Author: europlus

Retrochallenge preparations

One of the things I may need to do while engaged in my europlus Refurbapalooza is replace the CPU in one or more machines. I’m pretty sure at least one of my europluses has a dud 6502.

I bought some Rockwell 65C02s many years ago with a view of having them available for replacing dud CPUs – and then I found out that the 65C02 won’t work out of the box with anything before the enhanced //e. There’s some info online on what need to be done to get an older Apple ][ to work with a 65C02, but I’m not keen on modding my europluses like that.

So, if I’m going to be able to overcome that hurdle, I need some old school 6502s – and where do we all go to source such things these days? eBay, of course!

I was surprised by some eBay auctions when I did a search there – it seems to me possible that they have just reproduced old datestamps on newly-made 6502s. I may be wrong, it just seemed that was a possibility given the number of items (both number of auctions and quantity available) listed as “new” with datestamps from the 80s. Of course, they could have all been squirrelled away in the corner of some office or factory for all this time! Maybe I should stop being so suspicious!

Anyway, I settled on an auction for 11 Synertek 6502s with original Synertek-branded anti-static tube – in fact, I’ve organised a group buy of two tubes with other Australian Apple ][ enthusiasts. They should arrive just before the start of October, and that will give me the one/s I need for Retrochallenge and a few spares, supply some other enthusiasts’ needs now, and perhaps have some available to pass on in the future.

I have two Synertek 6502s which came from a couple of my Apple ][s stored in the Rockwell 65C02s’ anti-static tube (I hate throwing out anything!), so I’m pleased I’m finally replacing like with like.

Until I test other chips on non-functioning europlus motherboards, I won’t know which I might need to buy to get machines operational. But at least I hope to have a shopping list by the end of October!

I’d be interested to hear in the Comments below what prep you need to do for Retrochallenge (without doing any of the project itself, of course!).

Disk ][ refurbishment

One of the things that came out of WOzFest /// for me was that most, if not all, of my Disk ][s were no longer operational.

Given my desire to recreate the original Apple ][ setup we had when I was a teenager, operational Disk ][s are a must. Despite my infatuation with modern solid state storage solutions for retrocomputers, there’s just nothing quite like closing that door and hearing the mechanical symphony of a Disk ][.

So, in preparation for WOzFest $04, I decided to give my five Disk ][s a bit of TLC and try and get them all working (Figure 1).

Step one is to crack them open with a view to cleaning the read/write heads and possibly lubricating the rails. Luckily, they’re pretty simple devices to get into – four screws on the underside (Figure 2) and the upper case slides off the drive mechanism, showing the bare drive mechanism and the analog card that drives it (Figure 3).

To get to the read/write head, another two screws holding the analog card need to be removed and the card can be slid out of two slotted guides towards the rear of the drive (near the “D”s at the rear corners of the analog card). The analog card has two cable connections – for quick and simple work, only the one closest to the front of the drive (with a molex connector) needs to be disconnected to allow the analog card to be flipped upside down over the rear of the drive (Figure 4). This cable’s connector is “keyed” with a missing hole for the missing pin on the header to aid alignment and orientation.

Some Disk ][s have a plate covering the read-write head – this is simply clipped into place and easy to remove (Figure 5). You can then (gently) raise the sprung component (not too high!) of the drive head (which holds the disk against the read/write head) to clean the actual read/write head itself (Figure 6).

I’m leaving the outer covers off and the analog card unsecured in the drives I’m going to be using for disk imaging – this allows easy access to the drive head for cleaning. It’s amazing how quickly gunk builds up on the read/write head. I’m using isopropyl alcohol and cotton tips to clean the heads.

I had to lubricate the rails the head mechanism travels along in one drive – I used white lithium lubricant applied liberally with a cotton tip, then wiped off the visible excess with a paper towel after moving the head mechanism up and down the rails a few times.

Unfortunately, while working on my drives, I connected one to the interface card in the Apple ][ incorrectly – while I had it properly aligned along the length of the connector, I only plugged it into the outer row of pins, rather than to both rows (Figure 7). Snap, crackle, pop! I’d burnt out something on the drive’s analog card.

I was pretty sure the next drive I connected to the Disk ][ interface card I was using was connected correctly, but it also popped and was no longer working. I wondered if maybe something on the interface card had blown as well?

Visually, I could tell that the 74LS125 logic chips on the Disk ][ analog cards had blown (Figure 3 and Figure 8). By this point I had some confirmed working drives, so I swapped in a 74LS125 from a working drive’s analog card – the drives still didn’t work (I was using a different interface card in case the one I’d been using was also now a dud).

At this point I swapped a known good analog card into both drives in turn just to make sure that’s where the problem was and both drives worked, so I went back to swapping other chips from a known good analog card. Luckily, there aren’t many chips and I quickly determined both analog cards’ MC3470 chips were also faulty, even though there was no visible damage.

I was able to buy 74LS125s from my local Jaycar electronics store (for AU$1.75 each), and I bought replacement MC3470s from eBay (for about AU$2.50 each including delivery) – I bought enough of both chips to test a repaired drive with the suspect interface card. If the drive blew again I would be able to replace those two chips again.

As it turns out, that interface card didn’t blow up a repaired analog card, so I think it’s OK and I must have connected the second drive incorrectly as well. I vow: never again!

So, after all that, I now have five operational Disk ][s, and a bit more experience and confidence in doing my own retro repairs (which bodes well for my Retrochallenge entry).

Feel free to share your own Disk ][ damage and repair stories in the Comments section.

What WOzFest Is…and Isn’t

There seems to be a lingering confusion in the international Apple ][ community about what WOzFest is, and what it isn’t.

If you had told me a year ago that I would ever write that sentence, I’d have had you committed – there was no way I expected the international Apple ][ community to care one iota enough about WOzFest to get confused by it.

The most common misunderstanding is that WOzFest is Australia’s version of KansasFest and is an annual Apple ][-related gathering, when, in fact, Australia’s version of KansasFest is Oz KFest.

I know I’ve brought about this confusion to some degree myself with the choice of name – keeping the “Oz” and “Fest” in the name does make it look similar to Oz KFest, but with the fact I live in Wollstonecraft giving me the opportunity to make the ultimate Apple ][-related name pun possible when abbreviated and paired with “Oz”, it was too tempting not to.

The events are also viscerally different in other ways – WOzFest’s informal nature vs Oz KFest’s set session schedule; WOzFest is a frequently-held one day gathering vs Oz KFest being less frequent and held over several days; WOzFest is always held at my home while Oz KFest is held in different locations around Australia.

So, when your international Apple ][ buddies mix up WOzFest and Oz KFest, point them to this handy comparison chart:

AttributeWOzFestOz KFest
FrequencySeveral a yearEvery 1-3 years
Static addressingYes¹No²
Formal program of eventsNoYes
LengthOne daySeveral days
PizzaYesYes
Chaotic natureYesVariable

Comparison Chart Notes:
1. WOzFest is always held at my home in Wollstonecraft, NSW, Australia.
2. Each Oz KFest is held in a different location throughout Australia.

europlus Refurbapalooza

I’ve watched from the far sidelines (maybe from the carpark?) as previous Retrochallenges have been held, always wishing I had the time to dedicate within one month to try and achieve something pre-planned, documented and tangible related to my retrocomputer interests.

January is never a good month, with birthdays and new year’s really putting a spoiler on doing anything solid.

Similarly, July has always seemed challenging as well, even though I can’t specify exactly what it is about that month that would preclude my involvement.

However, with the revitalisation of my Apple ][ efforts since attending Oz KFest 2015 (which has included holding WOzFests, sorting through my collection, holding more WOzFests, and getting back into this blog after rehoming it to self-hosting) and the move of Retrochallenge to October, I’ve decided to finally enter that worthy competition.

As per my “official entry” (read “e-mail to John W. Linville, who will be running Retrochallenge 16/10”) my project:

[…]is an Apple ][ europlus refurbapalooza as I have several europluses (europli?!) in various states of disrepair. Most have blown PSU capacitors, and at least one has other non-PSU-related issues. Most of them have also been rigged up with other PSUs at one time or another.

So I’m planning on doing a census and re-uniting the europluses with model- and date-appropriate PSUs, replacing the blown capacitors, and trying to identify any other issues. General cleanup, keyboard testing, etc., will also feature.

And on the subject of John being involved in Retrochallenge 16/10, may I just extend publicly my gratitude to him and the other Retrochallenge organisers past, present and future – such a tangible effort on behalf of the retro community helps to make it a richer environment for us all.

So, what’s your Retrochallenge 16/10 project going to be?

Derailed

It’s annoying that a little hiccup can lead to a lengthy hiatus in my Apple ][-related projects and this blog.

I had been trying to maintain a weekly posting schedule, and also keep various tasks on my Apples moving along, but I lost access to the Man Cave for a short couple of weeks, and everything just fell by the wayside!

However, this post marks the reboot of my generally successful period of moving retro things forward, I promise!

I’ve already started planning for the next WOzFest, with an expected timing of November – I have some very particular ideas about the name and theme, and I intend to provide attendees with a very real memento of their participation! Look for the announcement over the next several weeks.

I have full access to the Man Cave again, which will allow me to finalise my disk ][ refurbishment project I began before WOzFest $04 – I’ll do a write up on that shortly, including discussing my “only make it once” ribbon alignment mistake, and how I identified and rectified the resulting damage.

I’ve decided on a surefire path to move another major project forward, which will be the topic of my next post, and hopefully several more during the month of October (hint, hint!).

All in all, I’m excited at the prospect of “getting back into it” in very tangible ways! I hope your retro projects have not been as neglected as mine have been recently.

My return to Apple ][s

I deeply lament not keeping track of our original europlus – it had initially gone to my brother-in-law when my dad bought our first Mac in late 1985, and it was then passed on to his cousin…and we don’t know what happened to it after that.

It wasn’t a particularly special machine – 64K of RAM (including a third-party 16K language card), 2 x Disk ][ drives, monochrome monitor, third party 80 column card, and a Silentype printer. It didn’t even have a lower-case mod or real-time clock. I’m not even aware of any photos of that machine, which is a shame given how much time I spent on it! I’ll certainly post them if I find any.

We didn’t have much original software – Apple Writer v1.1, pfs:file, and pfs:report. And several disks of software (almost exclusively games) which I can’t recall the source of (likely friends at school – our computer dealer, Computer Lighthouse at Penrith, was rabidly anti-piracy from what I could tell).

Fast forward to December 1998 and I see a message on the Club Mac BBS offering a IIgs for free. By this time I was feeling quite nostalgic about the Apple ][, so I reached out to the owner, but had to wait for the “first responder” to be a no-show before I could secure it. It came with a monitor, keyboard, mouse and a drive or two.

After that, I seemed to accumulate Apple ][’s at a rate of one or two a year, including models I didn’t really have an interest in collecting (like Apple //c’s).

I’ve been able to acquire a few europluses, a couple of Silentypes, several Disk ][’s, original disks for AppleWriter v1.1 and pfs:file, third party language cards and 80 column cards, monochrome monitors – pretty well everything we had “back in the day”. I had held on to my 5¼” floppies, which has meant I’ve been able to relive my early Apple ][ days more easily.

As a side note, while preparing for my “(Solid) State of the Nation” talk at OzKFest 2015, I trawled through my e-mail archives, and discovered that the IIgs I acquired at the end of 1998 was given to me by Craig, who was at OzKFest! I’m happy to say that he’s subsequently been re-united with his old IIgs and it now forms part of his collection.

Nostalgia is a funny thing. That IIgs I got in 1998 could have done pretty well everything I wanted to do as far as using Apple ][’s now – but there’s just something about reliving the old days with the actual model I had as a teenager.

WOzFest $04 Galleries

These are my pictures from and related to WOzFest $04 – please link to any galleries of your own photos in the comments.

A new logo for WOzFests.
That’s going to be one BIG europlus!
Guiding Disk ][’s back into operation.
i’m fEDD up doing its thing in preparation for WOzFest $04.
The fun begins.
Denis’ original europlus and //e.
A //e clone and a couple of //e’s needing love and attention.
A Laser 128 with an external port…it just looks wrong!
Things are kicking along now!
Soundsmith v2.0b starting up.
Giving credit where it’s due.
Soundsmith v2.0b in action.
Up to eight channels selectable thanks to the 4soniq!
FTA’s Soundsmith Player supporting extra channels.
Badge prep begins.
For a sense of scale.
Masking tape to keep bare wood available for gluing.
Undercoat.
My paint selection.
First coat.
Second coat – some pieces required a third coat.
Silver paint for authenticity.

WOzFest $04 Recap

Well, I had a lot of fun at WOzFest $04 – and got more done than I usually do.

Thanks again to all attendees for making it a great day. Denis, a first time WOzFest attendee from Canberra, brought his original europlus and //e – it was nice to see the original monitor he’d bought for the europlus as well. Jeremy, also from Canberra, brought the fruits of his search for educational material, including a //e clone.

Craig brought a Laser 128 – unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to play with it much or watch too much of the work on it, but seeing an interface card plugged into the external slot was very disconcerting.

Andrew worked on an adaptor for connecting a colour QuickCam to an Apple ][ – it’ll be interesting to see when he gets that working (no pressure!).

Jon as usual was helpful on lots of fronts, and Leslie also offered his expertise and experience in lots of discussions and projects, including replacing key switches on one of Jeremy’s //e keyboards.

Jon’s ESR meter was put to good use testing some power supplies’ capacitors to see which were out of spec. He’s kindly left it with me so I can test more of my PSUs.

For those not attending, the second hookup was to Antoine Vignau and Olivier Zardini from Brutal Deluxe, who revealed that they have been able to recover the Soundsmith source code files from the original author’s hard disk and have been busy working on v2, which, amongst other things, supports one or two 4soniqs.

The hookup to KFest went well as well – there were about 8-10 people at the other side who hung around to say G’day, and I finally got to personally say “Boo Atari!” to Kevin Savetz.

A reasonable amount of disk preservation was done, with more to happen with disks left behind for me to do so – it’ll be good to have Michael’s EDD+ card he won at KFest in the mix as well. Now that 4am’s Passport has been publicly released, some disk preservation might start to happen on a more distributed basis.

My special decoration project was a europlus badge reproduction…except it’s 550mm wide (a europlus to scale would be 2m wide, 2.4m deep and 0.5m tall!). The letters and Apple logo segments were laser cut at Robots & Dinosaurs, a local makerspace I’m a member of, and I hand-painted it all over the last week or so. I’m pretty pleased with the result.

I was happy to do more hands-on stuff this time around than I’ve been able to the last couple of WOzFests, and I’m certainly looking forward to the next one, look for the announcement as soon as I settle on a date.

Is it time for a Disk ][SB?

Update: added support/use within emulators to the wish list – that’s what you get rushing: you leave out something you always wanted to say!

There are a lot of very smart people in the Apple ][ scene.

Hardware and software products proliferate in a way I can’t recall being matched at any time since I got back into Apple ][’s in 1998.

And a large amount of time and effort is being spent on disk-related projects, especially hardware and disk content preservation.

For example, there are at least four active or semi-active disk drive emulation hardware products available at the moment: Nishida Radio’s UnisDisk, Rich Dreher’s CFFA3000, Пламен Вайсилов’s SDFloppy II, and Steve Chamberlin’s Floppy Emu.

On the software preservation side, 4am and Brutal Deluxe Software are amongst those involved in making old software, especially protected software, available for use by preserving the software, often via copy protection cracking (often detailing the cracks to allow them to be reversed or studied).

These preservation efforts often require a non-standard disk image file, such as a .edd file, made using an EDD+ card and software like Brutal Deluxe’s i’m fEDD up. These files preserve the stream of bits coming off the disk before they are decoded by the Disk ][ controller card, and this data can be captured down to a quarter-track resolution (can those in the know please correct me in the comments if I’m misrepresenting this?).

Occasionally a .nib file, which records extra track data (such as DOS volume number) beyond a standard 140K .dsk image file is enough to defeat copy protection which relied on this information.

So I’ve been thinking recently that it would be nice if we could use Apple ][ disk drives on modern computers, say via a USB-based device, to capture not only .edd files, but also .nib and .dsk files (ProDOS-ordered and DOS-ordered). Let’s call it the “Disk ][SB”.

I know I’m not alone in contemplating such a device: Apple ][ luminary Mike Willegal worked on an interface card in 2008 and 2009 with a view to having a final version utilising USB. Glenn Jones indicated on Mike Willegal’s site that he had worked on a similar device at some point in the past. Both projects are currently on hiatus.

Glenn pointed me to the Device Side Data FC5025, which connects a PC 5¼” floppy drive to modern computers via USB and is a currently active project – this is pretty close to what I’m suggesting, but can only create .dsk Apple ][ disk images, and can’t read “flippy” disks, which were not uncommon in commercial Apple ][ software, let alone in home use. Perhaps the most famous example of a flippy disk in Apple ][ circles is the original Karateka disk, which would allow you to play the game upside down if the disk was inserted upside down.

Further along the path to deep-reading of disk data is the KryoFlux, which reads the magnetic flux transition timing from disks and saves that data to modern computers. This is, perhaps, the bee’s knees of software preservation – but it’s also between €98 and €125 (plus the cost of a floppy drive), which for me is above my budget.

I envisage the Disk ][SB as operating somewhere between the KryoFlux and the FC5025 – not as low-level as magnetic flux transition timing, but higher resolution than the .dsk images the FC5025 will produce. Almost like an EDD+ card for modern computers. Having it Apple ][-specific meshes nicely with my computer model chauvinism. Perhaps the only “special” hardware required would be a physical Apple ][ disk drive.

And then, of course, there’s use in emulators. Charles Mangin, through his RetroConnector store, offers various adaptors for using legacy hardware on modern computers, and modern devices on legacy computers, such as his Joystick Shield for using Apple ][ joysticks on modern computers, including use within emulators. How cool would it be to be able to boot an emulator from a physical disk in a Disk ][?!

While contemplating such a device, my mind keeps returning to the Apple II Pi, which integrates modern hardware with ancient. On one hand, I wonder if the Apple II Pi could be utilised in some way in my grand scheme for modern disk image capture, while on another it makes me think that surely it would be possible to design a new USB-based solution for connecting Disk ][’s to modern computers (and I’m aware that’s just the certainty of ignorance passing judgement on the Disk ][SB’s feasibility – I’m no hardware or software engineer).

So, to summarise, my initial wish list for the Disk ][SB is:

  • allows connection of Apple Disk ][ drives (20-pin connector) to modern computers via USB;
  • allowing DB19-based drives to connect would be a bonus (and is SmartPort support too much to wish for?);
  • copy data/files to/from disks (perhaps via FUSE);
  • ability to use legacy drives and physical disks in emulators;
  • capture .edd disk images;
  • capture .nib disk images;
  • capture .dsk disk images;
  • capture other suitable disk image formats such as .2mg (see SmartPort meta-wish above); and
  • incorporating 4am’s cracks from Passport would also be a bonus to allow direct cracking of Apple ][ protected disks to .dsk image files on modern computers.

The division of labour between hardware and software would be at the discretion of the developer/s.

What do you think – am I hoping for too much?