Obviously somebody with waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much time on his hands...
Posted on 04/12/2015 5:27:23 PM PDT by markomalley
The Apple Watch looks to be an impressive piece of gear—it’s sleek and attractive, and offers plenty of interesting and useful features. But if you’re looking for something a little more old-school, might we suggest the Apple II Watch?
The DIY Apple II Watch comes from the mind of Instructables user Aleator777, and it takes design cues from the classic Apple II computer. A bulky, beige, 3D-printed plastic shell replaces the modern metal-and-glass enclosure of Apple’s real-life offering, and a Teensy 3.1 microcontroller acts as the Apple II Watch’s brains.
Aleator777 used a 1.8-inch LCD as the screen, but in true Apple II form, it displays everything in black and green. As for the band, there are no Milanese loops or sport bands here—just a simple beige woven wristband.
(Excerpt) Read more at pcworld.com ...
Obviously somebody with waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much time on his hands...
That is great. Love it.
Can it withstand EMP?
This is not terrible. I would wear it.
I’ll wait for the Apple IIe version. ;)
With current advances in magnetic storage technology, I don’t think it strange to produce a disk that small, holding the same amount of data as the original 5.25” disk of its day...
The real challenge: Making a disk drive, and controller to match. (Not sure which way to go there: Is that even possible?)
Cute. I really enjoyed working with the Apple ][, great little machine.
Pfffft!!!! LOL!
Apple IIGS laptop -- YouTube
The 5.25 Disk ][ (and subsequent smartport and other DB-connector models) were single-sided 35 track drives, with 4k per track (140K, sometimes metricized and marketed as 143K, a stupid fictional number). The 32GB thumb drives and flash memory cards widely used today have over 1000 times more storage than the ProDOS hard drive volume size limit, and 32megs was more than adequate for an OS that would boot off a floppy.
Those were the days...
;’)
-PJ
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Thanks for the heads up. I too enjoyed working on the Apple ][. My daughters school was given one by Apple back when she was the first Kindergartner in the Stockton Unified Gifted and Talented program. They decided that the GATE class was the perfect classroom to get the computer. . . but they had no software. I spent a lot of time writing software for it. . . and the school let me take it home to work on it.
I recall one night after spending twelve hours writing a spelling drill program for the teacher that would show a picture of the object to be spelled and providing other clues, it allowed the student to try to spell it correctly. Pretty nifty. When I went to save the program to floppy, the bleeping computer claimed it couldn't find the floppy drive. On an Apple ][ of the period, the only way to get one to re-recognize a floppy drive, was to RESTART the bleeping computer. . . losing all your work. I could not save all my work.
The blue invective awoke my wife at the other end of the house and probably neighbors for at least a couple of blocks around! That was the day I learned to make incremental saves on anything I was doing. LOL!
I learned about incremental saves, too ... back in the day ... :-) ...
But even today, I’m still telling a few people here and there about incremental saves. A few times of typing a long e-mail on Yahoo and losing it, will make you a believer!
Too bad we didn't know each other back then. I could have helped you. If the floppy isn't recognized, drop into the monitor program. Connect a tape recorder (any will do). Issue the appropriate save commands in the monitor, to save the program to tape. After reboot, reload the tape, then save to floppy disc. On my Apple II I started with cassette tape saves, because disc drives weren't available for another year or more. I can still load programs off the Internet by connecting audio to my Apple II (still works after 37 years).
I appreciate the thought.
Tried everything I could think of including using the Monitor program to force recognition of the disk drive. Then i called my nephew who worked at Apple and he also suggested the tape approach but didn't think it would work because the likelyhood was the computer had developed a heat related problem from running for twelve hours. . . a I/O chip had become unseated and that was why the floppy was not being accessed and that chip also was involved in translating the program to the audio. He told me exactly what the problem was when the Apple ][s lost their connection to an already connected disk drive: Loose chip on the mother board. Turned out he was right. He swore me to secrecy and then told me the easy fix was to drop the computer from about four inches which gravity reseated the chips. LOL! Still couldn't save the program because reseating would likely restart the computer. . . and it was NOT a good idea to try the fix with the computer running. Bye-bye work.
Anyone else notice the new Apple Watch app that is automatically (at least for me) downloaded onto your iPhone?
That was so secret I didn't know that! That was a solution for Apple III computers, because they got so hot that the chips would unseat - metal case and no fan. Computers were more hands-on back then and I miss that. One time I pulled and inserted another board, and to my horror saw that I hadn't first powered down the machine; but to no ill effect (lucky). One thing I did have was an interface between my Apple II and my PC, so I could save data between them. I was using the Apple II at my job and needed to pass data to the PC which had an IRMA board talking to the mainframe.
I've also lost programs, mostly on PCs that froze up. Happened to all computer users!
I found the "Drop Fix" worked on a lot of computers, PCs included. It was a miracle cure! Won't work anymore with soldered on parts. That's a good thing. . .
I have come to the conclusion that every field has a "Fix' that they don't want their customers to see. In gunsmithing, it was barrel straightening. When I was managing a gun shop in my youth, the gunsmith invariably shut the door to the shop when doing a barrel straightening job because he did not want any customers to witness it. He'd find the bend point and then WHAP WHAP WHAP the barrel on a carpet covered board. Sight along it, and WHAP WHAP WHAP, rinse repeat, turning the barrel and WHAPping it until he moves to a bore sighting method and more, lighter whapping. Very high tech. . . It's all trial and error. LOL!
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