Proof that you can’t convince these people
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).