iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 07/04/2026

Working on some ANSI art drawing software for CGA/MDA, thought it would be appropriate to give the computer I've nicknamed 'Protogen' a #protogen face!

Image of a Compaq Portable with a green monochrome CRT displaying an ANSI art rendition of a protogen face looking directly at the viewer.

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 29/03/2026

Ran the benchmark on a Compaq Portable and a DTK XT clone, both 8088s running MS-DOS 3.22 with GW Basic. Compaq Portable came in around 290s, XT clone came in at 293s, 174s with 8mhz turbo

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 21/03/2026

Finally 3D printed a programmer's key for my Macintosh Plus.. I'm a real programmer now, supposedly! A third shade of beige for my mismatched Plus - platinum keyboard, beige chassis, and now a bone white PLA switch... #MARCHintosh

Image of a Macintosh Plus with a 3D printed 'programmer's key' inserted into the side. The Macintosh Plus is beige, the keyboard is a more modern platinum color, and the switch is somewhere in-between the two colors.

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 20/03/2026

There's a fox trapped inside my Macintosh Plus!

Image of the Macintosh Plus logic board, showing a FOX-branded crystal oscillator.

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 20/03/2026

FreeCAD to the rescue! Now my 800k drive eject mechanism is half 3D printed parts... but hey, no more paperclip ejection! #MARCHintosh #retrocomputing

Image of one of the eject gears for the Macintosh Plus floppy drive being modeled in FreeCAD

Image of the eject mechanism for the Macintosh Plus floppy drive

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 18/03/2026

Has anyone made 3D models of *all* of the gears in the Macintosh floppy disk eject mechanism? I have a 3D printed replacement for the one that *usually* breaks, but not the one that I've removed here... which is the one that broke in another 800k drive I have! #retrocomputing

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 17/03/2026

The issue it was encountering wasn't actually a fatal one (but it could become one given enough time) - the arm of the drive was getting stuck on the sticky rubber bumper, producing a rather worrisome noise as it attempts to unstick itself. It would often take 5 minutes or so to get it to boot.

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 17/03/2026

It lives! This is my first time successfully performing hard drive surgery.

Image of a Compaq Portable with the top of the case off, having run 'chkdsk' and reporting the size of the hard drive (20mb).

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 16/03/2026

Printed a replacement with TPU - flexible filament. Wow, I forgot that printing TPU is like trying to print wet, angry spaghetti. It took 1 minute to print the part and 30 minutes trying to get the printer to cooperate!

Image of a replacement part for a rubber stopper on a hard drive

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 13/03/2026

Eternally surprised by how far miniaturization has come... I guess we can fit USB-C ports, charging circuitry, a status LED, and a lithium ion battery inside a AA battery now. And it's charged by this absolute hydra of a USB-C cable... all with a cute fennec mascot??

Four AA batteries connected to a single USB cable that splits off into 4 USB-C connectors, next to its packaging with a cute large-eared fennec on it wearing green and white clothes.

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 05/03/2026

The Hardcard 20 was made with high quality precision-engineered parts and topped off with 'rubber bumper that turns to goo after 20 years and also turns blue for some reason'

The Hardcard 20 opened up, showing a rubber bumper that is disintegrating, turning sticky and blue for some resaon

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 04/03/2026

It really screwed up my Tool Of Unlimited Innovation too.

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 04/03/2026

20 minutes and multiple lacerations later, I've found that the strongest glue of all time is actually hiding underneath the lid of the Hardcard 20. No wonder so many people break the lids trying to get them off. Bonus dragon

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 28/02/2026

The Hardcard 20 when the Harder Card 40 walks in #retrocomputing

Two card-based hard drives, the Hardcard Plus 20, and a TR41 hard drive from a PC-98.

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 25/02/2026

Always found it a bit strange that the floppy drive on my desk has the logo of a company that I've always associated with cars all over it! They even made some of the 7400-series logic chips on it! Guess Mitsubishi was a bit like Yamaha and did a little bit of everything.

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 23/02/2026

Now it's been almost 3 or 4 hours since I transferred data over serial and the faint ghost of the serial port and speed are still visible here. I had no clue the persistence lasted this long. Also there's so little light that the image just appears solid black on my camera now!

Another long exposure image of the Compaq Portable CRT. It is much dimmer, and there is barely anything visible of legible. The faint outline of the 'COM1' text in the original post can be seen.

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 23/02/2026

Kept noticing my Compaq Portable's still showed an afterimage in a pitch black room... decided to take a long exposure photograph of it an hour after turning it off, and was really impressed by how much was still readable! You can even see the speed of the serial port I was using! #retrocomputing

A long exposure photograph of a Compaq Portable's CRT, taken an hour after the computer was shut off. A large assortment of mostly unreadable text is still visible, along with the shapes of the UI of Turbo Pascal and LapLink. On the right, the text "COM1 (115,200)" is clearly visible in two places. The illuminated areas are mostly concentrated towards the left.

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 13/02/2026

Vim is actually quite a pleasant experience on an 8088 with 640k of RAM, especially with turbo enabled! The last version of Vim to support MS-DOS was 7.4, but an install of that version would take up nearly half of my 25 megabyte hard drive... so I'm using version 4.6 instead. #retrocomputing

A photograph of Vim 4.6 running on MS-DOS, on a 8088 computer. The 8088 computer has an amber CRT displaying the default .vimrc file.

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 20/06/2025

I printed a new bottom shell for my SNES. Early models seem fairly prone to plastic degradation, especially the bottom half of the enclosure. It can become so brittle that even manipulating the screws causes breakage. I think I did a pretty good job color matching with airbrushing. #3dprinting

Picture of an SNES with a Super Mario World cartridge inserted. The bottom half of the SNES has been replaced with an identical 3D printed version. Paint has been applied to the bottom half to match the color to the top half.

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 25/01/2025

I've been teaching myself CAD lately, so I designed and 3D printed a proper enclosure for my Greaseweazle floppy disk archiving setup! #retrocomputing

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 17/01/2025

The most peculiar thing about it to me is how the internal CRT is connected to the video card - the CRT has a DB-9 connector that runs through the case and out through a hole on the side, connecting to the video card output. The mono/RGB switch also has leads hackily soldered to the motherboard!

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 17/01/2025

This luggable XT clone is a restoration project I've been working on. Still needs some retrobriting as the top of the case is heavily yellowed. My best guess is that this is DTK branded based on the BIOS & RTC card, but it lacks any brand markings on the case at all. #retrocomputer #retrocomputing

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 15/01/2025

'Reverse Screen' by Darin Adler from 1986 is an early example of what we call 'dark mode' today, inverting the entire screen - even the mouse. It really takes the eye strain out of working with a compact Mac in the dark! #retrocomputing #VintageApple

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 14/01/2025

A few months later, the original owner purchased a 20 megabyte hard drive for a total of $745.22, or approximately $2,120 USD accounting for inflation. Despite the reputation of Hardcards as unreliable, this one is still working to this day.

An invoice dated 01/02/1987. The only line item present is a 20 megabyte Hardcard, which is a hard drive expansion card. The line item cost is $698.10, and the total cost with sales tax is $745.22. Some personal information of the original owner was edited out of this.

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 14/01/2025

While I'm not the original owner of my Compaq Portable, I do happen to have the original invoices. It was purchased from ComputerLand in 1986, an Illinois computer retailer franchise, for use in a grocery store's back office. Adjusted for inflation, it cost approximately $5,600! #retrocomputing

An invoice for a Compaq Portable. The invoice is dated May 1st, 1986. The unit cost of the Compaq Portable was $1,693.23, with the memory upgrade costing $138.24. The total cost with sales tax was $1,945.94. The personal information of the original owner and signatures were edited out of this image.

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 13/01/2025

Shout-out to James B. Penny, P. L. Roddy, and G L Brasher for the work here! 42 years later...

14 ' NAME: DEMO - DEMONSTRATION PROGRAM
16 '
18 ' REVISION: 2.00
20 '
22 ' DATE: 9/83
24 '
26 ' AUTHOR: JAMES B. PENNY, P.L. RODDY, & G L BRASHER

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 13/01/2025

Since the demo program was written in BASIC, the source code is readable... and at first glance, it's really quite scary to look at, especially with only 80 columns. The 'DRAW' function is pretty versatile.

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 13/01/2025

I took inspiration from the demo program included with Compaq MS-DOS version 2.12! The intro sequence for this program is just delightful. I love the attention to detail with the laser 'sparking' whenever it starts drawing a new letter. #retrocomputing

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The BombSquad @bombsquad.dev · 13/01/2025

Hello, world! Not very used to posting on platforms like this, but I thought it would be nice to document interesting things that I find or little projects that I'm working on. Here's a 'Hello World' program I wrote to help familiarize myself with Turbo Pascal, running on my Compaq Portable!

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