It would be nice if someone was making new keyboards, but there isn't anyone. There IS an indiegogo by some guy in Australia making new C64 keycaps... (in various colours and translucencies), but not new keyboards.
Personally I'd like a mechanical keyboard for these computers so that they can shed their "toy" status a bit, but good luck getting Unicomp or some other mechanical keyboard maker to make replacements.
I have a C64-Reloaded board with one of the newly produced transparent C64C cases. I have to admit it looks pretty cool. I only had to find a broken C64 to salvage the keyboard and chips from it....and that's kinda of a problem. For all the replacement boards and cases for these retro projects... there are no replacement KEYBOARDS or chips.
For this A1200 replacement board and case, there are no replacement keyboards. You have to rip an old one apart to put one together - or find a broken one and refurbish it.
It's a pity that we can't completely rebuild these computers part for part without salvaging broken units. Indeed in the case of the C64, the chips are hard to replace or replicate exactly (particularly the SID sound chip, which is highly sought after by electronic musicians)
Large IT companies seem to make most of it's money by taking on customers that nobody in their right mind would take on, basically due to the fines and punishments that come with abject stuff-ups for mission critical system from three-letter agencies and large companies. Yet somehow they make a profit and completely hash it up while protecting themselves legally - ready to find another victim.
Sales people walk in and sell to these customers the moon and kitchen-sink - including things which are technically not possible thanks to liberal use of marketing-speak - taking up many words in the English language to say very very little, but sound impressive. Words like "cloud" and "new IT" and "big data" etc. etc. These ridiculous expectations are then dumped on the tech staff who are only told AFTER the fact. Tech comes back and mentions that what has been sold is impossible to implement within reasonable budget/timeframes.
In any case to protect the IT company legally, the people who work for them have to write up loads and loads of documentation and other ITIL legal stuff to ensure that any time that they touch the system to make any change whatsoever that the company is covered legally from any multi-milliondollar fines. Not only does this take a lot of time to write up, but it's very expensive to pay people to do this, so costs to the customer mount exponentially depending on difficulty.
While all these bureaucratic nonsense goes on, nobody can actually do very much on the environment.
People come and go from the company over the large amount of time it takes to get stuff done, typically not handing over work properly and costing the IT company more time to retrain new employees, and some of them are simply thrown in the deep end with little help. Due to the insanity these new employees have to work with, they typically quit early and change jobs - costing even more money and wasting more time. To deal with this issue and to try and save money, the jobs are then farmed out to India or the Phillippines, and to places where people will accept lower pay and probably make an effort to put up with the nonsense due to their life depending on it.
So now you have a bunch of people on the account whose English is not 100% and who are trying to deal with a complete mess, completely remotely. Because it's all outsourced and done remotely with various people scattered all over the world in different timezones - you can imagine how difficult it is to get everyone together to decide on anything. A good amount of time is wasted on communication and collaboration - which costs the customer even more money again.
You can be fairly certain that given that there are too many cooks, they stuff up and this wastes more time, costs a little less money now, but now what is produced is still not very much and the quality is iffy. Given the iffy quality, this now causes more problems and takes more time and costs more money to fix - which the customer ends up paying for.
End result? The whole project goes WAY over budget and takes WAY too long.... BUT, thanks to the IT company filing all the paperwork THAT WASTED ALL THIS TIME IN THE FIRST PLACE, they feel that they are legally protected from the client - who feels that they have been completely screwed (which they have).
So the customer eventually sues for this hash of a system that is unfinished and over budget. Large IT company comes back with all the documentation and contract legalese and says "Sorry about your luck"
Large IT company goes on to find fresh meat, and the cycle repeats. Customer goes to another oversized IT vendor and they do the same thing.
Ah Australia --- A country which prides itself on a stifling bureaucracy, naysaying, playing time-wasting political games, coming up with new complex and unnecessary laws, trying to run a nanny-state, being a bunch of killjoys, finding legal avenues to stymie new developments, whinging about problems rather than doing anything about them, outright hostility to anything new, NIMBYism, and doing EVERYTHING possible to ensure that engineers who actually DO things, and anyone with a new disruptive idea who wants to get something done, gets wrapped heavily in red-tape of some description, verbally beaten into a pulp, and fed to the dropbears.
Our economy is in trouble, but we can sell the world politicians, lawyers, and bureaucrats. Won't build us a network infrastructure for the future though.
Terry Gilliam's film "Brazil" should have been called "Australia"
I have the 32K RAM expansion for the Vic20. Has a pass through port to mount other cartridges, and you can flick the memory banks on and off with dip switches.
And yes, an expanded vic20 runs a ported version of DOOM:D Yes, it's crap.
The problem with vulnerabilities is when you are in an organization where simple patching is overmanaged to death so that the patches are never applied in a timely manner.
As I have discovered, it is a lot better in a legal sense to leave things unpatched. The patching requires downtime, it adds nothing to business, it introduces risks to the system of a failed change. If the patching screws up, then YOU take the blame.
It is just MUCH easier to leave the vulnerability unpatched and tolerate getting hacked. Reason? Because then somebody else takes the blame. It wasn't you, Mr. System Admin, who broke the system, but someone else. Therefore, it's not your fault. You can walk away with your paycheck as the system explodes in the background. If you noticed the vulnerability and made plans to patch it, and it doesn't get patched due to some bureaucratic ITIL wrangling, you can just walk away from the carcrash.
Patching vulnerabilities just isn't a priority for many IT environments.
Potentially I need to muck with the BIOS to get this to work properly on Linux, but with the defaults, Windows wakes OK from sleep and Ubuntu 15.04 doesn't
Tried getting my wireless logitech keyboard to wake up my ubuntu-installed intel NUC to wake from sleep, but I can't get it to work. Logitech's Unifying receiver can wake from sleep on Windows out of the box, but ubuntu needs hacks and tweaks... of which I can't get to work.
Having to get out of the chair and lean over to hit the power button on the computer should not be a feature when there's a wireless keyboard on the couch.
Just because you don't deal with Microsoft or Windows Server in your daily life doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of places that use it.
Like it or not, there are many companies who have run Windows Server as legacy and then migrate to the newer versions when the time arises. They do this because the applications they want to run are all on the Windows platform! Surprise!
Now, we can start OS wars about the technical merits of Linux vs Windows.... but the fact of the matter is, if the app the business runs is on Windows Server, then the server going to run Windows Server, and that is the end of the conversation.
As a consultant, you often walk into Windows shops and have to deal with real companies, and their very real business needs. If you work in-house for a company and have the latitude to enforce Linux company-wide, or you're an ISP or something, then good for you.... but you're in a minority. If you are mostly a Linux enterprise environment, you're probably dealing with the horror that is Oracle. That's enough to make companies jump into Microsoft's arms.
Besides, I'm looking to Windows Server 2016 to support SSH so I don't have to install Cygwin to get it.
Speaking of which... where is the "You COWS!" guy in the comments for this article? No silly comment about SPARC being for cows? He's getting slow.....
I imagine it is the same for you when you wake up, check the site, look for smug tripe, and then post your own smug tripe which was in response the mildly amusing troll.
Come on, reply again and let's keep taking this to it's "reducto ad absurdum" singularity.
What is it like when you have a daily routine of waking up every day, checking the website, only to post the same blather in every thread for no reason. Only to get up and do it all again the next day.
The failed loading was basically due to the tape heads being misaligned. And the woeful speed was also fixed by tape turbos... but again, took third parties to do it. Also decent data compression wasn't widely used. Most of the data being saved was uncompressed.
With aligned heads, decent data compression, and fast tape turbos.... it became completely possibly to jam around 60 decent games onto a single C90 cassette..... but by that time, the world had moved on.
There's no point in Commodore releasing this "me-too" Android phone. Nobody is going to give two-flying rats, especially the people who remember what Commodore was before it fell into bankruptcy.
In the past year, the remaining enthusiasts have seen redesigned clone C64 motherboard (the Commodore "reloaded") and we've seen a successful kickstarter to mould new C64 cases - in new colours including transparent - which could be used to hold a C64 motherboard OR be used as a case for other computer projects (raspberry pis for example). There are new storage devices for all the old kit that enthusiasts have made (the 1541U2, the Chameleon cartridge, SD2IEC), but Commodore had nothing to do with these at all.
This new "Commodore" who owns the rights has failed to do what other enthusiasts have had to pick up the mantle to do.... and none of these enthusiasts can use the Commodore logo because the new owners start getting all litigious. The new "Commodore" is just hoping to ride off the nostalgia that the original Commodore generated. Nothing more, nothing less.
If the new owners had half a brain, they'd be building raspberry pi-like devices and supporting the computer hobbiest segment of the market. That's what Commodore was renowned for. Computers for the masses, and enough openness and simplicity so that the beginner could get down and dirty with machine language and the chips on the board.
Why the hell can't they just finish the C65 and give us something new to hack on? I'd spend money on that over an android phone.
We complained to Microsoft that we didn't want the schizophrenic UI choice of "control panel" vs "settings" They listened, and then ignored everyone. There is no good reason for both to exist in Windows 10 at all.
They've pushed this OS out the door minus the polish required to fix this glaring disparity.
Granted, these things will probably get fixed in later versions, but currently Windows 10 has plenty of niggling issues still, and they're pushing it out the door. Full screen on a number of apps doesn't work properly (being the major one I've discovered)
Slashdot Mirror
Pretty much.
It would be nice if someone was making new keyboards, but there isn't anyone.
There IS an indiegogo by some guy in Australia making new C64 keycaps... (in various colours and translucencies), but not new keyboards.
https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...
Personally I'd like a mechanical keyboard for these computers so that they can shed their "toy" status a bit, but good luck getting Unicomp or some other mechanical keyboard maker to make replacements.
I have a C64-Reloaded board with one of the newly produced transparent C64C cases. I have to admit it looks pretty cool. ...and that's kinda of a problem. For all the replacement boards and cases for these retro projects... there are no replacement KEYBOARDS or chips.
I only had to find a broken C64 to salvage the keyboard and chips from it.
For this A1200 replacement board and case, there are no replacement keyboards. You have to rip an old one apart to put one together - or find a broken one and refurbish it.
It's a pity that we can't completely rebuild these computers part for part without salvaging broken units.
Indeed in the case of the C64, the chips are hard to replace or replicate exactly (particularly the SID sound chip, which is highly sought after by electronic musicians)
The next step will be to replace all the offshored workers with PERL scripts.
Large IT companies seem to make most of it's money by taking on customers that nobody in their right mind would take on, basically due to the fines and punishments that come with abject stuff-ups for mission critical system from three-letter agencies and large companies.
Yet somehow they make a profit and completely hash it up while protecting themselves legally - ready to find another victim.
Sales people walk in and sell to these customers the moon and kitchen-sink - including things which are technically not possible thanks to liberal use of marketing-speak - taking up many words in the English language to say very very little, but sound impressive. Words like "cloud" and "new IT" and "big data" etc. etc.
These ridiculous expectations are then dumped on the tech staff who are only told AFTER the fact. Tech comes back and mentions that what has been sold is impossible to implement within reasonable budget/timeframes.
In any case to protect the IT company legally, the people who work for them have to write up loads and loads of documentation and other ITIL legal stuff to ensure that any time that they touch the system to make any change whatsoever that the company is covered legally from any multi-milliondollar fines. Not only does this take a lot of time to write up, but it's very expensive to pay people to do this, so costs to the customer mount exponentially depending on difficulty.
While all these bureaucratic nonsense goes on, nobody can actually do very much on the environment.
People come and go from the company over the large amount of time it takes to get stuff done, typically not handing over work properly and costing the IT company more time to retrain new employees, and some of them are simply thrown in the deep end with little help. Due to the insanity these new employees have to work with, they typically quit early and change jobs - costing even more money and wasting more time. To deal with this issue and to try and save money, the jobs are then farmed out to India or the Phillippines, and to places where people will accept lower pay and probably make an effort to put up with the nonsense due to their life depending on it.
So now you have a bunch of people on the account whose English is not 100% and who are trying to deal with a complete mess, completely remotely. Because it's all outsourced and done remotely with various people scattered all over the world in different timezones - you can imagine how difficult it is to get everyone together to decide on anything. A good amount of time is wasted on communication and collaboration - which costs the customer even more money again.
You can be fairly certain that given that there are too many cooks, they stuff up and this wastes more time, costs a little less money now, but now what is produced is still not very much and the quality is iffy.
Given the iffy quality, this now causes more problems and takes more time and costs more money to fix - which the customer ends up paying for.
End result? The whole project goes WAY over budget and takes WAY too long.... BUT, thanks to the IT company filing all the paperwork THAT WASTED ALL THIS TIME IN THE FIRST PLACE, they feel that they are legally protected from the client - who feels that they have been completely screwed (which they have).
So the customer eventually sues for this hash of a system that is unfinished and over budget.
Large IT company comes back with all the documentation and contract legalese and says "Sorry about your luck"
Large IT company goes on to find fresh meat, and the cycle repeats.
Customer goes to another oversized IT vendor and they do the same thing.
Imagine them using the term "surface"
"The players are all looking at the surface"
WHICH SURFACE? THE TABLET OR THE ACTUAL FIELD ITSELF?
Dear aunt, lets set so double the killer delete select all
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
...and help them overthrow the Hindu caste system that discriminates against them getting computer-based jobs.
Ah Australia --- A country which prides itself on a stifling bureaucracy, naysaying, playing time-wasting political games, coming up with new complex and unnecessary laws, trying to run a nanny-state, being a bunch of killjoys, finding legal avenues to stymie new developments, whinging about problems rather than doing anything about them, outright hostility to anything new, NIMBYism, and doing EVERYTHING possible to ensure that engineers who actually DO things, and anyone with a new disruptive idea who wants to get something done, gets wrapped heavily in red-tape of some description, verbally beaten into a pulp, and fed to the dropbears.
Our economy is in trouble, but we can sell the world politicians, lawyers, and bureaucrats.
Won't build us a network infrastructure for the future though.
Terry Gilliam's film "Brazil" should have been called "Australia"
And at the next Apple event, at no time in history were so many words used to say so little.
The problem is as George Carlin said:
They want obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept it.
I have the 32K RAM expansion for the Vic20. Has a pass through port to mount other cartridges, and you can flick the memory banks on and off with dip switches.
And yes, an expanded vic20 runs a ported version of DOOM :D
Yes, it's crap.
Every job that a human can do will eventually be replaced with robots.
For everything else, it will be outsourced to India. And that includes the robot repair call center.
I for one welcome our new Hindu overlords.
The rest of us are F**KED
The problem with vulnerabilities is when you are in an organization where simple patching is overmanaged to death so that the patches are never applied in a timely manner.
As I have discovered, it is a lot better in a legal sense to leave things unpatched. The patching requires downtime, it adds nothing to business, it introduces risks to the system of a failed change. If the patching screws up, then YOU take the blame.
It is just MUCH easier to leave the vulnerability unpatched and tolerate getting hacked. Reason? Because then somebody else takes the blame. It wasn't you, Mr. System Admin, who broke the system, but someone else. Therefore, it's not your fault. You can walk away with your paycheck as the system explodes in the background. If you noticed the vulnerability and made plans to patch it, and it doesn't get patched due to some bureaucratic ITIL wrangling, you can just walk away from the carcrash.
Patching vulnerabilities just isn't a priority for many IT environments.
Potentially I need to muck with the BIOS to get this to work properly on Linux, but with the defaults, Windows wakes OK from sleep and Ubuntu 15.04 doesn't
...wake from suspend is a whole lot worse.
Tried getting my wireless logitech keyboard to wake up my ubuntu-installed intel NUC to wake from sleep, but I can't get it to work.
Logitech's Unifying receiver can wake from sleep on Windows out of the box, but ubuntu needs hacks and tweaks... of which I can't get to work.
Having to get out of the chair and lean over to hit the power button on the computer should not be a feature when there's a wireless keyboard on the couch.
Now , now..... don't tempt the troll....
Just because you don't deal with Microsoft or Windows Server in your daily life doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of places that use it.
Like it or not, there are many companies who have run Windows Server as legacy and then migrate to the newer versions when the time arises.
They do this because the applications they want to run are all on the Windows platform! Surprise!
Now, we can start OS wars about the technical merits of Linux vs Windows.... but the fact of the matter is, if the app the business runs is on Windows Server, then the server going to run Windows Server, and that is the end of the conversation.
As a consultant, you often walk into Windows shops and have to deal with real companies, and their very real business needs.
If you work in-house for a company and have the latitude to enforce Linux company-wide, or you're an ISP or something, then good for you.... but you're in a minority.
If you are mostly a Linux enterprise environment, you're probably dealing with the horror that is Oracle.
That's enough to make companies jump into Microsoft's arms.
Besides, I'm looking to Windows Server 2016 to support SSH so I don't have to install Cygwin to get it.
Speaking of which... where is the "You COWS!" guy in the comments for this article? No silly comment about SPARC being for cows?
He's getting slow.....
I imagine it is the same for you when you wake up, check the site, look for smug tripe, and then post your own smug tripe which was in response the mildly amusing troll.
Come on, reply again and let's keep taking this to it's "reducto ad absurdum" singularity.
I have to wonder about that troll.
What is it like when you have a daily routine of waking up every day, checking the website, only to post the same blather in every thread for no reason.
Only to get up and do it all again the next day.
I'm a SHAAARRK! I'm A SHAAARRRRK! Suck my dick, I'm a SHARK!
The failed loading was basically due to the tape heads being misaligned.
And the woeful speed was also fixed by tape turbos... but again, took third parties to do it.
Also decent data compression wasn't widely used. Most of the data being saved was uncompressed.
With aligned heads, decent data compression, and fast tape turbos.... it became completely possibly to jam around 60 decent games onto a single C90 cassette. .... but by that time, the world had moved on.
There's no point in Commodore releasing this "me-too" Android phone. Nobody is going to give two-flying rats, especially the people who remember what Commodore was before it fell into bankruptcy.
In the past year, the remaining enthusiasts have seen redesigned clone C64 motherboard (the Commodore "reloaded") and we've seen a successful kickstarter to mould new C64 cases - in new colours including transparent - which could be used to hold a C64 motherboard OR be used as a case for other computer projects (raspberry pis for example).
There are new storage devices for all the old kit that enthusiasts have made (the 1541U2, the Chameleon cartridge, SD2IEC), but Commodore had nothing to do with these at all.
This new "Commodore" who owns the rights has failed to do what other enthusiasts have had to pick up the mantle to do.... and none of these enthusiasts can use the Commodore logo because the new owners start getting all litigious. The new "Commodore" is just hoping to ride off the nostalgia that the original Commodore generated. Nothing more, nothing less.
If the new owners had half a brain, they'd be building raspberry pi-like devices and supporting the computer hobbiest segment of the market.
That's what Commodore was renowned for. Computers for the masses, and enough openness and simplicity so that the beginner could get down and dirty with machine language and the chips on the board.
Why the hell can't they just finish the C65 and give us something new to hack on? I'd spend money on that over an android phone.
We complained to Microsoft that we didn't want the schizophrenic UI choice of "control panel" vs "settings"
They listened, and then ignored everyone.
There is no good reason for both to exist in Windows 10 at all.
They've pushed this OS out the door minus the polish required to fix this glaring disparity.
Granted, these things will probably get fixed in later versions, but currently Windows 10 has plenty of niggling issues still, and they're pushing it out the door.
Full screen on a number of apps doesn't work properly (being the major one I've discovered)
It might be smaller and faster, but can it play Elite?