It Occurred to Me That a Lot Has Changed in Mobile Computing over the Last Fifteen Years

Posted on October 18, 2013 by Blake Patterson

This past weekend my wife and I headed down to Charlottesville, VA for the night, to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. When we met, she was half-way through law school at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and I soon moved up there (from Williamsburg) to make dating her a little less highway-intensive. (As it happens, four months later we were engaged.)

I’ve been a googly-eyed computer junkie since Christmas 1982, but it was just after arriving in C’ville in early ’97 that I became all about mobile computing (we called them “PDAs” back then). I got hold of a Palm Pilot Personal, and was hooked.

At the time, I was running Debian Linux as my desktop OS, and I started a PalmOS-on-Linux blog that was short-lived and of little utility to anyone. It was my very first blog, though.

The PDA bug bit me hard, and I remember frequenting the local Barnes and Noble — the first one I ever encountered (some years before) — day after day, when it was getting near time for the bi-monthly Pen Computing magazine to arrive on the shelves. That was the one — the only — mobile computing magazine out there. That was my scene and, so, I was voracious for new issues. So unfamiliar were such devices to people back then, that I recall many instances of someone coming over to ask me, “Hey, what is that thing?” (especially in the case of the large MessagePad 2000). It was a happy period in my decades of geekery.

As I stood in that same Barnes & Nobel this weekend, having not done so for a number of years, it struck me just how much has changed in mobile computing over the past 15 years or so, and how ubiquitous mobile devices of all shapes and sizes have become. As I sipped my coffee, not one person came over to ask me about the iPhone 5s in my hand. The odd man out in that bookstore cafe, today, is the person not carrying a mobile device of some kind.

Standing there pondering the situation, I sent out a string of tweets that I wanted to share with those who may not follow me on twitter or who may have otherwise missed them. (For easy reading, the tweets below are temporally arranged top to bottom, and I’ve hyperlinked them a bit for added info.)

Blake Patterson ‏@blakespot 13 Oct
I am standing in the first Barnes & Nobel I ever encountered. I think it was back in ’93 or so. (@ Barnes & Noble) http://4sq.com/1cgJAsE

Blake Patterson ‏@blakespot 13 Oct
It’s interesting…

Blake Patterson ‏@blakespot 13 Oct
I was in here in my early PDA (handheld computers, youngins) crazy days all the time (’97, ‘98) following the technology…

Blake Patterson ‏@blakespot 13 Oct
…always searching the shelves for the latest issue of Conrad Blickenstorfer’s Pen Computing magazine ( http://www.pencomputing.com ).

Blake Patterson ‏@blakespot 13 Oct
I had a Palm Pilot back then, moving to a Philips Velo, a Newton MessagePad 2000, and then the Philips Nino.

Blake Patterson ‏@blakespot 13 Oct
The Nino inspired my first second blog, back in ‘98. Here it is, derelict: http://blakespot.com/nino/ Frozen (basically) for 15 years.

Blake Patterson ‏@blakespot 13 Oct
There was no easy internet on these devices. Some had jacks to dial out to a PPP account over the phone line. All of these had b&w screens.

Blake Patterson ‏@blakespot 13 Oct
And, it’s interesting…

Blake Patterson ‏@blakespot 13 Oct
Here I stand, my iPhone 5S in hand, tweeting this, cross checking in Safari, getting alerts, with a fast, wireless connection to the ‘net.

Blake Patterson ‏@blakespot 13 Oct
Pen Computing was the one. Bi-monthly. Today, here, I see about 2/3 of the computer mags on the shelf are about mobile.

Blake Patterson ‏@blakespot 13 Oct
A lot has happened in the last 15 years in mobile. (Most of it in the last 5-6.)

Blake Patterson ‏@blakespot 13 Oct
The Palm Pilot, I spoke of, has a 16MHz 16-bit processor. The Philips Velo has a 36MHz 32-bit processor.

Blake Patterson ‏@blakespot 13 Oct
The iPhone 5s, here, has a dual core 64-bit Apple-designed CPU running at 1,300MHz.

Technology marches on.

Posted in Handhelds, Just Rambling | 6 Comments

Siri and Eliza Have a Conversation

Posted on September 17, 2013 by Blake Patterson

Eliza is an early computer program that served as an experiment in natural language processing. It was written at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum in the mid-’60s and is best known as a simulation of a Rogerian psychotherapist. Siri, perhaps better known in today’s world, is a natural language personal digital assistant for iOS devices, released by Apple in 2011 as part of iOS 5.

This morning, I happened across a reddit post by user ReddInternet, showing Siri and Eliza (running on an Apple //e) engaged in a back and forth conversation. It is an amusing thing to behold, and I thought I would share it with readers. The poster drew inspiration from an earlier, similar exercise carried out by the father of Karateka, Jordan Mechner.

As it happens, my first experience with Eliza was through her inclusion in Electronic Arts’ Software Golden Oldies: Volume 1 collection, which was one of the first commercial packages available for the Amiga 1000, both of which I purchased in October of 1985.

Posted in Multi-Platform | 2 Comments

“BASIC Week” Fun Over at /r/RetroBattlestations

Posted on September 15, 2013 by Blake Patterson

Last week was BASIC Week over at one of my haunts, /r/RetroBattlestations. Retro guy Chris Osborn (@FozzTexx) created a BASIC program that renders out the subreddit’s logo along with Snoo (Reddit’s mascot) to the computer screen. Chris provided ports to several 8-bit platforms and challenged folks to type in the program on real metal — no emulators — and take a photograph of the glowing, rendered image after a successful run of the program. The greater challenge was to port the program to a system not yet represented. The prizes were retro stickers for several winners, and three months of Reddit Gold for the two grand prize winners.

Intrigued, I fired up ST BASIC on my Atari 520ST and spent some time adapting the Commodore Plus/4 version to the ST. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why ST BASIC’s ELLIPSE function was behaving differently than I expected, and I finally switched over to the dot-plot approach of the Commodore 64 version. I think I would’ve had it, too, but ST BASIC, it turns out, is rather limited. (It was a nesting thing.) So, with the clock ticking away, I stepped back and typed in the existing Apple II version and had a little BASIC fun on my Apple IIe and //c.

It’s interesting that Applesoft BASIC on the IIe can handle deeper subroutine nesting than MetaComCo’s ST BASIC. At any rate, I intend to go back soon and spend some more time on the ST to get that version working, just for fun.

In the end, there were some impressive ports worked out by the winners. Did you take part?

Visit a gallery of all my r/Retrobattlestations entry photos. A complete list, with links, of the fun I've had with challenges in that subreddit over the years can be seen below. Good times!

Posted in Apple II, Multi-Platform, r/Retrobattlestations | 6 Comments

Assembling the Lego Apple //c

Posted on September 1, 2013 by Blake Patterson

Lego Apple //cI enjoy fiddling about with vintage computers of all makes and models, but early Apple machines hold a special place in my heart. As such, I was most intrigued a few months back when I read of apparent master-of-plastic-block-architecture Chris McVeigh’s miniature Lego likeness of the original Macintosh. McVeigh offered up the plans for the Mac and various other designs of his creation gratis, on his website, as well as offering parts-compelte Lego kits that can be ordered from the Powerpig’s online store.

I was deeply tempted by that model of the most lovely Macintosh of all, but I did not order. McVeigh’s latest creation, however, was more than I could withstand.

The My First Computer (Two Seeds Edition) [PDF] is a 4-inch-tall Lego model of perhaps the sexiest computer I’ve ever owned, the Apple //c, the first Apple product to feature the Snow White design language created by the famed Frog Design innovation firm. The finished model features the Apple //c main unit, the Apple Monitor //c with stand, and the Apple Mouse //c. There are even cables for the mouse and the CRT. The detail is amazing, really.

The kit was a no-brainer for me. I saw it. I instantly ordered it. I received it. I assembled it. But, I did so on camera! A big part of the fun I’ve had with this kit was recording its construction to share with fellow vintage computing fans out there. And, so, without further ado…enjoy the video.

If you’re an Apple fan, or a Lego fan, or a Commodore fan, or — well, just check out Chris McVeigh’s work. It’s certainly worth a look.

Posted in Apple II | 1 Comment

Susan Kare Gives Kutcher the 32×32 Treatment

Posted on August 18, 2013 by Blake Patterson

So, what do you think?

Susan Kare, who designed the icons and fonts for the original Macintosh, also created 32×32 pixel micro-portraits of the Macintosh team, at their request, back in the early ’80s. One team member who definitely did not request a pixel portrait was Steve Jobs, but he got one anyway. I’ve become quite familiar with it, actually, as regular readers may be aware…

Marking the release of the film Jobs, starring Ashton Kutcher (which opened this weekend), Kare recently tweeted a new diptych of her own design showing a 32×32 pixel Kutcher beside the classic Steve Jobs icon. I don’t think I’ll be getting as up close and personal with the Kutch’ icon as I have the Jobs.

I need to catch the film soon, despite what people are saying…

Posted in Just Rambling, Macintosh | 1 Comment

Found Photo: Me and My Apple QuickTake 200 Camera

Posted on June 6, 2013 by Blake Patterson

I was recently digging about the storage shelves, looking for an old box of floppies when I came across a large box full of photos that I hadn’t opened since moving into this house ten years ago. I spent an enjoyable hour looking through this trove of photos that spanned a good five years, all at least ten years back down memory lane. One of the earliest photos I found in the mix is of myself standing on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, holding my first digital camera, the Apple QuickTake 200. This photo was taken in early 1998 — fifteen years ago, at the time of this post.

I used the QuickTake heavily on this first, real trip my wife and I took together, about a year after we met. She brought her film camera along, hence this photo.

The gallery of photos I took on that San Francisco trip with that QuickTake 200 can be seen here.

Much more recently, I used the QuickTake to create the first photo panoramas of my computer room (“the Byte Cellar”). It, along with Apple QuickTime VR Studio 1.0, did a particularly good job with the panoramas, I thought.

Another piece of now-vintage hardware I had with me on that trip was my new Newton MessagePad 2000. I did lots of dialing onto the Internet with it from the hotel room, I recall. Good times.

Posted in Just Rambling | 1 Comment

Regarding Keyboards, and a New Favorite: the Leopold FC660C

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Blake Patterson

Nearly two years ago I got into mechanical keyboards (real keyboards, proper keyboards) in a pretty big way. In order to truly enjoy the experience of typing on these quality boards, I decided to learn to type “properly,” as opposed to my odd (but fast) most-of-left-hand + one-finger-on-right-hand approach, and made a post about it. Not long at all after that post, I was indeed “typing properly.” It was a lot easier to learn than I imagined it would be.

As I mentioned in that post, I had ordered a Realforce 87U keyboard featuring Japanese Topre capacitive keyswitches, and I received it soon after. It is a keyboard that has an exceptional feel that’s pretty hard to describe. (I soon modded it out with a partial set of orange keycaps.) It has been my primary keyboard for most of the time since that post.

Since then, I’ve also picked up a Unicomp Classic 104 with buckling springs (basically a modern-day IBM Model M), refurbished the old Focus FK-2001 with Alps switches that I used on my 486 NEXTSTEP for Intel box in the early ’90s, stole my keyboard-happy friend Arnold Kim’s Matias Quiet Pro (with Alps-like switches — a nice board, but no superstar) and picked up a genuine IBM Model M Space Saver keyboard (buckling springs) in mint condition, as well (it’s something of a legend in the mechanical keyboard world). All of these are quality keyboards, far surpassing what comes bundled with any PC or Mac you might buy. Still, the Realforce with its lovely Topre switches has remained my favorite.

Until recently, there were only two consumer keyboards on the market featuring Topre keyswitches: the Realforce boards and the Happy Hacking Professional keyboards from PFU systems. These are expensive keyboards, make no mistake. About a month ago, however, news landed that Korean keyboard maker Leopold was releasing a Topre-based compact keyboard, model FC660C, at a more affordable — thought still rather high — price-point. It features 66 keys and uses Topre switches and, over at the keyboard forum Geekhack, the race was on for Topre-lovers to get their hands on one of these brand new boards. (And getting one outside of S. Korea is a challenge.)

After watching things at Geekhack for a few days, I saw that LA-based EliteKeyboards.com made a post indicating that they were about to receive a small batch of FC660Cs — 30 or so — with more to come in a month or two. I “kept a close eye” on their website for the new keyboard to appear and, when it did, I quickly ordered one. A few days later and I’m typing on it.

Now, I’ve tried most types of keyswitches out there. Alps, Cherry MX, buckling springs, Topre, scissor switches, typical rubber domes, etc. Of them all, I find Topre switches, which are basically domes of unusual quality combined with a capacitive, low-reisistance spring, the most to my liking. What surprises me, thought, is that I actually prefer the feel of the less expensive Leopold board to that of my Realforce 87U. Topres bottom out with a satisfying “THOCK,” and the Leopold’s “THOCK” is just…a bit more satisfying.

I initially wanted the FC660C to use in the standing-desk setup I’ve got going in the kitchen on the main floor of the house. The Realforce has been living on my iMac in the basement computer room, and I thought that a nice secondary keyboard on the standing-desk would make for a great set of workstations to alternate between in order to mix up the workday. (Also, I wanted both machines to have “tenkeyless” keyboards — those lacking a number pad — as it makes for better / closer trackpad positioning.) Given my unexpected preference for the Leopold, however, I believe it will be taking up residence on my main machine, the basement iMac, while the Realforce moves upstairs to the standing desk.

They’re both exceptional keyboards, but for the money, the Leopold FC660C takes it, I think.

One of the things that creepy keyboard nutballs like myself enjoy doing is listening to the sweet music that is made when these keyboards do their thing. There are lots of videos of mechanical keyboard fans fingering their precious hardware on YouTube. I’ve watched many of them and, given how little time the FC660C has been on the market, I thought I would take the opportunity to make my own typing video for the first time, to help convey the lovely sound that issues forth from this great new keyboard as I type upon it, for those that may be considering the purchase. The sound, to me, is like rain gently falling on a wooden cottage, somewhere deep in the forest. Soothing and, oh, so sweet…

Enjoy the video and, if you haven’t already, I urge you to consider investing in a “real” keyboard of your own.

UPDATE Feb 2014: I picked up a second FC660C for the office in town!

Posted in Just Rambling, Multi-Platform | 14 Comments

My First “Homepage” and Email “Sigs” of Olde

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Blake Patterson

Last month, to mark the 20th anniversary of the World Wide Web, CERN placed the first web site back online at its original address. This got me thinking of my early experiences on the Internet and, soon after (when it arrived), the web.

My first direct interaction with the Internet began in college when I was given my initial accounts in the department of Applied Physics and Computer Science at Christopher Newport University. I was given a UNIX account in the Sun lab as well as an account on the school’s PR1ME system back in 1991. On those systems (mainly the Suns), I used email, Gopher, Archie, Usenet, FTP and IRC. There was no web. (And Hotline came later — 2nd rule of Hotline: you DO NOT talk about Hotline.)

One day I was in the lab and a fellow student was showing another this new thing called Mosaic, one of the very first web browsers. I recall him talking to his friend and describing it, and the World Wide Web to which it provided access, as being “basically the Internet for the lazy.”

I played around with Mosaic in the lab and then, later, at home on my 486 DOS/Windows 3.1 machine via my first SLIP account, which provided minimal web hosting. (Netscape was a welcome arrival in 1994.) It was on that account that I setup my first “homepage” back in 1995.

So, CERN’s recent move with the world’s first website reminded me that old time is still a-flying and that there might still be a chance to grab a copy of my first website from The Wayback Machine. After some searching, I found it — most of it — and pulled it down onto my server. I patched things up a little bit and I’ve now got a live copy of my “homepage” as it existed back in 1997, which is almost exactly the same as it was back in 1995 when it first went online.

So, have a look. (And definitely some laughs…)

Yep, that’s it. It was clear from the moment Tim Berners-Lee laid down his first lines of code on that NeXT Cube that I was destined to rule the web.

While I was at it — sharing the olde — it occurred to me that I have an archive of all of the email sent and received through my old college accounts (Pine, Elm — good times) for 1994-1995. I started scanning through that, as well as Google Groups (early Usenet posts), to get a copy of (most?) every email / Usenet sig I ever used over the past 20 years. I found quite a few iterations and I present them to you, with a blush on my face, below.

Ah, the much younger me. If only I had copies of the various UNIX .finger files I had in place over the years…

I hope you enjoy this bit of nostalgia. It’s been fun to put together and a somewhat shocking (jarring?) walk down memory lane. Oy.

Posted in Just Rambling | 5 Comments

i-Opener: The Internet Appliance That Was Made to be Hacked

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Blake Patterson

I scan eBay’s vintage computer area daily — a few times a day, actually — to keep an eye on what’s passing through. The other day I saw a new-in-box Netpliance i-Opener pop up, and that took me back a few years.

Between 1999 and 2002, a company called Netpliance sold an “internet appliance” known as the i-Opener for $99, for the purpose of providing Internet access to customers via their monthly (paid) dial-up service. The i-Opener was a loss-leader, costing the company something between $300 and $400 to produce. The real money was to be made via the Internet service but, early on, there was no binding service contract, so users were free to purchase the device and forget about paying the monthly fee.

But, why would they do that?

It turns out the i-Opener was, in fact, a pretty standard low-end PC. It featured a 9-inch color LCD, a 180MHZ WinChip C6 processor, an SO-DIMM socket, an IDE interface, a single USB port, and partial serial ports. It presented the user with a super-simple interface to the Internet running on QNX in 16MB of flash RAM. Once it was discovered that under that dumbed-down graphical interface sat a real PC, a number of i-Opener modding websites popped up and folks got busy turning this little $99 beauty into a functional PC. And, I was among them.

In the summer of 2000 I grabbed an i-Opener for $99 and, based on information gleaned from the aforementioned websites, set out to turn the i-Opener into a useful computer. And, I had real motivation in the effort; I was in the process of selling my Power Mac G3 system a couple of months before the new G4 systems arrived (to maximize resale value), and the i-Opener was going to be my main machine for a while.

After a few weeks I had all the parts I needed to begin surgery on the unit. The first thing I did was remove the 180MHz WinChip C6 and replace it with a 200MHz WinChip 2 that featured a number of enhancements beyond the mere 20MHz clock jump. The CPU needed extra cooling, so I cut through the RF shield and the plastic backplate of the unit and mounted a low-voltage cooling fan. I also added a 2.5-inch, 4GB IDE hard drive and a custom interface board that provided a real, functioning serial port (for use interfacing with my Compaq iPaq PDA, of course). Next, came the powered USB hub and the LinkSys USB-to-ethernet adapter. Finally, a PS/2-style breakout cable let me replace the unit’s weak keyboard and its integrated track knob with a proper keyboard, the Happy Hacking Keyboard 2 Lite (that’s currently doing service on my Raspberry Pi), and a Kensington trackball.

I installed Windows 98 on the system and, in the end, had a rather functional machine to keep me in business while I was between my 300MHz PowerMac G3 and my dual-G4 800MHz PowerMac to come. I had fun replaying DOOM II on the unit and wrote with it some of my more memorable MacRumors posts during my two-year tenure at the start of the site.

I sold the unit not long after my new G4 arrived, but I kind of wish I had kept it. I see there are a few of them on eBay right now, as I write this post, but I don’t think I’ll dip back in to relive the i-Opener adventure. It made for a nice story though, I think.

An amusing side-note to this story is the phone call I received from a Netpliance rep, a few weeks after purchasing the unit, instructing me to begin paying for their monthly service. I pointed out that when I bought the unit, no binding service contract was part of the bundle and that I had already heavily modified the device. (The company had, since, corrected matters in their TOS agreement and even began cutting the pins off the IDE connector, of which I was aware). The rep then pointed out to me that they had decided to retroactively apply a binding contract to all units sold. After offering up a stunned pause followed by a bit of laughter, I said goodbye to the woman on the other end of the line and, of course, never heard anything else about the matter.

Posted in Other Platform | 13 Comments

A Glimpse of the Elusive ‘Time Bandit’ for the Sanyo MBC 550

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Blake Patterson

Those who follow me here at my retro blog or over at TouchArcade know that I’ve been a gamer for quite some time, now. And, after all of those years of gaming, I certainly have my favorites that still provide me deep enjoyment, today. One such title is Time Bandit from MichTron.

Time Bandit is an action / adventure game that some would liken to Gauntlet, though it’s a deeper experience and the TRS-80 original predates Atari’s title by five years. I first encountered Time Bandit in its most popular incarnation, the Atari ST version, in late 1986. (I’ve written about the game several times on this blog, and will link through at the end of this post.)

After making its debut on the TRS-80 Model I in 1980, Time Bandit made its way to the Tandy Color Computer and Dragon 32 / 64, and from there landed on the somewhat obscure Sanyo MBC-550 “PC alike,” before arriving in its foremost incarnation on the Atari ST in 1986. Amiga and DOS ports of the ST version followed.

As I’ve indicated, I’ve spent the most time with Time Bandit on the Atari ST, but I’ve had an interest in trying the game out on its various other platforms due to my fondness for the ST release. I’ve put in a few hours with the Amiga version on my Amiga 2000, and have fiddled around with the DOS version under DOSBox. After acquiring a Tandy CoCo 3 not long ago, I’ve had the opportunity to play that early version of the game, as well. But, the version that has most fascinated me for years is a version that I had not, until just recently, even seen in screenshots — the Sanyo MBC 550 version.

First, a little about this unusual machine. Released in 1983, the Sanyo MBC 550 (the model 555 had dual floppies) was an extremely inexpensive “PC alike” computer that wasn’t fully compatible with the IBM PC. Creative Computing called the Sanyo “the least expensive of the PC compatibles.” At a time when a comparatively equipped IBM PC cost around $3,400, the Sanyo sold for under $1,000. It could run certain PC applications, but notable differences in its BIOS and display system prevented many IBM PC programs from running on the Sanyo. And, while the display system caused compatibility problems, it was superior to the IBM CGA color standard of the day; the Sanyo offered a 640×200 pixel graphics screen capable of displaying eight colors at a time, well beyond what CGA could deliver. Also of note, its Intel 8088 processor was not clocked at the PC standard 4.77MHz, but at 3.58MHz — so it may have also been the slowest PC compatible available at the time…

Well, slowness aside, apparently the lure of the relatively low price-point of the Sanyo along with its capable graphics system prompted Bill Dunlevy and Harry Lafnear to create a version of their action / adventure title for this odd-duck of a PC-ish system.

I actually played around with a Sanyo MBC 550 on several occasions at the store where I catered to my TI-99 fetish back in 1983 (that’s a whole other story), though I never saw Time Bandit running on the system. And, as years passed, I never saw the Sanyo version of the game in screenshots or video or through any other means.

That is…until earlier this week.

Due to my long-running interest in seeing the Sanyo version of the game in action, it has been my habit to occasionally google for it, hoping to find that a proper set of screenshots or a video has popped online, but I always come up blank. The other night, however, I encountered a screenshot I had never seen before, leading me to Gerry Brophy’s Sanyo MBC 550/555 Software Archive website. Gerry has a functional 550 and is interested in maintaining an online archive of disk images for the system so that others might better enjoy their vintage units or get a feel for the system through (MESS) emulation. And on his Disk Images page, there I found it – a disk image and a single screenshot of Time Bandit for the Sanyo MBC 550.

On finding this, I immediately contacted Gerry and told him of my long and fruitless search. He quickly responded and offered to take a series of photos of the game screens as well as a proper video. And, so he has done!

   

Great screens eh? (See full gallery.) And, here’s the video, below. Strong work, Gerry!

So, there it is. You have now enjoyed a glimpse of the highly elusive Sanyo Time Bandit experience! Sadly, the retail floppy for the Sanyo version of Time Bandit is copy protected, and so it can’t be duplicated or successfully run in the MESS emulator. These disks are old, and there are certainly not many out there. As such, I am attempting to contact the game’s author, Bill Dunlevy, in an effort to urge him to release an unprotected version of the game online if it is within his will and/or his power (sadly, he may not hold the copyright or even a copy of the game). Otherwise it would seem that soon all of the Sanyo floppies out there will become magnetically decayed and the bits that make up this rare version of such an excellent game will be lost to the winds of time.

(I have updated my original Time Bandit post on this blog to reflect the new screenshots and to explain away a set of Photoshop-enhanced CoCo screenshots in the post that I had, for some time, believed to be screenshots of the Sanyo version.)

And here, as promised, is the list of Time Bandit-related posts I have written on this blog over the years:

Posted in Gaming, Multi-Platform | 11 Comments