Joel Crane

@PotatoFi
63 Followers
39 Following
87 Posts
Idahoan ๐Ÿฅ” living in Finland ๐Ÿ‡ซ๐Ÿ‡ฎ, working at Hamina Wireless. CWNE #233. I'm into old computers, retro videogames, 3D printing, and fixing stuff.
LocationHelsinki, Finland
Work Websitehttps://www.hamina.com/
Personal Websitehttps://www.potatofi.com

As an American living in Finland I regularly get asked, "What's Halloween like in Finland?"

๐Ÿ‡ซ๐Ÿ‡ฎ Finnish parents don't like Halloween, more work
๐ŸŽƒ A thing at our kids' international school
๐ŸŽƒ Virtually no trick or treating
๐ŸŽƒ Small 1-table display of Halloween stuff at the grocery store
๐ŸŽ„ Store is dominated by Christmas stuff
๐ŸŽƒ Big growth in the past 5 years; previous there was zero Halloween stuff at the store

The โ€œ1โ€ key doesnโ€™t sit correctly in the keypad, which makes me wonder if this was returned or binned due to a defect, and part of why it survived until 2025.

A new-old-stock Nokia 6300 from eBay. I still have mine that I carried for 5 or 6 years in storage in the US, but have been planning to pick up a fresh one for awhile. I might grab a pre-paid SIM to see if the 2G networks are still around in Finland.

Next up, I'd like to find a NOS GSM Motorola Razr V3.

My PowerBook 160 must have been dropped at some point, as one of the serial ports is missing right off the PCB. My 145B had completely different ports, so I couldn't borrow one from that, so I decided to design and 3D print a blank. ๐Ÿ‘
โ€œYouโ€™re going home with me.โ€ #GameBoy
I hate that iOS app developers are leaving iOS 15 and thus the iPod touch behind, especially for apps that target kids. I get it, but I hate it.

Something I need a bunch of: small MicroSD cards, in capacities like:

๐Ÿ’พ 128 MB
๐Ÿ’พ 512 MB
๐Ÿ’พ 1 GB
๐Ÿ’พ 4 GB

I need them for things like Game Boy flashcarts and SCSI hard disk emulators for old computers. They don't need to be fast, just reliable. Any ideas on where to find them?

I always enjoy seeing the โ€œPubโ€ tram around Helsinki! ๐Ÿบ๐Ÿš‹๐Ÿ‡ซ๐Ÿ‡ฎ
In Poland, I ate Zapiekanka. Bread, mushrooms, tons of melty cheese, and ketchup for 3.50โ‚ฌ. Delicious.

Time to finish up the PowerBook 160 with a BlueSCSI kit from @onegeekarmy!

This card does SCSI solid state storage and SCSI ethernet emulation (which means Wi-Fi support for this 1992 machine). Iโ€™ve never soldered castellated joins before; theyโ€™re pretty fun!