iKarith

I'm certain there are lots of Apple // programs that are still not archived to this day. I have it in my mind to try and better index what we've got to make it easier to figure out what's missing, but that's not an easy task I've discovered. I started out with the contents of asimov's images/games/adventure directory and GSPort. Many of the images don't start. Ideally what I'd like to do is build a tool that for each disk image will determine what format the image is (DOS 3.3, ProDOS, RDOS, ProntoDOS, Pascal, etc.), how much space is used/free, its catalog, in the case of things like ProDOS, what version of ProDOS, whether the disk is bootable, etc. If the disk is bootable, I'd like to boot it and get a screenshot in an automated fashion. Hopefully all of this will provide enough information that the cryptic names on asimov can be translated to names, related files referenced, duplicates detected, etc. Not looking to replace asimov, just index it so that it's easier to find something on it, especially if you only know some of the information about what you're looking for.

I have a cassette recorder making its way to me, but I couldn't actually use it directly on my Apple IIgs. I think I'd be more interested in a program that could take a raw PCM stream (maybe grab SDL and use SDL_LoadWAV to open something a little less raw?) and convert that to a set of monitor commands ala what's done to bootstrap ADTPro, and used much the same way. That'd allow binary cassettes to be loaded onto a //c or IIgs. Integer programs saved to cassette are a bit more complicated, but they could be loaded the same way from the BASIC prompt. I don't know if any Applesoft programs made it on to cassette in wide circulation. The thing is that the CFFA3000 is a very expensive card. There are less expensive options out there, just that none of them seem to be quite as effective at doing everything you could need. The closest is the SD Smart Drive, but it requires a Smartport do provide floppy and block devices. I guess block devices are somewhat a luxury on the purely 8-bit machines, but the IIgs really does need a hard drive of some sort.

The world opened to me when I got my first LCD screen. Even with a low resolution on a 21 inch monitor, I got headaches. What your mom used to say about sitting too close to the TV is apparently not true about your eyes, but if you sit as close as I do to a screen, it does give you migraines after awhile. Those old 12" screens, I had to get close enough to feel a tingle on my nose for 80 column. The major issue now is finding LCD screens that are compatible with my old friends which are often not well-behaved in terms of video generation. Back in the day, they didn't have to be. CRTs accepted a lot of "good enough" where the LCDs' video processors tend to be a little more picky. Worse are the machines that want to output RGB since I live in the US. I thought I was doing good to have a line on a 15" LCD that I knew would handle 15kHz RGB with CSYNC, and it indeed will work a treat for the IIgs which doesn't need it because I've got VGA out on that, but without any support for lesser video, it's not really suited to the C128. Back to searching for a Rev A Dell 20" I guess--that model apparently purely coincidentally took 15kHz. Bigger screen, but that's rarely a bad thing. I suppose it's ideal for an Amiga, but Amiga is for rich people. Used to be the A600 might've been a good machine for me to have one. Easy enough to add flash storage to it and it didn't have any upgrades that would drive up the price of the system and would be considered "essential" once you got it. Then one was created, and the cost of the machine more than doubled. Actually, with the exception of my TI-99/4A ($20) and one of my Commodores (basically cost of repair and shipping), I haven't actually paid for the retrocomputers I own. Upgrades sure, the most expensive of which was flash storage for my IIgs. The rest cost me but the promise to give it a good home and use it if I can. I've tried to make good on that. Of course I'm fighting storage limitations with just the machines I've got and I can only set up one of them at a time as is, and my whole income is on the order of US$800/month disability. Employment ... is unlikely, especially in this economy.

[email protected]:~$ telnet bbs.paytonbyrd.com 6401 -bash: telnet: command not found [email protected]:~$ # [CENSORED] [email protected]:~$ sudo apt-get -y install telnet Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following NEW packages will be installed: telnet 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 16 not upgraded. Need to get 65.8 kB of archives. After this operation, 143 kB of additional disk space will be used. Get:1 http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ jessie/main telnet armhf 0.17-36 [65.8 kB] Fetched 65.8 kB in 1s (37.0 kB/s) Selecting previously unselected package telnet. (Reading database ... 214961 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack .../telnet_0.17-36_armhf.deb ... Unpacking telnet (0.17-36) ... Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.0.2-5) ... Setting up telnet (0.17-36) ... update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/telnet.netkit to provide /usr/bin/telnet (telnet) in auto mode I see some charset differences. ANSI clearly is set up for CP437. Going in ASCII mode, I see that input is echoed both as I type it and echoed back to me. That's not something a terminal program normally does, but it also can't really be so easily just disabled. I wish I could easily just redirect minicom to a telnet port. Oddly, that's about as complicated as setting it up on my retro computers.

I would use my retrocomputers for packet radio if I could, but generally I don't have a TNC. Closest I've got is my Kenwood which has a soundmodem interface billed as "Echolink compatibility". I still need to consider upgrading my ticket, but ... I can't do HF (antenna nazis and in a steel building.)

From all I've read, there's probably more good reason to put the 32k in the console on the 16 bit bus and thereby selectively increase he speed of using that RAM a little. I don't know how much of a difference that really makes though and it may preclude the use of more than 32k? I think far more than a RAM upgrade, what we need is OSHW mass storage without a PEB. You can install a couple of chips inside your console to add a RAM upgrade. It's a lot cleaner if you have a small PCB--I'm not a fan of piggyback soldering--but that exists already if you dig for it. Unless you've got a working nanoPEB, there just aren't many disk options, and they're not good ones. So many mass storage options are being created for other computers that haven't had them until now. I think the DSR is the major sticking point for doing it on the TI, but it might not be. Maybe now that the FlashROM99 exists, folks will start turning their attention to the idea of an expansion port solution. A successor to the FR99 could actually live in the expansion port and maybe do double-duty, if there's otherwise a way to determine first if a cart was plugged in and only "connect" the FR99 when there wasn't. NO idea how to do that yet though.

ZoomFloppy is more on the order of an X*1541 cable, only it works via USB. It's a useful way to get things on to floppy and off of floppy, but that's about all. (It cannot replace a disk drive, only access one.)

I could become interested in one if some of those RPGs have Western translation patches. My Japanese is lousy, and my written Japanese is almost nonexistent. Characters often more complex than is easy for me to see well enough.

"My" first computer was the Apple //e with an Echo at my desk in school. I was seven, and legally blind. That computer was half of how I was going to function in a normal classroom with normal kids. Because while all the other kids were seated in clusters, having me alone facing the back of the room at a six foot long table totally did that! I had a normal desk, but I never used it and don't know the names of any of my classmates from then. Not one. Anyway, the first computer I owned was long after anybody else had stopped using them, an Epson CPM portable. It lasted for years until its battery pack finally gave out in like 1991 or so, and it was the only functioning computer I had until I was given an Apple //e in 1992. In 1993 I wound up with an Apple IIgs. In 1995, as a "graduation" gift, my grandmother bought me a 486DX2/66 from a local sysop. In those days, 8MB and a 420MB hard drive would go far, especially when the sysop gave me access to the part of the BBS I never had access to before, matey! There was a time between that when a cheap surge protector failed to blow, taking out my IIgs.

Sorry about the multipost all, the server seemed to have gone away for like 5 minutes, right when I hit the post button. I got timeouts saying the server didn't respond, and then when it went through there were three posts. Whoops.

Hi everyone, a few of you might already know me from the TI and Apple // subforums here, or from Facebook groups. I'm Joseph, and I'm an Apple // guy. Except I just realized that I currently own more Commodores than Apple //s, so I ought to say hello. I've got a C64, a C64C, and a C128 (which is presently in another's care until I can collect it and fix its missing F5 key.) I'm fundamentally an Apple guy because I'm legally blind and grew up using an Apple with an Echo. Sure there was speech on the Commodore and most other platforms of the era, but most anything text-based could be made to talk on the Apple without much effort. That's not true of the Commodore or anything else. I could use CRTs in 40 column mode back in the day, but it gave me headaches and was hard in 80 column. Now I use LCDs that are significantly larger screens anyway, which solves that problem twice over. Speech is now more about loving the tech than any kind of need, and so I can play with Commodore where it was more of a novelty than an accessibility tool. No fancy upgrades, though I do own a ZoomFloppy now, with both parallel and IEEE connectors too, nice. Of course those are hardly needed with the 1571, but they're sure tempting options for the 1541 Pyramid Building Block. (Actually the 1571 is not lighter, it's just a lot smaller.) Am interested in a dual SID option to put both 6581 and 8580 into one of my C64s, probably the C64C because I can keep its all-glyphs-on-top keyboard with it that way. I prefer that keyboard. over the older styles with the PETSCII glyphs on the front of the keys. I also do cool stuff with Raspberry Pi. Never got what I'd consider acceptable performance out of vice on it, but I have designs very similar in function to Raspple II (which I've started working on with IvanX for those who know what that does.) Anyway, hi!

Nice to see this and that it's got lots of cool, current info. I wish it had a release date mentioned somewhere--when I stumbled across the last issue, I didn't know if anything in it was current because I didn't know when it was released. (I'm still somewhat new to actually reading AA forums, so yeah..)

All right, technically at this point I'm sitting at a C64, a C64C, a Zoomfloppy that came with a C128, a TI-99/4A, and a couple RPIs.

My love of all things speech synthesizer being legally blind says do want. My empty wallet says can't have. Story of a retro-computer hobbyist's life.

Ideally you'd want a slide switch that can look stock inside the console, but that is indeed a couple 3PST switches.

The biggest problem today is that the PEB is a somewhat uncommon, very costly, and very expensive device that is sort of but not really necessary, except it kind of is. And the alternative is the nanoPEB which isn't really a replacement, can't be easily obtained either, and is pretty famous for QC issues. You probably don't need a PEB just to play most any game released on a cart if you've got a 32k RAM upgrade, though a few of them need some kind of storage device, whatever that looks like. Cassette is guaranteed to be clunky, especially if emulated. Disk requires a PEB, a nanoPEB (and XB), or a hen's teeth rare sidecar disk drive. I don't even know if an alternative is really practical. The card edge connector on the nanoPEB appears to be one cut down and modified to fit. And I don't have even enough skill to write non-trivial code for the TI in BASIC yet, so even a DSR that had a table of recognized keywords (if that's even how a DSR would work) and could trigger a microcontroller to read a byte off the data bus of the inex of the keyword in the table ... Totally beyond me. But it seems like that might be the first step of something like the AVR in the uberGROM and FR99 being able to be programmed to replace the nanoPEB. I'm trying to tiptoe around the problem for now, but ultimately it's going to come down to the need for some kind of disk device for the masses, available to the masses. And it doesn't really exist yet.

I was recommended the XB 2.7 suite, which I understand to also use an UberGROM cart. That's what I got, and it appears to have a lot of tools I don't yet understand, and a lot of games most of which I suspect run just FR99. Two carts isn't too much to be able to do most anything that can be done without plugging expansions into your TI (though don't some of those require at least more RAM?) Perhaps in my own case I should've gone with the triple-BASIC cart, I dunno. I suspect there'll eventually be advantage to having both, but I'm slowly trying to build the knowledge base needed to educate a new user about what they need to get started. I'm just trying to avoid too many expensive mistakes in the meantime.

Isn't there some problem with putting RAM inside your console? ie, that devices like a nanoPEB won't work unless you've got a switch to disable it?

N00b hat on, that's too many. It's confusing, and people can't easily keep all that straight. Moreover, I'm rather aware that multiple carts now exist that contain multiple versions, and for some like RXB there are multiple releases. When I talk about barriers for new users, this is the kind of stuff I mean. Not only that, at $35-50 a pop for these things, the idea that you need half a dozen different versions of BASIC makes it financially very unattractive. This one personally affects me. Especially since some of them are still in active development and I'm not sure they can be upgraded if you have an old version?

If a new 80 column capable version were done, that'd be cool. If it were done with 40 column support still working, more's the better. If one could convert between the TI format and the "standard" format, better still. I have this cart and it's just sitting here because I have no cassettes and haven't gone looking for cassette files.

I have the lnatronix but haven't gotten it powered up and connected to the TI yet--don't have the right serial cable here. Anyway, I'm very interested in doing this and other things with the Raspberry Pi. I've started helping IvanX with Raspple II and kinda envision something like that for the TI.

Cassette cable might work fine with mp3 player for input. Likely not for output. Though that's probably not an issue unless your mp3 player has record settings.

"I'm Al Gore. And these are my vice presidential action rangers. A group of top-nerds, whose sole duty is to prevent disruptions in the space-time continuum." "I thought your sole duty was to cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate." "That, and protect the space-time continuum. Read the Constitution!"

That sounds like a no.

I don't think another BASIC for the TI is what we need. We need ∀ TI BASIC, which is kind of RXB I guess. I kinda wouldn't mind seeing a successor to the XB 2.7 suite built around that. We're closer now to a One Cart To Rule Them All, but we're not there yet.