Computer Log

Heard about BiliBili on Linus Tech Tips or some Linus show. It’s a Chinese online video sharing platform based in Shanghai. 

With computer running. Had some thunder storms portable power station made a few clicks. Decided it was best to run it unplugged. Computer kept running… Nice.

My “channel” doesn’t have one single topic. It’s just things that interest me at the time. It leans towards computer emulation, because a big part of my interests is in that area. The very first video I posted to my “channel” was on Feb 18th 2018 it was titled “Run RSTS in a PDP simulator in Linux”. This used the simh emulator. Because I started my career on a DEC PDP-11 computer running RSTS/E. I was a DEC fanboy and actually contacted a headhunter, before the days of the Internet to find me my first “real” job using DEC computers. Preferably using RSTS/E but not to the exclusion of other DEC OS’s. I noticed this headhunter posted quite a few DEC related jobs… in the newspaper classified ads. I was coming straight out of community college so I had no real world computer experience. I was working (and paid) in the college computer department, with both IBM/360/370 running MVT and DEC PDP-11 computers running RSTS/E. So I asked her if she could find me a job using DEC equipment. Because I liked working interactively, unlike the IBM where I punched cards and waited for listings. Of course IBM had 3270 terminals where you could do interactive programming. But I was unaware of this at the time. This was back when you typed out your resume and cover page on a manual Typewriter and snail mailed it to a company you were interested in. In my case I sent my scant resume to the headhunter.

My second computer video, which didn’t get many views and my personal favorite Mainframe video was “Using Virtual Tapes to transfer data to MVS on Hercules!” March 31st 2021. I developed an interest in Hercules because I stumbled on a Moshix video about MVT. That was the IBM OS I learned on in college. I thought Moshix’s videos were my first exposure to Hercules around that time but it wasn’t. Thanks to keeping log files with screen captures I see I actually first used Hercules and 3270 emulators in 2013. I made a entry in my logfile with the description “Ran VM/370 in a IBM S/370, ESA/390, and z/390 hardware emulator on Linux”. It was very nostalgic seeing that big green VM/370 logo on the screen. I didn’t identify the emulator as Hercules, although thanks to the screenshot… it clearly was. More details here. His MVT videos led me to his much more interesting TK4-/MVS videos.

Now my top curiosity at the time was, does this emulator simply execute IBM 360/370 on up commands, or could it do real Mainframe work? I would typically make up a few fake customer records, such as Herman Munster, Mickey mouse, Donald Duck etc. But I would quickly run out of ideas for fake customers or get bored trying. And I wanted a lot of customer data to run tests on. So I had previously written a Python program that created random real “looking” customer data. You know random names created from first/last databases, address (with valid C/S/Z), various dates such as birth dates, real “looking” credit card account numbers with a valid mod 10 check digit. Many fields, and a record length that held all these fields. I think my records were over 150 characters. I wanted my Cobol and MVS utility programs to work with a million records at least NOT 20. Of course my fake records created with Python lived locally on Linux (could have been MS-Windows).

So I needed a way to transfer a large number of records to a MVS data set. Thankfully I found Jay Moseley’s MAKETAPE utility. For my purposes this turned out to be the best solution. It could convert a million ASCII records into EBCDIC records in the blink of an eye. I assume that most people used MAKETAPE to create records for the IBM mainframe. However I later used this same program to make a smaller batch of EBCDIC records to process on the ASCII DEC PDP-11 computer. Because in my first real computer job on DEC equipment we had many customers (probably all) that would send us IBM EBCDIC tapes. So we had to convert those tapes to ASCII data for use on the DEC mini-computer. It was slow… but early days exciting.

So that’s a long winded description of why “”Using Virtual Tapes to transfer data to MVS on Hercules!” was/is my favorite Mainframe video that I made. I’ve made a few other Mainframe videos since then because it was a big interest at the time. However… been there… done that. I did a few more enjoyable… to me videos on VM and DOS/VS. I had a very fleeting interest in writing CICS using KICKS however… why? I’ve forgotton so much. Again… been there… done that. Not looking for a CICS job anytime soon. I’ve done a few other computer emulation videos.

Speaking of Jay Moseley he probably doesn’t get as much credit for all this mainframe stuff as he should. Clearly many of Moshix’s early videos were created from his documentation.

Three more people deserve a lot of credit for creating a usable MVS system. This is the most usable of all the IBM mainframe OSs available…  

Volker Bandke creator of MVS TK3 (I never used)
Jürgen Winkelsmann creator of MVS TK4-
Rob Prins creator of MVS TK5 the current best version

Also for me personally… VM/370 Community Edition or VM/370 CE which is based on my first usage of an IBM OS running under Hercules.
DOS/VS is pretty useless without it IMHO
This allowed me to create a much more usable DOS/VS running under VM

Moshix gets credit for creating many helpful How To videos. His MVT video which led to his TK4- videos reignited my interest in this area.

I did a few videos on the very cool and overlooked “Z390 Portable Mainframe Assembler and Emulator”.

I got very interested in solar energy and portable solar power generators. So I did a silly video on creating a wooden rack to support portable solar panels.

I did a video about how I got interested in the TRS-80 (and owned one) because of StarTrek on the DEC PDP-11 mini computer.

I did a short video using X-Plane 11. Flight simulation… another interest.

I recently developed a big interest in converting my DVDs and Blue Rays to a digital format, for use in a media player. This was because I discovered many of my DVDs were going bad… disc rot. Plex and Jellyfin are the most popular software in this category… by far. But I settled on Kodi. It accomplishes what I want. And if for some reason I later decide to use a different media player, I don’t think it would be too hard to convert my digital content to another format. Actually no conversion would be required just renaming to their standards. The hard part is done… ripping my DVDs and Blue-Rays to disk. So I made one video regarding one aspect of that.

I think some of these I only made public a short time. But they exist on my “channel”.

Basically I make a video every now and then about whatever I’m interested in at the time.

I had problems combining different videos (different resolutions). I was able to solve the problem however I’m not sure I can explain it, but I will try. So this description may change every now and then, as I figure better or more correct ways to do things. I may also not describe the best way but a way I found that… works for me.

I started out adding videos fine, then on playback I noticed certain clips were small and not filling most of the screen.

So I had 2 videos to combine…
Video 1 1920×1080
Video 2 1080×1920

If I open the 1080×1920 first… then the 1920×1080 video looks small
If I open the 1920×1080 first… then they both look normal (like they do if I play them individually)

Depending on which video you load into kdenlive (NOT put on timeline) first affects how it’s displayed… in kdenlive AND the output video. Below the 1920×1080 video was loaded first and it fills the screen in kdenlive and the actual video. If I load the 1080×1920 video first… you can see the 1920×1080 video displays smaller.

I found another way to fix the resolution… but it is confusing.

Select Settings on the main screen. This screen will appear…

Click on the red area.

This rather confusing screen appears. However if you click on the top red area then the bottom half becomes editable where you can make changes. Such as 1920×1080 for size. When done enter a description in the Description field. You can now select this for your project. Then you can open the 1080×1920 first and it won’t affect the 1920×1080 video.

However it use to say something about “Switch”, which I always clicked without knowing what it was saying when dragging a video in… and now it doesn’t say that.

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It turns out I didn’t need this command to accomplish my goal. But I’ll document it anyway… because I may need it in the future.

ffmpeg -i “input.mp4” -vf “scale=1920:1080” output.mp4

This command displays the resolution for a video

exiftool “video.mp4” | grep “Image Size”

I might have to take a look at Arch based Omarchy Linux. I had already been hearing good things about it. I recently watched Network Chuck give it a good review. Now The Lunduke Journal is reporting to my surprise that it’s a non-woke distribution. Network Chuck didn’t say any thing political about it, however he ends his podcast with a prayer. So it’s not surprising.

Landuke pointed to this interesting article about it from right winged and non-tech Daily Wire. Looks like it’s got some big backers too.

A few tips because I forgot some things. When converting multiple TV files. On Open Source, if you double click (open) the source directory, you won’t be able to add multiple files to the queue, so just select (single click) the source directory without opening it.

Many people are already aware of these. But for someone who lives in a bubble… they’re new.

I just heard about Kick, a streaming app and Threema another end-to-end messenager.

OK in keeping with my previous post, it seems like the best use for my power station is to use it as a UPS for my computer. Below it is being so used. The computer is plugged into the AC output The power station is plugged into the wall. I has pass-thru charging so in this case the power is going directly from the wall (grid) to the computer. However in the event of a power failure it will switch to the power station within 20 milliseconds.

I haven’t had a computer UPS in a very long time. The last UPS I had would provide enough power to finish up your tasks the shut everything down in a orderly manner. This power station, acting as a UPS will keep my computer running over 3 hrs.

What the app looks like. Obviously I can’t snap the picture on both at the exact same time, which accounts for the slight difference in wattage.

However I didn’t buy it for a UPS, I bought it for sleeping purposes so I can run a fan and a small radio for at least 2 nights for extended power outages in the summer. So I actually would finish up and shutdown fairly quickly. I can do minor computer activities on my phone. It just turns out it’s best to use is as a UPS. It’s the healthiest way to keep the battery at 100%.

If I was shopping for a computer UPS today before any of my new found portable power station knowledge, I would no doubt have bought a small unit with only 10-15 min of reserve.

I just did some searching on Amazon, and it appears that UPSs now have very similar technologies to power stations. Including using the superior LiFePO4 batteries.The biggest difference I see is power stations have the ability to charge by solar. And the UPS has surge protection, however my Anker power strip also provides surge protection.

For this test I have power cords running off the front of my desk. I need to buy a small hole saw so I can run these cords out the back of the table that is attached flush against the wall.