Some of you may remember that last year , after a regretful decision to 'upgrade' from Windows 7 to Windows 8 I decided to jump ship and switch over to Linux. Ubuntu 13.04 to be precise. I blogged about the install process here, and my first thoughts after a week here, with the intention of regular posts whenever something goes really good or really bad. So, it's 14 months later, and basically things have gone pretty good. Sure, there's some things that aren't just how I like them with Windows, but other bits that just seem to work really well. In defence of my lax blogging, I'd just say that I got on and used the computer as I expected I would. I got tripped up a couple of times, but Google and AskUbuntu.com always seem to put me back on the right track. I have expanded my Linux network too. I was donated an old netbook last year that now runs Ubuntu 13.04 for an hourly Twitter job. The plan had been to test it on the netbook then set up a Raspberry Pi to run it, but the netbook is surplus, capable, cheap to run and it works - so why change. I have also bought myself a little HP server which I put Ubuntu Server 13.10 on, along with OwnCloud. This works like DropBox, and synchronises files between my main PC, phone, tablet, work computer and is available to me (albeit slowly) anywhere on the internet. All in all, things have been ticking over quite nicely. Life has been happy in Linux land... until recently!
With over 24 hours to go before the end of July deadline the final piece of the puzzle fell in to place! But, first, a quick catchup from the last blog post;
We're at the halfway mark of the Retro Challenge, and there's a slight lull in activity, so this seems like a good chance to catch up on what's been done so far, and what's still to come. Firstly, a quick review of the challenge I set myself; write my name in LED lights. These must, however, be controlled by a Z80 computer, which I've got to design and build myself, and written in assembly language which I need to learn. Well, the start of the challenge saw me dive headlong in to KiCad, learning some of the intricacies of printed circuit board layout. I'd used KiCad for a couple of little projects before, but certainly wouldn't have described myself as competent. I'm still not a master of it, but I'm a lot more familiar with it than I was. I split my breadboard based Z80 down in to several modules, each of which will plug in to a Veroboard backplane. 6 of these have been designed and sent off for manufacture which will give me a basic Z80 computer that I can use via a terminal emulator. The boards are;
I knew there would be some stumbling blocks with this Retro Challenge, but, hey, it wouldn't be a challenge if everything was just nice and simple. However, I seem to be beset by little stupid technical issues that aren't necessarily retro in nature. However, the fact that you're reading this does at least mean that my blog is working again! I ran some updates last week, and it caused some issues with a plugin meaning I had no way of adding, editing or modifying any posts. I've now got that tracked down to the Poll plugin and disabled it. So, yay, I'm back! So, part of this challenge is to use LEDs, and the little 8x8 matrix modules I found seem ideal. I had initially intended to design a PCB to mount a bunch of these on, but due to time constraints, it was looking very unlikely I'd get them designed, ordered, manufactured and delivered by the end of the month, let alone time for testing. So I decided to go Old Skool, and do this part on a breadboard. Well, 2 breadboards, as they each need a driver chip. Although, it's actually 3 breadboards, as 2 aren't quite big enough. Not to mention the other breadboard with the supporting circuitry on. I made a start on this last night;
I have always wanted to enter Retro Challenge, ever since I first heard of it nearly 24 hours ago. I followed a link that took me to http://retrochallenge.net/ and I read up on what it was all about, scrutinised the rules and checked out what others were doing. I quickly came to the conclusion that I could give this a thing a go. All I needed to do* was come up with a suitable challenge for myself.
I have decided to make my name appear in LED lights.
So an email was sent to the competition organisers;
