MarkO
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Posts posted by MarkO
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I have a newer Apple //e with a light beige cable, like I have seen with the Apple ][gs, but my original Apple ][e came with a thin black cable.. There must be an official part number, but I don't know what it would be....
MarkO
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I would prefer the Original Disk, even if the Media is not usable any more, just for eye candy.. Download and play from a Cracked Copy for everyday use...
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From what I remember at the time of getiing the ZX-81 Kit in 1982, is the ZX-80 has 4K ROM, 1K RAM and ONLY ran programs in FAST Mode. The ZX-81 has 8K ROM, 1K RAM and had the FAST mode, but also the SLOW mode. The TS1000, has the same 8K ROM, and 2K RAM. The 16K RAM packs are interchabgable, between the ZX-81 and TS1000. In both cases, the internal RAM is disabled.. I current own 8 of these computers, with both types of RAM Packs.The original ZX-80 only had 1k of RAM. A screen that was filled with characters took almost 800 out of that thousand bytes. Most programs did not fill the screen, but you get the picture. The program and the data it uses have to live there, too. Not a lot of room to work in. The ZX-81/TS-1000 bumped that to 2k. Any savings was worthwhile, even if only a few bytes.
You really couldn't do much useful with it till you got the 16k RAMpack. I recall entering programs tag-team style with my brother and helping find where the heck some seldom-used token was on the keyboard. After awhile you memorized most of them. I got a refresher course in that recently playing with one of my old machines. At least they made "Delete" easy to get to! That's kind of an admission of their guilt right there, if you ask me!
-Ed
The Delete Key was very nicely located....
I found the ZX-81 fairly easy to learn.. but I was 16 at that time..
MarkO
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Lawless Legends posted a Playable Demo for KansasFest 2014. I have not located a Video of the Demo Session at KansasFest 2014, yet... It was Live Streamed by ulteriormodern
Download the Apple ][ .DSK and play it in an Apple ][ emulator or on Real Hardware.
The DSK Image is ProDOS 8 V1.9 and will need 64K RAM and has no Basic Programs on the Disk, but might need AppleSoft in ROM. I haven't tried it on my Apple ][, yet.
MarkO
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Here is a scary scenario for you...
It's 2025, all the kids and young adults have never known a world without the Internet. Most people no longer have 'REAL BOOKS' containing real knowledge, everything is electronic or 'on the cloud'. In one millisecond an EMP goes off in the upper atmosphere, electronics are destroyed, the Internet and electric infrastructure is simply 'OFF'. Knowledge is out of reach, possibly even lost, bank cards are useless, they cannot talk, text or even think for themselves... How do you think they would adjust?
How about the lessons imparted by Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451??? All information stored Digitally, could be manipulated.. If no Paper copies are around for comparison..
MarkO
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<< SNIP >>
I've also always looked at clear cases with flashy LEDS as really really tacky... speaking of tacky....
Oh YES!!!!
How about FOIL!!!
MarkO
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Yeah, I didn't mean to say you either... I have seen a bunch of websites though that cover the history and alot seem to mention "Tandy bought a bunch of TVs and stripped out and tossed what they didn't need"....lol, from a manufacturing standpoint, that's not very efficient.... to buy parts that are specifically going to be thrown out, especially when it's a new product where price was everything.
<< SNIP >>
Typically, Buying Completed Units and removing what you don't need is not economical..
But... It depends of what the Product Costs, and How Much you can sell it for...
Take for instance, the Ford Transit Connect.... And avoiding the "Chicken Tax".
See:
Many things that look Straight Forward, aren't....
MarkO
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Another thing to consider would be to check the edge connectors, give them a good rubdown with a pencil eraser and make sure both sides of the connectors are clean, they may have some oxidation on them which can cause erratic behavior.
That includes the drive controller itself.
Yus, and the one sticking out the back of the drive.
OK.... I did remove the Malfunctioning Drive from the FD-500 Chassis, and have Removed and Replaced the Disk Controller to Floppy Disk Cable at Both Ends, numerous times, as well as removing the Read/Write Head Cable from the Drive Electronics Board.
I am reluctant to break the Factory Seal on the newer FD-500, but I might need to mix and match pieces to find the Malfunctioning part.
On another note, My MCM68766C35 EPROMS were delivered, but I haven't picked them up yet..
MarkO
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Controller to drive cable
OK.....
Yeah, controller to drive. Also, make sure the drive cable isn't folded up and rubber banded, it's not impossible to get cross talk across the ribbon cable as it's not shielded in any way, also keep it away from the left side of any CRT television, the fly-back transformer is usually there and can cause interference as well.
It's not Folded Up. It's on Right Side of Display ( 9" TV ), and In front of the Display.. Kind of like This Photo.
The Original Apple Disk ][ Drives have a Rainbow Cable.. No Shielding...
The Later Disk ][ Drives have a Gray Cable, with a flexible Metal Braid that the Ribbon Cable is attached to, and has a Metal Tab at the Computer end to Ground to the Computer Case.
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It might be the cable.
Good point James... worth investigating to rule it in or out...
Are we talking about the Cable from, the Read/Write Head to the Drive Electronics, or the Cable from the Drive to the Disk Controller Interface??
If I can locate a 5.25" 360K Floppy in my "Vast Amount of Stuff", I will try a different floppy in the FD-500.
MarkO
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Hmmm... something stored about 145K. Maybe I'm thinking of after directory and allocation tables.
Tandy RS-DOS looks a lot like Apple DOS 3.3, except Apple has 16, 256 Byte Sectors per track, Tandy has 18, 256 Byte Sectors per track.. Each natively support 35 Tracks.. Both Machines can be modified to Add a Track or so...
Both have the Catalog ( Directory ) in the Center of the Disk, Removing 4096 Bytes from the Apple Storage and 4608 Bytes from the Tandy Storage. Apple DOS is On the Disk, Tandy is in ROM.
The Programmer that Finished the Apple DOS, Paul Laughton worked for IBM, and used IBM Terminology like VTOC ( Volume, Table of Contents ) and CATALOG. Tandy DOS was written by Micro-Soft and Used CP/M Terminology like Directory and DIR..
MarkO
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Very cool. I don't know enough about the various OSes and DOSes for CoCo. Wouldn't surprise me. Most software for that machine is pretty smart, well designed stuff.
OS/9 or NitrOS9 is a lot of fun. Need to use it more. But then again, I need a 512K machine too.
There is actually quite a few Tandy CoCo DOS.
I have my EPROM Burner up and Working, and some MCM68766C35 EPROMs on the way.. I am thinking of trying Art's ADOS and ADOS3.. And maybe rebuilding the CoCo 3 ROM to include HDB-DOS for Drive Wire. I still need some 4 Pin DIN Plugs.....
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The bare innards and "get it right or blow it up" nature of the Apple II taught me a healthy respect for the getting it right part. Especially when I blew up my //e motherboard. I had pulled a card out with the power on, and it wasn't straight up. Poof! It was out of commission for nearly 2 or 3 weeks while the Apple tech worked on it in his spare time. I couldn't afford much then, except maybe parts. I think to myself the warez I lost out on! And I always check for the red led!
I blew up my Disk ][ by connecting the Disk Drive to the Wrong Pin on the Disk ][ Controller Card... I think it was only $65.00 ( USD in 1986 ) to get it fixed..
Even today, with the Original Disk ][ Controller Cards, I remove the Card from the Computer, Turn it Upside Down to see that ALL the Pins on the Board go into ALL the correct sockets on the Drive Cable, and then Re-Insert the Card into the Apple ][...
By the time I had the opportunity to get into the CoCo my days of 8-bit computing were trying to come to an end. I was trying to embrace the 16-bit market full-on and in doing so I let my Apple //e rot under bed or in the shed or someplace. But that was a mistake, a fiasco. When the Amiga failed to meet my needs I went back to the Apple //e right away and continued on till the PC started going full-tilt.
I jumped to the IBM PC, because I could see in 1987 that there was a much bigger market to sell software into.... Only in the last few years have I got back into the old Apple ]['s, my SX-64 and Sinclairs and now the Tandy CoCo...
MarkO
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I always had a hard time going to ProDos. I didn't like the "systems" and module approach. I found the filename restrictions too restricting and dumb. And to a kid in diapers the whole directory/path concept seemed unnecessary and in-the-way.
I saw the Value of ProDOS, but I found DOS 3.3 More Comfortable to work with and less restrictions too..
I had ProDOS Disks with v1.0.0 and v1.0.1 and was surprised many years later to see there was many, many updates to it..
What I did enjoy was discovering that many Apple II drives could access track $23 and thus gain (to a kid) loads more storage space. I was green enough to enjoy the MAGIC that software could do. I envisioned some cloud of smoke in the drive doing something with the molecules and stuff and making new hardware out of old.
Have you seen this Apple Disk ][ Story???
And then there were the Rana Systems Elite series, I think these got up to 600K or something? IDK, I never had one BITD, but have them now, and yet to experiment and play with them.
I have one Drive... But no Controller.. I didn't realize they were such a special Drive...
I also remember hussing and fussing over file placement and would verify locations of "critical" games and text files with the COPY II PLUS utility.
Well, I never went that far... Pronto-DOS performed miracles on Disk Access Times...
MarkO
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The CoCo stored around 145K on a disk if I remember right.
160K, Apple Disk ][ is 140K
Almost all DOSs where the drive was directly interfaced to the host CPU used a temporary buffer instead of reading directly to the RAM the program was using.
That slows down disk access because you are copying to RAM and then copying from RAM to RAM.
On top of that the DOS would often have to sync to the start of a track to start reading data.
I still remember copying programs from one disk to another so the programs would be stored on consecutive sectors and tracks of the disk for faster access.
If you used a disk cacheing program, DOS would just copy any cached data directly from RAM with no waiting.
Apple DOS 3.x was very Bad about this.. That is why Pronto-DOS, Diversi-DOS, David-DOS, etc. were developed to Speed things Up... Nothing was better than Wolfenstine, Converted to DOS 3.3 and then have Pronto-DOS added to the Disk..
On the Apple II, storage space and speed depended on what DOS you were using.
Early versions stored less than later versions and ProDOS was much faster than earlier versions.
Removing DOS 3.3 or ProDOS helped with Disk Space.. Also if you only had Machine Language Programs on your ProDOS Disk, you could remove BASIC.SYSTEM from the disk.. The Aztec Compiler even had its Own ( UNIX Like ) Shell..
FWIW, I believe the CoCo DOS has calls for reading individual track/sectors.
From BASIC, DSKI$ for Input and DSKO$ for Output. You can Read or Write 256 Bytes, held in Two 128 Byte Character Strings, to any Formatted Track/Sector. ( I got the Color Computer Disk System manual with my last FD-500 )
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Well... Cleaning the Read/Write Head with 99% Isopropyl Alcohol didn't help... I did get some Disk Dust off of it, but that appears to not be the problem... So I have Two working CoCo Floppy Controllers, and One Working FD-500 with a Single Drive... I guess it's time to find a pair of Double Sided Drives to put in the FD-500 Case..
On a more positive note.. My Needham's Electronics EMP-20 PROM/EPROM Programmer and ANGO LA6T Eraser are working fine..
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Also... The Sinclair ZX-81/Times-Sinclair 1000 is still very loved....
New Hardware includes Replacement Membrane Keyboards, RAM Expansion with SD Card Storage, and AY Sound Module from RWAP Software.
Please note I don't own RWAP Software, or even own any of their products, but I do need a couple Replacement Keyboards for my Sinclairs.
MarkO
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Actually, I'm pretty impressed with what it can do considering what it has under the hood compared to say a C64, Apple ][, or TRS-80 Color Computer. The big drawbacks being the keyboard, and the poorly written 8K ROM BASIC. Internally though, it's an impressive machine considering the number of chips under the hood. When home computers came about, they were a bit expensive. The first home computer, the TRS-80 "Model I" was an extremely well made machine, and sold incredibly well considering it's $600 price point, which was about 4 1/2 percent of the median household income at the time ($13, 572). It was like spending $2400 in today's dollar.
<< SNIP >>
I totally get why it was a popular machine for it's time, why it had a big following of folks who loved it, and why it's still a popular vintage unit. I just started the thread as a joke, I have no ill feelings towards folks who owed, or still own one. It was just posted in fun... kinda like this:
Here was my thinking at the time.. The Apple ][+, has a fairly nice keyboard, but no Lower Case, and Disk Drives ( which at the Time were Quite Fast ), and cost well over $1000.00 ( USD ). The Sinclair, barely has a keyboard, and no Lower Case, and only Tape Storage, but cost $100.00 ( USD or less ).
My Second Computer was an Apple ][e ( with Lower Case ), and Cost me $600.00 ( USD ) ( I was a Half Owner, so $1200.00 ( USD ) for a used Apple ][e, with 64K and One 140KB Floppy, and a Monitor /// )
I would have liked to control stuff with my Computer, and found an article that showed how to Interface to the Apple ][ Game I/O Port and Opto-Isolator ( AKA Optocoupler ) and a TRIAC ( A Bidirectional SCR ) to control 120VAC ( or possibly Higher Voltage ) devices... I even bought all the Parts, but never put them together.. I was worried about Blowing Up my $1200.00 Apple Computer..
Now, a $100.00 Computer, that was a much more reasonably priced device to potentially destroy.. Unfortunately, there was nothing a simply as the Game I/O Port on the Sinclair, so duplicating the Control Circuit on it would have been much more difficult, for an 18 year old.
A few months ago I found this on eBay, and recognized it was doing what the Article I read in the 1980s was doing with the Apple Game I/O Port, but it used an Apple Slot.. Something Like this could be very easily adapted for the ZX-81/TS-1000 or C64, or CoCo.
MarkO
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Nice article. I made it into a .PDF file for you. It's easier to download and print this way too.
I was thinking the Same Thing.. You beat me to it!!!!
MarkO
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Well, you're 100 percent correct that the forced use of short key for basic statements like PRINT was to cut down the code size. They were trying to squeeze the equivalent of a "level 2" basic into the space of a Level I basic. But forced short key isn't what really bugs me about it. It's that freakish ever-changing-to-yet-another-alphabetic-character of a cursor. Cursors are cursors, and characters are characters. A cursor can be an underline, or an inverted space (block character), it can blink, or not, but the two biggest no no's you could possibly do is A) Let it be an alphabetic character, or B, change. TS 1000 did BOTH. A cursor's job is to indicate where the next character will appear on the display, not to indicate what "mode" you're in, I don't know much about how it works, but what I've figured out just dicking around with an emulator is that "L" means you're in basic statement input mode, and "G" means Graphics mode, and K means whatever letter you type will actually appear on the screen mode, aka, string input mode.
I was 16 years old when we got our ZX-81, and I found the BASIC quite easy to pick up, even after Apple Integer BASIC and AppleSoft BASIC. Take a look at a ZX-81/TS-1000 keyboard
If you look at the Primary BASIC Keywords ( above the Letter ) on each Key, some are real obvious, like "R" and RUN, "I" and INPUT, "P" and PRINT, "S" and SAVE, "D" and DIM, "F" and FOR, "G" GOTO, "L" and LET, "N" and NEXT.
Because of so many BASIC Commands starting with the Same Letters, there are conflicts, but Quite Obvious second choice letters were, "E" and REM, "O" and POKE.
In most ALL CASES, the BASIC Keyword is on a key, Close to the First Letter of the Keyword, such as:
"R" and REM, RUN, RAND, RETURN
"I" and IF, INPUT
"P" and POKE, PRINT
"G" and GOTO, GOSUB
"L" and LOAD, LIST, LET
"C" and COPY, CLEAR, CONT, CLS
The Secondary Keywords ( below the Letter ) like Math Functions, are mostly grouped around the "Q" <-> "T" <-> "H" <-> "A" keys, String Functions from "Y" <-> "I" <-> "K" <-> "J".
The rest obviously got fitted in where they could...
Still the Groupings of the related Keywords, made remembering them quite easy..
Even Applesoft didn't have something like INKEY$, the Sinclair being my Third BASIC, I learned had it, which was much more obvious that Reading a Memory Location on the Apple ][ and looping until it changed...
They honestly could have indicated the mode by say, changing the border color to indicate the mode or something else. That way, the cursor could have been, well, a cursor, and not a cursor/mode indicator. Also, the problem with short keys is that you have to memorize a bunch of different functions for the same key depending on the mode you're in.
True, but it didn't take me long to get them... Once through the Manual and I had it down....
I think you're being generous saying that it saved as much as 1k, there's about 300 characters in the keyword set (for the lookup table), and the routines for checking and tokenizing are probably about 20 to 30 bytes each, and both could use the same keyword table, so well under 1/2 kilobyte. If they were looking to keep things light, they could have shelved "Let" the most useless function of any programming language ever of all time.
Programming is difficult enough as it is without having to continuously remember what key does what, or to glance down at the keyboard to figure out what key to hit or track modes.
I don't think that the Single Key entry saved much space, at least none in the Stored Programs... Every BASIC I have seen Tokenizes the Keywords into a Byte or Two... What the Sinclair did was Reduce Keystrokes while entering Programs, because of the Barely Sufficient Keyboard.. I am not a Touch Typists, but I could enter programs just about as fast on the ZX-81 as an Apple ][. Maybe faster...
MarkO
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The Timex is neat for what it is. It's a fun thing to tinker with but not something you'd want to be forced to use. It still kills me how much productivity software was released for it, and that some people actually used it (like my dad!).
I had a Pac-Man like game for it... Actually played quite nice... I believe that is what my Uncle made the Joy Stick to play Arcade Games like Pac-Man.
It does have quite a few halfway decent games (some could even qualify as "good"), but the keyboard ruins many would-be excellent titles. I will say it does Space Invaders-type games pretty well, though, or other games requiring only two or three key input. The potential for Roguelikes and text adventures is there as well.
There were quite a few After Market keyboards.. I will pull out my Sinclairs and take some pictures...
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I actually have some 5.25" and 3.5" Cleaning Disks... Honestly, I never thought to clean the heads.. Wow!! Has it been that long since I used Floppies...
But I will disassemble the FD-500 and clean the Head Directly... That way I can observe the operation while it Formats and tries to Read/Write..
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<< SNIP >>
I don't know much about the innards of the unit, but I do know it had a Z80, which is a great, very powerful chip. As a matter of fact, modern x86 chips have more in common with a Z80 than they do with the intel -8080 and 8088 chips. In other words, Intel took a que from the Z80 as their development line continued. Other than that, I don't know much about the internal hardware. I do seem to remember reading that it had but 5 chips in it, which was few compared to the typical 50 or so on other systems. I think it's biggest drawback was the keyboard, or lack there of. I imagine someone out there somewhere down the link has hacked a proper keyboard onto the unit... if not, it would be cool to do. Of course, an emulator will do that...
<< SNIP >>The Sinclair ZX81 was my first home Computer ( I used the Apple ][+ at High School, so it was my first computer ), my Dad and I built it from a Kit, ( $99.00 ( USD ) IIRC, $149.00 ( USD ) Pre-Assembled ) from an ad in Popular Science. As usual, there was two or three parts left over... Resistors IIRC... ( Ask me if you haven't heard a "left over parts" Joke... )
The Circuit Board in 1981 was designed for 4 or 5 ICs. The Z80, the ULA ( IIRC ), the ROM ( 8K ) and either One, 1K RAM or Two 512 Byte RAMs. The Timex-Sinclair came with 2K of RAM, but I haven't opened any of them to see how their were packaged.. I believe they were a Single 2K RAM.
My Uncle that made the Joystick for the Sinclair, game me all of his "stash" when he was cleaning up a decade ago..
I have Eight ZX-81/TS-1000, Eight 16K RAM Packs and one Memotech 64K RAM Pack, and I can only find the White Thermal Printer, right now.. I have one with the Silver Thermal Paper too... One of the ZX-81/TS-1000s is in a Metal Case with an actual keyboard..
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Well, I got my FD-500 with the J&M Controller... Good News and Bad News...
The J&M is the JFD-COCO, but has the Tandy 1.1 DECB ROM, and the CoCo 3 Mod, with a very nice Blue Wire job.. It works great...
The FD-500 has external Damage.. The Drive Spins and Seeks, but doesn't seem to Read or Write..
Anyone have experience with connecting an Oscilloscope to the Read/Write heads..
MarkO
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Lawless Legends
in Atari 8-Bit Computers
Posted · Edited by MarkO
A video of the KansasFest 2014 Demo of Lawless Legends has now been posted at Facebook..
You can jump right to it here, lawless demo.
Talk starts at 07:30 into the Video..
MarkO