Bluemeanie's Retro Computing

For the past few month I have been developing a storage solution for the Apple II that, to my knowledge, hasn't been done before. A SD card as a hard-drive replacement. It is nearly finished and has (hopefully) only minor issues left to fix. I admit, this doesn't sound neither groundbreaking, nor highly complex, but that is not the goal I am aiming for. I wanted to build something for the Apple II for quite some time, because that is what this computer was originally aimed at. It also gave me the chance to learn more about the hardware and internal parts of ProDOS. Finally I wanted to have a cheap mass storage, that may be assembled quite easily from parts that are not too complicated. Of course, there are already lots of devices that have an sd card and you can choose a floppy image like the or are feature stuffed, but i wanted it to be as simple as possible: ProDOS may access the card directly and boot support shall be provided. Luckily, I remembered André Fachat's  S...

This is it, the topic for my first RetroChallenge! I want to build a replacement for the Apple II Mouse Card. Well, at least a prototype. Why on earth...? Just imagine the all the endless possibilities you get from a GUI: it changes the whole experience of computing! Suddenly everyone could use a computer and nobody has to remember and type all those cryptic commands anymore... To be honest, that's neither really new, nor completely true. But just ignore that for a moment: If you want mouse support on the Apple II series, you have three choices: a IIc/IIc+ , a IIgs or the II Mouse Card. The first choice is compact, but limited. The IIc has no slots (and that is one of my favourite features of the Apple II line). Additionally, a IIc isn't exactly cheap here in Europe. The second one, a IIgs with its ADB bus is nearly perfect, except that it isn't cheap either. That leaves us with the third option, the mouse card for the II. The computer itself is quite common an...

I'm not really sure, if Hello, world! is a good title for the first entry of my first blog. Being a computer engineer means that I have written quite a few Hello, world!s in several languages, with several compilers, for several targets, on several platforms. So, why not enter the world of blogging with a Hello, world! as well? Being a computer engineer also means, that I spend my whole day staring at a screen, developing firmware and applications for embedded devices and sensors, trying to make use of modern technologies. You cold think that I'd prefer to spend my spare time without all that tech-stuff. Well, yes and no. Sometimes, I like to work on computers and systems that were already obsolete when I began computing (late 90's) or was even born (mid 80's). Through the years I fooled around with various Commodore, Amiga and Atari systems, but somehow, I always found a great interest in the Macintosh and the Apple II series. That is the area where my most recen...