This MITS Altair 8800 kit was partial assembled with some errors but never completed. It sat for decades but now it has finally been corrected and completed with a new power supply. Here it is running its first game program.

https://icm.museum

#retrocomputing #vintagecomputing #retrogaming

“My god. The weapon is armed, the countdown has begun, and the only known copy of the override code is stored on this old Nokia 5510 with an empty battery. We’re doomed.”

“Everybody chill the fuck out. I got this. Just gotta crack open the old cable drawer. Here you go.”

“You have a Nokia 5510 charger, but why?! That phone hasn’t been sold in over 20 years!”

“Let’s just say, I always knew this day would come.”

“Wow. Your decision to never throw away cables just saved humanity honey…honey…time to wake up honey…”

TIL: lace cards

It’s a computer punch card with every possible spot punched out, so what remains is a flimsy filamentous net of paper that instantly tears and jams up the card reader.

Old-school denial of service attack.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lace_card

I really enjoy sitting in a corner and building just-the-right-thing that has as few bugs as I can manage, that sits quietly doing its job for a couple of years without troubling anybody. And when I learn after the fact that I've managed to do this, I feel very good about it.

It can take a while to figure out what just the right thing to build is, and it can take a bit of quiet not-rushed work to build it to my satisfaction, but it pays off when I'm allowed to do this.

"Allowed to". I don't like that phrase any more.