The random ramblings of a French programmer living in Norway...
2020
  Freeboot revisited
Sat 18th January 2020   
Once upon a time I had to sell my Oric to buy an Atari ST.

Unfortunately I barely managed to get enough money to get myself a Singled Sided floppy drive model, which quickly proved to be an issue since most people were swapping around double sided floppy disks.

To solve the issue, I bought an external Double Sided Cumana floppy drive, which allowed me to access all these floppies... but not boot on them!


Enters the FreeBoot!

2019
  Fixing a Brionvega Algol BV1
Tue 26th November 2019   
The problem with vintage equipment is that it has a limited shelf life, and some specific parts are now either difficult or impossible to find.

For my Oric activities, I've been using a 36cm Sony Trinitron found in the storage area of Funcom when we moved to a new office, and it's been faithfully working for years... but recently it has started making some humming noise and sometimes have a faded picture, which is generally not a good sign.

  Fixing the SHV33 back cover
Sat 31st August 2019   
When my Nokia 700 became unusable as a daily phone, I searched for an equivalent high-end compact mobile.

Unfortunately, all I could find (under 5" size) on the European market was either the iPhone SE, or ultra low spec mobiles running obsolete versions of Android.

Then I took a look at the Asian market and saw that they had plenty of mobiles that would match my requirement, except of course they were not available on the European market, which mean I had to import one.

  Power Brexit
Sun 6th January 2019   
A few months ago, when I started collecting Oric software, I realized that my old tape deck was starting to be very tired and unreliable. Then I spotted an auction for a "Binatone Data Recorder", which apparently had been recently serviced with new belts and power cable.

The form factor also seemed ideal to fit on my desk without taking too much room... the only problem was that it had one of the annoying UK plugs that require an adapter to fit in EU mains.

Time to fix that.

2018
  Tape Storage Hacking
Thu 1st November 2018   
I recently started collecting some specific pieces of Oric software for some future projects of mine, and obviously when you have to pay the "eBay Collector Premium Tax"(tm) you would rather not have all your tapes get crushed, broken, or fade out because of the sun.

The solution is simply to invest in some adequate storage systems, which ideally would also pass the "partner test".

2016
  Høytorp meeting
Tue 16th August 2016   
The Rakkestad meeting was interesting, but there was unfortunately not many people present.

Fortunatelly this Høytorp Treffet 2016 was a totally different beast: Nice weather, a large assortment of diverse vehicles, a lot of people, and all in all a very entertaining experience!

  Custom Shaders
Thu 21st July 2016   
One of the important things in a recreational vehicle is comfort.

Many things impact comfort, such as the quality of the driving experience, the sitting, the noise, but when you want to sleep in a vehicle what really matters is to be adequately shielded from the sun and be able to breathe!

2013
  Fix it, fix it, fix it!
Sat 30th March 2013   
So the Valp was now parked on the parking: Time to get things going.

Is it dead?

The first thing we did of course is to try to start it. Nothing happened. The blinkers and windshield wipers worked so at least we knew there was electricity going on, but since starter engines are notoriously power hungry we decided to buy a battery charger, remove the batteries, and let them charge for quite a long while.

  Shopping time
Tue 26th March 2013   
Now that we knew we wanted one of these horribly cute off-road vehicles, I started to contact the various sellers to ask questions about their state and it quickly appear that you could classify the various available models in three categories based on their prices.