Linking Out
Here's a bit of a link collection. This covers my personal links, i.e. where to find me online, as well as websites I like, YouTube channels I watch, etc., things like that.
Personal Links
- 📧 Send an email
- 🐘 Mastodon at bitbang.social
- 🦋 Bluesky
- ⌨️ GitHub
- ⛏️ The Cutting Room Floor
- ☕ Ko-Fi
- 📺 YouTube — rarely used, except for watching
- 📹 Twitch — not really used anymore
🥚🐛 cohost — read-only from October 2024, offline by end of 2024
Forums, Wikis, etc.
People
Websites or other online presences of people I follow elsewhere and/or had followed on cohost, in no particular order — half or so mutuals, half not, just good people who post fun or interesting stuff.
- xkeeper
- Nicole Express
- Tom James / iiotenki
- Viz
- taizou
- Zero One
- Sanqui
- asie
- aurahack
- Kastel
- Amelie Doree
- Leaded Solder
- Foone
- Kimimi
- Mireille
- Variant
- Yakumono
- Techokami
- Koko
- hikari-no-yume
YouTube channels
Roughly sorted by most watched and most looking forward to videos, but maybe not quite; don't take it as in order of recommendation. All are (mainly) in English; might also include inactive or abandoned channels. Some descriptions still forthcoming.
Retro and Semi-Modern Computing, Repairs, etc.
- Adrian's Digital Basement — Restorations, modifications, etc. of retro systems from Commodore, Atari, Apple, and IBM PC compatibles in general, plus CRTs, homebrew hardware, and the occasional rarity like the Plexus P/20 UNIX server or the SWTPC 6800 microcomputer.
- Adrian's Digital Basement ][ — Adrian's second channel, featuring unboxings, trying out untested hardware, etc.
- LGR — Probably doesn't need much introduction, long-running channel about retro tech and games for PC compatibles, but also showing off ex. digital cameras, odd peripherals, and more; love the build and documentary-style videos.
- Necroware — Kind of a wizard at repairing badly damaged PC mainboards and expansion cards; exploded batteries, ripped traces, cracked and broken PCBs, no problem. Also creates homebrew hardware, like Dallas RTC replacements and Socket 7 VRM modules.
- Jan Beta — Repairs of computers and hi-fi/audio gear, with a German bent and much Commodore/Amiga love, but also featuring Ataris and other machines; not much, if any, content related to PC compatibles, tho. Not afraid to show failures or mistakes, leaving them in the videos.
- Action Retro — Fun Shenanigans and Totally Normal Computing, with many Macintosh-related videos, from 68k to Intel, often involving strange upgrades and/or Linux; also has some rarities like the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh. The Cursed Mac SE/30 saga is well worth a watch.
- Tech Tangents — Lots of PC-related content, plus ex. typewriters and calculators; also videos about pre-PC HP computers and peripherals. Runs Caps Wiki, a wiki dedicated to documenting repairs, original and replacement parts, etc.
- This Does Not Compute — Macintoshes, laptops and a sprinkling of video games and media formats, with historical context. Some very interesting documentary-style videos, too, like about the unreleased, PowerBook Duo-based Apple PenLite tablet.
- Cathode Ray Dude - CRD — Computers alongside cameras and other devices, often from the 2000s. Has various series of videos, with Quick Start probably being my favorite, featuring PCs that can boot into alternative, often useless, minimal operating systems. Love the videos about Dell's "Showstopper" and the Sony EVM-800 TV/VCR combo.
- Noel's Retro Lab — "Repairs, enhancements and deep dives", as the channel banner puts it, here with a Spanish bent; mostly featuring home computers less commonly seen, ex. the Amstrad CPC series and Sinclair machines, but also plenty of ex. Commodores. Does the aforementioned "deep dives" showing how and why a part has failed.
- RMC - The Cave — A variety of videos about all manner of computer- and game-related things, here also often with historical context, including repairs and upgrades; also runs The Cave, the UK museum/exhibition space in which the videos are usually filmed.
- ctrl-alt-rees — Many Atari and PC-related videos, including ones about rarer items like Atari's "Sparrow" and "Panther" prototypes, but also simple PC upgrades or console mods.
- vswitchzero — Similar to Necroware, another wizard-like enthusiast of PC-compatibles, fixing ex. badly broken Voodoo graphics cards. Overclocking, benchmarking, and whole builds are featured, too.
- Michael MJD
- Budget-Builds Official
- Epictronics
- Mark Fixes Stuff
- PhilsComputerLab
- RetroSpector78
- Mr Lurch's Things
Retro Video Gaming
- Gaming Historian — Long-form documentaries about video game history, such as the making of Tetris and its subsequent licensing entanglements; no longer produced full-time, still worth keeping an eye on.
- Displaced Gamers — Most recently focusing on NES games and the tech behind them, in terms of their code and hardware. Some very in-depth videos about, for example, why certain games have graphical glitches, or why they run slowly; prepare for 6502 assembly.
- Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games — English channel of Masahiro Sakurai, of ex. Kirby and Super Smash Bros. fame; short videos with insight, anecdotes and advice on game development and the industry.
Modern Computing and Video Games
- Gamers Nexus — Reviews of modern PCs and hardware, hardware and industry news, comprehensive benchmarks, some very good investigative videos on questionable companies and practices, etc.; very much unbiased and trustworthy in my personal opinion, also sometimes just plain funny.
Science and Technology
- Techmoan — Consumer technology, both new and old, forgotten media formats, documentary-style videos, etc., with a great British sense of humor; very much love videos on things like the VHD video disc format, or Hi-Vision Laserdiscs.
- The Post Apocalyptic Inventor — Less typical electronics repairs, more on the mechanical engineering side of things, but still very interesting; also with a German bent. Also fixes tools for the workshop, salvages parts for reuse, experiments with power generation, etc.; the Scrapyard Repair-A-Thon series of videos is a great watch.
Daily Life
- Tokyo Llama — An Australian who bought an abandoned farmhouse in Japan, documenting the process of renovating it; lots of woodworking, gardening and the like. Also other related videos.
- Life Where I'm From — Both, more casual and more documentary-style videos about everyday life, mostly in Japan's cities and its countryside — from food, to traffic, to insulated bottles, to steel-making; not the annoying "wacky Japan!!" kind of content many other foreign Japan-based YouTubers do.