Initial Thoughts: Arduino Opta

Leave a reply

Arduino have announced a new micro PLC, the Opta, and while some details are unclear, it seems like a pretty neat product. Here are my initial thoughts:

Pros	Cons	Unknowns
Partnership with Finder	Digital I/O uses 0-10VDC, not “standard” 24VDC	How will programming support for IEC 61131-3 PLC languages work? Via existing IDE?
DIN rail mount	Analogue inputs use 0-10VDC, not “standard” 4-20mA	Can programming be done over Ethernet?
IEC 61131-3 PLC language support		I/O expansion options?
Beefy relay outputs with dedicated commons
Modbus-TCP and Modbus-RTU support
Input power supply is 12-24VDC
IP20
-20 °C to +50 °C temperature operating range

I’m hoping to buy one.

Apple 27” Thunderbolt Display

Leave a reply

My Apple 27” Thunderbolt Display was flickering on and off intermittently (running on my M1 MacBook Air via a Apple USB C/Thunderbolt Adapter). Turns out it was the integrated Thunderbolt cable – I’ve connected it using a seperate cable and it now works perfectly (the display has a separate Thunderbolt port you can use).

Eventually I may try to replace the cable properly but it’s a fairly involved job… (thanks Apple!).

Dusting off my Apple IIc

Leave a reply

I have a pair of Apple IIc units (with matching power bricks), an Apple IIc monitor (complete with stand), an external Apple IIc floppy drive and an Apple IIc mouse (in original box no less).

In some brief testing, everything apart from one of the Apple IIc units worked perfectly (including both power bricks). This includes all of the 5 1/4 inch floppy disks I tried!

As you can see from the following photographs, the monitor is still crisp and bright. Not bad for around 38 years old!

With any luck, repairing the other Apple IIc unit shouldn’t be too hard. Everything is intact and present and there are no signs of damage.

Turns out my working Apple IIc is an ”original” ROM version.

Review: Birders (film) on Netflix

Leave a reply

I stumbled across this film via a Facebook post and watched it during lunch and on the bus home from work (it’s only 37 minutes long). It provides interesting insight into the birding on either side of the US/Mexico border, an area I knew very little about. A bonus is the wonderful cinematography (in particular the incredible raptor scenes). It’s a niche topic but I highly recommend the film.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birders_(film)

https://www.netflix.com/au/title/80244682

M1 MacBook Air

Leave a reply

So I’ve finally bought myself one of the new M1 Macs – my first new computer in nearly 10 years. I went with the 16GB unified memory model with 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU and 1TB SSD. Not very cheap but I’m hopeful I will get 5+ years of service out of it.

Apple Product Ranges and Processor Architectures (Updated)

Leave a reply

The iMac joins the Mac Mini as the only products to span three architectures

July 2021 Birding Update

Leave a reply

An overnight twitch with two friends to Credo Station yielded two new birds for me:

Scarlet-chested Parrot – 2 males and a female seen and photographed
Gilbert’s Whistler – 1 male and 1 female seen

Good views of Ground Cuckoo-shrike and Zebra Finches also which was nice. These two additions take my Australian life list to 358 and my Western Australian life list to 295. Photographs from the trip are on my Flickr site.

A trip down memory lane – the Commodore 64

1 Reply

The first computer we had when I was growing up was a Commodore 64. We had it in the late 80s/early 90s – when it was old but not yet retro cool. It was my introduction to computing and I have fond memories. We had a tape drive, joysticks and the paddle/wheel controllers. Some of our favourite games were Wizard of Wor, Lemans (top down car racing game with the paddles), The Last Ninja and Impossible Mission. A few years later it was relegated to storage as a Window 95 486 PC and a Macintosh IIci took it’s place (we didn’t miss the tape drive and it’s propensity to find errors 30+ minutes into loading a game).

Fast forward a few decades and, thanks to John, I am now the proud owner of a Commodore 64C. John also hooked me up with a modernised power supply, joystick, S-video cable and a 1MB (!) cartridge full of programs. I’m using an S-video to VGA adapter to drive an old 17 inch LCD. Graphics isn’t perfect – I’ll be trying another old LCD soon.

Loading up the 1MB cartridge and there is Wizard of Wor!

There is currently a battle going on to see who can get the highest score…

Apple Newton MessagePad (OMP) Repairs

Leave a reply

In an effort to scale back my collection, I have been going through my Apple Newtons. I have 4 OMPs (Original MessagePads) – two are dead completely and two are exhibiting the glitches expected from bad capacitors.