Retro Geek

Wow.

UPS just dropped off the Commodore PC10-III.

It is brand new. It doesn't have the original box but it does have the original styrofoam. It doesn't look like it was ever even plugged in.

I gave away my Duo 230, recycled my IIsi, 8500/225, 7300 and G4 450. I still have a dual G4/180 card around here somewhere. Did those count as vintage?

In my book, anything with an ADB port qualifies as vintage... although the Blue & White is pushing it.

In other words beige = vintage?

Black, too, if you consider the Macintosh TV.

Yellow would be the more vintage colour.

Quote
John Willoughby
The only vintage machine I still have is my 20th Anniversary Mac, with G3 accelerator. I wonder if it still boots up...

I had one of those. Sold it in 2004 or so. Not only was it slow (even with the G3 card) , but its LCD dimmed faster than any other LCD I've ever had. Beautiful design, though.

That which is old shall be new again!

I think they'll do well actually...

There's some backlash in the vintage computing world from people who are upset about them "polluting" the #c64 hashtag on Twitter.

Well, here ya go...

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/09/golden-nintendo-quest/all/1

If you were a dialup BBS user back in the old days, I highly recommend this book:

Commodork: Sordid Tales from a BBS Junkie.

Help?

I did a ClosedApple+CTRL+Reset on my Apple //e and I don't get KERNEL OK. I get a RAM address:

*RAM 00001000

I assume this means there is something wrong with the computer's RAM?

I'm able to load some games but they do not play, reset or partially load.

Also, I'm typing this on a lampshade mac running OSX 10.2.8. <--this could be my problem, no?

:-)

If anyone knows anything about older Apple computers I'd appreciate the help.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/2011 11:26AM by Madaracs.

Almost all of what I once knew of Apple ][ lore has faded with the years. I only revisit Apple's early days in emulators now. Sorry.

Edit; didn't read your post correctly. You did do the self test.

I'm not too familiar with broken Apple IIs (I only broke one once, by inserting the Disk II controller incorrectly in the slot) so not sure what could be the issue. But as the chips in an Apple IIe were fairly common you should have no problem sourcing them I guess.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/2011 09:11PM by tliet.

Well I isolated a couple of problems.... or at least one problem and maybe one configuration issue.

First, I discovered by switching the disk controller to another slot, I was able to make games/programs load properly. Lucky break I guess. But I also noticed some dip switches on another controller card inside the //e and I was wondering if that was what dictated which slots worked for what. Or it may be that all of the other slots have potential issues. I tried all of them and it would seem the even number slots seem to at least boot. While the odd numbered slots either don't boot at all or only drive the disk drives partially. That seems weird to me but I know nothing about Apple architecture so I can't be sure it's not normal.

The other thing is that the 80 column 64K RAM expansion card may or may not be bad. When I removed it and performed the self check again, the system reported back: SYSTEM OK. When I add it back in I get the aforementioned: *RAM 00001000 message.

Now it appears to be working good though. All the disks I attempted to load booted up and loaded with no issues. I guess there were one or two that didn't but they were hacks anyway and may not have worked in the first place. I'll try them in my //c and see if I get the same results.

This machine has an aftermarket power supply in it as well so I'm wondering if the board wasn't fried at some point.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2011 02:27PM by Madaracs.

The 80 column and memory card may only be put in slot 3 or the dedicated slot IIRC. Disk II interface goes into slot 6. Clean the surface connector with some eraser.

But I'm sure you are aware of all this.

Ah ha! Well that is great to know. So that explains why the Disk II interface works best in slot 6. It was in slot 7 so it would boot and then do nothing. Thanks for the confirmation on that!

The 80 column card really only fits in one slot so I can't screw that up. It has "This side toward keyboard" or something printed on it too. And since it's beveled to fit in the front I figured that one out pretty quickly.

So now I know that the only real issue I had may not even be an issue. I'll need to find someone else with the 80 column card to do a self test to see if it produces the same RAM message or says SYSTEM OK.

I did find a place that sources the RAM cards.

I may have a spare, actually.

For those interested, I've put together a Lisa Profile disk with Lisa Office 7/7 a few years back. http://www.xs4all.nl/~tliet/Lisa_011007.zip

It can be booted with the Lisa emulator, which works quite well... http://lisaem.sunder.net/downloads/LisaEm-1.2.6.dmg

Free beer for anyone successfully porting this to the iPad ;-)

Unfortunately, my Lisa died many, many years ago. But I'll never forget the thrill of booting it up and going over all the old books and boxes of software.

A somewhat related question; does anyone remember the Self Running demo that used to exist for Microsoft Works 1.0? I remember seeing this demo while at the local Apple dealer back in '85 and was absolutely stunned. I was used to Atari 400/800 XLs and just got introduced to the Apple II. I'm curious if anyone knows about this and is even able to put it online.