Ruben Schade 🔰 🇦🇺 @rubenerd@bsd.network

📌 Another post I’m going to pin:

If you started following me, I’d love to know why! Please ping me and say hi, it makes my day :).

Took all weekend, but finally got the desk sorted! I have the 32-bit corner, the current corner, and the 8-bit corner!

The nest of upscaler, KVM, and input selector cables is truly horrifying. But it all works!

We’re looking at moving into somewhere bigger soon, so we can have a proper “computer lab”. But super happy for this for now :’)

(And 16-bit stuff like an Amiga or Atari 1040ST would be incredible, but also no space right now!)

#retrocomputing #hashtags

I'm copying my pinned post from Twitter which reminds me of fun times with lovely people. I'd just left an AsiaBSDCon dinner with everyone in Tokyo:

#FreeBSD, #NetBSD, #OpenBSD? :'D

So many people have given me their retrocomputer treasures, I've decided to contribute back.

Anyone in #Australia want my Japanese NEC APEX VPS 486, for free?

http://retro.rubenerd.com/necapex.htm

• 486DX2, 66 MHz
• VESA Local Bus riser
• UMC UM82C491 chipset
• 16 MiB SIMM
• 128 KiB cache memory
• 1.6 GB Quantum hard drive
• PC DOS J6.30/V (can install English DOS)
• Sound Blaster 16 with OPL3

(Includes JUST the NEC, not the monitor or other stuff).

Works great, and I love the Japanese stickers. Alas, it smells a bit musty which sets off my allergies :(. Maybe you could clean it, or maybe doesn't bother you. Please don't reply telling me how to clean it.

I don't have a car, so happy to meet at a northern Sydney train station. If I don't get takers in a week, I'll offer to ship within Australia. Its quite heavy, so outside AU would be expensive.

Feel free to DM me if you're interested.

It's amazing how the mood from five great convos with awesome, smart people can be undone by a 5 minute interaction with a jerk.

I wish data centres made it easier to go direct for colocation for personal stuff, but they always want business details and minimum commits.

I know (extremely well) that there are plenty of intermediaries. I also know the financial reason why they don't want to entertain tiny accounts. But still.

Does anyone have a favourite stand thing for old ISA, PCI, VLB, and AGP cards? I feel like it’s finally getting a bit silly in here.

Reheated some food thinking the topping was cheese, took a big bite, and it was... mould. Then for some reason I instinctively swallowed it instead of spitting it out.

Happy Monday! I... um, don't feel great.

New barista at this coffee shop: "I've got an order for Chris"

Kiwi: "[mumbling] for Chrus?"

New barista: "This was for Chris. A flat white"

Kiwi: "[mumbling] I'm Chrus, and [mumbling] flat white"

New barista: "I... I think this was for you then?"

Kiwi: "[mumbling] Chrus [mumbling]" *walks out*

I know I've been mentioning @davidgerard here a lot recently, but his stuff has been super useful.

Pivot to AI comes out every weekday, and succinctly summarises the latest AI guff. Each episode covers one topic, which also makes them easy to share.

https://www.youtube.com/@PivotToAI

I still can’t even.

My father in law’s latest haul! A beige Athlon tower, some early 2000s books, an Apple ADB keyboard with Alps switches, and an original IBM XT 5160 motherboard with all memory banks populated ;w;

Local op shop had this among a bunch of travel books. Published 1961! Instabuy.

It's really weird today, I'm both incredibly pessimistic about the current state of the industry... but I just wrote a bit of code and went to get a coffee and am in high spirits. It's like my brain can't decide what to feel.

I'm sure this isn't as unusual or interesting as I'm making it out to be.