From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Jan 8 14:36:46 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from brea.mc.mpls.visi.com (brea.mc.mpls.visi.com [208.42.156.100]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AAD0637B402 for ; Tue, 8 Jan 2002 14:36:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from sheol.localdomain (hawkeyd-fw.dsl.visi.com [208.42.101.193]) by brea.mc.mpls.visi.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 59C5D2DDC05; Tue, 8 Jan 2002 16:36:40 -0600 (CST) Received: (from hawkeyd@localhost) by sheol.localdomain (8.11.1/8.11.1) id g08MYS535122; Tue, 8 Jan 2002 16:34:28 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from hawkeyd) Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 16:34:28 -0600 From: D J Hawkey Jr To: Matthew Dillon Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Oh my god, Google has a USENET archive going back to 1981! Message-ID: <20020108163427.A34988@sheol.localdomain> Reply-To: hawkeyd@visi.com References: <20.21dd4868.296bb1c2_aol.com@ns.sol.net> <3C3A810A.C616A903_mindspring.com@ns.sol.net> <200201081104.g08B4i309583@sheol.localdomain> <200201082138.g08LcFS61637@apollo.backplane.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <200201082138.g08LcFS61637@apollo.backplane.com>; from dillon@apollo.backplane.com on Tue, Jan 08, 2002 at 01:38:15PM -0800 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Jan 08, at 01:38 PM, Matthew Dillon wrote: > > Ah yes. By the time I was ready to throw my PET away the hardware > inside was so hacked up I don't think anybody but me could boot the > thing. > > [SNIP] > > -Matt I've never been much of a hardware hacker, but my buddy, some eight years older than I (with an EE degree), hacked up his PET pretty good. I don't know the particulars, but I remember a wrapped core of wires some inch-think that went all over his house. He had managed to get the little thing to control his garage-door opener, his microwave oven, his stereo system, and I don't remember all what else. You could access it remotely, too. The stereo thang was SO cool. He'd cataloged all his 8'' quad tape reels - which he'd set up with some sort of markers on the "unused" channels - so you could walk up to the PET, select a song from a menu, it'd tell you what reel to mount, and it'd find that song and play it! FF, RW, skip, repeat, all the bells and whistles. Select radio freqs on the tuner, too! I remember all sorts of solenoids and servos he added to the guts of his stereo equipment to pull this off. I was like, 16 or 17, as I recall, and that just blew me away. He goes back to wire-wrapping instructions on CDC test equipment, and now is focused on bleeding-edge HDD controllers. He's the "mad scientist guy" in my life. My "heyday" was back when MS-DOS was still fair game, and DESQview was the cool thing to run on a PC. I hacked their and the BIOS interrupts a lot, and was actually paid pretty well for it. Can't do that no more, though. OK, enough of this Wayback Machine(tm) stuff. See Ya, Dave -- ______________________ ______________________ \__________________ \ D. J. HAWKEY JR. / __________________/ \________________/\ hawkeyd@visi.com /\________________/ http://www.visi.com/~hawkeyd/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message