Tony is a Geek

I confess, I wasn't going to do this. I wasn't going to go down this rabbit-hole. I wasn't going to write any Python (Micro or otherwise). I wasn't going to stay up until 1am, 2am, 3am on several different nights, including Dec 25th... "just figuring out this last one bit". I wasn't. But, I did...... and in a way, I am kind of glad that I did.  It won't help me very much, but it might help some genuine youngsters out there who are wanting to cut their teeth on some code and want to build on something that actually exists & works (I'll come back to that later). As  mentioned previously, I re-kindled an amusement of fun with an old Atari 800 XL  and the sheer fact that you used to be able to just turn it on and get a blue screen (not THAT type of blue screen) with the word: READY [_] with a flashing (or sometimes not) cursor, you were the artist.  You were the creative one.  You had the freedom to turn a blank (blue) canvas into something that yo...

I was trawling the internet, as you do.... I found a few Atari 800XL related web-pages and YouTube videos, thought I would share them here: That then led me onto this cable video: The interesting thing about this video is - that is NOT just a bog-standard ordinary USB cable.... no no no.  That has a USB to Serial converter built into it, that's why the USB part is a bit larger / longer than normal.  Well, funny enough, when I was looking for the ESP8266-01 programming device I found such a cable and it has been sitting on my desk waiting for a purpose... I now have one! I also mentioned HERE about having a cut/worn SIO cable, well that makes for a perfect cable to cut up and join to the USB.  What's not to like? Okay, I confess, I did actually "finish for the day" and went to bed... alas, I did not sleep after a couple of hours, I gave in...and went back into the "office", fired up the soldering iron and made the cable (in 1 go), then went back to bed, slept...

As mentioned in a previous post, I was doing some loft-digging and I "found" some old Atari hardware that I believe I purchased around the 2007/2008 timeframe and they have sat in boxes (and a house move) ever since. As these are sturdy, good old fashioned pieces of kit, I fully expect them to still work absolutely fine - unlike todays hardware that, if you had the right power supply available would attempt to connect to an out-dated WiFi protocol to get to the internet to download updates before allowing you to use it - think about that more for a moment.  The Atari 800 XL devices were primarily "invented" in about 1979, as you'll see in a photo later - I have one of those, and then were made for about 5 more years, up until 1984-ish.  We're now in 2022 (on the cusp of 2023), 2023-1979 = 44.  That means this hardware was made between 35-45 years ago - I'm including the tape-drive(s) and the disk-drive(s) in that range band. I will be the first to admi...