Well, I certainly didn't get much done this time around for the Retrochallenge. I kinda bombed out because of lots of big commitments I had to be present for. So now it's back to normal for me for a while, and back to school. Which means that when I'm not doing work I'll probably be messing with projects some more. Here is my ambitious to-do list for the near future:
1. continue work on my Tandy 102 BBS (for which I am writing my own code)
2. fix all the nagging and annoying bugs in my Apple IIgs internet setup. That Lantronix seems to work just fine until you put it one someone else's network, and then it all breaks loose and strange things happen. I'm still trying to figure out how to keep my TELNET connections from freezing up every couple minutes. I suspect it's something to do with the way the router expects to interact with it, so I turned all the settings to LOCAL mode to prevent outside pings and such from borking my connection. It seems to be working great now, but things can always break again.
3. plan and prepare for my trip to the Midwest Gaming Convention. This is going to be fun.
4. and this is more of a low-priority since I seem to be spending all my money on tuition right now, but I am in the search for a Tandy 200. But anyone knows Ebay can be a fickle beast, so we'll see how that pans out.
I'll post pics or maybe a video of my IIgs in action sometime soon. It's quite a blast to hop on and use Gopher, Links, Alpine, and all the other good stuff Unix has to offer.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Friday, January 9, 2009
A long overdue update
And now it's time for an update, a long overdue update. Things have been going a little slow with my challenge thus far, but mostly because of one problem- my null modem cable stopped working right. Until the new cable is built I can't continue testing my BBS software. In other news, I have procured an Apple IIc, for no particular reason. It's in quite good shape, and came with everything I needed, except a monitor and disks. It even has the special canvas carrying bag too! I'll probably set it up as a terminal or something like that.
I'll be honest, one reason why I haven't built a new null modem cable yet is that I have been having a great time messing with my new Apple IIc, playing games and such. I found a cool program called ADTPro which allows me to transfer disk images to my Apple IIc from my PC. It only needs Java to run, so it's cross platform. (with machines that have Java, that is.) I found a couple boxes of blank 5.25 inch disks in the basement and copied a bunch of programs onto them. The cable I had to build (and which used the spare parts I would have used to make a new null modem cable for my Tandy) was a bit tricky because the Apple IIc doesn't have a regular serial port on it. Instead it has a 5 pin DIN. I ripped a DIN off an old AT style keyboard I had laying around and used that along with a 9 pin dsub connector. It's not pretty, but I was more intent on getting it done and getting on with playing games. Games like Taipan, Oregon Trail, Spare Change, etc.
I'll be honest, one reason why I haven't built a new null modem cable yet is that I have been having a great time messing with my new Apple IIc, playing games and such. I found a cool program called ADTPro which allows me to transfer disk images to my Apple IIc from my PC. It only needs Java to run, so it's cross platform. (with machines that have Java, that is.) I found a couple boxes of blank 5.25 inch disks in the basement and copied a bunch of programs onto them. The cable I had to build (and which used the spare parts I would have used to make a new null modem cable for my Tandy) was a bit tricky because the Apple IIc doesn't have a regular serial port on it. Instead it has a 5 pin DIN. I ripped a DIN off an old AT style keyboard I had laying around and used that along with a 9 pin dsub connector. It's not pretty, but I was more intent on getting it done and getting on with playing games. Games like Taipan, Oregon Trail, Spare Change, etc.
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