30 years after the only time i saw one, today i'm re-united with a treasure of my childhood: a Datatrain 272A amber monochrome monitor

datatrain was a canadian monitor company back in the 80s and early 90s, that, afaik never made it outside of the country. i've only ever seen datatrain monitors used in two places: banks and grocery store checkouts. they were invariably monochrome (MGA) and almost always amber or green phosphors - although they did sell white variants.

these are, in fact, rebadged and redesigned Amdek monitors. the rear of the monitor reads "Datatrain: A Division of Roland DG Canada".... (!) I had not realized roland (the synth company) had bought Amdek/Datatrain back in the day. wild.

one thing i've never seen mentioned is that the phosphors used in "amber" monitors varies *widely* between manufacturers. this is a very warm blood-orange monitor, compared to the canary yellow used in my 6-inch Hyperion monitor.

if you've never seen a monochrome monitor in-person, here are a few phenomenological details i'm surprised by:

- the picture is warm, crisp, and *bright*. the camera is cutting out so much out of the contrast by design, so you're seeing what amounts to a washed-out image.

- i was expecting the usual CRT whine/hum and/or degaussing gong at startup. it is dead silent

- there's no static on the front of the glass! i'm used to brushing my fingertips along and feeling snappy static electricity, and this is completely static-free

- it's easy on the eyes, in a way that CRTs rarely are. i'm not sure if it's the specific phosphor used, or relatively low radiation, but it's so comfy to start at

- til the Tandy 1000 TL/2 can auto-boot in monochrome mode by hitting Ctrl-Alt-Shift-V at POST! there's a helpful sticker on the back of the machine with instructions.

also: til my Tandy 1000 TL/2's little RLL drive seems to have died :\ it's not booting at all, so i'm reduced to using the built-in-ROM DeskMate shell which is kinda cute

#retrocomputing #canada #computerHistory #tandy #vintageComputers

For my fellow maker/hacker/nerd/geek/ham radio folks, May's EFM reminder is out - LMK if you will also be attending

Electronics Flea Market (EFM) - Saturday May 9, 2026 at West
Valley College

The Electronics Flea Market (electronicsfleamarket.com/) <electronicsfleamarket.com/> is in lot 2 on the 2nd Saturday of each month at:

West Valley College
14000 Fruitvale Ave
Saratoga, California 95070

Post an announcement to your mailing lists to remind your members to participate.

The Electronics Flea Market (electronicsfleamarket.com/) is held in parking lot 2 of the West Valley College in Saratoga from 6:00AM until noon. Please don't arrive in the area before 5:30 AM as we need to maintain quiet until 8:00 AM. Avoid lot 3 parking, as it is for the farmers market operating there on the same day.

EFM Buyer parking in lot 2 is *free* for this event. If you park in a different lot be sure to have a college parking permit <electronicsfleamarket.com/faq#…> ($3) on your dashboard.

Sunrise is 6:40am PDT. Low 52F and high 73F. Cool early, then nice
partly cloudy.

We hope to see you all there. Please pass along this email to your your friends, or bring them along, so they can be a part of this over 50 year old activity.

#siliconValley #SillyValley #sanfrancisco #sanfran #sanfranciscocomputers #sanfrancomputers #sanfran-ciscovintagecomputers #sanfranvintagecomputers #sanfranciscovintagehardware #sanfranvintagehard-ware
#vintagecomputing #vintagecomputint #vintagecomputer #vintagecomputers #vintagecomputalk
#vintagehardware #computerHistory #retro #VCF #vintageComputerFestival
#retrocomputing #retroComputers #WallOfRetro #retroTech #retroTechnology
#nerdsOfVintage #happyNerding
#computer #tech #computerHardware #laptop #laptops
#IBM #thinkpad #thinkpads #VintageThinkPad #X86 #WindowsVista #IBMhardware
#lenovoHardware #Thinkpadnium #ThinkPadRepair
#upcycle #restore #TechnologyRepair #WasteNotWantNot

@screwlisp

You can pick up the document 'Signalling and Handling Conditions' from this index page:

nhplace.com/kent/ZL/

It was longer than I thought it would be, but I think you'll find it interesting to see what the Zetalisp condition system (which inspired the Common Lisp condition system) looked like.

In spirit, it was much the same. The biggest differences are:

* The CL system has 'active' restarts, where the ZL system had a passive thing where you returned a value to the case context and hoped that it would do the thing you wanted. It felt quite a bit more error-prone (if you'll pardon the reuse of 'error' here, maybe I should say 'mistake-prone').

* The ZL condition system offers a lot of really low-level stuff that did not seem proper for CL.

* The set of operations offered in ZL was richer, but also a lot more complicated, I thought, and I worried people would not really see what it was trying to do.

* Obviously, the ZL system was based on Flavors, not CLOS, and made reference to a lot of LispM-specific packages.

* The document was published in January, 1983 and identifies itself as part of Symbolics Release 4.0.

There are other differences as well.

#Zetalisp #LispMachine #LispMachines #Symbolics #LispM
#ConditionHandling #ConditionSystem #ErrorSystem #ErrorHandling #CommonLisp #CL #Flavors #CLOS #History #ComputerHistory
#InternetArchive #Bitsavers

Hivemapper Dashcam HDC S
Model: HDC-S-0HE1-001
S/N: HDCS 807

Well, this is an “interesting” device, I grabbed it from ewaste thinking this could be a good webcam or security camera. And it is, in a way – a dashcam that they supposedly paid you in cryptocurrency to drive around while this documented the scenery and road. In short, some custom hardware for mapping roads as you drive, so you can earn their custom cryptocurrency which has devalued. These HDC-S models are recently EOL, and are not recognized in windows or OS X (I have not tried Linux or BSD). They are listed for stupid money on eBay, but I was unable to get them to work for anything.

Analysis/documentation:
github.com/obrientg/Hardware/b…

#hivemapper #crypto #cryptobro #AI #AIisBS #fraud #EnvironmentalAbuse #ponzi #ponziScheme #cryptocurrency #cryptocurrencyponzi
#dashcam #trash #ewaste #ewastefind
#siliconValley #SillyValley #sanfrancisco #sanfran #sanfranciscocomputers #sanfrancomputers #sanfranciscovintagecomputers #sanfranvintagecomputers #sanfranciscovintagehardware #sanfranvin-tagehardware
#vintagecomputing #vintagecomputint #vintagecomputer #vintagecomputers #vintagecomputalk
#vintagehardware #computerHistory #retro #VCF #vintageComputerFestival
#retrocomputing #retroComputers #WallOfRetro #retroTech #retroTechnology
#nerdsOfVintage #happyNerding
#computer #tech
#upcycle #restore #TechnologyRepair #WasteNotWantNot