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Apple IIc ROM Upgrade
The more I learn about the Apple II world, the stranger it seems. Who knew the Apple IIc went through four different ROM versions, each with different capabilities, but mentioned nowhere in the model...
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Signed By Woz
What’s the perfect gift for a guy who’s obsessed with disk emulation for antique Apple computers? How about a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk signed by Steve Wozniak, inventor of the Apple II. Bonus points if...
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Apple II Copy Protection
Growing up during the heyday of Apple II computers, I learned about something mysterious called copy-protection. This meant floppy disks could be used to run software, but the software couldn’t be...
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Building an SRAM Substitute
How would you use modern RAM and interface logic to replace 8 MB of vintage SRAM? A cheap and simple solution would make a big difference for many retrocomputing and hobby electronics projects. This...
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Teen Boy Arrested over Homemade Clock
A 14-year-old Texas high school student has been arrested, suspended, and threatened with expulsion for bringing a hand-made digital clock to school, after officials and police believed he’d tried to...
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Reverse Engineering Hello World
Want to know more about how assembly code works, and how Windows executable programs are put together? I thought it would be fun to write a “hello world” program in C, and then examine it with some...
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Dissecting Bloated Executables
Did you ever wonder what’s used to stuff the sausage of a Windows executable file? In yesterday’s post I examined a simple text-only C program, and discovered that 18 lines of C code created a 6144...
View ArticleWhat Happens Before main()
Did you know that a C program’s main() function is not the first code to be run? Depending on the program and the compiler, there are all kinds of interesting and complex functions that get run before...
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Assembly Language Windows Programming
Who says assembly language programming is dead? Keeping with my recent theme of peering inside Windows executable files, I decided to bypass C++ completely and try writing a Windows program entirely...
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A Handmade Executable File
Make a Windows program by stuffing bytes into a buffer and writing it to disk: no compiler, no assembler, no linker, no nothing! It was the obvious conclusion of my recent efforts to gain more control...
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Four Little Updates
Some brief updates on Floppy Emu, Plus Too, and the DiskCopy2Dsk tool: Two Apple IIc Plus testers reported this week that the Floppy Emu disk emulator is incompatible in 3.5 inch emulation mode with...
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Backups: Head in the Sand
For two decades, I’ve head my head in the sand when it comes to the topic of backups. My strategy has been: Put lots of essential, irreplaceable work-related design files on PC Every 2-3 years, copy...
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The Story of Tetris Max
It was the summer of 1992. Nirvana smelled like teen spirit, Ross Perot was running for president, and I was a senior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who wanted to play tetris. Looking at...
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Standby Current of a USB Car Charger
How much current does a typical USB car charger consume, when nothing is charging? Zero? Microamps? Milliamps? Is it enough to be concerned about draining the car’s battery? There’s no better way to...
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Apple IIc+ is Weird
It’s time for more Apple II love from Floppy Emu! The newest Apple II compatible firmware, apple-II-0.1M, adds a few small but important improvements: Fixed Smartport hard disk timing problem when...
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Designing an Electric Scribbling Machine
I’m working on a design for a “scribbling machine”, similar to the concept shown here from Make Magazine. For the past three years, I’ve led groups of children through a scribbling machine...
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USB to ADB Keyboard/Mouse Adapter
I’ve begun looking into options for a USB-to-ADB adapter, to enable use of modern USB keyboards and mice on vintage Macintosh and Apple IIgs hardware. There’s no real “meat” to this yet, as I’m just...
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USB to ADB Napkin Design
I’ve finished my rough-and-ready “napkin” design for a USB to ADB converter, building off the ideas discussed in my previous post. This device will enable modern USB-based keyboards and mice to be...
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Apple ADB Traffic Sniffing
I’m continuing work on the USB to ADB input adapter for vintage Macintosh and Apple IIgs computers, and I now have an ADB traffic sniffer that’s more-or-less working. It doesn’t (yet) send any ADB...
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Understanding the ADB Service Request Signal
In the comments section of yesterday’s post, I mentioned a concern about ADB’s service request (SRQ) mechanism. A device requesting service can pull the ADB bus low at a certain point midway through...
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