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

My First Computer Thought It Was a Sewing Machine

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Blake Patterson

I’ve shared many stories of my early adventures in computing on this blog over the past nine years, but it recently occurred to me that one of the most bizarre details of all, I’ve never mentioned. While I have spoken of receiving my first home computer on Christmas morning, 1982, I never mentioned that it was purchased at, of all places, a Singer sewing machine store at the local mall. In retrospect, that seems pretty strange…

To back up a bit, I got an Atari VCS for Christmas in 1979 (and have no idea where my parents purchased it). I didn’t do much with it until ’81, however (it started out on a black & white TV), but by ’82 I was getting pretty heavily into gaming. I’d go to the local K-Mart, BEST, or Toys “R” Us to check out new cartridges, and I’d see the various retail home computers — Atari, Commodore, and TI — outclassing the VCS with their game demos. Their keyboards and BASIC and other things that made them “real computers” started to appeal to me in a big way, and I began to urge my parents towards getting me a home computer.

My folks came to see the merit in it and it seemed that Christmas would be the time. So, I spent a good bit of time fiddling with the various systems I saw in the aforementioned stores we frequented — Atari, Commodore, and TI — to try and make up my mind about a system to go for.

During this time, my mom would take 10-year-old me with her twice a week, more or less, to the local mall, Coliseum Mall in Hampton, VA. I loved that place. My mother was a “housewife” at the time and sewing was a big thing for her. As such, we’d often end up in the Singer sewing machine store where she’d shop for thread or other sewing supplies. Now, oddly, it was around this time that this Singer store started selling computers.

How odd, indeed…

This little sewing machine store filled with reams of fabric, pattern kits, and doily-looking things, all of a sudden setup a display along the back wall featuring a Commodore 64 and a Vic-20, an Atari 800, and a TI-99/4A. (As I recall, the Atari 800 was too expensive, but they also sold the Atari 400.) As a regular customer, my mother was friendly with the woman that ran the shop — Sandy somebodyorother — who offered to give us a bit of a deal on the sale if we purchased from them. Christmas was approaching and, so, I spent weeks walking around clutching the BEST catalog and computer pamphlets, furiously trying to decided which system to ask for. I recall a few of the variables I was tossing around at the time. PAC-MAN looked the best on the Atari 8-bit, and I recall thinking it would be impressive to wave in front of my 2600-using friends (we played a lot of 2600 PAC-MAN in those days…oy…). I did not like the look or physical feel of the C64 or VIC-20, so they were right out (interestingly). The shiny, aluminum TI-99/4A looked the most futuristic and “computery,” but Munch-Man was a pretty weak take on PAC-MAN (this was before Atarisoft cranked out a superb PAC-MAN for the TI), though Parsec and its use of the available speech synthesizer was impressive. It’s interesting to note I never even ran across an Apple II or IBM PC, as they were not found at any of the more general retail stores we frequented. And, at that point, they would have been price prohibitive.

In the end, I asked for the TI-99/4A and its speech synthesizer module and, on Christmas morning, hooked it all up to the TV in the den for the first time.

The Singer connection didn’t just end with the purchase of the computer, however. We learned in early ’83 that a woman from the local TI-99 users group, The Peninsula ’99ers (I think it was called – I became a member), was teaching classes on TI BASIC on the weekends in a back-room of the Singer store at the mall. Her name was Judy North and she and her son were huge TI fans. (Here she is sharing a tip in the Feedback section (page 8) of the November 1986 issue of MICROpendium [PDF].) I signed up and ended up having a lot of fun sending sprites around the screen as part of those small class sessions. Sometimes there were even Krispy Kreme donuts. Sometimes.

As months passed, I wanted to do more with BASIC and, so, I sold a pretty shoddy motorbike with which I used to tear up the dirt lane in front of our house for the funds to buy the TI Extended BASIC cartridge ($99). And, for my 11th birthday in the spring of ’83, we purchased more hardware from the Singer store: the TI Peripheral Expansion Box, a disk controller card, a 5.25-inch floppy drive, and a 32K RAM expansion card.

By around this time, the computer displays at the Singer store had increased in size and number, taking up perhaps a third of the floor.

TI soon pulled the plug on the 99/4A, which was getting trounced by the competition (mainly the VIC-20), and the TI displays disappeared from the store. Over the next few years, however, more systems and peripherals went on display there. One of particular note that I recall was the Sanyo MBC-550, a loose PC clone that had some interesting graphics hardware. (It had its own version of Time Bandit.) That Singer store is the only place I’ve ever encountered one in person.

In 1984, what with TI out of the home computer market, I put an ad in the local newspaper, The Daily Press (interesting story, there…), and sold the TI system, moving on to the newly-released Apple //c. I have since, however, reacquired a full TI setup and enjoy playing around with it from time to time.

In prepping for this post, I carried out a number of searches to try and find other accounts of computers being sold through Singer stores — and came up empty-handed. I did discover that in the the ’60s Singer acquired Packard Bell, and later acquired a minicomputer corporation, but I found no mention whatsoever of computers being sold in their retail stores, either as part of a corporate history or by way of a user account. And that vexes me.

I’d love to hear if anyone else out there ever saw a computer display in a Singer store in the ’80s, anywhere in the U.S, or if anyone happens to recall that Hampton, VA store that I frequented 30 years ago. Surely I’m not the only one who got their first computer from so unlikely a vendor.

UPDATE: See more (recovered photos and info) about this system in my 2016 post, “33 Year Old Roll of Film Offers a Glimpse of My Vintage Computing Beginnings“

Posted in TI-99 | 14 Comments

Pinterest as a Visual Archive of Computing History

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Blake Patterson

A couple of years ago, a social network based around the photo pinboard concept went online. Known as Pinterest, the site enables users to setup an account and “pin” photos from around the net to their own set of “boards,” setup by the user under categories of their own, personal preference. You’ve probably heard of it.

At first glance, just wandering in, Pinterest seems like a portal to the world of catalog living…and largely it is, I think. It’s mostly filled with fashion, interior design, scenic vistas around the world, cute little animals — that kind of thing. I signed up and started pinning a few photos here and there, and then more or less left it alone.

Some time later, I was examining a set of excellent photos of a rare, vintage computer someone had placed on their website, and I started saving a few of them to the local Pictures folder on my Mac for safe keeping, as was my habit upon finding a truly great photos capturing a piece of computing history. (There just aren’t enough high quality photos of some of these great machines of decades past.) It was then that it dawned on me that I could pin these photos to my Pinterest boards, preserving them for not just myself but others as well, in a public place (in case the original website went offline — Pinterest saves the images locally), while at the same time actively promoting them to followers.

I setup a series of boards to categorize the types of hardware I wanted to save, and thus began my new process of archiving vintage computer photos. It wasn’t long before I realized how valuable a process this is for photosets that are part of eBay auction items. After a few weeks or months, photos for ended auctions are usually gone, and there are so many vintage computer items passing through eBay that some truly excellent photos are popping briefly, only to disappear forever.

Here’s one example, the Acorn Phoebe. And another, a Heath Zenith Z-90. And, here is a Pravetz 8C. Or, how about this rare 80-column display card for the TI-99/4A? Try to click through to the source — all of these images appeared online and then quickly went off into nothingness. But they’re still here in my Pinterest boards, and you’re looking at them. What’s more, the eBay situation has evolved into a new activity that I quite enjoy: scanning eBay specifically in search of a great shot or two to capture every day. It’s an eBay activity that’s a little easier on the wallet than my typical use of the site…

So, Pinterest. Is it going to make an archivist of computing history out of you? I hope you enjoy the photos I’ve pulled together.

Posted in Just Rambling | 2 Comments

An Inside Look At OS/2…And Why It Failed

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Blake Patterson

Just a quick post to point folks to a two-part look (from The Register) at the situation that was the OS/2 operating system and why it failed, from the perspective of an IBM insider. It’s well worth a read.

Released 25 years ago, OS/2 was a team effort between IBM and Microsoft to replace DOS and Windows with the PC operating system of the future. It was highly advanced in many ways, but also severely stymied by ill-made decisions on the parts of “business people” at the top, and developers as well.

I tried out OS/2 v2.1 and v3.0 “Warp” back in 1994-1995 on my 486 PC, but it never really worked out for me due to hardware incompatibilities in the first case, and its heavy use of resources and awkward interface in the second. My greatest involvement with OS/2 would have to be when I worked for the University of Virginia Medical Center Computing department back in 1997 and shared on-call, evening support for a hospital room allocation application running at the UVA Hospital, custom written for OS/2 by a staff doctor.

OS/2 now exists as eComStation, published by Serenity Systems. It’s certainly an interesting part of computing history.

Posted in Other Platform, Windows | 1 Comment

A Phone Call I’ve Remembered These 28 Long Years…

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Blake Patterson

My first home computer was the TI-99/4A from Texas Instruments. I wanted to get a “real computer” (I had an Atari 2600 at the time), I bugged my parents, and I got to choose from what was on the (1982) market — within a certain price range. I recall choosing the TI mainly because it looked futuristic, the C64 looked ugly, and the Atari 400 had a lame keyboard. (the Atari 800, Apple II and IBM PC weren’t even in the running — too expensive.) I got it on Christmas morning, 1982. [The photo up there to the right is one I took of the TI-99/4A I received that Christmas morning, on the bed in my room just minutes after I received it, during a brief early-’80s equivalent of a “time out” I was subjected to due to the apparently disconcerting fit of joy I demonstrated upon receiving said unit…]

I had a lot of fun with the TI, and was able to expand it significantly, making it the gift focus of my birthday and the following Christmas. (I even sold my motor dirtbike, powered by a lawn-mower engine, to a neighbor for $99 so I could buy the TI Extended BASIC cartridge.) It was an extreme thrill to have my own floppy drive and store programs on disk rather than tape. Just holding a floppy disk, back then, was awesome, somehow — it was utterly foreign and the experience is hard to describe. Unfortunately, Texas Instruments crashed and burned terribly in the face of the competition in the home computer market and, in early 1984, Montgomery Wards was selling remaining 99/4A units for $25, as I recall. Because of all this, I wanted to jump to another computer, and my parents were behind it, having read about the TI’s woes in the paper and seeing how hard it was getting to find TI-related items in stores.

So, we listed the lot for sale in the local paper.

I got a few calls from people asking after the system’s details and the solidity of our asking price as days passed, of course. And then…one day…I got this unusual call I’ve remembered these 28 long years.

A man rang and indicated he wanted to ask about the TI system for sale, and so my mom gave me the phone. I have no idea who he was. I told him to fire away. He then began to explain to me that he was a happy TI user and had a great fondness for the platform. He then asked me if I was sure I wanted to sell the system. I explained to him that, given TI’s market exit, I wanted to jump to a different platform (the new Apple //c, which my parents agreed to go for, given Apple’s growing educational reputiaton). He acknowledged that, but wanted to tell me a few things about the TI, before I sold.

He informed me that the TI-99 was the first 16-bit home computer (news to me!), and spoke of the power that 16-bit offered vs. everyone else’s 8-bits. (He failed to mention the dubious bus architecture TI’s engineers were forced to bestow upon the system.) He then told me about this 256-bytes of “Scratchpad” memory that was in the TI that let special things happen. I, in my mind, pictured a little text editor with a yellow paper pad allowing 256 letters to be written, I recall — I pictured it vividly. I later learned that the 256-bytes of “Scratchpad” memory was the only proper 16-bit memory in the TI’s abysmal architecture, and it was often used for pseudo CPU registers, as the 16-but TMS9900 CPU had no actual registers, but used attached memory for that purpose, in the name of multi-user, context-switching efficiency. (Have a chunk of memory for each users’ “registers” and switch from one chunk to the other with just one pointer — it was inherited mini-computer DNA from TI.)

The guy talked to me for about a half an hour and laid on this-after-that win that the TI offered, and then asked me, at the end, if I was sure I wanted to sell. The entire purpose of his call was to convince me not to sell the TI. But…I was still sure. If I had been a little more tech savvy at that point, I might not have been sure. If I had been a lot more tech savvy at that point, I still would have been sure. :-) It was a dead platform, and one that had been poorly architected, though that really was due to some internal roadblocks at TI and not the machine’s engineering team.

It was such an unusual call that I’ve remembered it for nearly three decades. I’d love to meet that man today, if he is still alive — we’re obviously kindred spirits. My mother, I recall, was highly concerned that an adult male called to chat with 11-year-old me for so long. I assured her it was ok. Anyway, we sold the TI system to the brother of a stock car racer who wanted to use the system to calculate engine and suspension stresses in TI Extended BASIC. I’m not sure if he got that going or not. [Early-1984 TI-99/4A buyer in Yorktown, VA — ARE YOU OUT THERE??!!]

Anyway, I got the Apple //c in April or May 1984 and, I must say, preferred it strongly to that TI-99/4A, my first computer. Still, the TI holds fond memories, and I put together a full system some years ago, that sits on my desk today. I fire it up for the occasional game of Parsec or Ant Eater.

Things in computing were so much more fun, back then. Really, they were.

Posted in Down Memory Lane, TI-99 | 9 Comments

One of the Finest iPad Apps Is No More – Thanks for the Update, Twitter

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Blake Patterson

I know this is my vintage computing blog, but sometimes I need to stray off just a little. (That’s why I took pencil to the masthead logo a year or so ago…) Right now, I just need to vent my frustrations with Twitter Inc. for pushing the turd that is the latest version of the Twitter iOS app into the App Store.

I made my first tweet over four and a half years ago and, presently, Twitter is the thing on the Internet that I find the most useful and fulfilling. When I signed-in to twitter for the first time, there was no iPad (and the iPhone was brand new), but the iPad quickly became my device of choice for interacting with Twitter, and with the Internet in general, really, when I’m not working (writing, coding, etc.).

Over time, various apps arrived that provided a better Twitter experience for iOS users than that of the Twitter website. Now, I’m not going to go into the whole history of the iOS Twitter app landscape as I’m prone to do (I just deleted a paragraph, in fact, where I had begun to do so…sigh…), but suffice it to say that, on the iPad, Twitter (the app from Twitter Inc., themselves) that sprang from their purchase of Atebits’ Tweetie a couple of years back, was — until quite recently — the best iPad Twitter experience out there. Its interface was, I will say, perfect for the multitouch, 10-inch tablet. It featured panes of information that could be slid to the fore or conveniently out of the way such that amazingly efficient use of the device’s screen could be made. The interface felt very (literally) hands-on, lending to a surprisingly immersive experience for a Twitter app.  Twitter on the iPad was what you used to show off the device to curious friends. It felt like the future.

No more.

When version 4.3.2 of Twitter was replaced with version 5.0 in the App Store on September 18th, all that was nearly magical about its interface was gone, replaced by a new, dramatically less functional interface the motivations behind which I will surely never understand. This past weekend, I updated Twitter on my iPad and, when presented with this new interface, I was nonplussed. My first thought was that somehow, perhaps resulting from an App Store glitch, a very old version of Twitter had been installed on my iPad by mistake. As I moved through the app, I became more and more alarmed as well as confused as the apparent fracture in functionality that first greeted me grew into a mighty, gaping chasm upon further inspection.

One set of screenshots that compares the Twitter landscape view of version 4.3.2 to that of the new version 5.0.2 should really be all one need see to at least get some small taste of the incredible step backwards in interface design with which Twitter, Inc. has saddled its once elegant iOS client.

A failure of interface

The upper screenshot shows the dynamic interface of the earlier Twitter, where panes could be slid onto and off of the screen at will, to give focus to whatever area of information is of current interest. The in-pane web view shown can be slid left to reveal the rest of the page, tapped into full-screen for dedicated viewing at a larger rendering, or slid right to reveal more of the far-left action bar. In the new Twitter shown in the second screenshot, there is no left/right sliding to make use of the iPad’s large screen. Those light grey areas forever letterbox the comparatively small stream of tweets at the center. A click on a web-link always takes over the screen to a full-screen rendering; gone are the three in-pane webpage view sizes that gave such a nice feel to the Twitter experience on the iPad. And the list goes on.

A 2011 video from Twitter, Inc. does a fairly decent job of showing off many of the features of the interface they’ve discarded (though, only the portrait orientation is demonstrated, unfortunately).

Twitter is the app I use most on my iPad. I’ve deleted version 5 and re-installed version 4.3.2, and will sit on this version for quite some time, I imagine. I am in hopes that the folks over at Twitter Inc. have been hearing the tweets of disappointment from those of us who appreciated the impressive work they put into the “old” Twitter app, and will re-consider the direction they’ve gone with version 5. It truly is a monumental step backwards.

[ It seems worth mentioning here, given some of the response tweets I’ve gotten over the weekend, that I do own Tweetbot for iPad and I have used it. It is a very nice Twitter client, my “second best” choice on the iPad, in fact, and far nicer than the new Twitter version 5. I feel, however, that its interface on the iPad is well behind that of Twitter version 4; it does not utilize the screen in as efficient a manner. That said, Tweetbot is by far my favorite iPhone twitter client, and I use it hourly. So, no, I do not want to “just use Tweetbot instead.” And, while I’m on this sidebar, I’ll mention that for the desktop and laptop, YoruFukurou is my client of choice. ]

Posted in Just Rambling, Other Platform | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Tandy CoCo to Get Its Own ‘Soul of a New Machine’

Posted on September 23, 2012 by Blake Patterson

Ever since reading The Soul of a New Machine, Tracy Kidder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the creation of a 32-bit minicomputer, I’ve been a hound for any such works offering behind-the-scenes looks at such periods of silicon genesis. They are, to me, the very most interesting things to read.

Over the past decade, I’ve found and enjoyed quite a few such stories regarding a variety of platforms and technologies. Of course, not every system of my personal interest has been covered in this manner. One of those without a nice, public genesis chronicle is the Tandy Color Computer, which is a platform I added to my own collection only recently. I’m pleased to report that this won’t be the case for long.

Notable CoCo-scene personality and all-around super-nice guy Boisy Pitre, who I recently covered here in regards to his fascinating Liber809 project, has partnered with video game historian Bill Loguidice from Armchair Arcade to bring forth a book chronicling the history of the Tandy Color Computer.

Pitre and Loguidice have interviewed many individuals from the old days at Tandy, including all members of the CoCo engineering team, in order to render what will surely be a most fascinating history of of a machine that certainly deserves to have its story told.

In part two of a recent series of RadioShack Memories videos capturing a discussion between Pitre and former Tandy engineer Jerry Heep, Pitre explains the motivations behind his coming book. (Part one and part three are worth a look, as well.)

It seems that Pitre and Loguidice are aiming for a release at the end of this year, and I’ll let you guys know when it lands. I’m very much looking forward to it.

For those who share my interest in such things, some of the other books of this sort that I’ve enjoyed are:

[ Photo courtesy of Christopher W. (moparx) ]

Posted in News, Tandy / TRS-80 | 2 Comments

Susan Kare’s 32×32 Pixels of Steve Jobs…On My Flesh and Forever

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Blake Patterson

I got my first geek / tech tattoo back in 2007. I decided to go for an icon that captured both gaming and the element of retro: the ubiquitous Space Invader. I put a call out for opinions on just which Invader to get, and I had it inked. Three years later, I decided to let the world know I have a chip on my shoulder (as if my Twitter feed isn’t enough), and had a 6502 indelibly laid on my flesh. (Ok, it’s an approximation — 40 pins seemed a lot.) Dave Waugh down at Jinx Proof tattoos in Georgetown did the work, and I love them.

Now, anyone who has followed my writing across any of the sites I’ve run since the web began knows that I’m a rather devout Apple fan. I’ve owned lots of Apples over the years, and that’s because I love them. Given this and my recent interest in tattoos, I’ve wanted some kind of Apple-related tattoo for some time. On October 5th of last year, Steve Jobs passed and, unsurprisingly, it affected me deeply. With his passing, it became obvious to me that I wanted my “Apple tattoo” to be an homage to this man who so powerfully influenced my life and shaped my career.

After a bit of contemplation, the perfect Jobs tattoo design popped to mind. Early GUI work at Xerox PARC has long fascinated me, and its delivery to the consumer market, first with the Apple Lisa and later (and far more significantly) with the Macintosh in early 1984, is a major — perhaps the major — moment of paradigm shift in technology over the last quarter-century. Icons were in and the command line was out. But, somebody had to draw all those pretty pictures.

That person was Susan Kare.

Born in Ithaca, New York in 1954, Kare joined Apple in 1982 after receiving a call from high school friend Andy Hertzfeld, major designer of the Macintosh system software and co-founder of Radius, General Magic, and Eazel, suggesting she come to the Cupertino-based company to design user interface graphics for the upcoming Macintosh. While at Apple, Kare created all of the Mac’s bitmap icons, as well as several fonts, including Chicago, Monaco, and Geneva. Her business card read “Macintosh Artist.” Later, When Steve Jobs left Apple and formed NeXT, Kare came along to become the company’s Creative Director. She, later, produced icons and pixel art for both Microsoft (for Windows) and IBM (for OS/2).

During the development of the Macintosh, Hertzfeld created a pixel editor for Kare to use to create the all-important GUI icons on a 32×32 pixel grid. And icons, she created. One night, he happened into her cubicle to find her laboring over an icon portrait of their project leader and Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs. The story is chronicled on his website, Folklore.org. Herzfeld was skeptical that a convincing portrait could be rendered in just 1024 pixels but, alas, she had done it. 1983 Steve Jobs was eerily well captured by her artistic skills in that small grid, and soon the rest of the Mac team was asking her to render likenesses of them in those tiny bitmaps.

I have long been impressed by Kare’s Steve Jobs icon and, given my deep passion for retro computing and admiration for the late Captain of Apple, it seemed Susan Kare’s Steve Jobs icon was the perfect image to have permanently emblazoned upon my skin as a salute to the man’s passing as well as the world-changing work with which he and his team gifted us.

Dave Waugh over at Jinx Proof did the work today (as well as refreshing my 6502 tat), and I am stunned by the excellence of it. I now wear one of Susan Kare’s most notable icons upon my person, and in a nicely visible spot on my right arm. And, I’m happy to share it with all of you out there.

So, what do you think?

UPDATE (April 2018): Susan Kare has seen photos of the 1024-pixel grid of ink on my right arm and does approve, I’m rather pleased to say. In fact, in the years that followed she used a photo of the tattoo in the conclusion of her EG 2014 talk, and has sent me a few “Kare packages” as a friendly nod. What a lovely individual she is.

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Three-Headed Beast Spotted Staring Across Martian Landscape

Posted on September 1, 2012 by Blake Patterson

Multiple monitors can be fun, sometimes. :-)

(Check out the Mars Curiosity 360-degree panorama here.)

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