Update 2016 Jun 8: I was able to get the typewriter open and it is now working and printing A couple of weeks ago I picked up a Smith-Corona Memory Correct 400 Messenger at Goodwill. I debated getting it since I already have enough retro stuff around the house, but every single time I’m at a Goodwill I look at all the typewriters to see if they have some kind of serial or parallel port. This one has an external interface which can be connected to a computer using an external box...

Bad RAM on the IIgs A couple of weekends ago I was in the mood to do some retrogaming and didn’t know what I wanted to play so I asked for some suggestions from Twitter. I played some Castle Wolfenstein, Snake Byte, BC’s Quest for Tires, and Miner 2049er on the Apple IIe and then I wanted to try some games on my Apple IIgs. Unfortunately my IIgs has had intermittent issues for a long time, and it was looking like bad RAM might be the culprit.   The IIgs has an Applied...

I’ve had my dad’s first calculator sitting in a drawer in my desk for a little while. It’s a Hewlett-Packard 25 calculator with a red LED screen. My dad got it in February of 1976 at Macy’s and paid $207.68 for it. The calculator itself has a manufacture date of March of 1975. Not long after he got the calculator HP introduced the 25C which would save your program even after switching the calculator off which he said he would have preferred, but back then returning...

One of the retro computer mailing lists I’m on recently had a side project go by about building a single board computer using a Hitachi HD63C09P 8-bit processor which is a descendant of the Motorola 6809. I followed along with interest and there were some small PCBs designed and when it got to the testing phase the project stalled because they couldn’t get the 63C09 to start up. For some reason the crystal wouldn’t start oscillating, or when using a full can oscillator the E...

Adventure games via Periscope Over the weekend I was having some fun with Periscope and having people join in while I played some old graphic text adventures. Remember graphic text adventures? They were text based adventure games but would show a picture above the text so you didn’t have to use your imagination as hard. You still have to type commands and read descriptions. Because of their slow pace I thought they would lend themselves well to a little bit of interaction while...