Glen's Amusing Blog

	RS232 Closed....
January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2009 December 2009 January 2010 February 2010 March 2010 April 2010 May 2010 June 2010 July 2010 The "New" Lounge PET VIC TED LAB STORE My Collection ABOUT ME coming soon Disclaimer: All the information presented here, was taken from the following sources: Brain Bagnal's Book On the Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore. Available at Amazon.ca The new edition had been delayed at Amazon until Feb.2010 Also, a lot of information has come from Video interviews with Bil Herd and Dave Haynie. Dave has a lot of videos on You-Tube. Search them out.. I wish I could post them here, but I don't have permission. Lastly, more sites on the net have information. There are even a few dedicated sites to the C16. Do a Goggle search, because Bing is just a flash in the pan.:) Please help keep the lounge alive and donate Today.Your donation helps keep an Computer from ending up in a Landfill, and keeping the history Alive for future generations!	Last Update July 25,210 25 Years later and still not forgotten!!!! Yesterday, was the 25 anniversary of the Amiga launch at Lincoln Center in New York. Here is an excellent article on it. I have been extremely busy for this weekend, not only did Amicue have its annual pizza bash on Friday, and Coffee on Saturday, I have been extremely busy re-doing my room to network the A3000T to the A1200, and have them share a VGA Monitor. This has taken the better part of the weekend. I wanted to go to Vegas to the 25 Annual ComVex and really meet and calibrate this important milestone in style, but that wasn't meant to be. You Can see by the above crappy Camera Phone pictures, the Very start of the plan. I have the A1200 so it can slide under the monitor, when the A3T is in use. I did run into issues though, my KVM switch has no Power pack for it. It seems you can never find the right wall-wart when you need it and possibly this KVM gets power from the PS/2 ports, which are not used. I found a VGA only switch box on e-bay for like $7 with shipping so I am waiting for that. I also linked the 2 units together with a null-modem cable. I have no Idea if that will work, or which program to use to make them "Talk" to each other, but Craig from Amicue, promised to help me out with that at a later date. So far not much has been done on the 3T, as the system drive is full, and I am busy looking at what I can do. 2 of the 3 drives or only 20 meg, and without the all important 3.1 Roms, I am kind of stuck at the moment with this configuration. Once I get the 3.1 roms in and possibly dig up a CF card adaptor (this is a SCSI system, so a regular CF card set up won't work), I think I will put OS 3.9 on it. My only gripe has been, after 25 some years, why hasn't ANYBODY made a newbe unzip program that is easy to use with a nice GUI? With all the different compression schemes (LHA,LHZ, DMS etc) and the fact that it is the number one problem new people have, why hasn't this be done? Make it work like WINZIP and be done with all the BS involved with it? Last Update July 20, 2010 1 Holy Grail Found! If You have been following my Blogging, A few months ago, I was hinting that I might be getting 1 of the Holy Grails of the Amiga world. Well, On Sunday, it was a done deal! I received a working A3000T system!!! The 3000 Tower system is truly a work of art. It is also one of the heaviest computers I have ever had to lug around. I did not weigh it, but it has to tip the scales at over 50 Lbs. The side panels are like plates of Armor and I would not doubt that this tower could survive a .22 shot at it point blank range .Commodore also used this same Chassis for the A3500 Tower and some PC towers. They just changed the design of the front Bezel. One of the first things you will notice, is right now, I am using an inferior Commodore 1084S monitor on it. Like the 3000 Desktop, this will run a regular VGA flat panel, but all my Flat panels are used elsewhere right now. The 1084S can not get a nice workbench screen, and everything is squished and out of proportion. Before we take it apart, I wanted to mention a very weird situation with this T. Old time Amigains will probably laugh at this, but the owner has the original ver.2.xx Roms and has SoftKicked it in to OS 3.1- to me, that is totally amazing, as I always thought you had to have 3.1 ROMS to boot 3.1.! The first thing you will notice is the massively huge hard drive in the middle. This 600 meg Scsi drive takes up 2 -5 1/2 inch drive bays, and must weigh 5 lbs itself. Up top in the other 5 1/2 inch bay, you will notice a second drive, so unless I move stuff around, an internal CD Rom is out for now. Luckily I have the External Tascam unit. Once the side panel is off, you can see the inside of the unit. I took the top off first, thinking you needed to remove it to get the sides off, but you don't. Unlike the A3000 Desktop unit, this has tons of room for all your cards. I just taped the hanging cable up for the next couple of pictures. This WAS a Video Toaster system and the owner decide to keep the card. I will be putting another VT card in here soon. Yes, this unit has 3 hard drives total, I did not bother to take off the hard drive sled in the middle yet, as it is a royal pain to put back in. When I have time to change the battery, I will take all the pictures of the Whole mother board then. Speaking of the battery, you can see this one is OK still and does hold a charge. You can also see that this is a rev. 6.1 board. I am not sure if there were others. Last, are a few random photos of the back and such, I will post more about it as I find out more. I decided NOT to whip the drives, as they are just chalked full of stuff. Last Update July 7, 2010 Apple's Iphone 4 woes.. Wow, July already. I have been following the Apple fiasco know as the Iphone 4.Basicly, it boils down to a poor design, that Apple will have no choice to fix soon. For those that don't know what is going on, to boil it down, the Iphone 4 is a fantastic device all round, but, as a phone, it fails! The design has the antenna grounded if you try to use it as a phone, and left handed people, are just SOL, as the chips are right underneath the area that left handed people would put their thumb, so the phone just grounds out. People are also reporting to a lesser extent that the proximity device is failing, so that when people place the phone up to their heads, app's launch and the phone hangs up. Add to this, a few lawsuits and all the problems in China at the Foxconn plant where the Iphne was made (employees killing themselves- no just one, but over a dozen, jumping off the roof) and you have one heck of a nightmare for Apple. But hey, the Ipad is actually cool. I had a chance to play a bit with Corey's and it is kind of neat, but at $700 plus, it had better be cool. Nothing really new on the Amiga front, but I think I got (or will have) everything fixed with HeathKit as my Credit Card company finally "unfroze" my Visa, so they will finally be paid. lastly, I leave this for all the Apple fanboys: Enjoy: New Apple Friend Bar Gives Customers Someone To Talk At About Mac Products .	SPONSORS OF THE LOUNGE ADVERTISE Your Company Here: E-mail the lounge for more information

Last Update July 25,210

25 Years later and still not forgotten!!!!

Yesterday, was the 25 anniversary of the Amiga launch at Lincoln Center in New York. Here is an excellent article on it.
I have been extremely busy for this weekend, not only did Amicue have its annual pizza bash on Friday, and Coffee on Saturday, I have been extremely busy re-doing my room to network the A3000T to the A1200, and have them share a VGA Monitor. This has taken the better part of the weekend.
I wanted to go to Vegas to the 25 Annual ComVex and really meet and calibrate this important milestone in style, but that wasn't meant to be.

You Can see by the above crappy Camera Phone pictures, the Very start of the plan. I have the A1200 so it can slide under the monitor, when the A3T is in use. I did run into issues though, my KVM switch has no Power pack for it. It seems you can never find the right wall-wart when you need it and possibly this KVM gets power from the PS/2 ports, which are not used. I found a VGA only switch box on e-bay for like $7 with shipping so I am waiting for that.
I also linked the 2 units together with a null-modem cable. I have no Idea if that will work, or which program to use to make them "Talk" to each other, but Craig from Amicue, promised to help me out with that at a later date.

So far not much has been done on the 3T, as the system drive is full, and I am busy looking at what I can do. 2 of the 3 drives or only 20 meg, and without the all important 3.1 Roms, I am kind of stuck at the moment with this configuration. Once I get the 3.1 roms in and possibly dig up a CF card adaptor (this is a SCSI system, so a regular CF card set up won't work), I think I will put OS 3.9 on it.
My only gripe has been, after 25 some years, why hasn't ANYBODY made a newbe unzip program that is easy to use with a nice GUI? With all the different compression schemes (LHA,LHZ, DMS etc) and the fact that it is the number one problem new people have, why hasn't this be done? Make it work like WINZIP and be done with all the BS involved with it?

Last Update July 20, 2010

1 Holy Grail Found!

If You have been following my Blogging, A few months ago, I was hinting that I might be getting 1 of the Holy Grails of the Amiga world. Well, On Sunday, it was a done deal! I received a working A3000T system!!!

The 3000 Tower system is truly a work of art. It is also one of the heaviest computers I have ever had to lug around. I did not weigh it, but it has to tip the scales at over 50 Lbs.

The side panels are like plates of Armor and I would not doubt that this tower could survive a .22 shot at it point blank range .Commodore also used this same Chassis for the A3500 Tower and some PC towers. They just changed the design of the front Bezel.
One of the first things you will notice, is right now, I am using an inferior Commodore 1084S monitor on it. Like the 3000 Desktop, this will run a regular VGA flat panel, but all my Flat panels are used elsewhere right now. The 1084S can not get a nice workbench screen, and everything is squished and out of proportion.
Before we take it apart, I wanted to mention a very weird situation with this T. Old time Amigains will probably laugh at this, but the owner has the original ver.2.xx Roms and has SoftKicked it in to OS 3.1- to me, that is totally amazing, as I always thought you had to have 3.1 ROMS to boot 3.1.!

The first thing you will notice is the massively huge hard drive in the middle. This 600 meg Scsi drive takes up 2 -5 1/2 inch drive bays, and must weigh 5 lbs itself. Up top in the other 5 1/2 inch bay, you will notice a second drive, so unless I move stuff around, an internal CD Rom is out for now. Luckily I have the External Tascam unit.

Once the side panel is off, you can see the inside of the unit. I took the top off first, thinking you needed to remove it to get the sides off, but you don't. Unlike the A3000 Desktop unit, this has tons of room for all your cards. I just taped the hanging cable up for the next couple of pictures. This WAS a Video Toaster system and the owner decide to keep the card. I will be putting another VT card in here soon.

Yes, this unit has 3 hard drives total, I did not bother to take off the hard drive sled in the middle yet, as it is a royal pain to put back in. When I have time to change the battery, I will take all the pictures of the Whole mother board then.
Speaking of the battery, you can see this one is OK still and does hold a charge.

You can also see that this is a rev. 6.1 board. I am not sure if there were others.

Last, are a few random photos of the back and such, I will post more about it as I find out more. I decided NOT to whip the drives, as they are just chalked full of stuff.

Last Update July 7, 2010

Apple's Iphone 4 woes..

Wow, July already. I have been following the Apple fiasco know as the Iphone 4.Basicly, it boils down to a poor design, that Apple will have no choice to fix soon.

For those that don't know what is going on, to boil it down, the Iphone 4 is a fantastic device all round, but, as a phone, it fails! The design has the antenna grounded if you try to use it as a phone, and left handed people, are just SOL, as the chips are right underneath the area that left handed people would put their thumb, so the phone just grounds out. People are also reporting to a lesser extent that the proximity device is failing, so that when people place the phone up to their heads, app's launch and the phone hangs up. Add to this, a few lawsuits and all the problems in China at the Foxconn plant where the Iphne was made (employees killing themselves- no just one, but over a dozen, jumping off the roof) and you have one heck of a nightmare for Apple.

But hey, the Ipad is actually cool. I had a chance to play a bit with Corey's and it is kind of neat, but at $700 plus, it had better be cool.

Nothing really new on the Amiga front, but I think I got (or will have) everything fixed with HeathKit as my Credit Card company finally "unfroze" my Visa, so they will finally be paid.