Author Archives: vauthor

Emulated 11/70 Printer, Updated

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My WF-2630 died recently and left me with a need to replace it. I thought that while I was replacing the printer, I might go with one that would print a larger page size like 11″x17″. Several companies had all in one printers that would handle that large size. Epson has a couple different models but they are very large around 20″x35″, HP has some but they are more expensive than I wanted. I settled on a Brother that was more moderately sized and priced. I also have Brother laser printer which I like.

Once I had the printer in hand and set up it was time to integrate it with ersatz-11. First, I wanted to pick which printer would get my output. It was really simple once I figured it out. All I had to do was set the desired printer as the windows default printer.

In the configuration file for Ersatz-11 (e11.ini), I had to change the printer assignment line to:

ASSIGN LP0: OSPRINT: /FORM:LETTER/SIZE:132X110/SIMPLEX

which breaks worn like this:

/FORM:/LETTER is regular 8.5″x11″ paper

/SIZE:132X110 is 132 columns (printing at 16 characters per inch) and 110 lines (10 lines per inch)

/SIMPLEX is only one side of the page

Once that was accomplished, I needed to fire up Ersatz-11, my emulated PDP 11/70 and make a change to the spooler command file (SPOOL.CMD). This time around, /DFL:107/LEN:107/HEAD:3/WIDTH:132, the DFL and LEN are set to 107 lines, the head to 3 lines and the /WIDTH to 132 columns.

Notice the /FORM:LETTER is for 8.5″x11″ paper, even though I was planning on using 11″x17″. Turns out both brother printers print at 16 characters per inch and 10 lines per inch unless told otherwise. That’s nice because although my new printer will print 11″x17″ it does so only one sheet at a time, with the operator hand feeding each sheet. Also, when I went to make these changes, I could not find any references to go by. I could not find where I got the information for the Ersatz-11 configuration file or spooler command file.

Terminal Emulation

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I run RSTS/E V7.0-07 on an emulated PDP 11/70. This is kind of cool, but would be useless without someway to access it. Best option would be an actual terminal, but for me they are too hard or too expensive to come by.

That leaves me with some sort of terminal emulation. Terminals on the 11/70 that I used in school tended to fall into two groups, paper and video. The video terminal screens of that time were close to being square and used a monospaced font (all the letters were the same size). The ones that I used VT52 and similar used a display of 80 columns and 24 lines. More modern computers use a more rectangular screen with fonts that are not monospaced and can (and do) change size.

For terminal emulation I have a choice of Windows (7, 8.1 and 10), android, Macintosh (6.0.8) and Apple II. I’ve tried several terminal emulator programs under Windows and they all have what I consider a drawback. An 80×24 screen is slightly bigger than a 4×6 index card. I still use both Putty and Tera Term on occasion but if I want to do anything serious I would prefer another option.

I haven’t ruled out the Macintosh, but as of yet I haven’t found a terminal program I would use on a regular basis.

That brings me to the Apple II. My first Apple II was an Apple //c with a 9″ monochrome monitor. About 10 years ago I was looking at some Apple IIs on eBay and saw one where the seller had it hooked up to an LCD monitor with great results. I sent a note to the seller telling him I wasn’t interested in the Apple II so much as what monitor he was using. He was very understanding and told me it was a Dell 2001fp. I bought one of those and shared it with my PC. It takes Composite, VGA, DVI and S-Video inputs and you can change with a push of a button on the front. This is what I use on my Apple //c now. It is a 20″ monitor, which after a 9″ monitor is pretty nice and is also more square (4:3) than the current monitors.

My Apple //c is connected by a serial/null modem cable to the PC that runs my emulated PDP 11/70. I use ZLink as terminal emulation software on the Apple //c and works very well for my purposes.

I uploaded a video of using the Apple //c and Dell 2001fp Monitor as an emulated terminal to YouTube at : https://youtu.be/y0Aok67byXk

Floppy Emu I

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(This post should have been put up in August of 2015)

I ran across an amazing piece of hardware on the internet.  It is called the Floppy Emu and is designed to connect to the floppy disk drive port of vintage Macintosh computers.  The Floppy Emu lets you store diskette images on a modern SD card and access them on your vintage Macintosh.

I won’t do a full review of this piece of hardware as I don’t think I could do it justice.  The ability to easily move disk images from the internet or my PC to my vintage Macintosh computers is the reason I bought one.

I ordered the Floppy Emu with the case, extension cable and sd card for a little over $130 on a Friday this past June.  It was shipped from southern California to Maine over the weekend and I had it on Monday afternoon.  It was simply, but well packed and fit in my small mailbox (like a small PO Box).

I opened it on the kitchen table and checked the contents of the package and found everything there.  The transparent case is laser etched and cut, and requires some assembly.  My daughter and I put it together in about half an hour, most of which was pealing the protective paper off the case parts.  If you wear glasses you’ll want them handy as things are small.  Altogether it presents a pretty little piece of hardware, with it’s clear case and several blinking lights and LCD screen.

Once it was put together, I plugged into my Macintosh SE and turned the SE on.  The Floppy Emu is powered by the Macintosh disk port and it lights up right away when I turned on the SE.  When the Macintosh is ready for a disk, you can see a list of images on the LCD of the Floppy Emu.  Using two buttons you can scroll up and down the list and a third button lets you choose an image.  When you choose an image, it is like putting a disk into the drive.

Last Update: 27-Aug-15

 

Oregon Trail, Update and Online

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Last July, I posted about finding a copy of an early version of Oregon Trail.  I was going to get it running on an emulated PDP 11/70 running RSTS/E.  I managed to get it all typed into the emulated computer, but it was not running very well.

Recently, I cleaned up my ability to print listings from my emulated PDP 11/70.  One of the listings I printed right away was for Oregon Trail.

Last night, I spent about half the night working on Oregon Trail.  I loaded up the PDF of Oregon Trail in Creative Computing (V4N3 May/June 1978) and set the size at 200%.  Working with the printed listing and a ruler to mark my place, I went line by line through the program and made corrections on the printout.  In some instances I increased the size setting to as high as 1600% in order to clarify what was in the magazine.  I spent a matter of a few minutes making changes from the listing to the program and as a finale step ran a cross reference listing and found one variable that was not really supposed to be there.

I believe I have it running now and have put it in the games library so others my try it out.

 

Creating PDF of Basic-Plus listings using WF-2630

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In the past I have tried to get usable listings posted in blog postings and they don’t fare well for me anyways.  While I was working on getting my emulated 11/70 to print I tried out something that works out pretty cool.

I have an Epson WF-2630 multifunction printer.  It prints, scans, and faxes.  It can create PDF documents as it scans and has an Automatic Document Feeder (ADF).

When you print out a listing it stacks up first page on the bottom to last page on top, so first thing I did after printing a listing is to reverse it so the header page is on top of the pile.

After I looked at the first couple of listings I had a thought about creating a PDF of one.  I took the stack and put in the ADF of the printer facing up.  I ran the Epson scan program and just told it to scan using the ADF.  For the size setting I used “Letter [L][11 x 8.5 in.]”.  After scanning the whole document I saved it.

The first couple of times I tried it I was using the size setting of “Letter [8.5 x 11 in.]” and then when I opened it using Adobe Reader I would rotate the image.

Choosing the “Letter [L][11 x 8.5 in.]” setting saves me from having to rotate the document to view it.

Looking at the PDF this creates is very much like looking through an old fanfold listing.

Here is a listing of a program I typed in called Star Merchant:
STMRCH-BAS

Emulated 11/70 Printer

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I have emulated a PDP 11/70 to run RSTS/E for decades.  The big thing that was missing for me was the ability to print.  Almost two years ago I switched from SimH, a great emulator, to Ersatz 11.  Ersatz 11 has the ability to print using the host computers printer.

When I switched over I got the printer working but, it wasn’t quite right  I seemed to loose a few lines of text over the page breaks.  The other night I had time to sit down and work though it.

If I print the traditional way, I could only get 80 columns.  Ersatz allows you to rotate the output to get wider printouts.  I had already rotated the output, but while I got the wider printouts I was loosing a couple of lines across the page breaks.  A little tedious trial and error resulted in a setting I could work with.  This line in the ersatz init file sets up the printer:  ASSIGN LP0: OSPRINT: /LANDSCAPE/ROTATE:90/FORM:LETTER/SIZE:132×58

Once RSTS/E was setup I changed the spool command file

FORCE KB: LP0:/DFL:55/LEN:55/HEAD:1/WIDTH:132

You will notice that the init file defines a page size of 58 lines of 132 characters, but the spool file defines it as 55 lines of 132 characters.  They don’t match but they do work on my Epson WF-2630.

The print out is not perfect.  The header pages from QUE are a few lines to long to fit on a page but the rest of the print out is great.

 

 

Raspberry Pi 3 B+

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Not vintage, by any stretch of imagination, but I have been fascinated by the Raspberry Pi since they came out.

Last month, I ordered one, specifically I bought the newest Raspberry Pi, the 3 B+.

The package I ordered had the Pi, heat sink, the smoke case with the clear top, power supply and 8 GB micro SD card with NOOBS from Adafruit.

They shipped it right out and I got it in a few days.  Arriving in the afternoon, I spent about two hours trying to get the Pi board into the very pretty case.  It wasn’t going to go in more than about three quarters of the way and it just would not snap in.  I set the case aside and tried to run it with out the case.  I got it all set up with a TV and plugged in the power for a very pretty rainbow screen with a lighting bolt off to the side.

A quick look on the internet shows that this might mean I need a newer OS than came on the SD card.

I went out and got another micro SD card and following the instructions on the Raspberry Pi downloads page (https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/) downloaded the latest NOOBS image and put it on the new SD card.  This one booted right up and worked fine.

Knowing that everything was working as it should I went on further at the Raspberry Pi website.  Apparently others have had the same problem and there was a video that showed exactly what my problem was.  When you put the card in the case you put the long edge with the HDMI port in first and tip the card down away from yourself until it snaps into place.  The problem I had was the micro usb port has a very tight opening and you have to be perfectly square or it won’t go together.  After watching the video I tried again and it went right in.

All in all, its a nice little computer.  I’ve had some older laptops with less power.

 

 

 

RC2018/04 – April 30

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The month has run out.  My project is nowhere near done.  It is in fact barely started.

I have been working on initializing the files.  Seems like every time I made a step forward, I trip over something.  I’ve been working with three manuals in PDF format and a large paperbound book.

It took me days to figure out why I was getting a Protection Violation.  It turns out I was over thinking opening the file and added an unnecessary mode.

Now I’m dealing with a bloated file.  It should be a block in length and yet it exploded up to sixteen blocks.  The record size of the file should mean I could get 16 records in a block.

While RC2018/04 is over, my project is not done, but I plan to keep plugging away on it!

 

 

 

RC2018/04 – April 3

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I had the day off and was going to get a lot done.  Here’s how the day went.

I went down stairs to work on the computer.

Oh look, there’s face book, I should update that and see what’s going on.

A few minutes later (many actually) I click on the email tab.

After reading and sorting out that email I moved onto another email tab.

That one done I remembered a couple of online builder type games, that need their daily updating.

After all that, I remembered I wanted to order a Raspberry Pi.  I’ve never had one before, so I have to look through all the goodies.  I should have a case, and a power supply and an sd card with an OS.  You know what they say, “Time flies when your having fun”.

So there went the whole morning wasted on not getting anything done.

On to Plan B.  I found a spiral notebook and got to work.  I wanted this game/environment to be like a text adventure.  You move around based on what you read in the descriptions by typing commands as small sentences.  Sometimes just one word, like a direction (north, east, south and west) to move.  I plan on using at least North, North East, East, South East, South, South West, West, North West, Up and Down to start with.

I want at least some of the user/players to be able to expand the environment by being able to add on as they go.  This was a hanging point for me because I didn’t want something hokey to differentiate between players and builders.  I figured I would code in a flag for the user and come up with a plan a little later once I get the environment working to tell who was who and impose limitations on the player.  Along these same lines, I need to come up with a way to identify each person so they can interact when they are in the same place.

Last Update: 04-Apr-18