10
May
2012

AppleSoft Magnum Opus

By

When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time writing and not enough time working my Applesoft.

It was February 26th, 1986, Third Period Computer Basic Class. This
was the day I would write my greatest Applesoft program ever.  What it lacks in
actual program content, it more than makes up for in setting the stage
for the antagonistic relationship I was developing with the instructor.
I only had to print it a few times for debugging purposes to seal the
deal for the rest of the semester.

 1  REM  *********************************************************
 2  REM  *                                                       *
 3  REM  *                   Copyright (c) 1986                  *
 4  REM  *    Xanith Diskette Company and/or its affiliates.     *
 5  REM  *                   All rights reserved.                *
 6  REM  *                                                       *
 7  REM  *  Redistribution and use in source and binary forms,   *
 8  REM  *  with or withoutmodification, are permitted provided  *
 9  REM  *  that the following conditions are met:               *
10  REM *                                                       *
11  REM * -Redistributions of source code must retain the above *
12  REM *  copyright notice, this list of conditions and the    *
13  REM *  following disclaimer.                                *
14  REM *                                                       *
15  REM * -Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the    *
16  REM *  above copyright notice, this list of conditions and  *
17  REM *  the following disclaimer in the documentation and/o  *
18  REM *  other materials provided with the distribution.      *
19  REM *                                                       *
20  REM * -Neither the name of Xanith Diskette Company or the   *
21  REM *  names of its contributors may be used to endorse     *
22  REM *  or promote products derived from this software       *
23  REM *  without specific prior written permission.           *
24  REM *                                                       *
25  REM * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND*
26  REM * CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED       *
27  REM * WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED*
28  REM * WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A       *
29  REM * PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL *
30  REM * THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY *
31  REM * DIRECT, INDIRECT, *INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR *
32  REM * CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING,BUT NOT LIMITED TO,  *
33  REM * PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF  *
34  REM * USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOW- *
35  REM * EVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN*
36  REM * CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING        *
37  REM * NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE*
38  REM * USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSS-    *
39  REM * IBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.                               *
40  REM *                                                       *
41  REM * The SUMS program impliments an application that simply*
42  REM * allows a third party (hereby referred to as "user") to*
43  REM * assign numeric values to variables, which are held in *
44  REM * memory, called upon, and used to calculate a total    *
45  REM * sum.  No claim of ownership will be brought against   *
46  REM * the user values and such intent is neither implied or *
47  REM * expressed for the term in which the user values are   *
48  REM * contained in memory.                                  *
49  REM *                                                       *
50  REM *                                                       *
51  REM *                     SUMS                              *
52  REM *                                                       *
53  REM *                      by                               *
54  REM *               Daniel McLaughlin                       *
55  REM *                  Third Period                         *
56  REM *               February 26, 1986                       *
57  REM *                                                       *
58  REM *                   STARRING                            *
59  REM *                     The                               *
60  REM *               DECLARED VARIABLES                      *
61  REM *         A$ as User Numeric Input No. 1                *
62  REM *         B$ as User Numeric Input No. 2                *
63  REM *                                                       *
64  REM *********************************************************
65  INPUT "INPUT THE FIRST NUMBER => ";A
66  INPUT "INPUT THE SECOND NUMBER => ";B
67  C = A + B
68  PRINT  
69  PRINT A;" + ";B;" = ";C
70  FOR I = 1 TO 2500 : NEXT I
71  TEXT  : HOME
72  END
Category: Apple II Notes, Software  One Comment
06
May
2012

Fantasy Wargaming

By

It’s was no secret at the time, that I spent an inordinate amount of my attention to creating fantasy wargaming worlds to explore.  I guess it’s no secret now, either.  So why am I blurting this out now?  I was cleaning and organizing things, trying to reign in my uncontrolled accumulation of stuff, and opening up my Applesoft textbook from high school, entitled “A Guide to Programming in Applesoft” by Bruce Presley.  I remember the class.  It was taught by an abnormally masculine girls sports coach, and was pretty much a sleeper class for me.  I remember that the instructor (who may have only paged through the textbook that summer) had a problem with me keying in “?” for print statements.  That was the first time it was suspected that I may be engaging in hacker-like activities.  I never did show her that I could edit my code with ESC + I,J,K,M.  Oh well.

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

Category: Apple II Notes  One Comment
28
Apr
2012

Bring Your Apple II Work

By

You should bring your Apple II work. There’s nothing wrong with the idea. Yesterday, I had mentioned that I had brought an Apple IIc Plus as a cube-side companion.  I had set it up, using a DVD player as a LCD display.  The display is highly portable, but the dispaly quality definitely takes a hit.  The big benefit is that the whole deal can jam into a reasonably sized laptop bag, you know,  for the Apple II ambassador to the world on the go.  Setting up the serial video streaming rig is straight forward:  RS-232 compatible connection from your PC connected to a IIc MiniDIN8 connection (Trivia:  The RS in RS-232 stands for Recommended Standard.  Early on, this was a +/-10vdc signal that sometime got driven at lower signal levels and lead to communication problems.  Soon a +/-5vdc driver appeared and became known as RS-232 compatible).  That’s about it on the hardware side, so let’s review the inventory:  An Apple IIc, a display of some type, an Apple IIc serial connection (RS-232 DSub-9 to MiniDIN8 cable.  You’ll want one for ADTPro anyway,  available here).

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.

 

Category: Apple II Notes  Leave a Comment
18
Apr
2012

Binary Hexarhythms

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I have begun reading a book entitled “Artificial Intelligence on the Apple II”.  It is interesting to me and does a reasonable job of explaining the workings of it’s schemes as far as informational management.  Concurrently, I am also looking at a few Nibble Books that I purchased from Mike Harvey.  I haven’t met the man, but he has always been quite personable in e-mails and I have found his products to be of great value to me.  Particularly the OCR searchable complete Nibble magazine library on DVD.  Recently I purchased a few nibble books on DVD.  I chose a few that I felt would have the most strategic and tactical value to me and it came to a reasonable price.  These books are well written, and quite an asset as I experiment with ideas.  Continuing with my Apple II Attention Deficit Disorder, I was going through some Apple II programming documents about different means of sorting binary values that I found in the Asimov FTP site AppleII Documents folder.  All of these bits of information went into my Apple II mixing plenum, and got processed by my subconscious.

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.

Category: Apple II Notes, People  Leave a Comment
03
Feb
2012

Origins

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I was thinking about my initial Apple II origins.  Until our family was able to purchase an Apple II, my childhood command center was located in my Uncle’s house.  I was thinking about the desk, a beige sheet metal office desk, with a laminated wood desktop.  The Apple II sat in the center of the desk, under the green screen monitor, on top of a finely appointed, do it yourself monitor stand.  The memories over the years have blended some of the defining qualities of the space.  The monophonic cassette recorder and the disk ][ drives always were to the right of the monitor.  I imagine this is more a result from being right-handed than any positional practicality, but that may be wrong:  A disk drive placed on the left impedes access to the power switch.  A smoke colored plastic disk box sat further to the right of the disk drives and contained frequently used games, and utilities.  There was always felt tip pens and the equivalent of a pilot razor point pens, and mechanical pencils all in a coffee cup.  Early on, to the left of this set up was a teletype, on a stand that functioned as the printer.  It was awesome, loud, and slow, and occasionally functioned as an actual teletype for my uncle’s amateur radio trials.

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.

Category: Nostalgia  Leave a Comment
31
Jan
2012

Welcome to the Machine

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One of the aspects that I like about my abstract and amorphous endeavors on the Apple II platform is the opportunity to research topics and get a better understanding about the machine.  To those ends I have been heavily  investigating Assembly Language on the Apple II platform, a topic I had dabbled in long ago.  Now, I wanted to take an honest look at what it was going to take to code a program idea that I have.  I want to fully describe the program, a program of such ridiculousness, that it’s only purpose would be to teach one how to code assembly.  I won’t give details though, because I want to see if I can do it, no matter how long the project may take, and I want to see how much of details I can solve on my own.

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.

Category: Apple II Notes  Leave a Comment
25
Jan
2012

Apple II. Capital G. Capital S.

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I am going to try and do justice to this entry, and I am hoping to write it in one shot, and publish it, but I am mentally spent today.  I instructed a class today, and somewhere in the presenting/expounding/redirecting/clarifying/guiding the mental energy gets drained.  It was nice today, though, as a learner turned to conversation towards Apple II’s, a topic in which I am well versed.  We talked for a good while, steering through the Apple II product lines, the chain of CEO’s, I tested my view on the new Scully paradigm, and was met with the same disbelief I once held.  All in all a memorable moment in a long day.  I don’t know how that happens, but it seems to happen a lot with me.  Since I have been a technical instructor, I have influenced and been influenced by a principal scientist who taught me about the Beeb Micro, and I think I sparked an interest for him to build a Zed 80.  In one class I was instructing, I met a man who build his own 6502 computer on board a Navy ship in the 70′s out of a electronics kit they had on-board.  We talked for some time about the way to account for bits in bygone eras, specifically Apple II’s and his experience programming games on them.  I was impressed and happy to meet such Hi-Res person.  I recommended that the engineering department pick him up, because there was more there than met the eye.  It turns out that I had just encountered the man with a heart of dice, the last man standing at Avalon Hill Games, Bill Levay.  It seems that in every class I meet someone that has an eye towards the past, I little air of nostalgia about them, and it makes me like what I do that much more.

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.

Category: Apple II Notes  One Comment
23
Jan
2012

Seeing the World with ComputerEyes

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As I entered my abode this evening I saw on the stairs a freshly delivered package in a stale cardboard box from Subway.  A-ha! An eBay delivery, recognized it right off from the overzealous use of packing tape that was clearly not intended to just keep the box from opening, but a wholehearted attempt to keep the box together entirely. I waited until after supper to inspect further. 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.

Skull goes here.

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.

Category: Apple II Notes, Apple IIGS, Peripherals  Leave a Comment
22
Jan
2012

SheppyWare & More Tweaking

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I’ve had to slow it down a little, my friends.  I’ve been getting a lot of hangout time with the Apple IIgs, lately.  In fact, I have had so much hang out time that my wife has put the kabosh on it while she’s around.  Oh well, I suppose I was getting a little obsessive.  I can’t help it as it is a new platform to me, and one that on some levels I am intimate with, but on other levels I am not at all.  It’s exciting to me and has taken me down some good paths.

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.

 

 

Category: Apple II Notes, Software  Leave a Comment
18
Jan
2012

Apple-Cat

By

Kind of a disappointing Apple II day.  Cue the Trombone players in 3 … 2 … 1 …

Waaaah   Waaaah    Waaaah  WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

I finally came across the ComputerEyes GS software I needed as a .sdk file.  I opened it up in CiderPress, made a disk, tried it out on KEGS and had a successful boot.  Later, I brought the image to life as a 5 1/4″ floppy, transferring the image from ADTPro.  I booted it up on the GS and . . . the software failed to find my Computer Eyes card.   That is real disappointing, and may be my first card failure ever.  The version of computer eyes for the GS is 3.2, and I wouldn’t think that the software is highly specific to the card, but it might be.  I will take a close look at t he card later and try to determining of there is a version associated with it and maybe I just have the wrong package for it. Rest assured, the investigation is underway.

But like everything, there is an upside to today:  I grabbed a stack of albums from one of several bins and came across classic rock central.  CSNY, Hendrix, Eagles, Butterfield Blues Band, Buffalo Springfield, The Cars, The Yes Album.  I put on side one of The Who’s “Tommy” (on the Decca label) after given a pass to a few Nancy Wilson (not associated with Heart) albums.  The Who album looked brand new, on heavy vinyl, but no booklet.  They were numbered correctly, sides 1 and 3 on one album, sides 2 and 4 on the other, so that they could drop from a stack for continuous listening.  As the introduction piece of Tommy played, I made some floppies.

I moved my operations over to the Apple II+ which I had acquired to experiment with a Wild Card that I purchased from eBay, presumably from Joe Grand.  I had made some disk to play a bit with the Apple-Cat II.  I had been lucky and picked one up with a 212 expansion card.  So I spent some time experimenting with Cat Dialers, Cat-Fur, Cat’s Meow and other such software.  I listened as I sent busy signals, blue boxed, and straight up sent 2600 Hz tones down the line.  And then I paused, and wished as hard as I could that I had someone to trade wares with on the Cat-Fur, because lets face it, 1200 baud is 1200 baud.

I came across a program entitled JOSHUA.  ”Hmm, I wonder what this does,” I thought.  Would you believe it was a War Dialer.  No kidding.  Started war dialing straight away.  ”Should probably be sending that to my printer in case I find W.O.P.R.”  I think I actually said that out loud.  I was hacking.  Big time.  I felt naked without a ski mask, mirrored aviator sunglasses, or some fingerless gloves, but somehow, I would continue hacking, despite my fashion handicap.  And then I was foiled.  My area dials all 10 digits, but poor old JOSHUA only dialed 7 at a time.  I spat a curse upon the children of the recorded digital voice that told me to “Please hang up and dial again,” because I was already doing that automatically, baby!  Yeah!  JOSHUA!  Go, Man, Go!  I pressed CTRL-Reset, and JOSHUA returned to the Main Menu.  I stopped wardialing in case someone was trying to wardial me.

From the No Big Whoop department:  I figured out that I can drag and drop files on System 6 OS.

Category: Apple II Notes  Leave a Comment
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