The joystick I bought from the auction site arrived yesterday. Works pretty well for being almost 40 years old. I suck at Choplifter, though I used to be pretty good at it, as I recall! I think you have to get as many hostages in the chopper as you can before you head back to headquarters, because the subsequent sorties invite all sorts of other bad guys.

I bought a VGA/HDMI video adapter for the //c, thinking I could use HDMI with my TCL TV. It works, but it doesn't seem to recognize the 4:3 aspect ratio, it stretches everything. I need to play with the TV's video settings and see if I can figure that out. The builder said that some TVs don't recognize the 4:3 aspect ratio of the signal.

I ordered a hardcopy of the Apple //c Technical Reference Manual from Call-A.P.P.L.E. and it arrived yesterday as well. It was only then that I realized this version doesn't have the ROM listings. I had a hardcopy of the //c TRF in my collection, alas. But the Internet Archive has the version I remember.

The Floppy Emu likes to have the files on the micro-SD card in contiguous blocks, and won't load a disk image that isn't contiguous. This involves basically copying everything off of the card and then back onto it. That's today's project, because a bunch of the games I stored on it won't load. Like Fortress, which is an amusing way to pass the time.

I'm still waiting for some software to arrive that'll include a number of 5.25" floppies I can use as scratch disks. I want to test the disk drive before I do anything "serious" with it, like play with Micro Dynamo.

I'm debating whether or not to "retro-bright" the case. It'll have to wait until we get back from New York in any case. That's probably when I'll open the thing up again to install the ROMxc anyway. Maybe I'll just disassemble the whole thing and try and get rid of the yellowing.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:52 Sunday, 1 September 2024