Been up since 0300. Read this whole thread at AppleFritters, because I just received the card and now I have to figure out how to play with it. Here's a video if you don't want to read several hundred posts. If you want to see an Apple II running Mac System 6, running an Apple II emulator, worth a watch. (Technically, it's an ESP32 running a Mac emulator, running II In a Mac. But the ESP32 relies on the Apple II for all of the user interaction.)

I'm creating something of a challenge for myself. The IIe is becoming more interesting than the IIc, because it is more expandable. I can work on it in the garage, but it's a little uncomfortable and the garage isn't the best environment for that machine. After we get back from our trip up north, I'll have to really put some serious effort into reconfiguring this office.

I've got another modern card coming for the IIe, an FPGA card that will output VGA video and emulate a Mockingboard sound card and a SuperSprite video board. I had a Mockingboard back in the day, and a fair number of games used it for music and sound effects. Will Harvey's Music Construction Set was a program that allowed you to create your own tunes for the card. The SuperSprite board used the same video processor from Texas Instruments that was in the TI-99. Very little commercial software was ever released for it, chicken and egg problem. But probably fun to play with.

Here's a video of how that project came to be, back in the early days of the pandemic. It's pretty amazing what smart people can come up with to pass the time. I'm intrigued by their implementation of the SuperSprite board, which supposedly originally contained an Echo II speech synthesizer and a General Instruments AY3-8912PSG sound chip. (The Mockingboard used two AY3-8910s.)

Mitzi and I binge-watched The Diplomat and enjoyed it very much. Now I guess we'll have to wait an eternity for another "season." Can probably do a season 1 and 2 re-watch, and see if we missed anything the first time. We watched the last two episodes of season 1 before we started the second one, because who remembers what the heck was going on that long ago? Worth your time. Suggest you do it soon to avoid the spoilers.

And we rented Twisters last night. Not sure why that movie seemed so popular or well reviewed. It was fairly entertaining, but probably not worth the effort as a re-make.

We also watched a "direct-to-streaming" movie, Canary Black, on Prime, Friday night. Derivative. Sloppy writing. "Pull up" is the only verbal directive for displaying a computer file, and they do it a lot. They cast a Scarlett Johansen-type as the lead (Kate Beckinsale), and found someone who resembles Alec Baldwin to play her boss. We made it through the whole thing, in part, because part of the attraction was identifying all the elements "borrowed" from other action movies, and there were so many that we didn't have to endure long stretches of boring "action" between them.

It wasn't as bad as another movie we started watching on Prime, Killer Heat. We stopped watching that one less than halfway through, it was that bad. Insufferable.

Guess I'll go take a walk.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:31 Saturday, 2 November 2024