New Album: Polished Turds

When you throw away your computer, you should probably format the hard drive first. If you don't, your contents are likely to end up on Classical Gas Emissions, and that's exactly what's happening in this entry.

First, I must tell you that in the 7 years I've been writing this blog, I've never had more fun putting together an entry than I did with this one. Every bit of putting this content together was fun and enjoyable!

So what did I find?



This computer belonged to a guy named Kellen Guilbault, who I may add is a fantastic guitar player. Kellen recorded a whole bunch of songs, many of them being classic rock covers. These were all multitrack recordings that were made with a piece of software called Cubase.



I initially found a handful of poorly mixed songs that were in various stages of completeness. After the excitement of finding these, I dug around in the .wav files sitting in the software's default recording folder and found more hidden gems, totalling over 80 minutes of "music".

Now although Kellen is a damn good guitar player, that's pretty much all that's enjoyable about these recordings with a few exceptions. The timing is off, many of the tracks were recorded with a cheap microphone, and Kellen isn't a very good singer. For a couple of songs, he sought out the aid of a female singer (name unknown) who does a better job. I also believe that Kellen's brother Marc is the one playing the drums.

After gathering up the songs, I transferred them to my own PC and put them into my preferred choice of multitrack software: Multitrack Studio. I remixed them and put some much-needed effects on the tracks. I could have fixed many of them with extensive editing, but editing is tedious and I would have to send Kellen a bill for my time (I found his address on his resume). Plus, the songs are extremely entertaining in their original sloppy, out-of-sync form.

We've got a bunch of Led Zeppelin covers, a couple of Stones and Beatles songs, and a handfull of other well-known classic rockers. There's also a few of Kellen's originals in this collection. The quality of the songs is all over the place, ranging from excellent to down-right-fucking-awful.

The best ones here are Kellen's "Song Zero", Neil Young's "The Needle and the Damage Done" and The Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" which lacked vocal tracks, so I sang them all and mixed them in. This is the only song I did editing on, since there was a bar missing which rendered the song useless for recording the second verse of vocals.

The worst ones are "You Shook Me All Night Long" and "House of the Rising Sun". They're absolutely atrocious renditions.

Since I did such a fantastic job remixing these songs, I Christened the collection with the name "Polished Turds" and made a nice album cover using a couple of photos I found on the hard drive.



Here's some options for your enjoyment:

Download the entire collection! (You WON'T be sorry)
Listen to "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
Listen to "The Wind Cries Mary"

If you're wanting to know how much I improved the sound, feel free to hear the original mix of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".

And that's pretty much it!

On September 24th, I'll be making another appearance on Amateur Hour. In the next couple of weeks, I'm also planning on releasing the album I recorded, so there's lots of exciting things coming up! Stay tuned...

Dead Computer Found!

It's been a long time since I posted the contents of a PC I found. I can't remember if it was in the trash or abandoned by the computer recycler, but I don't think it's more than five years old with the most recent files being created in the fall of 2010. When I got it, it didn't power up. I switched out the power supply and like magic, it turned on and let me into this family's world of photos and videos.

The methods of pulling files off PCs I find vary with hardware and operating systems, and because this one is fairly new, I was able to easily transfer the files over my LAN. The most frustrating part of compiling this collection of stuff was dealing with the multiple and sometimes unusual video formats.

But here it is... A lovely collection of the best of what I found on this PC. I hope you enjoy it!

Click Here to Check It Out!

X-rated BBS Ads

Here's another computer I scrounged up. It's a cute yet ugly little 386. Yes, I modified the display to show "FU". This computer has Windows 3.1 on it along with many DOS applications, one of which was a .gif image viewer. I used this piece of software to view the many x-rated .gif files that were stored on this computer.

There's quite a few interesting things about this batch of porn I found. First of all, the date stamps are from 1993. Second, the few that have copyright years noted on them are from before 1993. Third, they're all in color. Fourth, they all have BBS ads added into the image (a BBS (Bulletin Board System) was a computer system people could dial into and download files, post messages, and play 'door games' such as "Legend of the Red Dragon", all of which predated the popularity of the Internet). The BBS owners likely put their ads onto these pictures to prevent other BBSes from stealing them for their own, and to help promote their boards.

Computer image scanners didn't really appear until the early-to-mid 90s, and even so, the affordable ones were initially black and white handheld pieces of junk. The people who scanned these images either had a shitload of money to spend on scanning equipment, or they had access to a color image scanner belonging to a professional business.

Even color PC monitors weren't in existence for very long before these images were scanned. I clearly recall using Windows 3.11 on a 286 with a monochrome monitor.

First, the warnings...
THESE IMAGES ARE NOT SUITABLE FOR WORK!!!
THESE IMAGES ARE NOT SUITABLE FOR THOSE UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE!!!

And now, feel free to enjoy these nifty-looking BBS ads:


The Dirty Hacker BBS
Electric Blue BBS
The McHenry BBS
Rusty Eddie's BBS
The Taste BBS
Windy City / TomCatPix BBS

If you want to download all of them (like the guy in the comment section), click here!

Found: Andrea's Computer

It's been a while since I've collected data from a discarded computer. I haven't really bothered doing this for a while since I haven't had the time. Collecting, sorting, and reading someone else's writings takes a lot of time.

I picked up this discarded computer for the sake of having an IBM Model 5150. It has a couple of nice upgrades, namely the 3 1/2" floppy drive, and the 20 Megabyte hard drive (which was completely full). Since this picture was taken, I've also found a matching IBM monochrome monitor to go with this system.

In the picture above, I am transferring the data onto my trusty little Sharp laptop. I tried connecting my netbook to the 5150, but the USB serial adapter and Linux weren't very co-operative in communicating with it. There's nothing that works like good ol' DOS when it comes to these old computers.

The hard drive contained stories and poetry written by a 13 year old girl named Andrea Woodrow. Her name has been changed for obvious reasons. I did a Facebook search on her real name, and found that we have a mutual friend on Facebook. It's VERY tempting to contact her and send her a copy of her own work.

The stories are generally incomplete, and so is the novel series that she was writing. Her poetry is actually quite decent though, but perhaps I should let you judge the content for yourself. I hereby bring you, The Writings of Andrea Woodrow!

Found: Heavily Modified Commodore 128D

It seems that I've been quite lucky with finding old Commodore computer stuff over the past little while. Today I picked up some Vic-20 stuff from a friend on Facebook. But a couple weeks ago, I found something quite special, unique, and incredibly cool behind the big bad recycling depot...



For those of you who know what Commodore computers look like, you'll see that this does NOT look like a Commodore computer. But it truly is. It's a Commodore 128D. This is what it's SUPPOSED to look like:



Somebody took this machine and put it into a PC-style case. But that's not all they did. They also jammed in a 1571 floppy drive, a 1581 floppy drive, a Modem, a home-made internal cartridge bay which includes a Fast Load cartridge, The REU expansion, and the Super 81 utilities. The Jiffy DOS upgrade has also been added, and it seems the ROM has been customized since the guy's name, address, and phone number are displayed whenever the computer is turned on in 128 mode. (I edited out the sensitive information)



To change between different modes and settings, there is a flip-down door on the front panel which exposes a bunch of custom knobs and switches to tweak the 128 to your personal needs!



Even the original LEDs on the front panel of the case have been wired up!



All the ports on the machine (except the tape drive connection) have been mounted on the left side of the case. Also included is an electrical outlet where you can easily plug in your monitor and printer!



I believe that the main power supply in it is NOT a Commodore supply, but something that was hacked together.



Here are the reset button and power switches for the Computer and Floppy Drives. I'm guessing the square hole is where the modem connector was originally supposed to go.



And now, here's some pictures of what the inside looks like. The actual C-128 mother board is sadly buried right at the bottom of everything.











And here's me, enjoying this fantastically modified Commodore 128D by watching the Britney Spears slideshow! (WARNING: Link NSFW)

It's My Birthday!!!

It's blog-entry Sunday, and my birthday has magically fallen upon it. I was trying to figure out what to do for this entry, and then I figured I'd write about important things that happened in my life which led up to me creating this goofy blog.

I was a huge music junkie, even when I was five years old. I still own a cassette of "music" which I recorded on my parents' floor-model stereo system (yes, I knew how to work a tape recorder at that age). The tape was probably a K-Mart brand (green label) 90 minute low-noise compact cassette. The tape has seen many better days. It's been eaten a few times and the tape is twisted in some spots which have been permanently pressed for well over 20 years. While I was cueing up the tape to create this MP3, the tape deck decided to wound it yet again by eating it. I carefully unwound it from the capstan and performed yet another surgery on it. I won't let this tape die after having it for some 25 years! Regardless, here's a really irritating children's song (and the portion that I pulled out of my deck's throat):

Listen to a stupid animal song!

The first computer I owned was a TRS-80 Model I. I got my first taste of programming on this thing, and ironically it gave me a jumpstart into working with electronics, trying to find (and repair) a reliable shoebox tape recorder which could save and load programs reliably. This computer cost me a whole ten dollars, and a few years later I stupidly re-sold it for ten dollars. It's worth more on Ebay these days:

 

The first computer program I ever wrote was on the Commodore Vic-20. It was called "Dot Junk", a really stupid math game which didn't really make any sense. Regardless, it was my first venture into programming my own stuff. The original version I programmed needed a RAM expansion since it didn't fit into the generous 3.5K of RAM the Vic leaves for the user. About a year or two later when my programming got more efficient, I made a slimmed down version. Here's a couple of screenshots:



I can't believe it was 20 years ago that I wrote this thing!

If you have a Vic-20 emulator, you can download 'Dot Junk' and try it out!


The bulk of my teenage years in the 1990s included programming on my Vic-20 and later my Commodore 64. Also eating up my time was creating mashups and medleys (under the name Canned Peaches) on my reel 2 reel machines and whatever other analog stereo equipment I owned. Here's a picture of the setup I had in my bedroom:



Now that I have webspace, I'm planning on making all my Canned Peaches albums available for downloading in the (hopefully) near future. Here's just one of the masterpieces I created during my depressing, sheltered teenage life... and what an appropriate song it is! It's my goofy, messed up birthday medley (unfortunately, I'm not turning 16 this year):

Click Here for "Happy 16th Birthday" 


I believe it was in 1996 when my brother got me started on playing guitar. My mother bought me a really cheap acoustic guitar from Consumers Distributing. I played the shit out of that thing. Eventually, my uncle sent me an electric guitar which I still have to this day. One of the greatest feelings I've ever experienced is writing a song and hearing it come alive on stage. I'll put up some of my songs (including video footage) in the future. I just don't have the time to transfer and edit any video today.

In the year 1999, I entered into the already dying BBS scene. I loved BBSing with a passion, and decided to pay for a separate phone line and run my own BBS. I had around 50 door games (including X-rated ones), Fidonet, and a file base full of pr0n. Here's the ANSI graphic people saw when they logged in:



All this stuff (and more) has contributed to my love for music, old technology, and all things bizarre. A lot of people tell me I have no life. The thing is, this IS my life, and I find it to be a very satisfying one. Happy birthday to me, and all the oddball things in life I enjoy!

The Modern Computer

I'm addicted to owning ancient computer books. I've been addicted to them ever since they were new. With the exception of larger storage space, more RAM and faster speeds, the basic parts of a computer haven't changed all that much. Below are some scans from these old computer books, telling you about the main components of the computer you're using right now. Enjoy the pictures, the descriptions, and yes, the prices of computer hardware of yesteryear! This blog entry is a bit graphic intensive, so click read more to see the rest of the images.

Full Computer System:




...read more...

Video: Colby's Missing Memory

25 cents can't buy a lot of things these days. But sometimes, it can buy an hour of hilarious cheesy Christian brainwashing! I present to you the greatest Children's video ever created:



Why is it that people who create Christian entertainment take the latest fads and make them completely fucking lame? The fad this time is the personal computer boom of the 1980s. Since computers were totally cool, the Kids' Praise Company decided to make this computer even more cool! here's how they did it...

Colby the Computer's features:
- Integrated Casio Keyboard
- Roller Skates
- Stupid Hat
- The Entire Bible Programmed into Him
- Voice of a Flaming Homosexual

In keeping with Colby's last feature, they decided to cast an entire group of gay kids. Just look at these screenshots:

    

Anyway, here's the story in a nutshell: The tough kid fucks up Colby's floppy drive by turning a knob that controls Colby's "voltage regulator override circuit" which ends up giving Colby a "data-ache". The section of Colby's memory that gets erased is the part of the bible that talks about love. Anyway, Colby needs to "re-position his files", so they send the Mario Bros. of Christian computer repair: Flip & Flop.



These two guys are dressed (poorly) like 5 1/4" floppy disks, and have dreadful fake british accents. After the kids try to "re-program" love into Colby, the Mario Bros. specially build a new floppy drive and install it into Colby who then discovers that all his missing memory was on his "backup file".



I used flaming pink to circle what the floppy drive looks like. I don't know about you, but I've NEVER seen a floppy drive that looks like the top-hat token from Monopoly.


The terminology and the representation of computer hardware is so hilariously inaccurate, you'll swear that the cool Christians who wrote this piece of garbage got their computer knowledge from "2001: A Space Odyssey" (or they randomly pulled technical words out of their homo-cornholes)

Enjoy the clip. Notice the dreadful choreography, the cheesy music, the rollerskating computer, and the Angus Young keytar solo!

My Oldest Piece of Computer Hardware

I've been home sick most of the week, so I figured I'd kill some time by writing a new blog entry. What I'm about to show you is the largest, most useless thing I own, and I'm quite proud to own one. I've come across many ancient pieces of computer history in my time which included cylinder hard drives and magnetic tapes galore, but this item is quite special...

Behold!



It's a punched paper tape reader made by Decitek / OK Tool & Machine Corp. It measures 23" x 21" x 11" and weighs approximately one ton. This particular machine has 8 sensors for data reading, making it one of the more technologically advanced versions (HA HA HA). So, how the hell did I end up with this thing?

My previous workplace manufactured electronic circuit boards. They used this thing to control a wire wrap machine. Wire wrap went the way of the dodo back in the 1970s in favor of printed circuit boards. My workplace held onto this equipment because the boss didn't like to throw anything away. You should see the crap that collected in that place.

Not too long before I switched jobs, they did an extensive cleaning of the place. The paper tape reader along with a piece of the wire wrap machine were slated for the BFI bin. I happily threw the other piece of this machine into the dumpster, but I didn't have the heart to throw out the reader, so it ended up in the back of my truck (along with a few bags of pre-cut wire)

One of the reasons I didn't keep the entire machine is because it was incomplete, and the other piece of it was larger than the this thing. I also had no desire to keep a phenomenal amount of shit in my garage.



Here's the back of it. I believe that this is actually a rack mount reader put into a case along with a specially designed interface for the wire wrap application. To my dismay, the cables to connect this thing were nowhere to be found. When powered up, this thing makes a sound like nothing else I've ever heard. It sounds like.... well, like a computer lab from the 1970s.



When I peek through the vents on the top, I see a 25 pin male connector. I'm led to believe that it's an RS232 port, but without a paper tape (nor the desire to take this thing apart), I cannot prove this. It would be nice to have a paper tape to try the thing out, but they cost a small fortune on Ebay. Perhaps I'll run across some one day when I least expect it.

It's too bad I don't have the punching machine because I have a BASIC computer program in one of my old computer books that will write text on the tape:



Could you imagine installing Windows off paper tape? It would take months to do it, and probably hundreds of rolls of tape!

Apple Hacking

I recently saved another lot of computers from the big bad computer 'recycling' depot. As you may recall, they just take whatever they want out of the computers and then toss them in the dumpster.

Anyway, I got an Apple Power PC in this lot. When I got it home, I noticed that some of it was missing. Instead of a motherboard, the previous owner stuffed in a little note:



Unfortunately, they left the hard drive inside!

Since the motherboard is gone, I have no way of browsing this hard drive on the original machine. So, I took out the hard drive (which in this case was an IDE drive) and tossed it into a PC. I fired up a Linux live CD, mounted the drive, and I'm now able to see all the goodies included on it!



So far, it doesn't look like there's anything worth taking. Oh well, one of the other PCs was quite fruitful with data, so I'll be posting some goodies off that once I'm finished with the Kacey Beach PC.

Pentium 75 MHz: Thoughts of a Teenager

  

Here's a nice computer I dragged home. It was destined for recycling as someone had dumped it off behind a computer recycling depot. The thing about this 'recycling' depot is all they do is disassemble it, take whatever they want out of the unit (usually nothing if it's too old) and throw it in the dumpster. Hardly recycling if you ask me.

Anyway, I powered it up and was delighted by a badly color-coordinated copy of Windows 3.1! Believe it or not, I actually enjoyed Windows 3.1. There really was no other interface like it, and it sat on top of my favorite Microsoft operating system: MS-DOS. (In case you're wondering, my second favorite is Windows 2000.)

From what I can gather from the documents and files on this PC, it was used by a teenager. The documents (and pictures) are really quite interesting and amusing, so I created a new blog to store them in.

The contents of this blog will be more upbeat and positive in contrast to the journals that I've previously posted.

So now, I am pleased to bring you ....
From the PC of Kacey Beach!

The Garage Jukebox (v2.1)

  

At long last, I'm writing about my Garage PC. This is actually version 2.1. The original garage computer was a horizontal Compaq Pentium II machine running Win98, 48M of RAM, and one drive bay which held a single DVD-ROM drive. After deciding I wanted more DVD drives, I made it my goal to find a different computer with a case that had more drive bays.

The new candidate was my cousin's old computer which he gave to me as payment for installing Ubuntu on his new PC. Here's the specs on it before I opened it up and started hacking away:

- Pentium 133MHz (yes, a downgrade)
- 42M RAM
- Windows 95
- 500M Hard Drive

It had a couple of modifications that I made to it while he owned it. I put in a CD burner and an extra plug on the power supply for a second hard drive.

When I got it, I found out that the floppy controller was dead after trying to boot off a floppy, and trying about 3 floppy drives. Oh well, I didn't really need the floppy drive.

After putting a 1.7G hard drive into a PC capable of booting off CD-ROM, I installed Damn Small Linux v3.4.11 (which in my opinion is WAY better than version 4.x.) The great thing about Damn Small Linux is it searches for hardware on each boot which means you can just swap the HD into another PC and it will run fine.

  
Rear View and The Guts

Over time, I collected 3 DVD-ROM drives. The sound card has 3 internal audio inputs, so I'm able to play Audio CDs on each of the drives if I wish to do so. Ripping, downloading music, and modifying the MP3 tags has been the most time-consuming part. You can fit approximately 700 MP3s on a DVD-R (224kbps encoding). This would be double if dual layer discs are used.

I installed a USB 2.0 card into the computer so I could use USB flash drives with it. The card has 4 external USB ports, and one internal port. I ended up taking a USB extension cable, cutting one end off it, and soldering it onto a backplate which had two USB ports on it. I took a floppy bay cover, cut a hole in it with a dremel tool, and mounted the backplate onto it so I could plug a flash drive into the front of the computer. Not only is this useful, but it covers up the hole where the floppy drive used to be located!

For the future, I may take the USB hub that I have kicking around and mounting it inside the PC, making multiple USB ports on the front of this machine. But I probably won't be implementing that until I decide to make this computer entirely solid-state since the DVD-ROM drives start failing at around -30 degrees in our cold Canadian winters. I'll probably be moving entirely to solid state once 4G flash drives drop significantly in price. In other words, I'll probably make it 100% solid state in about two years.

Anyway, over the last month, I've been preparing to give the ol' Garage Jukebox a bit of an upgrade which I completed this week. I purchased a LaCie external CD burner at a yard sale for $1, and a Sony DVD-ROM drive (with a bad belt) for $2. I opened the external drive, took out the CD burner (made by Lite-On), and installed the DVD drive (repaired with a new belt). Believe it or not, it works great! Not sure how Windows would deal with this since it needs specific drivers to use it, but Linux is happy to make it work for me.


The old burner sitting on top of the hacked drive

Instead of turning the external drive on and off when I need it, I built a 'power bar' that connects to the switched power output on the power supply, using a plug from an old power supply and some outlets I pulled out an old UPS. Some of you may remember this plug on the power supply was used for making the power button on your PC control your monitor too.


The Home-Made Power Bar

I had some 72 pin RAM kicking around here that I am no longer using, so I jacked up the RAM from 42M to 128M. There was no noticeable performance improvement after doing this.

I wrote a couple of scripts to make drive mounting a lot easier to deal with. One click mounts all the drives and fires up the XMMS music player. One click kills XMMS, unmounts the drives, and shuts down the computer.

  
Desktops: Before and After

I also gave Torsmo a re-vamp (the spec display in the top right hand corner). Torsmo seems to be an older verison of Conky, since I used Conky commands to change it. I cleaned off the icons that I almost never use, and aligned them along the top. The desktop looks a lot cleaner now.

  
In the Garage / The Keyboard

The computer resides under my workbench in the garage. It's connected to a 19" monitor I found in the trash, and has a "Windows Certified" keyboard. For the longest time, I didn't even bother having a keyboard attached. I have a set of indoor speakers AND outdoor speakers connected. I can control which ones are on and off with a small switchbox I built. I eventually want to run internet into the garage, since it'll be easier to look up things like chip pinouts when I'm working on something.

  
Speaker Switchbox / Wiring Hell


Outdoor Speaker Above Window

There is a total of 2845 MP3s on this machine. Please note that these are ALL songs I enjoy listening to, and not merely rips of all my CDs with the filler included. I've also made an effort to avoid having duplicate songs, although I know there's a couple of slip-ups which I will fix when I re-organize the DVDs again.

Click here to see the entire playlist!
(You can REALLY tell which bands are my favorite)

Make way for more updates to this computer in the future!