Repairing an old Tape Drive from the 1950’s.

A great video showing the innards of a 1959 IBM 729 Vacuum Tape Drive.

 

 

Minnowboard Turbot Review

I purchased a Minnowboard Turbot last month as, while I was very happy with my Raspberry Pi 2 and was looking at the 3, I wanted something that was significantly faster and, more to the point for me, used an x86 CPU. The Turbot is the 3rd iteration (that I’m aware of) of the Minnowboard, and the first one that I ever considered buying. Things like having the RTC battery holder soldered on already (although I am skilled at soldering), and improvements with HDMI output compatibility, along with performance improvements in both graphics and raw speed, garnered enough of my interest to warrant a purchase.

After putting it through its paces and installing a good half dozen Linux distros on it, I have to say that this would make an excellent low-end media center PC as, with a dual core CPU and 2GB of RAM, it can handle 1080p video without a problem, as well as low-end gaming & emulation. While Higan bounced between 10 -45 fps so often even SMW was unplayable, ZSNES (which I remember running SMW at playable speeds on my dad’s 486 SX 25mhz under DOS 6.22 18 years ago) offered a wonderful experience. Early MAME games were playable, but anything past 1989 is hit and miss.

Power usage is impressive, with idling watts as low as 2.9, though ~3.5 seems to be the norm under Lubuntu 16.04. Running the Nexiuz benchmark, I managed to get the power usage (as reported by EZ Watt at least) up to 10.1, although it was hovering in the high 9’s most of the time. I’m currently having it connect to my security camera via rtsp and it still hovers around the 4.5w mark.

When you factor in that this little unit makes no noise, and while it can get a bit warm, it could still be handled, even while compiling MAME, which took 12 – 18 hours (I fell asleep and it was finished when I checked after waking up).

While I am very impressed with the Turbot and have noticed the company behind them are coming out with faster (and quad core) versions, I am looking onward towards  the Intel Core M CPU’s, as they appear to offer remarkable performance, albeit at a higher price point than the Atom x64 CPU the Turbot uses.

I don’t regret getting the Turbot and enjoy having a computer that is always on and yet makes no noise and uses almost no power.

Turbot-Box-01 Turbot-Box-02 Turbot-AC_AdapterTurbot-In_the_Dark Turbot-Mighty_Mouse Turbot-Thumb_DriveTurbot_Mix_Power_Usage Turbot_Max_Power_Usage Turbot_Nexiuz

Pi 2 – Benchmarks

I ran a few benchmarks via hardinfo the other week and took pictures (with the flash off). I now have my Pi2 on a 3-way HDMI switcher (bought years ago for monitor) along with one of my backup computers, so it’s easier to mess with the Pi2 from time to time. I’d rather not have to physically switch HDMI plugs as my TV, nice as it is, only has two HDMI inputs.

First we have some info about the Pi2 as reported by the program.

Sysinfo 1

Info about the Pi2

Sysinfo 2

Info about the Pi2

Onto the actual tests.

Raytrace test

The Pi2 running the Raytrace test.

N-Queens test

The Pi2 running the N-Queens test.

Fibonacci test

The Pi2 running the Fibonacci test.

FFT test

The Pi2 running the FFT test.

Cryptohash test

The Pi2 running the Cryptohash test.

Blowfish test

The Pi2 running the Blowfish test.

Limited Reproduction Run Of Unreleased Nintendo NES Flight Simulator ‘Chuck Yeager’s Fighter Combat’ | RetroCollect

Limited Reproduction Run Of Unreleased Nintendo NES Flight Simulator ‘Chuck Yeager’s Fighter Combat’ | RetroCollect.

 

I LOVED this game for the IBM PC. First starting out on my Dad’s Tandy 1000XL (AFAIR), before he upgraded to a 486 25mhz 4MB RAM and Super VGA graphics and Sound Blaster sound card. Lots of fun, though a joystick was required, otherwise it wasn’t worth playing.

I can’t wait until they release the ROM.

The writing bug strikes

I’ve found myself wanting to write in larger amounts for the first time in a long while. Part of it is the fact that I am no longer in school and therefore using energy that might have gone towards writing. Another is the fact that I find the ideas for the 3rd book in my trilogy falling into place and I feel that I should be starting on it by Summer’s end. And yet another, is the fact that I have some obscure things to write about, mostly dealing with retro-gaming/emulation.

 

Hopefully updates will be more frequent from here on out.