Message from the basement: It's that time of year (Patreon)

(Not a video message, just text and a couple pics)

Hello my patrons! Today is December 26, the day after Christmas. As we approach  the calendar New Year celebration, I am reflecting on how 2022 was the year of healing post COVID, at least for me. Finally, life feels like it's mostly back to normal, at least where I am. Businesses are bustling, people are out and about. It's a great sight to behold.

Unfortunately 2022 wasn't all great - it brought with it the full fledged war in Ukraine, global inflation, a massive explosion of COVID in China and multiple horrible mass shootings in the US. 

With that said, I wanted to wish everyone a happy holiday season. Let's look to 2023 with hope and optimism for the future. I am happy to know that no matter what's happening in the world, we will still have our retro computers. They are relics of the past that continue to thrive and spark excitement in our community. I have to wonder if the designers of these computers ever though people would still be working on these old things as much as we do??

Speaking of old and forgotten things, the 8" mystery hard drive may be working sooner than later. It turns out (if you hadn't see the pinned comment on the video) that the drive is a Priam DIscos 1070 and there is actually a good amount of documentation for it. I'm working with patron Peter (who I mentioned in the video) on an Arduino sketch that will power up the drive and allow us to read data from it! (See picture) 

The drive may still be dead (mechanical drives are notoriously unreliable) so we'll see how it goes when we first attempt to spin it up! Don't worry, I'll make a video about it :-)

Happy holidays to all! 

PS: Attached is a picture of me by my tree on the 24th. 

PPS: If you want to read more about the mystery hard drive, see the information on the 1070 here: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/priam/