Eric Canales / Chicago, IL
Hi, I’m Eric. I untangle tricky IT problems, help people make sense of technology, and build things for computers that refuse to get old.
Still plenty of play left.
01 / The human behind the keyboard
Especially when it helps someone else.
I’m an Information Systems Consultant and Senior Systems Analyst with more than 25 years in IT and computing. My day-to-day includes enterprise application support, tracing stubborn problems through logs, databases, and fixing business processes to get things moving again.
I also believe great technology starts with people: delivering a better customer experience, communicating clearly, and making complicated things easier to understand.
Off the clock, the curiosity stays on. I obsess over Tandy and Radio Shack computers, BASIC and Assembly. I have a few software projects, and maintain my own server and AI infrastructure.
02 / Made out of curiosity
Old computers. New possibilities.
And the occasional rabbit hole.
01 — BASIC, meet Picotron
Because sometimes you look at a new fantasy workstation and think: “This could use more BASIC.”
A BASIC compiler, debugger, and development environment for Picotron. A little nostalgia, with plenty left to make.
Explore BASITRON at PlayPi
02 — New tools for old favorites
I founded PlayPi Games in 2023 to make tools for the retrocomputing community. One of those is 6dev09, an IDE for BASIC and Assembly on the Color Computer and other 6×09 systems.
Meet PlayPi Games03 — A bridge between worlds
A project connecting Picotron with its host computer, including battery polling and a small API. A practical excuse to bring a fantasy workstation a little closer to real hardware.
Take a look on GitLabInto this sort of thing? Follow along on Patreon, or poke around my GitLab projects.
03 / Small experiments, local AI
Small AI demos.
A little curiosity, made interactive.
01 — A little retro mischief
A TRS-80-style dancing demon in the browser. Play with the speed, add a few more dancers, and let the pixels do their thing.
Let it dance02 — Small CPU, big curiosity
Peek inside a tiny processor: write a program, step through instructions, and watch its registers, flags, and memory change.
Take it for a spinBoth pages were created with Strata, running locally on a 16 GB NVIDIA T4 in my own AI infrastructure.
04 / Keep the conversation going
I’m always happy to talk technology, swap ideas, or hear what you’re working on.