January 26, 2008

I experienced 30 minutes of intense pain this evening. I took a quick glimpse at eBay's "Vintage Computing" listings this evening and what I saw was amazing.

"Vintage APPLE IIC computer NIB Sealed Never Opened II C"

That's right. A new-in-box Apple //c system: main unit, monitor, monitor stand and AppleWorks integrated software package. Straight out of 1984 and never opened. Never. Opened.

I bought this system from a collector who said he bought this from the original owner who had just stored it and never got around to opening or using it. I have stored this system for years in a smoke free and safe place since. It does show some wear from shipping and storage, which was mostly from the original owner, who didn't understand what a rare item he was dealing with. To find a complete system unopened and never seeing human eyes before is unbelievable.

I have never seen another unopened Apple II C system in my life, and this belongs in a museum as this is the only way to correctly portray how a new Apple system from the early years of computing would arrive.

This is the prize of Apple and Vintage Computer collecting

When I encountered the auction there were 31 minutes left and the bid was at $920. Too rich for my blood these days, sadly. But I was racked with pain in being unable to bid. I felt a little better when I saw the final auction ending price.... $2,553.00. To lend some perspective, back in 1984 the retail price of the Apple //c main unit was $1299. A rare find that went for a rather exorbitant amount.

Still, it would be lovely to have...despite the fact that I've already got an Apple //c put to good use on my office desk.

January 15, 2008

As I start this post the Steve Jobs' Macworld San Francisco 2008 keynote is just four minutes away. And sadly I could not make the trip this year. My trip out there for last year's keynote, working coverage with Arn for MacRumors, was some of the most fun I've had in my life, but it ultimately just wasn't in the cards for this year.

To ease the pain, I've taken the day off work and am sitting here watching the MacRumors Live coverage with my Macworld ID badge sitting next to my MacBook Pro. It's still a festive day, though. I'm anxious to see what Steve has in store for us.

Happy Macworld 2008 everybody!

January 2, 2008

I purchased what I believe to be the first Amiga sold in the state of Virginia back in October 1985. To say there was a dearth of software for the platform at that time is an understatement. I ultimately sold the unit in March or April 1986 for that very reason. Well, that was part of it. At any rate, I had it for a brief time and the best game I played (and solved) on it, amazingly, was Infocom's Wishbringer by Brian Moriarty. Yes, a text adventure. How ironic, but I loved the game.

I've been trying to think of new and interesting evening entertainment for my wife and me after our daughter goes to sleep, and it occurred to me that text adventures by laptop on the couch might be fun. My wife and I are both Sherlock Holmes fans and so Infocom's Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels seemed like a natural as did, of course, Wishbringer.

We're starting with Wishbringer tonight as I'm still trying to get my hands on the full Sherlock game and bundle somewhere (likely as part of The Lost Treasures of Infocom II). Since I played Wishbringer on the Amiga with its distinctive white on blue Intuition interface, I wanted to try and recapture that feel on the replay. I think I've done a pretty good job in doing so. I grabbed the Mac Z-Machine interpreter Zoom and have configured it to exactly match the default Amiga Workbench color scheme. As you can see from the screenshot, it's pretty much there aside from the relatively pixelated Topaz font.

I think it will be a lot of fun. I'll let you know how it goes.

January 2, 2008

Yesterday I was fiddling around down in the "byte cellar" for a bit and went to reconnect my Apple IIgs's audio to the A/V switch after hijacking its cables to record a bit of Wii audio for a recent post. While I was digging around behind the machine I found a loose RCA cable tied at one end to the IIgs' composite video jack. After wondering for a moment what that was about, I recalled that a couple of years ago someone had asked me to verify that the IIgs composite video signal was indeed color and not greyscale (Amiga 2000-style). I did so by hooking the IIgs to the neighboring Commodore 64C setup's Commodore 1702 CRT. Yep, it's color.

For no particular reason I reconnected the GS, which has its own 12-inch RGB monitor, to the 1702 and fired up an old 8-bit game. Looking at the display on the RGB and composite screens sitting next to each other I was reminded how much better Apple IIe-style video looks on a real composite CRT. The Woz's "high-res" graphics mode generates color by taking advantage of NTSC artifacting using black and white pixel patterns on the 280x192 pixel screen to create four colors (other than black and white) at an effective 140x192 resolution -- brilliant stuff way back when. The problem is, the IIgs RGB video output, needed to best represent the far more advanced GS-specific graphics modes, has to sort-of emulate these NTSC artifacts for IIe-mode graphics and the results just look, to my eyes (and despite the aforelinked, overexposed image of the side-by-side displays), rather wanting as compared to "the real thing" on a composite screen. So, I decided to leave the 1702 hooked to the GS, sharing it between the Apple and Commodore computers (thanks to its switched, dual inputs). But this new arrangement underscored a little issue I'd been meaning to take care of for a while now....

After posting several photos of the Commodore setup some time ago I received a few reader comments indicating that the image on the screen seemed to tall. Looking at a few, more familiar Apple games (when it comes to 8-bits, I was an Apple guy back in the day) on the screen last night, I was reminded of the adjustment I'd been wanting to make...and the reason I'd not yet made it: there is no "v. size" knob among the front controls or around back. This meant opening up the enclosure, grabbing my plastic CRT tools, and fiddling with pots -- which I promptly did. But which pot? I found five right away, but they appeared to be unlabeled (I think they may have had labels...obscured with a 23-year-old layer of dust). So, I went online and spent a great deal of time searching for a guide to 1702 adjustments or some sort of schematic when finally I found a hand-drawn schematic and various other, useful 1702 images. Just what I needed. A little twiddling on the proper pot to the glare of a few test images and things are looking just about right, finally.

My purpose in rambling on about all this has simply been to share the link that helped me so that perhaps it can be more easily found by the next guy needing to make a few 1702 adjustments. Browse the complete directory full of related goodies.

And it's definitely worth noting that mucking about in the innards of a CRT CAN KILL YOU!! Only do so if you're sure you know what you're doing!