Yesterbits

ProFiles encouraged

paulhagstrom — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 01:04:43 +0000

Apple’s ProFile drive, designed (clearly) for use with the Apple ///, came in a couple of variations, and quickly made its way to the Lisa and Apple II as well. They came in 5MB and 10MB varieties (the 10MB versions are quite rare now), as distinguished by their model numbers (A9M0005 vs. A9M0100).

To use the ProFile, an interface card is required appropriate to the machine. The Apple /// and Apple II each require a dedicated interface card, while the Lisa (sort of) required a more general parallel interface card. I say “sort of” because the Lisa actually has a built-in parallel port that can be used for this out of the box, but the port in the Lisa 2 at least was internal, used to support an internal widget drive. In my Lisa 2, I have an X/ProFile connected to the internal port, so to connect an external (second) drive, I need the parallel interface card. I actually have a couple of 5MB ProFile drives and two parallel cards, but the first parallel card I tried didn’t work and I haven’t gotten around to trying the second one yet. My plan is to back up whatever is on the ProFiles now (which were almost certainly formatted for Lisa use), and then reformat them with the Apple ///.

Here is the Apple /// card alone, and then installed:

The Apple II card had a more generic name (“Apple II interface”), but was specifically for the ProFile. Moreover, the EPROM on the card determined whether it was for the 5MB or the 10MB ProFile. I am not at present sure whether a 10MB EPROM will work with the 5MB drive, but as I understand it the 5MB EPROM will only see 5MB of a 10MB drive if connected.

Here is the Lisa parallel card. I have two of them, and, oddly, they differ in that one has a 6-color logo on it and one does not. I have tested the white-logo one and it didn’t work, I haven’t tested the 6-color logo one yet.

Speaking of formatting the drives, another point about the ProFile: It is possible to erase a ProFile drive on any of the machines you can connect it to, but to do a low-level format requires an Apple ///, the ProFile interface card, and a special “low-level formatting kit.” I have the kit, but I haven’t used it yet (or even unwrapped it). First, I’ll back up the drives, then I’ll reformat them. My thinking is that they could use a good reformatting to extend their usable life. All of the ProFiles I have power on and make it to the “ready” state, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re on their penultimate legs.

The picture below is “of” my LLF kit, but it may well not be in its authentic packaging. It’s just in a standard “accessories” box, probably shrink-wrapped and labelled by the guy I bought it from (VintageMicros).

Anyway, on to the manuals, disk images, and paper stuff. This is ProFile stuff specifically for the Apple ///, originally contained within a box, here’s a (particularly beat-up) instance of it:

Apple III ProFile accessories – US packing list (Aug 1983)
Apple III ProFile accessories – US packing list (Oct 1983) (now with warranty card!)
ProFile driver diskette (disk image file from apple3.org)
ProFile Owner’s Manual Errata
ProFile Owner’s Manual (Apple III)
Helpful Hints card
Backup III diskette (disk image file from apple3.org)
Backup III manual
User Input Report Form (older)
User Input Report Form (newer)
Warranty Registration Card

I don’t have any materials for the Apple II version, and I posted the ones I have from ProFiles intended for the Lisa a couple of entries ago about stuff packed with Lisa. So, there it is. When I actually go through the process of doing the backup and low-level formatting, I’ll document the process and results here, but for now, just clearing up the backlog of scans I’ve got.

It’s Business Time

paulhagstrom — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 11:13:32 +0000

Today, we have the Apple II Business Graphics package. I was surprised to discover that it didn’t seem to be archived in any of the places I looked, but it also turned out to be kind of a beast to copy. Even Apple-branded stuff back in the day was copy protected.

This is a complete set, at least according to the packing list. The only thing I haven’t scanned is the “How-To Sheet”, which is glued to the inside of the top cover of the box.

Here is the scanned documentation and paper that came along with it:

The real coup here, actually, is that I finally managed to get disk images that seem to work in an emulator. It was no easy task. I first managed to get a bootable copy using Locksmith 5.0, and then tried a couple of different nibble disk transfer methods until I finally wound up using SST to nibblize the disks on actual hardware and then reconstitute the image in an emulator. Virtual ][ seems only to like it in its half-track format (v2d), so accordingly, it only runs right now in Virtual ][. Maybe someday I'll try it again—it is not flawless. Sometimes (randomly?) it bombs out with an I/O error and you have to reset the machine. But I tried it a little bit (nowhere near exhaustively), and it basically seemed to work.

Update: Thanks to Rich Thompson in the comments, I was made aware that Computist #48 has a softkey for this. The trick is that track #1 is unreadable on the original, and if it can be read, the program bombs out. So, I re-imaged the disk straightforwardly with ADTPro, converted it to a .nib file using Disk Muncher in the emulator (reading from the .dsk.po file, writing to a .nib file), and then went in with a hex editor and changed all instances of D5 AA 96 FF FE AA AB to D5 AA 96 FF FE FF FF, which effectively destroys track #1. The .nib file now boots fine, so I have replaced the disk images I’d had up before with these. Because the Computist softkey relies on using a magic volume number (005) to see if it’s dealing with the PLOT disk, and because the .dsk format doesn’t preserve the volume number, I have not gone ahead with deprotecting the disk, since it would have to be stored in a .nib file anyway.

I was previously having occasional I/O errors that would force me to reset, and I don’t know whether that behavior is gone or not (perhaps that even happened BITD). I haven’t stress-tested this new image, but I was able at least to recreate the plots I’d done without any errors appearing.

Packing Lisa

paulhagstrom — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 09:09:30 +0000

Some packing lists and other stuff from Lisa 2/XL. I have some manuals as well, but this is all the little miscellany.

Apple III publications

paulhagstrom — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 03:00:32 +0000

I just recently got a pretty big haul of Apple III stuff, including a bunch of boxed software (quite a bit of it still shrink-wrapped), and also a number of newsletters and catalogs. I’ve scanned what I have of the newsletters.

One that was new to me is The /// Magazine. It seems to have been a publication put out by Pair Software, which served as a kind of advertising vehicle for them, but also included quite a few articles. The editing is a bit spotty, spelling errors are somewhat rampant, but it’s still interesting to see. (Perhaps the worst of the errors is that on the cover of the October 1986 issue, in large type, it proclaims “November 1986″.) I have four issues, and I’ve also scanned a renewal notice and subscription card.

A more well-known Apple /// publication is On Three, three of which I have, along with a kind of “brochure” (On Three Tracks) that is really just a brief catalog, with one article in it. I scanned all of these, one of which already exists on asimov (among many earlier issues there, scanned by Mike Maginnis). Two of the ones I have scanned here (vol 5, numbers 1-2) were not represented there, though, nor was the On Three Tracks brochure. On Three was also essentially produced by an Apple /// software/hardware company, but it was nevertheless a pretty contentful and professionally produced newsletter.

I also have posted a couple of Sun Remarketing Sun Times catalogs. Sun Remarketing of course was the company that bought up a lot of Apple /// and Lisa stock and resold and supported it after Apple canceled the machines.

These are not entirely pristine. The original recipient marked the date received on them, and went through some of the catalogs checking off things of interest and making notes. I have made no attempt to clean this up. But it’s not particularly distracting, either.

The /// Magazine

October 1986
November-December 1986 (this one I may re-scan later, edges a bit rough)
January 1987
February 1987
Renewal notice and subscription card, December 1986

On Three

Sun Times

Softalk issues

paulhagstrom — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 10:04:27 +0000

Sooner than I’d anticipated, I’m back on the blog. I’ve scanned a couple of my issues of Softalk, and as an experiment, I tried putting them in a shared folder on box.com, since I happened to have a bunch of space available there. But the downloading interface is not optimal, and it pings me every time someone downloads a file. The advantage was that it was browsable, but I’ll replicate that by posting the links here.

Update: I’ve updated August 1982, it is now complete except for the back cover.

What I’ve been doing is extracting selected individual articles (with full-page ads removed) from the magazines, and then (where I’ve done the whole thing) the entire issues. These are searchable images, originally scanned at 600dpi and down sampled to 300dpi, since, as it turns out, the printed resolution is not high enough to warrant 600dpi. I’ve also put bookmarks in the PDF files for the articles, since the additional time to do that over and above the cropping and OCR time was fairly insignificant.

Where I’ve processed the full issue, it’s linked below. I have some articles from issues that I have not scanned in full in here as well. I will update this post when I’ve scanned them in full, but probably also recapitulate it in a new blog post for those.

If you don’t want to wade through what’s below, the full issues are: July 1981 (79MB) and October 1982 (243MB). August 1982 (217MB) is complete except the back cover.

Softalk 1981 July

Softalk 1981 July (full issue; 79MB)
Exec Strategic Simulations (Allan Tommervik)
Assembly Lines (Roger Wagner) — addition and subtraction
The Pascal Path (Jim Merritt) — data types
Softalk Presents the Bestsellers

Softalk 1981 November

Full issue not complete
Exec Brøderbund
Grist for the Mill And Other Apple-Compatible Microprocessors (Jeffrey Mazur) — 6809 accelerators
SOFTCARD Symposium (Greg Tibbetts) — Basic-80 file commands
The Pascal Path (Jim Merritt) — output formatting and comments
Assembly Lines (Roger Wagner) — reading/writing data files
Time After Time (Richard Kaapke) — clock cards
The Third BASIC (Taylor Pohlman) — text and data files
Softalk Presents the Bestsellers

Softalk 1982 April

Full issue not complete
DOStalk (Bert Kersey) — debut, poking around in DOS
Pascal Path (Jim Merritt) — parsing input
Hardtalk (Jeffrey Mazur) — reviewing game controllers
Go Ahead and Interrupt Your Apple, Part 2 (Dan Fischer, Morgan P. Caffrey) — processing interrupts

Softalk 1982 August

Softalk 1982 August (mostly) (still missing back cover; 217MB)
Exec Sir-Tech (Jim Salmons)
Bank Switch Razzle-Dazzle: Peeking and Poking the Apple III (John Jeppson) — recreating PEEK and POKE on the III
Assembly Lines (Roger Wagner) — reading the hires screen
The Pascal Path (Jim Merritt) — I/O streams
SOFTCARD Symposium (Greb Tibbetts) — DDT program, continued
Hardtalk (Jeffrey Mazur) — EPROM programming
All About Applesoft (Doug Carlston) — shape tables
DOStalk (Bert Kersey) — graceful exit from CATALOG pause, etc.
The Customization of VisiCalc for the Apple III (Joe Shelton) — VisiCalc Advanced Version and VisiSchedule
The Third BASIC (Taylor Pohlman) — scrolling through text files
Softalk Presents the Bestsellers
Subscription card

Softalk 1982 October

Softalk 1982 October (full issue, 243MB)
Exec Infocom (Roe R. Adams III)
DOStalk (Bert Kersey) — RWTS
Graphically Speaking (Mark Pelczarski) — graphic character generation
Hardtalk (Jeffrey Mazur) — the game I/O interface
Have an Apple Split (Bob Bishop) — doing magic with blanking intervals
The Pascal Path (Jim Merritt) — multidimensional arrays
SOFTCARD Symposium (Greg Tibbitts) — generic CP/M
The Third BASIC (Taylor Pohlman) — reading keyboard modifiers with interrupts
Ad: Beagle Bros

Softalk 1984 January

Full issue not complete
Back to The Old Apple III Patch (John Jeppson) — moving system files into a subdirectory
DOStalk (Tom Weishaar) — VisiCalc files
A Family for the III-Plus (David Durkee, Albert Chu, Bob Cummings) — The Apple III+ team
If Then Maybe (Roger Wagner) — BLOADing Applesoft files
Softalk Articles Index Sep 1980–Dec 1983 (Betsy Barnes)
Apple Leaders Preview 1984 (compiled by Tommy Gear)
Softalk Presents the Bestsellers

Softalk 1984 July

Full issue not complete
Softly Comment: Apple III obituary (Al Tommervik)
Softalk Presents the Bestsellers

Softalk 1984 August (final issue)

Full issue not complete
Exec Electronic Arts (Matt Yuen)
DOStalk (Tom Weishaar) — text files

State of the blog

paulhagstrom — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 07:12:30 +0000

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here, and as usual a lot of interesting and relevant things have happened (mainly in terms of acquisitions) that I could post about. Mostly, I’ve just resorted to Twitter, and by now there are so many things to post about that I’m sure to forget something. I got a couple of really interesting collections of things, including an early II+ with all its boxes and lots of tapes and manuals, another set of things left over from a Apple II repair shop with lots of spare chips, badges, and doodads, a big set of LEGO/Apple II robotics equipment and a half-dozen //es from a retired industrial arts teacher. I now also have two standard (non-plus) Apple IIs through a couple of lucky breaks, a machine I’d thought I’d never even have one of (neither of them have the coveted raised power lamp, they’re both slightly too new). So much to document, so many disks to image.

Being an academic, I’ve reached the break between Fall and Spring semesters, which I hope will give me some opportunity to get through some of these projects that have been piling up. Among the projects I’d like to undertake is to figure out how to organize this site in some useful way, since I envision having lots of stuff here that’s not really best viewed in reverse chronological order. We’ll see. Only a few short weeks open for this, but maybe I’ll make some progress.

Anyway, this is just another “I’m still alive” post, though if you were following @yesterbits on Twitter, you’d have known I’m still alive.

Supercalifragilistic Epson Alidocious

paulhagstrom — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 10:08:12 +0000

Some more Epson doc scans, I think this finishes the sets that I have. The Epson QX-10 reference manual is here, and then various manuals pertaining to the Epson PX-8 and peripherals.

Laudably, Epson still has at least one relevant manual on its support site. I didn’t find anything on the PX-8, but a slightly newer version of the operations manual can be found here:

Epson QX-10 Operations manual (1984)

It’s starting to get a little bit hard to track everything down, so I intend to shortly try to gather related documents together in a compilation page (e.g., for the QX-10 and for the PX-8), but for now, just looking through posts with the paperwork tag is the only way to find scans I’ve posted.

PeachWare, CP/M-80, and Valdocs

paulhagstrom — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 21:29:41 +0000

A few more scans from the QX-10 library, these are scans of the Peachtree software suite manuals.

Also, the Epson CP/M-80 manual, MTERM manual, and the Valdocs User’s Guide.

Mountain Hardware cards

paulhagstrom — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 06:02:36 +0000

I’ll write more about this shortly, but I recently got a really nice and complete Apple II plus system setup, complete with a couple of Mountain Hardware cards and manuals. Almost all of this system was purchased at the end of November, 1979, so these cards are from that era. I’ll look at each card individually later, but for now since I’ve done the scans, here are the three manuals.

Compaq MS-DOS 3.1

paulhagstrom — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 07:23:48 +0000

In support of my two Compaq Portables (II and III), I got myself a copy of the official Compaq 3.1 version of MS-DOS and BASIC. At least for the Compaq Portable II, my understanding is that this is the latest version (oddly, apart from MS-DOS 6.0) that it can run. I had a version of these disks already from the net, but those were in German—these disks are not. I also scanned in the manuals and the box. Links to the disk images (360k .img files) and the manuals are below. I’ve successfully booted from them and briefly used them from within VirtualBox, so they should be ok. Next up will be to create real floppies from the images and install the system on the Compaq Portables, but one thing at a time.

Links to the scans: