Well, that was very quick delivery indeed! Thanks, Dave! A few days ago, I was contacted by a fellow who had built a small batch of brand new replacement rechargeable batteries for the Alphasmart Dana/Neo – offering to send a demo unit of the new battery to me for review. He had left his message […]
Category: Model T Computing
24x Max 2 The MAX! 1997 CD-ROM Drive refurb!
Well, guess I voided *that* warranty! :D This one looks about the right size – a tiny bit smaller, but that’s prolly exactly right, accounting for the stretched condition of the old belt. OK, let’s power it up and make sure it works! Currently in the earholes:
More options for Alphasmart Dana Battery Life
Typecast bit typed on Alphasmart Dana and injected into a Photoshop 7 document for formatting with Richard Polt’s “Patrician” font and printed on a laser printer, then stamped & chopped & pasted up onto newsprint along with a thermal printout photograph taken on a toy camera from reader Gregory. Having fun with a $5 bag […]
Sunday Morning TCL IS BACK! :D Also, I built a 1998 Computer.
Weapon of Choice: “Indy” 1959 Tower Chieftain III Typewriter Club LIVE – 2023-09-03 I went through half a dozen of my old IDE hard disks before I found one that would work. Most of them couldn’t even be detected by the BIOS. My supply of these is dwindling fast.. This old aluminum tower case has […]
Mail Call: The Surf Camp Missives – And Kevin brings me Komputars! :D
Kevin & Bill Talkin’ Typewriters Kevin’s Underwood Komputar – getting it’s spinning rust wiped, because it’s polite to dban other people’s datums off of drives before re-using them. This is a delightful add-in bay with lots of connectivity. Push the button and the card reader pops out and can be used as a travel card […]
Let’s make an Alphasmart 3000 better and review it!
Weapon of Choice: 2007 Alphasmart 3000. She throbs with the anticipation of your touch! Sometimes you’ll find fun silk screening easter eggs on the internal circuit boards in a device – the Alphasmart 3000 has this one! There are few things as satisfying as being surprised by a machine that you’d previously dismissed, and I […]
I got a box from Joe! :D
Always a fun thing to get, this box contained a brace of vintage writer’s slabtops, which Joe decided to downsize and send to me to add to my already varied collection of such machines. Constant readers of this blog will have noted my occasional article on my 1980’s Tandy laptops (TRS-80 Model 100 and 200s […]
Tandy WP-2 User Manual (Happy #SepTandy!)
Weapon of Choice: 1989 NTS WP-10C (with my Tandy WP-2) While I am normally a typewriter guy (as might be obvious), I also do have a small collection of the transitional electronic writing laptops of the 80’s and 90’s. Luckily, this is a collecting niche that takes up very little room (my entire collection takes […]
UJTU: SCM Carriage Levers, Corona Feets, A Gift For a Patron and Scannin’
Weapon of Choice: 1936 Corona Junior Model S. The Carriage Release Levers on 1959-1980’s SCM portables are prone to breakage and getting more so as they age. These, from Bubbles, my own 1960 Galaxie are brittle and developing hairline cracks despite being in quite good shape. They also aren’t white anymore. I pondered how I […]
Brother EP-22 (versus Brother EP-20)
Weapon of Choice: 1983 Brother EP-22. Until I actually picked one up, I thought that the Brother EP-20 and EP-22 were the same size. Turns out, while the top shell for both was clearly pressed from the same mold, the bottom shell on the EP-22 is almost a quarter inch deeper than the EP-20. It […]
Building a new Decade-old Computin’ Machine
I took part of today to go through a pile of old computers to take to Goodwill, which is a thing that always gives me pains because I know they’ll likely just get thrown out, but then who the heck wants beige box Pentium IIs, IIIs and 4s? Someone, I’m sure, but I’ve already got […]
Converting a TRS-80 Model 100 REX ROM to work in a Tandy 200
Well, I was too broke to spring for the NADSbox and REX200 when they were available, and regretted it for sure when the supply dried up and they couldn’t be had anymore. The NADSbox I can live without, thanks to mComm, but a REX200 was something I really wanted for my 1985 TRS-80 Tandy 200 […]
A Timeslippy Review of the Quickpad Pro
Towers of Tapes digitized, and I burned up one VCR already, but remembering a lot that I forgot. Speaking of which, I forgot to review this Quickpad Pro after I got it, although I made a few false starts. I forgot a lot that I had learned about the machine over the year that I’ve […]
Ttssastt Episode 0.2: Using a digital recorder with TRS-80 Model 100/102/200
A reader named Duane Calvillo read the last post I did on using a digital recorder to save and load files from the little Model T computers, and just wanted to know the specifics of the actual saving and loading process. In the previous article, I talked more about the process of figuring out how […]
PaleoComputing: 1981 Osborne 1 CP/M Portable Computer
I don’t really intentionally collect old computers, I really don’t. However, when Bill Wahl called me up and said “Someone left an old computer here because they didn’t want to throw it away, and I thought you might want it. It says Osborne 1 on the side. Come and get it out of here.” Well, […]
Back to the Future: PRAM and The Promise of Unified Memory (again)
“The research trend now in memory technology is to find a single memory for both temporary storage and permanent storage in personal computers as well as embedded systems. Research trend now in memory is unification of memory, so that there should be no separate SRAM, DRAM and flash, it’s going to be just one memory.” […]
TRS-80 Bar Code Reader drivers for Model 100/200 and Kyotronic 85
I admit I’ve been obsessing over my old Model T computers this past week or so. I finally did dig up my Null Modem cable and got the little laptops talking to the PC again, and I also dug up my old cassette software for the T100/200. I’ve sampled them all to digital WAV files […]
RTFM: TRS-80 Model 200, Proper Disassembly and Re-assembly – fix that pesky video ribbon cable!
You who follow my correspondence here will know all about my TRS-80 Model 100, which sees use mostly as a timelapse camera controller. I also have a pair of Tandy Model 200’s, which are the rarer version and are basically the same machine with a few improvements like a much larger screen that folds clamshell-style […]
File Transfer for TRS-80 Model 100/102/200 using a Digital Audio Recorder: The Road Less Travelled…
It all started simply enough: I came up with the idea of using my retrotech timelapse camera kit to do a timelapse of the upcoming Phoenix Type-In. Well, when you come up with these ideas, the first thing you do is check your kit and get it ready. Thus began the adventure… I pulled the […]
Retro-Tech Thursday: Timelapse Photography with Canon Powershot 600 and TRS-80 Model 100
Video not playing? Download file instead. This is a timelapse study of the habits of a turtle, a cat and a bunch of small fish over the course of a day and night that I did some years back. I just found out I can render these videos to MP4 and embed them via HTML5, […]
Tilting for Visibility: Travel Typewriters and TRS-80 Model 100’s
Retro Laptops Reviewed for Nano Suitability
National Novel Writing Month is fast approaching, and it seemed relevant to take a quick look at some of the non-typewriter options that a Nano participant might have a mind to use when banging out that magic 50K. On obtaining a slightly beat-up Apple eMate 300 from Ryan this past week, I realized that I […]
TRS-80 Model 100 VS Alphasmart Dana
Man, it’s been awhile since I’ve had to run TEENY.EXE to load a DOS onto a Tandy laptop. Probably the last time I did so was sometime in the 20th century, before I was smart enough to buy TS-DOS on a ROM chip for my T200. I forgot what a pain in the ass it […]