Re: ancient stuff/rumors of existence ie ramblings

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

brad wrote:

<snip>

> various robot projects from the day...how they were built..most were just
> plans that could be made from radio shack stuff today.

Six degree of freedom robotic arms show up quite regularly on eBay,
and usually sell in the $250-$550 range, depending on all the usual
variables.  I am thinking of the Teachmover arms, and the Microbot
arm that preceded it.

The Teachmover is operated by a serial interface, and an Apple II will
do it quite nicely.  The Microbot was actually designed with an Apple II
interface card and a ROM extension to Applesoft called ARMBASIC.

Of course, it's easy to control servo motors with variable-width pulses
generated in software using annunciator port(s) on the Apple II.

> of course the novation modem card mods to get free phone calls/hack back in
> the day..(be neat to look at..of course would not work today)

IIRC, no modification was required.  The Novation Cat had a D/A
converter to allow "voice mail" applications, so the Apple II could
generate virtually any signal to be sent down the line, and listen
for the result using the A/D.  The hacks were all software.

> the X10 stuff for turining on/off lights appliances etc with an apple //
> ...could prob be done today with off the shelf parts

Most of the X-10 control options for Apple II cards (like clock cards)
were just 40kHz ultrasonic transducers.  They were meant to be placed
near an ultrasonic remote-capable base controller (the old 3"x4"x5" box
with the ultrasonic option, sold by Sears and BSR).  The transducers
are still available very inexpensively, though the older ultrasonic-
capable base controllers may be a little hard to find.

The later model produced as an X-10 product for the Apple II, PC, and
Mac, used a serial link to an external box containing a microprocessor
that kept time and the scheduled event list.  It sent commands directly
over the power line.

The software to run these was pretty widely available, with some of
the best being written as shareware.

If you wanted to start "from scratch", you could go either the
ultrasonic route (as I did in 1982) by writing software to toggle
an annunciator to generate the modulated ultrasonic signal, or
you could use the very popular CM11 serial-to-X-10 computer
interface that is widely available, with one of the shareware
X-10 packages.

-michael

8-voice music synthesizer using NadaNet networking!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/