Saturday, October 29, 2016

Ah well.

So much for this RetroChallenge. I suppose it's not a total write-off since I'm really only motivational distance from using DriveWire to have more fun/success, so pressure to get there is progress. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to make that happen and then I can throw up some 'Well I got this far...' photos to prove it. It'll be nice to try something new, I've got a few cart games but while they're amusing enough novelty is always a thing.

Thursday, October 13, 2016

RetroChallenge 2016/10 -- Day 12 + 13

Pretty marginal. Didn't hardly do anything today, too distracted by other stuff.

Yesterday I managed to load a tape version of Scripsit and save and load a file with Audacity. Low hanging fruit to be sure, but workable enough.  At least I have the cartridge version for when I am totally impatient. I will have to try writing the text for a blog post on the CoCo for kicks, although converting from audio back to text will either be easy (if there's a tool) or incredibly painful -> impossible if not.

I've been using the CoCo 1, particularly since I'm still waiting on my DriveWire cable. From what I've read the 32k on my CoCo 1 just isn't enough to make that work. Maybe I'll tack some sort of cliche photos up here to make it less boring. I've got to try loading some games. I really wish I could load stuff directly from tape for that real tape experience, but that'll have to wait until I can have a go at saving audio TO the tape from my laptop.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

RetroChallenge 2016/10 -- Day 11

Well, I guess I waited a long time to get in on the game. Anyway, here's what I am planning to do for the remainder of this RetroChallenge:

Tandy/Radioshack Color Computer (CoCo) 1/2:

- play with tape deck and figuring out loading/saving (this is new to me, since I wasn't born yet then)
- get a DriveWire 4 setup working with the CoCo 2 (I just ordered a DriveWire cable/adapter...)
- write some code in basic, something other than 'PRINT "HELLO, WORLD!"' for a change!

Apple IIe

No idea yet, better get my act together soon. I'd like to actually get around to playing some games on it. I've had this for a fair number of years now (which is to say that it's less than ten but I don't actually know) and I've mostly poked around and not done much exciting.

- improve pseudo text editor to actually have save/load under ProDOS (it was built in an emulator, so it's never been tested on real hardware or been able to do anything but temporarily hold onto typed text)