Updates (Page 8)
July 18th (8:32PM)
No progress really yesterday or today. Played a little Oregon trail on the Apple IIe on Saturday, but the image for disk 2 must have been broken since it didn't work. I gave up and turned it off. Can't make a new disk in the middle of a running program anyway. Today I was busy with life. So, that's all really. The Apple IIe is still producing different ascii characters than I want it to. I tried every parity setting, so that's not the problem. If the speed were wrong I probably wouldn't get anything. I'm not really sure what's going on. No progress, it's a little depressing, over and out. P.S. If anyone has any recommendations for good games available on the asimov ftp archive let me know. I need something to entertain me and to be retro enough to qualify for attempting to particpate. Nintendo Wii doesn't count.
July 22nd (1:57PM)
Progress report on professed intent: Fail; I'm also really lazy. On a tangent, I decided this morning to whip out the modem w/mac serial cable I bought maybe a year ago for $0.75. Real cheap, couldn't resist. Anyway, I got it upstairs, and then remembered why I left it in the basement. I didn't have a suitable power supply. Flash-back to a couple months ago, I acquired a 9VAC adapter for it while on a trip (thrift stores are great). When I got home, it was the wrong plug size so I left the adapter and modem in the basement and returned upstairs in a huff.
Flash forward to this morning: I tried some solutions and then proceded to remove the plug with a soldering iron (after confirming the adapter worked with the modem by holding wires together). Needless to say, I always seem to destroy things and have to fix them. In desoldering the plug, I lifed the solder pads... DRAT! Fortunately there were nearby pads for other components that were directly connected, so I soldered the wires to those. That said, I did have to jumper a wire to the switch (soldering iron visit 2) to get it to work. Anyway, so it's a Practical Peripherals MC144MT II (14.4 modem), which is slower than is probably available, but decent (at least for $0.75). Got that all hooked up to the phone line and tested it several times w/ MODEM.MGR with no success, at least until I realized I need to swith the Apple IIe's SSC jumper from 'TERMINAL' to 'MODEM'. After that it was smooth sailing (excepting the stupidity of trying the setting of AUTO MODEM before realizing that using the HAYES SMARTMODEM driver would probably work). Anyway, I'm now up a workable modem (at least for the Apple IIe and the mac, maybe the pc too?). So, that accomplished I needed a real world test. So,... I tried dialing the Prism BBS (see list), which I found on a list of operating bbses online (the link is a local copy of the list on this server). The first try got me a message about dialing '1' first, funny to hear this over a modem speaker. The second try however, was a success. Obviously I didn't create an account (I have no info about the BBS), but it was cool to connect to it. NOTE: I have never had dial-up at home, though I had used it a friend's house once. That said, any knowledge I have of modems is reading material on the internet, not actual info. Thus the difficulties at first of getting connected.... And, that's my update for today, over and out!
Modem Lights on PP MC144MT II
Prism BBS Logon Screen
P.S.
Very fun time this afternoon, getting it dialing. Anyone got a dial-up bbs that I can dial into to?
P.P.S.
The Prism BBS is in Windsor, NY (inside this state) so hopefully my parents won't see any strange charges on the phone bill.
P.P.P.S.
Pictures of logon screen on Prism BBS and of modem lights forthcoming (see links above). If anyone wants a video (probably w/sound) of it dialing and connecting I'll try and take one.
