L Break Into Program
@breakintoprogram.co.uk
Blog: http://www.breakintoprogram.co.uk
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/BreakIntoProgram
Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/breakintoprogram
Software developer & electronics dabbler. Restoring & programming vintage computers from Acorn Atom to ZX81.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/BreakIntoProgram
Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/breakintoprogram
Software developer & electronics dabbler. Restoring & programming vintage computers from Acorn Atom to ZX81.
Off to the AVRO Heritage Museum today with my mum and aunt. My nan used to work at AVRO during WWII. Should be interesting.
Avro Heritage Museum | Aviation | Woodford | Stockport
The Avro Heritage Museum is an aviation museum on the old Woodford airfield near Stockport and south of Manchester, Cheshire.
www.avroheritagemuseum.co.uk
November 28, 2025 at 10:02 AM
Off to the AVRO Heritage Museum today with my mum and aunt. My nan used to work at AVRO during WWII. Should be interesting.
Ended up watching KPop Demon Hunters with my mum tonight. My niece and nephew love it, so we figured we'd watch it to find out what the fuss was all about. Ended up really enjoying it.
November 27, 2025 at 9:10 PM
Ended up watching KPop Demon Hunters with my mum tonight. My niece and nephew love it, so we figured we'd watch it to find out what the fuss was all about. Ended up really enjoying it.
Mum’s up from Norfolk for the week. Went to Quarry Bank Mill and got chatting to staff operating the machines. Very interesting and quite noisy!
November 27, 2025 at 5:17 PM
Mum’s up from Norfolk for the week. Went to Quarry Bank Mill and got chatting to staff operating the machines. Very interesting and quite noisy!
A chap I’ve kept in touch with who visits our repair cafe has just given me a load more C64 stuff.
November 27, 2025 at 10:42 AM
A chap I’ve kept in touch with who visits our repair cafe has just given me a load more C64 stuff.
I can't wait to see what half-arsed system they'll build to audit pay-per-mile excise duty for EVs.
November 26, 2025 at 3:06 PM
I can't wait to see what half-arsed system they'll build to audit pay-per-mile excise duty for EVs.
Optimising the maths for the 3D engine. What I'd do now for LD D,(DE). Sigh.
November 26, 2025 at 11:39 AM
Optimising the maths for the 3D engine. What I'd do now for LD D,(DE). Sigh.
Literally just nodding off and figured out a neat way to save a load of time when rotating the model points. Note to self, only need to index LUT once.
November 24, 2025 at 12:19 AM
Literally just nodding off and figured out a neat way to save a load of time when rotating the model points. Note to self, only need to index LUT once.
Discovered what the original bug was. To do a signed divide, I first get the sign (XOR the high bytes). I can then use that to determine the sign of the result. I then get the absolute value of the dividend and divider, do an unsigned divide, pop flags, and negate if result should be negative...
November 23, 2025 at 7:51 PM
Discovered what the original bug was. To do a signed divide, I first get the sign (XOR the high bytes). I can then use that to determine the sign of the result. I then get the absolute value of the dividend and divider, do an unsigned divide, pop flags, and negate if result should be negative...
Feels like a coding kind of day today. Going to split my maths routines into two files, low and high level. Need to convert my stars and world ordering routines to assembler.
November 23, 2025 at 10:56 AM
Feels like a coding kind of day today. Going to split my maths routines into two files, low and high level. Need to convert my stars and world ordering routines to assembler.
Righto, you know the drill…
November 23, 2025 at 10:07 AM
Righto, you know the drill…
Manchester was incredibly busy. Enjoyed walking round the cathedral area. Not been in Sinclair's Oyster Bar for donkeys years. Had a quick walk round the Christmas markets and a sneaky mulled wine, then onto the art fair at Manchester Central. Really enjoyed that.
Manchester Art Fair | Contemporary Art Fair UK 2025
Join Manchester Art Fair 21–23 November 2025 At Manchester Central. Discover Contemporary Art From 170+ Exhibitors. Book Tickets Today.
www.manchesterartfair.co.uk
November 22, 2025 at 6:53 PM
Manchester was incredibly busy. Enjoyed walking round the cathedral area. Not been in Sinclair's Oyster Bar for donkeys years. Had a quick walk round the Christmas markets and a sneaky mulled wine, then onto the art fair at Manchester Central. Really enjoyed that.
Up with the birds this morning, walking down to the local sports club for a church breakfast. Full English and good banter. Going to grab a coffee and see where the rest of the day takes me.
November 22, 2025 at 10:00 AM
Up with the birds this morning, walking down to the local sports club for a church breakfast. Full English and good banter. Going to grab a coffee and see where the rest of the day takes me.
Reposted by L Break Into Program
Hey, I bet you didn't hear that Zork 1, 2, and 3 were open-sourced today!
…Oh, you have heard. Yeah. Way ahead of me. :)
Here's my comments, and some details that you might not have seen.
blog.zarfhome.com/2025/11/zork...
…Oh, you have heard. Yeah. Way ahead of me. :)
Here's my comments, and some details that you might not have seen.
blog.zarfhome.com/2025/11/zork...
Zork is now open source
Two years ago, I wrote: Microsoft-the-company does not care about Infocom. But a lot of people in Microsoft must care. Microsoft is heavily populated by greying GenX nerds just like me. Folks who grew...
blog.zarfhome.com
November 21, 2025 at 3:19 AM
Hey, I bet you didn't hear that Zork 1, 2, and 3 were open-sourced today!
…Oh, you have heard. Yeah. Way ahead of me. :)
Here's my comments, and some details that you might not have seen.
blog.zarfhome.com/2025/11/zork...
…Oh, you have heard. Yeah. Way ahead of me. :)
Here's my comments, and some details that you might not have seen.
blog.zarfhome.com/2025/11/zork...
Enjoyed doing some Z80 coding last night. Not had much chance to do any this month. Been so busy job hunting and preparing for RetroFest.
November 21, 2025 at 8:43 AM
Enjoyed doing some Z80 coding last night. Not had much chance to do any this month. Been so busy job hunting and preparing for RetroFest.
Started optimising some of the maths in the Next 3D engine this evening. First, writing a fast 16-bit divide routine using the multiply by reciprocal method and a small look up table.
November 20, 2025 at 11:15 PM
Started optimising some of the maths in the Next 3D engine this evening. First, writing a fast 16-bit divide routine using the multiply by reciprocal method and a small look up table.
Need to service the Einstein keyboard this afternoon. A couple of the keys are a bit spongey. Probably just gunked up. Then I can pack it up as I don’t need it for a while.
November 20, 2025 at 10:57 AM
Need to service the Einstein keyboard this afternoon. A couple of the keys are a bit spongey. Probably just gunked up. Then I can pack it up as I don’t need it for a while.
Wait, what?
Stargate Announcement | Prime Video
YouTube video by Prime Video
youtu.be
November 19, 2025 at 10:32 PM
Wait, what?
The Elonex laptop I've been posting about today has a 40MB hard drive. And it uses CHS addressing, not LBA. My biggest fear is that at some point it will suffer a failure. As the BIOS doesn't support LBA, I'm probably going to be stuffed. Are there any modern CHS IDE drive hardware solutions around?
Cylinder-head-sector - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
November 18, 2025 at 9:27 PM
The Elonex laptop I've been posting about today has a 40MB hard drive. And it uses CHS addressing, not LBA. My biggest fear is that at some point it will suffer a failure. As the BIOS doesn't support LBA, I'm probably going to be stuffed. Are there any modern CHS IDE drive hardware solutions around?
Took Mrs B a couple of hours to drive a couple of miles tonight because the A555 airport link road was closed due to flooding. Again. Of course locals would have told you that it'd be a daft idea to build a bypass round there. But what would we know.
November 18, 2025 at 9:18 PM
Took Mrs B a couple of hours to drive a couple of miles tonight because the A555 airport link road was closed due to flooding. Again. Of course locals would have told you that it'd be a daft idea to build a bypass round there. But what would we know.
An interesting rabbit hole to fall down this afternoon...
How quake.exe got its TCP/IP stack - Fabien Sanglard
fabiensanglard.net/quake_chunne...
fabiensanglard.net/quake_chunne...
November 18, 2025 at 7:04 PM
An interesting rabbit hole to fall down this afternoon...
Righto, I should be preparing for an interview tomorrow. I hope they ask questions about fitting 3.5" drives in 34 year old laptops, because if they do, I'll nail it.
November 18, 2025 at 5:05 PM
Righto, I should be preparing for an interview tomorrow. I hope they ask questions about fitting 3.5" drives in 34 year old laptops, because if they do, I'll nail it.
Huh. File Explorer in Windows 3.1 doesn’t seem to be Y2K compliant.
November 18, 2025 at 4:40 PM
Huh. File Explorer in Windows 3.1 doesn’t seem to be Y2K compliant.
Fitting the BIOS CMOS battery to the Elonex. It was designed for the BBC Master. This is a bit of a bodge, but it’ll do. Will secure wires with some Kapton tape and a couple of dabs of hot glue.
November 18, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Fitting the BIOS CMOS battery to the Elonex. It was designed for the BBC Master. This is a bit of a bodge, but it’ll do. Will secure wires with some Kapton tape and a couple of dabs of hot glue.
Woke up this morning to discover another good-un has shuffled off this mortal coil. An absolute legend in all respects. Very sad news.
Rebecca Heineman - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
November 18, 2025 at 11:15 AM
Woke up this morning to discover another good-un has shuffled off this mortal coil. An absolute legend in all respects. Very sad news.
Was up till the early hours this morning finishing that coding test. It was one of those that looked like a shoo-in but was quite nuanced when you got into it. My head wasn't in the right space on Monday after RetroFest, so went for a swim. It clicked late afternoon thankfully.
November 18, 2025 at 11:05 AM
Was up till the early hours this morning finishing that coding test. It was one of those that looked like a shoo-in but was quite nuanced when you got into it. My head wasn't in the right space on Monday after RetroFest, so went for a swim. It clicked late afternoon thankfully.