What’s Mike Doing?

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February 15, 2025For those who’re just joining us, I’ve dusted off a two-decade-old project idea and have actually started working on it. There’s a working prototype which I’m not going to link in this post, because this text will likely be around long after it’s been and gone, either shelved for another 20 years or thrown online in some kind of working form. [...]
February 9, 2025In April 2005, I registered a domain name. I had a plan, and it was an ambitious one. I had read an O’Reilly book on XML (cover-to-cover) a couple of years beforehand, and it did something to my brain and I thought I could see through time. Weblogs were ascending fast, the web was exciting, … [Read more …] [...]

Chinwag Posts

Mike, why did you want an old school cassette player that records and has line-in jacks and stuff anyway?

Well, a while back I inherited a stack of old ZX81 and Spectrum stuff, and having a modern device to replace this Sanyo that needs a lot of TLC makes exploring some currently unknown data a little bit more accessible!

The new tape deck will record a tape direct to an MP3 file on a USB drive really easily. It only seems capable of creating mono audio files, but that won't be an issue for this purpose.

A 1980s Sanyo DR101 tape player next to a modern equivalent with USB input and output, and an old audio cassette with a hand written label reading

Happy to report that my new vacuum sucks. It retrieved about half a cat (by volume) from the rugs in the lounge room.

My god Meech. Dude. Seriously. You didn't even spend that much time indoors until about a year ago.

This one cartridge is my nemesis. The other five I have here are pretty reliable now after contact cleaning, but this one still needs a couple of inserts and removals to get a good load.

I have even gone as far as reflowing it this morning, and it's *better* but still not good enough for me.

I think the issue is that it copped some extreme heat given discolouration on the case that the others don't have and the PCB is very slightly warped now, just enough that combined with the age of the slot on the GB itself that it's always on the edge of failure.

A Game Boy cartridge, Crash Dummies, on top of an original Game Boy console

God help me I've done some restoration on a Game Boy for the first time and now I'm looking for more broken ones.

They're pretty pricey though, considering how many must have gone out there into the world.

Looks like the Game Boy Pocket is the most unloved version, so I might get one to play with.