Streck

I'd prefer hardware-generated 80 column text, if possible. How easy is it to get one's hands on AVPC/EVPC these days?

Do Term80 and/or TimXT support VT100 emulation?

Thanks for the tip about Hidden Reef! Yeah, I knew that Term 80 did 80 columns natively - I just meant that if I did choose another terminal program that required a card, I would then have to decide which card to use...

Similar to what I've been doing with my Apple II+, I'd like to see if I can get my TI-99/4A working as a VT100 terminal. Right now, all I have is the 99/4A console. I'd like to do this with period-appropriate hardware - no modern shortcuts. So it looks like I'll need the expansion box with all the usual cards (32K, floppy, RS232), plus of course the terminal emulation program, and, depending on that program's requirements, some kind of 80-column card. Only 80 columns is acceptable to me. I've been looking through various forum threads and websites; the names that seem to come up most often for what I'm after are Term 80 and Z-Term. There's a record of Term 80 being succesfully used for this purpose; I found a copy at WHTech but haven't checked it out yet. I remember reading that there was an "evaluation" version as opposed to a full version... bah! I'm presuming that Term 80 can do VT100 emulation, but have had trouble digging up documentation to confirm that. So, I thought I'd run this by the community here and see about any gotchas, recommendations, things I might be missing, etc. Might there be any other terminal programs at which I should be looking, preferred 80-column cards, etc.? Appreciate your help!

So, here's what I have so far: ASCII Express - VT52 only MODEM.MGR - no VT100 on II / II+ VisiTerm - no VT100 Kermit - incomplete VT100 DCOM - bad Videx driver (two patches posted; neither worked for me) ProTerm - indeterminate. II / II+ version not available for download; can do VT100, but unknown if this extends to II / II+ with Videx Z-Link - no II / II+ support The search continues...

I got as far as creating all four floppies for it, and running it, before discovering what I could've known if only I'd read the docs. (Also, I see you're in CT as well. Head up route 8 to Carbone's Market in Torrington for the biggest sandwiches you've ever had.)

It'll run, I just can't have VT100. From the documentation: "VT220/VT100 emulation runs on the ProDOS version only and requires a IIGS, //c, or //e with Apple 80-column capability. This emulation will not run on the DOS 3.3 version or on a II+ or with other video cards."

At first, I was content to use my II+ as purely a game machine, but the perfectly-working Videx VideoTerm card led me to explore various applications involving 80-column text. One of these was to use it as a terminal to a Linux box. There are, so far as I've found, two programs that might fit the bill: Kermit (Kermit-65, to be exact, v3.87), developed by the well-respected cabal at Columbia University, and DCOM 3.3, an ambitious effort by then-student at UCSD Jim Hayes. Both are available on the Asimov FTP site. Other communication apps like ASCII Express or ProTerm either don't run on the II+ or don't offer anything better than VT52 emulation at best. Results from each have been mixed. DCOM's Videx driver was all written by Hayes himself, and its initial implementation is, well... No, the vertical sizing on my monitor doesn't need adjustment - the VideoTerm stays obediently within the screen in all other applications. For whatever reason, Hayes' driver puts the VideoTerm's text out of bounds. The input bar for the IRC client is well below the white bar at the bottom. The only way to compensate for this is to shrink the vertical size, which yields a distracting effect where text gradually gets longer as you go from top to bottom - and also renders the top inch or so of the screen unused. Look carefully: This, of course, has to be reverted back when I'm finished, lest all other games and apps look squished. Hayes posted two different patches for the driver, but the first one seems to completely break the process - DCOM just asks me to switch to my output device, as though it doesn't even know the VideoTerm card is there - and the second produces garbage characters combined with an out-of-whack vertical sync. Not good. On top of that, DCOM leaves, as far as I can tell, absolutely no way for you to input capital letters unless your II+ has the shift-key mod, or even up/down arrow keys, which are vital for certain UNIX/Linux programs such as Lynx. So, it was time to turn to Kermit. Initially, it looked very promising - none of DCOM's awful video stretching! The display was as perfect as anything I'd seen on professional-quality applications like Magic Window II. My joy was short lived... The issue here seems to be with the VT100 emulation itself. The Kermit manual does in fact say that the emulation is not complete, but that seems to be an understatement. The scroll region in any IRC or chat program is limited to the bottom few lines, rendering those programs useless. You can see where the ASCII art that's supposed to say "irc.choopa.net" just writes over itself at the bottom. And there doesn't appear to be any setting in Kermit to tweak in order to overcome this. It's quite a shame, because Kermit is wonderful in all other respects. The full character set is available for you to input (although, as with DCOM, I haven't determined how to input up/down arrows, or even if that's possible) and the VideoTerm display is top-notch. In scouring the Internet, I did find old USENET posts and scans of Washington Apple Pi showing evidence of a v3.88 of Kermit-65 - but that version seems lost to the ages... and, even if it were found, there's no guarantee that it would possess a more complete VT100 emulation. I also came across posts about NovaTerm for the C64 and other emulators that claimed to do VT100, but, like Kermit, fell short. Apparently this was not an uncommon issue back in the day: "true VT100" didn't always mean that! So, I'm curious to know if anyone else has embarked on this crazy quest, or at least if they have any advice to share. I'm willing to accept the possibility that the II+ is juuuuust far enough on the trailing edge of technology to make what I'm after impossible... but I'm not willing to concede that until I've exhausted my options (short of writing my own Videx driver, because frankly, that's beyond me).

Well, I managed to use Dave Dunfield's ImageDisk program to rip a dozen or so of the Kaypro disks, and convert the images into a format that's usable by the MESS emulator. These disks were from the BCS's Kaypro user group (apparently called BOSKUG), and contain the usual things you'd expect from a user group: various apps, tools, games, newsletter content. One of the games is a Pac-Man clone that I don't believe has been archived before. I've since sent the images to a couple of archivists, who will hopefully make them publicly available at some point.

I recently acquired a Kaypro 2 from a former member of the Boston Computer Society. It's in great shape and works perfectly. This is my first CP/M machine. It also came with a load of disks, both application and data. They look like they've been stored in good, controlled conditions. My impulse is to start ripping images of these disks, as I've done with hundreds of Apple II disks, so they can be put online and preserved. I know there's already a lot of Kaypro software that's been archived, but I might have something that's been missed, and the data disks are surely irreplaceable. I've been able to find some articles about creating Kaypro disks from images - but none about the reverse, creating images from Kaypro disks. Would anyone with Kaypro experience be willing to give me some pointers? What software should I be using on the Kaypro end?

Yeah, I prefer to go full-retro with a genuine old CRT monitor. I foolishly got rid of my 9" Sanyo VM 4509 a while back. Thought I'd snagged a Monitor /// on eBay for super-cheap... but now the seller's trying to back out of the deal. Bah!

ASCII Express worked marvelously! Amusingly, setting up the Linux end was more trouble than the Apple end - I've very little Linux experience and it took me way longer than it should have to realize that I needed to sudo the agetty command. (Linux always just popped me back to the command prompt with no error message, nothing.) AE's big limitation is that it does VT52 emulation but not VT100. I was able to get VT100 working under DCOM 3.3 and Kermit, with some configuration tweaks. As you can see, the video is crap because I'm using a TV, not a real monitor. The TV was perfectly adequate for everything other than 80-column work, but now I need something better. An Amdek Color-I? Sanyo VM 4509? Apple's own Monitor ///? Hmmm... The Linux machine was just an old Compaq Armada E500 that my office was discarding. Pentium III, 256 MB RAM, 12 GB drive, more than enough for Ubuntu. The cherry on top was that I got character input from the II+ working correctly with the help of this USENET post from 1985: http://www.megalextoria.com/forum2/index.php?t=msg&goto=138086& I'm so glad that all those old communications and publications are being preserved.

Let's say a terminal to a Linux machine, or to anything else for which I can use popular emulations like VT100/TN3270/etc.

Let's say I wanted to use my 64K II+ as an 80-column terminal with my Videx VideoTerm card. What would my best program be? There are lots of programs out there for the 128 //e, //c, etc - I know that ProTerm is a popular one - but a II+ is what I'm working with. The VideoTerm card was the most popular 80-col card, at least. Would anyone have any suggestions?

A fellow on another forum I post at reports that his company still uses Apple II's, in 2015, to control CNC machines. I've requested photos and will post if/when they're available!

I have to say, I was very pleased with Atarisoft's version of Galaxian for the Apple II - crazily, I almost consider it superior to the arcade version for overall feel of gameplay. The sound is terrific too. I'd be satisfied with a version of Galaga that used the same graphics, sounds, and physics.

Well, how about that! Now I wish I hadn't sold my /// years ago so that I could try those out authentically. Ah well.

There's a bit of truth in both sides here. Each generation of thinking holds a certain unique value. You'll find axioms and assertions from every decade that are perpetually useful, and which usually didn't even originate during that time, but far earlier. There is benefit to be found in an older perspective. However, there's no single source of gospel truth, and it is, sadly, natural for people to become rigid in their thinking, to cling to what they already know, to resist change to the point of willful ignorance. Just as today's kids don't understand how older generations approached, used, and understood technology, we often don't understand how today's kids do the same... and sometimes we're not even interested in knowing, which is tragic and reprehensible. (There's a lively discussion going on at the newsgroup comp.sys.apple2 right now about the very existence of this Apple II subforum on AtariAge, and it's rather revealing of what certain demographics think about Web forums and social media like Facebook - not that this wasn't obvious - but I'm gratified to see some of the "old guard" participating here and in other places.)

Honestly, I'd be very surprised if there were even a single game made for it, something that didn't run in Apple II emulation mode. So narrowly focused was Apple's marketing about this system - narrower than IBM's for the PC - that I can't imagine any developers at all would have bothered to step outside that. I'm willing to be shocked, though!

I'm curious - what were the circumstances of this discovery? What sort of place do you work in?

Correction: S/N 29687.

Source code retrieved and posted on GitHub! I hope you like 6502 assembly: https://github.com/j...Persia-Apple-II Jason Scott's guest post on Mechner's blog: http://jordanmechner...2/04/textfiles/ Mechner's tweets and photos of the recovery process: https://twitter.com/#!/jmechner

And he's reached out to none other than Jason Scott! I can't think of anyone better for high-profile data recovery.

Atari NTSC Sunnyvale S/N: 29587 (just the number, no letter at the end) Speaker slots Channel select Perfectly functional, and near-pristine cosmetically. The orange trim around the switch console is completely intact, for a change. EDIT: Wow - looks like I might have one of the oldest light-sixers here!

I'd rather have too much than too little - many of the "dupes" are actually different versions or different cracks of particular titles (I contributed three different versions of Music Construction Set) and, yeah, the disk images themselves take up only a tiny fraction of the space anyway. Better to be redundant than remiss!