💾 Archived View for freeside.wntrmute.net › log › 2021 › 20210201.gmi captured on 2022-06-11 at 20:53:03. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-05)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
now watching: Annihilation
Started hacking on the RC2014 mini again. The last time I left it, I had two mini-projects going for it. The first was the ESP8266 wireless module. I assembled that but it looks like there's a short somewhere. Also, the default firmware is apparently a telnet console, but what I want is a WiFi serial terminal sort of thing. Right now, it has a 68B50 serial chip, so there's only one serial port available. However, I have my SIO/2 system that might be able to use a pair of ports. I'll have to see if I can transfer that stuff over without having to lose my other data partitions. I still have to figure out where the short is, then figure out a good scheme for using wifi over the serial port to at least browse Gemini...
The second (unfinished) project is a universal micro keyboard. Jeremy sent me one a while back but I set it up in a way that won't work with the mini. There's an alternative hack to it so you can get it to lay flat on top of the mini so you keep your stack. This might be cool to use with the pi zero serial terminal setup. No clue when I can work on that (I'm already up too late).
I got Turbo Pascal (3.01) set up and working, verifying that the editor works to compile ye olde hello.pas. It uses Wordstar bindings which I like. Also got ZDE and a couple other tools transferred up. If I was smart, and I'm not, I'd zip them together and make it easier to stand up new installs. I'd also like to get XM.COM working; I tried stealing it from the RomWBW board (the SC131) but it has issues. It needs patching to recognise the BIOS.
So what am I gonna do wih Turbo Pascal? Well, there's a few projects. I want to work through Algorithms + Data = Code, but first I gotta (re)learn Pascal. I want to work through Celestial Calculations too. But also... gotta learn Pascal. If BASIC supported structs/records, it would be possible to get cracking that way, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't. I *could* use the hi-tech compiler too, I guess. Anyways, at some point in the future I'm going to expand my gemhole with more CP/M and RC2014 stuff, kind of like I had on my old WWW site. I found my old thermal printer, a serial-attached thing, but that again needs a dual serial console. Maybe I can scrounge up another SIO chip and the logic stuff I need. Another option would be to pick up the official RC2014 kit for it, but use my board.
Unrelated, but as part of my diet changes, I wrote my own program for it. It's first and foremost a CLI program to record weigh-ins and food, but there's a dumb HTTP interface now that shows the food I've eaten today, some basic data (like the macros available for the day), and lets me record new food. At home, I can do this on my phone because the interface just runs on my raspberry pi desktop (unauthenticated because hashtag yolo). The cool thing about all this was it took about a half hour to get the basic database schema and shell of a program built, which I did over lunch. Then I slowly hacked in new features, culminating in writing the http stuff during a meeting where I was mostly just listening. All said, maybe two hours total of work. It's dumb, but it's useful. So far. Talk to me in a few months and see if I'm where I want to be.
School is... relentless. Sundays are basically the only time I have to do much unless I stay up too late. I still have a few pages to write, and there's a physical assessment tomorrow.
Last, I've been reading Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds and it's been pretty good.
Okay, next update in who knows when. Catch y'all on the flipside.