The Ultimate Commodore 1541 Drive Talk: A Deep Dive Into Disks, Controllers, And Much More

The Ultimate 1541 Talk by Michael Steil, presented at the Vintage Computer Festival West

When we think of retrocomputing, it’s very often the computers themselves that get all the glory.  There’s nothing wrong with this of course- the computers of the late 70’s and …read more Continue reading The Ultimate Commodore 1541 Drive Talk: A Deep Dive Into Disks, Controllers, And Much More

Floppy Drive Keyboard Is Inefficient Fun

Most of us are used to a typical 101-key setup for typing on our machines. Mobile and touchscreen devices have offered alternative interfaces over the years, but generally still sticking to QWERTY or other similar layouts. [foone] cares not for convention however, building a text-entry device based on the iconic …read more

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Repairdown: Disklavier DKC500RW Control Unit

If you’ve been kind enough to accompany me on these regular hardware explorations, you’ve likely recognized a trend with regards to the gadgets that go under the knife. Generally speaking, the devices I take apart for your viewing pleasure come to us from the clearance rack of a big box …read more

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Floppy Drive Music By Emmy Winning Composer

We’ve featured a lot of awesome music made using floppy drives before, but this is the first time we’ve seen it used as the main instrument in a movie score, and by Emmy winning composer [Bear McCreary]. The movie, in this case is alien invasion film, Revolt, but you’ve surely heard Bear’s amazing work in the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series, The Walking Dead, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (my favorite of his), or the one for which he won an Emmy, Da Vinci’s Demons wherein the main theme sounds the same backwards as forwards, to name just a few. So …read more

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