piratesexmachine420

[piratesexmachine420]

USPS Northrop Grumman LLV Appreciation post sponsored by Postaldog on Kofi!!

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02/27/2025

[piratesexmachine420]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

(Don't worry it's been fixed for like a year now but WOW)

[piratesexmachine420]

I'm thinking in particular about my Windows XP machine and NES here, they both use external power supplies that passively produce a lot of heat, even when the device they're plugged into isn't powered on.

One of these days I need to buy a bunch of switched power cords

[piratesexmachine420]

One of these days I need to buy a bunch of switched power cords

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[piratesexmachine420]

02/26/2025

[piratesexmachine420]

C-q C-x RET?

I heard you like escape rooms.....

[piratesexmachine420]

cron job that periodically kills any vi/vim/neovim/whatever-it-is-you-kids-are-using-these-days processes. Mandatory pomodoro and it saves you from having to remember how to exit!

I heard you like escape rooms.....

[piratesexmachine420]

Sometimes I wish someone would offer me $17.6 billion to peel and eat an entire orange.

[piratesexmachine420]

It's genuinely fucking comical how genuinely horrible the NVIDIA 50 series launch has been

Like how is the fact it's overpriced garbage that struggles to beat last generation the least bad thing about the launch

[piratesexmachine420]

re: ICF VIII

Oh, I actually have one other thing to say about the TI Keyboard.

What's up with the model name? "PLT-KBD". "KBD" is pretty self-explanatory, but "PLT"?

I have no proof, but my theory is that it might've been a castoff from the cancelled PET project. My evidence for this is that all the known prototypes from PET also have model numbers that start with "PLT", for "Personal Learning Tool". The dates match up (PET was in development from 1998 to 2003) and so does the ethos ("learning tool" vs "just calculator").

Then again, I've seen the Voyage 200 referred to as a "PLT" before (e.g. the ticalc.org site, or in an unsourced claim on Wikipedia), and that's just a TI-92 Plus with a new shell and more storage, so maybe the name just got reused by TI marketing for whatever reason. Who knows.

[piratesexmachine420]

02/24/2025

[piratesexmachine420]

“Hyperfixation” has lost most of its intensity through semantic satiation. It’s gone so far that “he has a fixation on cars” actually sounds more intense than “he has a hyperfixation on cars.”

I think “hyper-” is no longer an intensifier. now it means “of or related to autism!”

[piratesexmachine420]

ICF VIII

Here's an amusing little product: the TI Keyboard. I've mentioned it on this blog a few times before, but I don't think I've ever really highlighted it until now.

This works exactly how you think it does. The cradle is nothing more than a strangely-shaped calc to calc serial link cable with one end that will only physically accept devices in a TI-83 style chassis.

You can even just use the cradle as a link cable, no problems.

Setup is pretty easy, just slide the graphing calculator into the cradle and plug the other end of the cable into the I/O port of the keyboard.

All communication is done asynchronously over an unusual variant of TI's normal D-Bus protocol*. This limits compatibility to just the contemporary (2002) graphing calcs with upgradeable OSes (i.e. flash storage): the TI-83 Plus, -83 Plus Silver Edition, -89, -92 Plus and Voyage 200. (The TI-92 Plus and Voyage 200 require using a normal calc to calc link cable, as they won't fit in the cradle. Also, apparently in 2005 a revised cradle was released that let you use calculators in a TI-84 Plus-style chassis -- these seem much rarer. One's sitting on eBay right now for ~$50. I'm not pouncing on that.) TI would've included a CD with up-to-date versions of TIOS and AMS when they sold the TI Keyboard, but I bought an out-of-box unit and only have the keyboard and cradle myself.

As another side note: I don't own a TI-73 and thus can't check this myself, but I don't see a technical reason why it wouldn't also work there. Apparently TI just didn't think it was a good fit? (I'm inclined to agree.)

Oh, and you'll also need to make sure the keyboard has fresh batteries -- three AAAs -- the link cable interface doesn't provide any power.

Once you're up and running, you can just start typing away! On the 68k-based TI-89 and -92 Plus, AMS will give you full keyboard support everywhere, including shortcuts like copy+paste. Built-in apps, optional apps, and third-party apps all work. (This is a consequence of the event-driven way 68k apps work, and the way they construct their UIs from builtins, but I digress.) IIRC even ASM programs can use it in some capacity, so long as they use getkey routine instead of trying to read the keyboard directly. Don't quote me on that though.

You'll probably just want to stick to the text editor, though. Try to do anything...calculator-ey and you'll rue the lack of dedicated keys for stuff like 'integral' or 'theta' or 'degree'. They're all still available under keyboard shortcuts (■+7, ■+H and ■+F, respectively) but those are annoying to remember and often inobvious. At least the diamond key makes more sense: it just works exactly like the normal diamond button does.

On the z80s, support is essentially the same but a little messier. It's mostly about the keyboard shortcuts, they behave differently across TIOS and NoteFolio (a note-taking and text editing app that was also included with that CD I mentioned before), and AFAICT it's pretty spotty in all other apps. StudyCard will let me use ◆+1 for F1, but ProbSim won't. Also, TIOS proper doesn't have support for lower-case letters, so shift and caps lock have no effect on letters outside of NoteFolio.

(NoteFolio was also available for the 68-based machines, but I haven't tried it out myself. I'm doubtful it was a significantly better experience than the built-in text editor, unless Microsoft Word compatibility [yes, really] was something you were desperate for.)

What you're probably really wondering is what it's like to type on. Not great! It's a membrane, and not a very good one. Keys are soft and mushy, travel distance is weird, and it's also kinda slow and kinda laggy. I'm a terrible typist, but if you weren't I imagine dropped inputs would be a problem. Additionally, the arrow keys, page up and down, and delete keys are all in a highly annoying places -- especially the arrow keys. It's not a good experience, but it does still beat the TI-92's stupid tiny chiclet keyboard. (I love the 92, but you aren't getting more than like 30 WPM on that thing.) If I had to type up a document on a calculator, I'd want to use this.

In the end though, I'm not sure exactly who this product was for. Were there people who actually wanted to type documents on their calculators? Were TI envisioning a future where classrooms of students would be taking notes on these tiny 4cm x 6.5cm LCDs? It might save paper over a physical notebook, sure, but it's soooo limited and cumbersome. What if you want to draw diagrams? What if you want to pretty print a math expression? What if you, heavens forbid, you want to draw a graph? Now you're out of luck. Especially since you would've had to spend $44.95 on this thing. That's almost eighty USD now.

I myself only bought it because I thought A) it was odd and b) it would help me turn a calculator into a goofy sort of desktop computer if I also bought a TI-Presenter or ViewScreen (one day...), which also wouldn't be a super helpful addition to my life but would probably earn some nerd cred.

Anyways, I leave you with a slightly humorous cut from the TI Keyboard Manual:

Use two hands to type ◆+H, TI? Why would I want to do that?

Not pictured: my shoulder contorted so hard that my elbow is in the middle of my chest.

*It took me ages to find documentation about what exactly was different about it. I apparently eventually tracked down a zip file full of TI-made pdfs about it, including the technical documentation I was looking for, but I have no memory of how I got it. All I know is that it's sitting in my downloads folder now. I might've ended up crawling through the Internet Archive? It was a real slog.

[piratesexmachine420]

Vim is a nice simple text editor. Emacs is an angel sent by God. One of those weird ones with too many eyes.