Category: RC2021-10

Retrochallenge 2021/10 posts

Remembering Tony Diaz

Mid-afternoon during WOzFest Twenty BOO! 👻, frequent attendee Andrew, who had dialled into the Google Meet, announced in a shocked voice he’d just discovered Tony Diaz had passed away earlier in the week.

To say Andrew, Michael, and I were bewildered is an understatement. A real jolt, not only because Tony was only 54, but also because some of us had been in communication with him about a week before his passing.

Between then and now I’ve had time-consuming work and family matters to attend to, hence the delay in this post, but I was given the opportunity to contribute to the memorial for Tony published in the current issue of Juiced.GS, which can be found as a free download on the mag’s Samples page.

I’ve said much of what I felt I needed/wanted to say in that piece, so I’ll keep this short.

Tony was anti-exclusionary, loved to share his knowledge, and revelled in being around people who were enthusiastic about retro Apples and flying, his two great loves (actually, should extend that to three to include In-N-Out!).

I feel lucky to have met and known him, and to have seen him share his rare prototypes and knowledge, including at WOzFest-1 and WOzFest S7,D2.

He’ll be sorely missed at the next Oz KFest, and I’ll miss his virtual and occasional in-person WOzFest drop-ins. Take care, mate.

RetroChallenge 2021/10 Endgame, WOzFest Twenty BOO! 👻 Report.

What a month October was – while not a complete wash out, I certainly did not complete as much of my projects as I’d like (please put that on my gravestone). And I was subsequently swamped with work and family matters through into the New Year (Happy New Year, by the way!).

I’d pretty well done nothing between my last report and WOzFest Twenty BOO! 👻, so there are no missing updates to catch up on.

But progress is progress, so let’s get the lowdown on what progress there was last weekend…

  • europlus Refurbapalooza Resurrection – No progress. Work was just too busy to get to this one. I’ll have to save this Resurrection for another day (RetroChallenge 2022/04?!).
  • Lockdown WOzFests – Completed! Well, this was a sort of a cheat one, but I did get to chat with some people, which was especially comforting at WOzFest Twenty BOO! 👻 (see below).
  • Pirated software manual scans – Incomplete. The progress I made on this project was to finish removing all the hundreds of rusty staples holding each manual together. Now it’s just sheet feed scanning to follow – a pretty simple, if lengthy (there is a 13cm pile of paper to scan!), task.
  • Applesaucing – Incomplete. I did do some imaging at WOzFest Twenty BOO! 👻 for Call-A.P.P.L.E. of some of their original disks I had in one of my multitude of boxes which Bill Martens (a virtual attendee) suggested they didn’t have copies of, so at least what progress I did make on this was pretty targeted!
  • Citizen Science – No (effective) progress. I now have a funky magnetic field display film which I can use in conjunction with flux images of disks to get a sense of how the physical layout of magnets on modern devices relates to disk damage. When I get to work on this one, there’ll be some cool graphics to include in the findings.

WOzFest Twenty BOO! 👻, held on Saturday 30 October, was meant to see me get more done than staple removal and imaging 15 or so disks.

In my defence, the day was severely marred by the news received mid-afternoon that my friend, Tony Diaz, had passed away in America earlier that week.

I’ll leave my thoughts on Tony and his passing to a separate post, but sharing grief with other enthusiasts both locally and internationally was indeed comforting.

I had elected to keep WOzFest Twenty BOO! 👻 as (almost completely) virtual-only as my wife and I are keeping ourselves in an almost-lockdown for some time to come – only Michael from RCR was in attendance as he is in similar almost-lockdown circumstances at the moment, and he had a delivery for me. Sharing a 42m² room with one person who’s pretty well not seeing others seemed OK.

That meant I got to share pizza and ciders in real life, and remembrances of Tony in person and via Google Meet.

An additional project I took on for Saturday was setting up a 21″ iMac 2012 I’d been gifted the prior week – I have two 21″ iMacs I use for Applesaucing and scanning, and with the 2012 replacing a Mid-2010 machine, I was able to have the new one and the other one (2015) both set up for High Sierra and Catalina dual booting. This allows me to use 32-bit software (iWeb and scanner software) when needed, but also have more recent OSes on them.

Between OS installs and data and app migrations, that went on for much of Saturday, but the new machine is significantly lighter than the one it replaces, which makes puttering around in WOzFest HQ easier as I move things around for optimal placement when doing work.

I’m now trying to plan for this year’s five WOzFests – I think I have a schedule sorted, and will make an announcement as soon as I can.

RetroChallenge 2021/10 Days 2-3 Report: Progress, of sorts, and a WOzFest!

I’ll be honest – I didn’t get as much done during WOzFest RC 21/10 as I’d hoped – I did continue to set up WOzFest HQ for working on my projects, and I did get some Applesaucing done, but I hit a few roadblocks…

Firstly, I think one of my disk ][ drives with an Applesauce sync sensor is having issues, which I only fully appreciated after about 10 disks (with quite a few multiple attempts to capture some of them). At four plus minutes per attempt, well…

I put the “track 0 always coming up orange” as attributable to some sort of protection scheme Personal Software applied to the Visi* range of products, but I finally tried an unprotected disk and had similar issues.

Of course, that first unprotected disk I tried had actual track 0 issues when I tried a new drive, but fewer of them, and a second disk I tried worked first time.

And it wouldn’t be a RetroChallenge without further confounding issues – the first Visi* disk I went back to also had real issues on track 0! Gah!

Oh, and of course, in the mix was the drive’s head cable occasionally getting caught and making captures useless (the same data being captured as different tracks). Between all that, it took me a while to get in my groove!

Anyway, I was able to capture several disks, sometimes using multiple captures to create a single working image (a newer [and long desired] feature of the Applesauce software).

I still have a lot more disks to do, but am now feeling at least in a better position than mid-afternoon Saturday.

Today, I’ve just tided up a little and started to set up my second spare iMac so I can use my ScanSnap sheet feed scanner for the pirated software manuals. The scanner uses 32-bit software, so I’ve installed High Sierra and am just migrating the other spare iMac’s High Sierra apps and user so I don’t have to set everything up from scratch.

This will allow me to use either machine for Applesaucing or scanning, or a single machine for both in less busy times.

Google Meet worked OK once I installed and set up the “auto admit” extension – for some reason, even with the invite link, Google doesn’t allow attendees outside of the inviting domain to just enter the meeting. And the first “auto admit” extension I tried didn’t work. And you have to restart Chrome to make the settings stick.

For sharing my projects, I joined from the Applesauce-connected iMac to stream various windows as I captured disks, and from an iPhone above the disk ][ drive to watch the drive do its thing.

My first two attendees were international – RetroChallenge judge Eric and Josh “Get The Damn Batteries Out” Malone, both from the US, joined for a while at the start. We had a few Australians hooking in across the day and evening, and everyone just worked on their own projects or whatever and discussed whatever came to mind.

It was nice having the company throughout the day, and I can’t wait for WOzFest 22 when I’ll hopefully get a few updates on where everyone go to – and with the way our vaccine rollout is finally going, I’ll hopefully be allowed to have 10 attendees as well!

I also responded to a few posts on the Australian Computer Museum Society forums site in relation to our Team ACMS project – a AU$500 grant is up for grab for Australians who register an ACMS affiliation when entering RetroChallenge and post about their entry on the forum. There’s a large Aussie/ACMS contingent this RetroChallenge, which is great to see.

I can’t wait to get some more progress under my belt – the nice thing about the scanning especially is it’s pretty brainless for me to keep plugging away at (even during the week), while my other projects are more hands-on.

Catch up in a few days – will I be able to report useful progress?!

RetroChallenge 2021/10 Day 1 Report: Prep is all you need

Just spent the time after a morning work meeting prepping WOzFest HQ – mostly sorting and getting rid of rubbish.

Bought some chips and some booze, even if I will have to be a martyr and consume them myself!

Ready for a proper day or retro tomorrow during WOzFest RC 21/10 – DM me on Twitter for the Google Meet link.

WOzFest RC21/10 & WOzFest 22 Announcement

UPDATE: See details of a new project for my RetroChallenge 2021/10 entry below.

Firstly, an apology for forgetting to announce WOzFest ]20 HOME : GOTO 20 – life got in the way, and I just didn’t get around to posting here

And although it’s not far away, I’m very happy to announce the date for the next WOzFest: WOzFest RC 21/10 will be held on Saturday 2 October 2021, starting at midday Sydney time (UTC+10:00).

And, to top off the year, I can also announce that WOzFest 22 will be held on Saturday 30 October 2021, starting at midday Sydney time (UTC+11:00).

Why two WOzFests in one month? Well the name for ’21 should give the clue – I’m entering RetroChallenge 21/10, and it seemed a good way to bookend my efforts for the month.

The theme for WOzFest RC 21/10 and WOzFest 22 is, obviously, “RetroChallenge” – drop in, check out what I’m up to, and let me know your plans at WOzFest RC 21/10 and how you went at WOzFest 22.

My entry for RetroChallenge 2021/10 has four five parts:

  1. europlus Refurbapalooza Resurrection – my Apple ][ europlus refurbishment project has edged along since my last Retrochallenge entries, but I’ve started to kick up the pace. Can I get all my boards tested by the end of Retrochallenge 2021/10?!
  2. Lockdown WOzFests – to celebrate Retrochallenge 2021/10, I will schedule the next two WOzFests for 2 October and 30 October. Retrochallengers from around the globe should drop in to detail their plans at WOzFest RC 21/10, then describe the pain of how it went all awry at WOzFest 22! Share the love, pain, frustration, and triumphs!
  3. Pirated software manual scans – I have a 13cm pile of photocopied Apple ][ software manuals from WOzFest attendee Neville to scan and upload to the Internet Archive.
  4. Applesaucing – Similarly, I have a metric buttload of disks to image with my Applesauce, gotta just get back to it.
  5. NEW: Citizen Science – Floppy disks vs Magnets: I’ve seen discussion of magnets affecting disks, I’ve done it myself, and I jokingly place bad disks on WOzFest HQ’s fridge with HD magnets. But magnets are all around us now, and those into software preservation have to be careful. Join me as I test the effects of the various common (and maybe not so common) magnets in our modern lives on the media we’re here to preserve. If you have equipment to flux image a disk, and some magnets laying around, add your data to the pool so we can spread the warning far and wide – disks and magnets are not BFFs!

Yes, four five projects is a crazy an extra-crazy load to take on, but I’m crazy! Aim for the stars and you’ll blow up on the launchpad, I always say!

I encourage Australian entrants to also sign up at the Australian Computer Museum Society forums and detail your entries and progress in the RetroChallenge 2021/10 category there – a $500 grant is being offered by the Society for Aussie entrants to try and drive local engagement in the retro scene. Just make sure you tick the Australian Computer Museum Society affiliation tick box when entering RetroChallenge!

In addition, regular WOzFest attendee Andrew told me HacktoberFest 2021 is happening in October, so be sure to sign up to an open source project, and let us know what you’ll be working on during the month when you drop by.

Sydney is still in COVID lockdown, and will not see any easing of restrictions in relation to visitors until the Monday after 70% of the population 16 and over are double-vaxxed. This is currently due to happen towards the end of the first week of October, so WOzFest RC 21/10 will be a stream/virtual event only.

Once we hit 70%, five double-vaxxed visitors can attend, so that will be the minimum allowed for WOzFest 22 – but we’ll probably have achieved 90% double-vaxxed by 30 October, so the restrictions may have eased even further. Please note: even without a government stipulation on the vax status of visitors, I’ll be requiring WOzFest attendees to be double-vaxxed for the foreseeable future (don’t @ me). QR check in will be mandatory, as well.

I’ll be using Google Meet to stream what I’m up to and who I’m chatting to – let me know if you’d like the link so you can connect up with us.

As per recent WOzFests, I’ll be preparing the day before – the Google Meet link will work for all four days. Runtimes are Fridays from 11:00 local time to 17:00 local time (roughly), Saturdays from 12:00 to 22:00 local time (if I can make it that long) – UTC+10:00 for WOzFest RC 21/10 (and prep) and UTC+11:00 for WOzFest 22 (and prep).

As always, I’m continuing to raise funds via Ko-Fi. This allows small (or large!) donations to be made – check out my intro post there for the lowdown, and feel free to drop anything you can in the can to help me to run WOzFest moving forward.

I hope to (virtually) see you there!