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A project log for Vintage Z80 palmtop compy hackery (TI-86)

It even has a keyboard!

eric-hertzEric Hertz 08/26/2021 at 17:560 Comments

I /finally/ figured out /exactly/ the reason I took on this project... it's a major component of another project I'd backburnered so far as to only have the vague recollection of its needs, and to nab it when I found it.

Along the way, easily two years, now, I thought of many potential solutions, saw many others on HaD, found a few /almost/ solutions at Goodwill, including a few "JuiceBox" toys, which probably would've worked, but not ideally...

If this was my prior "normal" life"style", it'd've been probably one of two options: either build something with an AVR and scavenged-parts, or just use a friggin' laptop. But both these options are pretty difficult in this life"style."

A couple years back I was living on my uncle's farm... he had a blutooth doodad which would make a phone again /almost/ perfect... but the app was far too limited, and the affordable ones apparently haven't been hacked-enough for better to exist, nor protocol documentation... and, again, in this environment coding [learning to!] Android apps isn't really feasible...

No, what I needed was a low power, small, computer with a couple 5V GPIOs that I could develop the software /on/.

And here I finally have one... three, in fact, and mighta wound-up with a fourth if I didn't calm myself down upon seeing it for $7... And I've been far more than "dinking around" on this thing for /months/ without its even once, until waking this morning, occurring to me /why/.

HAH.

Nevermind the many-times-daily reminders. Nevermind even having written about a probably-more-important project I'd been neglecting. I had two, two was thrown at me... but I guess I forgot to put them together.

Heh.

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