Another repair project that I’ve had sitting around for quite a while is a TRS-80 floppy drive. It was another “untested” item that I got for a reasonable price off eBay. When it arrived I hooked it up and it didn’t work. A little bit of investigation and I found that the spindle motor wasn’t turning on. Again I got distracted with something else and put the project aside for another time. Precariously balancing I didn’t want to have to test the drive by...

I still remember the first time I ever touched an Asteroids machine. It was in a dark arcade in Vallejo, one of those ones that had popped up in an empty storefront in a shopping center. The machine was different than all the others in the arcade, it was a lone cocktail cabinet amid the uprights that were packed anywhere they could fit them. I dropped in a quarter to see if I could make sense of the game, and was amazed at how fun it was controlling the ship. Of course I died quickly because I...

You decided to "work" from home and you're having a blast killing aliens, rescuing princesses, and finding buried treasure. And of course right while you're in the middle of solving the world's hardest puzzle an urgent call comes in from the office. Of course that means you’re going have to get up and go sit at another computer to ssh in and see what's going on. Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to do that? Using a combination of tcpser and...

With the TRS-80 Model II working one of the first things I did with it was to send the world’s first tweet from a TRS-80 Model II. To do that I used Kermit for CP/M. World's first tweet from a @RadioShack #TRS80 Model II made in 1979! https://t.co/5trIKlhBqW pic.twitter.com/2vJffAAhGb — Chris Osborn (@FozzTexx) June 2, 2016 The TRS-80 Model II support in Kermit is missing hardware flow control support however which means that it’s very prone to dropping...

This article is a followup to my previous article about trying to open and repair this typewriter. It's open! Bob Will didn’t have a service manual for my Smith Corona Memory Correct 400 Messenger but he did let me in on the secret to getting a mid ‘80s Smith Corona typewriter open: pry really hard. Yes really! Before you do that you want to remove the two screws near the platen. After taking out the screws the only thing holding the cover on is a couple of large metal posts...