Kevin

Atari 2600 Cartridge Emulation – Part 2 Following on from my previous post: Atari 2600 Cartridge Emulation in this post I start to look at how to build a custom Atari 2600 ROM itself. I’ve spent a bit of time pouring over the …

Reproducing Nick Bild's picotari digital picture frame on the Atari 2600.

emalliab.wordpress.com/2025/12/18/a...

#Atari #Atari2600 #RaspberryPiPico #Picotari

Parts 6 and 7 show how to replace the ROM with a microcontroller and then create a dynamic assembler to change the code directly "on the fly".

emalliab.wordpress.com/2025/11/21/t...

#TD4 #Arduino #4bit

Photo of an (almost) square LED panel display with green LEDs illuminated in what can be seen to be a pattern representing a stage of Conway's Game of Life.

Finally getting around to messing about with some 16x64 RGB LED Panels I picked up in a giveaway a while back from Limehouse Labs.

emalliab.wordpress.com/2025/11/01/h...

Bit late to the party with this one :)

Here is a custom PCB version of the 4-bit TD4 with the LED bling built-in.

emalliab.wordpress.com/2025/10/29/t...

makertube.net/w/beyW1XWnp4...

#TD4

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage Meet two of Victorian London's greatest geniuses... Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron: mathematician, gambler, and proto-programmer, whose writings contained the first ever appearance of general co...

Yes, yes it is! Our fabulous logo was designed by Sydney Padua, who wrote The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, a brilliant alt-history in which the Analytical Engine is finished and used for fighting crime.

www.penguin.co.uk/books/286982...

Ada Lovelace Day has begun! As midnight arrives on Kiritimati Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, our global celebration of women in science, technology, engineering and maths begins! Join us in celebrating by posting about your fave women in STEM #ALD25!

Playlist: Design engineer Yewande Akinola, physicist Dr Sheila Kanani, geneticist Dr Kat Arney, mathematician Dr Sara Santos, atmospheric chemist Dr Anna Jones, software dev Jenny Duckett & biologist Dr Bissan Al-Lazikani in 2016. www.youtube.com/watc... #ALD25

Playlist: See data scientist Dr Chanuki Seresinhe, dinosaur researcher Dr Susannah Maidment, engineer Dr Hilary Costello, statistician Prof Emma McCoy, deep sea biologist Dr Diva Amon & science presenter Natasha Simons speak in 2018. www.youtube.com/watc... #ALD25

Photo of a cheap TD4 kit with some added LEDS. There are two 6-LED modules added on top of the A and B register chips, and four additional individual LEDs soldered onto the underside of the board just poking out on the right, one for each row of ROM instruction DIP switches. Some of each of the LEDs are illuminated along with the existing LEDs for the OUTPUT register that are built into the original board.

Now with added bling! Part 4 has some simple hardware mods that add LEDs in some useful places to help debugging.

emalliab.wordpress.com/2025/10/05/t...

#TD4

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

TD4 4-bit DIY CPU – Part 3 Having now spent some time thinking about and building my TD4 4-bit CPU this has a look at some code that I can run on it. Part 1 – Introduction, Discussion and Analysis Part 2 – B…

And now with some notes on programming and some example programs.

BTW - Anyone think of a way to multiply two numbers given only two registers and no other storage...?

emalliab.wordpress.com/2025/10/01/t...

#TD4

Photo of a fully populated TD4 PCB. There are 16 blue 8-way DIP switches in a 4x4 grid, each with a corresponding 8 diodes - yes I really had to solder 128 diodes. There are 13 ICs, a few resistors and some miscellaneous components.

It works!

Details here: emalliab.wordpress.com/2025/09/28/t...

#TD4

TD4 4-bit DIY CPU I was looking for DIY CPU projects, as I like kits that help me think at the lowest level of processing. It helps keep me grounded in how far technology has come over the years. Some of the options…

Figuring out how the TD4 4-bit DIY CPU works.

When mine arrives in the post, I'll see for real what it can do (assuming it doesn't drive me mad soldering all those diodes)!

emalliab.wordpress.com/2025/09/18/t...

#TD4

The ultimate fate of Tad Williams' Otherlanders...

A screenshot of the BOXES Vol. 4 Kickstarter page showing 20 hours remaining with £4156 of £5000 raised.

20 hours remaining and just under £850 to be raised!

By my reckoning that’s around 40 backers. Can you be one of them? Do you know someone who could be?

BOXES is an anthology that showcases exciting UK based cartoonists. Check it out here: www.kickstarter.com/projects/thi...

Are you on Mastodon?

I've not found you over there so far, but can't help thinking you'd find a pretty good audience over there for this kind of thing...

Wouldn't it be a great outcome if the world collectively finally recognised that sometimes we could do with a few more people simply dreaming :)

Small Microcontroller Displays I found myself wanting several small displays connected to a microcontroller, so was doing a bit of a trade-off between various options, and was starting to lose track, so this post collects some o…

A summary of the small microcontroller display boards I have kicking around for my own reference...

emalliab.wordpress.com/2025/07/19/s...

In the data sheet I was reading I thought the data had a minimum pulse width of 500nS (plus setup/hold time) and an address latch 400ns?

That worked for me anyway? But I wasn't using A8/A9...

Some of the control line transitions have a minimum wait time - that caught me out. Are you sure you're meeting all the timing criteria?

Isn't all control pins high "latch address" so what is the following data access? That looks like a lot of data activity with no further control line updates?

Cover of the magazine, Shoreline of Infinity 39. Image is a pinkish background with a mathematically inspired image.

Shoreline of Infinity 39 Now available for pre order
www.shorelineofinfinity.com/product/shor...

Fascinating to hear how you (used to do|are doing) things - many thanks for bringing this to #RetroFest2025 today :)

It was fun to see a Compumate. I don't think I've seen another one in the wild before!

#RetroFest2025

Get in with that MS BASIC...

Photo of a rc2014 and a HDMIPi display with a small solderless breadboard inbetween with a single chip on it, connected to both via jumper wires. The RC2014 is on and the display shows the boot information showing that BASIC is running.

Using a Raspberry Pi V1 and HDMIPi as a serial terminal for a RC2014.... almost.

emalliab.wordpress.com/2025/05/30/r...

#RaspberryPi #RC2014

10/n

HUMANS are an Everything Technology. We need tools that we can use, not machines that will live our lives for us.

And not Agent software that burns forests and slimes rivers so someone can say they made a billion rather than a paltry twenty million.

More #buyastrangerabook day loveliness!

@lisatans.bsky.social is offering to buy someone whatever book they like, up to £15!

So, if there's a particular book you're after, get in touch!

UK only.

Screenshot of the linked information. Lots of text, but basically the dotnet-policy-service bot responding in github comments on a PR telling the copilot bot " please read the following Contributor License Agreement. If you agree with the CLA, please reply with the following information" and then suggesting some responses. Copilot does not appear to have responded...

Anyone else find this hilarious?

On the dotnet runtime repository, there is a policy bot asking copilot to read the contributors policy information...

https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/pull/115733#issuecomment-2892074537

Fab - yes thank you, really enjoyed all the "near" ones. Creepily feeling quite near at the moment too!

Just embarking on the "far" stories now (although I've already read The Bee Bearer in Shoreline of Infinity) :)

Just started on Limelight (and other stories) by @lyndseycroal.bsky.social.

If the rest of the stories are as good as the first two, this will be a real treat :)