Paul Rickards
LightNews LightNews
banner
paulrickards.bsky.social
Paul Rickards
@paulrickards.bsky.social
3.4K followers 150 following 410 posts
Artist exploring vintage pen plotters with modern code. Retrocomputing repair and collecting. Mixes the best of new and old. He/him #penplotter #c64 🏳️‍🌈

My blog: https://biosrhythm.com/
My shop: https://shop.paulrickards.com/
Posts Replies Media Videos
paulrickards.bsky.social
🐖 Start pig-mode?
A Mac System 7.5 dialog box from ResEdit with a small pig icon, the text "Start pig-mode?" and Cancel and OK buttons. It apparently constantly tries to free up resources, aiding developers. To see it, hold command-option-shift and choose About ResEdit from the Apple Menu.
September 17, 2025 at 10:31 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
Today's plotter weather 🌧️

#PenPlotter
A tiny pen plotter in a colorful plastic case with receipt paper drawing the current and forecast weather with weather icons and temperatures in black ink. A plotted page of current and forecast weather on 2.25" wide receipt paper in black ink. A plotted page of current and forecast weather on 2.25" wide receipt paper in black ink on top of a wide tractor feed green bar paper with an ASCII Snoopy and a part of the 2025 calendar.
September 16, 2025 at 1:08 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
Check out my Only Fans page! 😏

#PenPlotter
September 15, 2025 at 7:59 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
Did you know the Amiga Kickstart boot screen is stored as vector data? It uses 412 bytes. 💾
September 14, 2025 at 5:05 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
Over the past week, I built a new tiny #PenPlotter with a vintage ALPS 2.25" mechanism! It sports a 3D printed snap-fit case, receipt paper holder, speaks GRBL over WiFi, 18650 battery w USB-C recharge, and a color scheme borrowed from the JLPGA PowerBook 170.
A tiny pen plotter housed in three increasingly sized plastic boxes of red, blue, and yellow. A white top with buttons and paper coming out show the text Hello, World and a differential growth pattern drawn on it.
September 12, 2025 at 2:52 AM
paulrickards.bsky.social
Later we'll hack some ATMs.. easy money..
An Atari Portfolio showing the infamous "PIN IDENTIFICATION" program from Terminator 2.
September 4, 2025 at 10:13 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
Putting Zork 1 on my Atari Portfolio for some gaming on the go.
An Atari Portfolio computer with a serial interface. On the screen is a terminal program XTerm downloading "zork1.dat" showing progress as dots. An Atari Portfolio running Zork 1. On the monochrome screen it says "West of House. You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here." There's a > prompt and a flashing cursor at the bottom of the screen.
September 4, 2025 at 9:45 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
A gift from a friend. ❤️ My friends know me all too well.
A canvas tote bag with the Tekserve logo on it with "Apple Specialist" below it and their former NYC address.
September 3, 2025 at 8:58 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
Interesting. Your motherboard seems to be a different revision. I’ve only seen 5 EPROMs in a row and only 5 sockets.
Bottom of a DisplayPhone with the trap door off showing the circuit board and ICs.
September 1, 2025 at 6:56 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
My #AppleLisaClone has a new front panel! I got one of the new Lisa 1+2 hybrid panels from Mac Effects, courtesy of @rectapete.bsky.social

I moved the iPad LCD panel over to it and added some custom 3D printed CRT bezel gap fillers to fit the curve.
An Apple Lisa 2 with hybrid 1+2 front panel showing the LIsa logo in Mac Paint with a Mac Plus keyboard and trackball in front with an 8 ball. Close up of the Lisa screen showing the iPad 1 LCD screen with a black 3D printed bezel CRT curve gap filler. The screen is showing the Lisa POST.
August 30, 2025 at 1:15 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
I’ve got 7 of them right next to me
A stack and of rainbow color 3D printed floppy cassettes which are obviously neither.
August 25, 2025 at 3:15 AM
paulrickards.bsky.social
Lots of IO. Audio is all built in. Video inputs from 3 card slots. I have two SD cards and a PC/VGA card. There were also HD capable cards.

Each SD card has three 1394/400 ports: two for DV input and one for HD. You can playback or record PGM and both inputs from the card simultaneously as AVI/DV.
Photo of the rear of the Anycast showing lots of audio and video input and output ports including XLR, RCA, BNC, VGA, S-Video, and 1394. A single SD video input card on a table.
August 21, 2025 at 12:47 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
Rate my battlestation!

This is a Sony Anycast Station AWS-G500HD from 2007. It's essentially a Sony luggable PIII 933Mhz PC that runs Linux 2.4.20 with a ton of FPGAs to do the heavy lifting of a video switcher. Plus glorious physical buttons, faders, dials, and removable keyboard. And a jog wheel.
A Sony laptop-style computer cosplaying as a video production switcher with keyboard, buttons, sliders, and dials on the bottom and a LCD on the top showing several windows of different video sources including "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles, Look Around You: Maths, a Lisa sales pitch video, and a rotating cube.
August 20, 2025 at 2:39 AM
paulrickards.bsky.social
Moody disjointed EA logo in KPT Bryce, MacOS 9
Screenshot from Mac OS 9 showing KPT Bryce software interface with a dim rendering of some mountains and misty purple water with a cube, sphere, and pyramid floating above.
August 18, 2025 at 4:23 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
👀
Screenshot of xeyes looking up to the X windows X mouse pointer.
August 17, 2025 at 9:11 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
It's an "install an old version of Linux" kind of day. TWM really takes me back..

#RetroComputing
Screenshot of a Linux X-Window session with the Tab Window Manager with several apps open including xterm, Netscape, xcalc, xbiff, and xclock. The color scheme is a simple white, black, and light cyan.
August 17, 2025 at 7:56 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
Repairing an Okimate 20 printer. Given the complexity of this thing and age, it's quite repairable and the output is really nice.

#RetroComputing
An Okimate 20 printer with the cover removed revealing the inner workings of the printer including belts, gears, and electronics. Paper is loaded and printed with barber pole test.
August 15, 2025 at 3:18 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
TIL the Kensington Turbo Mouse can use a billiard ball.
Photo of a beige trackball with an 11 red/white striped billiard ball in it next to a Mac Plus keyboard. Photo of a beige trackball with an 8 black billiard ball in it next to a Mac Plus keyboard.
August 14, 2025 at 4:38 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
Remembering Harvey Milk- gay rights champion, Navy veteran, and first openly gay man elected to public office in California.

CMYK on 11”x15” watercolor paper using a vintage HP 7585B #PenPlotter generated and controlled with Python.

shop.paulrickards.com/wildcards/

#Pride #PlotterArt #Art
An abstract portrait of Harvey Milk comprised of 34 horizontal lines that modulate thicker or thinner based on the portrait and are one shade of a rainbow continuous outlined in black. The shading is from cross hatching of pen strokes of cyan, yellow, and magenta inks.
June 5, 2025 at 7:24 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
I’ve long admired the old ALDUS logo from PageMaker. I’ve used that style to create a #PenPlotter rainbow portrait of Alan Turing for pride month.

CMYK on 11”x15” watercolor paper and a HP 7585B pen plotter with Python.

shop.paulrickards.com/wildcards/

#Art #Artist #PlotterArt #PenPlot #NoAI
An abstract portrait of Alan Turing comprised of 34 horizontal lines that modulate thicker or thinner based on the portrait and are one shade of a rainbow continuous outlined in black. The shading is from cross hatching of pen strokes of cyan, yellow, and magenta inks.
June 3, 2025 at 7:03 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
At first glance, I thought it was a box of decongestant.
A small white rectangular paperboard box opened on a black table with a silver plastic packet visible in the opening. The box says Raspberry Pi Camera Module 2 in a sans serif font with small print and a bar code that evokes a pharmaceutical box.
April 13, 2025 at 5:39 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
Back from a whirlwind of a weekend. Thank you to all that stopped by my #PenPlotter exhibit table at #VCFEast this year. And a huge thank you to all that purchased plots and floppies at consignment.

If you got a plot or postcard, reply with a picture!

#VCFEast2025 #RetroComputing
An exhibit table at a computer fair with two large plotters and a music keyboard with a built-in plotter. In the back is a large framed abstract colorful plot on an easel. On the wall are various abstract pen plot designs and a poster.
April 8, 2025 at 2:47 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
Getting things ready for my #PenPlotter exhibit at #VCFEast2025 this weekend. Spent the day plotting this poster on the Roland DPX 2000. I added some color splashes to it this year.

If you come to the show, you’ll see this plotter plus a few others.

#VCFEast #Art #RetroComputing
A Roland DPX 2000 pen plotter with a completed poster titled The Plot Thickens: Pen Plotter History and Artistry. An oblique view of the poster showing some color splashes of pen plotter artwork.
March 31, 2025 at 11:05 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
This is still a CMY Delaunay Triangles on Waves but with a slightly distorted shading giving it a shaggy texture.

CMY on 11”x15” watercolor paper using a vintage HP 7585B #PenPlotter with Python.

Available in my shop: shop.paulrickards.com/cmy-delaunay...

#PenPlotterArt #NoAI #ArtForSale #Art
An abstract pen plot on white paper in portrait orientation of tightly packed triangles arranged in a subtle wave pattern from upper left to lower right each hatch shaded with a different color from overlapping cyan, yellow, and magenta inks. The shading is disorganized so it has a shaggy, fuzzy texture about it. Detail from an abstract pen plot on white paper in portrait orientation of tightly packed triangles arranged in a subtle wave pattern from upper left to lower right each hatch shaded with a different color from overlapping cyan, yellow, and magenta inks. The shading is disorganized so it has a shaggy, fuzzy texture about it. The detail shows individual pen strokes comprising the hatch shading. Detail from an abstract pen plot on white paper in portrait orientation of tightly packed triangles arranged in a subtle wave pattern from upper left to lower right each hatch shaded with a different color from overlapping cyan, yellow, and magenta inks. The shading is disorganized so it has a shaggy, fuzzy texture about it. The detail shows individual pen strokes comprising the hatch shading.
March 30, 2025 at 6:48 PM
paulrickards.bsky.social
This CMY Delaunay Triangles on Waves looks like colorful facets of gemstones arranged and tightly packed together.

CMY on 11”x15” watercolor paper using a vintage HP 7585B #PenPlotter with Python.

Available in my shop: shop.paulrickards.com/cmy-delaunay...

#PenPlotterArt #NoAI #Art #ArtForSale
An abstract pen plot on white paper in portrait orientation of tightly packed triangles arranged in a subtle wave pattern from upper left to lower right each hatch shaded with a different color from overlapping cyan, yellow, and magenta inks. A lighter spot of color is in just above the center. Detail from an abstract pen plot on white paper in portrait orientation of tightly packed triangles arranged in a subtle wave pattern from upper left to lower right each hatch shaded with a different color from overlapping cyan, yellow, and magenta inks. The detail shows individual pen strokes comprising the hatch shading. Detail from an abstract pen plot on white paper in portrait orientation of tightly packed triangles arranged in a subtle wave pattern from upper left to lower right each hatch shaded with a different color from overlapping cyan, yellow, and magenta inks. The detail shows individual pen strokes comprising the hatch shading.
March 29, 2025 at 4:57 PM