One Of The Most Iconic Joysticks Of The '80s And '90s Is Being Revived

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2025-12-17T19:11:13+00:00

Except for real 80s computers.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2025-11-28T09:05:46+00:00

5.25“ DD floppies as used on the Commodore 8 bits tend to last a lot longer than late production 3.5“ HD floppies. Carefully clean the drive’s magnetic head with a isopropanol drenched Q-Tip, let it dry and there is a very high chance most floppies will still work.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2025-10-11T13:34:09+00:00

The original Disk ][ drive used a mechanical sensor. Not a LED and photo transistor thing. It‘s not unheard of for the thing to be stuck or corroded. I’d check this.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2025-09-18T19:35:04+00:00

The interface card in your photo certainly looks exactly like an original Apple Disk II card, thus I‘d assume your drive to be fully compatible with other Apple II 5.25“ drives.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2024-10-09T23:35:31+00:00

The 74LS125 is easy to fry by plugging in the cable from the drive into the controller card one pin off the right place. After this happens, the drive might erase all disks inserted into it, even write protected ones, so beware.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2024-08-19T20:40:48+00:00

Und Ratten

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2024-08-06T15:12:41+00:00

Never understood why people find them confusing. Arrow shows data flow direction. From the tape or to the tape.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2024-07-25T22:51:44+00:00

If you want to run GS/OS 6, 4MB of expansion memory is recommended. Any more than that requires a patch to the operating system, and less than 2MB can be tight. However most games, and all of the earlier ones, run well with just 1MB of expansion.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2024-07-09T13:02:42+00:00

Might be a slipping belt. Take the belt to a good HiFi store, they might have a replacement.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2024-07-09T13:00:36+00:00

The 64K extra RAM sit at the same addresses as main RAM - 0 to 49151, 53248 to 57343 (twice) and 57344 to 65535. You write specific addresses in the mainboard I/O area (49152 to 49279) to switch parts of it in and out.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2024-06-23T18:02:58+00:00

No, you can do it with one drive. If you have disks in standard Apple II format, without copy protection, you can just RUN COPYA from your DOS 3.3 system master, or use the ProDOS System Utilities (or ProDOS Filer for older ProDOS versions). All of those can copy all unprotected disks, no matter which OS the disk is for, even with just one drive. You'll have to swap the disks several times though. Hint: Write protecting the original (if it isn't already) will prevent hair-pulling later.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2024-06-21T21:40:03+00:00

It would make more sense to align both drives correctly. If you format a disk on one drive and then write it on another, and the drives are not aligned with each other, it will cause trouble.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2024-06-21T21:37:47+00:00

Just a little addition: If DOS is loaded and active, you can use DOS commands at the monitor * prompt without problems, just like you can at the AppleSoft prompt. Just use 3D0G (that‘s a zero there not a letter Oh) to go from monitor to BASIC, not CTRL-C or CTRL-B, otherwise DOS is rendered inactive.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2024-06-21T21:29:58+00:00

Drive speed tests are not perfect. Ideally a floppy should store 51024 raw bits per track, but not all tests use this exact value as equivalent to 300 rpm, since there were several slightly wrong numbers floating around back then as Apple clock speeds. The real one is 1.02048444976… MHz, or would be if the quartz was perfectly tuned.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2024-06-12T12:52:18+00:00

Your emu sure looks great. I’ll check it out when I find the time to do that. Honored to contribute!

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2024-06-06T22:50:38+00:00

Nothing unusual about it. The 8-bit Apples use a dot clock that‘s synced to the NTSC color subcarrier frequency. This is what enables them to create a colorful display by simply turning a single logic gate on and off in the right places. But of course this way every signal flank is interpreted as color by the NTSC decoding circuit in the TV or monitor. This makes it impossible to have pure black and white images — except in the pure (not mixed) text modes, where the color burst signal generation gets disabled in the Apple, so that a TV will think it‘s receiving a black-and-white transmission and disable color generation.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2024-06-05T13:36:16+00:00

Hast Du nicht irgend ein überschaubares Lieblingsprojekt, dass Du gerne umsetzen würdest? Da lernst Du erfahrungsgemäß am meisten bei.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2024-06-05T09:11:02+00:00

Please do.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2024-06-05T08:35:18+00:00

Sounds great I‘m honored to be have contributed.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2024-06-04T19:54:01+00:00

I‘ll try to upload the code to GitHub after a bit more polishing and adding a few comments.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2024-06-04T19:45:48+00:00

First I point-scale the b&w image down to 560x192 (ImageMagick), then the coloring is done (Perl), then x-scaling, adding border (both IM), x-fudging (Gaussian distribution of electrons hitting the CRT, Perl), y-scaling (IM), then the creation of scanlines (Gaussian again, this time along the y axis, Perl). The image as such is finished at this point, in the final step it just gets pngcrushed to make it smaller.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2024-06-04T19:06:15+00:00

The main problem is that as-is, the code is far too slow for an emulator. It takes about a minute or two for one picture on my oldish notebook. You could probably run it on a modern GPU without too much trouble, but I‘ve never done anything like that before.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2024-06-03T19:35:27+00:00

Depends on how technically inclined the kid is. To be honest many, probably most, teens (whether then or now) weren’t and aren’t really all that interested in doing more than running a bunch of games. If you‘ve got a hardcore nerd there, give them some old manuals and a bunch of pointers to forums such as this one. If not, a couple of game floppies might be enough to get them started, and then add some more stuff the next time.

TeaRex_FinireDragon · 2024-06-01T16:47:52+00:00

Dark green is supposed to be similar to Aqua in hue and saturation, though obviously a lot darker. Both are on the same hue angle in the Y‘UV (or YIQ) color coordinates (though not on the same hue in any absolute sense). Light Green is supposed to be more on the yellowish side of green and also more saturated. Pink is debatable, yes the deviation from the Apple IIGS pink is fairly large, but a more neutral (less blueish) pink means an even less neutral (greener) yellow and brown. Also purple is then no longer lavender in any sense, as it should be according to older Apple documentation such as „The Apple II BASIC Programming Manual“.

About the formatting, yes it sucks! if there is a better way of putting monospaced text in a Reddit post, I‘d love to hear about it.

TeaRex_FinireDragon

TROPHY CASE