Updates (Page 6)

July 8th

And around again... mostly FAIL. Did try out Bard's Tale (a cracked copy apparently) on the Apple IIe, but I ended up running in circles (being a coward all the way) trying to find my way back to the adventurer's guild. Somehow I think that program could have had a better interface. That and it really needs the command reference and maps, unlike modern games where guess and go with it seems to work okay. Short video of the middle of that silliness later, possibly tomorrow we'll see. Anyway, maybe I'll try Prince of Persia tomorrow (probably also a cracked version), although it has a time limit if i recall from the last time I tried the disk (shortly after I bought the Apple IIe). Hope that second disk drive arrives soon... Really want to make progress, but so many things seem to get in the way all the time. I never accomplish much in the real world either.

July 9th

Not doing well today either. I did recieve the Unidisk I ordered. I recieved a duplicate of something called 'Speedway Math' too (educational math practice I guess, since there was no animation), it was jammed in the drive a bit, the warped label wasn't helping. So I know have two Apple II drives, yay for not having to swap disk in future. Still need some more disks, but not a huge deal. No real progress yet, my time has been consumed trying to get other slightly more modern computers to do what I want them to. Hopefully I will be able to get back to work on retro stuff soon. It's much less confusing and frustration usually stems from lack of knowledge, not lack of proper function.

July 12th (12:36AM)

So, long time no see. Been too occupied by other things, namely a visit to IKEA on Saturday with the family and helping put together purchased IKEA furniture yesterday. Fixed up my serial adapter earlier this morning, some wires came loose, and put some connector covers on the end. In worse news, just now I snapped a pin off the modem/terminal jumper block on my super serial card and had to stick a bit of wire in to ensure the connection was good. :( Then I determined I didn't need to change the position anyway, grrr! Got MODEM.MGR, a suggestion of one possible terminal software by Arfink, on disk today. It seems to work okay. I will need to build RS-232 level shifter and attach cable to Arduino today (after lunch?). Not sure what I have to do to get that to work, since the Arduino uses an FTDI chip of some kind to make a usb virtual serial port and only provides header access to the TX and RX lines. I'm not sure if that's really a problem, but we'll see. Honestly I'm a little concerned because when I make the Apple IIe run VT220 terminal emulation (MODEM.MGR) and attach that to a terminal program on this end, it seems like I can only type from this end. Will need to figure out how to send data to Arduino. Anyway, some progress I guess, over and out!

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