Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 12hThis looks like a legit add-in character for Office 2000! Amazing work! 011
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 29/09/2026Not sure what exactly I was expecting at the end, but that final boss battle felt way easier than it should have been. 000
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 29/09/2026I finally completed the first episode of Duke Nukem 1! So many hours spent playing the first few levels, never actually stuck it out long enough to finish the whole episode. 100
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 28/09/2026At last! Today is the day I have a need for that mini USB cable I haven't touched in 10+ years! ...now where did I put it? 000
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 28/09/2026People like you are exhausting. I'm not the one going out of my way to attack random people because I saw some parody post pop up in an obscure algorithmic feed no one's heard of and made negative, incorrect assumptions about them. Take a step back and stop being so angry and miserable. 000
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 21/09/2026I'll probably give it a shot again somewhere down the line, but I think I was too ambitious thinking I could just easily swap it out on my laptop for school. I've spent more time tinkering and messing with it than paying attention in lectures which is becoming a problem lol 010
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 20/09/2026I'll be honest. I've never had any issue with any of the Seagate drives I've bought in 10 years, but the one WD drive I'm running on my NAS keeps throwing sector read errors at random. 020
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 19/09/2026I think this is the story with most people when it first released. The novelty was cool for a very short period before we all started to realize the terrible implications and ethical issues around it. 131
Reposted by Graham Downeyⓓⓔⓔⓑ 🔜 PRGE @deeb.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Some crazy person built a portable PS2 that uses the original chips but utilizes a custom motherboard. Usually these projects come out kinda clunky but this looks slick af! github.com/tschicki/PS2... 1962677
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 16/09/2026I guess I'm just not cut out for Linux on the desktop. At least not as a daily driver. XFce, KDE Plasma, Cinnamon. I can't find any DE I can fully get behind, and Wine really isn't as good as people made it out to be. Time to jump through the hoops of a Windows 10 setup again... 110
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 15/09/2026Man I thought XFce would be a great place to start, but there're so many buggy themes and things you can't fix without manually going through config files. 110
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 14/09/2026Lightweight and reliable, the 2 things I care about most for any workstation! 010
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 14/09/2026I've been running headless Linux servers in my home lab for more than 10 years now but never really tried it as a desktop. Found an old Ryzen 3 laptop I could get working that looks like a good candidate for my experiments. 020
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 09/09/2026Scored at the giveaway table at the computer science offices on campus! 020
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 08/09/2026With the price of storage now I don't feel too bad searching marketplace for extra drives for backups. Hard to say no to a couple 1TB WD enterprise drives for $25 each. 001
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 08/09/2026Love that Dell kept the same HDD caddy design for so long. The 3rd gen Intel Optiplex I saved from ewaste had the caddies thrown out, but the one I pulled from a 2004 Dimension fit perfectly! 121
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 07/09/2026The extra ride height is a bonus so it won't bottom out when towing or carrying band equipment. 000
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 07/09/2026The Buick is happy once again! New rear shocks means it no longer feels like chopping waves on the open sea. 110
Reposted by Graham DowneyKaptajnen @kaptajnen.bsky.social · 01/09/2026#SuperMario Bros. Has been ported to #Sega #MasterSystem by "LackofTrack" You can play it either with #NES graphics or the new All-Star look and choose between PSG or FM music. What an incredible feat! Grab it before #Nintendo does shorturl.at/kjLAP #homebrew #gamedev #Mario #retrogaming #gaming 4327141
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 31/08/2026Most people on the internet lack basic reading comprehension. 010
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 30/08/2026Wii Sports can't already be retro! That was my childhood! :( 020
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 29/08/2026When the mod is enabled you essentially get two cascaded high gain inputs, but without doubling the high pass filter of the smaller bypass cap on V1b. 000
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 29/08/2026The interesting thing is how the front of the amp works. There's a high gain and low gain input. The high gain input goes through V1b into V1a for more gain. The low input bypasses V1b entirely going straight to V1a. 110
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 29/08/2026A simplified version of the schematic would actually look more like this. If you notice V1a and V1b actually look quite similar now. Essentially when you switch on the modded it changes V1a from a cold clipper to more of a high gain boost like V1b. 100
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 29/08/2026If you notice on V1b the paired resistor is only 2.7k for exactly this reason. Luckily, running two resistors in parallel actually lowers the overall resistance. By introducing the 1.8k resistor next to the 10k on the cold clipper, it actually reduces the total resistance down to about 1.5k. 100
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 29/08/2026Now what about the extra resistor added in parallel? The problem with adding a resistor bypass cap to the cold clipper is if the resistor on the cathode is too large, the extra gain added by the capacitor becomes too much even at low volumes and starts to make the signal very fuzzy. 100
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 29/08/2026Essentially, this bypass cap in the circuit is providing an overall boost in gain to the signal without trying to change too much of the amp's voicing and coloring characteristics. 100
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 29/08/2026Looking at the full schematic again we can see at point 3 on V1b there is a 0.68uF bypass cap. Smaller values like this cut low frequencies of the signal and boost only the mids and highs. The 150uF installed on V1a is large enough that it boosts the entire frequency range down to around 1.6hz 100
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 29/08/2026The capacitor in parallel with the circuit here is what's called a cathode resistor bypass. Essentially what it does in the circuit is boost the AC gain of the signal by acting as an electron reservoir on the cathode. The size of this capacitor also changes what frequencies it boosts the gain on. 100
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 29/08/2026Now I'm not going to claim to be a professional amp tech here. Once I got this far I had to do some reading up on valve operation and how changing values affect the signal's gain and tone characteristics. I apologize in advance if I get any assumptions wrong past this point. 100
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 29/08/2026If we ignore the bypass switch we can draw these components into the schematic to better visualize what this mod really is. This is a side-by-side of the stock circuit and the modded one with the switch enabled. 100
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 29/08/2026Now the question is what exactly are the resistor/cap combo on the side of the PCB supposed to do? These are connected at the top of R1 on the board, which connects the cathode on the V1a cold clipper to ground. We can see where this is on the schematic. 100
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 29/08/2026The only thing really changed on this side of the circuit is the push/pull function acts as an on/off switch between the posts on the back of the pot. Pushed in the switch is off and the mod is disconnected. Pulled out and the components on the blue wire connect to ground. 100
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 29/08/2026For those unfamiliar, yes, the resistor cap combo jumping from the input jack to the preamp knob are stock. That's just how Marshall chose to wire up these old amps. The small cap between the two pins on the potentiometer is the infamous Marshall "bright cap". 100
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 29/08/2026For anyone familiar with the inner workings of a JCM 800 you'll probably notice most of the amp was left pretty bone stock for a late 80s Marshall circuit. There's only the push/pull pot added and a parallel resistor/cap combo hanging off the right side of the board. 100
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 29/08/2026Unfortunately he lost the original paperwork describing what the mods were. All he remembered was that the preamp volume was a push/pull pot that ran the amp stock when pushed in, but gave an extra boost in gain when you pulled it out. 100
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 29/08/2026The previous owner of the amp had it modded by Gar Gillies of Garnet Amplifier fame back in 2005. For those unfamiliar he was the tech who built the amps for the Guess Who in the 60s/70s and designed that signature "American Woman" lead tone. 100
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 29/08/2026Finally got around to opening my JCM 800 to clean the pots and actually see what mods the last tech did on it almost 21 years ago! 110
Reposted by Graham DowneyAnatoly Shashkin💾 @dosnostalgic.bsky.social · 15/01/2026The intro from "Another World" still manages to impress decades later, which is why I feel like it's nearly impossible to describe emotions one felt upon encountering it 35 years ago for the first time. 2230161
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 20/08/2026I haven't noticed any issues recently. Maybe it's because I haven't updated the client in about a year 010
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 13/08/2026It's a DOS game targeting 386 hardware. This format lets me fit a 128x128 map in 16kb, expandable to 256x256 without crossing segment boundaries. 110
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 06/08/2026Better yet, a very normal hand with a thumb and 3 fingers! 020
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 17/07/2026A fun read on how composite CGA color artifacting actually works! 040
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 10/07/2026That cockpit camera mode reminds me a lot of Need For Speed 2. 110
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 08/07/2026These dual slot 1 systems are fun! I set one up with Debian and have it hosting my website and doubling as a DNS host for my LAN. 120
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 05/07/2026Still perfect for doing retro palette-based videogame graphics! 020
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 24/06/2026After 4 days of what felt like hitting my head against a wall we were able to roll back the Mac one version of MacOS. 030
Graham Downey @grahamdowney.com · 24/06/2026Wait until you discover Princess Auto doesn't actually sell any auto parts! (It's all tools, trailer parts, yard implements, and surplus knickknacks) 020
