Author: Baab

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New group project for December meeting…

Thanks to 801Labs @_bashNinja for a wonderful holiday gift idea.

I’d love to do this at the November meeting, but I sincerely don’t believe the parts will be here in time. 801Labs announced they are doing this project as a December group build, and they are offering the kits for $10. I thought I’d play along and do it through our group as well.

I couldn’t justify sourcing enough to get the price QUITE that low. I can do them for $15/each. If there’s enough interest.prepayment I’ll order more. Like 801, this is a group build in person, I’m not doing shipping for these.

So if anyone wants to participate in the group build for these, I should have all the parts in time for the December meeting. Any leftovers will be held for future meeting attendees.

It’s a simple but elegant LED marquee display in a 3d-printed case using a Wemos D1 mini Wifi IOT module and a 4-in-1 dot matrix LED module. I ordered them in white PLA and red LEDs, just like the photo. By default it will display time, bitcoin price, random advice, weather, maybe a few other configurable things, but once you get it in place, you can likely make it do display anything you want. I was thinking it might be fun to add in a display when someone logs into the DC540 Citadel BBS.

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cDc has got me a little verklempt.

So I’m finally getting around to digging into the cDc book, which I preordered and was looking forward to.

I’ve only completed the first few chapters, but reading this book is like reading my own story. Trafficking in MCI numbers, hoarding esoteric text files, running multiple BBSes over the years. Close calls, and learning from the mistakes of others. Familiar names.

I feel like it’s time to release a set of text files about MY history, and see what comes out of the woodwork.

They’ll be on the citadel. There is no better place for them. If it takes five years for the right people to find them, then so be it.

I might drop some knowledge on different techniques that might be used to carve a successful career on your own from a disadvantaged position.

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BSidesDC?

How many of us are going to BSidesDC next weekend? I’m volunteering Saturday and Sunday mid-day, but I’ll have some time before and after to wander and maybe have a drink with some of y’all, especially those of you who can’t make the Monday night meetup in Stone Ridge.

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Retrocomputing: Altairduino

I picked up this Altairduino unit back in 2017 or 2018 I think. The original came with a narrow bamboo case, and I ran into fitment issues and took a break from the project, although I had gotten the electronics portion working. At its core, the project uses an Arduino Due, and simulates the loading of 8″ floppies from files on a micro SD card.

Recently, a blue and white case was made available to simulate the original Altair 8800 case. It’s a bit deeper as well, and comes with an expansion board with a hardware terminal emulator, external serial port, VGA, PS2 keyboard socket, etc. I finally got around to put my Altairduino into a box.

Now I’m struggling with the serial port functionality and/or the SD card reader. But even without those, I can play kill-the-bit and pong with the switches and LEDs on the front panel.

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And in other website change news…

Tonight I added Facebook and Twitter login via OAUTH. Facebook seems to work just fine, Twitter seems a bit weird but I’ll check it some more later. The idea is to give you folks the capability of logging in here without having to create and maintain a separate user ID. You are still welcome to do it that way, I’m just creating options.

I will work on event registration next.

Nobody has commented on the front page changes, so either:

  1. Nobody goes to the front page, they just link here directly;
  2. Nobody comes to the website at ALL;
  3. Nobody can figure out how to get past it; or
  4. Nobody gives a shit.

I’ll take any answer. As a part-time nihilist, none of this truly matters.

For tonight, I’m going back to looking at Arduino Due pinouts. I’m trying to diagnose a serial port issue.

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Thanks, Meetup!

So, if you were following our Meetup page, you’ll notice that WeWork/Meetup announced some upcoming changes that I, as an organizer, was not comfortable with.

They decided that, beginning in November, they would reduce organizer fees. Great. All in favor. But at the same time, they would start charging attendees $2 per RSVP. Yeah. No.

I would be okay with $1 per RSVP, -if- and -only- if, that money were split between Meetup and the organizer somehow. But it’s not, and I feel pretty strongly that they will either reverse this decision, or face the demise of their platform.

It’s easy for me. I’m a small organizer. It’s EASY for me to get off their platform. I don’t have to rely on them. I really feel for some of the organizers of larger events. Especially those who charge for attendance — this new schema, at this time, doesn’t seem to offer the capability to upcharge.

But again, it’s not about the money — for me, anyway. It’s that I resent a sudden inconvenience on my user base that benefits me in almost no way.

So from this point on, please feel free to follow this website and/or Twitter (@dc540baab) for updates. How this is likely to flesh out is that I continue to announce the events on Meetup, but no longer allow RSVPs through that platform, instead driving them here, where I will add a registration form of some sort.