If you can buy one last thing and on your to-have list

• a housing block in Venice
• a house outside Ulanbaatar
• a trip to space just once

has been fucked by a black hole that's been chasing you all your life and just won't let you go which is at the moment expanding into a supermassive one so chances are pretty much zero

and you're about to have 0 income for the foreseeable future, maybe forever

What would you get ?

You just fixed up your Atari STe, which has been refurbished and should last another 20 years definitely. It's not a "modern" device after all, made to break in 2 years.

it HAS TO BE a refurbished c64, right ?

Low power consumption, refurbished to last another 20-40 years ... the other one is actually a museum piece which for some wonderful reason almost never got out of the box (thats my theory anyway) so it turns on without a hitch or glitch. There's a polishpsu to prevent death by brick of death but it's scary to turn on, right, usually only to test programs which in our case our game-related as we are not l33t demo-coders.

Just shakespearean monkeys who keep hitting buttons until something comes out.

So it works

The video out, sound out, cartridge port and both joystick ports and all keys on the keyboard tested, we'll leave it on until next cycle, then turn it on for the night cycle. If no smoke comes out or it pops from a bad solder it should be okay. We have some faith that it won't but you never know until you test it.

See, with electronics ...

New stuff is no problem, you KNOW its gonna break within two years usually, if you take extra warranty maybe 3 (bc they guarantee the maximum period they're sure it will operate and no more, what else do you think that means?)

Old stuff is different. The original breadbin is over 40 years old , the other one no idea but its refurbished so it should last anyway.
Why is that ? Well see, both your pcb ("motherboard"), chips and most components will last indefinitely barring corrosion (dank environment, whatever), pouring acid or sugary stuff over it or you know, smacking it with a hammer, if it's left turned off. Electronics has a problem with heat so if its kept COOL while on, it can last a REAL long time (talking about old and retro-machines, right, not the type of HP printer that has a chip embedded with an expiry date))

HOWEVER : the capacitors are a different matter ... in micro-electricity , capacitors are used to ensure a stable flow of the current (electricity if you like), they're like small temporary batteries that hold some charge for a very small time.

For instance if you turn off something and you see the leds stay on for a second or so, that's the capacitors that still have power in them, gradually fading.

NOW : these things are like little batteries in all aspects ? no, but in most perhaps .

If you put a battery unused on a shelf it will die eventually, if you recharge it , it will die eventually, if you recharge it following "the right way", it will last a long time (relative) but in the end it will die anyway. Batteries can't last forever.

Something about perpetuum mobile i guess, they tried all kinds of stuff, even water flowing down thats carried up again to drive turbines.

So on this thing, everythings been cleaned from any corrosion or sticky stuff, the case has been cleaned and the capacitors has been replaced. It's an original machine in all aspects b/c the stuff that makes it tick is all original , its only the things that ensure stable flow at micro-level which after decades have decayed that have been replaced.

In a nutshell (its not like we are professor level Wozniak on electronics but we know a few things here and there about the universe)

and that

is THAT

for the eyeballs i can feel in salems lot,

but mostly for us, this thing can keep us warm during a financial winter. We can leave it on, and turn it on when we want at no fear of it popping, the other one gets shelved for testing only. The difference is the sid-chip (sound) in these, one has the original, the other one the revised version that has supposedly better filters but some quirks like for instance in a game like impossible mission the speech becomes barely audible.

Why this ?

well, that housing block in Venice is out of reach, so are the other two and we really didnt have any other ambitions in life than those three.

This is possible and this is probably the last buy for years unless stuff changes but

for those alive long enough

since the 1970s until now

WHO can remember a five-years stretch in which things got better

???

...

???

u-huh

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I think this will be the meatloaf news and 8bit internet station as well as a tracker and native paint program , for the games the mister FPGA is just too convenient having it all in one place and

Now by 2030 we'll be churning out demos like Trident xept that we only do games but also have just a few hours a day of which a lot goes to keeping the place clean .

At the end of the day, the floor is clean, the kitchen is clean, the toilet is clean, we have eaten, food for tomorrow is ready, the laundry is done, every few weeks the lawn gets mown, the dishes are done and we have showered.

Not your standard shut-in Otaku, BECAUSE WE ARENT but

actually the only way to get disability despite this is to enter into an institution, which means 1000s of euros a month and ending up in debt and

well we can HANDLE life here in our current state, but thats about it

we go outside with the cat after dark once

and the rest we do some programming because that keeps the head away from madness ...

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I had a whisper : "We saw someone walking in the street after he was" , probably gets your credibility , which must already be at minus deepspace, a bit lower ...

MAN I HATE THIS FUCKING PLACE SINCE I WAS 15

to be born without talent, and have no skills in a place called salems lot

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fyi for yow-ass

thaswassin da box ...

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edit : 12:02 ... i assume its fine but i'll leave it running until first cycle (our daily rythm is strict and im very much convinced thats the only thing keeping this non-existing condition from deteriorating faster) just to be sure nothing starts dripping off from the heat (normally i put casefans under it, as i do with the STe as well, b/c it doesnt hurt and an oil bath is just too messy)

heres the thing : We have no affiliation we are not sponsored, dont get paid for this, didnt get a coupon or deduction but i have to say the experience of interacting with the store was more than acceptable and if this thing doesnt blow in the first 24 hours , other than the santa tax and eurosuit-mealtime ticket bonus VAT, the price was very reasonable (otherwise we could buy Falcons and X68000s as well , you see)

i'll give the guy a hoot :

and another

they had an A1200 on sale, fully refurbished, looking like 1000 bucks and actually

i think the price WAS 1200 GBP so ... (which is pretty cheap compared to some on ebay really)

ALAS ...

the money and

we dont have an emotional connection to Amiga , even if its superior hardware to an ST, the ST was a bedroom friend before titties 'n beer , no Amiga will ever beat that and

well we dont have 1200 GBP spare change for retro-bits really

and wont in any foreseeable future unless an uncle from Timbuktu sends us congolese gold and uraniam assets or we win the lottery

which will be hard to play and we already play that only once a month ... look at it : the chances you get by paying more or playing more compared to the increase in chance of winning is as good as negligible

....

Sorry to disturb the neighbours, the tracking said : 10:45-14:45 i was up on time but apparently they delivered one hour early

(who ever heard of taht ???)

so thanks for holding it ...

ANND

eat, and take a 30 minute lie-down so we can at least make it to first cycle without sleeping

CUT !

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yeaa ...

CUT! my life into pieces, YOU SURE DAM DID A GOOD JOB OF THAT, Mister Sir, Sir ...

must be nice to be able to do that yourself, messing with pcbs and micro-electronics is something we wanted to add since the kid ... Von Neumann logic we have since the kid ... Syntax is a waste of brainspace as long as you have manuals or access to them ... unless you're in a professional well-paid position to make it useful to spend part of your active brain on that ofcourse ... i mean its a brain, you can re-format it indefinitely , its not like an SSD or anything but

We'll never get the money for the ultimate retro we wanted : the Atari Falcon , and later (somehow we never heard about it til later, despite it being like the GOD-computer of the era ... ) the Sharp X68000 but those come at like €15000 or more, often for "not tested" machines, and i dont think you can even FIND an Atari Falcon anymore ANYWHERE xept maybe private forums if you know a guy who know a guy ... and

well, the Falcon "might be" programmable after a lot of digging but the Sharp has like nothing of a cross-platform IDE and all native stuff is in Japanese. To us here, its a total riddle WHY sharp never tried pushing that machine abroad, its clearly THE best hardware from that era, theres nothing to compete with it, not an A1200 even

anywees ...

Yay for the decay !

at least the whole world is falling apart after you made our life stuck and blocked the future, theres SYMMETRY !