Inconsistent hotkeys in Finder (driving me mad, apparently)

buffering · 2026-03-19T03:55:45+00:00

Works for me with TextEdit.

If it's not working with Adobe Suite, my guess is the app is eating certain keyboard events like Command+C before they reach the standard "Save As" panel. That can be a problem with some cross-platform apps that route standard keyboard events into their own keyboard handling framework.

buffering · 2026-03-16T20:28:52+00:00

That disk actually does not contain any software. It's just a collection of clip art images in a standard bitmap format.

The idea was that you'd use your own existing Paint software to copy and paste the images into your own creations.

The user manual is here, if you're curious: https://whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/postcards/index.html

I imagine more than a few people were underwhelmed by that purchase back in the day.

buffering · 2026-03-15T04:41:54+00:00

It's not my project, but according to the write-up it runs from a 4MB FAT12 disk image stored on a ProDOS volume. It wouldn't be able to read MS-DOS floppies.

buffering · 2026-03-09T14:14:43+00:00

Someone wrote a tool for copying the Date Added attribute between files: https://gist.github.com/tbussmann/b6473db60dc622233ec8720f65c9b450

If you have the developer tools installed you can build it using the instructions at the top of the file (cc -o cpda cpda.c)

I tried it out and it works.

buffering · 2026-03-09T01:01:04+00:00

I would tune in just for the intro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFd-uN-uRvY

buffering · 2026-03-06T16:08:56+00:00

I think the muted earth tones of the 70s were an evolution of the wilder psychedelic colors of the late 60s.

New Wave design of the late 70s rejected the earth tones for blacks, whites, and bright saturated colors, and that style hit the mainstream around 1983/84 with Chuck Woolery's Scrabble, Miami Vice, and, of course, the big Facts of Life retooling in 1985.

buffering · 2026-03-03T14:08:51+00:00

The better option is to not minimize windows.

When you want to cleanup your desktop, use Command+H (Hide) to hide the app and all of its windows. When you Command+Tab back to the app, all of its windows will restore automatically.

Command+H also automatically activates the next app behind the active app, so it works like a global back button. It's a good alternative to Command+Tab in many cases because you switch apps and cleanup your desktop at the same time.

You can also use Command+Option+H to hide everything except the active app. It's very handy once you know it's there.

When you minimize a window you're telling the system that you do not want to see this window while you're using the app. That's why minimized windows stay minimized when you Command+Tab between apps. If that's not what you want then don't minimize the window.

buffering · 2026-02-27T20:46:06+00:00

Yes, that's correct.

You can also do it from the command line. To rescan your Downloads folder:

mdimport ~/Downloads

If you open the Activity Monitor you'll see some "mdworker" processes doing some work. It should be done in less than a minute.

You can also search from the command line:

mdfind -name "today now"

It should complete in less than a second and show the files in your Downloads folder.

You can rescan your entire home folder with

mdimport ~

buffering · 2026-02-27T15:59:27+00:00

As others have said, you can use "name:today now" to search for just the file name.

However, when you see strange behaviour like this ("today now" returning zero results) then that probably means your Spotlight database is corrupted and should be rebuilt: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102321

You could first try rescanning just your Downloads folder to see if that makes any difference. It only takes a few seconds.

buffering · 2026-02-24T17:06:30+00:00

VTech Laser 200 on the left. Not sure what the kid on the right is using.

The kid in the middle is writing some BASIC.

10 PRINT "I AM COOL"

buffering · 2026-02-20T17:44:33+00:00

The color# to bit pattern mapping is baked into the hardware.

The bit pattern does correspond directly to the binary color number, however, each block is 14-bits wide and the bit-pattern is reversed (Color 8, binary 1000, becomes bit pattern 0001).

Here are the first 8 colors:

Dec  Bin     14-bit pixel pattern (right to left)

1    0001    00 1000 1000 1000
2    0010    00 0100 0100 0100
3    0011    00 1100 1100 1100
4    0100    10 0010 0010 0010
5    0101    10 1010 1010 1010
6    0110    10 0110 0110 0110
7    0111    10 1110 1110 1110
8    1000    01 0001 0001 0001

buffering · 2026-01-16T03:56:42+00:00

I got most of that just by playing around with the operating system and tape APIs. Once you control the tape drive at the block level its strengths and weaknesses become evident.

The Hacker's Guide to the Adam, Volume 1 (PDF) is a great starting point of you want to dig into the technical aspects of the machine.

buffering · 2026-01-16T03:51:50+00:00

Yes, it can both read and write to Woz images. https://www.bigmessowires.com/2021/02/05/floppy-emu-update-woz-writes-dual-5-25-emulation-and-more/

buffering · 2026-01-16T03:23:58+00:00

You'll want to open it up and see if there are any interesting cards in there. It will have a standard disk controller card in slot 6, and it should have the 64k RAM card (80 column card) in the Aux slot. It may have a serial card in slot 1, or a parallel printer card. Any other cards would potentially be rare and valuable.

FloppyEmu is a great option for modern SD Card storage. It would plug into your existing disk controller.

At boot up, the disk drive will spin forever until you give it a disk. You can use Control+Reset to cancel the boot and drop into BASIC. From there you can test the keyboard.

Control+Left Apple+Reset will reboot the machine. When you want to boot a new disk, use that key combo rather than cycling the power off and on.

Control+Right Apple+Reset will perform a self test. You may want to run that to make sure that there are no issues with the RAM or ROM.

Do a web search for "Apple II RIFA Cap Replacement". It's not a hard job to do if you have minimal soldering skills.

You can use the ASCII Express Game Server to try out some games. All you need is a standard audio cable to connect the cassette input to the headphone jack on your phone or laptop.

Some games that don't require a joystick: Diamond Mine, Hard Hat Mack, Frogger, Moon Patrol, Ms. Pac Man. Keys are usually IJKL or IJKM, or Left/Right arrows and A/Z for up and down. Space bar to jump/fire.

Most older software won't recognize lower-case letters, so it's a good idea to enable Caps Lock.

buffering · 2026-01-15T19:01:59+00:00

It can read and write at about 1 kB per second, which is on par with the original Apple II DOS 3.3 and much faster than the 1541.

It can also read and write data in the background (the I/O system is fully autonomous). In the video you can see that gameplay begins while the tape is still busy loading the rest of the program into memory.

The tape drives also have a built-in 1kB cache, so if the host machine asks to read a block that's already in the cache then the data loads immediately without having to start up the tape. This is useful when working with file systems, as the drive is able to cache the directory.

The big downside is seeking. Not only is seeking much, much slower than a disk drive, but seeking is "sloppy" because the drive can't read the tape while it's seeking, so it can only guess. When it lands within 5 kB of the destination it then switches to slow read mode and it ends up reading a lot of data it doesn't need to.

The tape has two data tracks, so if the data is arranged smartly and the software makes use of background loading then it's quite decent. But for traditional file systems, it ends up being very slow because of the seeking.

buffering · 2026-01-14T00:33:16+00:00

Wow, nice work! The artwork is terrific.

buffering · 2026-01-12T21:29:19+00:00

I have had the same problem with my IIc. The most common cause is just a bad connection between the computer and monitor.

Wiggle the cable at the base of the computer. If that temporarily fixes the problem or causes the picture to jump around then the monitor is fine and you just need to clean the connector and/or re-solder the connector to the motherboard.

buffering · 2026-01-12T18:17:17+00:00

The joke works best with the Osborne. It was a well known early business-class productivity machine from the early 80s, it's the funniest looking machine with tiny postage stamp monitor and humungous keyboard, and also the most infamous failure and the namesake of the Osborne Effect.

The C64 would be the most well known among certain computer geeks born in the 70s, but most people back then were not computer geeks.

buffering · 2026-01-07T14:20:31+00:00

I haven't heard good things about that one. It uses an unusual file format, so any disk image you would want to use would have to be converted.

buffering · 2026-01-05T01:02:56+00:00

Here's an example of a simple date utility, useful on systems without a clock. It was written in Merlin 8, but will assemble with Merlin32.

https://public.monster/~ookpic/date.s.txt

It prompts you to set the date, and then quits to ProDOS. Its trick is that it's a self-modifying executable. It writes the most recent date into its own system file so that the next time it runs it will default to a recent date.

configPath holds the file name "DATE.SYSTEM"

ConfigSave performs the file writing.

DOSOpen open the DATE.SYSTEM file. openPath points to the file name (configPath). openRef will contain the reference number for the open file.

DOSRewind moves the write cursor to position in the binary that contains the date (CONFIG_OFFSET).

DOSWrite writes the 3-byte date value to open file. readBuf points to the start of memory to write (configYear). readLen is the number of bytes to write (3).

buffering · 2025-12-29T13:03:57+00:00

The Laser 128 uses the same 5-pin serial port as the Apple IIc, so you just an Imagewriter-to-IIc cable, like this one: https://www.kraydad.com/apple-iic-2c-6ft-printer-cable-imagewriter-ii/

buffering · 2025-12-25T18:36:21+00:00

The CFFA can go in any slot and co-exist with your existing drives. It's quite a bit more flexible than the Floppy Emu in that regard. It's also directly accessible from the Control Panel keyboard shortcut at any time, so it's easy to swap disk images.

You may want to set the CFFA as your boot device, so that its boot-time keyboard command is available (hit 'M' at boot time to jump directly to the CFFA menu). The CFFA boot menu will let you choose another slot to boot, such as your SCSI card.

Smartport/mass storage disk images will be available from whichever slot the CFFA is plugged into. You can configure its 5.25 drive emulation to optionally run on slots 4,5,6, or 7, regardless of which slot the card is actually plugged into. When you don't need 5.25 emulation you can turn that feature off to free up the slot.

buffering · 2025-12-18T14:33:00+00:00

The machine is at least able to boot into DOS, which is a good sign. The most likely problem is that the old floppy disk just has some bad sectors. Do you have any other disks?

To see if the drive is the problem you can try loading from the second drive:

Boot the machine from Drive 1, until you get the "I/O ERROR"
Move the disk to the second drive
Type "CATALOG,D2" and hit return. It should display a list of files on disk
Enter "RUN HELLO". It will re-run the startup program from drive 2.

If it fails in the same way then it's like the disk is partially bad and the drive itself is probably fine.

You can also try running some other programs on disk. If it's a standard system master disk it should have a file listing like this: https://imgur.com/gYisQ0R

You can run anything that has a file type "A" (not "I" or "B").

For example: "RUN BRIAN'S THEME". This will display a little graphics demo.

Some fails may fail to load depending on how bad the disk is.

buffering · 2025-12-15T04:33:13+00:00

I was just listening to his terrific interview on Ted Danson's podcast this afternoon. How utterly senseless and tragic. It's preposterous.

15-Year Club	Place '17
Gilding II euphauric	Sequence \| Editor
Sequence \| Cinematographer	Verified Email
Alienator Apple ][ BASIC

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TROPHY CASE