October 1st started off like a normal day. I went to move a 20 year old Celeron-based iPaq near my Teletype in order to finish setting it up for the party I was having a few days later. After getting everything plugged in, it refused to boot up insisting that /sbin/init and many other files were missing. I booted into a rescue Linux via PXE and sure enough, the files were missing. Since I had had so much trouble getting it setup I didn't think much of it and wiped it and started over with...

Saturday morning I woke up early excited about my planned experiment. I took care of all the online stuff I needed to and rushed to prepare a boot disk for the Apple II Plus as an intro for Retro Computer Day . A couple of pictures, a little bit of image conversion on "the timeshare", and a quick transfer of files to floppy using an Apple IIe with an AppleTalk link. I then went around and turned off all the Macs and I was just barely ready at 8am. To try to keep myself from...

Not long after I started RetroBattlestations I started contemplating spending an entire day using only a retro computer, even possibly lugging it to work and using it there as well as at home. The idea of seeing whether or not an old computer could still be usable in a modern world sounded somewhat interesting, at least to me. After all, as much as computers have changed in the last 40 years, they also haven't. I often find myself using knowledge I acquire from tinkering with these old...

As part of collecting I've managed to build up a small pile of Apple II+ computers that were purchased to get various cards and other parts. A revision 7 one made in 1984 (contrary to popular belief, Apple II+ production did not cease when the IIe came out in 1983, see last two images in gallery) had become my favorite test machine when I needed to try out a newly received card or other Apple II+ hardware. One night while testing out a Micromodem II card and going through the...

When I first saw this clip from the BBC show Tomorrow's World several months ago I was fascinated by it and was impressed that they were sending a program for two different models of computers. It was also interesting that they chose to write something for the Apple II. Since then I thought it would be neat to try loading the program simultaneously on both models of computer and I thought Cassette Week would be the perfect time to try it! Unfortunately it took much longer to get...