News

I've been doing some work on a PCB drill so I don't have to give myself a lot of grief trying to drill accurate holes in the boards.

Well, it's been a year since my last update - I've moved house (again), and been doing work on it - although I'm not really in any position to document it. I have decided that I do want to get back into making PCBs, and I've been trying a few techniques out, which I'll be writing about shortly. In the meantime, I've been writing a front end to Gerber2PDF which allows me to use Altium in my workflow (which didn't work terribly well).

After a heck of a lot of messing around trying to get it working, Sonor is now working (mostly) as a 32-bit RISC OS application, and can load/play samples on a Raspberry Pi (running RISC OS, of course!)

I've been updating my autobuild system to use Jenkins, and I've been able to get RISC_OSLib and my own RISC_OSLib+ libraries to compile under GCCSDK. RISC_OSLib may not be 100% complete; I'm only converting the assembly files to C as and when I need them.

However, I have now completed my first 32-bit conversion of one of my RISC_OSLib programs - !Thieves. Seems to work fine on the Raspberry Pi...

If you need a GCCSDK version of RISC_OSLib, then you can get it from my autobuild site. If there's something missing, then I'll update it (and everything else that derives from it should automatically be rebuilt as well.

I found some pictures of some electronics that I used to light some Lego. This was actually done around June 2013 - although my garage build was a higher priority at the time!

My wife and I moved house last month, and it's been a bit hectic. It was only last Saturday (9th) that I finally got all the stuff that had been put in storage at my mother's house back since January last year. Since then, I'd only been using two monitors, which didn't really let me feel productive enough. Now I'm back to three, and I've been continuing to get something working that I'd started after recovering the data from my RiscPC's hard drives.

In case you missed it, you can get Equinox (documentation available here). And I've also been able to get the FahZhi play module compiled in GCCSDK. This is actually used by Equinox, and also the FahZhi sequencer I started a long time ago. 2005 - wow!

I've now been able to get a lot of stuff off my RiscPC's hard drives, and making notes as to what I've found.

I've been making some changes to ROVLib insofar as being able to download via SVN, and now everything should build via GCCSDK (which will be the only thing that will be maintained)

Is this the future or the past?...

Okay, so I've not really posted much of what's been happening the past year - mainly because my job got modified into a hardware role, which is what I liked to do at home anyway, but then doing the same thing all day can get tedious... Unfortunately, one of our cats, Priya, got hit by a car and she lost her tail - and in January, she got hit by a car but lost her life this time.... Also, I'm in the process of moving house, which is stressful on top of a further change at work to a hardware management role (which means that I may want to do real hardware stuff at home again) - which I can't do until we've actually moved... The wedding aniversary was fun though!

I got married on 1st April 2016, and I've now got some pictures of the day from the photographer.

Okay, it's been a while since I've updated the site. But I have decided that I won't be doing any more work on Eagle parts search as I've been forced to use Altium at work, and while it has it's foibles, it probably is better than Eagle.

I've finally added some pictures of our new kittens, and after they came home.

I've started a 3D printed martian.

I've had a 3D printer for a while now, but I've only just decided to make a section on some of the stuff I've done with it.

I've finished my stint with MacOS. Because Apple haven't made a definitive statement about support for Snow Leopard, and given the recent (really crap) security problem which hasn't been addressed in Snow Leopard, I've decided to make a home-brew PC - based on Hackintosh rules (in case I do want to install MacOS on it). I'm now pretty much fully migrated (except for any music software). The new machine is an i7-4770K overclocked to 4.3GHz computer, which should suffice for quite a while (especially given my Mac Pro 1,1 has lasted me 6+ years). It definitely makes the Mac Pro look sluggisgh!

I've been rebuilding my garage, and instead of doing the usual write-up-with-pictures of this, I've been using my digital camera, and an automatic shutter control gizmo to create time-lapse photographs.

I've now done the work with the images - I'll wait to see how much of a bandwidth reduction this has. I did find some old pictures of Fry and Leela after I'd brought them home though, as well as a partially written guide on how I make two-layer PCBs which I finished off.

I also added some pictures of my Life On Mars canvas I got made - it's in the Lightwave section.

I'll be doing some work with the image linking today, so some of the image links may not work while I'm playing. The aim is to reduce the bandwidth consumed by robots visiting some of the large images I have on my site.

A couple of minor things: I've corrected the links below for the power control systems below, and also the Marcos Mantula rebuild site is now back online after I'd upgraded the PHP version which Serendipity didn't like.

I've had to make a 3rd version of the power control system, because the relays started to stick.

I've made a 2nd version of a power control system which uses USB to enable power automatically whenever either of my computers turn on.

Well, I've sold the CNC machine I was making, so today I went to the new owner's workshop to put it back together again - and give it a test.

I've had enough. ArcCommand is back.

Another desk is my latest thing - which is coupled with my spare bedroom.

I've not updated this site for over a year now - I've been working on a hardware project which is a bit secret at this moment in time, but I have just received my Raspberry Pi, which I'll be doing other hardware things with. I'll keep notes...

I started to redesign my website, but I couldn't come up with a design I liked - so I've put the old one back for the moment.

I've decided that my digital FPGA-based synthesizer work should have its own web site, along with a blog to go with it. The main site is meant to be more factual, and the blog more discussive.

I've made an online Eagle PCB parts search facility.

I'd made a mistake while doing the comments system - I store an MD5 hash of the URL that was visited in the database, and not the URL itself. Unfortunately, I didn't have a way to find out the URL from the MD5 hash, so if a comment had been made, I had to guess based on the context of the comment where the page is.

Due to a holiday away, I've only just spotted that someone has posted a comment, but I don't know where. As a result, I've added in the URL to the comments system so I can work out where the comment was made - and also it'll email me to say that a comment has been added. I've now found the comment (again, by guesswork), so have replied.

The follow-on project from the XilVGA has started - a new dashboard for my Aeon.

No, this isn't an April Fool's joke. You can now comment on all PHP pages on www.tribbeck.com - there's a link at the bottom. It's a bit experimental though!

I'm making a board to produce a VGA display using an FPGA.

I need some software for a Xilinx-based Logic Analyser I've made.

I've made a Xilinx mezzanine development board.

We had some more snow today.

I've made available some of the component libraries I've done for Eagle PCB.

I've been experimenting with creating laser effects in smoke using Lightwave.

This is a project that I've been working on.

I've started a second version of a 2.5D CNC milling machine.

While doing a bit of tidying up the PCBs section below, I've just noticed that the earliest entry was just over 10 years ago! And nnoyingly, the counter hasn't worked since January 2008!

I've made notes on how I make PCBs.

Well, it looks like this has survived the server move I've just done

If you don't want to use LCDproc (LCDd), then you can drive a Matrix Orbital LK202-USB-24 directly in PERL. Although, I'm sure LCDproc should do everything you need anyway...

We had some snow today, which made it a bit interesting getting into work.

I've now started rebuilding a friend of mine's Marcos Mantula.

As an intellectual exercise, I ported ArcCommand to MacOS.

I've moved my server, and also uploaded some new ROM images.

You can now download MP3 versions of the music I've written for both the Preliminary Designs and Passport To Tomorrow albums. I've also announced the start of my third album - 08:13:21.

I'd decided to put all my pictures in an archive, and extracted all the (nice) pictures of my cats I'd not shown before. Here they are.

Okay, so it may not look like I've been doing much - I have done a bit more to ACED, but my current thing is to get a lot more experience with Lightwave modelling - by recreating a certain album cover.

I've decided to upload some of my Lightwave images.

Since I'm finally going to drop the "chios.org.uk" domain name, I've made a copy of the Cloe notes.

I decided to get myself a GP2X to play with.

I decided earlier in the month what my next kit car will be. It'll be the Aeon GT³ - and I've set up a web site.

I've set up two HTTP acceleration servers for this domain - you should get better access to the server.

I went on a test drive of the Aeon car that I'm probably going to build next.

I found some pictures of the Acorn Stork.

Thanks to the WayBackMachine, I've recovered the computer case I made. I've also grabbed some new and old pictures of my cats.

Now FireFox is available for RISC OS, it's time I upated my site to use CSS. If you want the old site, it is available from here - although it is not being maintained.

I've been playing with MPEG video files. Here are the notes of my experiments.

Two A9 ROM images are now available for download from the RISC OS ROM Images site.

I came across a funny sign today, so decided to stick it here.

We use these GPRS modems at work, and they have a tendancy to beep. A lot. Here's how to silence them permanently

I've been looking at what to get for my next kit car.

The Adjust ROM image is now available for download from the RISC OS ROM Images site.

I've been working on a music playroutine for Equinox that has evolved into a sequencer project.

I've got two cats, and I thought it was about time I uploaded some pictures of them.

Actually, I need a new playroutine for Equinox music - which has ended up as being a sequencer project instead.

so I've moved a lot of my stuff to the loft. Since some of it is obscure, I thought I'd take some photos of it beforehand.

This is something that I've been working on - a game called Equinox that I started in 1992, and restarted it in 2002. Note that the DNS may not have propagated immediately...

My other kit car now has some more pictures available.

Although I've been too busy building my other car and trailer, the Steel Cobra images are now back up.

The RISC OS ROM Images section is now available again.

I've found a slightly later backup of my web site, so I'll be transferring data from it.

Thanks to Redbus and their lack of power management, I've had to revert to an old copy of the site. Pretty much everything else has now gone :(. I do intend to recreate as much as possible, and also redesign it as well.

I bought some kittens today.

My other kit car now has some pictures available.

This was added as news on 24 Apr 2002, but happened at that date. Information is available from Acorn Arcade. Please disregard any ArcCommand messages after this line.

Available here, it's the latest version of the game in RISC OS, Windows and Linux guises. The pages have also been updated.

I found this loafing on my hard drive that I'd written about 8 years ago...

My version of Peter Irvin's Starship Command is available from here.

You can now download Dune II (Acorn version) from this site.

VoiceCon 0.08 has been released, with features such as device drivers, URL opening, improved recognition, improved profile systems.
It has been a while since anything worthy enough to put on my site, but I do have a number of projects that I am working on which should be released during the year.

CalPOP3 is now available for download. It is a replacement for Voyager's POP3 fetcher, based on some code that I had kicking around.

I wrote these pages a while back, but haven't linked to it. There are some more images to go in there, when I have time. This is the main reason for me being so quiet in development...

WindowRd has been slightly updated, and is available for download. WindowRd is a program I wrote 4 years ago to capture RISC OS windows and so forth so that they can be used in menus. This version has been updated to allow 32bpp windows to be captured without errors when loading into !Paint.

DesPass is a simple program that allows you to create DES encrypted passwords suitable for uploading to web servers, such as Apache-based web servers (but should work with others). There are instructions for use with ArgoNet's servers.

LongFiles 3.00 beta has been finished, and is now available for download. The key feature is automatic support for RISC OS 4, in that discs formatted for RISC OS 4 will not use the LongFiles extensions.

You can now download example files for Sonor and Sonor Jnr from the Sonor download directory.

VTi (now Argo Interactive) have given me permission to allow full copies of some software that I wrote for them a few years ago. These are Sonor, Sonor Jnr, Talking Canvas Junior and Desktop Tracker. They are available from http://www.tribbeck.com/sonor/. Please note that there is no support available for these programs.