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ClausB

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Posts posted by ClausB

  8. Posted · Edited by ClausB

    BYTE magazine recognized its significance, naming it one of the "Trinity"of personal computers, along with PET and Apple II.

     

    Don't look for innovation in the TRS-80 design, look for it in the distribution.

     

    How was Apple II generic? Sure, no custom chips but those off-the-shelf chips were put together in a way unique to the genius of Woz.

    • Like 1

  10. Posted · Edited by ClausB

    I got a good education from BYTE magazine, but you're asking about books, so I'll say Best of BYTE, Vol. 1. While I was building my collection of back issues, it substituted for those earliest issues I was missing.

     

    Favorite manual? Atari 400/800 Hardware Manual. I befriended the salesman at the local dealer and he let me photocopy their early edition, which was full of typos and hand drawings and blurry schematics. Learned a ton about Atari's wonderful custom chips and about computer design in general.

     

    Also Lance Leventhal's 6502 Programming uncovered the mysteries of machine / assembly coding.

     

    Osborne's Introduction to Microcomputers Vol. 2. A friend gave me his thick loose-leaf copy when he got the final bound version. A collection of technical details of many early microprocessors, it was updated several times while in loose leaf form. I still look at this often.

     

    Apple II Red Book. I worked on Apples at PDI and they gave me this manual, an early compendium of the best of Woz. He signed it in 2011.

    • Like 2

  13. Posted

    Wow, crazy! Some parts of the characters are not affected: top of A, bottom of V and Y, middle of I and Z, and all of the left bracket. Only where there are pixels in the left side of the characters does the noise show up.

     

    Also the downward scrolling is mostly on the left side of the screen. Elsewhere the noise looks more random. The left side is when ANTIC does refresh cycles, so there might be data timing issues. Timing is handled by the smaller chips on the CPU board and the ROM board, so check them if swapping ANTIC chips doesn't help.

     

    It wouldn't hurt to reseat all the chips again and look for bent pins and pins with excess corrosion. I have a few early Ataris and they always need reseating. Their boards don't have gold edge contacts and they corrode more quickly. Try running a pencil eraser across the darker tin edge contacts until they start to shine brighter.

    • Like 1

  22. Posted · Edited by ClausB

    On 11/21/2019 at 7:54 AM, ClausB said:

    ... So one 48K board will save another 0.5 W or so over 3 16K boards. Total savings, rounded up, is about 3 W.

    Measured with Fluke clamp meter at 10.2 Vac:

    1.8 A w/ 3 x 16K

    1.5 A w/ 1 x 48K

     

    So difference is indeed 3 W.

  23. Posted

    My story is a little bittersweet, as I blame Atari for derailing my career path.

     

    I've always loved science and have been good at math, so I wanted to become an astronomer. My high school math teacher recommended a FORTRAN course but I thought that sounded too industrial, especially since it was taught in the shop building behind the school. He said it's really mathematical so I tried it and took to it quickly. My senior year the school bought two Altairs and I learned BASIC on those, plus I got my own little computer, a TI SR-56. I spent a lot of time programming those, mostly science apps.

     

    In college I worked on my chosen career path with some programming courses sprinkled in. By senior year my interest in computers had grown and I added a second major in computer science. That's when I saw the Atari and had to have one. I obsessed over my 400 instead of studying for the Physics GRE, so thoughts of grad school faded. My career since then has been a series of programming jobs with some digital hardware development thrown in. I never made it to grad school but have had many rewarding experiences at work, with raising a family, learning to fly, and coaching school robotics teams. But I have watched as computers have become important in research science, thinking I could have done that.

     

    I don't really blame Atari, and I still love those old machines, plus I have made new friends among you all in this great hobby.

    • Like 5
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