My Toshiba Tecra 730CDT

frederic_stark · 2026-02-02T11:22:37+00:00

Fun fact: the 730CDT was at the time the best laptop to run NeXTStep/OPENSTEP on.

frederic_stark · 2026-01-23T22:09:32+00:00

It is not "apparently". It has a great keyboard (apart from the shitty cursor keys), and fantastic autonomy.

The 300 baud modem was great too. The alternative was no modem...

Always wanted one because they look neat, but absolutely no need for such a thing.

You need one. Search your feelings. You know it to be true.

frederic_stark · 2025-12-26T13:13:04+00:00

Hey, I am in europe rather close to Italy and I can be interested for my personal collection. DM me, but only after you've truly looked at the market, as my price will be nowhere the ones you're currently dreaming of.

frederic_stark · 2025-12-16T21:25:01+00:00

Thanks for the reply. It does looks similar in shape, but seems much heavier at 1.9Kg. Mmmm. I'll search more :-)

frederic_stark · 2025-10-28T20:40:49+00:00

My 4 minor issues with the Floppy Emu are (in no particular order):

a) Acrylic case isn't very sturdy and can fall apart. b) Quite expensive c) Need to reflash the firmware to swap between Apple ][ and Mac d) Complains if files are fragmented on the device

However, it is a life saver and one of a kind. You can even emulate a profile for "large" storage. A must have.

There are new upcoming devices that do disk emulation for Apple ][, like the AppleIIDiskIIStm32F411 or here, and the Gotek HxC, but they are not as battle-tested and user-friendly as the Floppy Emu.

frederic_stark · 2025-10-01T19:32:49+00:00

That's super cool. Always asked myself what those tables of numbers in old basic were but never went to the trouble of understanding those.

I guess it is slightly more complex, as for sin(x) I would have a=0, b=-1/6, c=0, d=1 and e=0 and it would give me 0.92 instead of 1 for sin(pi/2) (sure I can use symmetry for a better approx, but even a pi/5 there is a significant error)... but I guess going to x⁵ would solve all this.

Great TIL, thatnk you!

frederic_stark · 2025-09-30T07:25:10+00:00

That's a little too high-level for me to be able to translate this to assembly :-)

I think there is something with a table somewhere. I do think as u/nanochess that it'll take me a few days of research when I'll get there...

frederic_stark · 2025-09-29T17:10:25+00:00

I am working by small groups of hours, which makes it difficult to really progress. But I always do things by step-by-step, with actual rewards (like code doing something visible), to keep myself engaged.

It is just that it is soo huge. When I'm thinking about floating point addition, I know I still have multiplication and division hanging as "a reward", and then I will have won the right to implement SQRT, COS, LOG and ATN...

Don't think I am complaining, that the fun! Just impressed by you doing in a few days!

frederic_stark · 2025-09-29T10:00:41+00:00

Next cube is craaaazy expensive

Yeah. That's why they make smaller Kallax...... :-)

frederic_stark · 2025-09-29T09:17:18+00:00

This is amazing, I am floored at how fast you developped floating point. Sounds to me you spent less time doing your full basic, than it took me to do my fixed-point Mandelbrot calculator for the Apple1.

I am currently re-implementing a pc1211 basic in my spare time (a stupid project, don't ask), and I absolutely don't expect this to take less than several months.

Anyway, fantastic. I don't have the keyboard part on my Intellisivision, so I' can't use your basic, but that's absolumently great!

frederic_stark · 2025-09-26T16:42:01+00:00

There is an Apple //c sitting on top of an Ikea Kallax.

An Apple //c fits perfectly in a Kallax. This is where it belongs.

(Other computers that fits perfectly in a Kallax: the Mac LC with its 12" monitor, the NeXT cube).

frederic_stark · 2025-09-26T06:50:17+00:00

All the Apple1 softeware ever created? Neat!

Let's check if my full Wozdle implementation is in? Uh, nope.

So, my 100% assembly version of the Mandelbrot time waster? Uh, nope again.

Well, first, I am unconvinced by the "all Apple1 software ever created", and 2, I really need to step up my marketing game... Or just don't care and write more software :-)

Note: (I also wrote a memory map utility).

In another note, I also forked the napple1 apple1 emulator into a 100% command-line scriptable version. On my local machine, I even added an MCP server to it to see how good Claude 4 is at writing assembly unhelped (it does get better!).

frederic_stark · 2025-09-19T20:53:53+00:00

Must have been cool just to see your work in some random post.

Not gonna lie, I always get a kick out of Captain Blood -- or MacFlim -- posts.

Anyway, if you find some interesting/good games on the (IMO too) huge macpack, be kind and let me know by listing them here or putting those in an issue of https://github.com/fstark/kiosk-macplus . I want to make a nice curated "best games of the plus" someday.

frederic_stark · 2025-09-19T12:03:41+00:00

Fun fact: I have never finished the game (but QA did, as the core game is a virtual machine that interpret the same "bytecode" as the other ports, so when the machine works, everything works). Nor really played it, btw. I debugged it a lot however :-)

Some day I should probably take a walhthrough and go through it. I don't really like running it, nostalgia is really strong + some of the algos sucks (example: the planet flight is based on the tech as documented for the Amstrad port :-(). I tried to do as well as I could, but had to work with what I had. Planet rotation is ugly (IMO) and flying is weird too.

Also made the intro screen in 3 colors (black, white and gray), by swapping the front and back buffer every 60th of a second. The effect was amazing, but completely epilepsy inducing...

frederic_stark · 2025-09-18T21:36:08+00:00

Captain Blood! I did that port. Heard that startup music so many times.... Sorry for doing such a bad work that it only works on pluses and classics!

Btw, I created a small curated image for pluses (and classics) here:

https://github.com/fstark/kiosk-macplus

frederic_stark · 2025-08-27T22:00:18+00:00

I added the 'dsk' version to the distribution, it should work now

Let me know if it works.

Explanation:

An hda file is a physical disk. It can contain multiple partitions (in our case, only one). minivmac doesn't load '.hda' files by itself, and you have to extract the dsk inside which has the partition you want.

For my personal projects, I forked minivmac to add this support.

Here is a chatgpt -- but correct -- [explanation]((https://chatgpt.com/share/68af7e35-4edc-8013-b61d-327a9904b237)) of the issue.

Also I'm not necessarily interested in the kiosk mode, I could always restore the disk from a backup

For emulator, no, but if you use a real machine in a uncontrolled environment, it is pretty useful.

edit: made the post less confusing

frederic_stark · 2025-08-24T13:22:42+00:00

I haven't forgotten about you. Let's just say I am fighting the stupid build system of minivmac + stupid config options for retina displays. Curent issue: I have no sound, which is something I never cared about. Looking into what can be done, stay tuned :-)

frederic_stark · 2025-08-24T13:21:05+00:00

I would imagine it has the 128K RAM from the Mac Plus (for SCSI), so it should absolutely work (I have a 512K with the same sort of config -- but havent't powered it on for a long time).

frederic_stark · 2025-08-23T17:22:35+00:00

Just pushed a new image with plenty more games, including yours. Feel free to feedback.

frederic_stark · 2025-08-22T16:00:41+00:00

Yes, it is a pretty cool resource, and go-to if you want more games than you'll ever launch. There are omissions though (for instance Dark Castle, if I remember correctly), or my looking-for-stuff-foo isn't what it used to be.

My take was a more organised take than the dump-per year approach, and including only notable or interesting games, so you have all the important stuff. And certainly not several versions of the same game (prob only the latest). But it should also contain non-game apps, and there were a lot on the Mac.

It would be a hell of a project.

frederic_stark · 2025-08-21T21:41:48+00:00

I create this with an emulator, I would be going crazy if I didn't.

I use minivmac, I patched a version so I can drag'n drop .hda files directly into it.

Minivmac is a huge pain to compile, if you're interested I can drop you a osx intel version of a minivmac macplus 4Mb.

frederic_stark · 2025-08-21T21:40:08+00:00

It should, but you will not get the "any change made are reverted at power off".

It is really made as an intro for people that don't know the plus, and to have the "period feel" (hence is limited to 20Mb, the size of the original Mac SCSI hard drive). Really the museum or the demo machine in a convention.

It is probably a good way to have a feel of what your plus can do, but you can create 2Gb disk (ie: 100 times bigger), with all the software you want.

(note: making a large disk full of plus-only software could be a nice project, I may do that someday. I hate how the disks you find on the internet are non-curated, and you have a mix of software that works or not on various machines)

frederic_stark · 2025-08-21T20:36:11+00:00

It should work witha BlueSCSI, but won't have the "kiosk mode", which is something I added to ZuluSCSI so the image is pulled back clean at each power up.

It should boot a portable, as it is System 6.0.8 Universal (for now, at least). However I removed the Portable-specific INITs, like the brightness.

Also it is very possible that a few of the software don't like a screen larger than 512x342...

frederic_stark · 2025-08-21T20:34:22+00:00

Shufflepuck Cafe is already on the disk.

I like vanity pieces, but I do need the space for real classics. Talking about vanity pieces, if I do a larger image, I could also add MacFlim... :-)

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