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Transformer Beta 3.6

September 4, 2017 at 15:15 in Amiga

You've might heard about this one, it's been offered for sale online. I was planning to do a comparison of the various Transformer versions, but I haven't found the time to look into it so here it is so you can ;-) From the ad:

"Disk is dated 12/24/1985 – approx. 4 monthsbefore the release and is without the Commodore/Amiga copyright notices (Showsonly Simile Research). This version requires EXACTLY an Amiga 1000 NTSC (or emulated)with 512k chip RAM, Kickstart 1.0, and Workbench 1.0"

    Amiga Transformer Beta v3.6 (1985)(Simile).adf

So far, I have been able to track down 6 different versions of the Transformer; Beta 3.6, v1.0, v1.1, v1.2a, v1.2b and v1.21. Some of them I have boxed, they're all identified by a version sticker on the label like so:

Transformer diskette

Here are the details of the Beta 3.6 version I acquired, the Kryflux dump was 100% as you can see:

transformer_kryoflux_beta_3_6

File selected             : Transformer beta.adf
File size                 : 901.120 bytes
CRC32                     : $05D15C5D
File loaded as an ADF     : Possible Data disk [DOS filled]

Bootblock specification:
 - No bootable
 - OFS (Original File System)
 - Identification with ABR engine : Unknown bootblock!
 - Identification with DWP engine : <Standard> DOS Progressive Filled Bootblock OFS

----------------- -------- -------- -- -- -- ---------------- -----------------
 Content list    |  Size  | CRC32  |BA|HR|SQ|      Date      | Information     |
----------------- -------- -------- -- -- -- ---------------- -----------------
.info            |      39|77955DEB|OK|OK|OK|2075.01.16 22:43|                 |
AT1              |  81.756|9E29D4F9|OK|OK|OK|2075.01.22 07:05|                 |
ATPREFS          |     200|85D5B4D2|OK|OK|OK|2075.01.16 22:53|                 |
SetATPrefs       |  12.076|94D606C0|OK|OK|OK|2075.01.16 21:28|                 |
SetATPrefs.info  |     530|291E653E|OK|OK|OK|2075.01.16 21:27|                 |
Transformer      |   2.888|2244FC7C|OK|OK|OK|2075.01.16 21:28|                 |
Transformer.info |     938|D9C00249|OK|OK|OK|2075.01.16 21:27|                 |
----------------- -------- -------- -- -- -- ---------------- -----------------

All 7 file(s) were saved!


transformer_beta_3_6


[BigBaldGeek]

Suzo The Arcade wiring

September 4, 2017 at 14:45 in Retro

As I couldn't find it easily on the web and I was fixing some joysticks I'd figure to leave this here for future reference. The cause most often causing issues is simply broken wires right after the plastic housing or just before the DB9 plug.

Color
Joystick
Blue
Down
Brown
Right
Orange
Fire
White
Up
Black
Ground
Green
Left

Picture of the internals of the joystick



Amiga Diagnostic Kit from Commodore -- update

August 21, 2015 at 16:22 in Amiga

Lately I've been spending my time researching the Amiga Diagnostic Kit and its behavior. There currently are 2 ways of using the kit; by using the boot disk (if you got a partly functional computer to diagnose) or by using the builtin roms. I've been working with the second method only so far.

In order to do this, you will need to hook up the kit to your Amiga, connect a null modem cable and start your terminal emulation (regular 8n1) and .. hey presto!



When the diagnostics find an error, it will exit into a small menu with a descriptive error message:

TEST #80
Test #80 - ROM CheckSum Checking
** NOTE: CheckSum found was: #3568
** ERROR ** Test: #80 ROM failure! Bad CheckSum!
** TRACE ** Test: #80
 D: 00003568 0002FFFF 0000FFFF 0DA0001D 000000FF FFBF7BFF FFFF7FFF F7FFFFFF
 A: 01000000 00F43FF0 00F40115 00BFD000 00F0C438 00FC00FE 00F43FF4 00F43FF4

HIMAX :
It seems the box is made for up to kickstart 1.3 as it will complain about wrong checksums with anything greater dan kick 1.3. This is pretty amazing as the box was released a good half year before kick 1.3 was released. This must mean 1.3 was ready internally a great deal sooner. Below are some checksums I've received by running the diagnostics:
 
Kick        Checksum Remark
1.2          #0000
1.3          #0000
2.0          #AEEB   (Original Commodore 37.175)
3.1          #6153    (original Hyperion)

There is a small help builtin:

HIMAX : ?
Select ONE of:
 C - Clear Trace and Trap flags
 E - Error Trap Mode Set
 N - Flip NOLIST Mode
 R - or (CR), Retry the Current Test
 T - Trace, Set the Program Trace Mode
 X - or Q, or A, or S, will abort HIMAX
Z - a NOP just for DaveN
? - or H, will print this menu
 " "- (space), Continue to Next Test

The interesting menu item is ofcourse Z, referring to DaveN. It wasn't until later that I realised who DaveN is, at first I just figured it to be a German Commodore engineer as the box was made in Braunschweig.

The tests complete, when it is done it will show 2 screens alternating while showing the error codes on the diagnostic box (don't mind the sparkles, these are from my RGB to VGA box):



Later, when I made a backup of the eproms, merged the ROMs and disassembled them* I found a nice easter egg (I removed the last 2 digits to be nice to the person who owns that number these days ;-) ). I guess we now know who DaveN is..:

TEXT 0000a355:
 DC.B ">Disk Ground call Needle-san (ha ha ha ha ha)! 408-522-73xx",0


In case you want a copy of the roms, you can find them here: HIMAX_ROMS.rar

[BigBaldGeek]

* = I used Ira from Aminet to disassemble the roms. You can find it here. It will compile just fine under Cygwin if you add the -ansi directive to the COPTS in the Makefile. You should make it look like this:

OS =
EXT =
CC = gcc
CCOUT = -o
COPTS = -c -O2 -ansi
LD = $(CC)
LDOUT = $(CCOUT)
LDFLAGS =
include make.rules

Now just run 'make' and you will get an ira.exe.

Amiga Diagnostic Kit from Commodore

June 13, 2015 at 0:26 in Amiga

"Da bin ich wiedah!"

Some time ago I bought a rare piece of Commodore kit; an A500/A2000 Diagnostic Kit made by Commodore.I haven't been able to find much details about it, other than that it is partnumber 380 568 and mine was made in Braunschweig. It is a true dead-test kit sold to official Commodore service companies. The cool part is, it can check both the female slot Zorro based machines (A2000) as the A500 male Zorro slot machine (A500) using the same module.

There are two big modules and cables for every expansion port, inclusing the floppy port! It comes with both an amiga floppy and a PC disk containing a terminal emulation program. Ha, they even added a C64 adapter..

Unfortunately, my original disk that came with it was broken. However, my set also included a backup copy of it and using my trusty Kryoflux and the ADF workshop I was able to restore a working copy. The 5.25"PC disk was curiously still very much intact!

Grab a copy of the Amiga disk, the PC disk and the manual here.


For those of you wondering about the German phrase mentioned above.. check the various startup-sequences. Also, I left the temporary files alone on the disk, check them out for some source code :-)

[BigBaldGeek]










Next Hackalong: November 7, 2014 / 12:30

September 16th, 2014 at 2:41PM in hackalong

Welcome back to our irregular schedule! Our next Hackalong will be hosted by our friends from DearBytes on November 7 at their Beverwijk offices.

As of yet, we already have 1 speaker: @Foobar_testing_, demonstating his cute little #pownersheep. Pownersheep are built from Teensy and a Bluetooth module; for details, the Github page has them all.
Also, there is some action footage on Youtube .



If you want one of those cute little sheep too, please let us know upfront. We’ll have to order and do manual 3D-printing, so we do need some time to prepare. Any profits (if any) will be donated to Room to Read.

See the DearBytes site for route information:

http://dearbytes.nl/

(Please don’t forget to pick the Beverwijk address, no Hackalong will be in Germany… for now.. :) )



KIM Kenner archief -- update

May 7, 2015 at 19:08 in KIM-1

KIM Kenner archief -- update

Dankzij Hans Otten is nummer #76 boven water! Verder heb ik nu de PDF versies online kunnen zetten. Laten we eerlijk zijn, dat leest toch wat prettiger op de tablet of e-reader!

Klik hier voor het archief.


[BigBaldGeek]



Kim Kenner archief

March 9, 2014 at 16:18 in KIM-1

In 1976 kwam MOS uit met de KIM-1, de Keyboard Input Monitor. Het was een single board computer gebaseerd op de MOS 6502 die veel succes had onder hobbyisten. Het duurde dan ook niet lang voordat ook in Nederland de KIM gebruikers club werd opgericht. Het clubblad van deze vereniging heette de KIM Kenner. Vanaf 1981 werd deze omgedoopt naarde 6502 Kenner om uiteindelijk te eindigen als de uP Kenner. Het clubblad heeft het bijna 19 jaargangen volgehouden.

Sinds een jaar of wat heb ik een aantal KIM-1's op de kop kunnen tikken. Helaas was er op internet weinig te vinden buiten de standaard instructie manuals dus het repareren of bedienen bleek een zware opgave zonder gebruikersgroep. Het aantal serieuze KIM enthousiastelingen is wereldwijd op handen (en een voet misschien) te tellen.. Tot mijn plezier heb ik alle jaargangen (op nummer 76 na) van het clubblad kunnen vinden.

Vooralsnog zijn de JPG's beschikbaar, middels OCR ben ik bezig (zover de tijd het toelaat) ze stuk voor stuk ook textueel aan te vullen. Nummer 76 mist en van nummer 55 staan momenteel alleen de oneven pagina's online.

NB: Mocht iemand vinden dat zijn oude textuele inbreng ("jeugdzonde?") hier ongewenst online staat hoor ik het graag en zal ik die artikelen direct offline halen. Ik vermoed echter dat men het meer kan waarderen dat dit stukje Nederlandse computerhistorie niet verloren is gegaan. (Bent U een auteur die het juist erg op prijs stelt, hoor ik het uiteraard ook graag!) De voormalig hoofdredacteuren die ik heb kunnen benaderen (Mijnheer Rinus Vleesch Dubois, mijnheer Hans Otten, mijnheer Tonny Schaeffer en mijnheer Stappers) zagen er (net als ik) geen kwaad in deze hier beschikbaar te stellen gezien de leeftijd van het materiaal.


[BigBaldGeek]


Slides online

February 24th, 2014 at 4:37PM in hackalong

Hi all and thank you for yet again a great hackalong! I’ve received the slides from our presenters. You can find the Minemu slides from @brainsmoke here (or here) and the slides in regards to ‘yanking apart mobile applications’ from @markos1979 here (or here).

image

As promised, brainsmoke has given us the credentials for the Minemu virtual machines so you can get your hands dirty!

[BigBaldGeek]

February 21: Hackalong event

February 3rd, 2014 at 3:29PM in hackalong

Hi all!

Here are the details of the first Hackalong of 2014!

In 3 weeks we’ll have another meet and we’re quite happy with the line-up:

We’ve found @markos1979 ready, able and willing to present us ’how to rip mobile applications apart’ as he endearingly puts it himself. This will be a handson talk so please come prepared: Mac and Linux folks can get their hands dirty. If you want to tinker with iOS please make sure to bring your Mac!

@brainsmoke will present us ’Minemu: Using dynamic taint analysis to protect buggy binaries’. Dynamic taint analysis is a very effective way of detecting and defending against memory corruption attacks, yet large performance penalties prevent its widespread use.

LOCATION:

For a change, this Hackalong will be held at Teleportboulevard 121 in Amsterdam, a building with a big XS4ALL logo on it. You will all be welcome as of 12:30h CET, we plan to kick off at 13:00. You are advised to come by public transport as parking is limited (and the building is across station Sloterdijk..).

You can find travel directions here.

Please note: It is an open event, kindly hosted by @spierenburg from KPN - please let us know beforehand if you want to join as we have a 30 people limit!

PS: As a cherry on the cake, we’re working hard to get some swag this time so you might want to bring your wallet.


[BigBaldGeek]


Something’s brewing.. again!

January 17th, 2014 at 2:27PM in hackalong


image

Hi everybody!

it’s been a while, 2014 has just started, we’ve just finished digesting most of the holiday food and combed the remains of the fireworks out of our hair and we are already working on the new hackalong series!

For some reason, last week a lot of ideas and initiatives came up. The first hackalong of 2014 is currently actively being planned and plans are in the making for the second and even third event.

Keep an eye on this page and our twitter feed to be informed.

In the meantime, enjoy our newly designed logo done by Philipp Pixel :-)

[BigBaldGeek]


Raytracer 1.0 (plus source)

January 8, 2014 at 9:43 in Amiga

Back in 1987 Eric Graham was the person responsible for one of the most iconic demo's of the modern computer age, the Juggler. You can describe this remarkable small yet impressive piece of software as one of the killer apps for the Amiga platform and it was 'just' a demo!

The impact at the time comparable to what Halo did for the Xbox and what Mario is to Nintendo.
This demo itself drove the sales of hardware and even Commodore itself had to be convinced it was no hoax. Eric made the Juggler demo himself by coding a raytracer named ssg, a pieco of software that would evolve into Sculpt3D.

Ernie Wright has a great page describing the importance of the Juggler demo, it's inner workings and has taken the effort to preserve it for future generations.

Unfortunately, it seemed the sources were lost, even to Mr. Graham himself, which was a bit odd as the disk was sent around to people interested. There must have been more than one copy!



After a patient search I was able to find a copy, albeit with one or two errors unfortunately. Most files were intact, except for the file 'Movie2' which is merely the Juggler demo with a different background. I was able to repair the disk and now this second movie works aswell. 

UPDATE: The KryoFlux hardware I used to dump the ADF was able to read the original disk flawlessly. I removed the link to the DiskSalv repaired ADF. Thanks mark_k and Crashdisk for informing me.



You can download the original disk disk here and the repaired disk here. On request I also have the KryoFlux raw stream files available.

[BigBaldGeek]


Amiga 3000 Vs. Raspberry Pi

October 13, 2013 at 11:20 in retro

I've ran bonnie CPU and disk performance comparison tests between a Raspberry Pi and an Amiga 3000 running Amix. You can find the results (pretty graphs) at the Amix site of Failure. It's kind of awesome to see a €50 gadget and a 25 year old $5000 workstation!



[BigBaldGeek]


AFFF Night of Terror 2008

October 12, 2013 at 14:38 in zombie

I had removed the photo's from the index, but from the Google results it showed people kept visiting frequently (pretty amazing after 5 years!) so here they are again.

21 year old cool dude Erik Hillenbrink of Rob's Prop Shop turned me into a real Tom Savini-style zombie for the AFFF Night of Terror 2008!

My friend Arjen Wolfs and I noticed some cute Vampire queens during the NOT2007. Although we loved the idea, we figured it could be done... messier! We quickly realised we would need the help of real professionals and Erik wanted to help us! His dad is a special FX legend, it's quite possible you watched a movie using special FX from Rob's Prop Shop (Zwartboek, Phileine zegt sorry, Mindhunters, The Discovery of Heaven, TBS, Erik of het klein insectenboek, Griezelbus, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.. Pretty impressive eh?)!




[BigBaldGeek]


DevOps and the future of system administrators

October 4, 2013 at 13:28 in devops

I don’t know what it’s like where you are, but here at Schuberg Philis more and more of us are DevOps-ing, Chef-ing and Git-ing the cloud way of working. Even though, like us, you might not see direct results porting mostly legacy code, the end result will be staggering. Maybe not for customer 1 or 2, but definitely for the builds in 2014. Some of you still might haven’t found the right cause to try this way of working, the truth of the matter is that, sooner or later, it’s coming all our ways.

There are too many convincing reasons for me that DevOps is here to stay: it’s faster, more flexible, less risky – and it makes it possible to cut costs by eliminating the system administrator role (and the CIO too). So if you’re a systems administrator (or a CIO), prepare yourself for the next step, before someone else does it for you.

What should you do? First of all, don’t fight it and don’t treat it as a bit of industry buzz that will blow over. You can’t afford to, because one day soon you’regoing to be on pager duty and find yourself confronted with a DevOps environment. And what are you going to do then? The new way of designing and deploying environments is here to stay. The learning curve is short yet very steep (f-ing vertical perhaps) but the results are worth it.

Get with the program

You know how fast the pace of change is in the IT industry. You know how quickly the cloud, SaaS, PaaS and other developments have gone from shiny new toys to mainstream offering – and how they are now cannibalizing the on-premise software model. What makes you think it won’t affect (read: eliminate) your job? I believe that the adoption of DevOps is being driven by four “big hairy beasts”:

The rise of agile development processes and methodologies;
Demand by application and business unit stakeholders for more production releases;
The wide availability of virtual and cloud infrastructure from internal and external providers;
Increased usage of datacenter automation and configuration management tools.
Any one of those alone would be a threat to the old development-administration duopoly. But together they form a knockout blow. The transfer to DevOps makes it pretty easy for any reasonably competent generalist to do what once took a team of specialists.

In, out, or shake it all about?

So what are your options as a system administrator? First up, accept that the sysadmin role in it’s current shape is going to disappear. Some people will exit IT completely because of this. Some will find a more specialist niche within the industry. Some will freelance for multiple clients, replacing other sysadmin people who have specialized or quit. And some will, if they can, reinvent themselves as, let’s call them “system masters” – (part sysadmin, part CIO, replacing both). These people will find the best mix of in-house and hosted solutions to meet the business’s needs. Managing data flows rather than infrastructure.

In every case, the future scenario involves big changes. At the same time, one thing is clear: if you’re a systems administrator and you want to continue doing something that looks vaguely like what you do today, you need to be into DevOps. Future IT solutions are going to be dynamic situations driven by responses rather than pre-determined conditions. And that requires a systems master, not a systems administrator. Enjoy the ride.

[BigBaldGeek]

(blog reprinted from http://www.cupfighter.net/index.php/2013/09/devops-and-the-future-of-system-administrators/)


Winter!

October 2, 2013 at 10:20 in Amiga

Now the days are getting shorter it's time to find some projects to get through those long dark winter evenings!

Back in the old days a friend of mine build a 14MHz accelerator for me, a hack designed by Livio Plos from Italy. As this design has proven to be stable and lasting, I've looked up the original design on Aminet in order to rebuild it. Obviously it would be easier to buy a cool new product from Jens suck as the upcoming ACA500 but it wouldn't be as much fun :-)

Fortunately (for me) my friend still had his mod still lying around somewhere which makes it a little easier to rebuild.



For those interested, you can find the original archive with the IFF pictures converted to JPG here.

[BigBaldGeek]


September 13: Hackalong event


August 21st, 2013 at 8:31PM

The third Hackalong is finally on its way!

It took a while, but in 3 weeks we’ll have another Hackalong:

Leon van der Eijk (Twitter, Blog) will present us how to build your own Kippo SSH Honeypot and show us all kinds of nifty things you can do with the output, especially kippo-graph.

You’re more than welcome to participate - bring along your portable computer with an SSH client installed (like PuTTY for Windows) - we’ll supply a number of (CentOS 6) Linux servers to run a real-life honeypot.

Small update:

We’ll have a few CACert Assurers walking around, so if you want to be assured, bring along 1 (or preferably 2) forms of ID. We’ll have some forms ready!

Update II:

Oscar Koeroo (Twitter), currently employed with the KPN Red Team, has confirmed giving a presentation/workshop on “intercepting Ziggo WiFi passwords in about 15 minutes”. Bring along your own rogue AP if you have one, together with a copy of Backtrack or Kali Linux (there will be a limited supply if you do forget yours :) )

LOCATION:

The hackalong will be held at Boeing Avenue 271 in Schiphol-Rijk. We will be kicking off around 10:00h CET.

Schuberg Philis on Google Maps

Please note: It is an open event, kindly hosted by SBP - please let us know beforehand if you want to join.

[BigBaldGeek]


The walking 0xDEAD

April 3rd, 2013 at 3:00PM in hackalong

Hi all!

@m0n0sapiens has put a blogentry online about the hackalong, check it out here. You can grab a PDF of the presentation slides there aswell. Highly recommended!

image

[BigBaldGeek]



Hackalong -- Update

March 14th, 2013 at 2:38PM in hackalong

Hi Everybody!

As the next hackalong is only a week away (Friday, March 22nd), here’s a small update. We still have some (free!) spaces available if you’re interested!

Next week m0n0sapiens will give us a presentation regarding reverse-engineering. As it’s a one day thing, the focus will be put on ‘building’. We will be given an overview of tools of the trade available and get our hands dirty. He will be teaching us how to approach typical reversing issues and we’ll look at various malware examples. Depending on the brilliance level of attendees the training will be more or less hands-on/dynamic.


image

You will need a small download as course material. This will be put online here when it’s available.

Also, I’ve received some questions regarding the address. The hackalong will be held at Boeing Avenue 271 in Schiphol-Rijk. We will be kicking off around 09:30.

[BigBaldGeek]

PS: there will be blood….

Retrohacking

May 10, 2013 at 15:36 in retro

Het zal geen geheim (meer) zijn dat er naast een ethical hacker ook een retrohacker in ondergetekende schuilt. Gezien mijn liefde (obsessie?) voor Commodore hardware (C=64, wie is er niet groot mee geworden?) ben ik begonnen aan een C=64 hardware projectje: het maken van een eigen cartridge! Tuurlijk, de EasyFlash3 is een fantastisch ding, maar om het écht te snappen wilde ik aan de gang met een eprommer en soldeerbout :-)

Online vond ik de site van Arjen Vellekoop die de printplaatjes te koop heeft. Het lijkt op het eerste gezicht misschien wat oneconomisch om dat te doen, maar tegenwoordig hoeft het niet duur meer te zijn!

image

Voor twee tientjes vind je de eproms, eprommer en eprom wisser op eBay.  Het restant van de onderdelen (wat weerstandjes, condensatoren en een IC-tje) zijn goedkoop te vinden bij Dick Best.

Je kan natuurlijk ook altijd in je lokale #hackerspace terecht.. 

Arjen heeft goede instructies (nederlands- en engelstalig) op de site staan, dus na een klein kwartiertje solderen zat de boel in elkaar! Het meeste werk was nog eigenlijk om de binary files te maken om in de eprommer te branden! Met het tooltje mcart van Markus Brenner is dat zo gepiept! Met mcart zet je .crt bestanden om in .bin bestanden die met de eprommer te branden zijn.

Project geslaagd! H.E.R.O, Jumpman Junior, Cynthcart en C64Anabalt werken als een zonnetje. Ik ben bang dat ik aan de 5 printjes die ik besteld had te kort ga hebben..


image

[BigBaldGeek]


Great start of the new year!

January 14th, 2013 at 1:47PM in hackalong

Hi all,

I’ve been asked about the lack of updates. We've definitely not been slacking, a lot of going on (just not all on the hackalong front). Let me give you the lowdown..

DevOps

First of all, we’re very busy getting ready for the DevOps meetup here in the Netherlands on January the 16th. The purpose of this meetup is to see if we do a full size DevOps Days Amsterdam this year. It’s a busy DevOps year, and a lot of DevOps days are planned throughout Europe, we figured the Netherlands could use one too! We’re looking for people to help and this meetup is a start. For those of you not aware, check here for attending: http://www.meetup.com/DevOpsAmsterdam/events/95445882/

As a result, we’re very busy preparing for the DevOps Days (date to be determined).

Alt/S

As most of you likely already know, Alt/S is coming up! Even though we don’t have anything to do with preparing this event (@Seccubus is doing a workshop or two, but that hardly counts) we do like to point it out. mark your calendar: January 22nd, 09:00 in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague! Registration is free but mandatory:  http://www.alt-s.nl/  We wish @yafsec, @alcyonsecurity, @legosteentje, @pyrobatnl, @gitaar_gevaar, @annejanbrouwer, @mrkoot, @meneer, @seccubus and everyone else a lot of fun and success! Check the FAQ here:  http://www.alt-s.nl/faq and registration here: http://www.alt-s.nl/register

Finally, we _are_ planning a new hackalong soon! But with all the other engagements we need to find the right moment. If you have any suggestions for a new topic, or would like to volounteer as a speaker, let me (@BigBaldGeek) know!

[BigBaldGeek]


Cheezy!

December 3rd, 2012 at 6:05PM in hackalong

Oscar Koeroo (@okoeroo) kindly provided us with a pdf of the presentation he gave at the first hackalong! The title is ‘Public Key Infrastructure, a cheezy Man-in-the-Middle attack hack’ and it can be found here:

http://tinyurl.com/c99653h

Enjoy!

[BigBaldGeek]
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