If NO IMAGES will be shown, use www.z80.eu/blog instead of blog.z80.eu

Please note also - THIS BLOG ENDS HERE WITH THE LAST ENTRY FROM NOVEMBER 9th 2021.

I have prepared a new blog with wordpress at https://vintagecomputing.info !!!

Thank you.

Just take a short break and visit http://www.tassos-oak.com/NB2/toolbook.html for a deeper look into the Z80 coding secrets with Doctor Dobb's Z80 Toolbook.
If this link doesn't work, try this one (archive.org).
Beware the loading time for this page (all things are listed on only one large page !), but enjoy these mostly elegant code snipplets for your Z80 CP/M system... even on emulators.

Yeah, I got my Apple 5.25 Floppy Drive (A9M0107)



and also the two DSUB connectors for the still missing Y-cable.



Now I have only to rebuild the floppy cable and then I should be able to run my Apple IIe card also with (real) floppies.
Meanwhile I can show only a starting screen of the card itself :-(

As we all know, most of the products today are produced in a cost efficient way.
Because of this, vendors always looking for a chance to produce things cheaper.
But because this happens, also quality goes synchronously down.

This happened to Linksys Router (think about forced cisco cloud account usage, which was changed back in October 2012, but also missing features, low quality and early defects).

Like other vendors, Cisco devices does also have a long list of vulnerabilities:
http://securitytracker.com/archives/advisory/6966.html

Now - on top of the above listed facts - there is another great achievement Cisco reached:

They aquired Scansafe a few years ago, their services are named now "Cisco Cloud Web Security" (it seems also be related with the Linksys Router Configuration issue, see above).
I thought they have a team of agents who edits their web filter entries. So they will be able to achieve a defined level of quality at least.
But I was wrong. Their webfilter service seems to be made only by searching keywords, not monitored by humans. My own website here ( www.z80.eu and also this blog ) is now categorized as "virus site". THIS IS ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS. I am offering infos about detecting virus, but I do not spread viruses. Cisco, you failed verifiable 100%.


But do you really expect Quality from Cisco ?

P.S.: This was valid for more than one year. Now it's not more categorized as a malware site, due to my continuously sent requests.

As described in http://www.z80.eu/blog/index.php?entry= ... 319-180000 , I got an Apple IIe Card for my LC aka Color Classic.
But this leads into a chicken and egg problem.
I've read at http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/app ... #equipment and in the section after it how to go on with these images.

But I am totally unsure how to start.

There is a reference to http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/bas ... inscii.txt which describes how to get the BINSCII.EXE (has nothing to do with PC EXE files!) running with ProDOS. At this point I asked myself how to get BINSCII.EXE to the ProDOS Partition, which must be the first step after downloading the file.

Also, ShrinkIt and Copy II Plus is mentioned then, I have to get it running after I managed the above BINSCII problem.

Even if I got both running (BINSCII and ShrinkIt), I am unsure about the next step.

After I downloaded a 140KB image file and copy it to the Mac, should I use BINSCII first, then Shrinkit (I do not know how to get this onto my ProDOS formatted partition), and then Copy II Plus to write the image back to a floppy drive ?
So do I have to own a Apple 5.25 Drive, otherwise I'm lost ?
I guess my build-in HD floppy drive will not help (for nothing).


I asked the author, but he didn't answer. Any hints are welcome !

Looking at the wonderful bootscreen of a DEC PWS 433 during BIOS boot phase, I had the idea to preserve this image. Looking around for the image file, I wasn't successful.
So I made a picture with my Nikon and cropped & scaled for Win7 Boot Updater, see
http://www.coderforlife.com/projects/win7boot/
Download the program (no installation required), and choose "complete" for the background picture:

You do not have to choose other options (let the animated windows logo as is).
And here's the background image file itself you have to choose:


Happy DEC PWS booting...