iKarith

Actually, is the 2.7 suite upgradeable? It looks like the cart might be without too much special hardware.

At this point, cracktros are kind of part of the history and lore. I explained it to my fiancee: There's a copy of The Oregon Trail out there. It doesn't have a cracktro or anything, but it has a silly "Pepperony and Chease" tombstone (get it?) in the game. If I ever came across the game complete and the means to buy it, I'd do so. And I'd look to see if it had a "pristine" image. I'd extract that and probably upload that image for archival. But I would also keep around the archive image that already exists, just because Pepperonny and Chease is something most people who have an Apple // today have seen. It's now part of the history, despite being a dated and poorly-spelled reference to a ridiculous TV commercial from long after the game was released, and its worth saving in its own right. (Possibly as a delta to be applied to a clean image for space savings, although with 140k images, is that really necessary?)

Hi everyone! I'm not exactly new to the Apple //, but I'm fairly new to using AtariAge. I'm iKarith, Joseph Carter in some circles, and I'm a legally blind albino who sunburns in < 5 minutes in Portland, Oregon in January as a result of the cancer drug I take which made it so I didn't die of terminal melanoma. ...I've had an interesting history. Those of you who know me from Facebook Apple // groups know I'm going to KansasFest this year, thanks to the kindness of some truly awesome folks, which means I'll be actually meeting IvanX with whom I've been collaborating to improve Raspple II, A2SERVER, A2CLOUD, etc. and make them all easier for the community to develop and maintain, as well as some 60+ of you guys. As you can imagine, I basically grew up with an Apple //, usually a //e with an Echo. CRT monitors give me nasty headaches after awhile because I have to get so close to them to see anything, so the Apple was an obvious choice since everything from AppleWorks to Eamon could be trivially modified to talk. The IIgs and the platinum //e have a special place in my heart because of specific things growing up, but the common Apple //e was the backbone of my childhood, despite me never owning one growing up. I love vintage technology, particularly computers. I'm not really a collector, though at this point I have a small collection that comprises a IIgs and some parts, a TI-99/4A I rescued from a Goodwill before it was abused, and a C64. I feel it kind of an obligation to make sure that these things continue to do cool things for the sake of doing cool things. But my first love always will be the Apple // series because I owe everything I've ever done or will ever do to having one around somewhere.

One thing you can investigate in the near term if you haven't got any sort of mass storage device for the IIgs is AppleTalk via A2SERVER. This requires something running Linux, in particular Debian or Raspbian wheezy or jessie at this point. (I intend to change that a little further down the line but that's where it stands right now.) A2SERVER is essentially a netatalk 2 based package with some glue to make it friendly with the Apple //e and IIgs. If you have some RAM in the machine (I recommend more a little more than 2MB as I got out of memory $0201 errors trying to use it with exactly 2MB unless I kept the OS fairly barebones), you can have a pretty decent GS/OS 6.0.1 or 6.0.3 setup. The companion to A2SERVER is A2CLOUD. IvanX and I are working on getting that ready for a major update at KansasFest next month. It's not yet ready for Debian jessie is the major problem we aim to solve. If you try to use the canned Raspbian-based image, disconnect the Raspberry Pi from the network during installation so it doesn't install jessie on you. It also doesn't work right on the Raspberry Pi 3 yet as a result. Next month.

I'm also new around here and coming from A2 as well. From what I can tell, XB 2.7 suite is presently the state of the art for doing all the things you'll want to do with the machine, regardless of your configuration. The only thing remotely in contention is RXB, which is under active development and was really cool at FestWest. I don't think Greg's got any XB 2.7 suite carts in stock or I'd say it was THE thing to get hands down though--there's just so much in there. RXB may replace it and if you're interested you should look into that, but the suite is definitely the way to go for the moment.

I'm now very excited about the possibility. Especially since it seems the FR99 takes images with complete names (which of course means they can be identified properly in the FAT32 filesystem) and it ignores things that aren't images, so it seems like you could have game manuals on the SD card along with the games. The TI couldn't use those, but your handy-dandy micro-SD-reading dingus sure could!

Formatting a disk is a rare enough task that some external tool could be used to do it I suppose. ProDOS has that limitation for space reasons and while it's occasionally wanted, it's not so often wanted that you aren't happy enough to have a tool do the same task. My understanding is that the 2.7 suite requires a special cart and wouldn't just run on a FR99 (which can't be gotten for a couple of months at this point anyway...)

The way I look at it, magnetic media is all doomed to die anyway. The sooner we accept that and prepare for alternatives the better. Ideally, the best preparation I can see is one that allows an arbitrary microcontroller to feed data off arbitrary binary disk image files to the system. If we have that, the microcontroller may change, the memory device may change, and even its format may change, but it won't matter to the computer it's connected to. From there? Multiple redundant copies of everything. That's the only way to ensure that nothing is lost. I've seen the estimation that Atari VCS carts are going to begin failing en masse within the next decade, and that seems likely to me. But to my knowledge, those are all archived all over the place. As long as that continues to be the case, carts can have their ROM chips pulled and replaced without (IMO!) harming their value. I say that as someone who would use them, not collect them for future resale. No media will last forever, and we knew back in the 80s that magnetic media would (and did even then) degrade beyond usefulness. I've also had burned CDs from the 90s become unreadable today, so the key remains the copies in too many places for the copies to be easily wiped out in anything short of a global extinction-level event. In which case it won't matter anyway, because we'll all be gone, along with our retro computers. On that cheery note...

I think I may have been trying to ask about RXB(?) demoed at FestWest which seems to be a pretty near superset to all other BASICs for the TI.

Thanks, I thought so but was not sure. For now just collecting useful information as I haven't got a FR99 yet. Although you'll probably find an email from me (I think it was your address I sent to?) when you have the chance. Unless ArcadeShopper does or will soon have what I need sooner? That'd save me shipping. (Which leaves the paying for of course...)

If you saw my bank account... Nah, I've got to hold off of anything not real cheap (and even more than a couple things that are) until after KansasFest. I'd been saving to go, but didn't think I could save enough (I'm basically unemployable given my medical history, to say nothing of the disability), so when my fiancee fumbled her iPad off her lap when she turned around in her wheelchair and it cracked, I surprised her with a shiny repaired one. And then the Apple peeps surprised ME with a ticket to KFest. So all spare funds are committed for a few months because it's a 3 day trip by car from Portlandia to Kansas City. (No, I'm not the one driving. My efforts will be spent trying to keep myself from getting skin cancer in the passenger seat again...) 40th anniversary of Apple (not that they know or have cared that we exist since about 1984), so this is kind of a once in a lifetime experience. And I don't even know who to thank for it. (Then they told me on the zelboraf study that going conflicts with their newly changed schedule and I told them to figure it out because I AM GOING TO KANSAS CITY. I'm not sure they get it. But Katie does.) So I have to hold off buying (m)any fancy toys until after I'm safely back from that and have paid my existing debts. I did get to kinda just show up at FestWest this year, and have promised to be a good retrocomputing nerd and use the forum now and then so I'm all on the list and everything next year.

Thanks guys, I'll have a look at stuff and see if these manuals are things I need to pick up or if someone else has already grabbed them by the time I've had a look.

I've got the nanoPEB, I just don't know what I'm doing with it yet. I've figured out I want to call mount(1,1) but that's about all I know so far. I need to dig up a manual for a disk drive I think to learn the commands. UDS-10 I found online, but haven't ordered one yet. Seems cheap enough once I have some spare cash, but I'm _very_ limited cash-wise (and still owe electriclab for the nanoPEB actually...) Budgets suck. OTOH, thanks to a nice Amazon gift card for my birthday, I'm apparently going to be developing soldering skills--I've now got most of the equipment necessary to do so. If I can magnify my work enough to handle 0.1 pitch components, I might be able to make myself a little spending money fixing some stuff. That white cane in my avatar ain't just there for show. Like most albinos, I'm legally blind.

I have notes to play with a nice python alternative to ti99dir, particularly since I mostly pair my retro computers with small $35 ARM toys. Actually, aside from a basically abused 2009 or so vintage Mac, I think the fastest computer at my fiancee's place with a keyboard is probably my Pi 3. I've got an i5 Mac at home, but there's construction outside my place and I keep nerd hours so I'm usually here. Would the 2.7 cart be a better investment than XB at this point? And how would the FR99 change the equation? I sent an email to inquire after one of those this morning.

Are those images for the new FR99 also in a format for TI99Sim by chance? That would be even more cool. (Or perhaps, we need to have FR99 support in TI99Sim? Hmm, I wonder if that's within my ability to accomplish with what I know so far?)

I for one find email and things related (certainly BBS echoes count) far more easy to work with than forums (with all respect to our benefactor who has a very nice forum here...) I dunno if it's really going to fly in the modern age to set up something as esoteric as fido-style networking since that was all pretty complex and whatnot back in the day, but I certainly remember those kinds of things and did them. I even remember my old node number on a couple of networks from back in the day.

I wonder what it'd take to get Stuart's browser to work with the Pi solution? Do we just need to emulate a modem?

SMS/Mark III/SG-1000 are like Atari VCS save for an extra fire button on pin 9. Pin SMS Genesis Genesis 7 high 7 low === ========== ========= ========= 1 Up Up Up 2 Down Down Down 3 Left Left GND 4 Right Right GND 5 +5V +5V +5V 6 I button B button A button 7 photodiode multiplex multiplex 8 GND GND GND 9 II button C button Start SMS/Mark III/SG-1000 is easy: Pins 1-4 are up/down/left/right, pin 5 is +5V, pin 8 is GND, pins 6 and 9 are buttons I and II, and pin 7 is the photodiode of the light gun. If that looks remarkably like an Atari VCS controller, it is! Signals are active low and should have pullups, though apparently the standard pads assumed the console held the signals high. Obviously the Atari VCS has no II button, though Princess Rescue could use it if you plug in a SMS or Genesis 3 button pad. The 3 button Genesis pad has more buttons and must multiplex based on pin 7. Keep it high to use the Genesis pad like a SMS and older controller, in which case B is on pin 9 and C is on pin 6. Drop pin 7 and pins 3 and 4 both go low (impossible state for the D-pad, but identifies the controller) and pin 9 has A and 6 has Start. These buttons are active low with pullups. The 6 button controller ... is crazy. It sets pin 7 low, and then pulses it high twice within 1.1 msec to indicate it wants to read. During this time, the pad acts like a 3 button controller. But when it gets that second clock pulse, it sends back: 7 1 2 3 4 6 9 ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== Low Up Down Low Low A Start : : : : : : : High Up Down Left Right B C \ Low Up Down Low Low A Start | rising w/in 1.1msec High Up Down Left Right B C / Low Low Low Low Low A Start High X Y Z Mode High High Low High High High High A Start Be sure D pad goes high High Up Down Left Right B C Low Up Down Low Low A Start Low >= 1.8 msec Basically, you don't want none of that.

For those who don't have (nor really want) a PEB, I don't see that there's really an alternative to the CF7+ or nanoPEB on the horizon at the moment. If someone writes a DSR for it, we could interface just about anything really, but I don't know of anybody working on that just now. The clever solution with the SD card and the AVR for the cart port looks sweet, but my understanding is that one will always want a cartridge-based memory device and a storage device of some sort. And the options there are cassette or facsimile, something involving a PEB, and the CF7+/nanoPEB. I guess there are disk drive sidecars, but those look to be mostly unobtanium?

I saw recently mention that the black Mitsumi keyboards had square keys--is that not necessarily the case though?

So I think I know the answers in this particular case, but since this thread appears to be hanging around awhile, could someone explain to n00bs what is required to participate in this?

I meant a signal-level control for main power. Something to connect a power switch in the console to without having to have it able to handle three voltages.

Don't have most of this stuff, and not likely to get anything that requires a PEB. Interested in the stuff that doesn't however whenever cash allows.

Is there a site like asimov for the Apple // where these things tend to get uploaded? (One of the problems with asimov is that it has just about everything, but you may not know it's there or be able to find it due to 8.3 filenames in an era when that mattered, but that's a problem I intend to work on at some point.)

Omega, I think you hit the nail firmly on the head here. All I wanted was to play some games with a little machine I picked up for $20 at Goodwill. It would've been smashed to pieces there and was in such fine shape I just had to take it home. I remembered Alpiner and Parsec because they talked. There were others, but I didn't remember them so much. And I haven't gotten so far as most of that yet--I don't have and don't plan to get a PEB--I just don't have the space. The F18A might happen. A nanoPEB is happening. Internal RAM I think isn't compatible with the nanoPEB but I'm not 100% sure about that, so even though internal RAM could be faster it's not happening yet. But a HxC-based floppy thing might happen along with a nanoPEB replacement. Haven't gotten to try out the new games yet because I don't know how to work with the nanoPEB's CF card yet and don't have any but TI beginner BASIC. (I'm not sure I need Extended or XB to do anything more or not yet.) But I'll figure it out at some point and then ... yeah. The quirky little machine I only ever played a couple of games on at a friend's house and that I got myself at some point but couldn't use at all, and now own again and am determined to make useful... Addicting hobby, you know.