Clay Cowgill

[Clay Cowgill @Arcade]

@jeffqchen Yeah, AMD parts back then were generally printed and not laser marked. Definitely suspicious. (I swear, anything from China that’s laser marked at this point is probably remarked at minimum if not outright fake…)

[Clay Cowgill @Arcade]

@nexta_tv The year is 2026. A robot in a clown wig kicks a Chinese child to the tune of a 1978 German reggae/disco band made up of Jamaican and Aruban musicians singing about a Russian mystic in 1916… annnnnd that’s enough internet for today.

[Clay Cowgill @Arcade]

@theliamnissan

[Clay Cowgill @Arcade]

@davepl1968 I’ve never used ours— Roombas do a good job! I *am* tempted to pull wires or something through the tubing just to put it to use though. 😅

[Clay Cowgill @Arcade]

Depending on what you’re wanting it *for*— Travis already suggested NES games— but if you wanted something lower density/older silicon process Atari 2600 carts would be good as well. Later ones used COB, but older 2Kbyte carts were DIP (Dodge-Em, Football, Night Driver, etc. probably ~$2 plus shipping on eBay if you search a bit.)

[Clay Cowgill @Arcade]

@peterjhasson Happy to hear everything is going well for The Sims!

[Clay Cowgill @Arcade]

This might fall under ‘abstractions’, but I noticed as the years went by that fewer software people had a deep understanding of what the system hardware architecture was that was running their code. (I once interviewed a senior firmware engineer from a BIG US corp that couldn’t tell me what the CPU was that their code was running on in an embedded system— “it’s C”.) How fast is code executing from flash vs. RAM? Do different regions of RAM have different performance? Do you have cache? How much/what type? What are the cache thresholds that cause a performance hit? What instructions are particularly slow, which features are fast, etc.

[Clay Cowgill @Arcade]

@Dream_Library_ Thanks for sharing that— I’d never heard about it here in the USA before. Here’s an Imsai I’ve recently acquired to restore! (Sorry about the glare, it’s bright outside today.) 😆

[Clay Cowgill @Arcade]

@hiromuxsou @Kasekisai_T How much added sugar is there per serving in Japanese mixes? In the US, pancake mixes usually have anywhere from 3-9 grams added sugar per serving. (More general-purpose baking mixes like "Bisquick" only have 2 grams, while something like a box cake mix might have 18-20g.)

[Clay Cowgill @Arcade]

@agohige44 Wow! Excellent work!

[Clay Cowgill @Arcade]

@sanoh00 Really impressive! Well done! Z-80 @4MHz?

[Clay Cowgill @Arcade]

@JayinKyiv Dance Team 6

[Clay Cowgill @Arcade]

@Drone_Wars_ Formlabs Fuse1 has entered the chat.

[Clay Cowgill @Arcade]

@ore57436902 Reverse engineering is a skill— the more you do the faster you become. Good job!

[Clay Cowgill @Arcade]

@NavyStrang SpaceX brought in ~$15B in revenue in 2025 and carried out 170 launches that year alone. NASA spent ~$12B on SLS development costs over 15 years and has made two Artemis launches. “Slow and steady” might not be winning the space race.

[Clay Cowgill @Arcade]

Adding my votes for TV series: Falling Skies (an earth invasion series, not so much space opera at first), LEXX, Space:Above and Beyond, Space:1999.

Pitch Black/The Chronicles of Riddick/Riddick are films I haven’t seen mentioned yet… (the latter ones have more space opera elements)

Oh, and I’m not sure how the humor would translate, but “Avenue 5” is quite well done as a space opera/comedy series.

[Clay Cowgill @Arcade]

@ukey00000 @FiredUpCoug I learned something new today— I’ve never heard of taco rice! I’m definitely going to make this. Thank you!

[Clay Cowgill @Arcade]

@mitsuru_y If there’s one thing Americans love, it’s bravery in the face of adversity. With the Fukushima incident, Japan showed the rest of the world the right way to handle a disaster. You all should be proud!

[Clay Cowgill @Arcade]

@nyantamach222 “Frank”… is tired.

[Clay Cowgill @Arcade]

@KadenaSKK So true— I’ve taken Germans out shooting, Japanese would be the next logical step!