From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Jan 8 13:38:27 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from apollo.backplane.com (apollo.backplane.com [216.240.41.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EE47137B404 for ; Tue, 8 Jan 2002 13:38:19 -0800 (PST) Received: (from dillon@localhost) by apollo.backplane.com (8.11.6/8.9.1) id g08LcFS61637; Tue, 8 Jan 2002 13:38:15 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dillon) Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 13:38:15 -0800 (PST) From: Matthew Dillon Message-Id: <200201082138.g08LcFS61637@apollo.backplane.com> To: hawkeyd@visi.com (D J Hawkey Jr) Cc: tlambert2@mindspring.com, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Oh my god, Google has a USENET archive going back to 1981! References: <20.21dd4868.296bb1c2_aol.com@ns.sol.net> <3C3A810A.C616A903_mindspring.com@ns.sol.net> <200201081104.g08B4i309583@sheol.localdomain> Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG :Unix! : :I've got _all_ the original CBM stuff for the VIC-20 and C-64, hardware :and hardcopy. Even some aftermarket FDDs. : :I poked a _lot_ of stuff from Compute!, including the assembler, and :have several of their wire-bound books, too. : :I've got the 6502 monitor and 300bps modem cartridges, and if I dig :around, I'll bet I can find the breadboarded interface to an audio :cassette player I built so long ago from a Byte article! I soldered :"reset wires" to both machines' mobos, too. : :I've still got all software I accumulated on floppy (even some cool EA :games, and MicroProse's Gunship), but I have no idea if any of it is :still readable. : :Those were the days, my friends... :Dave Ah yes. By the time I was ready to throw my PET away the hardware inside was so hacked up I don't think anybody but me could boot the thing. I had replaced the character generator ROM with a RAM and wired in a wire select to an unused bank, which meant the screen was spaghetti on power-up until i LOAD'd a copy of the character set. I had the machine language monitor extension rom. I had wired in an extra 16K of dynamic ram, giving me 48K total (bank selected) (imagine piggy-backing a bank of 14 or 16 pin DIPs on another bank and soldering each lead, except for the select, to the one below). I had the NMI button hooked up, of course, and I brought the TTL video lead for the monitor out to act as a poor man's oscilliscope. The insides of that box was a mess. These days traces or so tiny and chip leads are so close together (not to mention the 6+ layer boards!) that hacking a PC's hardware is pretty close to impossible. But it's funny... I never had a desire to hack up my C64's or my Amiga's. I guess there enough fun things to do with them that hardware hacking wasn't necessary. -Matt To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message