Today is the the thirtieth birthday of perhaps the world’s most iconic personal computer company, Apple Computer, Inc. We almost lost her back in 1996 when she was at her all-time low. Rumors of Apple’s impending collapse, or even the embarrassing possibility of a desperate sale to another company, were everywhere. But just in the nick of time, Steve Jobs made his triumphant return and turned the company completely around. In 2006, Apple is actually more profitable than ever before (thanks to the iPod) — even more so than during the height of the Apple II days.

The machine that founded the company, the “Apple I,” is pictured on the left in a homemade wooden case, as seen at the Smithsonian Institution. I downloaded the picture from Compuserve back in 1992, and it’s always been one of my favorites, despite its grainy GIF quality. I thought about planning some more Apple-related features today, but so many others have done it so well already. Check out these interesting articles that Wired has put together on the whole event.

Never before or since has a company put so much soul into a computing machine, and I’m proud to say that I have loved and used many Apple computers in my short time on this planet. Join with me in toasting Apple, a true pioneer in the PC industry, on their big day. I’m really glad you made it this far, Apple. Here’s to another thirty years of incredible success and continued innovation!

Late last year I found this classic (for me, anyway) picture lurking in my files and scanned it. It’s a Polaroid photograph of one corner of my then “computer room” taken by myself somewhere around late 1994 or early 1995 (yes, my family was lucky enough to have the space for another room dedicated mainly to my BBS computer, but filled with my other junk as well). I was 13 or 14 at the time. As you can see on the picture, I’ve labeled certain items in the room with numbers. Each number is associated with an item that I talk about below. With that out of the way, click on the image to open up the bigger version and let’s start the tour!

1. DEC VT-125 Terminal – A true classic in the terminal world, pulled from a dumpster. The neighbor of my father’s company serviced minicomputers and was always throwing neat stuff out. I got about 3-4 of these, took a few apart, eventually throwing them away for space concerns. But I think I still have one or two left.

2. Micromint Z8 Board – Part of the Micromint Z8 Basic Computer/Controller set. Inherited from my father’s old workplace. The Micromint Z8 system was a BASIC language-programmable microcontroller, essentially for early “embedded computer” applications. I have a bunch of cool expansion boards too, including one that lets you save/load your program to cassette tape, and another that lets you burn EPROMs of your BASIC programs! Cool stuff — I should play with it again.

3. NES Games – Back in 1994, my NES game collection could actually fit in one cubic foot of space. Crazy. A NES Game Genie code book can be seen here, awkwardly sticking out of the top of the plastic basket. Eventually my collection would spill out of the pictured basket and beyond…

4. Commodore CBM 2001-32 – This was had at a hamfest for $10, including the separate companion disk unit. It’s tucked away in the far back corner of the room, so I guess I didn’t use it very much.

5. Zoom 2400 BPS Modem – My first modem, given to my family by a friend. The top cover is off because I was playing around with hooking the speaker audio output to headphones — both for kicks, and for late-night modem sessions without waking the parents (I did this before I figured out the Hayes AT command to turn off the internal speaker) . This very modem is responsible for introducing me to the world of BBSes sometime in 1991. Of course, this being 1994-95, my main workhorse at the time is an Intel external 14400 modem across the room (not pictured).

6. Apple II+ – My dad bought this for me around 1990-91 (from a hamfest, big surprise) so I could learn BASIC on it. And I did, having loads of fun with it over the years. At the time of this picture I had the luxury of a color composite video monitor (#11). Up until then, I was stuck with a monochrome green-screen. But somehow it almost didn’t feel like an Apple II any more once it was in color.

7. Odyssey2 Games – Yes, this black blob is actually fifteen Odyssey2 games in interlockable cartridge racks, purchased for $10 along with an Odyssey2 console at a hamfest in the early 90s.

8. Nintendo Entertainment System – Back then, I took everything I owned apart, and the former “family NES” was not spared this treatment. Thinking myself clever, I switched the one and two player ports around, along with the “power” and “reset” buttons. How delightfully obnoxious. This unit, 11 years later, went on to become the NES DVD Player hack I did recently.

9. EPROM Eraser – It’s the gray rectangular box on top of the Apple II+ (#6). Never really used it very much. It was inherited along with the Micromint Z8 controller board stuff (#2) and was used to erase EPROMs programmed by the unit. It works by shining UV light through a tiny quartz window on the EPROM.

10. Apple II Disks – Stacked here are two boxes of Apple II disks. The lower one is mine, the upper one was given to me by a friend (with all his Apple II disks in it!). In fact, it was the same friend who gave my family the 2400 BPS modem (#5). It’s nice to have good friends.

11. Composite Video Monitor – What a grand day it was when I acquired my first color composite video monitor at a local hamfest! In this picture, the monitor is performing triple duty between the Apple II+ (#6), NES (#8), and Atari Jaguar (#14). I simply switched the AV connectors at the back depending on which one I wanted to use.

12. Atari Lynx – I bought this under-utilized portable wonder in used condition from a guy who regularly called my BBS (“Raven,” if you must know) in 1993 or 94. The transaction was done entirely by mail and we never met in person (imagine that!).

13. Mystery Sticker – I’m not sure what this is. It looks like a random peel-off trading card-sized sticker just stuck on the wall at an odd angle. Weird. This picture have been taken after my dad made me take down the 100-odd posters and other crap I had tacked and taped all over the walls, believing they were a fire hazard.

14. Atari Jaguar – I was a total Atari nut in the very early 90’s, believing strongly that Atari was the greatest company ever. “What’s this Nintendo business?” I said. “Atari was first!” I heard rumors of their Panther, then Jaguar, consoles and waited anxiously for their release. My birthday in 1994 was one of the happiest days of my life: I received an Atari Jaguar System and Super Metroid for the SNES. Here, Doom can be seen in the cartridge slot, a version of the seminal 3D FPS rivaled on consoles only by the PlayStation version.

15. Apple III – The prize of my collection at the time. When I first heard about the Apple III years before, it was like some magical, mythical beast. Would I ever catch sight of one, much less possess it? Naturally, I was extremely excited when my father and I came across this one later at a hamfest (again, big surprise). $10-20 later, I had my first Apple III, complete with dust cover (pictured on the unit). I only had the Apple II emulation disk for it, though, and to this day have never run any native Apple III software. Shortly after my Apple III was obtained (turned out they were not as rare as I thought), the Apple Lisa quickly became the next mythical beast to be had — a beast I’m still chasing in the wild to this day.

16. Plug ‘N’ Play Mosaic Book – This book is how I got my first copy of Mosaic, the first graphical web browser (it came on a floppy disk in the back). Shortly after, I began to develop my first home page, and boy did it suck. It’s funny reading lists of “cool” web sites from back then because, well…there were only about ten web sites back then. Ergo, all of them were cool (and listed in this book).

17. Handheld Video Games Magazine – I just found this particular issue (Spring 1991) again recently while working on my “Game Ads A-Go-Go” column for GameSetWatch. Good issue. I apparently didn’t value it very much at the time because it’s sitting on the floor right next to the spot where our cats would leave all the dead birds they’d caught that week. Yum.

Well that’s the tour, hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for accompanying me on a nice walk down memory lane.

Simple but well-constructed, Shamus is one of my favorite games for the Atari 800. It’s an engaging experience…unless you see what I’m about to show you. That’s because the real enjoyment and challenge of Shamus as a game is mapping its unpauseable, implausible geometry.

Shamus is a natural extension of Atari’s old Berzerk. Touch the wrong thing, and you die: an enemy, a bullet, or a wall. There’s even an Evil Otto equivalent, the Shadow, who comes to get you if you’re on a screen too long. But a fixed map, keys, and keyholes bring in an adventure element that Berserk doesn’t have.

Now I could fill you in on all sorts of game details, but they won’t make much difference. Just blast your way through the maze, heading for room 127. The following tips, however, may help you choose your route: 1. the large, difficult rooms are the horizontal connectors (those with left and right exits). All of these, plus the start room, contain an item, while none of the other rooms do. 2. The blinking question mark, called a “Mystery,” will give you points and/or an extra life but may also summon the Shadow immediately, so it’s best to eliminate all enemies in the room before grabbing it. 3. Some of the keys change position from game to game. Check out my maps (below) to work out the best route through all the places they may be hiding.

Warning: Shamus spoilers ahead!

[ Continue reading The Mazes of Shamus » ]

I have a box of about eight musty, “doorstop quality” Commodore 64’s (C64) and VIC-20’s sitting up in my attic. They came from a local hamfest a few years ago. It was getting late in the show that day and the vendors were tired and wanted to go home. At the end of any hamfest, vendors have tons of near-worthless, unsold, bulky junk that they’d usually rather throw away than drag back to their car. I have been stuck in a situation at least four or five times where I was interested in buying one item, but would only be allowed to purchase the item if I agreed to haul off all kinds of other crap for the seller. In this case, I just wanted to buy a single box of C64 disks that I noticed sitting on a table, but the guy would only sell it to me if I agreed to take six C64s, five Vic-20s, a few disk drives, lots more accessories and carts, and…well, there wasn’t just one box of disks, after all, but more like ten. It was like some Vaudeville routine: as soon as I thought the seller had pulled the last box of Commodore-spew from under the table and turned to leave, he’d say “oh wait!” and pull out another one. At this point my father, who was saddled with the unenviable task of helping me carry all these musty artifacts to our car, had a severe grimace on his face. That day I inherited some guy’s entire Commodore collection for $10, including his massive anthology of pirated C64 game disks (complete with a thick three-ring-bound index to the disks!), and I think my dad inherited some permanent “Commodore grimace” lines in his forehead.

I climbed up into my fiberglass dust-ridden attic the other day, looking for an ideal donor of a 6510 processor to add to my CPU collection. Temptingly, in my Commodore box there was a C64 already apart and in pretty bad shape — an ideal sacrificial Commie to dissect. Upon bringing it down and looking inside the case, I found something pretty amusing: some guy — presumably the previous owner — was fiddling with the power connector in the unit and somehow broke the ground contact and corresponding pin off the connector. It looks to me like he was in the middle of laboring to remove the connector when he was abruptly struck with Sudden Onset Lack-Of-Patience Disorder (or SOLOPD, a common affliction amongst electronics tinkerers). Soon after, his strategy for connector removal became “rip it off any way you can.” Unsurprisingly, he broke his machine in the process. Through the magic of literary time travel, we can infer what obviously happened afterwards as he attempted a repair:

There he was, cradling the lifeless body of a broken C64 in his arms, crying and cursing himself for his impatience and uneven temperament. He broke down on his knees and swore to the heavens to never harm another 64 again if only the Commodore Gods would ease his suffering and forgive him for his mistake. But alas — his cries of desperation fell only on deaf ears (the 22 year-old family cat). And like any man whose most desperate call goes unheard, something turned inside him. For a brief moment, all that was dark and cruel welled up within him, twisting his soul in queer ways as a streak of fiery evil flashed over his hollow eyes. He raised his arms, clutching the helpless computer over his head, and nearly bashed the faulty unit into the darkest form of oblivion. But at the last moment, something stopped him: a key from the unit fell to the floor beneath him. It was the “plus” key — the very first key he pressed on the greatest day of his life. Vivid images of his 15th birthday flooded his head, filling him with a deep sense of regret over what he almost did. It was on that day that he received the very machine he was clutching from his late grandfather. How could he forsake old Roy — always happy, smiling, and helpful — and the desire for a better life that he handed down to his only grandson in the form of a $300 personal computer? It was then that the man decided that he should spare the machine; he would fix it. But how would he achieve such an impossible task? He didn’t have any spare C64 power connectors, and, after all, replacing the connector required removing the old one — the very problem that got him into this mess to begin with! Frantically searching for a solution, he scratched through his junk box until his fingers nearly bled. In the dustiest, farthest back corner of his tattered box, he found it: a nail. Yes! He thought back to his summer job as a carpenter with his grandfather’s construction business — lesson number one in his carpentry training taught him that a common picture frame-hanging wall nail, when used properly, was the perfect solution to any troubling situation. He quickly put his MacGyver-like improvisation skills to work, firing up his soldering iron to melt the broken connector’s mangled plastic and fuse the nail in place. After an intense four-hour operation with many close-calls and stressful moments, he was finished. He plugged the proper power supply into the machine and, with great tension, flipped it on. Tears of joy streamed from his reddened, tired eyes as he saw the bright, vibrant power LED light up. “If only Papa Roy were here to see this,” he thought, as he ran his hand across the smooth back of his favorite machine. “May this heavy light that shines upon me forever serve as a beacon, steering and guiding me through the foggiest, darkest, and stormiest nights of my life.” The ordeal was finally over, and he knew he would never be the same man again.

Yes, he used a nail to act as a ground contact, bridging the outer ground ring of the C64’s DIN power connector and the RF shielding of the cartridge port. Does it really work? I don’t know; I don’t care to try. Personal revelations for the man aside, this has to be the messiest improvised hack I’ve ever seen in my life. At least we got a good story out of it.

Hacks like these should make us all stop and think more deeply about ourselves.