This is just me thinking out loud, but back in the day I wrote a number of modem drivers basically for the purpose of running bulletin board systems, and mostly specific to the Novation Apple-Cat ][ modem. However, it occurs to me that it was also possible with those drivers […]
Monthly Archives: March 2012
Apple II collection goes platinum
I managed to find a platinum Apple //e on eBay that looked pretty unyellowed, had a complete set of plastic back panels, the essential cards, and even a disk drive and joystick. It was fairly clearly from the bottom of someone’s closet, put up completely untested and at a surprisingly […]
Do not discard
Today, a HUGE box arrived. In fact, it was the second of two boxes, which my sister had brilliantly shipped out to me from the other coast. But the reason for the huge box is that, within it, was this! Admittedly, to most, this looks like, well, trash. But it’s […]
A couple of Softalks
The Softalk magazine (1980–1984) has become surprisingly rare. Surprising because it used to actually be given for free (at least for a while) to anyone who bought an Apple. And it was a good magazine too. But although many other computer magazines of the 80s have been scanned and made […]
Vintage hardware is big
I started moving some of the computers that are basically ready to go up into my office, since there’s little point in having them all tucked away in the downstairs lab space. But, the thing is, old computers are big. I am clearly going to face a challenge trying to […]
Press reaction to the QX-10
Here are some scans I just did of a couple of reviews from Microcomputing magazine in 1983 on the Epson QX-10. “The quintessential computer? Epson’s QX-10 hits the high-end micro market.” Jim Hansen, Microcomputing, April 1983. “Vive la difference! Valdocs: While the Epson QX-10 offers impressive features, it’s the software—particularly […]
Terrarium teardown: green slots
I disassembled the terrarium ][+ in preparation for checking that it is clean, reseating the chips and reattaching the motherboard to the case. And look: Green slots. Interesting.
iMac G4 1GHz moves upstairs
I moved the 1GHz iMac G4 upstairs and installed Leopard on it today. Not much going on there yet, and it is on the network via DHCP (so doesn’t have a stable IP address), but I can screen share into it from my office iMac, which I can screen share […]
I a e r t r P i t n
A small batch of color ImageWriter ribbons arrived, which were indeed still wrapped in their plastic, just as the auction had indicated. However, the plastic had holes in various places. So these were not after all the still-sealed ribbons I’d thought they’d be. I picked one and opened it, and […]
What is it with people?
I also don’t approve of this: [Photo credit: macgeek on instructables.com, hosted here.] But it is mitigated (slightly) by the fact that one of the people responsible for doing this to a G4 Cube at least put the (working!) parts up on eBay. Here, incidentally, is my new-to-me G4 Cube. […]