Bill Lange

February 5, 2020

In addition to the various smartmodems and the chronograph, Hayes also has a Interbridge and a Transet. Not sure how many of these two items sold, but they are hard to find today.

February 1, 2020

I got it as a bonus for supporting the Kickstarter for this book I believe.

February 1, 2020

After a couple of years, tonight I finally got around to replacing a burned out fuse and got my working again. My has a little board inside by Paul Rickards that lets the Hayes Chronograph update the time via my wireless network and the internet, rather than having to hook up a computer to it.

January 31, 2020

January 31, 2020

I found the VHS tape of this demo at a random flea market a few years ago. I got it for next to nothing. I had never seen it before and was glad to find and save it. Emmy Award Winning Atari Videographer Amiga Bill Winters was kind enough to dumped it to digital format for me on his equipment.

December 20, 2019

Thanks for updating 3.90 to include the XEP80 port option!

December 5, 2019

Here are two and a half silent (boring) minutes of Silent Bulter 80 boot from an SDRIVE-MAX on an Atari 800XL with a XEP80 connected to joystick port #1 and output to a Zenith green screen.

I tried to capture the video with a video capture card, but the card didn't like the XEP80 output.

December 4, 2019

Quote

Got SB80-19871009-80 to run

Nice job!

December 3, 2019

Quote

I never did understand the title of this program.

There was once a popular thing called a "Silent Butler". Maybe it is just a play on that.

I find a spreadsheet, even back in the ferg, much easier to use.

December 3, 2019

There are 14 diskettes with dates covering more than a year. I would hope that there is more than just the title screen. I did use one of the 40 column versions in this set to create a RECORD disk to try with the 80 column version.

December 3, 2019

Curt Vendel recently sent me 14 5 1/4 floppy diskettes related to the rare, unreleased 80 column version of Silent Butler. I Kryofluxed all 14 diskettes and put disk images and RAW files in various places including archive.org.

You can run the disk images in Altirra with a virtual XEP80 attached. I've been able to get the 80-column title screen to display, but nothing after that. Once the "disk" stops stops spinning, it plays a tune, which I assume means it wants a RECORD disk, but haven't got much further. Curt had brought these diskettes to VCF East 2019 in May and we were able to get just as far on physical hardware.

As I mentioned I Kryofluxed all 14 diskettes and made disk images of both sides for a total of 28 disk images to play with. The raw Kryoflux files are also in the archive.

sb80.png.b54be115cab2ebac156b8eb5d5c87c58.png

Curt also has a few pages of notes/manual that were with the diskettes. We'll get them posted here as well.

If anyone is able to get past the title screen in 80 columns, please report back.

Regards,

Bill

November 27, 2019

Here is my testing of Thom's "CIO2 Test Program".

I create a short BASIC program that sends a message through FujiNet to port 23 on a server that has Hercules running and listening.

November 20, 2019

I don't think Dragon Bade II hasn't been available for a very long time. There are some tools and other ideas on the site that might be useful.

November 20, 2019

I was a play-tester on a Palm Pilot game called Dragon Bane II that had this look back in the early 2000s.

http://www.mythological.com/db2.htm

November 20, 2019

One issue that I ran into, and it took me a few days to figure out, is that the ESP8266 works with a 2.4Ghz wireless network, but doesn't seem to operate in 5Ghz. It will connect to 5Ghz, but it will not work, at least for me.

If you have issues trying to connect to the tnfsd server, try using 2.4Ghz.

November 15, 2019

Nice! Thanks for sharing, and of course, for creating the game in the first place!

November 8, 2019

If any one of you that have downloaded the poster and actually have it printed and hung, please post a pic.

November 7, 2019

Here is the huge poster image if anyone wants it. You can have it printed at vistaprint.com or wherever.

https://citrix.sharefile.com/share/view/sbb9e9658d73421e9

November 7, 2019

I've played Universe a lot over the years. Playing in Altirra with two virtual drives to cut down on excessive disk swaps and ability to speed up the emulator during the slow (graphic drawing) parts is really useful. I always enjoyed figuring out profitable trade routes and those one or two items that you can make ridiculous profits on. I never saw the End Game screen.

October 15, 2019

Bill Lange

Somerset, NJ

September 12, 2019

These pens are still used in some industry equipment such as EKG machines and such. I've read somewhere (maybe on Paul Rickards' blog: http://biosrhythm.com/?p=1395) that they are still manufactured in Europe in small lots. Expensive, but fresh.

September 11, 2019

Circa 1985. Atari 800XL, ATR8000, two DSQD drives, 810, Hayes ...

September 11, 2019

Here is my setup from circa 1984: Atari 400 with full-stroke keyboard hacked in, 810 drive (with write bad sector switch), 850, Hayes 300 smartmodem, Gemini 10x printer. Notice the Ultima map pinned to the wall.

September 11, 2019

Here is my rig from the summer of 1983. I built the desk in high school freshman year wood shop class. Atari 400 to which I added a switch to turn off the internal speaker.