An update on what’s been happening
Current mood: tired
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

Ok, so it has been a while. Time for an update.

KFest 2008 is 22 Days away and I wont be there this year. I'm kinda bummed about that. Especially because I know that there will be a few things announced that will be very interesting.

Unfortunately, I can't talk about them directly or I'd spoil the surprise but I've had a hand in a few of them. So while I can't blog and let you know what I've been doing, please be satisfied in the knowledge that I haven't been doing nothing!

As a followup to the last entry, I've been using JPEG Lossless rotator to rotate the upside down scanned pages. This seems to work adequately, however the rotation can only work on sizes that are a multiple of 16, so the image width is slightly cropped. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to choose what side got cropped - but I haven't noticed any major issues so hopefully neither will anyone else.

Printing all the pages into a single PDF results in a ~60MB file for each issue. This is too large to place on my webserver so I can't make them available easily yet. I'll probably have to drop them onto CD and resort to snail mail to get them to Bill. If he ever wants to continue this project that is... I haven't heard from him for a long time now.

One thing that is unlikely to be announced at KFest is Marinetti 3.0. I've discovered that the source code for the Tool stub has not yet been released so it makes sense to me to wait until Richard has time to extract it.

Those people following comp.sys.apple2 with a keen eye will notice that there's been some movement on MS-CHAPv2. Polymorph has ported the SHA-1 hashing algorithm to Orca/C and Geoff Weiss is busily merging it into his Hashtool tool set. Once its there, work on the MS-CHAPv2 protocol can begin in earnest.

I've asked Polymorph to consider porting the RC-4 encryption algorithm as his next challenge. With this, someone may be able to implement a secure channel like SSL or SSH. Now that would be interesting.

You'd probably need an emulator to run it fast enough though. Oh darn, there isnt an emulator that can connect to the host's TCP/IP stack... yet

Currently reading : The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (King, Stephen) By Stephen King

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Scanning, Scanning, Scanning
Current mood: accomplished
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

Goodness me, has it really been that long since I had something worthwhile to blog about?

Of course not, but I have been slack with adding entries. Obviously nobody that cares is reading this or they would have sent me an email to find out what was happening.

I spent the day in the National Library of Australia with my laptop and a scanner. This turned out to be a lot simpler than I had imagined it would be. If you can't photocopy more than 10% of an item within a library without getting into hot water with regards to copyright, then I expected that bringing in my own scanner would cause some questions to be asked at the very least.

Thankfully there were none. The security guard and the information desk were most helpful with assistance to acheive my objective.

Bill Mertens (Call APPLE) put a call out to Australians to assist with finding issues of the Australian Apple Review magazine. His vision is to scan every issue and make them available on the internet. He was missing a few issues.

I have a fair number myself, but between us we were still missing 5. Mostly in the first year of publication.

This is where the NLA comes in. One of their mandates is to collect all material published within Australia. The AAR does appear in their catalogue. Interestingly enough, they were missing a few issues themselves.

I set up my laptop and scanner in a corner of the main reading room, requested Volume 1 of AAR to be retrieved from the stack, and setup wireless access so I could participate in the A2Central chatroom while I worked.

Thankfully AAR was located onsite and it arrived quickly.

Unfortunately all the issues that they had in Vols 1 & 2 were bound into a larger book. This makes scanning a bit more difficult. My scanner has a lid that cannot be completely removed. The impact was that every second page had to be scanned upside down. I'm now looking for software that can manipulate a whole directory of JPGs without me having to do them manually. If you know of something that can do that, please let me know!

Each issue has around 30 pages. There were 5 issues that I needed to scan to fill the holes that Bill and I have in the complete set. This took me 5 hours to accomplish. Along the way I read a couple of interesting articles about Apple clones and early music synths that connected to the Apple.

I've yet to post process them into one document for publication on the web but expect that this will happen during an upcoming Downunder Chat.

Hope that you appreciate the effort!

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Kansasfest 2007 - hardware central expo
Current mood: sad
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

I'm currently sitting in KCI enjoying the complimentary WiFi while I wait to board my first flight for the trip back home after attending Kansasfest 2007.

I have really enjoyed my time here with friends, old and new. Talking with people in person about our favourite machine is something that I have not done very much of in the last few years and I have missed it. I certainly tried to make up for it over the previous five days, however I'm feeling sad about leaving because I don't know when I'll be coming back.

This year there were a lot of people who had knowledge of and a strong interest in hardware. Michael Mahon's R&D to develop nadanet is inspiring. James Littlejohn's upcoming projects are very interesting. Ed Eastman's ability to desolder cache ram chips, spread a .3 package into a .6 package and install them was also impressive.

I went to Kfest this year with a few goals. I've met almost all of them.

The main one was to release Marinetti 3.0, however, I haven't spent enough time on it and I felt that to release it now would be 'half baked'. I plan to get onto this in the short term. We'll see what happens.

I wanted to get my TWGS boards upgraded to 32k Caches & faster crystals. Thanks largely to Ed Eastman and also to Henry Courbis, we upgraded two stock TWGS' to run at 12.5Mhz. They failed at 14Mhz but we weren't able to test any speed in between, so they may run slightly faster yet.

Key to the cache upgrade was the cannibalisation of a 486 motherboard to retrieve the cache rams. I'm glad I kept it - ewaste recycling at its finest.

Paul Zaleski also told me about Henry's high speed GALs - they may help with getting a further speed boost too.

Ed also reworked the oscillator socket from dip to machine pin on a ZipGS for me. The dip socket had been installed on an angle that made inserting oscillators difficult. Now I won't have that issue.

After attending the soldering session I don't feel as bad about not bringing my IIgs motherboard with me to have machine pins installed in the cpu socket - I may be able to do this myself.... now I need to find some tools. I certainly learned that my fat tipped 30w iron is not the right tool for the job.

I'm bringing a //e motherboard back with me courtesy of James Littlejohn. I'm planning to hack it to hold a IIgs motherboard so that Charlie can use it - ala Mike Stephen's work (url is not available). The //e motherboard will be offered to someone else who's requested one to work on.

The plane is about to start boarding so I'll head out.

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Computer History Museum
Current mood: excited
Category: Travel and Places

Today I visited the Computer History Museum in Mountain View California. I found the tour very interesting as the guide gave background information on what need the computers were being built to fulfill. This enlighted me on a few things about business and military usage of early computers that I didn't know.

As well as the visible collection there was also a display about the history of computers playing chess which I also found very interesting.

I managed to stay inside for an extra 30 mins after the general public left but I still hadn't seen all that the museum had to offer. Unfortunately I wont have time to go back on this trip.

Kansasfest starts on Tuesday...

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Applecations articles
Current mood: accomplished
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

Finally, I got my act into gear and have completed the conversion of the Applecations Apple II articles into HTML files for hosting on the web.

Thanks to Kelvin Sherlock for the idea of using Perl to do the bulk of the processing.

You can find them on my homepage:
http://home.datacodsl.com/kalandi/apple/aug.html

Currently watching : The Aviator (Two-Disc Special Edition) Release date: 24 May, 2005

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June long weekend
Current mood: determined
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

Ok, another long weekend. Time to get some stuff done before Kansasfest.

Today I have closed two Marinetti Open Source Project http://sourceforge.net/projects/marinetti bugs. Both related to language interface files. One was a problem for anyone trying to use a particular routine, the other was more of a consistency thing. Nothing major, but hey, at least they're out of the way.

I've also made some changes to the language interface files in relation to another issue. I sent those out to a few coders to test for me as I don't have the environments set up to be able to test Orca/C, Orca/Pascal and GSoftBASIC. I'll have to wait for feedback before I can close this one off.

I've also been in touch with Kelvin Sherlock http://iigs.ksherlock.com/ regarding the release of his TCPSnooper code as open source so that they can be part of MOSP. There are a few issues with what he's provided me with as it relies on a customised third party library that can't be included in CVS.

I also would like to tackle some of the bugs that are impacting developers and users. Unfortunately they take some time to replicate, trace and fix. The time that I do get to work on this stuff is not usually long enough to really get stuck into things to the level that is required to make a difference.

A long weekend can be different though....

Time to get stuck in!

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Kansasfest here we come
Current mood: excited
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

Hey, nearly forgot some of the biggest news of all!

I've convinced work to fund my ticket over to San Francisco in the week before Kansasfest www.kfest.org, so I'm going!

I've lined up tickets for the sidetrip, sent in my registration and bought some travel insurance.

I've also submitted a session request to present the Marinetti Open Source Project and some suggestions for sessions that I'd like to see (debugging with GSBug, Pixie and NiftyList; UI programming; de/soldering).

9:21 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Downunder Chat
Current mood: tired
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

The Downunder Chat has been continuing all this time. Every Friday night 9-11pm Australian Eastern Standard Time, IRC server: a2central.com channel: #a2c.chat. Tonight we were joined by Alex Lee for the first time. Alex is gathering scans and photographs of Apple IIgs products and is planning to publish them into a coffee table type book.

I tried to scan some of my gear in to contribute, however the results were not great. I'll need to have another attempt.

Alex found a number of chat participant were owners of equipment that he needed scans of to flesh out his collection.

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Deadline for submissions
Current mood: accomplished
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

I've been kinda quiet lately on the blog and that is because I've been head down on an an interview for Juiced.GS. Today was submission day and I got a draft in on time. There are still a few minor tweaks to be done before it'll be finished - the biggest issue is that there's probably too much material :) What a great problem to have!

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Time at home
Current mood: determined
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

Ah, the Easter long weekend. 4 days in a row to be at home.

Time to finally get some stuff done.

I emailed Jonathon Chandross, ex-moderator of Comp.Sources.Apple2, to remind him about ressurecting the csa2 material that he was responsible for. It looks like the site that it was most recently on has gone 404 which is kinda disturbing. What I really want is the FTP material to be made available again because there was stuff on FTP that was never posted to the newsgroup. Google has archives of the newsgroup but it appears nobody has archived the FTP server :(

I emailed Doug Granzow, publisher of II Sysops, to remind him about hosting the II Sysops newsletter. He seemed open to the idea (and amazed that I'd found him) when I first approached him, but since then there's been no word.

I scanned and PDFd all the II Sysops issues that I have (7). I'm not sure how many Doug published. I hope that I can make these available to everyone soon. There are some great articles about the different BBS packages, and an interview with Andy Nicholas (Apple Engineer) which I think would be great to have available to all.

I added a few short TOC entries to the Juiced.GS index. I have some ideas for what I'd like to be available in the index, but not sure how to do it in a Wiki. At some point I'd like to get others involved in creating the site and I hope that the common vision provides what I want. I guess whatever gets created will save me from doing the lot myself so I should be thankful! :)

I was the highest bidder on an Apple II Workstation card on Thursday. Now I have to pay for it and get it shipped to me. I liked the idea of being able to network my platinum Apple //e and still have the use of a super serial card (all the slots are full). I'm thinking perhaps of implementing a MacIP interface for Contiki so that the Workstation card can become another method of getting a //e onto the net. I'm not sure if it's possible or not, but the idea inspired me.

Ewen announced his SNAP  newsreader application this week. I'm glad he's announced it so I can finally talk about it. I've been beta testing it for the last few months while he's been writing it. The beta testing has taken a bit of my spare time and hence I haven't been doing other things.

It's great to see a new application (SNAP) using Marinetti - especially one that is complex and pushing the networking connectivity.

That's it for now. Still two days to go!

Currently listening : Home By The Corrs Release date: 07 February, 2006

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