One of the many promises of 5G is accurate time-transfer. I spent a couple of days travelling around the North West of England testing exactly how accurate available time transfer was from commercially deployed 5G installations.
Author Archives: zedstarr
10 years of Raspberry Pi
So the Raspberry Pi has been around for 10 years… everyone’s favourite credit-card-sized computer does just about everything
The Psion MC400 EROS – Tandy TRS-80 model 200 replacement?
A look at what state-of-the-art mobile text processing for journalists was like in the mid 1990s – the Psion MC400 EROS system.
A SIP trip down memory lane… back to Asterisk PBX & VOIP
A long time ago I built a VOIP PBX. I’ve been wanting to build & use another for a long time and finally got round to it with a £10 Cisco phone and £14 USB dongle…
Borked Signage
In honour of the regular El Reg feature which looks like it’s coming to an end… here’s my tiny collection of borked signage:
Emulating the Psion MC400
I read an online post about creating an “MC400 emulator”. That got me thinking about the ROM, and the 28F010 flash chips that realise it…
A Tale of Two Sources: NASA vs. Braben & Bell
Comparing comments (or the lack of them!) in software from 1969 & 1984. NASA’s Apollo Guidance Computer versus Elite for the BBC Model B 🙂
Breaking the Sound Barrier with Maxell Cassette Tapes
As a teenager in the 1980s I was obsessed with Maxell tapes, and the brand Maxell in general. Here’s my homage to Maxell Holdings, Ltd.
Using a 30 year old laptop in 2021: The Psion MC400…
A summary of all the things that are right with my 1991 Psion MC400 laptop, “online” via an attached Raspberry Pi 3B+ and wifi…
My Linux life: a retrospective
As of July 2021 Linux has been around for 30 years. For almost all of that time I’ve been installing Linux on just about anything I possibly can….
Psion MC400 – retro computing via RS232 to Raspberry Pi – handshaking fixed…
Getting the 1990s era Psion MC400 laptop online via an attached Raspberry Pi and some custom shortened Psion serial-USB cables… Tweets, Emails, BBC News & screenshots! All in glorious monochrome and at 19200 baud 🙂
Finding beauty in unexpected places
Some patterns…. the beauty in repetitive patterns, in nature and in art.
40 years later: reflections on 1981 – pop music’s greatest year?
Was 1981 pop music’s greatest ever year? There’s no doubt for me – it absolutely was! Débuts from several of the decade’s biggest names, Eurovision Winners and a novelty No.1, 1981 had it all.
RS232 flow-control & handshaking – Psion MC400 retro communications
Connecting my retro-laptop to the internet via 2 x RS232 serial connections to a Raspberry Pi… and defeated (for now) by lack of hardware flow-control signals 😦
5G on the moon?
NASA has ambitions to build a comms infrastructure on the moon using 4G LTE technology…
dot-com failures, skim.com & obsessive bag collecting
About my Love of bags – this one a dot-com era superstar from 2000/2001. Internet enabled fashion? Oh yes! SKIM.COM a y2k style bubble ready to burst 🙂
“My Life in Laptops” – am I Doug Rocket?
My homage to Doug Rocket’s art installation at Place “MY LAPTOPS 1991-2005”. It’s well Mexico.
Room 7609 