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colinlm

Re:Sierra digital cameras on the Apple II on Wednesday September 16, 2026 @08:49AM (#49726196)
Author here.

Monochrome only, and it downscales. Only 1/4th of the pixels' IDCTs are computed, for "speed". It is also hardcoded for 640x480 images, again, for "speed" :-)

It's based on picojpeg, heavily reworked to get rid of about all intermediate buffers, core decoder functions rewritten in assembly.

Hi, author here.

It's not about business (or being bought). It's about my hobby. This is the email they sent me:

--- Your BurgerDisk project is an ingenious way to modernize Apple II storage, showcasing your expertise.

This is Emily from PCBWay. I'd like to sponsor your projects with free PCB prototyping. A brief review would be appreciated in return.

Would you be interested? ---

This is my reply:

--- OK, why not, as long as my review is my own and honest :) What is the budget ? ---

I then published my post without them pre-screening it. It's a honest, factual review about how it goes to have PCBWay make an assembled PCB. They didn't even ask me to share it on any social media.

What I got out of it is a few hours of fun (because this is my hobby) routing a (rather simple) PCB, and a batch of twenty modules that I didn't have to use my pocket money for.

This is all. Don't overthink it.

I do sell my device. It's mostly as a service to the community members who don't have the equipment, time or skill to assemble it themselves, as it is a free software, open hardware project; it's not going to replace my salaried job in any foreseeable timeframe, and it's not the goal.

Hope that clears things up,

Colin

I should add one. Check this in the meantime ! https://youtu.be/A9NqiPYullU
When implementing my version, I have noticed that the original Shufflepuck (with no anthropomorphized opponents) also did use the EOR trick on the player's paddle. Shufflepuck Cafe, on the other hand, draws it "cleanly". I suppose it was purely for performance too.
Yes, Princess Bejin's telekinesis sound effect is different depending on which side she'll serve, which helps a lot. This is universal as far as I know.
Re:Optimizing a 6502 image decoder – part II: assembly on Saturday October 04, 2025 @03:16AM (#45471297)
It's moire, an effect of the browser scaling the dithered image
Re:Optimizing a 6502 image decoder, from 70 minutes to 1 minute on Monday September 29, 2025 @03:57PM (#45418049)
Oh yes the dithering takes 10 seconds all to itself. The Quicktake 100 format is much more simple (4-bits nibbles) and it still needs 22 seconds to decode 640x480.

(Decoding and dithering are done in two passes for memory reasons and space on floppy disk reasons but it brings auto-levelling)

It's about 450 cycles per pixel for decoding QT100 (1200 for QT150), and 230 cycles per pixel for dithering.

Re:Speed-coding for the 6502 – a simple example on Friday August 29, 2025 @10:16AM (#45064453)
Every entry will be used, it's to scale X/Y coordinates :) And indeed, those 0.2s are dwarfed by the rest of the algorithm (10 seconds)
Re:Yes, the Apple II MouseCard IRQ Is Synced to the VBL on Thursday May 08, 2025 @10:47AM (#43926564)
To be fair, starting with the Apple IIe, the $C019 softswitch is a good, light way of syncing to VBL. Doing it with the mouse IRQ has an advantage when one requires a mouse, though: it works the same way on the whole line of Apple II computers, starting with the II+.

Without the mouse IRQ, if one wants to support the whole line of Apple II computers, one has to vapor lock on the II+, remember that the IIgs's $C019 high bit means the inverse than the IIe, and the //c requires more trickery around it. (cf https://github.com/cc65/cc65/blob/master/libsrc/apple2/waitv...)

Re:Glider for Apple II on Thursday March 27, 2025 @03:32PM (#43497212)
This is the scalable and hard way :) I had no memory pressure issue with this game so I went with preshifted shapes instead (as described in page 4 of https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/ftp.apple.asimov.net/documenta...).
Re:Glider for Apple II on Thursday March 27, 2025 @03:17PM (#43497052)
I didn't create it, it's Motter Tektura 9pt (https://fontsgeek.com/fonts/Motter-Tektura-Normal) and I manually fixed a few characters that looked bad at 9px.

On the splash screen, it's just an image, made with Gimp and converted to HGR.

Re:Mastodon for Apple II on Monday October 02, 2023 @10:52AM (#37738908)
Most of us throw that in the form of an HTTPS-stripping proxy on a Pi :)
Re:Mastodon for Apple II on Monday October 02, 2023 @10:51AM (#37738892)
Yes, although the zeropage is quite cramped. There's only about 8 bytes free there if you don't want to overwrite anything. Accessing the zero-page only gains 1 cycle out of 4 needed to access non-zero-page memory locations, anyway, so that's only a 25% performance gain in very limited applications.
Re:Mastodon for Apple II on Monday October 02, 2023 @10:03AM (#37738294)
According to people at CryptoAncienne (https://github.com/classilla/cryanc), a 25MHz 68030 needs about 22 seconds of maths to handshake a modern TLS server. During that time, most servers close connection.

So on an 1MHz 6502, I think it'd be minutes just for handshaking.

Re:Mastodon for Apple II on Monday October 02, 2023 @05:49AM (#37736025)
Hi! Author here. That was a requirement until this week-end, but I've done some work to support II+ without 80-column cards this week-end. The menu is toggled instead of being on the left.
Hey folks! As the author of this, I'm touched by your kind words in the comments! I feel like I should quote some of you on the clients' page, because some of these comments really reflect on the reasons I wrote this.
There are two on this page https://www.colino.net/wordpress/archives/2023/02/07/accessi... (Climate stats and graph)