This--
...the LILYGO TTGO VGA32 micro-controller board will be arriving soon.
It is an ESP32-based board that can be had for quite cheap.
It supports the Arduino platform/firmware and uses the fabGL library to support VGA video output.
It also includes PS/2 inputs for both keyboard and mouse.
This inexpensive board will allow the permacomputer project to start experimenting with releasing software.
Did way more Arduino assembly hacking late this evening.
Get used to using Makefiles and a lot of avr-gcc and avrdude.
If you do it in the Arduino IDE, it will be completely different to doing it in Emacs. The Arduino IDE is only made for coding in C or C++, so you have to get used to keeping some vestigial amount of C in order to do any assembly programming.
Ports between different Arduino models change their addressing so you will end up scratching your head as to why everything was not kept the same.
Hard to explain, but Arduinos are not that great. The software stack is very crufty and quite bitrotted by now.
Code that is promised to just work if you download the file and compile it and upload it, manifestly does not--usually because many people using Arduinos are using Windows.
The Arduino Atmel AVR ISA is proprietary, so that just absolutely sucks.
Restart Podcast Ep. 102: We’re saying no to Microsoft’s wasteful end of Windows 10:
https://therestartproject.org/podcast/windows-10-2/
@purple is this in BASIC?
Why don't you just update the screen every keypress? Not sure if the Canon Cat did this but why would stuff change in between user input?
I remember when I wrote an Atari 2600 kernel that there where about 76 1 MHz clock cycles per scan line on a PAL TV.
I think strobing at 10 Hz is too low. I reckon either up the strobing or remove the conflict between interrupts and timers.
I am all for #permacomputing and I always was, already in 1990s (!) ... but I am not really sure what level of permacomputing is right for us just now.
I sometimes feel like I was doing #solarpunk before it was a thing. I started my first #solarbike in 2013 (no computing, just bike... but the dual use for charging my Asus Eee on road while wild camping was strong motivation to continue...) and this is the first time I used the term "solarpunk" (as a joke).
But actually, I ran two important projects related to #permacomputing before:
In 1996, I started development of Arachne WWW browser for DOS, which was proprietary for many reasons (it was released as open source around cca 2000, but also abandoned). It ran pretty well on 386s with 4 MB RAM. While it could be used even on 286s or XTs, but the results were not very satisfying. I was shocked, that almost immediately after 386s started to be available (my country was lagging behind), the became obsolete, because Windows 95 required at least 8 MB RAM and were pretty unusable on anything less then Pentium. I hope I helped to prolong life of lot of DOS based PCs, but in fact, many serious bugs were not fixed before it was too late. But it was somehow (very limited) commercial success, surfing on early dot com bubble.
But I was not sole developer, I rather managed incoherent group of paid external developers. Kind of pre-open-source shareware approach.
The second attempt at PC recycling was participation in the CZFree.Net project since 2002, where we were re-purposing 386 and 486 PCs (originally even some 286s) as Wi-Fi routers by adding rather expensive PCI based 802.11b network cards with RSMA connectors. Basically, local community was supplying us with their obsolete PCs and we were recycling them into community wireless routers.
Again, this was kinda commercial success, because I learnt from my earlier mistakes (including being early web hosting provider) and added certain multi level marketing features.
1/2
Happy Birthday to us 🎂! KDE is 29!
Today KDE is 29 years old and we are celebrating kicking off our yearly #fundraiser . Donate and make KDE's wishes come true.
Shlee moshed around and
The @PostersUnionAU storage server is online!
Beautiful @mikrotik green.
The Pokémon of the day is: Sandile! 
Discuss! #PokemonOfTheDay
from issue one of Factsheet Five
https://archive.org/details/1_20230606_20230606_1844/page/n1/mode/2up
In an effort to make my computers weirder, I dug a CutiePi Tablet out from the makerspace.
I've had this thing since the kickstarter. It was sitting at the makerspace unused because the last CutePiShell build or whatever they called their window manager, sucked. It was broken and incomplete.
Now there's a decent ubuntu build, so I'm using that.
#fennel 1.6.0 is out! https://fennel-lang.org/changelog#160--2025-10-13
main features include reading files from macros, --to-be-closed with-open, and the ability to disable lambda asserts
Published my review of the Sony CLIE PEG-TG50 and updated my recommended Palm OS apps page on my capsule.
gemini://gemini.cyberbot.space/gemlog/2025-10-13-TG50review.gmi
gemini://gemini.cyberbot.space/retrocomputing/palmsoftware.gmi
Something weird happened to the Arduino.
The program I had written to flash the onboard LED no longer works.
This is the issue with assembly language--perhaps another route of exploration is needed.
There is ulisp, which was my original plan of action--build a BASIC on top of that...