iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The first game I ever bought was King’s Quest III (1986). I was looking forward to it for months. It was finally released within days of my tenth birthday. I asked everyone for cash instead of gifts, and got just enough for the $49.95 plus tax cost at the Radio Shack in the shopping mall in Madison.

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I really miss the weather from 40 years ago. Then we could just have peaceful rain. Today, instead, we get hail, severe thunderstorms, damaging straight-line winds, and tornadoes over and over again. When monitoring all of this in the Madison area, here is my favorite page for viewing a radar loop.

tempest.aos.wisc.edu

UW-Madison Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

What happens when you write a CRT simulator that, instead of simply adding a "scanline effect," actually models the power supplies, video input signals, amplifiers, electron gun, yoke, aperture grill, phosphors, etc., of a real CRT? This. Totally emergent--nothing is "faked." Stay tuned for more.

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Back in the 90's, I'd make sound effects for my games by recording things with a Radio Shack microphone into my Sound Blaster AWE32. Then I'd use Cool Edit to remove background noise, add effects, and so on. I'm very tempted to fire up Adobe Audition and try to make some kind of sound effect again.

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Reposted by Robert Sundling

Kaitlin Sundling @kaitlinsundling.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

I'm attending Francesca Hong for Governor's event, “ELECTION DAY PHONE BANK FOR FRAN HONG” - sign up now to join me! Let's make the best of the stormy weather and help get out the vote for Fran! www.mobilize.us/francescahon...

mobilize.us

ELECTION DAY PHONE BANK FOR FRAN HONG · Francesca Hong for Governor

It's Election Day– let's make as many calls as possible to get Fran Hong elected! No previous experience is required. Join us anytime between now and polls close to help us get out the vote and win th...

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

When I was a kid, on dark, rainy days I’d play King’s Quest II on our Tandy 1000SX in the corner of my parents’ bedroom. Not King’s Quest or King’s Quest III. My rainy day game was King’s Quest II. Today, almost 40 years later, whenever it rains I feel like firing it up. Kolyma is my cozy place.

A screenshot from the game King’s Quest II, where King Graham is on a beach, looking towards the ocean as waves crash upon rocks.

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

If you have an appropriate 8086/8088 emulator available, give this a try. It's worth it! It definitely works on 86Box - @86box.net - emulating an IBM XT with a VGA adapter. Note that it won't on newer CPUs, as it requires invalid opcodes to be elided rather than trapped.

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

I bet @thealmightyguru.bsky.social will appreciate this. I found this old BASIC program I wrote on our Tandy 1000SX when I was ten years old, creating a (mostly) 3x5 font. Sadly I didn’t create the letters R through Z. 😃 (A Python script rendered the image here from the original DRAW statements.)

A vintage BASIC program to draw text characters for the letters A through Q using “DRAW” statements for a Tandy 1000, in screen mode 5 (320x200, 16 colors).

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Introducing Mocha! He’d been at our local Humane Society for three months without being adopted before we found him. He’s 11, super cuddly, and loves people so much. Every morning he wakes up SO HAPPY to find we’re still here and runs to us with his tail wagging and thumping against anything nearby.

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

@wildweasel486.bsky.social You may have already seen this, but I just happened across it today and thought of you. 😃 A fully playable version of Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge.

aaron-demeter.itch.io

Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge by Aaron Demeter

Now With Scoring Pencil!!

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

One thing I miss is the smell of new floppy disks. It’s been a long time… 😢

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Congratulations to the GNU Compiler Collection team for their successful launch of GCC 16.1! Great work, everyone! 🥳

gcc.gnu.org

GCC 16 Release Series - GNU Project

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

Bumped up GCC to 16.0.1 for my DOS game engine today; making sure I'm reading for the impending release of GCC 16.1. To get the cross compiler built, I only needed one minor new patch (adding "struct timespec" to time.h) for this to work over GCC 15.2.

$DOS command prompt showing the output of rasdan --info. It reports “RASDAN: Build 6312 (05 Apr 2026 03:50:27 PM CDT), 32 bits,” compiled with GCC 16.0.1 (experimental, C++26/C23) and NASM 3.01. CPU is identified as “GenuineIntel,” family 5, model 4, stepping 3, with FPU, TSC, and MMX support. Memory shows 15,200,440 bytes available, largest block 14,712,832 bytes, base address 00400000h, page size 4096 bytes, FAT DS hack conventional memory mapping, and a 65,024-byte transfer buffer. Prompt returns to D:\RASDAN>.$

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

12 down in today’s (Feb 18, 2026) New York Times crossword puzzle will be of particular interest to @commodoreofficial.bsky.social. If only they’d mentioned its rebirth…!

12 Best-selling home computers of the 1980s

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

I feel like maybe 10% of my life is now spent charging batteries. It increases every year. It didn't used to be this way. Remember when you didn't have to charge your game controller or your mouse or your flashlight or your snowblower or your book? I'm not sure if this is better or worse.

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

Well, that was short lived. 😢 The second time I went to power on my Commodore 64 Ultimate, my monitor insists there‘s no HDMI signal detected. Tried multiple monitors, TVs, and a receiver; all say the same thing. Tried the Commodore+N trick while booting; no difference. Anyone have any tips?

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

I finally gave in and upgraded to the new Alexa so that we could turn multiple lights on or off with one command. For some reason, after every response she now adds “Don’t worry, Bob. Everything is under control.” It’s quite disconcerting. I’m definitely feeling that things are NOT under control.

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

🎶 One of these things is not like the others… 🎶 Happy New Commodore Day, everyone! @commodoreofficial.bsky.social

Five Commodore 64 boxes sitting on a couch. The middle one is a new Commodore 64 Ultimate.

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

My wife and I had a fun time playing Utopia on our new “Intellivision Sprint” this weekend. I hadn’t played it in almost 40 years; she hadn’t played it ever. Unlike many other Intellivision games, it really still holds up as-is! I have a feeling we’ll become evenly matched pretty soon.

Screenshot from Mattel Intellivision game “Utopia” where the game is over. The player on the left has won (with 3665 points to 2611 points) and also has a ridiculous number of fishing boats.

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

I'm considering switching to lead-free solder. Any suggestions on the best lead-free solder on the market today for hand-soldering? Mostly SMD components, but still some through-hole. @polpo.org - Any experience with lead-free solder for prototyping?

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

@patbiosteamist.bsky.social Did you see that Walgreens has a Respiratory Illness Index Tracker again? It says it's updated once a week. The last update was November 8. It's different from their old one. Don't know if it's useful or not. It's *something*.

walgreens.com

Respiratory Illness Index | Walgreens

Track flu and COVID-19 with our Respiratory Illness Index map. Get local updates and find links to virtual care, and vaccines and testing at a Walgreens near you.

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Reposted by Robert Sundling

Ian Scott @polpo.org · 10/11/2025

Are you ready for #PicoIDE? It seems to be telling me it's ready. Coming soon: ATAPI optical disc emulation and IDE hard drive emulation. picoide.com

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

In 1998, I wrote a NewtonScript bytecode disassembler and package dumper for my own use, so that I could create patches for Apple Newton software. Today, I dusted it off, built a shiny new Makefile for it for modern systems, and am releasing it as open source on GitHub. Enjoy!

github.com

GitHub - RobertSundling/Newton-PKGDUMP: Apple Newton Package Dumper and NewtonScript Bytecode Disassembler

Apple Newton Package Dumper and NewtonScript Bytecode Disassembler - RobertSundling/Newton-PKGDUMP

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

Sadly, the New York Times still hasn’t updated their Spelling Bee word list to include King’s Quest III characters.

Screenshot of the New York Times Spelling Bee game. The player has tried to enter the word “MANANNAN,” referencing the wizard from King’s Quest III, but the game displays a gray box saying “Not in word list.” The honeycomb of letters shows M in the center with surrounding letters A, N, T, Y, E, and I.

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

Throwback Thursday: The first thing I did when I got a car with a USB port was see if I could connect a floppy drive to it to play music. I could! Granted, I did have to build a custom disk image by hand, since the floppy disk had to be formatted as if it were an SD card and not a floppy.

A hand holding a black external USB floppy disk drive inside a modern car. The car’s infotainment screen shows the song “Making Flippy Floppy” by Talking Heads from the album Speaking in Tongues playing, with the source labeled “FLOPPY.” The screen displays the album art and playback controls, while the lower console shows a message indicating the climate control is switched off.

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

It's time! After 33 years, I'm adding Gravis UltraSound support to my DOS game engine. 😄 I never owned a GUS back in the day, so it never happened. Now I've got a PicoGUS from @polpo.org (and a great emulator from @86box.net). So off we go! Step 1A: I mirrored the final GUS SDK (v2.22) on GitHub.

github.com

GitHub - RobertSundling/GUSDK222: Gravis UltraSound, PC GamePad, and Analog Pro SDK V2.22 (GUSDK222.ZIP)

Gravis UltraSound, PC GamePad, and Analog Pro SDK V2.22 (GUSDK222.ZIP) - RobertSundling/GUSDK222

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

I am increasingly a fan of the Monaspace font family (monaspace.githubnext.com). I've added support for Monaspace features to the GUI TTY interface for my DOS game engine (which takes the place of an external MDA monitor). It's fantastic to be able to customize its look and feel so thoroughly.

RASDAN Remote TTY settings window showing the Fonts tab. The font family is set to Monaspace Neon, with adjustable sliders for font weight, bold weight, italic slant, and width. Options for texture healing and several ligatures (equals, greater/less or equal, arrows, markup, F# operators) are visible, with most enabled. On the right is a live preview panel displaying sample text, numbers, and ligature symbols. The entire screen is amber-on-black, styled like a retro DOS MDA terminal.

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

It's crazy the kind of stuff you end up writing when you're building a network stack for DOS from scratch in C++26.

C++ function that parses an IPv4 address string into a 32-bit integer, validating each octet and returning an error type if the format is invalid. Uses std::expected for error handling and processes characters one by one.

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

Congratulations to the GNU Compiler Collection team for their successful launch of GCC 15.2! Great work, everyone! 🥳

gcc.gnu.org

GCC 15 Release Series - GNU Project

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

I'm testing GCC 15.2 today. I just used it to build the various test programs for my game engine for all available platforms, including DOS and Windows. Success! But it's always hilarious to me to see a test that runs at 60 fps in DOS on a 486 with a VGA run at 13,000+ fps on a modern machine.

Screenshot of a simple test of a game engine, showing 13,745 frames per second.

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

GCC 15.2 drops tomorrow. Got a head start today and built a cross-compiler for my 32-bit DOS apps from the 15.2 RC. It's working well so far! (It reports as 15.1.1, but that's fine. I didn't touch gcc/BASE-VER or gcc/DATESTAMP, where I could have bumped it up to "15.2.0 20250808" had I wanted.)

Screenshot snipped from a DOS application, showing:

Build target: DOS (DOS32, VGA) 32-bit
C++ compiler: GCC 15.1.1 20250801 (C++26/C23)
Assembler: NASM 2.16.03

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

I always end up so many levels away from what I'm actually working on. I was thinking it'd be great to remotely control my various vintage PCs from my main workstation, with them all in little windows. Now I'm investigating custom SVGA + PS/2 keyboard/mouse + power control KVM-over-IP solutions...

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

Making decent progress on my 640x480 to 320x240 linear mode SVGA project. I first wrote a CRTC register dumper, then examined values on a card with a 320x240 linear mode. It's pretty clear how this card does it. Next step will be to take an SVGA card without the mode and apply these same changes.

Screenshot comparing CRTC register values for a 640x480 256-color mode to a 320x240 256-color mode.

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

My challenge this week is to take SVGA cards with linear VBE 640x480x256 color modes and tweak CRTC registers to turn those into linear 320x240x256 color modes. Some cards expose such a mode already, but not all. The performance gain over Mode X is worthwhile. I’ll open source what I find.

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Reposted by Robert Sundling

Wisconsin Watch @wisconsinwatch.org · 05/08/2025

"The deal is the latest development in a saga involving some of the video game industry’s lowest-paid workers. It comes after Microsoft purchased Activision Blizzard, Raven Software’s parent company, leaving the roughly two dozen testers to negotiate with one of the world’s largest tech companies."

wisconsinwatch.org

These Wisconsin video game workers were first to unionize at a major U.S. studio. Three years later, they have a contract.

The deal at Raven Software in Middleton affects quality assurance testers, some of the video game industry’s lowest-paid workers. It caps a saga that included a strike and a purchase by Micro…

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Ullrich von Bassewitz's BGI drivers are excellent SVGA reference code. The comments are in German. As English alternatives exist, human translation may not be worth the effort, but I used GitHub Copilot to translate the comments to English for my own use. Someone else may find this useful as well.

github.com

GitHub - RobertSundling/uvb-svga-bgi-english: English language translation of Ullrich von Bassewitz's SVGA BGI drivers

English language translation of Ullrich von Bassewitz's SVGA BGI drivers - RobertSundling/uvb-svga-bgi-english

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

I'm working on a special-purpose MOD library today and testing it with MOD files by Dr. Awesome (Bjørn Lynne) while listening to his new album Point of Significance. Perfect blend of old and new. @bjornlynne.bsky.social

music.apple.com

Point of Significance by Bjørn Lynne on Apple Music

Album · 2025 · 16 Songs

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Official Commodore® @commodoreofficial.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

We Did It. Commodore Is Home. With the final payment locking in the deal CEO Peri Fractic signed the final contracts in The Netherlands, officially acquiring all 47 original Commodore trademarks. After decades adrift, the brand is finally where it belongs - with fans. #WeAreCommodore commodore.net

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

Back in 1991, I wrote a fully functional text adventure development system for DOS. I never ended up making any actual games with it, and it's now been untouched for almost 35 years. Just for fun and historical interest, I've decided to make it and its source code freely available on GitHub. Enjoy!

github.com

GitHub - RobertSundling/ADVGEN

Contribute to RobertSundling/ADVGEN development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 26/07/2025

I thought I’d try a little experiment. First, some background. Back in the late 80’s or early 90’s I made this logotype for a BBS door game I was writing. I only created these specific letters for it, by hand.

The words “BLACK MAGIC” in a whimsical low-resolution hand-drawn bitmap font.

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Reposted by Robert Sundling

NPR @npr.org · 19/07/2025

Congress eliminated public media funding. At a time of deep division, public media brings us together. Help keep it strong. Join our monthly donors today: n.pr/458sOhq

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

It’s been so long (decades!) since I worked on my Mattel Aquarius emulator. It probably wouldn’t be the worst idea to release it as open source, although I’m not entirely sure there’s any point to that, considering the saturation of such things these days.

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

In the 1990's and 2000's, I used a CoStar LabelWriter II Plus to print shipping labels for my shareware games. CoStar's driver didn't support the II Plus on 32-bit machines, so I wrote this. It emulates a LabelWriter XL and converts the datastream to LabelWriter II Plus format. Now on GitHub. 😃

github.com

GitHub - RobertSundling/costar-xl-to-ii-converter: Vintage tool to convert raw CoStar LabelWriter XL printer data to LabelWriter II Plus format

Vintage tool to convert raw CoStar LabelWriter XL printer data to LabelWriter II Plus format - RobertSundling/costar-xl-to-ii-converter

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

Anyone else remember when computer mice came in tins? #gaming #razer #boomslang

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

This free 3D model of the Tandy 1000 by River Yang (the person behind freepoly.org) is fantastic. Perfect detail, and it was clearly made with fantastic care. I’m planning to use a scaled-down version of the main body for a 3D-printed project in the coming months. There’s a great PCjr model as well.

freepoly.org

IBM Tandy 1000

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

I just wrote and published a utility for extracting files from the .cre files that are used in Microsoft Links Extreme, for @wildweasel486.bsky.social The tricky part was reverse-engineering the custom compression algorithm they used (which turned out to be an LZW variant), but it's all working!

github.com

GitHub - RobertSundling/lx-cre-util

Contribute to RobertSundling/lx-cre-util development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

I just happened across this old animated PC Christmas card I made in 1993. I made it from scratch in about an hour, creating the artwork and writing a tiny MS-DOS/VGA sprite system in Borland C++ and assembly. I put it on GitHub if anyone wants to see it. 😃🎅🎄 github.com/RobertSundli...

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

I love when a raw bitmap image just happens to be the same width as your hex viewer. 🤣

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

I’ve been working on updating my website to include some of the software I wrote 30+ years ago. Here’s a teaser.

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Robert Sundling @robertsundling.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

I remain unconvinced that the new AI "Rewrite" feature of Windows Notepad is useful for revising DOS configuration files.

The image shows Windows Notepad open with a CONFIG.SYS file, containing DOS system configuration commands. The Notepad AI Rewrite feature is in use, transforming the system settings into a poetic format. The poem personifies DOS and memory management elements like HIMEM, UMB, and buffers. The interface includes options for rewriting styles, navigation controls, and a "Replace" button.

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