Apple II emulation

I briefly looked into this, a little over a year ago. This time, I took a little more time and was more successful. I Found and downloaded two Linux emulators…microm8 and linapple.

The Apple II is so iconic…how could I not look into it? The TRS-80, Apple and Commodore Pet, were the 3 most popular computers that came out in the late 1970s. I was very interested in the Apple at the time, but the price was one deciding factor in choosing the TRS-80. For some reason I was never that interested in the Commodore Pet. I was later very interested in the Commodore 64 and also the Amiga. Strange thing I often forget the Pet, the 64 and the Amiga are from the same company.

This is my first go at Apple II emulation, so some mistakes and/or wrong guesses, are inevitable.

It seems to me that when you 1st start the Apple, it looks for a disk drive. If not there…you can press RESET to boot into BASIC. linApple works like this. microM8 doesn’t, instead you use their tacky looking intro screen.

microM8

microm8 made me a little nervous, because it was an executable and I saw no checksum. sha256sum?

I took a chance and ran it after disconnecting from the Internet. To me, the startup screen was too busy. Too many fonts and graphics. Like tacky early HTML web pages.

I typed and ran a simple BASIC program. The Apple II uses Applesoft BASIC.

10 I=I+1
20 PRINT I,
30 GOTO 10

Pressing CTRL+C stopped the infinite loop.

Because of my executable nervousness…I paused further exploration for now.

OK I saw a Tom’s Hardware review of this. So I tried it.

One thing I like (over linApple) is copy&paste…

copy…drag over text
paste…shift+CTRL+v

One thing I hate is their online requirement. You know just like a real Apple…NOT!

The have a large collection of software…BUT

You have to be online to access it. I hate control.

linapple

You compile it yourself…no provided executable. Still no checksums but it was on github, so that made me feel somewhat better.

So after playing a little bit, here are a few things I learned.

./linapple -f start fullscreen, the default startup screen is way too small…IMHO.
CTRL+F2 – to reset/reboot
F3 load a .dsk file
F6 toggle fullscreen
F12 exit

Typed in the same BASIC program above. But the output looked strange. Found out the RESET included loading a small program. So my program was mixed in with that program. So I had to type NEW first, before typing my program. Then the program run fine.

I made a slightly modified version of the above program…

10 FOR I=1 TO 20
20 PRINT i,
30 NEXT

It also worked.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to paste in that simple program above. And when I tried to copy my mouse pointer disappeared. Pressing F12 or F6 brought it back. Actually the rom intro screen says any function key will bring back the mouse pointer.

Evidently this emulator is mostly intended to run roms, and NOT program. Thankfully I was able to paste rather long programs into the TRS-80 emulator. Maybe cut&paste will work in the microm8 emulator. It does!

./linapple --autoboot --d1 ../share/linapple/Master.dsk

The above worked but not sure what the Master.dsk is/does.

I found…here a Donkey Kong rom .dsk [Donkey Kong (1983)(Atari).dsk]

I tried various command line ways to load the disk (below is a shortened no space version of the disk, I also tried surrounding the full name with double quotes)…

./linapple –autoboot –d1 ../share/roms/DonkeyKong.dsk

That didn’t work. Nothing, command line, so far has worked!

Note: linapple lives in /home/bill/Downloads/Computers/Emulation/Apple II/linapple/linapple-master/build/bin/

So I started linapple (from the bin subdirectory) like so…

./linapple -f –autoboot

At this point you can press F3 to load the Donkey Kong disk. You can choose (with the cursor) the full name with spaces and the parenthesis)

After loading the disk, press CTRL+F2 – to reset/reboot. And at that point the game begins! It’s not as good as my old 1982 ColecoVision version, but not bad. Far superior (at a higher cost) graphically to my TRS-80.

Note: As you can see from the Title bar it defaults to Apple //e emulation. The only way I see how to choose a specific Apple emulator, is in the linapple.conf file. I saw no command line option, which seems weird.

Amazon raises free shipping to $35

I don’t have Prime. But I still use to be able to buy $25 of merchandise, to get free shipping. I almost always have been willing to wait a little longer to use free shipping. For me it always made sense to add item(s), if needed to reach $25. Especially if shipping is > $5. There’s always some small item I can add.

Not saying I won’t continue to use Amazon, but probably less so for more frequently bought, less expensive items. I wanted to buy a drill bit and drill screwdriver extension and Milwaukee saw blade clamp. For this purchase I already needed to add item(s) to reach $25…except I looked in my cart and it said I now needed to reach $35. This definitely made me look for alternatives for smaller purchases. I’ve had past good luck with Ebay. Many of their items have free shipping.

I’m possibly looking at buying a new Multimeter. Possibly a KAIWEETS. Now that is already over $35. However I’ll still consider Ebay for that purchase too. OK, a quick check on Ebay finds the model I was interested in $2 cheaper and free shipping too at ebay..

Yes there is a part of me that want’s to show Amazon (in my mind…I know they don’t give a darn) I’ll just not blindly play along with their increase. My little boycott isn’t going to shake up Amazon. And it causes me more work. But I was already often adding items to bring my total to $25.

As a matter of fact I just removed 3 items that totaled < $35, from Amazon and ordered them from Ebay. It took a little work to compare prices. Because sometimes an Ebay item with free shipping, was more than the Amazon item. Only one item was a few dollars more but still cheaper then Amazons ~$7 S&H. Also why was S&H ~7$, but if I remove 2 items S&H stays the same?

In this case Amazon. lost some business and ebay gained some business. It’s probably been over a year since I ordered anything from ebay.

Raspberry Pi 5 shipping in Oct?

Read here. First update in 4 years. I bought my Raspberry Pi 4, four months ago, now they come out with a new model. You’re welcome nerds. I control these things.

Is it too sunny outside? I’ll just plan a trip to the beach. Is it too windy? I’ll try and fly a kite. Not windy enough? I’ll plan to paint something outdoors. with spray paint. No new Raspberry Pi model for a while? I’ll buy the latest model.

MVS local printing under VM/370

I admit, I am puzzled over MVS local printing under VM/370. DOS/VS printing, (CLASS=A,DISP=D), goes to VM/370 local (/io) print. Why doesn’t MVS’s (MSGCLASS=A)? There must be a logical reason…but I don’t see it. MVS’s print just disappears. It bothers me that I don’t see the reason. I assume it has something to do with the USER DIRECT file. Without VM/370 each OS’s print goes to their local directory.

x3270 positioning

I previously, a few years ago, had this…with titles working, running 2 DOS/VS guests. Then recently, an existing working script, positioned but was minimized to the smallest. So I looked at that today. And this is the result. The 1st screen says Operator, but it’s already running on the hercules console..

This is what produced that for my screen resolution (-geometry +leftSide+top)…

x3270 -once -title OPERATOR -geometry +400+0 -model 3279-2 127.0.0.1:3270 &
x3270 -once -title MAINT -geometry +1150+0 -model 3279-2 127.0.0.1:3270 &
x3270 -once -title Guest1 -geometry +400+550 -model 3279-2 127.0.0.1:3270 &
x3270 -once -title Guest2 -geometry +1150+550 -model 3279-2 127.0.0.1:3270 &

So -geometry +0+0 would be upper left corner

The -once causes all the x3270 screens to close at hercules exit (after VM/370 /shutdown)

Fonts

A more compact font, 3270-12, is also supported, as are the various sized fonts 3270gt8, 3270gt12, 3270gt16, 3270-20, 3270gt24, and 3270gt32.

Signal…another rant!

What’s with Signal not allowing you to easily print or export your own texts? Even the government declassifies top secret information from time to time. Why can’t I declassify my own information? How about you protect my texts on the way to me…but after it gets to me safely…allow me to manage it!

Signal on new phone

Well I installed Signal on my new phone and lost all my old texts. Yes I had a backup, but no I don’t have the 30 digit restore code, that I ranted about before, because I was never shown it. I still can look at my old messages on my old phone…as long as I have it and it works. Of course the first thing I did was create a backup AND copy the 30 digit backup code. As I said before, even if I wasn’t previously told that 30 random numbers were a code, just by the sheer fact that they were displayed immediately after a backup I would have saved them to my password safe, thinking “I don’t know what these are but they look important”.