I see too many people who think that GFSA are merely misguided, that showing them the truth will convince them otherwise.
Not The Case.
Digital Necromancy
As mentioned before, back in the late eighties I built a 68000-based computer. Last time I messed with it was probably in 1991, 30 years or so ago.
Well, it still lives. It runs a hacked version of MVME101bug, and I also have Gordon Brandly’s Tiny Basic along with a bit of code to copy it to RAM at 0x002000 and run it there.
But I have given up trying to hack MVME101bug any further. These days I have the source for the Motorola MC68000 ECB TUTOR monitor, and I know how to compile it, and it’s basically the same thing*, so that’s where I’m going next.
* In addition to the TUTORNEW commands, MVME101Bug has BI (initialise block of memory), BD, BH, BO (bootstrap from floppy), and IOP, IOT (disk I/O). It takes up aroung 22k of EPROM space, while TUTOR had to fit in 16k. I will worry about that when I get there.
Really large PCB
If you need an oscilloscope, or you have an oscilloscope that needs a service, Peter is your man*. I bought an Elteknix OS 620 from him, gave him my Hitachi V650F to service.
In his stash of stuff he had a large PCB with a 68000 on it. Obviously an arcade game of some type, I recognised the JAMMA connector. Gave me a bad case of the 10th Commandment. So he gave it to me.
Apart from the 68000 there’s also a Z80, in close proximity to the only surface-mount IC on the main PCB. Said IC is a MSM6295, a sound chip used in many games, so this does not narrow down what we actually have here. But some searching for the text on the ROMs pointed me at this ROM image, and some further searching gave me this auction.
So it’s a bootleg Street Fighter II.
It’s also to far gone to save, IMO.
Interesting mix of chips, very heavy on the programmables, with lots of GALs, an OTP 27512 and three HY18CV8 EEPLDs. I found the array of 74597 shift registers interesting, I wonder whether they shift the content of the rather large (10 Mbit) ROM / EPROM array straight out to video (maybe to create the background).
And interesting to note, it’s all on two PCB layers.
So now I’m conflicted as to whether I should strip it for spares or mount it in a lightbox for display.
*Assuming you’re in the Cape Town area, that is.
Long haired teenager
This little one has really long tassels on her ossicones. This was close to Crocodile Bridge, note the farmland in the background.
With eyes on the side of their heads, antelope don’t have binocular vision, so they can’t perceive depth. But as you can see from this photograph, this one can just about see behind her head.
Greetings, earthling.
Sable
There are some antelope you don’t spot very often in Kruger. Sable, Roan, Tsessebe, Reedbuck and Hartbees are the ones to look out for. Eland are apparently not that rare up north but I have never seen one in Kruger. Not that we’ve ever been up north :-/
We saw these two Sable close to Skukuza from either (can’t remember) the bridge over the Sand River or the bridge over the Sabie. At the limits of the 600mm lens and no, the lens is OK, it’s heat haze that messes up the photograph (click to embiggen to on-the-camera resolution). This was around half past ten in the morning. Yea, it’s too hot out there by half past ten in the morning.
This one was close to Pretoriuskop, which is their stomping ground. He was in the middle of the road when we saw him but disappeared into the bushes real quickly and did not stay around for long.
(We saw a lone Tsessebe before, also close to Pretoriuskop).
Kingfishers
Kruger has nine different types of Kingfisher. This time we only saw three.
Pied Kingfisher on one of the bridges over the Sabie river. You see these quite easily all over the Lower Sabie area.
Giant Kingfisher at Nkuhlu.
And a Woodland Kingfisher on the H4-2 on the way to Crocodile Bridge.
(On a previous trip we saw an African Pygmy Kingfisher. I don’t think we’ve seen any of the others… yet)
The lions put up a show.
After going for a morning drive somewhere where we saw a chubby unicorn with her calf, off in the distance, we returned to camp for a loo break and then headed off in the other direction.
Found a roadblock just after Lubyelubye. Saw that the roadblock was following a few lions who were headed in our direction. Which means that we were suddenly at the front of the queue.
I pulled into the Lubyelubye viewpoint and we saw threefour lions pass.
Now people were cruising the road, trying to spot the lions. I decided to go long and drove to the first place where we could actually see over the shrubbery and rocks (problem with a flat car) and stopped. There was not much happening.
Tanya spent some time photographing this dwarf mongoose. A herd of impala came across the road, went down to the river. We had just decided that most likely the lions had flopped into the shade somewhere when there was a movement and impala running everywhere. Then it was quiet again.
And then a lion popped over the river bank with most of a very small impala in his jaws. Tanya was so excited she photographed a bush (this bush turned out to be a pain in the autofocus).
He’s carrying the head, but I think he left the hindquarters behind.
Then another lion popped over the bank, with more bits of impala (there was another one off to the right which we couldn’t really photograph through the bushes. I think there were five lions and I think they caught three impala between them).
Of course one gets uninvited guests.
Hindquarters recovered.
And then a crocodile came to investigate.
By now we’d been here for about an hour and we couldn’t leave if we had to. Cars all around us. Fortunately for them we had a flat car, so people could see over our roof. But the bushes are a pain. We need a non-flat car.
Remember what I said about this bush being a pain?
Hey!
Hey?
Where did everyone go?
Leopard Sightings
The roadblock was… a leopard. There are plenty leopard in the park but it’s hard work to see them, sometimes. Other times they pitch all on their own and give you a show.
This one was parked off on the other side of the bank, not bothered by people.
And that’s the best picture we got.
But undoubtedly a leopard.
Because later, this is what we saw. And if what you’re seeing can be explained by someone leaving a pillow up a tree, you can’t really claim to have seen a leopard.
Later the same day we saw the Lubyelubye leopard parked off under a rock on the far side of the river. That’s why we have a 600mm lens.
16:24
16:27
16:43
Much later the same day..
And that was pretty much how much leopard we saw this time.