Cool. I can't wait to try it out. Prolly order it up in a couple of
weeks! Ah, the anticipation... LPRINT here we come.
On 10/18/22 10:48 PM, Gregory McGill wrote:
From the retroprinter web site
If you do insist on a physical print out also (say for auditing
purposes), then the Retro-Printer can be configured to also create
that alongside the electronic version.
On Tue, Oct 18, 2022, 5:03 PM Will Senn <[email protected]> wrote:
I'm loving my m100. It's an endless source of fascination - very
old school, but amazingly well preserved and usable. I haven't
done much with it beyond learning about how to connect it to my
Mac via serial - which works flawlessly in both directions with
TEENY.CO <http://TEENY.CO> and dl, yay, running stuff from club100
on it - go Starblaze :), and refreshing on BASIC sans renum and
tron/troff! Mostly, I've been reading everything in sight
(virtually speaking) and preparing to dive into its software guts
more seriously - quickly moving into 8085 territory.
BTW, I did get my BASIC banner program written and working as I
remember it did in the 1984 timeframe based on the bitmaps in ROM
(basically just asks for a string, get's each character of the
string's character map, asks the user for a character to print and
one to not print, pixel on char and pixel off char, asks for a
multiplier, then prints to screen with the multiplier applied in
both rows and columns, nothing fancy) - thanks for pointing me to
the ROM address of the characters set. But other than that, It's
all been reading and planning... which brings me to the weekend
projects I have mapped out for the next bit of time:
1. Get a REXCPM (ordered up) installed and running doing whatever
it is that it does :).
2. Get a Retro Printer and Centronix-Parallel printer cable
ordered (saving up), installed, and running. Hopefully, it's like
having an Epson MX-80 without the noise, greenbar and ribbon fuss.
I do still want to print out pages and pages of dot matrix
listings, but to my laser printer!
3. Make a new Cassette Cable for my Califone AVR tape recorder
which has MIC, not LINE. Got a plan, need cables - sheesh, amazon
is expensive for 5 pin DIN male aluminum solderable, 2.5mm TS
mono, 3.5 mm TS mono, 1/4 inch mono cable, and 570M ohm resistor
($36 USD). but I want to try the DIY route and I don't know where
else to look for this kinda stuff... Yeah, I know cassettes are so
70's, but hey I wanna see it work in 2022 and compare the
experience with my PAL-1 (KIM-1) cassette stuff - which was dismal
- very, very unreliable and fickle. I'm hoping to learn a bit,
play a bit, and have it actually work more often than not.
4. Write a disassembler or maybe even a monitor for the M100 based
on what I've read about (Jake Commander's article) and experienced
KIM-1, Apple ii-e, Commodore, etc. Surely, I don't have to live in
BASIC?
5. Disassemble the M100 ROM - I know it's been done before, but
surely I can do it too, right?
That's what I have planned anyway, as it proceeds, I'm sure I'll
get distracted with shiny objects and other interests, but hey,
better to have a plan than not! This weekend, I have to update a
couple of Research Unix howtos (v6 and v7), so I doubt I'll get
much m100 stuff, but I just might :).
Here are a few questions related to the plan - please feel free to
answer them or to make comments or suggestions related to the plan!
q1. Will the retroprinter let me print reams of dot matrix pages
to laser printer or do I have to go to PDF and then print the PDF?
q2. Is there a monitor for the M100 available?
q3. Does anybody know of any available commercial assembler that
runs on the M100 (I know about cross assemblers, but that's not
what I'm looking for here and I know about cmzasm.ba
<http://cmzasm.ba>, and byteit.ba <http://byteit.ba>, I'm looking
for something commercial - say the Tandy Assembler or the Custom
Software Assembler)
Thanks!
Will
