Randomly putting you in the Middle Seat on Ryanair

When software goes rogue: I'm going to "randomly" assign you a middle seat since you didn't pay to sit together.


https://phys.org/news/2017-06-ryanair-random-seat-allocation-oxford.html

PT-2600 system board

I opened up my Brother PT-2600 to see what was inside:





It has an H8S/2324 cpu with 32KB ram built in.



an New Japan Radio NJU6540AF lcd controller and an OKI R27V1602E rom chip.



and a ba6220 motor controller and a PDIUSBD12 usb interface chip.

PT-20 and DYMO tape

One of the things that made me do a double take was that the PT-20 had a TC cartridge that was labeled DYMO.

Apparently, there was a DYMO 3000 that used brother TC tape.

Here's the cartridge that was in my PT-20 with the DYMO brand.




And the dymo 3000 (pictures I found on the internet)



You can see that the locking lever mechanism (the orange lever) looks identical.


The dial of the Dymo looks very similar to the PT-6.





Note that they both have 9 buttons in a 3x3 grid along with a dial wheel.

PT-20 Code+K HINMEI

Here's your Japanese word for the day: HINMEI.

I put it into google and it means "Product Name".

You can put it info mode with CODE+K and it will show you "HINMEI".

Pressing enter will tell you that the PT-20 is "25 : D". (The PT-20 and PT-25 are pretty much identical except for the memory storage I think).









Up and down arrow will select various other tests: LCD, KEY, PRINT, END.


And CODE+D after you turn it on will give you this demo print: Welcome to the world of creative lettering.





CODE+C will print ABCDEFG as a quick test.

PT-20 system board

Here's an old PT-20 system board (uses the old TC tape) and it was made in 1992.



LCD controller Hitachi HD44780S


Sanyo LC3517BML-15 2048 WORDS x8 BITS CMOS STATIC RAM


Mitsubishi M38004M8 cpu

decoding this cpu part number: M3800 4 = 640 bytes ram, M = mask rom, 8 = 32768 bytes ROM

NEC UB2908-A chip which must be some kind of gate array.

PT-1900 system board

I got a Brother PT-1900 that had a leaky battery so I opened it up to clean it and see what was inside.

Looks like a

Hitachi (Renesas) H8S / 2312 cpu with 8k of ram

Oki R27V802F-04HMA 524,288-Word x 16-Bit or 1,048,576-Word x 8-bit One Time PROM

PTC PT6520 lcd controller

Stanley EM100 1000 day rollover

So the Stanley finally rolled over from 999 to 1000 days and the moment of truth...



it goes back to zero and starts showing you tenths of a day, so after a couple of hours it goes from 0.0 to 0.1 days.

A couple of neat features on my car

A couple of things I've discovered about my car: you can roll up/roll down the windows with the key out of the ignition. So if you stop the car and take the key out, as long as you don't open any of the car doors, the power windows are still active. Once you open any door, the power windows shut down.

If you leave a door open, the overhead light will shut off after about 10 minutes. That helps keep the battery from running down.


And it won't let you lock your keys inside. If you hit the door lock button with the door open, it will immediately unlock all the doors if the keys are in the ignition.

Compute! Heat Seeker for apple 2

Years ago, I typed in a program from Compute Magazine's Apple Applications Special called Heat Seeker.

I've looked for pdf scans of that particular issue and haven't been able to find it.

I found it on a disk at asimov under images/magazines/compute/.


At last. (I think the memory of the game is better than the game is). It's a bit twitchy. If it were a bit slower and easier to control I think it'd be a lot more fun. Heck, just destroying the missiles on the ground with no missiles taking off is a challenge.





Compute! Apple Applications Spring-Summer 1985 (Side 1 - DOS 3.3).DSK

What happens past 999 days with Stanley EM100?

So I'm wondering what's going to happen once the day counter goes over 999 days... will it roll over to zero? will it just display 999?

Stay tuned, let's see what happens...

After 995 days, the Daewoo fridge is not too far off what the Energy Guide says, maybe 20% higher at $59.13. I think if the seals were a bit better it'd be more efficient. As the plastic door seals have shrunk over time, they don't remain perfectly straight.

INFO mode on PT-2600

So I got a PT-2600 and was fiddling about with INFO mode.

First hold down CODE+R while hitting power and that should reset the unit.
Turn it off, then hold down CODE+K while hitting Power and you should get into INFO mode.

So if you hit 0 you get into a mode where it says "KEY CODE". I couldn't figure out what this was all about, it wants some key number, but after typing 2600 (for the PT-2600, get it?) it then shows me the current serial number(which matches the number on the back of the unit) and allows me to set the serial number. I think that this must be where it will set the serial number for when you hook it up to a USB port.

I've successfully entered a new serial number, then Enter and it says OK. Power off, code+k + power and 0 then 2600 and I can see my new serial number.

(on my PT-1950, I tried 1950 for the KEY CODE and it worked to bring up the serial number)


Also there's an adjustment setting (though I have no idea what I'm adjusting)

If you hit H it will say "Adjust +- 0mm"

If you hit left arrow 4 this will change to "Adjust - 2.0mm"

If you hit right arrow 9 this will change to "Adjust + 4.5mm"

and if you hit 0 this will change to "Adjust +- 0mm"


So you can adjust "something" from -2.0 to +4.5mm in half mm increments.

HP Elite 8100 SFF and ubuntu 16.04 sound

I've got this HP Elite 8100 SFF (circa 2011) and everything seems to work, but no sound.

In System settings/Sound I get a "Dummy Output."

dmesg | grep snd

tells me that

[ 11.737424] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: no codecs found!

Man, I wish things would just work...


!!DMI Information
!!---------------

Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard
Product Name: HP Compaq 8100 Elite SFF PC
Product Version:
Firmware Version: 786H1 v01.05
Board Vendor: Hewlett-Packard
Board Name: 304Ah



!!Soundcards recognised by ALSA
!!-----------------------------

--- no soundcards ---


!!PCI Soundcards installed in the system
!!--------------------------------------

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev
05)


!!Advanced information - PCI Vendor/Device/Subsystem ID's
!!-------------------------------------------------------

00:1b.0 0403: 8086:3b56 (rev 05)
Subsystem: 103c:304a


edit: I get the same exact thing with Knoppix 7.7, snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: no codecs found!

I got a usb docking port that has usb sound built-in and that seems to work just fine so far, just plug in and it works.

edit: I updated the bios from 1.05 to 1.13 and it didn't make any difference. Still no sound.

ebay and firefox, paying with paypal doesn't work for me

So I'm running firefox 53.0.3 on ubuntu 16.04 and ebay keeps getting hung up on paying with paypal.

I click on pay with paypal, enter my paypal login and it gets hungup with a spinning circle.

It's done the last few times I've bought something.

I have to launch chromium, and it doesn't have a problem with this.

Flicking the apple2 hi-res pages as fast as possible

Just for fun, I thought I'd see what mame would do with flicking the hi-res pages as fast as I can. I remember doing this years ago on my apple 2.

The softswitches at $C054 and $C055 will select page 0 (c054) or page 1 (c055).

So let's launch the apple2ee driver with

./mame64 apple2ee

And after it boots, hit CTRL+F12 to do a CTRL+RESET to stop the boot process and give you a command prompt.



Then let's do a CALL -151 to get into the monitor,
then type an exclamation point ! to get into the mini-assembler.

Type 300:LDA $C054 (enter)
(space) LDA $C055 (enter)
(space) JMP $300 (enter)
then (enter) will drop you out of the mini-assembler.

To look at this disassembled, type 300L (enter)





now type CTRL+C to get back to applesoft.

type

HGR:HCOLOR=3:FOR I = 0 TO 179:HPLOT 0,I TO 279,I:NEXT

This will fill the hi-res screen with white.




Now we'll call our little machine language program:

CALL 768

and the screen will show alternating lines. On a real apple2, it will be more like a checkerboard pattern, but the emulation is probably handling it line by line.



To stop the flickering before you get a seizure, CTRL+F12 will reset the machine.




Those of you who know 6502 assembly would probably know how to squeeze some cpu cycles to flip the pages faster.

edit:

Well, I've recently discovered the apple ii emulator epple2 by Chris Mosher at http://mosher.mine.nu/epple2/.

This emulator aims to do faithfully recreate cycle exact apple 2 video, which is exactly what I'm looking for. After much trials and tribulations setting it up and getting the roms straightened out, I can try my soft switch hitting.

300: AD 54 C0 AD 55 C0 4C 00 03



hitting break, then

(sticking in one NOP - EA)

300: AD 54 C0 EA AD 55 C0 4C 00 03



after hitting reset, it goes back to text mode so let's change the code to hit the C050 and C057 switches and then have a few EA delays and jump to $0306:





Now the stripes are thicker: