@riley Sadly not, or at least "I probably do but I don't have a schematic and don't want to make everything else depend on the VFD"

@riley No, 5V DC from an ATX power supply. The board hosts an RP2040 which talks I2C to an Acorn A4000 motherboard, parallel 8080-style to a VFD display, and watches what the switch is doing.

@riley I thought of that one - but this is 0.1in padboard and I don't have space for a 14-pin DIP chip. I'm thinking about hooking in another transistor and a resistor to work as a level shifter.

High-side switching 5V devices with a 3V device (in my case an RP2040) is a proper pig.
N-channel FET? Can't turn it all the way on.
P-channel FET? Can't turn it all the way off.
BJT? 1.4V drop when it's switched on, so the 5V lamp gets driven with 3.6V, scarcely better than wiring it straight to the GPIO.

Argh! (Suggestions welcome)

edit: Sadly I can't rewire the switch: it's a 3-pin one with an internal LED. Pins are LED, Switch and common ground.

@foone Bad idea or the best idea

There's also another version of the Pinnacle packaging...
photo credit: Blazing Media, https://www.ebay.com/itm/176084798238

I completely fell down a rabbit hole with Wabash disks. Looks like there are a few different versions:
- Maxi-myte
- "Silver Box"
- Pinnacle Series
- Wabash DataTech blue label

Photo credits:
Maxi-myte: State Library of NC, https://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibrarync/8743834679
Silver: "Cruzin for a Deal", https://www.ebay.com/itm/386250491985?
Pinnacle: vcam2000, https://www.ebay.com/itm/266157181999
Datatech: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/286091441706

This could well be one of the biggest lies ever printed. #digipres

@foone PC actually! It's the cable TV headend. I'm trying to clear out all the old cable converters so I can load my own.
It's a K6-II running Interactive Unix and the General Instrument/Jerrold ACC-4000 software.

@foone Oh go on then...

We get signal.

I think there's a nonzero chance I might end up making PiSCSI emulate WORM devices. Pure absurdity, but I don't want to waste any of the five precious WORM disks I (am soon to) have.

It's an RTS/CTS problem, it's always an RTS/CTS problem.
Except when it's DTR.
Unless it's XON/XOFF (heathens)
It's handshaking all the way down.

The thing that makes me question it the most is, if it's true then the reverse (if a lot of experienced tech guys are in the scene, it should have a lot of experienced tech guys) should also be true. And yet a lot of the websites, groups, and infrastructure are just... cobbled together, like nearly every other hobby I've been involved with.
It's not a bad thing, just a "you'd think it'd be better" thing.

I wonder how true the statement about "tech and the internet is run by furries" actually is. I've worked in three tech companies and in all three - while I was active in the furry scene - I don't think I've ever run into another one at work.

@foone Funnily enough I was looking at used Redbox machines being sold off and had a similar idea. There's been some interesting posts on r/redbox.

@darkrat The oldest one in the results was uploaded in April 2009... I just dug out the tickets for the talk, and my Experience was in 2011.

The Stallman report reminds me of the time I went to see the guy talk at a LUG meeting years ago. There was so much interest, they had to book a university lecture hall - it was big! I was so idealistic - this is one of the visionaries of free software!

RMS started by berating someone for their choice of laptop...

The talk itself was absolutely forgettable... Right until he put his feet up on the table and started picking at them.

Never meet your heroes...