Typecast bit typed on Alphasmart Dana and injected into a Photoshop 7 document for formatting with Richard Polt’s “Patrician” font and printed on a laser printer, then stamped & chopped & pasted up onto newsprint along with a thermal printout photograph taken on a toy camera from reader Gregory. Having fun with a $5 bag […]
Category: The Laptop Collection
Spacetime Resync and the Joy of Installing Windows XP on New-ish Hardware
2014 HP Pavilion p7-1110 3.30GHz Intel Core i3-2120, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 500gb 7200rpm Hard Drive, SuperMulti DVD Burner. Snappy Driver Installer Origin (the good one) Let’s install some fun games! How about Sid Meyer’s Alpha Centauri, Alien Crossfire, Civilization 4 and Beyond The Sword? And while we’re at it, why not throw on SimCity […]
The transition from thriftin’ typewriters to thriftin’ teenaged digital cameras and laptops
2005 HP Pavilion DV4307cl 1.73 GHz Pentium M 1gb DDR2 800MHz SDRAM, 60gb IDE HD, 1280×800 15.4″ WXGA screen Intel GMA 900 128mb shared My Cost: $7, Mesa Thrift Store 2007 HP/Compaq 6715b 2.2 GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-64 4gb DDR2 SDRAM, 120gb SSD, 1680×1050 15.4″ WXGA screen ATI Radeon X1250 My Cost: Free, […]
Thriftin’ Report: $7 Laptop & Celtic Knot Stamps!
2004 HP Pavilion DV4307cl – a WinXP Powerbox! (: The Stampin’ Box is gettin’ pretty full again.
Carbons, The Long-Lived Neo, A Silhouette Mint, and other Crafty Things!
Weapon of Choice: “Dr. Lizardo” 1973 IBM Selectric II #26 1220365 Carter’s Blue Pencil Carbons found at a thrift for a couple bucks for a full box of 50. And so now I have reason to fire up the Neo again, just to check the battery, which is still at 100% after months since I […]
Thriftin’ Report 2022-10-03
Weapon of Choice: “Dr. Lizardo” 1973 IBM Selectric II #26 1220365 Correspondence: Episode 7 – The X Files. Nobody’s got this far yet, but I’m getting the feeling that Episode 7 will be the last for awhile. I feel it’s important to put an endpoint to things once you feel like you have completed the […]
Automatical Justified Typin’ from an NTS WP-10c
Weapon of Choice: 1990 NTS WP-10c SlabTop Word Processor Weapon of Choice: 198x Royal (Nakajima) Alpha 2015 #42320862 ProTip: Peel off that WP-10 sticker and it uncovers the Citizen 10WP that’s actually silkscreened onto the shell. Weapon of Choice: 198x Olivetti 900X #85330822198x Surprise! Looks like the WP-2 also has the option 32k SRAM installed, […]
An Unboxing That Became A Frankenstein Fix-It (Canon InnovaBook CD360 Hinge Repair)
Weapon of Choice: “Thunderbird 3”, 1966 Montgomery Ward Signature 440T #D6216161 Using the P-Touch that Joe sent me to Label my Laptop Collection, and also the power bricks belonging to each. When you have a dozen or so, they can get mixed up. *CRACK!* *SHATTER!* *SNAP!* Yuh, a stiff hinge + 25-Year-Old PVC = CRUMBLE. […]
Let’s make an Alphasmart 3000 better and review it!
Weapon of Choice: 2007 Alphasmart 3000. She throbs with the anticipation of your touch! Sometimes you’ll find fun silk screening easter eggs on the internal circuit boards in a device – the Alphasmart 3000 has this one! There are few things as satisfying as being surprised by a machine that you’d previously dismissed, and I […]
What’s Happenin’ Now?
Weapon of Choice: “Thunderbird 3” 1966 Montgomery Ward Signature 440T #D6216161 Weapon of Choice: 2008 Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook Diamondville Intel Atom N270 (1.6 GHz/533Mhz FSB/512K cache) 2gb DDR2 RAM, 8gb PATA SSD, 1200×600 8.9″ screen Intel US15W Express Running: AntiX Linux 19 I know, a tiny machine with a single-core processor is hardly […]
I got a box from Joe! :D
Always a fun thing to get, this box contained a brace of vintage writer’s slabtops, which Joe decided to downsize and send to me to add to my already varied collection of such machines. Constant readers of this blog will have noted my occasional article on my 1980’s Tandy laptops (TRS-80 Model 100 and 200s […]
Tandy WP-2 User Manual (Happy #SepTandy!)
Weapon of Choice: 1989 NTS WP-10C (with my Tandy WP-2) While I am normally a typewriter guy (as might be obvious), I also do have a small collection of the transitional electronic writing laptops of the 80’s and 90’s. Luckily, this is a collecting niche that takes up very little room (my entire collection takes […]
Solving the Alphasmart Dana’s Insatiable Appetite for AA Batteries…
Weapon of Choice: 2003 Alphasmart Dana Wireless (ha!) There’s a calculus you get to know when you own an Alphasmart Dana and you want to write on it, but you have so many other wonderfully tactile writing machines that you really don’t get to pull out the Dana often enough to justify keeping a set […]
Cyber Monday 30%+15% off TRBs, Plus Mothra Comes Back To The Desk
The Lulu sale has gotten even better! now you can get the 15% base discount on Typewriter Repair Bibles, plus use the discount code “CYBERMONDAY30” for an additional 30% “LULU20” for 20% off of your Lulu order (all caps, expires Dec 5 on midnight). Get ’em while they’re hot! And now some other stuff not […]
Six Months With a $4 Dell Latitude D410
Weapon of Choice: 2005 Dell Latitude D410, running MX Linux 18 2.0 GHz Pentium M CPU (Single-Core) 2gb DDR2 400MHz SDRAM, 40gb IDE HD, 1024×768 XGA screen Intel GMA 900 128mb shared I saw this little Dell Latitude D410 laptop on the bottom shelf of the camera aisle at the Deseret thrift store, no price […]
Friends from New Mexico & A Surprise Solution to 8-Bit Printing
Weapon of Choice: 198x Olivetti 900X #85330822 Joe Van Cleave’s Blog Post on his trip. WriteElephant’s “Letters From Nakajima“. “Scannin’, Scannin’, Scannin’” Scanned so far: 194x-Rex-O-Graph 194x-Speed-O-Print_Model_L-Instructions 194x-Woodstock-220k_SVC 195x-1962-Speed-O-Print_Parts-PriceLists 195x-Speed-O-Print_Liberator_200-Userman 197x-Brother_JP3-Parts 197x-Brother_JP4-Parts 1947-Woodstock-830k_SVC 1954-Woodstock_PPLnSVC 1955-RC-Allen_M600-M700-PnSVC 1957-1968-Copy-Rite_Duplicator 1958-Everest_K2-Parts 1959-Speed-O-Print-SVC 1962-Adler_Special-SVC 1964-Adler_Junior-10-20-30_SVC 1964-Adler_Junior-10-20-30-Parts 1964-Speed-O-Print_Copier-SVC 1967-Brother_JP2-Parts 1969-Adler_Gabriele_5000-Parts-SVC 1969-Adler_Universal-200-239-400-SVC 1970-Royal_Jupiter-10-12-12-Award-1300-SVC 1969-Royal_Jetstar-SVC 1973-Royal_690-Update-SVC 1972-Royal-590-595-790-795-Functional_Test 1974-Royal_2000_Centurion_Medallion-SVC 1962-Robotyper_Royaltyper-SVC 1955-1973-Royal_Portable_A-Parts 1959-Royal_Diana_Administrator-Parts 1955-1965-Royal_Royalite-Parts 1976-Royal_Sahara_Caravan-Adler_Tippa-Parts […]
AntiX 17.4.1 i386 on Sweet 16 Toshiba Portege M200
Weapon of Choice: “Toshi Station” 2003 Toshiba Portege M200-S838 – 32-bit 1.8 GHz Intel Pentium M 745 Centrino, 2gb DDR 333MHz SDRAM, 30gb IDE SSD, 1400×1050 SXGA+ screen – nVidia GeForce Go 5200 32mb DDR 4X AGP, AntiX 17.4.1 i386. I last wrote about this machine in 2014 when I was trying out different Linuxes, […]
Converting a TRS-80 Model 100 REX ROM to work in a Tandy 200
Well, I was too broke to spring for the NADSbox and REX200 when they were available, and regretted it for sure when the supply dried up and they couldn’t be had anymore. The NADSbox I can live without, thanks to mComm, but a REX200 was something I really wanted for my 1985 TRS-80 Tandy 200 […]
Vintage Typewriter Hunter Multimedia box
I noted in my last post that I was pondering loading a fun Linux onto one of the Core 2 Duos for the Type-In, I meant AMD Turions, actually: Weapon of Choice: 2008 HP Pavilion dv6815nr 2.0 GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60 4gb DDR2 SDRAM, 120gb SSD, 1280×800 15.4″ WXGA screen Nvidia GeForce Go […]
Vintage Laptop Collecting?
Hmmn, looks like I have a collection of vintage laptops now. I never really thought about it because I only bought the one Thinkpad T21 at a thrift store, and the rest have been given to me because they “didn’t work” in some way or were replaced by newer machines and weren’t wanted anymore. The […]
Weird Picture-Taker: Vtech Phusion toy PDA from the year 2000
Me, like in 2006 maybe? No datestamping on the Phusion, but that’s about the right year, I think. Upsampled from the Phusion’s original 120×160 bitmap about 12 years after I took the selfie. One of the benefits of not having a car is that I now finally get to go through boxes in the garage […]
A Timeslippy Review of the Quickpad Pro
Towers of Tapes digitized, and I burned up one VCR already, but remembering a lot that I forgot. Speaking of which, I forgot to review this Quickpad Pro after I got it, although I made a few false starts. I forgot a lot that I had learned about the machine over the year that I’ve […]
Ttssastt Episode 0.2: Using a digital recorder with TRS-80 Model 100/102/200
A reader named Duane Calvillo read the last post I did on using a digital recorder to save and load files from the little Model T computers, and just wanted to know the specifics of the actual saving and loading process. In the previous article, I talked more about the process of figuring out how […]
Neo Inevitability and a great 99 Cent Bag-o-Pens
Well, this is certainly a surprise, especially after reading Joe Van Cleave’s blog post where he discusses his reasons for liking his old Alphasmart Neo. I’ve had a pair of Alphasmart Danas for a few years and have liked them quite a lot, but they tend to eat through batteries faster than I’d like when […]
UJTU: Randomness
FreeDOS, a free, open-source MS-DOS clone OS Microsoft Word 5.5 for DOS, free download from Microsoft
TRS-80 Bar Code Reader drivers for Model 100/200 and Kyotronic 85
I admit I’ve been obsessing over my old Model T computers this past week or so. I finally did dig up my Null Modem cable and got the little laptops talking to the PC again, and I also dug up my old cassette software for the T100/200. I’ve sampled them all to digital WAV files […]
RTFM: TRS-80 Model 200, Proper Disassembly and Re-assembly – fix that pesky video ribbon cable!
You who follow my correspondence here will know all about my TRS-80 Model 100, which sees use mostly as a timelapse camera controller. I also have a pair of Tandy Model 200’s, which are the rarer version and are basically the same machine with a few improvements like a much larger screen that folds clamshell-style […]
File Transfer for TRS-80 Model 100/102/200 using a Digital Audio Recorder: The Road Less Travelled…
It all started simply enough: I came up with the idea of using my retrotech timelapse camera kit to do a timelapse of the upcoming Phoenix Type-In. Well, when you come up with these ideas, the first thing you do is check your kit and get it ready. Thus began the adventure… I pulled the […]
No more Neo, how about the Alphasmart Dana?
The major attractions to the hobby of admiring and using retrotech is the low cost of entry and the ease of seeing what technologies of the past have stood the test of time to survive and prove their worth and durability for particular tasks. Recent blog posts in the ‘sphere have lamented the obsolescence (or […]
Retro-Tech Thursday: Timelapse Photography with Canon Powershot 600 and TRS-80 Model 100
Video not playing? Download file instead. This is a timelapse study of the habits of a turtle, a cat and a bunch of small fish over the course of a day and night that I did some years back. I just found out I can render these videos to MP4 and embed them via HTML5, […]
Tilting for Visibility: Travel Typewriters and TRS-80 Model 100’s
Retro Laptops Reviewed for Nano Suitability
National Novel Writing Month is fast approaching, and it seemed relevant to take a quick look at some of the non-typewriter options that a Nano participant might have a mind to use when banging out that magic 50K. On obtaining a slightly beat-up Apple eMate 300 from Ryan this past week, I realized that I […]
TRS-80 Model 100 VS Alphasmart Dana
Man, it’s been awhile since I’ve had to run TEENY.EXE to load a DOS onto a Tandy laptop. Probably the last time I did so was sometime in the 20th century, before I was smart enough to buy TS-DOS on a ROM chip for my T200. I forgot what a pain in the ass it […]
Alphasmart Dana: First Impressions
Well, the Alphasmart Dana has arrived, and contrary to the Ebay ad, it did have a stylus installed already. And wow, this thing is as clean as a whistle aside from a small school item id# written discreetly on the side with a silver sharpie. C17 is this unit’s designation from its previous owner, and […]