retrocomputing

##The Cyber Surgeons Club in Argentina

On May 20, we were at El club del Cybercirujeo (spanish for "Cyber.-trashing Club"), a meeting/performance/showup at the Techeles Cultural Center, Alsina 1748, City of Buenos Aires, #Argentina.

Taking advantage of the participation of ~crazyjane and ~deadguy in the organization and ~arnica who was also present, we enjoyed the arrival of ~ffuentes from Chile to Argentina. The event found us ~peron, ~jota and ~thaiel in forms that can be described as pseudophysical.

For me it's a great pleasure to meet them all in person, which adds to the gathering of previous days! Althought we met in the data networks for a couple of years now (including on the SDF), this encounter makes me very happy, of course.

The event is carried out for the benefit of the cyber-trasher masses. These involves a network of organized communities framed in the recycling and development of computer equipment. They restore computers to their original design specifications, but also apply updates and modifications to give them new practicality.

The union of the power of knowledge and the mind while focused on a great task allows them to modernize the bowels of the hardware.

How the hackers do it

New and more powerful memory chips beef up machines that previously could only be described as zombies. Through the implantation of seasoned electronic brains extracted from mechanical corpses, and perhaps using hearts whose format is a new solid state drive, our delusional cyber-surgeons can breathe new life into them.

Undoubtly this needs a new soul, and not just any: the Cyber-surgeons install strongly ideologized operating systems under the banner of Free Software. These multipurpose programs are generally derivatives of the GNU Project added to Linux-type kernels: they can thus be copied, manipulated and extended freely without any imposition thanks to the licenses that specifically allow and guarantee it. So it becomes possible to revive the unearthed machines as if they were a tamed Frankenstein capable of serving the People.

The hardware could be considered important, but we must give it the dimension that it really has: that of being a malleable tool for joint work aimed at the Liberation of men, which must be superior.

The hacker show

Thus we find a lightning setup that revolves around several booths of Arduino devices to draw, mixing modern hardware with handmade controllers. Those are hacks involving levers and buttons from old unserviceable arcade machines. Some devices mutate to generate sound or interact with cell phone cameras or cathode ray tube television sets, as the screens illuminate with games. An almost fossilized Commodore 64s is revived thanks to its electronic DNA. Originally it was assembled in the 80s by the suburban Drean washing machine factory.

Some videos: https://toobnix.org/videos/embed/ab6b213a-53d4-4358-8a14-64bee1b6e17a?start=25s

Another video: https://toobnix.org/w/irCwpgpuSjkGMzrom1NHRK

In the #retrocomputing PC equipment area, several DOS games were made available to the public. Several old gaming PC were used, including a remarkable PC AT clones with a 12-inch amber monochrome monitor - a present from the Argentine computer past.

In addition to being able to enjoy the classics Arkanoid, BlockOut or Prince of Persia, we tagged it by leaving a message from the hackers of texto-plano.xyz (our public UNIX community in Spanish) among the source code in the AUTOEXEC.BAT.

As often happens, the true social network is friendship, and the Club is engendered by its mutants, who appear in dozens of colors, of all ages and genders.

Children shall have the Right and Duty to have fun in a healthy way, without privative licenses of any kind clouding their existence. That is why at their side there was what was boldly described as "the end of the world's largest cybercafe with recycled Linux". Some twelve notebooks with Huayra GNU/Linux ran an Unreal-derived FPS to make such a boast. There were frenzied laser and rocket firefights, arbitrated by a router recovered from a trash bin and improved with OpenWRT, producing a wired local area network without any appreciable delay. Not bad for these little machines. None of the tech-savvy thinks those suffer from lack of power.

https://toobnix.org/w/7HZBsqu13uNcddpBGBpYSn

Where there is a need, there is a right.

At the end we met a lot of people from the data network scene, and then the interactive music show are launched. Live and loud chiptune music by a lineup of maestros of the genre like Mambo Rivas, Cinematronic, Coke n Aspirin and some another in charge of speakers and video walls.

I left listening to the most wonderful music, which for me is synthesized with Free Software.

~perón