Tony is a Geek

I missed out on the CP/M hey-day, however, just recently, thanks to the RC2014 Z80 device and my re-ignited usage of the Amstrad CPC, I have learnt to use CP/M and respect just how genius it is/was. My first personal computer was an Amstrad CPC 464, that just booted up into Locomotive BASIC, which was fine for the 4-5years of usage, at school I used a BBC B that ran BBC BASIC, I learnt early on about porting from one BASIC to another and how it was more about getting the design/architecture right and then applying whatever syntax was needed to make it happen.  I then acquired an Atari ST 512 ( funny enough from a friend called Gary ) and I was amazed at using the GEM TOS user environment... I then upgraded to a PC-clone, it was a 286 PC that came with DR.DOS 6, on 2 3.5" disks.  I actually still have those 2 disks.  My first introduction to PCs was using DR.DOS, it did annoy me that when I went to college I had to use MS-DOS 5 that just didn't have the same things that I ...

I short while ago, I teased that I was going to do some time-travelling back to the 1970/80s.... I did actually purchase a Z80 MBC3 device , getting around the Brexit problem of not being able to purchase items from The Netherlands because of the massive VAt charge for importing the goods into the UK - yeah, great, thanks populace dim-witted knuckle-scraping thug heads for that decision - anyway, way arond it was for the seller to pay a small fortune themselves in fee's / costs and also for me and to get the item via eBay too.... yep, of course there is a loop-hole.  don't expect it to stay open for too long though. More info at github  and a new WEBSITE to purchase the kits from I received the board and all the parts and was ready to do a soldering session and then a really odd thing happened in the UK - the sun came out...for more than 1 day.  This meant I had to switch from doing things "in the house" and go and do all those "other things" that involve ...

Whilst I refuse to sign-up for an API key for chatGPT, you might want to if you want to repeat this example.  Why am I not getting an API key?  'cos I'm building my own offline version (that I'll document and share with everyone soon!) - I could easily then plug this DOS client into my version.  sweet. CHECK OUT THE ARTICLE HERE Until then... enjoy and be amazed at the fact you can still do things with old software & hardware that relate to "new" things.  Here we have a Generative AI being accessed from DOS and if you fancy replicating it yourself, it's just some C code, after-all.. then  CHECKOUT THE GITHUB REPO HERE I have used the MTCP packet-driver for DOS on many of my early 1990s hardware allowing it to connect to WiFi (WEP access only though) and access the internet, so this isn't something "too different" - after all, calling chatGPT is just calling a REST API. However, the "difficult part" is calling the REST API with HTTP(...

Okay, okay, yes, I know.... who the hell needs to know these? Well, I do actually!  I've been pulling my hair out trying to make a Bootable CF Card for my IBM PC 110 devices...I've tried all sorts.  Yes, I've booted to a MS-DOS v6.22 floppy disk and executed SYS C: or Format c: /S and all "looks good', then setup all the other files etc... but when attempting to then boot from that CF Card, all I get is a boot up error of I9990302 (or I9990305), which indicates this is not a bootable drive. Well, now that I've found THIS LINK , I believe that what I need to do is perform an FDISK /MBR (will confirm this later) and this will rebuild the Master Boot Record... if this doesn't work, then I'll describe indepth what I'm trying to achieve and what I've tried and what is failing and then go crawling the internet to find other people who might be able to help.... I've ordered another 3 x Viking 256Mb CF Cards and a 48Mb PCMCIA ATA card just to see wh...

Whilst having an end of year tidy up in the 'man cave', I found a couple of boxes with some " old " PC based computers contained within.  I had a couple of Gateway2000 Handbook 486 devices and a Fujitsu B-2154 touchscreen laptop.  I can recall, why I got them in the first place.  They are all small laptop/netbook sized, don't weigh very much and could be re-purposed for other things.  Well, that's probably what I thought when I first got them....did some stuff with them and then put them on a box for " coming back to them later on ". Well, " later on " just happened to be during the week between xmas and new year......