HereBeDragons
@heredragons
Also known as @herebedragons3 on the other site. Collector of all things Dragon - and much else beyond. Occasional fixer of computers, more commonly a breaker of them. See also and @shortcircuit.org.uk for exciting events info!
If anyone's interested in the Spanish Dragon story, this interview is a great start. What I would do to own that black Dragon ... www.dragondata.co.uk/history/Quot...
So you can add floppy disks, of course! Turning your Sord M5 into a 'serious' computer you can now use for, err, stuff!
Well, then you can add the EB-5 expansion box! Who needs those clean, simple lines anyway? And why might you want to do this? ... 2/3
I think we can all agree that the sweet and svelte Sord M5 (seen here in cost reduced 'Pro' form) is one of the prettiest of the 80s micros. But what if you don't want pretty? What if you want to make it into a BEAST? ... 1/3
Let's party like it's 1992 @ #synthesized in Cambridge this weekend! I'm all ready to go with my 90s style setup 🎹 🎶 www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/76919/Sy...
Wire it all up with a ton of cables and we're ready to go! See you all on Saturday and Sunday :)
Back in the day I had a Cheetah MS6 (and you can meet one of the guys behind it - @bob-p-dj.bsky.social - at Synthesized this weekend!). But now I'm going to use my Amyboard (the red gizmo on the speaker) to emulate one ... 3/4
The mainstay of my system was the Casio FZ-1 and Atari ST. Here they've both been upgraded with Goteks to make life simpler - plus the Atari has a modern mouse and a lovely crisp VGA output ... 2/4
Okay, so I think I have a plan for #Synthesized this weekend in Cambridge! Nothing like leaving it a wee bit late ... www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/76919/sy... ... I'm going to try and recreate my early 90s setup ... but with modern twists! 1/4
It's just over a week to #synthesized at Cambridge and I'm cutting it fine. This new toy arrived today - it's a Juno-6, it's a DX7 and it's all programmable in Python too- and it cost just $29! I have 1 week to understand it, program it, write some music for it and be able to demo it. Wish me luck!
Well spotted! There's actually a right old mixture of handheld up there, I really need to display them better.
Sun update! The ELC is now booting as nature intended, as a diskless client off the SPARCstation 2. So many ancient skills had to be dusted off, from wiring 10BASE2 coax ethernet to reconfiguring the kernel. Happy days!
Lovely little underrated machine. They'll run CPMish - cowlark.com/cpmish/index... - and even Unix (Fuzix) if you're crazy enough!
Isn't it gorgeous! Here's my slightly later Japanese version (the MZ-80K2E) with the green lid and light grey keys.
Indeed, the tapes were used for storage. All the way back to the first, 1978's MZ-80K (seen here with floppy drives too). By 1985 it was clear that floppies were the future - but it still needed a tape for compatibility with older machines. Sadly, I don't think this machine can play audio tapes ...
It also has a super little foldout doodad on the front that allows you to set the compatibility mode and screen resolution.
New toy alert! It's a Sharp MZ-2500 from 1985, otherwise known as the 'Super MZ', the last of the extensive Z80 based MZ range. Up to 256K RAM and 128K VRAM, it has a 6MHz Z80B and can do 16 colours at 640x400 (if you have all the VRAM). It also looks wonderfully like a top end HiFi separate ... 1/2
Oh and why the nostalgia? My first 'proper' job as a young unix sysadmin was to install a lab of these for the City of London Polytechnic (now London Guildhall University) all booting off a Sparcstation 1. So that's my next challenge, to get it talking to mine!
It might benefit from a recap, but it's not an easy machine to work on at all. Oh, and I've cheated - I don't yet have diskless booting running, but I've taken advantage of the external SCSI to bodge something together ... 3/4
There was a design flaw in this however - you couldn't turn the monitor off without turning the machine off too, meaning that most were left on and running for months, slowly cooking the capacitors and burning out the screen. I have been very lucky with this machine ... 2/4
I am sooo happy - and bubbling with nostalgia - to see this gorgeous Sun SPARCstation ELC up and running. This was Sun's low cost diskless workstation - basically a SPARCstation 1 bolted to the back of one of their mono monitors ... 1/4
Oh definitely a gorgeous little machine, one of my favourites too ...
Okay what have I forgotten? Off to the Dragon Meetup! www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/76704/Dr...