Tony is a Geek

This was a kickstarter that I backed ages ago... I am actually glad they didn't rush and output something just due to cost / speed as it would have been an "and also" type robot device. Whereas this robot has evolved, changed and updated as new technology has come along - now, I know very well, that keeping on adding the latest new & shiny can sometimes mean you don't ever have a complete "thing" and there is a point in time where you just have to "go with what you've got", but I'm glad they are taking their time with 'Little Sophia' Have no idea what I'm talking about?  Check out the latest video here: In fact it was due to this little robot that I ended up finding out about a tiny little STT / TTS audio chip that is amazingly small & amazingly powerful and REALLY cheap, something like £2 each - now that sort of technology was something I played with about 10 years ago and was about 10 times the size and 10 times lower ...

Sounds like a Resident Evil naming, however, it's not.  Basically, I purchased a CPC 464 with the built in tape-player listed on eBay as 'untested' and the when it arrived, well, it was rattling... The packaging was great, cannot fault the seller, they sold the machine as-is & I was buying it as-is. After unpacking, it was clear that the tape-player was no good, there were bits of plastic & metal rolling around inside.  I did what you'd expect, I unscrewed everything, took it all apart and did some retro archaeology.  The machine wouldn't power on.  No surprise there, it was listed as untested. I got my probes out and started to have a fiddle around.  So...power was getting to the main board, however, it is the cassette tape that controls the power switch and connects to the main board and gets the machine working.  The switch was duff.  Tested it and it didn't matter where the switch was, no electricity passing through it.  Maybe I can ju...

A short while ago (March 2023), I had a few days I had to take off, basically, if you don't take your vacation days by end of March you lose them and I also give too much to the company I work for, so I decided I would actually take the time off & I would do "me things".  That involved taking a visit to the official "Museum of Computing" in Swindon. Now, I had heard of this place for quite some time & I had visited Swindon a few times (it's only 35 miles up the road), I had never been there on a day when it was open.  So, I did.  It was nice. If you ever want to visit, go to their website HERE . Anyway, Mrs.isageek, was quick to point out that, "you've got one of those...and one of those... and some of those... and that...and that...haven't you got a few of them?", etc..etc... you get the idea.  She actually was right.  I did have quite a lot of what was on display, as well as what was accessible & usable - albeit back home the ...

So, the Atari 800 XL is running a 6502 CPU and p reviously I setup the C cross-compiler in Linux / Windows to write simple C code, compile the code, deploy to an emulator and to real hardware. Now...as I may have mentioned, my first computer was an Amstrad CPC 464 back in xmas 1984 - I was a little too young to really appreciate coding in anything other than BASIC at the time but I made a good go of it and did some interesting database / filing system type things that emulated PRESTEL screens and made some very slow BASIC games and played a lot of TAPE games.  I never really had the opportunity to write any code in C or Assembler for that hardware. Time zoomed along and I moved onto an Atari 520 STFM, then onto a 286 PC, then 386, then 486, then, well, y'know.... Around the 2007/2008/2009 period of time, I was having an external garage of the house I was living in at the time converted into an "office", but it had quite a lot of space, so I thought wouldn't it be goo...

Well....if I recall, it runs on 5volts, so could be plugged into a small powerbank and run standalone. Many moons ago - maybe 10years ago? I sold off an entire room of specific Amstrad machines, hardware extensions, software, etc... I literally had "everything" you could have ever got for the Amstrad range. I had one of those little obsession phases, where I started by just getting a CPC 464 and monitor to remind me of the one I had back for xmas 1984/1985... and then it grew to getting the add-ons, the original add-ons mind you, like ROM boxes etc... and then it migrated into getting the 6128 machines and dual 3" external disc drives and then I got a mythical 664 machine - all fully working and operational. Then I did what I couldn't do back in 1984/1985, I figured out and wrote an Assembler game called 'Scarab', it was an egyptian based collect 'ankh' symbols from around the screen whilst having 3-4 baddies moving around and they were coded to seek ...

As I am someone who cannot keep his brain focused for very long, I tend to wander off and do "engineering" distractions, whether that be writing code to do something useful, or not, or making some random old piece of software or hardware do things it shouldn't be doing, or even just doing something super simple, or deciding to undertake remodelling a garden to have a canal within in (and then putting it all back as it was after 6 months as I changed my mind), or deciding to make drones from scratch and then taking that technology and deciding to make autonomous robots, which then takes up loads of time figuring out how to get micro-controllers to work and sensors and actuators, then getting distracted by needing to setup solar panels to keep pond water pumps working 24/7 to keep the pond koi carp alive - you get the idea. Beyond doing the "day job", I tend to consume myself with doing too many side-projects that are great fun, very enjoyable-ish and are all tech...

Whilst I refuse to sign-up for an API key for chatGPT, you might want to if you want to repeat this example.  Why am I not getting an API key?  'cos I'm building my own offline version (that I'll document and share with everyone soon!) - I could easily then plug this DOS client into my version.  sweet. CHECK OUT THE ARTICLE HERE Until then... enjoy and be amazed at the fact you can still do things with old software & hardware that relate to "new" things.  Here we have a Generative AI being accessed from DOS and if you fancy replicating it yourself, it's just some C code, after-all.. then  CHECKOUT THE GITHUB REPO HERE I have used the MTCP packet-driver for DOS on many of my early 1990s hardware allowing it to connect to WiFi (WEP access only though) and access the internet, so this isn't something "too different" - after all, calling chatGPT is just calling a REST API. However, the "difficult part" is calling the REST API with HTTP(...

So... I spent some time setting this up on a Windows 10 laptop environment, which involved downloading and installing cc65 and adding the /bin folder to the PATH - I'll get screenshots from that laptop and paste down below - the reason I mention this is because that setup did not have the cl65 executable that allows you to do the compile/link all in one go, you have to do it step by step, which isn't a major problem, but it is interesting to do & understand what is happening behind the scenes. In my UBuntu linux environment, all that I did was: $ sudo apt-get install cc65 Then I used snap to install atari800xl-linux This allowed me to have an emulator for the atari800xl locally. Once the cc65 (cc = cross compiler) is installed you can use it straight away. I used the code from this page as a quick example. As you can see below, the simple C code is located in it's own folder, I then used the cl65 command to make the output file, for the Atari800xl it is best to call th...

Whilst looking at setting up come C programming for the old Atari 800 XL (as you do!), I stumbled over this website that looked awesome and contains a nice snapshot of information. https://retrogamecoders.com/ Setup by a gentleman, bit like myself, who was doing some spring-cleaning during the covid-19 pandemic and re-kindled some of that old computer magic days from the 80/90s, back before it got boring, serious & out-sourced :-D Oh looksie - Atari ST Coding (looks familiar) What am I looking at on there?  Well....just using Altirra emulator and looking at using some C coding, although I might dip my toe into using CC65 and cross-compiling, so I can code on the PC machine and produce output to then deploy onto/into the Atari 800 XL..... let's see! https://retrogamecoders.com/learn-code-c-programming/ Coding, done properly (none of that Python stuff). Will probably end up documenting my journey of setting stuff up, how to get the environment working etc... who to write some si...