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DnD, Floppies and 486:es

2023-02-20

It has been a hectic start of the year for me. To begin with, my new job

has been picking up speed, and I have been a bit stressed out by it

actually. I try to keep it on a manageable level, but it is hard. Lots

of manual work that needs to be taken care of, and lots of things that

we are working to improve and automate. It will be good in the end I

think.

I have been spending more and more time down the in the basement room I

rent for my photography work. As I previously mentioned, I have

furnished it as an electronics workshop too, and I've also worked on

some old hardware down here. I recently built a Z80-based computer kit

called the z80-mbc3. It is a slight change from z80-mbc2 that I found on

Tindie and bought. It runs CP/M-plus fairly well, and I've been

exploring it for the last few months. I also aquired an old 486 PC-clone

that I intend to get FreeDOS installed on. It will probably mostly be

used for games, but maybe there is a way to incorporate it into my

MIDI-workflow with the synths? We'll see. I upgraded it from a 486SX to

a 486DX2 running at 50mhz. It will do nicely I think. I got a CF-adapter

to use as storage and also a Gotek that I will probably replace the

built-in floppy with for convenience. Or maybe I'll keep it? It has it's

charm I have to admit.

Speaking of old hardware, I also bought a Greaseweazle a while ago, that

I have been using to dump some old diskettes/floppies with. I found an

old 5,25" drive that I tested today, and it seems to work equally well

with the GW as my 3,5" drive does. It was a bit of a pain, but I finally

found the required Shugart-cable to connect it. I tested it out on some

old ABC-800-floppies I had laying around and it seemed to work well. I

like the open design of the GW, and also the software is easily

accessible and runs well on OpenBSD too, which is what I insist on using

as a workstation down in the basement. Perhaps I can upload some of the

dumps to archive.org after some testing?

I also got a new GPU, an AMD Radeon RX 480. I have been bidding on an

auction-site for weeks, but the cards always go way up in price. This

one I got for 60$ or something. It works well with OpenBSD's

amdgpu-drivers, and is better accelerated than my old card (an x600). I

like the idea of buying stuff from aucation-sites instead of buying

things new. It takes a bit more work and perserverence, but the price is

usually better and it feels better somehow.

I have also been playing a lot of DnD these last few months. I play with

two groups, and both of them are running custom campaigns that I really

enjoy. I play a Rogue in one of them and a Sorcerer in the other. The

newest campaign is situated in Ravenloft, which is pretty cool I think.

Hopefully we can continue throughout the year with it.

Until later.

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