Motorola Droid X

Well, my Blackberry Storm is sitting idle in its own cradle; it’s man-genius click-screen days are all over.  It has been replaced by a smarter phone, Droid X.  I won’t bore you with all its technical details charms, but highlight only the things I find of interest.  And there are a lot of things of interest to me already, even after only a couple of hours of use.

Gad, it comes with a lot of memory.  There is 8gb internal and a 16gb removable microSD.  And you will find lots of ways to use that storage once you visit the Market app and try to weed through the apps, games, and other cool things to add-on.  Speaking of which, I already installed Adobe Reader, Labyrinth Lite, RingTone, and Touchdown Pro.  Labyrinth is the cool show-off 3D marble maze game, just because it is.  Touchdown is a (great) Microsoft Exchange client that simply works and is simpler to configure.  The built-in messaging integration to my personal IMAP and Gmail accounts take care of the rest.

While it has an HDMI output jack, I found its built-in Media Share to be a perfect companion with my Sony Playstation 3.  Droid X autoconnects to my home’s wireless router, discovers and allows for the PS3 to connect to it for streaming media (music, pictures, video) out of it for high-def viewing.  This will make the 8mp camera more friendly to use with this kind of easy integration of media files.

Overall, light to handle, touch is responsive, speech-to-text is accurate, apps are fast and intuitive, screen is large and vivid.  My phone just got a lot smarter — cool!

Now what to do with the 80+ cartridges I own?

Moral of the story: someone’s junk is someone else’s treasure.

The C16 (16kb memory) was to succeed the VIC 20 (5kb) for low-end computing, breaking the $100 price barrier for a color home computer.  That was the model I chose when shopping for my VIC 20 replacement, snubbing the more popular and powerful “gaming” computer in C64.  It was time to get a bit more serious about my career in computer programming, and I convinced myself that this little machine would serve my purposes better in that pursuit.  I was right at the time in December 1984, but in hindsight, the C128 home computer I would purchase just 7-months later was the real deal.

Pictured here is the Plus/4 model, with a price-point outside of its targeted consumers, outfitted in its sleek casing and cool keyboard layout.  It came with the full complement of 64kb RAM of which nearly 60kb of it was available to its improved BASIC 3.5 and built-in machine language monitor.  Back then, outlets were trying to gouge consumers for $399. Today, you can typically buy these in near-mint condition like this one for around $20.

Plus/4, joystick, floppy, and datasette

I have to confess that owning this floppy drive was a bit pricey – about $90 Euros plus overseas shipping — and the cost of a U.S. to Foreign power converter from the local Radio Shack. Not one of my better purchases, however, I am pleased the transaction of getting this working dinosaur went smoothly and without any disappointing incidents that occur frequently. So, I bundled the order with the Datasette and Jack Attack game cartridge to make the total purchase a complete success for the seller at Tinchens Online Shop.  Here’s a picture showing the peripherals working:

Floppy and Tape works!

C16 game: Jack Attack

The 1551 floppy drive connector into the game cartridge port has a passthru connector to allow a regular game cartridge to be fitted, as seen here with one of my all-time platform favorites in Jack Attack.

Anyways, I assembled one of the four for my personal collection, which was an easy insert-and-twist of the handle into its base.  And the supplied USB cable is ample in length.  Fired up the new VICE 2.2 software using Fedora 12 and its SDL UI immediately recognized the joystick as “USB HID v1.01 Gamepad [USB_Classic]“. No compatibility issues whatsoever — nice!

Even nicer was that old Atari joystick feel. As cheap and lightweight these joysticks go, nothing beats that old wigglin’ away and pounding that little red fire button as if pressing down any harder will make the 8-bit action perform any better — heh. I witnessed many such maneuvers from fallen opponents that took a classic beat-down from yours truly. The handle would creak mercilessly from the strain, followed by that wincing poppin’ sound of plastic giving in to the futile gesture. Usually, the busted joystick would go airborne and I’d have to go ducking.

Ah, thanks, Curt, for bringing back such lovely memories!

Atari-style joystick for your PC

Nevertheless, I am perfectly fine with a backup dump of my Mega-Cart, to be played using the new release of VICE 2.2 which supports the 2mb image, 8kb NvRAM, and all the appropriate bank-switching.  Cool!!

VICE Mega-Cart

xvic -cartmega mega-cart.rom -mcnvramwriteback -mcnvramfile mega-cart.nv

It replaces another Logitech keyboard, which was Bluetooth wireless and had great keystroke response.  However, the keycaps’ print was not accentuated enough and was hard to see under ambient light.  Also, there was this annoying optical level reader on the left that provided for Windows zoom factors — a real techie feature, but it would process false reads when a shadow passed over it — my desktop icons would start zooming or shrinking to ridiculous sizes.

This is a USB wired keyboard, fortunately it comes with a long reach to go under, then up and through the desktop to a USB port on my monitor.

Slim and elegant design

Now, if you think that is bad, take a look at two technologies that could not possibly be further apart.  A standard 5k VIC 20 hooked up to a 52″ Sony LCD HDTV — I cannot wait for my Mega-Cart to return from a minor operation to make up for a resistor that is out of tolerance in the VIC.

VIC 20 in HD