Winter Challenge 09!

It's finally here! (almost.) January of 09 is the month of the Winter Retro Challenge. And this year I am making my own BBS, hosted on my Tandy 102 and served up on a modem. Using that extra landline I never use but comes with my apartment. I pay for it, so I guess I better use it.

And why, you may ask, is this a challenge? Let me enumerate the challenges involved:
1. BBS software. It doesn't exist yet. I'm writing it myself.
2. I don't have a modem for my Tandy, other than the built in 300 baud one. This is a problem for two reasons:
3. First, 300 baud is sickeningly slow, even for a retro computer geek
4. Secondly, my second phone line is a digital line, not analog, so I won't be able to push the baud rate very high (or it might not work at all.) This also excludes the Tandy's built in modem because that is a pulse dialer- sheesh, it really is old.
5. And lastly, it's running on a Tandy 102. I get 32k of RAM. That includes operating space and storage, only 32k total.

A challenge indeed, but a workable one. Most of the problems revolve around the phone line I would like to host it on, and if all else fails I'll run an external modem at 300 baud and the IP compression on the phone line won't be able to change anything anyway. I wanted to host on Telnet, but that is now out of the question because the IT department at the University definitely won't be opening up any ports for me. But they'd never expect a phone line...

Finishing up

Well, the challenge is coming to a close. I think this post should be considered my final post for the challenge, as I will soon be heading off to work. It's a night shift, and by the time I get off work it will be August 1, and the challenge will be over.

Well, this has been my first Retro Challenge, and I think it has been a lot of fun. As is the case with most of the challengers, I think I can say that I shought my challenge was a sucess, even though my actual "accomplishments" weren't very huge. I set the goal to make some programs on the Tandy 102, write a blog, and get my Tandy online, and thus far I accomplished all of em!

Good work to all the contestants this summer! I look forward to the (highly objective of course...) judging and the upcoming Winter Challenge. And of course, I look forward to seeing you all on the Retro BBS sometime soon.

Lastly, since my main hobby seems to be retrocomputing in general, you can expect to see priodic updates on this blog with info about my tinkerings and code.

Call the medic

Well, my computer finally had some problems. Not my Tandy of course, that beast is practically indestructible, but my main PC, my HP laptop. It's time for some warranty repair, good thing I got the extended coverage. So I might be "absent" for a bit here as my computer gets fixed up. I'll try and post my "stones" game online form someone else's computer in the mean time.

And as a status update on the game, I think I'll release the text-only version to begin with because my graphics routines are terrible. Sometimes it's so slow it's disgusting. But I guess that's one reason to learn machine language. Part of the reason, I discovered, has to do with that fact that the screen can only fully refresh at 300 baud. You can of course put graphics into the buffer faster than that using either PRINT @ in BASIC or using machine code, but sadly the PSET command in BASIC seems to halt until it's sure the screen has caught up. It really is a limitation of the screen itself, as the older LCD's would tend to get very blurry with lots of things moving around. Those who played the old Game Boy original models should remember that in very fast games you'd often get "ghosting" and that one of the biggest selling points of the Game Boy pocket was that it wouldn't "ghost" like that.

Anyway, as soon as I finish posting this my HP will be going into a foam padded box and away to be fixed up so I will have a nicely repaired laptop (without missing keys or other broken parts) in time for school.

Expect to see me on the BBS with my Apple IIe soon though. Yes, new aquisition. I am very excited to try it out!

Sticks & stones

Well, "sticks" is having it's name changed to "stones." Gee, real creative. But as I was working on the game I realized that I could do better graphics of rocks than of sticks. Go figure. And I fixed my RND problem too. See, RND(x) lets you use almost any positive value of x as a "seed" for the number generator. But, if you use a negative number it generates a random number from a constantly changing seed. (TIME$) Took me a bit to figure that one out.

Demo Video

Well, I said you'd see it soon, and here it is: A video of my Tandy 102 Greets Demo.
If people really want to have it, I can upload a very high quality version to the Pouet site. (the central hub for all things involving demos.)

Some more stuff

And now for another exciting (cough) update!

I am currently attempting to get a movie of my Tandy 102 demo online so all of you who don't own the wonderful Tandy 102 can see something other than my code, which, frankly, is kinda boring. And then again, unless you are easily amused by old computers, you'll probably find the demo itself a bit bland. But I'm proud of it anyway, I had so much fun making it.

And I have begun my next project. It's a game, and I plan on calling it "sticks." It's a game you've probably heard of or played. Basically, there is a pile of sticks (or rocks, or whatever) and you can take 1, 2, or 3 of them. You take turns with a second player and try to force him to take the last stick. The person who takes the last stick looses. So far the code has been going well, though I am a bit stumped on how to make the computer generate random numbers correctly. Something tells me I need to seed my random number generator differently, it always wants to pick the same number of sticks... kinda annoying for this kind of game.

Yeah, that and the computer player's AI is pretty crummy right now. It just chooses randomly until the second to last move, when it tries to see if it can beat you. Pretty easy to beat the computer really, except by dumb luck when the computer wins by randomly choosing the right combination.

Well, back to work with the code! Expect a Google video link or something soon.

Pickle in the MID$

Well, I have not posted in a couple days and here is why- I am on vacation and have been spending alot of time enjoying the outdoors and such. But I got tied of outdoors right about the 100th time I got bit my a mosquito, and I came inside into the cabin and finished my code. It took a while, because I could not remember for the life of me how to use the MID$ statement. Finally I broke down and read the Basic Reference, and then I tinkered until my code was done.

I have posted the source code on a forum post on the RetroChallenge forum, the link is:

http://68kmla.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=63206#63206

There you will find my code. It's a scrolling-text demo. I spent about 5 hours total on the code itself, mainly because my skills are very rusty. My next project is going to be more ambitious, lets just say, now that I'm getting back up to speed.

One thing I learned while doing this- animations are hard to do on the Tandy 102. Especially since the screen only refreshes at 300 BAUD! Only real flaw of the machine- it has a reeeeely slow display. But I intend to make more cool things for it yet, juat wait!

MSS-VIA

My MSS-VIA came via UPS late yesterday, after I had finished my post. I was so excited to mess with it that I forgot all about posting an update then. For those who don't know yet, the MSS-VIA is made by Lantronix and is used as a "serial device server." In other words, it can connect any computer with an RS-232 serial port to the Internet. That would be my Tandy 102, and possibly some of my other computers too.

And of course, I ran into some problems. To be expected at this point, of course. I knew I needed a null-modem cable to hook up my Tandy to the Lantronix box, but I didn't know all the details of the protocol before I got it. The MSS-VIA has two serial ports on it, one a DB9, one a DB25. The DB9 is labeled "console" and according to the manual is used for configuring the VIA. It is fixed at 9600 Baud, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, and no parity, and uses software handshaking by default. The Tandy can handle all that stuff except the software handshaking. In other words, as soon as it receives any lines longer than a certain amount it would clip them off, waiting for the "handshake," which it doesn't receive. This makes a big mess out of BBS'es and such that I am trying to Telnet into.

On the other hand, the DB25 is fully configurable, so I just need to build myself a DB25 to DB25 null-modem cable and I'll be in business again.

In other news, I will be going on vacation for a week to the Minnesota north woods. Or as we say around here, I'm "goin' up nort!" I'll be staying on 5 Point Lake. I will have internet access some of the time, so I can post things, and I can also devote more time to some of my Challenge projects. Stay tuned for more updates.

Retro Challenge

Well, the time has come- I have entered the Retrochallenge '08 contest. The contest runs through the month of July. I have entered my Tandy 102 and pocket computer. I will need to get out my pocket computer and see what model it is or if it even works. I am going to be competing in the programming and hardware categories. I will be making some games and getting my computers online with some custom hardware. And of course, I am in the process of making up a website to host my code. (not that my code is going to need it's own website, it's not going to be big...) You know, so people can download it.

While I'm at it I might also mess with whatever other retro hardware I can get my hands on- time to head to the local thrift store and pick some up!

Stay tuned for more old computer hacking goodness!

The reto systems I have

A buddy of mine asked the other day "How many old computer things do you have anyway?"
Well, I guess I forgot to mention that here, so I'll post what I told him.

I currently have, in no particular order:

• Tandy 102 laptop
• Atari 2600
• Colecovision
• NES, restored to mint condition, with boxes etc.
• Several Pentium 1, 486, and 386 systems, in various states of repair
• A Tandy 1100HD laptop, used to work but now in the process of being fixed
• and though it's not a computer, I have a very nice Okidata 182 Turbo, recently refurbished, which I use for all my retro printing needs
  

I also have access to a Tandy PC-2 pocket computer and complete working plotter/cassette interface with all manuals and leather carry case. It belongs to by Dad, who has been loaning it to me indefinitely.

Currently on my retro wish-list is an Apple IIe, with color monitor, double disk drives and an 80 column card (the same system I had in 3rd grade) and also a VT100 or similar vintage DEC data terminal. And although it's not retro equipment I would like to get a universal device server like a Lantronix UDS10 in order to hook my retro machines to the internet.

It's called a UDS

Alright, it's time to reveal my devious plan- mwahahah! *thunder*

It involves a device called a UDS- which stands for Universal Device Server. And guess what it does? Based on the picture, it has ethernet and serial ports on it. Hmmm, wonder what it could be used for?

The one on the right is a Lantronix UDS10, but there are alot of similar devices around on places like Ebay, which are going pretty cheap these days. And yes, if you have not figured it out yet, this is used for putting old hardware online. Yes, that's right Aunt Virginia, I can in fact read email on my Tandy using one of these beasts. Or Telnet to BBS's. Or surf 'da internets. Though the latter would be hard with the tiny Tandy screen, but it could be done. Expect me to find something crazy amazing to do with one of these very soon.

Time to start the Challenge!

It's time to start the next retro-challenge! Unfortunately my retro-challenge won't be official, because there isn't one going on right now. However, it's the 25th Anniversary of my favorite retro computer, and I think now is a great time to give it some coverage.

It's called the Tandy 102, and it's an upgrade of the very famous and popular TRS-80 Model 100 laptop. I bought mine about a year ago off Ebay, and at the time I paid about $25 for it.

And of course, it's retro- the first Model 100's rolled off the production lines back in March of 1983. My model was introduced in 1986.

The main difference between a Model 100 and the Tandy 102 is mainly cosmetic. The 102 is slightly smaller, thinner, and also more durable. The 102 also has (IMHO) a much nicer keyboard, which is not nearly as noisy as the ones on the Model 100's. The unit only weighs a couple pounds, a mere feather compared with any modern laptop.

The 102 is also built like a tank. I have dropped mine down flights of stairs, spilled boiling liquids on it, exposed it to temperatures of nearly 35 below zero in the depths of the frigid Minnesota winter, and even accidentally squashed it underneath a pile of heavy books and a couple of loaded suitcases. It still works. In fact, the thing not only works, but still looks great too!


The displays on these beasts are very nice. They aren't very big, but they are readable in almost any light, and have an easy adjustment knob which can make them readable from nearly any angle as well. This picture is a close-up of the display, which as you can see is black and white only.

These machines are also the last machines on which Bill Gates actually wrote any operating system code, and it shows. The software boots instantaneously on power up, and I have NEVER had anything crash. Ever. Take that Windows! Of course, the software is also very gracefully simple, and does alot of thing without needing to install a single piece of software. There is an address book, scheduler, text editor, a Telecom software with a simple terminal, and of course, a realtime BASIC interpreter. I use the text editor on a daily basis to take notes for all my classes. If you look closely at the picture above you can see the programs I mentioned on the menu. I have two documents displayed there too, the files that end with the extension ".DO" The file called "TEENY.CO" is my uploading software, which lets me link to a regular computer with a serial port and transfer data back and forth.

The data transfer is critical if you plan on using this machine for more than a few days, because the best the machine can handle is 32Kb of data. (yes, that's KILOBYTES, not megabytes) The data storage is in a battery-backed RAM, which can power itself for roughly a few months without being powered on. Since all you data is in RAM you never have to save- it simply stays put until you move it or delete it. So, if I'm typing away and by batteries die I don't have to worry; all my data is perfectly safe.

Furthermore, this computer is the only one I know of which can run for a full 20 hours off it's batteries. No joke. And it only uses 4 AA's. Of course, for all you green people out there you can use rechargeable batteries which are easy to recycle that way. And of course, you can also use a wall adaptor.

Of course, it also comes with everything else you'd expect from a computer of its era and lineage. It can save to a cassette drive, or an optional Tandy Portable Disk Drive, which also runs off AA batteries. It has a printer port, an RS-232 port, a 'blazingly fast' built-in 300 baud modem, and even an expansion port for a barcode reader. And of course, no laptop would be complete without an awesome leather slipcase.