I found the DEC Professional 350 in Ebay for just $150 and I considered a nice way to get a PDP-11 system that could at the very least run BSD— for a decent price. PDP-11s are not only expense but the peripherals are also expensive prone to issues and it’s difficult system to bootstrap let…
About: dillera
Author Archives: dillera
Lost and Found Again: VT102
No good retro setup involving Unix can be legit without one. I had actually found a new-in-the-box VT102 once back in the 90s in Maryland at some recycling center. I used it for years but lost in moves around MD NJ and PA. I’ve been watching eBay for years trying to justify getting one again…
More Equipment
It’s been a while since I last posted and I’ve gotten some new things to work on. I’ll be documenting some of them here soon.  …
Lenovo Cheap Laptops for fun
I can’t pass up an interesting, cheap and small laptop. I’ll always have a use for them somewhere. Recently I’ve managed to pick up two Lenovos, and it’s interesting to see how varied and strange the laptops are from one another. They are both from the same manufacture, yet might as well be from completely…
In Search of Part 2: Linux on the Acer Switch 10 with Fedora 23
The amazing Fedlet release put together by AdamW let people easily install Linux Fedora on their BayTrail 32/64 tablets (64 bit CPUs but with 32bit FW). It was still somewhat buggy on my Acer Switch 10. Now that Fedora 23 is out I bit the bullet and did the upgrade to the latest packages… and…
Macbook
The MacBook is an incredible piece of engineering technology. This one is sitting on the MacBook Pro it’s replacing- after three years. 13†vs 12†and it’s more powerful and has more storage. The same amount of ram however. The size difference is astonishing…
PDP-11/70 CPU core and SoC :: Overview :: OpenCores
Fig D-1: A PDP-11/70 Console. These display and switch consoles were the hallmark of the PDP-11 computers in the 70ties. Picture courtesy of Henk Gooijen, see also Henk’s PDP-11 collection. The project contains a complete DEC PDP-11 system: a PDP-11/70 CPU with memory management unit, but without floating pointunit, a complete set of mass storage…
Amazon.com : Aspire Switch Laptop $139
Amazon.com : Acer 10.1″ Aspire Switch Laptop 2GB 32GB | SW5-012-192E (Certified Refurbished) : Computers & Accessories Amazon has a refurb 32GiB Switch 10 for just $139: Source: Amazon.com : Acer 10.1″ Aspire Switch Laptop 2GB 32GB | SW5-012-192E (Certified Refurbished) : Computers & Accessories And the 64GiB is $199…
Switch 10 CPU
The Switch 10 uses the Intel® Atomâ„¢ Processor Z3735F which has 4 cores, is 64 bit and and can burst up to 1.8Ghz. It’s part of the Silvemont family.     …
Products (Formerly Bay Trail)
Products (Formerly Bay Trail) comparison chart and links to detailed product features and specifications. Source: Products (Formerly Bay Trail)…
The Bitcoin Blocksize: A Summary – Rusty Russell’s Coding Blog
Source: The Bitcoin Blocksize: A Summary – Rusty Russell’s Coding Blog…
In Search of… Linux on the Switch 10 2-in-1
Remember that Acer Switch 10 that I purchased back almost a year ago, in 2014? I returned it to Amazon, but it’s taken ages for interesting (and cheap) Broadwell devices to trickle out and I’m not going to spend $700 plus for something like this. Meanwhile the Switch 10 was popping up again and again…
Mac ADSL OmniGraffle Stencil
I’ve always loved OmniGraffle, and I’ve always loved the simple lines of the Mac ADSL Stencil. I don’t like Graffletopia and paying for free stencils. I finally found the original location for the MacADSL stencil…. it’s here:  http://www.macadsl.com/actu/network-stencil-omnigraffle-macadsl  It’s so old it’s still a .sit file, so I’m attaching a .zip here so…
Stop Safari from showing Annoying Frequently Visited Sites
This is way, super annoying. Every time I want to drag a site down into the bookmarks this gets in the way. http://apple.stackexchange.com…
Mac OSX 10.10 and SCSI
Update 2017: 10.12 – Sierra broke the SCSI drivers and so ends the tales of SCSI and Atto on my Mac. Nothing I could do could get them to load. At some point I’ll revert the Mac back to 10.11 and use the SCSI if I ever need to read any of my tapes. Update:…
Apple Mini Yosemite Super Laggy – Fix
My mini is a 2011 i5 with Radeon graphics. Most of my work is on an external rail via thunderbolt, but the system has always been a little laggy to me. I work on Macbook pros and MacBook Airs (new, with flash drives) at work, and the mini has never been as quick and responsive…
Broadwell 2-in-1
Liliputing has a nice review of a bunch of 2-in-1 Broadwell (Core M) powered systems. All seem to be the 2-in-1 factor, as this new chip can be run in a fanless (i.e. tablet) form. Goodbye Atom. The Dell Latitude 13 looks nice, with backlit keys on the keyboard- but it’s bluetooth and at 13″…
Jeff vs Steve
The ultimate 1987 Face Off  …
In search of the smallest – Acer Switch 10 Edition
Updated September 6th – More information, readbility August 11th - Read my latest post- I got another Switch 10 and am using Fedora on it…  In my never-ending search for the smallest of functional laptops it’s almost been impossible to find something that meets at the nebulous intersection of light and small and actually useful…
Dual NICs with Vagrant and VMware Fusion Provider
Ian Nelson : Dual NICs with Vagrant and VMware Fusion Provider: “” Good example of doing more advanced networking configs with vmware fusion and vagrant…
Android Still Sucks at 4.3
When Android 4.3 API18 came out I pulled my old Nexus 7 out of the drawer, charged it, let it update to 4.3.18 and tried to use it for the next three days, leaving my iPad mini in the drawer instead. Â What I found out was: Android OS still sucks unbelievably bad. It’s kinda…
Dashboard Open Sourced on Github
 The Author of the seminal Dashboad for NewtOS has released it to the world on GitHub. There is a great read there on Github about the process. There is also a nice review about Dashboard that I came across if you are not familiar with what it did…
iCloud Safari Syncing Sucks Balls
iCloud Safari syncing just stopped worked about 3 weeks ago for one of my computers, and I cannot make it work again, I’ve clear and clear and re-synced each of my computers and iPhone. Finally, I just gave up and use Dropbox now. Â Just move Library/Safari over to Dropbox somewhere, and create a symlink…
Windows7 Reverse Scrolling
Do you use Windows7 on bootcamp? Or anywhere? After adjusting to the scrolling system on Mountain Lion (which I love) it’s almost impossible to go back to Windows and have wierd scrolling again. You can easily change it for USB mice (still need to figure out how to do it for trackpad) where easily assumes…
Tiny Linux computer
New toy…