Month: December 2023

It’s that time again; the semi-annual review of the year to somewhat consolidate things into a single post.

2023 was, in most ways, a repeat of 2022; the economy is still tits-up so most of my extracurricular efforts happened around the house – usually involving some computer.

Most of the fun stuff of 2023 was reconnecting with a lot of old computers I’d used / owned in the past:

This led to my working with OpenCore for a couple of months, and that led to turning an old Dell XPS into a Hackintosh – which led to buying a new PC over several trips to Microcenter…

The new PC, which is now an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D running 64Gigs of DDR5 and an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX video card has been pretty great, though Microsoft’s insistence on monetizing all user data regardless of system usefulness or stability really lets it down…

I also bought a new MacBook Pro, and then sold it seven months later… The M-series CPUs are pretty great, though Apple’s insistence on everything being an iPhone really lets it down.

I may make the jump to some *nix variant this coming year…

The birthday present I got in 2023 is still working great though. I’m not sure I can ever go back to simple LCD monitors.

Car-wise, my Chrysler 300 is still doing great – I love the gas guzzling monster and I don’t have any plans to replace it any time soon. And speaking of cars my roommate got a truck this year, and he seems pretty happy with it as well.

Other than that, the level of dystopia in 2023 continues to rise – homeless people setting fire to the forest, my roommate’s truck getting broken into, my office getting broken into… All things that, just a few years ago, were things we only read about as happening on the left-coast.

Let’s see, I also engaged in a little geneology and then attempted a new position at work that didn’t work out – I’m not an actual accountant, I just play one for my I.T. department. So, I’m still the CIO – a position I’ve held where I work for about fifteen years now. I’ll hit my 20 years at the company in 2024 – so there’s that I suppose.

Speaking of 20 years – this journal hit 20 years this year, and the domain rihahn.com hits 25 years in August. I’ve been doing this for too damn long.

Other than that, it’s been a year – much like every other year. I can’t complain much as I seem to have made it to the finish line once again.

Listening to "Gypsy" by Fleetwood Mac

In keeping with tradition, my car just passed 5000 miles and here’s the update.

Interestingly, I purchased the 300 on the 10th of August, 2022 – which is about 500 days ago.

5000 miles in 500 days – convenient. That puts me at 10 miles a day on average.

I need to get out more.

Listening to "Crystal City" by Robert Parker

It’s hard for anyone who wasn’t there to understand just how amazing the Amiga was when it arrived in the mid 80’s…

See, prior to the Amiga pretty much everything was 80-column shades of green or amber – or maybe 8 colors via RF modulator on the family NTSC/PAL TV if you were lucky – and suddenly in 1985 there’s this “Amiga 1000” machine that was doing stereo sound, 640×400 resolution, and 4096 colors!

The A1000 was a bit too pricy for a highschooler like me, but it was fun to drool over the thing none the less.

Then, in 1987, the Amiga 500 came out. It did everything the machine above did, but at a price normal people (like me) could afford!

I still remember the first time I saw an A500 in person, in late ’87, which had “that” King Tut image on the screen – and I was totally blown away…

Contrast this with the Atari 800XL I had the year before, in 1986…

Anyway, I really, really, really wanted an Amiga – but I was in the Navy in ’87 and that had a way of messing up my computer plans… I did eventually acquire that dream Amiga though, a year later in 1989, and I used the absolute crap out of it – eventually replacing it five years later in 1994.

Roll the clock forward a few years (30-ish) and I once again have an Amiga 500… Well, at least the soul of one at any rate.

A quick tour:

• The bottom edge is ATX power, MicroSD, USB2, and various power, reset, and status lights.
• The lower left is the voltage regulation section.
• The middle left is 6 megs of ram that the system can access as a mix of chip, fast, or slow ram.
• The top edge is I/O – PS/2 ports, VGA, stereo jack, serial, joystick ports, and 12v barrel.
• The middle right is filled with an MC68SEC000 and level converters, so this uses a real 68K CPU.
• The center of the board is the Xilinx FPGA that synthesizes the Amiga 500’s chipset.
• And just under the FPGA is the ARM controller that handles drive I/O.

And after some fiddling here it is running:

The MC68SEC000 CPU is stable at 60+Mhz, so this is basically an A500 with a 16-bit limited 68030 processor in it. Meaning it’s extremely high-performance while still being electrically 1:1 with an original A500.

I messed around with it for a few hours over the weekend and had a blast rummaging through my old applications and files. I do need to source a 9-pin joystick though… Mostly so I can play Shadow of the Beast. 😀

Listening to "Somebody's out There" by Triumph

Thought this was funny…

Listening to "Dreams" by Van Halen

Back on the 4th I mentioned the Minimig I ordered on the 27th that, in theory, was to arrive on the 6th.

Oh, how wrong I was…

See, in this globalist utopia of nations without borders and third-world manufacturing, things still need to go through customs to ensure all of the fingers in the pie get their piece. And this makes customs its own little circle of bureaucratic hell.

Here’s what my dev board’s trip has looked like so far:

You’ll notice the “Missing Mail” note on the 11th…

This was me taking a hint from the dozens of threads in r/USPS and r/USPS_complaints about Chicago being a postal black hole and suggesting that an official missing mail search often gets packages moving again…

Basically, it’s as close to “I want to speak to your manager” as you can get with the postal service – and it worked! In as much as the package started orbiting around Chicago again…

Anyway, the moral of this story is: Don’t Ever Ship Anything Important Internationally Via USPS… Spend the extra $10-$20 for an actual parcel service like UPS or DHL.

Listening to "The Mountain" by GUNSHIP

As of today, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is no more…

The end of an era.

Here’s a couple of my E3 badges: one from 2009 and the other from 2010 – for posterity:

Unlike a lot of folks, I’ve edited out my name, company name, and the barcode for security… It’s never “if” you will upset some crazy on the Internet who will try to get you fired – but “when”.

Listening to "Magic" by The Cars

As I mentioned a few months ago; I’m kinda into music and accordingly I always have some nice stuff for the reproduction of it.

Now I’m not some mental-case audiophile who needs four-figure interconnects for my six-figure component setup… I prefer to do the best I can while still being able to afford things like groceries, so in that vein I tend to acquire gently used stuff like my B&W DM640 speakers or my old Denon AVC-3000. I’ll occasionally spend a couple hundred on some piece of new gear like my Bose Companion 20 computer speakers that I’ve been using for over a decade, but that tends to be once every few years.

For example, for a few years now I’ve been using Audeze LCD-1 cans and a Soundblaster X3 – which is quite respectable for the $500 I spent.

The LCD-1’s are really nice, but the leather cups aren’t big enough for my ears, so they get annoying after an hour or so and I don’t use them as often as I would like. And while the Soundblaster X3 still sounds good, Soundblaster has a real software bloat problem and I hate loading its 20-something apps on the system to make it go… So, for Christmas this year I bought myself a new set of cans and a DAC/AMP…

I tend to prefer planar headphones, but planars that fit my ears tend to be in the $600+ range and that’s just too much in this economy… So, this time around I figured I’d try some regular old speaker headphones and I’ve always liked the fit of Sennheisers – so I found some HD 660S2s on sale and picked them up for $399.

The Sennheisers will support a balanced amplifier connection, and the Soundblaster X3 won’t, so I figured I should replace that too – which is where the FiiO K7 comes in, also on sale for $199.

So, all told it’s the most I’ve spent on audio hardware in a long time – but it sounds amazing! And as a bonus the FiiO doesn’t even need drivers. It just shows up as an audio device and works.

I’ve spent the last few hours just sending random FLAC files to the FiiO / Sennheiser setup and grinning like an idiot. 😀

Merry Christmas indeed!

Listening to "Trashin' The Camp" by Tarzan (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

My roommate is on day three at the hospital; surgery went fine and they got what they were after without complication, so now it’s just recovery from having his insides manhandled for a few hours.

Yesterday was apparently a lot of pain, and today is just sore and tired – so improvement of a sort.

In other news, the roof on my house started getting replaced yesterday, which was a hellish racket for about ten hours; they expect to be done by Sunday… Also, the Minimig I ordered has disappeared into the black hole that is ISC Chicago (International Service Center). No updates on it since the first.

Apparently this isn’t unusual for the Chicago customs office / USPS center, and there are entire reddit forums dedicated to “things being lost in transit through Chicago”… I have to give them 45 days, then I can file a missing package form and possibly order another Minimig.

If I order another one I’m going to offer them whatever it takes to not ship it via Mangle-Mail… UPS, FedEx, DHL all have their own terminals with their own customs and things work sooooo much better with them.

And that’s about it for this update.

Listening to "Magic Power" by Triumph

About once a week for years now I’ve stopped at the Carl’s Jr. near the office and gotten breakfast. And in that time the morning crew and I have gotten to know each other.

The usual process goes something like this; I pull up in my big rumbly sedan at a few minutes after they open at 6am and the voice over the speaker says “Good morning Mr. Miller – the usual?” And I answer “Good morning Rose, yes please.” I then pull around and spend a minute or so chatting with Rose about the weather or whatever before I’m given a large Coke Zero and a steak and egg breakfast burrito, and then head up the street to the office.

Rose is a single mother with two teenagers who works the morning shift at Carl’s Jr. and spends three afternoons a week with some rental maid service. She’s a really nice lady in my experience.

Anyway, this morning I wasn’t greeted by Rose – instead it was a halting synthesized voice welcoming me to Carl’s Jr. and asking if I would like whatever the current special is.

I say no and ask for a steak and egg breakfast burrito – and it assumes this means I want a sausage and egg biscuit. I correct it and after a pause it asks if I would like that as a large combo? No – just the burrito. Would I like a large coffee? No – just the burrito. Would I like two apple pies for a dollar? No – just the burrito.

So, I go back and forth with the robot for a good 5 minutes as it struggles to either upsell me or figure out how to make an order that’s just an entrée and a drink. Meanwhile cars are piling up behind me.

Once I’m satisfied that the robot has understood my order I pull around and encounter a disinterested teenager instead of Rose – and am given a sausage and egg biscuit and a large coffee…

I miss Rose.

Listening to "Los Angeles" by FM-84

Leading up to September 1989 I’d had quite a few different home computers – Sinclair ZX-81, Commodore VIC-20, and an Atari 800XL – but it was in the afternoon of a chilly September in Connecticut, 34 years ago, that I set up the first computer that I actually purchased for myself – an Amiga 500.

I used that Amiga 500 from late 1989 until early 1994 when it was replaced with a generic PC, which is about the longest I’ve ever used a single machine…

Anyway, I’ve always wanted another one just for ‘old time’s sake’ as well as maintaining access to all of the stuff I made on the Amiga over the years, but 30+ year old computers are fraught with complications such as failing components, brittle plastics, weirdly non-standard I/O, and a need for actual CRT-based monitors. And Amiga’s in general are surprisingly expensive here in the sci-fi future – a good condition A-500 that has had the 30+ year old electronics updated can command $600 to $700, and when you throw in a monitor and some shipping you’re looking at a bit over a grand for some nostalgia.

That’s twice what I spent for my original machine and its monitor…

To maintain access to my Amiga files I’ve since used a selection of software emulators such as Cloanto’s “Amiga Forever” to create ADF files, which are bit-copies of the original physical media that I can archive and load into various emulators as needed / wanted. But software emulation, while functional enough, feels ‘fake’ and I want an actual physical Amiga – but one without the above problems.

Basically I want a new A-500 made with new parts and that connects to modern peripherals such as SD cards and LCD monitors.

The current solution to this quandary is a thing called the MiSTer, which uses an Altera Cyclone-V FPGA to create system that emulates the actual circuitry of things like upright arcade machines, old home game consoles, and even a few old computers such as the Amiga.

This thing is very close to an electrical 1:1 to the original hardware of whatever core you load into it, but in its broad scope it leaves a bit to be desired when trying to get an authentic experience. For example, it will emulate anything from an Amiga 1000 to an Amiga 4000 with whatever chipset you desire (OCS, ECS, AGA) and with options for memory and ‘extras’ that never existed back in the day… But it’s weird to just dial-in more ram or processing power on your Amiga whenever you want, and the 680X0 ‘processor’ is also emulated, so there’s some weirdness there too.

And a MiSTer setup runs about $600 – if you can find one – because the DE10 nano board it’s based on can be hard to find.

Enter another FPGA project I discovered called the “MiniMig” for Mini Amiga…

This uses the same type of FPGA magic as the MISTer, but in a more authentic fashion… What the MiniMig does is use a Xilinx Spartan-III FPGA to create the custom chipset in the first-gen Amigas (Agnus, Denise, and Paula), and presents that to an actual Motorola (now Freescale) MC68SEC000 processor (basically a modern package for the old DIP 68000 CPU), an authentic 6MB memory bus, and PIC-based peripheral controller that can handle SD cards and VGA monitors.

In effect, what you get with the MiniMig is an authentic A-1000 / A-500 / A-500+ made with modern components that interfaces to modern peripherals – without all of the puffery one finds on the MiSTer – and all for a mere $350.

Soooo – I bought one as an early Christmas present for myself and it should arrive this week – customs willing – from the Great White North…

— Update —

The NOS KeyTronic keyboard and mouse for the MiniMig came in this evening.

The MiniMig only really understands PS2, so I had to source a keyboard and mouse for it as I had a worrying lack of PS2 peripherals on hand. This has been remedied with a big-ass enter key. 🙂

Listening to "1984" by Saffari

My CFO / real-estate mogul has been renovating a new house for his family for about a year and a half now – and now that he’s moved in, he has discovered a network shortcoming that I’ve been tasked to fix.

See, he bought the place off of some relatives who moved back to Taiwan, and then decided he’d live there after a quick $750,000 renovation. But during this renovation he decided to run everything with wifi as to not see cable jacks / cat6 anywhere… Which isn’t necessarily a bad idea these days, but said house is probably 6000 square feet over three floors and easily a hundred yards from end to end. Hell, the living room area is almost the size of my entire house… There’s even a new six car garage separate from the main house (which has a three-car garage), and it needs internet access as well…

It’s an amazing house, but the scale alone is a challenge for wifi – and that’s before he filled the place with a half dozen TVs, ten Sonos speakers, a wifi-based security system, a dozen wireless cameras, five computers, and all of the general wireless stuff that people have these days like phones, watches, appliances, etc.

Another challenge to this whole thing is said CFO is very much “form over function” and will invariably hamstring himself in order to not see the tech he’s so reliant upon. This is how you get things like the Comcast router, the old wifi router, the camera servers, the security system, and the two IoT hubs for the dozen wireless temperature / water sensors down in the basement in the tiny room that houses the two furnaces and two water heaters and is generally over 100 degrees…

And this is where I come in…

The first thing to fix was the old wifi setup he was using; an Amplifi HD with mesh extenders. This is a really good unit that I’m sure he bought for its looks, but it’s more designed for apartments and small houses – not palatial warehouse spaces that you can use a scooter to get around in. 🙂

So, I had him pick up a new TP-Link BE800 and three RE705X range extenders to replace the Amplifi, and then talked him into relocating his network gear from the basement furnace room to the main floor in a cabinet… And after he installed a bunch of holes in this cabinet and we patched the cable back to where the TV used to be – behind said cabinet – I installed the new Arris S33 modem, the new wifi router, and all of his old IoT hardware.

The hardest part of this was getting Comcast to let us use the new cable modem… That took about an hour.

And once this was done, we did some speed testing around the house and things were definitely better, but other things still didn’t work quite right… Like the Sonos speakers.

Doing some research on those Sonos speakers I’m fairly convinced that it’s not the wifi setup. My CFO has probably the most high-tech home wifi setup possible currently, and the Reddit r/sonos board as well as the official Sonos forums are pretty much wall-to-wall connectivity issues… I have an idea though; I’ll make an SSID specifically for the speakers on one of the 5Ghz radios, which should avoid band steering which seems to confuse them, and see if that helps.

It’ll take some tuning over the next few weeks, but I’m pretty sure I can get his remaining issues ironed out.

Listening to "Follow You Follow Me" by Genesis