Classic, Mac!
Not a Macintosh Classic, just a classic Mac. It’s the Macintosh SE! My favorite Mac just from an aesthetics point of view is the Classic, but the SE is close enough, more or less. I could never find a Classic for a decent price. Anyway, the IRC client Wallops had a new release, so out went the Atari and up came this thing for some tests. I posted about the last computer on the desk, so why not again for this one? [Edit: Haha, well for one reason, I already summed up this computer in the very first blog post! Eh, whatever..] Let me see how much I can remember about it [and probably (definitely) repeat some stuff].
The time period for this is a little hazy.. maybe 2019? The SE/30 that I’ve had since sometime early 2000s wouldn’t start up anymore. Opening it up revealed that it was in definite need of a recap. So, of course while perusing CraigsList one morning, seeing a listing for the SE asking $99, I couldn’t pass it up!
Seller guy had me meet him at his storage facility way across town. He may have told me what work he had done to the Mac, but I don’t remember, and probably wasn’t paying attention with all the distractions there. I brought a keyboard and mouse with me, assuming he didn’t have one since I didn’t see one in the pics of the ad (and he didn’t).
The computer turned on to the icon indicating “no disk”. Not really caring about the HD in it, I’m like “Cool, $99 you say?” He says “You’re gonna buy it like that?” In my head, I was thinking “How else am I going to buy it?” I always wondered what he meant by that.
A BigMessO'Wires floppy emu came into the mix somehow. I don’t remember if I had it before this or if I bought it FOR this.. but, for quite some time it was my storage solution on this thing, attaching to the SmartPort on the back. Then the RaSCSI came out, and I got one of those. Then the BlueSCSI came out, and I got one of those! My BlueSCSI just has the regular Pi Pico, though, not the Pico W (no networking), so RaSCSI it is.
The RaSCSI connects onto a Pi 3B+ which sits in the place of the hard drive, runs all the regular Linux stuff, and is powered by a molex to microUSB pigtail. It emulates a Dynaport SCSI Ethernet adapter, which there are Mac drivers for. There is a web interface that lets you add whatever you want on the SCSI bus, mount CDs, and create/upload disk images. It’s called the PiSCSI these days, by the way.
Being connected via SCSI, I can telnet into it and not worry about it being a cleartext connection. Then I can SSH out from there, or connect to whatever else. It’s a little like having a “Wifi modem” connected via serial, only with much more functionality! One goofy thing I ran into was that the emulated drive wouldn’t come up until something connected to the web interface… so I just stuck a ‘wget’ line in rc.local. This might’ve been fixed with newer firmware.
The SE maxes out at a massive 4 megabytes of RAM. It CAN run System 7.x, but then it’s super long boot times and only being able to run one program at a time. There aren’t that many applications that won’t run on System 6, anyway. As I type that, I’m reminded that the nice BBSing terminal, Black Night, is one of them. That’s ok, NCSA Telnet works fine. That’s what I’m in now, and I even have that Wallops IRC client in the background. I wasn’t able to copy/paste my ASCII BBS ads with all of that running, though. A dialog box complained about there not being enough memory, even trying to copy just one line of text.
Don’t forget to switch to MultiFinder when using System 6!
Tags: macintosh, classy, tags-are-lame
The ‘Tari
The Atari 130XE is now set up and the Mac SE is put away. I didn’t put the Atari in the same place, so the Mac didn’t REALLY have to go, but this way it collects less dust :). The hope was to post here when there was something actually interesting to say about it. Instead of waiting too long, I’ll just put this here. You’ll decide if it’s interesting, I suppose.
This computer has been with me since the early 90s. It came to me as a trade for a RANA2000 floppy drive and possibly something else. The condition it was in was just awful, though.
First, it was literally infested with little roaches. Gladly it wasn’t the super big kind, but there were A LOT of them inside. I opened the thing up in the back yard and there were just piled up roach bodies gathered all around the big chips where they were huddled for heat. MOST of them were dead, but there was still a handful crawling around. UGH. A nightmare inducing scene, I tells ya. I’d hate to see the guy’s house that it came from, because he must have actually been using it this way. There was probably some random other crud to clean off, like I know I took an old toothbrush and some Windex to it, but then it was back inside to get some computing done!
At the time, I had a very flakey 800XL. More than likely some IC had gone bad from me plugging a device into the joystick port while it was on. At random times it would just freeze up or throw a whole bunch of random characters in different graphics modes all over the screen. Sometimes it would do it shortly after power on, and sometimes I could use the thing for hours just fine. It was always totally unexpected with no warning, so I really needed something else to use.
When plugging in the 130XE, though, I very quickly found that the keyboard didn’t entirely work. A few of the top/console keys (Help, Start, Select) and the far left side keys (Esc, Tab, Control, Shift) did nothing. Somehow, though, I used it anyway! A few busted keys, especially ones that aren’t letters, weren’t going to stop me from computin' with my Atari. For the life of me I can’t remember what I did to get around needing some of them. I mean, I’m a UNIX guy, so I would have needed the Control key for plenty of stuff.. plus, I remember using Ice-T, a terminal program that requires you to hit Shift-Esc to get to its menu. Maybe I just used it with the defaults (or loaded a config file set up elsewhere), but getting around needing Control for so many things is still a mystery.
Fast forward to a bunch of years later when I decide to plug this stuff back in. Something tells me to check the voltage of the old power supply. This isn’t something I normally do, mind you, so I’m not really sure where I got the idea. It was, of course, busted, and giving me crazy negative voltage. That’s ok, luckily the Atari runs on a nice 5V 1.5A which is easily procured from various other PSUs or USB bricks. The very first thing I found for a replacement (before wising up and making USB-A to 5-pin DIN) was a Zip drive power supply. It works great! The 800XL was first to get used a little bit. I had replaced the motherboard in it with one from a dirtier/crustier 800XL prior to moving out of my parents' house, so it actually worked now. But it didn’t take long for me to want the 128k machine!
After getting reminded about the dysfunctional keyboard on the XE, I set out to find a replacement. And I did! There was an XE keyboard on eBay in extremely good condition for something like $80usd, so I hastily ordered it. I hadn’t “been around” again in the Atari scene enough to know what all was available (it’s been almost 25 years at this point).
Just as I was wondering what to do with my old keyboard, I happened on The Brewing Academy’s website, which is an online store for retro computer related stuff. They had a mylar replacement for the XE keyboard for $25. Not even knowing whether that was the issue or not, I figured what the heck. That’s not too expensive of a gamble :).
It was incredibly easy to put in, and turned out to fix all the issues. The only difference between my old keyboard then and the one from eBay was that mine had yellowed key caps. Well, that’s the one I’m still using today and am typing on right now. I figured I would keep the machine with its original keyboard, and that the yellowed keys would match the slightly yellowed case. In the VW world, we’d say it “has patina”.
Another thing I found, probably from talking to people on BBSes, was this “rubber key cup” upgrade from Best Electronics. Not sure if they’ve got these anymore, but I ordered a set for (both of) my XE keyboards. Man, the difference in typing with them is night and day. The original XE keyboard is very stiff and the keys don’t go down very far. Once you put these cups in place of the original ones (not too horrible of a process), the XE becomes MUCH more of a joy to type on. The same thing works on the Atari STs, by the way. I just don’t have any of those.
The next idea I had for this thing was to make it PAL for demos. From watching a Polish dude’s Youtube video, I learned you could just half-way do it by only replacing the NTSC ANTIC with a PAL one and most things would just work. The XEs, though, had all the chips soldered directly onto the board. Around that time, a very cool dude on IRC offered to socket everything in the XE for me! I think I sent him a little bit of money that he didn’t ask for at the time, but I’m still looking for a better way to repay him. The Atari was shipped there and shipped back WAY quicker than I expected (I’m a slacker so I figure everyone else is) and I now had a fully socketed 130XE ready to accept all sorts of mods. A PAL ANTIC was something like $20 shipped off eBay, so that went in nicely, and I could play all the demos from back in the day that would lock up on me! No longer were there parts that I’d have to quickly skip past or that would stop the rest of the demo from running! I wish I could have somehow done that in the 90s :).
The 800XL that was now in my original case was already fully socketed, so my upgrades focus were initially on that one. It got an Ultimate 1MB. Since I also got a SideB cart (har har, Side3), which I used on the XE, it didn’t make sense to put a U1MB in that too. The SideB provides reset, SpartaDosX, and a real-time clock, just like U1MB does. Then I found out about the Antonia 4MB upgrade. Nothing is ever going to use 4MB RAM on the Atari, but why the hell not? Well I got that, and I’m not sure I can even get anything to run in 4MB mode :). I just leave it at 1MB and everything is fine. Another thing the U1MB does is allow for custom OS, as does the Antonia.
Lastly, I got a couple Sophia 2 mods that provide DVI out, so I don’t have to muck with composite or S-Video. No TVs even have S-Video anymore, anyway. They hide a composite in on one of the component lines, but that’s it. Many out there like their CRTs… I was totally glad to adopt LCDs :). Even those slow-to-update blurry mess LCDs were awesome to me. I do still keep a few CRTs because they are special monitors for special computers, but they have not been hooked up for many years so who knows if they still work.
Anyway, the other day a buddy and I each put together an a8picocart, which is an open source programmable cartridge for the Atari made with a Raspberry Pi Pico (clone). After printing a shell case for it, I had to plug the 130XE in to test it out! So here I am, running SpartaDosX off the a8picocart, mounting disks off the Fujinet, running FlickerTerm 80 column terminal program, and connected to the Tilde servers typing this blog post.
The a8picocart rocks, by the way, for how cheap and simple it is to build. People are selling them for around $30… I ordered the boards from one of those sites that give you your first PCB order for free. The Pi Pico clone I got from someone else, who had bought a bunch of them for around $2 a piece. He sold me 10 of them for something like $2.50 a piece plus shipping. So mine ended up costing somewhere around $3. I’ve only used it for cartridges, so far. It supports small ATRs, I guess, but I haven’t tried that out yet. This is an excellent addition to doing things on the cheap with a USB SIO2PC or if you just have a Fujinet.
And… that’s the story of this Atari 130XE. It’s been through a lot, even with just a few owners (probably.. who knows really), but it’s a solid little workhorse! My wish is for demo coders to stop trying to detect PAL/NTSC like it was back in the day. If it crashes, it crashes! And if you have a PAL ANTIC in an NTSC machine, it won’t :).
Tags: atari, reminiscing, tags-are-lame
Word.
Welcome this super simple .. blog, I guess?
I like to switch around using different computers all the time. Right now I’m typing this on a Macintosh SE running System 6 with a whopping 4mb RAM. The terminal I’m using is NCSA Telnet connected into the RaSCSI inside the machine via an emulated Dynaport SCSI ethernet adapter. Fun times!
More than likely I’ll be changing out the RaSCSI for a BlueSCSI, but we’ll see how that works out.
In place of this Mac SE was a Commodore 64 for some weeks. It’ll probably come back again in not too long :). I’ll write about that machine more when it happens.
Tags: first-post, welcome