Notices by Solderpunk (solderpunk@mastodon.sdf.org), page 13

@cy @lain I set the high score on the Asteroids machine while I was there, but it was extremely easy to do so, I think it must have been reset very recently.

@lain Technikmuseum was also very good, and excellent value. One Euro less than Computerspielemuseum but about 50 times the size. The computer section is 99% Conrade Zuse and his exploding teeth, err, his early computers, but I'm not too upset because that's a sorely under-represented chapter in computing history. They also had a nice textile technology section which my wife enjoyed. Only complaint would be that approximately 50% of exhibits were German only, but not that big a deal.

@lain @cy Computerspielemuseum gets a thumbs up from me, despite perpetuating Apple II heresy. Mostly because they have a not-at-all locked down C64 on exhibit. You can power it down, pull out the Galaxians cartridge, power it up and knock out some BASIC code. They even have a manual sitting beside it so you can look up your PEEK and POKE addresses! They also sold me a very nice small poster with a PETSCII rendition of Alexanderplatz. https://mastodon.sdf.org/media/TM15noeiKujCTF38K3Y

No wonder @lain is so into traps, apparently this stuff is positively mainstream in Germany. Is this where you buy your programming socks? https://mastodon.sdf.org/media/AJrxCSrHTaRN7lsM2oY

@lain Hnnnng!

@lain @cy Tough decisions ahead!

@lain Fair enough. I am actually spending a little bit of time in Berlin next weekend, I might see if I can fit this in. Unless there are other more awesome retrocomputing things to see?

@lain Oh my, they have Konrad Zuse machines. Have you been inside?

@cy I'm *hoping* I can cut down the space by storing common substrings individually and assembling more specific messages by concatenating as required.

Things I would never have expected or necessarily even believed until I had experience writing command line software in assembly: useful error/help messages can easily eat up more ROM space than the parts of the code they describe. Old software sounded terse and angry for good reason.

*Finally* have multi-sector FAT16 write support working reliably. Only cost me untold hours of my life and a substantial chunk of my sanity!

Might spend next weekend alone in the middle of a forest remaining perfectly silent and still.

I suppose it's not a super high priority, but I'm surprised and a little disappointed that there doesn't seem to have been much effort put into developing a dead-simple filesystem for embedded or pedagogical use that has zero patent encumbrance.

Yo mamma's so FAT, Microsoft occasionally files patent infringement lawsuits against people who implement her commercially.

@bob My God, Nik Turner is on Bandcamp releasing new versions of Hawkwind songs?! I don't have words for how bizarre this is.

@satchmoz Oh, my bad, it must have been someone else.

Well, then, replace that part with the wonderful conversations you and @maiki are constantly having!

@satchmoz Satchmoz, I like you a lot. Keep tooting the things you too.

Thanks especially for your recent linkings to ESR's "The long goodbye to C" and discussion of the current situation with Eben Moglen and the FSF.

@klaatu Oh goodness, you're shopping for soldering irons in NZ? My condolences. I bought a pair of Goot irons (20W and 40W if I recall correctly) from Surplustronics in Auckland. Nothing fancy by any means, but anything remotely fancy was ludicrously priced. They survived about 3 years of causal use, including occasional weekend marathons, with no problems and were very easy to keep clean. Never touched a coat hanger, though. Good luck.

@lain I would definitely prefer "advance" here.

@lain I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but it does kind of feel like people are very slowly waking up to what's happened. People don't seem to feel too embarrassed to talk about it in the open.