So March is already turning out to be busier than I expected!I have a lot of work on at the moment, so the original plan was to just spend each weekend on the Retro Challenge.
But life gets in the way, and by 6pm on Sunday I haven’t yet started!
Still, let’s try to get something achieved anyway.
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The Retro Challenge is a one-month long excuse to do cool stuff with old computers and blog about it (vaguely wrapped up as a competition).
In 2017 I created the RetroMatic 2000 as my entry.
In 2018 I tried to restore two Osborne 1 portable computers. One restoration was completely successful, but with the other I couldn’t narrow down the problem in the disk controller as I lacked sufficient test equipment.
This March I’ll be doing a light-weight entry to the Retro Challenge as I don’t have too much time available.
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I’ve done some recent repairs and improvements…
I decided a quick video would explain these all best.
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So April comes to a close, and with it the April 2018 Retro Challenge.
I’ve spent the month of so buried in these Osborne 1 computers, and have achieved a great deal in restoring them to their former glory.
All the details are in the last 17 blog posts, but I’ve also made a 36 min video summarising everything I did (along with a slightly closer look at the computers and some demos).
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Yesterday I figured out a workflow for getting CPM software onto disk images that I could run on my Osborne computer.
Now to the final part of my personal ‘retro challenge’. Which was:
“Conclude by playing a classic CPM game on my portable computer! Preferably Colossal Cave Adventure or The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy :-)”
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Now my Osborne 1 is working well, it’s time to transfer some software onto it.
I have a handful of disks that came with it (just business software), but there is a whole wealth of CPM software out there, if only I can get it onto the machine in a format it can read.
Today’s task is to find a workflow that enables me to download CPM software from the internet, and easily load it onto the Osborne.
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In my previous posts I’d proved a Gotek/FlashFloppy USB floppy drive emulator would work with my Osborne 1. I’d also found a way to install it in a floppy disk storage pocket on the machine.
I then had to wait for more components to arrive, to finish it off in a neat package.
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In my last post I had successfully got a Gotek/FlashFloppy USB floppy emulator working with my Osborne computer.
For future use, I still wanted to design a way to copy any additional files as and when I needed. I’d already experimented with RS232 serial transfers. I had also wondered about leaving a floppy cable installed somewhere in the machine so I could attach a USB floppy emulator easily when I needed to, but it was in no way obvious how to do that without leaving the aesthetics of the machine a bit ‘messy’.
Today’s job was to solve that dilemma.
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In my last post, I had tried to get my Gotek/HxC USB floppy emulator working reliably with my Osborne computer.
For some reason the drive select signals from the Osborne weren’t getting through correctly to the Gotek/HxC.
This meant I couldn’t use a physical drive at the same time as the emulator (for example to copy files between real and virtual disks) as the computer couldn’t select between the drives.
Today it was time for a different approach.
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My next stage with my Osborne computer was to bulk transfer CPM software I’ve downloaded from the internet onto the computer.
In last year’s Retro Challenge I made my RetroMatic 2000, which included a USB floppy drive emulator based on Gotek hardware with HxC firmware.
I’d already tested that this worked with the Osborne with a custom cable, so my plan was to open up the Osborne, connect the cable, copy all the software to real floppy disks, then reassemble the computer.
Little did I know that this simple job would turn into a 3+ day marathon…
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