Retro Challenge Results: CP/M

After a couple of days of fiddling around with the various disk images provided at VintageWare, I can say I have had success.  However, I think I have a minor hardware problem.  First I started with the large disk image for use with 800k drives.  It worked right off the bat, but I didn't blog it.  I was going to blog it the next day and I tried to boot cp/m to take a photo, but it hung at the cp/m copyright notice.

This is were the couple of days of fiddling came in.  I thought the issue was with various components during boot which I swapped around between disk images.  Turned out however, that while cp/m needs to be started from a cold-boot, the computer has to have been on for at least 10 minutes prior before it will work.  I figure there is some component that when warmed up makes a good electrical connection and things work.  Here are a couple of "screenshots":

Advanced Logic Systems (makers of "The CP/M Card") designed the cp/m card and utilities such that you can share a RAM disk between ProDOS and cp/m, enabling you to pass files back and forth between the two OS's.  I haven't tried this feature yet but it is documented in the release notes and overview.  Something for next time as I'll be packing my IIe away (for the time being) to make room for my Atari Mega ST2.

Retro Challenge Results: Word Processing

Okay, I didn't get a lot done here.  I used AppleWorks as its file format can still be opened by more modern word processors (namely AppleWorks on Mac OS) and hence Word format for work.  The document I am writing is fairly simple.  It requires headers and footers, a table of contents, and hanging indents.  AppleWorks on the IIe does all of these, albeit a bit tediously.

Headers and footers weren't too difficult to implement.  Although once created, you don't see them on every page while editing.  When printed they would of course be on every page.  The table of contents was simple enough to do.  The hanging indents however, took a bit of getting used to.  It essentially involved setting margins at each level of indentation.

As AppleWorks on the IIe is not a WYSIWYG program, I would periodically view my document on an older Mac I currently have set up.  This Mac is running Mac OS 7.6.1 and has ClarisWorks version 4. This version of Mac OS can read ProDOS disks and so I simply inserted the Apple II disk and opened the file.

In ClarisWorks it display perfectly.  I was surprised to be honest.  I thought there would be formatting issues, there wasn't.  However, modern word processors (yes I'm calling ClarisWorks 4 modern) don't do hanging indents quite the same way as AppleWorks for the II line.  I didn't try converting in ClarisWorks to rtf and then opening in Word yet but I suspect it will look right, even if the method of hanging indents isn't the Word way to do it.

While I did faithfully work on this document using my Apple II for several days, I have to admit that that was all it was, a few days.  While AppleWorks was certainly capable of getting the job done, I found myself longing for WYSIWYG and (I hate to admit it), a mouse.  So I'm going to finish the document on my old Mac (an 8500).  It is 15 years old so I suppose that is vintage, even if it has a GUI, WYSIWYG and a mouse.

Retro Challenge Update: Getting Started

My Apple is a IIe Platinum that I bought in 1999 from an elementary school surplus sale. It was in great shape except for the usual yellowing of the case. It came with a DuoDisk and probably some cards, but I can't remember which ones.

1999 was the year I started collecting Apple II stuff when earlier I discovered someone had discarded a complete IIe in the dumpster of the apartment I was living in at the time. I remember taking out some trash and seeing it, running back up to my apartment and exclaiming to everyone who was there at the time "there's an Apple II in the dumpster!" My girlfriend (now wife) and her friend offered to retrieve it. Thank you ladies!

I had used Apple II's in high school but had never owned one up to that point. But from that day on I started collecting software, peripherals, etc. I don't have that dumpster IIe anymore, but I've since added a IIc and a IIgs to my collection. While my TRS-80 Model 4 collection is by far my largest, my Apple II collection is a not too distant second.

For the Winter Warmup I decided I wanted to use my IIe Platinum as I haven't used it much lately. In fact I couldn't even remember what I had in it until I cracked it open the other day. It took me awhile to find out what card was working and what wasn't, which should go in which slot, etc. but I now have it set up and ready to go.

In slot 1 I have an SMT Printech II parallel card. While I know I've had this card in the II for some time, I've never actually used it. Something to add to my list of "accomplishments" for this challenge.

In slot 2 I have an AE Datalink 2400 baud modem. This is a beautiful modem (if a modem can be beautiful). It has always worked great and 2400 baud is the nostalgic baud rate for me as it was the speed of my second modem, the first being 300. At the time it seemed lightening fast!

Slot 3 is taken up by the 80 column card in the aux slot of course.

Slot 4 is empty.

Slot 5 is a VTech UDC (Universal Disk Controller). This card is hooked up to a single Apple 3.5" drive. It only has one drive cable connected to jumper 1. With jumper 1 it is supposed to be able to daisy chain certain combinations but for some reason I can't get it to work with two 3.5" Apple drives. I spend quite some time fiddling with it, reading the manual, etc. but it is time to move on.

In slot 6 is an Apple Disk II controller card connected to the DuoDisk. I could have daisy chained the DuoDisk to the 3.5" (it works) but I wanted to boot from 5 1/4 by default and the VTech UDC works best in slot 5. So I just used both controller cards.

In slot 7 is a "The CP/M Card" Z80 card. I've mucked with this before in the IIgs with partial success. I've misplaced the disks but they are available on the 'net at Roger Johnstone's VintageWare site.

For a monitor I have a nice amber monochrome Pi3 from USi. The display is crisp and clear, just the way I like it!

A clock card and a shiny new CFFA3000 would be nice but they're not in the budget right now. Here's a grainy phone cam photo of my machine:

Retro Challenge Update: Use it Or Lose it!

A little over a decade ago I bought a brand new Apple IIe Platinum keyboard. I tucked it away in a bin of various computer parts thinking I'd use it one day when I "needed" it. Well I thought I'd install it yesterday, thinking why wait, save the older keyboard for a spare. So I hauled it out and went to install it. The caps lock key was detached. I thought nothing of it at the moment but when I turned the keyboard over to my horror I saw that it had been damaged beyond repair while in storage. Make that poor storage. A corner of the circuit board had been snapped, severing at least 4 traces. I'm sure a clever person with excellent soldering skills could probably fix it, but I'm not that person. So I decided that I'd at least remove the key caps and swap them. The camera on my phone is poor and has no flash, but here are the before and after results.
Old key caps: New key caps: While disappointed at my lack of care for this keyboard over the years, overall I'm happy with the resulting aesthetic improvement.

2012 Retro Challenge Winter Warmup

After reading about it for a number of year's, I've decided to enter this years Retro Challenge (winter warmup). If you've never heard of the Retro Challenge here's an excerpt from their site:

In a nutshell, the RetroChallenge is a loosely disorganised gathering of RetroComputing enthusiasts who collectively do stuff with old computers for a month. The event is very much open to interpretation... individuals set there own challenges, which can range from programming to multimedia work; hardware restoration to exploring legacy networking... or just plain dicking around. It really doesn't matter what you do, just so long as you do it. While the RetroChallenge has its competitive side, it's not really a contest... it's more like global thermonuclear war — everyone can play, but nobody really wins.

What's my entry going to be? I'm going to dust off my Apple IIe Platinum and finally get that CP/M card in it working. I'm also going to do some work related technical writing on it. I've always claimed to prefer early 80's word processors to Microsoft Word, let's see if I actually do!

eMate Battery Rebuild

eMate Battery Rebuild

While I was a little hesitant to do this project, I didn't want to spend about $100 on a rebuilt battery either. So following directions found on the net, I successfully rebuilt the battery pack for my Newton eMate 300.

Taking apart the original battery pack was straight forward enough. There are two sensor that you need to preserve for the rebuild that are a little tough to come off without wrecking them. Patience is simply the key here.

Re-assmbly with new batteries (the kind with soldering tabs) is easy, if you are half-way decent at soldering. I'm not. In fact I'd go so far as to say I'm bad at it. Hopefully with practice I will get better though as the savings in self-repair are tremendous. Soldering the two pairs of AA batterries together was the easy part. Soldering the thermal sensor and the wiring back on was not. For some reason I couldn't get the solder to stick to the batteries very well.

Once I got past that I packed the batteries back in the heat shrink wrap and stuffed it (quite literally) back into the battery pack "shell". To my surprise it went in quite easily. I plugged the battery connector into the eMate motherboard and almost instantly heard the reset power-on chime. I have to say I was surpised that it worked.

But work it did. I'm using the eMate now while the batteries are charging. So far no smoke or acrid smells! We'll see how well they take a charge and what kind of discharge rate I get out of them. Regardless, if I get any kind of decent life out of them then I'll be thrilled because the cost, $13!

Apple eMate 300

Having become a recent Newton fan this past year, I have had my eye on getting an eMate. The eMate is similar to the MessagePad 2000/2100 in that it runs the same version of Newton OS. However, it is in the form factor of a Netbook. The keyboard is a bit cramped but I can still touch-type quite fast with it. And that is the key for me. You see, despite how good the handwriting recognitions is in later versions of Newton OS, my own handwriting (and printing) is terrible and I find it almost literally painful to do.

The eMate is not without its limitations though. For instance, it only has one PC Card slot vice my MessagePad 2100's two. This means I have to swap out my storage card whenever I want to go wireless. Also, the eMate is slower and has less internal RAM than the 2100.

But despite those shortcomings, the eMate has a real keyboard and for me that makes it a winner. And as you may have guessed, I typed this blog post on my eMate.