I wrote to Tim Swenson to ask about the 2050 serial port to Z88 and he gave me what he thought was the proper way to interface it. But it leaves a little to experiment with. However I leaned that Tim now has a house and a new address. (see Unclassified Ads section)
Had a call from Fred Stern and he reported that Bob Gilder died on or about the first day of November. A neighbor had noticed him sitting at the kitchen table in the evening and he was still there and looked like he wasn’t moving the next morning so he called the police. They broke in and found him dead. Bob was one of the dedicated members of LIST.
Wrote Jack Boatwright in regards to my having to dispose of my newsletters and TS 2068 computer equipment and I haven’t heard from him. I had offered to send it shipping free so I guess the offer still goes.
While I have disk drives that will work on the TS-2068 and Oliger or LarKen disk interfaces I won’t ship them without postage reimbursement since they are really heavy. The drives would include several drive cases with power supplies. I will need to know in December since I will have to start cleaning them out soon.
[Figure: Desert landscape with saguaro cactus and wildflowers]
A move is contemplated from here in Auburn during the year of 1999 and at the moment where to is not sure. I have been given the ultimatum of not moving boxes and boxes of computer JUNK! The JUNK! is my wife’s words not mine. Later I will work with an MSDOS clone of some kind and will very likely have the ZX-81 and TS-2068 emulators as well as the SPECTRUM. And I will still have the Z88 so I will still be in the TS community.
I saw Frank Davis last Saturday at the Ft. Wayne Ham and Computer Fest. Since Frank is mainly into Amiga he is doing great in that field. Still has some Z88 and that sort of stuff to sell.
Been having a lot of household troubles. Not with my wife but the house. First we put in a new dishwasher and when the disposal was disconnected from the old dishwasher the connector on the disposal for the dishwasher discharge hose was broke off to the point where it barely could be clamped to. So I replaced that. All I can say they sure have made it easier to replace with a different type of assembly. I have put in three prior disposals and all of those had to be hold up while you tried to connect them up to the sink. Now you connect a subassembly to the sink and then you rotate the disposal into place which makes it very easy. And the first time I did not have to redo the plumbing to get it to fit. I was amazed at how easy it was.
The night of November tenth a portion of our privacy fence was blown down by the storm. What actually happened was that two posts had rotted and broken off at ground level. And our homeowner’s insurance has a hundred dollar deductible. And so to save the hundred dollars I dissembled the fallen fence and borrowed a clamshell post hole digger and dug two holes next to the cemented in old posts and set in place two new post of pressure treated 4 X 4’s. The lumber and the two bags of readymix was delivered Monday. I finished the fence yesterday (November 18th). Sunday (November 15th) our garage door opener quit raising the garage door. The helical gear that the worm gear that is on the motor shaft turns apparently has stripped all the teeth off. So Tuesday we went to Sears to see if they had an opener that was similar to the one that died. There are some differences could have probably used the same track and chain but I didn’t want that to go bad and have to redo the installation. I started that this morning and right now I am installing the light beam and sensor which is a feature that is mandatory for garage doors now. Supposed to prevent injury to a child or dog or even a person. In the morning I will finish the installation and then do the set up for proper closing and for the safety features. Right now I open and close the door manually and lock it by Clamping a C clamp on the track. I lucked out since they had these units on a special purchase and sale plus a coupon discount. The old unit was in use 16 years. The life of a garage door opening is from 15 to 20 years.
Looking at the electronics of the garage door controller I see that it could be easily converted to turn on something. It would make an interesting project.
Back to uploading and down loading programs from the Z88 to the TS-2068: I remember seeing an article about how to use a modem to modem with out Ma Bell being between. I will find that and get the 2050 modem and the Z88 modem going – I hope.
I have been looking at the PC’s and have started to figure bout when some of the salespeople are spoofing me. I was originally wanting to use a ZIP drive BUT! I was lead to understand that would be better off with a CD ROM burner. The disks are about a fifth the cost and there is a lot more capacity on the CD.
With all our trouble with our house I guess we are lucky since we don’t have hurricane or flooding damage. I have seen the destruction in Germany during W.W.II and in Korea during the war in 1950 and 1951. If you don’t have too much and you loose that
This is it till next time. 0/0