Battery power & the “Tandy Battery Club”
Remembering Tandy’s loss-leading “battery club” from the 1980s – giving away 1 free battery every month to get people in the store
Yanko Design tiny Bluetooth speaker inside a cassette case
A tiny Bluetooth speaker built into a compact-cassette housing. Super cute, super retro.
Psion Series 5 USB keyboard
My take on the old “re-purposing a dead Psion 5’s keyboard as USB keyboard” 😉 Using parts from dead Psion Series 5 and 5mx PDAs and an Arduino micro-controller.
A box of “Psion Organisers”
Aquiring some late 1990s PDA keyboards to revive with USB and Bluetooth connections… The Psion Series 5 (like all the Psion PDAs!) was renowned for its excellent mechanical design and the keyboard of the Series 5 was peak!
Clockwork uConsole – a ready made CyberDeck?
My experiences when my Clockworkpi.com uConsole arrived earlier this month – assembling the ready-made cyberdeck and some tweaks & challenges to work around some shortcomings…
PSION MC400 emulated – at last!
A few years after initially posing the question, an answer…. YES, the MC400 is emulated (in MAME 0.273 and later).
Is it Regs?
Asking the question: does it meet BS 7671 – the 18th Edition IET Wiring Regulations?
Latest Raspberry Pi – Psion MC400 Sidecar update
Super-cute Raspberry Pi Zero 2W based Psion-sidecar in a flirc case with 4 port USB hub underneath and an e-ink display on top 😀
Raspberry Pi count in the Home-Office: 10+
Counting up the Raspberry Pis in use in my home office… A top ten that goes up to 11 😉
“Electronic Sound” magazine cites 1981 as a pivotal year
How come we’re still feeling the musical & cultural aftershocks from the pivotal times of the early 1980s? “Electronic Sound” magazine’s latest two issues feature Steve Strange & Rusty Egan’s “Blitz Club” and the pop music highlights of 1981.
ASUS zenbook ux303 still limping on…
9 years after I first used my trusty ASUS zenbook ux303 it’s still just about going; the keyboard’s getting flaky-er (lots of keys on the keyboard work intermittently) and of course the hinge repair (drill-through-the-lid™️) has kept the case mechanically alive since 2019…
UTC-traceable flashing Xmas Tree Lights
Using a GPS’s UTC-synchronised 1PPS signal to drive a relay to flash some LED Xmas tree lights…
Setting a 1990s PDA clock via GPS
Setting the time on my 1990s Psion Series 3a PDA via an attached GPS and some OPL code to grab UTC time from the $GPRMC sentence…
PsiWin & MCLINK USB-RS232 adapter compatibility issues
Explaining compatibility issues between USB and retro Psion computers that use RS232 when using USB-RS232 adapters like FTDI & Prolific
“These aren’t the ROMs you’re looking for…”
The latest MAME release (0.253) is the first to support some of Psion’s 16-bit (SIBO) architecture platforms. Series 3a/3c/3mx, Siena and Workabout/mx are now partially supported.
Back to the source: Taking an emulated MC200 back to Psion’s old HQ in Harcourt St
Taking an emulated Psion computer back to its spiritual home – the MC400 emulation goes to Harcourt Street, London.
More retro Psion: The HC120 “corporate handheld”
Re-visiting the “corporate handheld” computer that is the Psion HC120,
LCD Cakes – can baking an old LCD screen really fix it?
Can baking an old LCD screen fix it? How about rubbing it with a cotton bud? I tried a couple of suggestions I found on the internet to fix blotches on an old Hitachi monochrome LCD screen from my 1989 Psion MC400 laptop.
Fedora 37, 38, 39, 40 & 41 on Raspberry Pi4
Two of my favourite things – Fedora Linux and Raspberry Pi – combined on the Raspberry Pi 4 8GB 🙂
On CyberDecks…
Battery powered, portable – Raspberry Pi cyberdecks with tiny screens & keyboards…
ITSF 2022 – mini review
So it’s the Monday after the week before… the week that saw ITSF 2022 happen from 7th-10th Nov in Düsseldorf and I’ve been reflecting on some of the themes & trends that stood out for me over the past week… MCMF (multi-constellation multi-frequency) GNSS receiversThe Sync & Timing community has had access to dual-band receivers…
Tiny oscilloscopes – revisiting the JYETech DSO138 and trying the Raspberry Pi Pico based “scoppy” on Android
Back in Jan 2021 I built the DSO138 tiny oscilloscope kit. Thought I’d dig it out and compare it with the more recent Raspberry Pi Pico based “scoppy” that uses the Pico’s A2D and an Android phone app to display the data
Raspberry Pi Supply Chain Issues – saying hello (again) to the Original Pi Model B Rev 2 512MB
If you’re struggling to find Raspberry Pi Zero (or Zero 2) boards for light IoT applications then an old Pi 1 512MB from 2012 might be the answer…
Tiny clock party – it’s not always about nanoseconds…
A selection of tiny clocks, sync’d a variety of ways – by hand or by (S)NTP/chrony. Featuring Raspberry Pi Pico, ESP32 and micropython.
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About Room 7609
Hi, and welcome to Zed Starr’s compendium of techno-bizzle. Sometimes a bit retro, or getting retro stuff to do things in “modern life”; featuring Raspberry Pi, Linux, GNSS, analogue audio/Hi-Fi, old 16-bit Psion computers and with an overall electronics flavour. And no, I’m not sure exactly what “techno-bizzle” is… Enjoy!
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Room 7609 