Today is a typical Saturday. My girlfried is babysitting kids of her relatives, so I found something urgent to do at work. There is so much stuff do be done, but I can’t quite start to repackage applications on the weekend.
Roman Chunin from NedoPC told me he got a new batch of TURBO 2+ PCBs. I hope he’ll build and debug one for me soon. I really want to have a good russian ZX Spectrum 128K clone. TURBO 2+ extended modes are quite intriguing as well.
I translated 2 out of 36 pages from DIY TURBO 2+ build guide. It is hard work, but I’m quite happy with translation quality. 2 out of 36 is only 5.5%, but I hope to make more progress soon.
I’m anxious to find out more about Evil Eye’s Pentagon 1024 SL project (another russian ZX Spectrum 128K clone), but its been a while since he made last update. I am really curious if he managed to get it working, and if so, how stable it is.
On Xbox side of things, I’ve ordered four SDRAM chips for 128 Megabyte upgrade. Soldering and especially desoldering surface mount components is a huge challenge. I need a flat tip for my Solomon SL-20 soldering station and some liquid flux or soldering paste. I really hope for the best. May be I’ll get lucky and do it right. Less experienced folks managed to do this upgrade successfully, so I’m almost calm about it.
128 Megabyte Xbox memory upgrade isn’t the most useful mod. The only homebrew I’m aware that benefits from it are NeoGeo and Capcom CPS 1 and 2 emulators. But it could also be used as a fully capable XDK debug station. Xbox is an amazing value per dollar for how many cool projects one can do compared to Playstation 2 Linux or Dreamcast with KOS.
In other news, great times are ahead for people who despise privacy! Narcissists all around the world can now share their photos on flickr. I’m using this brand new and exciting service for over a month now, and I’ve uploaded a lot of photos, sceenshots and other graphic files. I salute enterpreneurs who made this awesome resource a reality, and sincerely hope they have some sort of business plan, so it won’t go bust after first revenue / expenses analysis.
I was surfing blogspot blogs using the randomized “next” button and discovered a truly amazing graphic artist from Puero Rico. His nickname is Hellseher (sounds like bad hair metal band), and his art is awesome.
Aslo, I was thinking about PC upgrade today, but it is way too expensive. Here are my calculations:
Intel P4-550 3.4GHz LGA775 RETAIL BOX $365 TWINX1024-3200LLPRO 2x512MB PC3200 $458 ASUS P5P800 $120 ------------------------------------------- Total before tax: $943 Total with 15% GST/PST tax: $1085
Those are canadian dollars, but still it is way too scary. It seems I’ll have to postpone upgrade until April 2005.
That is it for now! Bye, everyone. Keep your head high and don’t drinking bad moonshine!