Hardware

Mar 11 2012

R&D Automation to Produce 2nd Run of CFFA3000 Cards

R&D Automation announced in a blog posting last week that they will be producing a new run of the CFFA3000 cards for the Apple ][.  The CFFA3000 is a card which allows the Apple ][ to use Compact Flash Cards and USB Thumb Drives for hard drive storage of disk images.  According to the R&D Automation website, "We are now in the process of getting final quotes on parts for run #2 of the CFFA3000. We hope to be placing orders for the parts this week or next. We have not made a final decision on the run size yet, but we are looking at quantities of 400 and 500. The price of the next run will likely stay the same at US$149.95. It should be available in summer of 2012.

We are also adding support for image file directories to the firmware and making a lot of optimization to speed up all disk operations. Time permitting we will also be looking into DMA support, but there is still much work to do before we have something to test.“

The previous run of cards sold out in a matter of days after the much anticipated update was released.  The specifications of the new card are as follows:

  • A CompactFlash / USB flash drive interface for Apple II family of computers
  • Support 1 to 13 partitions under ProDOS and GS/OS, and 2 virtual floppy drives
  • Virtual Floppy image support allows the use of almost any non-copy-protected floppy disk image, including .dsk, .2mg, and .nib files. Note: .nib files of protected floppies will not work with the CFFA3000
  • Allows storage of thousands of floppy and smartport disk images
  • User configurable partition count
  • Boot from either device and any partition
  • Allow booting from Dos3.3, Pascal, CPM, Contiki, ProDOS or GS/OS directly from the Interface card (for a floppy-less system)
  • Configurable as a CFFA smart port controller (i.e. a mass storage device) or as a floppy controller, or both. When configured as both, requires 2 slots in your Apple II, one for the physical card, and one for the virtual floppy controller.
  • Hardware supports DMA, although v1.0 software does not currently support DMA. Future support is planned, but not guaranteed.

To order a CFFA3000 Card, you will need to email Rich Dreher, the proprietor of R&D Automation using the “email me” link on his sales webpage at:

http://shop.dreher.net/

By admin • Apple IIgs, Apple ][, Disk Storage, Hardware, Vintage • 1 • Tags: , , , ,

Mar 6 2012

Old School Ingenuity Allows Split Screen iPhone Recording

One of the simplest and the lowest tech devices made for the iPhone is the new “Love Box” for the iPhone 4 / 4S.   The device is a grooved piece of wood with a sliding mirror allowing for both the back of the camera and the front view of the camera to be recorded at the same time, making The Love Box the first device to allow true split screen video mixing without all of the hassle.

The Love Box was created by an advertising agency in Barcelona, Spain, Honest&Smile, and is a truly hand made item harkening back to making cases for the Apple-1 computer.  The Love Box is priced at 40.68 Euros on Etsy.  While, it is such an item that anyone could make, the actual item is stamped and comes with a poster.  They will also email you tips on making your own Love Box.

The website for The Love Box is at:

http://www.thelovebox.com

By admin • Apple Computing, Cabinets, Do it yourself, Hacks, Hardware, iPhone • 0 • Tags: , ,

Mar 5 2012

Booting from IDE drive when there are SATA drives

This is a generic sort of article… I have only tried it on one type of machine but this advice may prove useful in other situations.

As regular readers know, I volunteer at an educational non-profit organisation every Friday as a systems administrator.One of the privileges is I get to borrow a computer every so often for one of my projects. In this case I had a computer I was using as a file server (using FreeNAS v7.x). Since I had it for over three years I figured it was time to get something a little newer. A client returned a Dell GX 270 because he no longer needed it. I asked and was granted permission to replace the older machine with this one.

At first I only had two hard drives to work with. The first was the hard drive from the old computer and the second was the drive from the new one. I was able to boot from the old drive with no problem. Adding in the new drive so it would be accessed over my LAN was also easy. I had a third drive. It was a 500GB SATA drive. I had everything but the power adapter so it took a few days to connect.

The SATA drive was one I had in my Linux box before the motherboard died. It still had all the information as well as the master boot record intact. Once it was added into the 270 it wanted to take over. Like Macs there is an option which allows the user to select which drive to boot from. For a file server that’s not an acceptable solution. In this case it didn’t work very well either. The boot process was hung for 15 minutes…

After a bit of research on the net I found the solution was to boot from a rescue CD/DVD and toggle the bootable flag on the first partition on the hard drive to off. From that point things worked fine. I don’t know if the hard drive works or not since it was only yesterday I added it to the machine. Assuming there are no hardware problems I should be able to do a bunch of neat things like create virtual machines which are stored on  the LAN, set up a private iTunes server, and back up the Mini I am using at the moment…

By BlankMike • Disk Images, Disk Storage, Emulation, File Utilities, Freeware, Hardware, Public Domain, Software, Virtual Servers • 0

Feb 16 2012

TV tuner and a DIY antenna

It’s going to take a while to get to the computer related material in this article. Please be patient.

Ever since I was a little kid I’ve been curious about the world around me. I was the type of kid who wanted to see what was on the next block or figure out how dolls were made (yes I took them apart and put them back together again). The only time I got into trouble for it was when a big kid thought he was doing the neighbourhood parents a favour and told us little kids not to go near the river because there was a big monster there. We wouldn’t have gone there anyhow but we really wanted to see that monster. We were so disappointed we told our parents. I didn’t see why they were so upset. We made sure not to go near the river. We stayed a whole six inches away from the water. ;-)

Later I wanted to figure out as much as I could about radio and TV. I used to lay awake for a couple of hours per night listening to short wave and AM just to see how far away the stations I could pick up were. As I recall, the name of the hobby was called DXing. I was able to get stations from South Africa and Moscow on short wave and as far south as the American gulf coast on AM. Now all I can get on short wave is Radio Cuba and American religious stations. TV was similar. When I wanted to see what was available over the air we only had three Canadian stations and one American station. With the switch to digital (many years later) I found we had six Canadian stations and (depending on location) one American station. Actually we have cable in the house and I am satisfied with it. It’s just that I’m still curious about what I can get locally.

I mentioned this to a friend at a local computer club and he suggested I connect my cheap LCD TV to an external antenna. I had previously connected it to our old VHF antenna and was pulling in five of the six Canadian channels. The American channel was a lost cause. He pointed me to the “coat hanger” antenna plans at Make magazine (it’s a DIY magazine like popular mechanics used to be). After reading the description I found it to be a UHF antenna. This was fine for me since four of the local stations were now on UHF (including the one I couldn’t get earlier). The other two Canadian stations and the American station were on VHF-High. I built the antenna and had some interesting observations. In the basement I was able to get two stations. That makes sense because UHF frequencies are basically line of sight. On the ground floor of a house covered in stucco (which filters out some signals) I was able to get all four UHF stations (including the one I couldn’t get before) and one of the VHF stations. The quality of the signal also improved since there were less “drop outs”. After a bit of research I found line of sight improves as the height of the antenna increases.

Not being satisfied I did a bit more research. First off, TVfool.com (a list of TV signals theoretically available in a given area) showed there were additional stations just beyond the horizon. On a good day before the digital conversion we used to be able to pick up two of them when the signals bounced off the troposphere. Apparently there are another three or four more in the area. Then there was video of one guy who lives slightly North of me being able to pick up Minnesota stations. This was a shock because North Dakota is directly to our South and much closer. It was about that time when I discovered plans for the Grey-Hoverman antenna (released under the GPL3). Apparently this antenna is so sensitive it puts the coat hanger antenna to shame.

While I was out shopping for material to build the new antenna I was talking with a sales person and a TV engineer I met at an auto supply place. They both decided to give it a try themselves earlier than I had. One of them was using a TV tuner card on their PC with the four inch antenna that came included in the box. The other guy had an expensive TV with a cheap commercial antenna (he was opposed to cable and satellite TV on principal). Their experiences were strange. Apparently neither were satisfied with expensive commercial antennas and found the cheap ones were just as good if not better for their needs. Both were able to pick up all the stations in town as well as the American channel. I told them what I was looking to do and I was looking to spend $10.00. They said for that price it was worth giving it a try.

At the moment the build for the Grey-Hoverman antenna is stalled due to a cold.

Here is the computer related part. Another computer club was looking for a presentation last month. I figured since I had the coat hanger antenna we could look at a TV tuner card. A member of the club has a friend who works at a local computer store and he asked me if he could help. I suggested he see if he could borrow a cheap $50.00 digital tuner card. The store loaned us the top of the line $250.00 card for the meeting (Thank you MyMacDealer for the free loan). On the day of the meeting I realised the building was of a cinder block and rebar type construction. It also had lots of steel heating ducts and such. Essentially this meant it was worse than my house for getting signals. Plus we were also meeting in a room smack dab in the center of the basement. The package didn’t come with the four inch antenna I anticipated. It didn’t come with any antenna at all. I had my doubts it would work. Without an antenna there was no signal at all. With the coat hanger antenna it brought in one strong and one weak signal. Much better than expected. I showed the plans for the coat hanger antenna to an engineer as well as a city technologist. They thought the design was very ingenious. A couple twists here and there introduced some noise cancellation features. According to what they said the coat hanger antenna performed much better than expected.

Once I build and test the Grey-Hoverman antenna I’ll approach the other group and see if they want to do a live demonstration of Myth-TV. This way they can test the two antennas side by side. They will be using a different tuner card. The one for the Mac had a single tuner and connected to the USB port. The one these guys use has two tuners and is an internal PC card. The cost of this particular card is about $150.00. Boiled down to the nitty gritty… The TV tuner cards work. If it doesn’t then return it and try a different model.

Some DIY stuff… The construction method I used with the coat hanger antenna was pretty shoddy. Further reading suggests it is really hard to go wrong with this one. Just make sure the wires are not touching when the connecting elements cross (insulated wire is a good choice here). The coat hangers should be scuffed so as to remove any paint and rust so they can come in contact with the connecting elements.

For the Grey-Hovermann antenna it is best to build a jig for bending the wires to the correct angle and cutting them to the correct length.

If anyone is looking for increased sensitivity and distance, connecting two identical antennas together will work. However anything more than a dual bay (two antennas) results in diminishing returns and isn’t worth the effort.

It is possible to angle both antennas in a dual bay differently. However if they are at a 90 degree angle the signals cancel out.

Reflectors can increase the sensitivity up to 30% but turn the antenna into a directional antenna.

Using wood as a mounting material means the antenna is designed for indoor purposes only. Outdoor antennas are typically mounted to PVC or insulated metal.

Outdoor antennas need to be grounded.

For the most part for a basic antenna, scrap material can be used for minimal cost. Using better quality materials and better construction methods will improve the output somewhat.

As a radio tech friend once told me. “All you need to get a signal is a long enough piece of wire. Anything else is just getting fancy.”

By BlankMike • Design, Do it yourself, Documentation, Hardware • 0 • Tags: , ,

Feb 15 2012

Apple ][ Uthernet Cards Sell Out in 48 Hours

The A2RetroSystems produced Uthernet card for the Apple ][ series computer has proven to once again be a big hit.  Glenn Jones, the creator of the card has managed to sell all of the 45 units that were initially set for pre-order.  At this time, it is unclear when another run of the cards will be produced, but you can check out the A2Retrosystems page to add your name to a waiting list for the next run or for more information about the Uthernet Card at:

http://a2retrosystems.com/index.htm

By admin • Apple IIgs, Apple ][, Hardware, Network Card, Vintage • 0 • Tags: , , ,

Feb 13 2012

New Inexpensive Solution For iOS Retro Gamers – iCade 8-Bitty

ThinkGeek now has a new item in their store which will fit right into those hands of the retro gamers.  The new 8-Bitty is a wireless hand controller which has Nintendo Entertainment System style D-Pad controls and multiple buttons for those games requiring more than the usual A or B button.  The item was announced yesterday and is already out of stock with no ETA on new stock being delivered.

Some of the fesatures of the 8-Bitty include:

  • Classic retro-styled game controller fits in your pocket and works with iPhone & iPad
  • 8 button control including 4 face buttons, select, start, and two shoulder buttons… plus the D-Pad for movement
  • Wireless connection with auto power save mode
  • Mini version of larger size iCade cabinet invented and designed by ThinkGeek
  • Fully compatible with all iCade games
  • Completely open development platform. App developers can add support for iCade with no permission needed from Apple or ThinkGeek. (See links for code examples below).
  • “Atari Greatest Hits” iPad App ready to go with the iCADE, including support for over 100 classic Atari games.
  • Atari App comes with Missile Command for free, other games available for in-app purchase. 3-game packs are $1. All 100 games are $14.99
  • Compatible with iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. Android support for most tablets and smartphones.
  • NOTE: Atari Greatest Hits only runs on iPad, not on iPhone or iPod touch.
  • Requires 2 x AAA batteries (not included)

The price is $24.99 making it a good option for those folks who like the iCade but don’t like the idea of having the iPad inside of a box in order to play the games.   You can find out more about the 8-Bitty at the ThinkGeek website at:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/retro-gaming/ecea/#tabs

By admin • Accessories, Apple Computing, Hardware, iPad, iPhone, Joysticks • 0 • Tags: , , ,

Feb 8 2012

A Look into the Original Apple Design Book

Have you ever wondered what Apple had in mind when it was designing new Apple IIgs machines back in the 1980′s?  Lim Thye Chen gives us a brief glimpse into some of those designs of prototypical Apple machines with a few pictures from the original Apple Design book at:

http://retromaccast.ning.com/photo/photo/listForContributor?screenName=rxq26qsiiir9

While this is not the first time we have seen such wild ideas of Apple products, it is the first time we have seen a mythical Apple IIsi or a completely integrated keyboard into an Apple ][gs.  These photos show some of the cool ideas that were shot down in Apple’s pursuit of the ultimate in computing.

By admin • Apple IIgs, Apple Inc., Design, Hardware, New Product, Prototypes, Vintage • 2 • Tags: , , , ,

Jan 26 2012

Building an Analog Joypad for the Apple //c

Kevin Dady is known for his strange hacks over the years, but this one is actually useful to Apple //c Owners.  Not wanting to purchase an Apple //c joystick, Kevin set out to build himself one, using a thumb controller from an XBox controller.  The result of that and a few parts from Radio Shack is a game controller that looks every bit the modern piece of equipment except for the old 9 pint //c connector.

Kevin has posted a step by step outline of how to build the controller complete with all of the pictures of his process on the Hack-A-Day Website.

Source:  Hack A Day

By admin • Apple //c, Hardware, Joysticks, Memory, Vintage • 0 • Tags: , ,

Jan 22 2012

iMame on the iPad 2 and the loading of more ROMs

For those iPhone and iPad users lucky enough to have downloaded iMame prior to its being pulled on the 23rd of December, 2011, there is a nifty new instruction set available on the Internet for adding more ROMs.  iMame came with 10 ROMs but none of them were particulaly exciting from the aspect of the average gamer.

The one thing that was exciting was the fact that MAME had made it into the Apple App store.  This has been rectified by Apple now, but this left many of us exploring the possibilities of adding our own ROMs to it.  To add the ROMs to the game, use a program like Phone View or iExplorer and find the /Apps/iMame/Documents Directory.  Copy you ROMs from your hard drive to the iPhone or iPad /Apps/iMame/Documents directory and then Eject the iPhone or iPad.

Go to the iPad or iPhone and start the iMame App, select OPTIONS, scroll down to the bottom and select Re-Scan all ROMs.  At this point, just go back to the main menu screen of iMame and the ROM’s have copied should appear in the selection menu of the program.

You can check out the post copy function of this with the video below:

iMame2 in Play

If you are not quite sure about this tip, you can check out

Loading the iMame ROMS

The instructions are for the non-Jail Broken iPad and iPhone.

 

By admin • Apple Computing, Apps, arcade, Emulation, Games, iPad, iPhone, ROMs, Software • 0 • Tags: , , , , ,

Jan 14 2012

Smartport VHD Sample Has Been Released

The first sample of the Smartport Virtual Hard Drive for the Apple //c has been released.  The sample shown on the SmartportVHD Website by Cedric Peltier is largely ready for production.   Cedric says in a posting on CSA2 that “Some minors details have to be reviewed before the public availability, but the device start to see the light”

By admin • Disk Storage, Hardware • 0 • Tags: , , ,

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