September 14, 2007

I listened to a good number of Earl Evans' Retrobits podcasts while on my recent vacation to the Outer Banks. (Earl has even seen fit to make mention of Byte Cellar in a few of his shows.) While all I've heard so far have been rather engrossing, one topic particularly caught my interest. Earl, who worked for Epson years ago, has acquired a CP/M-based Epson PX-8 (aka "Geneva") laptop - one of the first out there, and has been having much fun with it.

What I thought was particularly nifty is his effort to preserve the data on piles of PX-8 floppies that found their way to him. He was able to extract the CP/M applications off of almost every disk and is actually working on a hardware project to emulate an Epson PF-10 3.5" floppy drive so that these apps can be run directly from a SD card. An awesome effort in every regard.

When listening to Earl expound the virtues of his PX-8, a mental image of the laptop sprang instantly to mind. When trying to determine just why that was, I remembered picking up a copy of a magazine years and years ago that featured a review of what I felt sure was this unit as well as cover placement. After a bit of digging, I located the magazine in question, a fairly battered September 1984 issue of Computers & Electronics, and sure enough - the PX-8 is indeed the unit I remembered. As far as I know it's the only issue of this magazine I ever picked up and strangely I can recall the obscure, mom and pops drug store where the then-12-year-old me purchased it.

Inspired by Earl's effort, I felt compelled to contribute similarly, if to a far lesser extent, to this cause. I have scanned in the PX-8-related pages of the magazine and placed them online for Earl and others who might share an interest.

As a sidenote, Earl informed me that an outfit in Colorado called Star Technology is actually selling brand new Epson PX-8s for $79. There's really nothing like getting to experience that first unpacking moment with a retro machine....

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September 13, 2007

So, I wanted to pick up (one) ImageWriter II color ribbon to do a few test pages from the Apple IIgs on my new Apple ImageWriter II printer. I've since found that one can still buy these at Staples, but -- who knew? So I hit eBay. The best deal was a guy selling 6 ribbons for $25. A little more than I wanted to pay and more ribbons by far than I needed, but hey! So I ordered.

What arrived days later was a large box containing six boxes of ribbons. Inside each box was six individually sealed ImageWriter II color ribbons. So, I now have 36 of these ribbons! I will never use more than one.

So...if you need an ImageWriter II color ribbon, email me and I'll mail you one if you cover shipping. Okay? Let's give these a purpose.

Find my email address at blakespot.com.

September 11, 2007

Ok, my three regular readers may be asking themselves, "didn't we just read this story?" They would be mistaken in thinking so, however. Back in late July I described the manner in which I configured my Apple //c to serve as a dumb terminal, tied via serial link to my Mac mini. In researching the project, I ran across a story of a user who had put an Apple Newton eMate 300 to similar duty on his Sun box. Being an eMate owner myself and having a vacant Mac-style serial port on my dual-port Keyspan USB-to-serial adapter, I felt I must get this going as well.

And today, I have. Have a look at the photos.

It's hard to get as excited about this project as the Apple //c terminal since, well, I just did it with the Apple //c and I didn't have to splice cables together and since - hey, let's not fool ourselves - the eMate is a 25MHz ARM 710a (RISC)-based machine while the //c is powered by a mere 1.02MHz 65C02. But it' still worth a post, I feel.

No, this won't be a permanent office fixture. Just a little experiment. Sadly, the eMate will soon resume its typical roll as a paperweight to hold down my Apple Lisa 2 in the home "Byte Cellar." Still - it made for a pretty interesting little exercise.

September 6, 2007

I'm on vacation in the Outer Banks with my family presently - a sunny week at the beach. It's all about relaxation and, to me, that calls for another retro computing post. I thought I'd share one of my latest projects with you folks out there.

I spent a nice bit of time with my Mac Plus recently while putting together my Macintosh Plus Gaming Gallery post. It's a lovely machine to work with. Staring at its 9-inch, 512x342 screen (startlingly high resolution for the time) got me to thinking about those pixels and how they used to amazingly transfer clean and true to the page, thanks to Apple's ImageWriter printer. I had one back in 1984, attached to my Apple //c, but I never had one hanging off of a Mac. Manufactured for Apple by C.Itoh Electronics, it was loud and built like a tank - a real workhorse. At any rate, I was struck with a desire to see those pixels printed to page once again, and so I rolled my chair over the the Mac Pro to do an eBay search and get me one.

But as my chair was rolling across the computer room floor, it occurred to me that I have an Apple IIgs as well, with a nice 4096-color palette. Why not grab an ImageWriter II, the color-capable followup to the ImageWriter that, while still built like a tank, boasted a rather more stylish design and improved general performance. In 1985, I added an ImageWriter II to the Apple IIe that was then my primary machine and it, later, saw duty on my Apple IIgs and Amiga 2000 as well. It would do fine double-duty on my IIgs.

Click, click, win and a very well preserved specimine was on its way to me. A week or so later I was sad to find that the US Postal service fulfilled my worst fears. After eagerly tearing open the package, what greeted me within was a sight that sent a distinct shiver down my spine. Despite the unit appearing to have been packed rather well, USPS actually managed to kill an ImageWriter II. I've heard it suggested that J.R.R. Tolkien might have saved a great deal of ink if he had simply had the Council of Elrond ship the One Ring to Mordor via US Postal - surely it would have been destroyed utterly.

Long story short, the seller was quick to provide me with a second unit that arrived soundly (by an alternate courier...), if somewhat in less pristine condition. A bit of plastics swapping from the original unit has me setup with a rather nice looking, quite functional ImageWriter II that has successfully generated lovely prints from both the Mac Plus and the Apple IIgs. I even had cause to generate one of those great, old Print Shop banners on the IIgs (tough with Print Shop for the IIe/c - I can't seem to find a disk image for Print Shop GS). I actually found a large (5,000 sheet?) box of tractor-feed, fanfold paper on the shelves of the local Staples, happily - should keep me going for the rest of my life. All I need now is a mini-din 8 serial switchbox and the setup will be complete.

It's been 15 years since I had a dot matrix printer setup in my home. Hearing it in operation is like listening to a pleasant melody to my retro-loving ears. I highly recommend playing with such a unit. There's fun to be had there!