ThriftBits!

I have a big interest in Electronics going way back since I was a kid.  Microcontrollers (MCU’s) are really cool  Basically a whole computer on a chip.  Since I love computers so much, electronics, and programming, MCU’s are an obvious thing someone like me would enjoy.

To date, I’ve done very little with them myself.  I did build a POV kit with my friend Eric Lightbody.  With this, after we soldered it together, we wrote a little program, compiled it to hex, downloaded it to the device, and then displayed little cutesy messages to our wives.

What I purchased was a complete, brand new, Holtek HT46 Integrated Development Environment, and several long tubes of brand new MCU’s.  I haven’t read the documentation yet, but this looks like everything I need to be able to write programs for these MCU’s and then program the chips.  It problably does a lot more once I read the instructions.

In total, I have 120 “blank” MCU’s.  A variety of the HT46R62 andHT46R64 types.  I quicky found the datasheets for these, and they look pretty neat.

I’m not sure what the HT46 IDE went for new, but I’m pretty sure it was more than the $13 I paid for everything.   As far as the MCU’s, I haven’t found these exact MCUs listed, however, I did find a lower-cost version which is similar being sold by Newark for $1.96 each.  Mine could be more or less…

Okay, so 1.5GB of memory isn’t very much now days… Well, that’s mostly true.   I run mostly UNIX/Linux on my systems.  UNIX/Linux is very efficient when it comes to the use of memory.  It doesn’t have nearly the bloat that certain other Operating Systems have…

One of my servers is a HP/Compaq DL380.  It was purchased used and had 2GB of memory in it.  It’s been find, in fact, I’ve barely ever seen this server do any amount of swapping.  Anyhow…  This server will soon have 3.5GB…

I wasn’t looking for memory for this server at the MARA Hamfest, and I didn’t have the specs with me.  Being too lazy to try to Google from my phone, I just struck up a deal.  The merchant wanted $10 for each pair of 256MB modules.    I offered him $10 for all six, and he said sure.

Even at $5 each, it would have been a good deal.  However, I have boxes of memory laying around, and if they weren’t going to work, I didn’t want to add to my collection of misc-memory.

After looking up the Quickspecs for my server, I found that this memory is a perfect match for what I need.  Not bad — especially for HP Branded memory that still sells for $40 to $80 each refurbished from reputable sellers.

I went to the MARA hamfest this morning with my cousin and son Alex. Picked up a lot of goodies and sold quite a bit of misc. stuff too. It’s always great when you can come back with less stuff than you went with, and a pocket full of cash. A new box of stuff to play with is the bonus.  Or is the cash the bonus!?  Anyways….

I picked up two boxes of SCSI stuff for $5. It started with one box, and the merchant kept adding more SCSI stuff to the deal until I said… “That’s enough — don’t give me any more”.

You can never have enough SCSI stuff laying around. There are so many times where I need a hard-to-find connector, adapter, or cable, and end up paying $25 to $100+ for it. So, stocking up is the way to go.

This is a Apple Powerbook G4 that I got on FreeCycle a year or so ago.   It’s in rough shape as you can see by the photos.   I am giving it to a friend of mine and we are going to fix it up.   I did see it boot, by using an external monitor, for a few seconds before the battery died.  It didn’t come with a power-supply, so my friend has ordered one.  Once we ensure it boots, we’re order the rest of the parts which includes the LCD Hood and Video Cable.

Should be a fun project to fix up and make well again.

I was lucky enough to have a fellow free-cycler donate this box of TI-99/4A items for my collection. I’ve been collecting various vintage computer items for quite some time in hopes to display them on either an online, or physical, exhibit some day. For now, they are being stored until that time comes.

The box contains quite a bit of goodies. A nice bag of cartridges, data cassettes, speech synthesizer, joysticks, cassette recorder, and a bunch of books.

As soon as I get some time to take it all out of the box and hook it up, I’ll post some additional pictures.

I stopped at a thrift shop near work today after lunch.  This cartridge caught my eye because it was glimmering Gold.  I had not heard of this title before and decided to Google it from my phone.  The couple sources I found all said this cartridge was Rare/Extremely Rare.  So I decided to buy it.  Truth be told that I probably would have bought it anyways, but the fact that it was rare made it definite.

Doing some more Googling later confirmed that it was definitely considered rare.  It even made (barely) someone’s The 100 Best NES Games Ever list.  One other link I found considered this Extremely rare — and that source was a 1998 listing — which would probably make it ever more rare today.  I have no idea what it’s worth (probably less than the $2.92 I paid for it) but I’m looking forward to loading it up in my NES and playing it soon.

If you know the technical details behind the switch on the back, please share!

I found this handheld at Savers a few months ago.  I got it because it had the Atari name on it, looked old, and was something I had never seen before.  After doing a little research about it, I found some interesting tidbits.  This handheld was released in 1974 and was what gave Milton-Bradley the idea for Simon.  Atari also had a Arcade cabinet version of the game.  Unfortunately for Atari, neither of them took off.   Milton-Bradley’s Simon game took off and was quite popular and remains popular today.   You can read some more about the Atari Touch me at the Atari Museum.  The Manual for this game can be found at The Handheld Museum.  Direct download here.

I had read about Nixie Tubes in the past and thought they were really neat.  When I found this Digital Multimeter for $5.00 at a Hamfest, I had to have it!   It appears to work pretty good.  I haven’t had a chance to dig out some test leads and check out it’s accuracy, but just having a few working Nixie Tubes is good enough!