Let’s talk about how and what I am working.  I have the IIGS up and running and am primarily using it to transfer actual Apple II disks in to disk images.  These are the same disks that you may have read about in my previous e-log.  I had a catastrophic file system failure that left me hurting and bitter and almost misanthropic enough to take up fly fishing, but somehow I managed the strength to carry on.  So I am now archiving my original disks locally and via CrashPlan back ups, DropBox, SkyDrive, GoogleDrive, and Ubuntu Unity.  Not counting CrashPlan, I have managed to wrangle about 25GB of free cloud storage.  I imagine that the free cloud storage business has an Eric Cartman-type plan that goes along the line of “Hey guys, give me your info, I’ll hold it for you,” followed by, “Hey guys, I have your info.  Times are tough.  I am holding it hostage, what’s it worth to you?” Between the choices, though, I have distributed the info.  Informational survivalism is like evolution in that the information that adapts it’s form to it’s environment and propagates widely has better odds of surviving in the long term.  I really am enjoying the DropBox DiskBox that I have set up.  I can use emulation to work on hard disk setups and to update across platforms and locations.  If I have an idea, I have instant access to my disk images.

The second thing I have been thinking about is setting up a Cat-fur board, and last week I was actually working to this end.  I was hoping that I could make a connection with a willing Apple-Cat II owner / volunteer and test the system.  I’d also like to work out a way to keep the board up 24/7 but right now the idea I have is that is would have calling hours, but I haven’t solidified that idea as of yet.  I have some ideas for the board, but again I don’t want to get ahead of myself.  I should probably develop this idea as some kind of Retro Challenge.  Early testing though has proven problematic as I have to major roadblocks.

The first obstacle is this:  I have an order in for an undisclosed CF Drive for the Apple II’s that has been outstanding since last November with no clarification as to order status, which is depressing, but understandable, since I expect few things move quickly in the retro world, so the hard drive for the system is up in the air. But here is the thing that gets me.  I am interested in 2 CF card readers.  I have asked to be on the waiting list for one brand, I’ve crossed the six month mark waiting for the other brand, and I am considering ordering a second CF card from anyone that I can get to take my money.  Do I sound desperate?  Because I kinda am.

The second problem that I have to overcome is that three of my Disk II hard drives seem it have stopped reading/seeking floppy data.  My Duo Disk sees the info, but various combinations between the Apple IIe and Apple II+, 2 separate drive controllers and the 3 Disk II drives have proven fruitless.  All have failed overnight.  It’s puzzling and I am now researching how to troubleshoot this.

If I can overcome my data storage and retrieval issues, I can begin to live the dream that all healthy young lads strive for the opportunity to be found fit for:  Apple-Cat II Sysop. For now, though, I am going to be tinkering way at the mundane task of troubleshooting my gear.

Another thing that I have found immensely satisfying for personal reasons was a task I underwent to give me a better idea obout the Apple II timeline.  I have been operating under an untrue but understandable assumption that I know a lot about how the Apple II period went down.  I am kind of being funny there, as really, I have to do a lot of research to find things out.  I was kind of isolated, and I know how things went down on my desert island, but I don;t have good perspective overall.  One of the things I did to remedy that was to make an excel spreadsheet by year that corresponds to A2 History’s time line for software and hardware.  This is a work in progress and as I find new information and have time to do so, I add entries into the spread sheet.  In reality I should begin a database along side.  In many instances I was surprised by the actual dates that things were released and when I experienced them.  This project also gave me more clarity on the programmers that created some of my favorite software, and showed me how I gravitated to certain programmers without knowing they were responsible for the offerings.  Each programmer is very distinctive, like each author, each song writer, each band, and are somehow able to create artifacts that you enjoy rediscovering time and time again.

Finally I am going to put this here:

Last night I woke up from a dream.  In the dream I was watching a history of Apple II Software.  The documentary detailed the first software protection schemes and also talked about software firsts that occurred in Apple II software and continued to be used today.  The dream/film was incredibly interesting to me and when I awoke, I realized that maybe I had been spending too much time looking at the Top Software by Year at A2 History.

At this time, it was my dream to capture lightning in a bottle and pick up where Richard Garriott left off.  It’s true, I was going to be the next Fantasy Wargaming superstar.  “Fantasy Wargaming” was a book by Bruce Cordell that I found infinitely more interesting than all other D&D books, with the exception of the “Grimtooth’s Traps” series for 2 reasons: The first was that depth of historical detail and breadth of research that went into compiling the source material for the gaming rules.  It’s seemed every detail was covered, and actually led me into reading historical thesis based on medieval day to day activities.  The second is that the rules were not coherent and complete nor were they by any means playable in any enjoyable fashion.  It took me a while to catch on to that second fact, but in the mean time, I would continue to operate in my deluded milleu, trying to eke out a playable game.  As other students learned how to make student rosters, and report semester grades, I worked on making a gaming master piece.

So why haven’t you heard of this marvelous endeavor?  Because, as I just discovered, it only exists on a few sheets of paper jammed in my High School text book.

I present the hand written notes for Fantasy Wargaming, scribbled during my Computer Basics class of the 1984 Fall semester.

Fantasy Wargaming Programming Notes

On the software side, your are going to need vnIIc.  The software is step by step easy, and the site does a great job of documenting what you need to do.

Earlier this week, I covertly deployed this rig in the cube at work.  I experimented with single frame displays, and streaming the YouTube corporate video channel.  I need a better monitor, though, as the little LCD isn’t very crisp.

An idea was brought up to video the exercise and post it to YouTube, poetically bringing the whole thing full circle.  Armed with a few spare minutes and my n900, I set out to get some mediocre shots and fix the whole thing in post production.  I need a steady cam.

The Resulting Video is hereby tendered for your review.

Tuesday, I had difficulty sleeping.  I turned to a new technique for me: counting in binary.  It’s how I did it that was strange.  I let the for fingers on my hand represent switches and I incremented the bits as I counted:  No fingers, Pinky, Ring, Pinky/Ring, Middle, Middle/Pinky, Middle/Ring, Middle/Pinky/Ring, Index, Index/Pinky, etc., etc.

I think that this method has a name and really was just a binary version of “Chisholm bop”.

Eventually I picked up on the rhythm, steady and trance inducing.  The rhythm slyly made it’s way into my cerebral cortex, seductively tempting my brain with something that was just out of reach.  I couldn’t see what it was.  And then the seventh veil dropped.

I have never been really fluent with Hex to Binary conversion but now I have a new tool that is going to help me.  It’s a conversion table my brain saw.  Just make a 4×4 table of hex counting $0 to $3 left to right and continuing to $F.  Now count to 4 in binary on a header row and column.

___00   01   10   11
00    0    1    2    3
01    4    5    6    7
10    8    9    A    B
11    C    D    E    F

Find the hex number of interest and read the left column and top row.  For example: B is equivalent to left column 10 and top row 11.  1011.  It’s too simple not to have been written about somewhere else, I am sure, but it’s sure was cool actually seeing it in my mind as something new.  Now, when I am teaching people about addressing ADIO’s I can give them a tool than will help them when they need to set the switch to address $2D.

File cabinets stood across the deep, dark green, pile carpet, that acted as a medium to hold in perfect equilibrium, the scent of the room;  a damp, cold, mixture of in-window air conditioner, cigarette smoke, and whiskey, a combination that you can sometimes smell in small well-established taverns in military towns.  In those file cabinets, resided a pledge I believed in.  They contained manuals (both purchased and Xeroxed), and large 3-ring binders holding sleeve after glorious sleeve of 5.25″ archived diskettes, meticulously cataloged and annotated on printed dot-matrix indexes for each disk.  In addition the beginning of each volume cataloged the disk title.  The information was incalculable to my young mind, and in my years on their machine, I never did explore all of the offerings contained therein.  But that was all right, because I knew it would always be there.  Forever.  Because when you are young, that is the way the world is.

There was a large window that faced out to the back yard.  The window was appointed with black, heavy,  light blocker curtains and were perpetually closed.  When pulled aside, the window would reveal the triangular aluminum framework and guy wires of my uncle’s gigantic radio tower, and beyond the chain link fence, that at this time looked more like a prison dead line, was the abandoned remains of streets, sidewalks and home properties that the Cleveland Hopkins Airport had bought for their own sprawling expansion.  Through the desolate, scarred landscape, and through the sparse treeline, in the distance Brookpark Road marked the original boundary of the airport, and just beyond that one could make out the exotic red and blue lights marking the runway indicators.  The airport tower, a lone sentinel on the horizon, stood a silent witness to my youth, reserving the judgement of it’s ever present and baleful green/white rotating eye.  That black curtain was all the maintained the boundary between the reality of our existence, and the rich 8-bit life that we found inside.

Summer afternoons at my uncle’s house were great, as the endless day allowed complete submersion in whatever activity was primary for my visit, weather it be for extended gaming sessions (I was drawn early on to RPG like DRAGON’S EYE,  and the many titles of RPG and Text Adventure), Applesoft BASIC programming sessions, trying out  1 & 2 liners or a weird Beagle Bros. snippet of code, or an extended pirate session to fill my floppies with purloined goodies, 10 disks at a time.  The teletype would print theses amazingly Pepto Bismol pink labels for these disks, banging out letter after hammered letter, and advancing the pin feed for the next line.

Some weekends I could sleep over.  And occasionally meet other friends of my Uncle.  There was Leo from Washington DC, I think, that played guitar, and would program with my uncle and trade software.  Sometime there would be folks from my uncles work that would visit, and bring something interesting like a remote control helicopter and demo it in the backyard.  We would watch, talk, ask questions.  I remember my uncle say the helicopter was unstable to control, like constantly trying to balance an egg on it’s end.  I watched knowing I would not get a chance to fly what must have been an incredibly expensive model at the time.  An aircraft would approach the airport, unbelievably low to me in my mind as I look back on it, and if we were talking would eventually yell until the speaker realized it was futile.  We would wait for the airplane to pass and continue our conversation.

I remember that my uncle had paddles for the Apple II, with small hard red buttons, that left indentations in small fingers after greedy games playing.  Eventually he built his own joystick.  I thought it was awesome and he built me one.  To this day I think the design is one of the best, but I am not an impartial judge as I used the old one when he acquired a new Apple manufactured joystick.

I moved away in 1989.  My uncle eventually bought a IBM PC.  The airport bought his house and destroyed it. Luckily, he moved away before that last bit.  In the end, he had developed lung cancer, eventually stopped taking phone calls and died while I was in service.  For me, there’s no telling what became of those sheet metal file cabinets that represented the knowledge my young self once had in the ways of the world.

So I have been looking at where to start.  I reviewed Applesoft.  I must admit that I have not been using this language at all.  I pulled a physical high-school text book on Applesoft from my library .  This was my textbook and I have to admit I didn’t open it often.  By the time the system had made me enroll in an actual Applesoft class, I was well versed.  Cracking it open this time though I had a surprise for myself:  4 pages of notes regarding a incredibly convoluted RPG character generation program for a RPG game I was inventing on my own.  Among the randomly generated characteristics, six of the archetypes included, I also included astrological signs, stats for Lust, Greed, Selfishness, Leadership, Faith, Piety, Mana and a way of setting a social class of Nobility, Warrior, Landowner, Clergy, Freeman, Unfree, and Slaves.  This game, if I remember correctly, would have been very historically based.  It was very interesting for me.  All this, and I had yet to hear of a Renaissance Festival, the SCA, or even Medieval Times.  I will post the notes soon as I get some time to scan them.

After reviewing my time travelling notes, I reviewed some Applesoft and decided that that would be enough and I didn’t think I needed a six week immersion of program writing to get me back in the swing of things.  Although I might revisit this, because I really like the concept of Structured Applesoft and had begun along those ideals but did not make enough progress to speak of.  Everything looked familiar to me, although I am sure that glossing over it like that I am giving myself much more credit than would be evident of someone were to issue me a spontaneous Applesoft Challenge.  So, I moved on to looking at setting up a hard drive image that was strictly for assembly.  I chose Merlin as my editor, mostly because I had used it in the past and I admire Glen Bredon’s software prowess and sensibilities.

I spent a good amount of time reviewing the Merlin manual and entering the sample entries, and getting a feel for the open apple functional commands, that I had to look up because I was looking at an old revision.  Er- Older revision.  I took my time, and it seemed logical enough.

The next place I investigated was the book Assembly Lines by Robert Wagner.  This is a excellently written book, recommended to me, via a textfile on a floppy disk from my youth by none other than Krakowicz himself.  I began reading this book and taking notes.

After some time, I took a break and started looking around for other assembly books that might augment the experience.  I eventually ended up at Nibble.  Some few years ago I purchased the entire Nibble Magazine back catalog in OCR searchable pdf.  The collections came on 2 DVD, sent by the mighty Mike Harvey.  I have to say that this is a treasured possession of mine when I have to research some information.  These 12 years of documentation set a place in time for events in the Apple II continuum.  Prices.  New offerings and and ideas.  And as a former reader, it acts as a framework on which I can hand my memories.

I searched through he books section and selected a few choice editions including The Beginners Guide to Assembly.  I ordered them late Friday evening.  By Monday afternoon the DVD was in my mailbox.  I wrote Mike and thanked him.  He wrote back.  All around great experience!

I am somewhere in my beginning phases of learning this language and trying to be conscience of concepts I can use to give form to my ideas.  This week is a full schedule for me and I am not getting as much time as I want with the books.  I think I get a little reprieve  tomorrow night and maybe I can make serious in roads in my self-learning.

Coming home, I got a bio-chemical boost when I saw a rather large box awaiting me with a small box on the top.  Excellent.  I opened the boxes to discover 2 things that changed my experience wiht the Apple IIgs.  THe first was a RGB monitor I picked up.  Holy . . . The clarity of this screen is the best possible, and makes the graphics sing.  It was completely worth the $25 + shipping.  If you have a IIgs, lose the zero and get with the hero, drop that composite cable and get yourself a RGB monitor.

Uthernet, ComputerEyes, TDX, CF MicroDrive, 4MB Ram

The second package was sent to me from England and contained Andrew Webber’s TDX  card.  It is a stereo card the the Apple IIgs.  The Apple IIgs is not able to provide stereo sound out of the box.  Let me tall you a little about it.  This wonderful card separates the GS sound channels into a left and right output for a stereo effect.  The card connects to a 8-pin jack on the motherboard, where it picks up the channels of sound. It sends the sound out via a 1/8″ stereo jack, from which I connected a 1/8″jack to RCA connectors to my Lepai Amplifier to a pair of surround sound speakers I no longer use. This is the sound that should have been emitted from this computer.  It was wonderful!  The transaction with Drew as absolutely wonderful, as he kept me informed of the happening with the card, and when he shipped.  The turn around was absolutely top-notch and overall it was one of the better experiences an online consumer can have.   I unequivocally recommend Drew’s TDX card highly and over the next week or so, as I work my RGB monitor into the desktop, I will find some time to provide some audio samples.

This is what happens when you put a 10 MegaPixels of picture into a 16 bit sack.

Upon closer examination, the inspection revealed: An incredible amount of packing material, much more than what I suspected the tape/box/package-thing could hold and . . . an ComputerEyes digitizer that I have been chasing for the Apple IIe.  I had been wanting one for quite some time, at least since 11/26/09 and came into a low dollar auction for one.  Ten bucks was all it took to walk away with one, this time.

A sweet skull I digitized with ComputerEyes and a Panasonic video camera circa 1985.

I unpackaged my trophy, nay, my Major Award, and took a look at the contents.  This was an awesome package with some real life “feelies” and I will put some pics/scans up at some point soon.  What I found instide was the manual for ComputerEyes, and for the Print Shop companion software, two envelopes with the Digital Vision logo, coming out of Dedham, MA, multiple pieces of correspondence from the company, a invoice from the company, listing the ComputerEyes Digitizer for $399.95, the Print Shop Compatibility Software at $15 and a free Demo Disk plus shipping $11, totalling $425.95, paid in full.  I was very excited about this extra documentation and now considered my 8-bit Apple II ComputerEyes problem solved.

But there was another problem, one I wasn’t proud about.

Sometime after the ComputerEyes system entered my conscientiousness, and I decided I was going to make one mine, it was to the internet I trod in search of this magical device.  There was a problem though, and the problem was a serious dearth of information about the original system that I knew.  I could find no pictures, I seemed to remember a card being associated with the device, but this later proved to be false.  I couldn’t find any supporting documentation, and I was acting on a feverish impulse to buy one and in the end I ended up with a ComputerEyes card for an Apple IIgs.  I think at the time I mentioned this Twitter, got in to a short exchange with one of my favorite Retro pundits, @blakespot from The Bytecellar.  We made some chatter about my auction foibles and I am sure he went away from that dialog thinking “What is your deal, Ding-Dong?”

It was a rookie mistake.

Well I am stubborn and I held on to the card, knowing I couldn’t be beaten if I didn’t give up.  I put it away until I started noodling with this IIgs and wanted to see what it could do.  As I blogged earlier, I believed the card to be failed, D.O.A, a write off, and at that point I conceded that I was beaten but this card, on all fronts.  This 16 bit card from hell had crushed my dreams of digitization, and a new mission I was on to take a 10 MegaPixel video image and take it back to it’s 16 bit heritage.  And it was somewhere in this miasma of self-doubt that I noticed what was in the other half of the documentation.

Also arriving for the 8-bit version of the ComputerEyes module, I found the manual and software that supported ComputerEyes for the Apple IIgs.  This was too good to be true.  I now had full documentation for both devices.  This made me check myself, I opened the chassis on the GS and pulled the ComputerEyes card and gave it an quick visual inspection to look for wear on the contacts, or any tell tale signs of a fault.  Nothing.  I decided to reseat the card in slot #4 and as I did so, I noticed how tight the fit was.  I made a very dedicated effort to ensure the card seated properly, brought up the software and I had a sweet success! I hooked up the Nikon camera composite video out and captured the image with the Digitizer.  Awesome!

I have to tell you haw thrilled I was at this little success, and embarrassed again at not planting that card with the deft hand that I should have.  ComputerEyes IIgs, you have been a hard task master, but my stubbornness has paid off, and my 16 bit experiments in imagery can begin.  Victory will be mine, ComputerEyes, even if I have to conquer each of your 16 dithered colors.

This weekend I decided to primp up my CF image I am booting from.  I wanted some software, but I really have not a clue what the spectrum of quality is for different offerings.  It’s a complete trial by error methodology that I am implementing, and I like it that way, because the surprises to me are infinitely entertaining.  The first big surprise for me was SheppyWare.  I hadn’t spent much time there, because of my self-imposed 8-bit limitations of time gone past, but, I am happy to report that it is great, at least what I have experimented with so far.  You know, no actually meeting people, and only knowing of them from pieces you can glean from articles, chat rooms, text files, pod casts and the like, only really let you see them from a small crack of a door.  I have chatted with Sheppy a bit, but never looked closely at his offerings.  I can read a bit more about he man but the programs he’s written and I was impressed.  Granted, this impression is not of one who know the details, but by reading the docs, you can see the Sheppy identified a problem that irked him, and created the code to work around the problem, all in an effort to make the IIgs more like it should have been.  Yeah, that’s right.  You just read me getting excited about nearly 20 year old shareware.  The best part about reading the descriptions, hand choosing what I needed and putting them on my image (via the KEGS emulator, mind you) was that a few times I was referred to software that I didn’t know about such as Signature and Twilight II, that provide custom sound for events and a impressive screen saver.  I was also prompted to get a copy of Merlin16 on my drive as well as Wolfenstien 3D and a word processor or two.  If you are running  a IIgs and haven’t checked Sheppy’s site out, you are delinquent.

In addition to tweaking up the GS, I also began some reasearch int to the Apple-Cat II, entirely for my own edification, of course.  I came across a great page that if you have had an interest in the Apple-Cat I you probably have come across before.  I took a very close and discerning look this time and downloaded some of the files that the author had made available.  I was hoping to be more successful with reconstituting these files but I was not successful.  I do see some more Apple Cat time in my future and have been thinking aobut how I can create a setup that is optimal for how I want to explore the with the Cat.  That may be some weeks away.

I have a IIgs RGB monitor coming in a day or few, and need to reorganize the set up to support the room I need for it.  I am also going to reorganized the card  distribution inside the machines as well.  I haven’t the optimal plan as of yet, but am working on it.  Until I get a secondary CF Drive, I am limited to using CF images one machine at a time.  My GS is mot accelerated, and despite the cost I am highly interested in acceleration, but I am second thinking that.  I have a IIe that is accelerated, I love it, but I may be able to get by without on the GS by using the emulator when I need it fast.  That is kind of a lo-res way of looking at it, but I think I can get by.  I know I need more clock cycles on the GS before I have a good grasp of what counts and an opinion that means anything about it, but I am really liking the experience.  There is something about this experience that fits a quirk I have in my personality.  I don’t know if there is a word for it, but it probably should have it’s own Sniglet.  I will try to describe it.  When I was on a submarine, it was only a matter of time before you were only way to familiar with damn near everybody on board.  Familiar enough to write a biography.  So, to offset that, I desperately tried not to meet anyone new that came on board.  The goal was to have a stranger on board the boat when we were underway.  It was great to look over, see some face, and have no idea who they were or (rarely) what they did.  Somehow that made the experience better.  I think the same is true with the IIgs experiment.  There are a ton of expert human resources I could call on, who know the best way, but I already know that I am going to give there minds a break, because I am having a lot of fun experimenting with the system like it’s the first time.  Because it is.  As I proceed on that route I am constantly catching myself being impress with the capability of the machine.  And because of that, I keep wondering just how far I am likely to take it.