Bluemeanie's Retro Computing

I haven't posted for a very long time now, but I'm up and well during those strange days (future readers just google the year 2020 😷). The even better news is that since last year I teamed up with Jens who persuaded me to make a new batch of AppleIISD cards, as reported in my previous  post . The cards are available preassembled for 59€ excl. shipping. We are trying to get a website online where you can buy the cards. Meanwhile, you can contact me at the  Applefritter Forum . I still have not found a solution to the EEPROM problem erasing the first byte every now and then. That is why there still is a jumper to enable writing to the chip. However, this needs to be changed only when changing the card's firmware. I am very pleased with this feature as it gives the user a chance to upgrade to a newer firmware version without the need of an EPROM burner. It has been a huge help in development, too when you don't have to extract the chip every minute to burn a new vers...

I always was fascinated by computer tape drives. Ultimately by those huge open-reel systems you see spinning in about every movie scene from the 60s to the 80s that takes place in a computer centre. Having learnt about the mechanics of those monsters (vacuum columns, reel servos, etc.), they are even more amazing. I am almost absolutely sure that someday, I will have one of those things standing in my living room. For now, my late 70s Telefunken M15A professional audio recorder comes close (53kg without the matching stand), but it isn't a computer drive. Although, I planned to have it under computer control (MIDI) for some time... ✇ I recently bought a 2001 Hewlett-Packard C6364A external SCSI tape drive. Why? I can't really tell. Maybe because it was only ten bucks, and it's a computer tape drive, a very small one. DDS type backup systems were common in the 90s and early 2000s. The medium is the same form factor as a DAT tape but uses a different formula and evidently t...