@cognitivegears@lemmy.sdf.org cover
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cognitivegears

@cognitivegears@lemmy.sdf.org

I am a retro computer and bbs/early internet fan who does information security work as a day job. I am a bit of a retro-generalist though I do tend toward systems that I had or used growing up and starting my career. Color Computer, , , but especially early PC.

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cognitivegears Mod ,
@cognitivegears@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

I remember that well. We used DESQView to run our BBS as well. It was only a single line system, but DESQView let us do other things on the computer without taking down the board.

Has anyone played with TriDOS? https://github.com/prokushev/tridos - it doesn’t look nearly as featured, but has the advantage of being open-source and I thought might be interesting for a project I have in mind.

cognitivegears OP Mod ,
@cognitivegears@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Yeah it makes sense - and even now that isn’t an issue, I feel like the ability to “program” your edits is still a great interface for productivity.

Interview with Laine Nooney and Adam Conover about early computers and the Apple II ( www.youtube.com )

This video blew me away. Not because of a deep dive into the Apple II from any technical standpoint, but instead because it instead takes a broader look from a cultural perspective of the history around the late 70’s and early 80’s computer industry, and puts it in terms of the software and people who used them. It’s a...

Check out Greaseweazle! ( lemmy.sdf.org )

Finally got around to play around with Greaseweazle, and wish I had done it a long time ago! Greaseweazle is a tool to read and write raw data from many different systems. Want to read a CoCo disk, or write a new Amiga disk? I haven’t tried it, but it supposedly can even deal with 8" disks (if you have the drive and interface)...

dekkzz76 , to retrocomputing
@dekkzz76@emacs.ch avatar

@retrocomputing

Just how old qualifies as retro computing?

cognitivegears Mod ,
@cognitivegears@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

This is a great question with no definitive answer 🙂 There are a number of ways of looking at it, though the ultimate answer is whatever each person considers retro. A few general ways to look at it include:

  1. whatever was around when you were a kid. Of course, this depends wildly on who you are asking - for me this would include the Tandy Color Computer / Commodore 64 era through 486 PCs (or so.) For other people this could be a little older or much newer of course.
  2. Some fixed definition like (anything before the year 2000 or no PCs etc.) I’m not a huge fan of this personally as it leaves some people out.
  3. Any computer old enough that a single person could fully understand it’s workings and diagnose/repair problems etc. This generally includes 8 and some 16 bit systems. I’ve increasingly come to prefer this view because beyond nostalgia it also helps define something that I believe is a significant benefit to these systems.
Doom_Cough , to retrocomputing
@Doom_Cough@kbin.social avatar

Anyone using their retro machines to make music or for live use? I experimented with making live Acid music with a C64, using Mssiah, and a 303, etc. The timing of the 303 clone wanders sync too much as is but maybe adding a better midi clock like a modern drum machine to help keep it all synced.

Thought, opinions?

cognitivegears Mod ,
@cognitivegears@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Fantastic stuff. Unfortunately I don’t know enough to help but you may want to try to catch up with Inverse Phase: https://www.inversephase.com

He is a super nice person and is more knowledgeable about that sort of thing than anyone I’ve met. I’ve run into him a couple of times a VCF Midwest and always learn something new.

cognitivegears Mod ,
@cognitivegears@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

That does look like a happy Mac! I used to help support machines a lot like this for the teachers at my high school, kept me from having to do as much school work lol.

cognitivegears Mod ,
@cognitivegears@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

It's funny, I thought that would be a quick google search away, but I wasn't able to find anything about that either. Unfortunately my Gotek is setup on a Compaq Portable 1 and I can't use anything other than 360k floppies with it anyway, so I can't test it out either. I would expect that it should "just work", but can't tell you for sure.

However, besides just trying it out or if anyone else knows, a couple of other things that might help you:

Dual drive support with a single Gotek (very much a WIP, but looks like it's partially done): https://kivijakola.fi/projektit/2023/02/26/gotek-flashdisk-dual-drive-support/

Making a DOS image from Linux: https://askubuntu.com/questions/484308/create-floppy-images - my thought here is that you could make a dos 1.44mb image, mount it and a smaller 360k or whatever image, and then copy the contents to the larger 1.44mb image. You should be able to do something similar in Windows with software such as PowerISO etc.

Finally, if nobody else has a solution before then please update us when you try it out, this would be great to know.

cognitivegears ,
@cognitivegears@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

It’s a lot easier to get into then it used to be! Most BBS systems support connecting over the internet using the telnet protocol. Some of them you can connect to right off their web page.

You can find everything you need over at the telnet bbs guide:

www.telnetbbsguide.com

There are BBS listings there, as well as a handy guide:

www.telnetbbsguide.com/faqs/how-to-telnet/

cognitivegears Mod ,
@cognitivegears@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

DriveWire is still very much a thing - the original hasn’t been updated in quite some time, but the new software to do this is called pyDriveWire:

https://github.com/n6il/pyDriveWire

You need a cable to connect between the coco and the computer:

https://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/How_to_build_a_DriveWire_serial_cable

http://colorcomputer.net/serialcable.php

I’ve found them for sale every now and then as well, though they are pretty easy to make too.

You’ll also need to load a Drivewire capable DOS (like HDB-DOS.) You can get a cartridge that does it or even load it from tape / audio.

Once you get it going though Drivewire (or pydrivewire) has a ton of features and is a lot of fun to play with.

Let me know if you have any questions or problems.

/c/trek is leaking :) ( lemmy.sdf.org )

I recently found this Star Trek Stardate calendar and address book software for Windows 3.1 - between this and the After Dark Trek screensaver I should be able to decorate my computer desktop like a true early 90's Trek fan! I can't find this anywhere on the Internet Archive etc, so I'm currently putting together a greaseweazle...

cognitivegears OP Mod ,
@cognitivegears@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Will do, I just got the greaseweazel, power supply and microcontroller I just need to find a compatible drive (and figure out how to actually use greaseweazel lol.) Of all the retro things I have, I can't believe I don't have a working 3.5" drive lol.

cognitivegears OP Mod ,
@cognitivegears@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Managed to get it archived. Enjoy!

archive.org/details/stardate

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