The Next Challenge

Nov 15, 2020

I found this chess computer from 1988 at my parents home some days ago. Since the Corona virus I need some stuff to do and knew about this device was at some place. It is a FIDELITY DESIGNER 2000 DISPLAY which is a really cool device. It was not used for about 25 years but it still works. Now I can start playing chess. I my youth I played a lot with my brother so I know how to do but I believe I have to learn a lot.

The challenge is to beat this device... :) Now winter is coming and I will have a lot of time to go on. I will report my results here - next year!

As an IT engineer I am always impressed about what great devices was developed so long time ago.

Some specs:

• CPU: 6502
• Type: 8 Bit
• Speed: 3 MHz
• RAM: 8 KB
• ROM: 32 KB

My Retro Gamepad Collection

Sep 1, 2020

All my gamepads in buying order from left to right. I really like the wired NES controller at the left but wireless is more comfortable. The 4 button 8BitDo NES controller next to the left one ist very nice but Bluetooth has more latency then 2.4GHz controllers. I use this one with my Android devices when traveling. The two SNES 2.4GHz controllers in the middle are in my livingroom connected to a RaspberryPi running Emulationstation for playing on my TV. The two 2.4GHz controllers at the right are in my office connected to my PC. My favorite is the SNES controller with the purple buttons. Best quality are the 8BitDo controllers but they are more expensive. All of these controllers are very nice to play with. I prefer 2.4GHz controllers because they are easy to configure with RetroPie and Emulationstation. Bluetooth on a RaspberryPi sucks in many ways. More latency, more power consumption and also harder to configure.

NES Gamepad USB Wired - NoName. This is 100% the same as the original NES Gamepad from the early 90s. Price: EUR 5.00

NES Gamepad Bluetooth - 8BitDo. The 8BitDo NES Gamepad using Bluetooth with some extra buttons. 4 buttons on the front and two shoulder buttons at the top. Price: EUR 40.00

SNES Gamepad 2.4GHz USB Wireless - NoName. The SNES gamepad exactly like the original except that it is connected wireless using a 2.4GHz USB dongle. Very nice to play with on a RaspberryPi because of the easy configuration. Price: EUR 20.00

SNES Gamepad 2.4GHz USB Wireless - NoName. A very nice 2.4 GHz USB dongle based gamepad exactly like the original SNES gamepad. This is my favorite for playing retro games. Price: EUR 20.00

SEGA Gamepad 2.4GHz USB Wireless - 8BitDo. Very hight quality 2.4GHz USB dongle based SEGA gamepad from 8BitDo. Would be my favorite but for Nintendo games I prefer a pad with less buttons. But this pad is really awesome. So for playing "Sonic the Hedgehog" this is my first choice. Price: EUR 26.00

New Git Mirror Howto added

Nov 19, 2019

I finished my Howto on mirroring a self-hosted Git repository to GitHub using a post-receive hook. This makes it easy to use Travis CI or Docker Hub to rebuild code or containers on a Git push even when not using GitHub as primary Git hosting service.

Hope this is useful to you... ;)

My first C++ Experience

Mar 4, 2018

This weekend I started to evaluate C++. I tried C++ about 18 years ago and I was confused a lot at that time, not only because of C++ but also because Object-oriented programming was new to me at that time. I never had a need for C++ in the past and now I wanted to try some Qt stuff which needs some knowledge of C++.

I believe I will not develop software in C++ in the near future but I must say it has really a lot of nice features. Why I am writing this Blog post not because I am in love with C++ now but because I want to make you aware of a very nice C++ tutorial found at cplusplus.com. The tutorial is written very clear and has examples for everything. It took me just some few hours to understand how C++ works.

As IDE I used Qt Creator since I tried Qt stuff. I don't like the interface but for going on fast without configuration it was very useful to me. If I would start some C++ project I would prefer Anjuta, Code::Blocks or KDevelop.

Many thanks to the authors of that nice tutorial! Well done... ;)

Linspector-NG

Jan 18, 2018

I decided some time ago to work on Linspector again. Linspector is a very simple solution for monitoring systems and devices. Since the current codebase does not support Multi-Processer architectures the software needs a complete rewrite. But, I will use the current codebase for prototyping my ideas and will at some time start developing the next generation of Linspector from what I learned during the development process in the past years.

Because I thought my project "scheduled" could take over the job execution part I stopped development of Linspector some time ago. Even if both projects do many similiar tasks they are very different and sharing code between both projects seems not to be a good idea. I will work on both projects from now on and I believe both projects will be useful to me in the future.