Adding more functionality to my USB -> IR RP2040 firmware to support Apricot wired mice as well, I was able to explore Apricot Activity on the Apricot PC! 
https://forgejo.crashtest.dev/jasonalexander-ja/apridapter
#aprilcot #apricot #apricotpc #actapricot #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing
That was a lot of work nothing; but in my defence, I, nor clearly anyone else in the Apricot community could not find ANY prior reference to LibDsk or dskconv in reference to Apricot/Apridisk on the internet apart from on the LibDsk website
https://www.seasip.info/Unix/LibDsk/
The source tree for LibDsk also contained a HTML file describing the Apridisk format, it turns it's just RAW, but every sector has a header, and there can be comment records, and some sectors can be RLE encoded, that makes converting them actually pretty easy
Using that as a reference, I was able to add support for Apridisk file formats directly into the Greaseweazle CLI client, meaning, you can now directly write out Apridisk formatted files (and thus, all on actapricot.org archive) using Greaseweazle using the flag `--format=apricot.single` or `apricot.double`
https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle/pull/626
A far cry from spinning up a whole other DOS PC that was the Internet's generally accepted method previously
And ofc, my Apricot PC is booting off of both drives without issue, and I got DR's GSX working which meant I was able to load Apricot's very own Activity GUI shell!
Now, I just need a mouse...
#aprilcot #apricot #apricotpc #actapricot #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing
Windows 2 for the Apricot PC/Xi
https://www.ninakalinina.com/notes/win2apri/
#HackerNews #Windows2 #ApricotPC #Xi #RetroComputing #TechHistory
Update on the Apricot IR hackerying
Managed to make the USB HID stack library I was using work nicely with USB mice, and now we have a pretty fully functional USB mouse adaptor (which was my end goals )
#apricotportable #apricotpc #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #dos #msdos #vintagelaptops
Update on the Apricot IR work, after flailing around with USB HID host stack on the RP2040 I was able to get a rudimentary USB Keyboard -> Apricot IR adaptor
Needs more work, this is more of a quick PoC I made by editing the example code, but I hope to make this into a full USB KB + Mouse adaptor
#apricotportable #apricotpc #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #dos #msdos #vintagelaptops
I have made what I believe to be the worlds first Kempston joystick to Apricot IR keyboard adaptor
#apricotportable #apricotpc #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #dos #msdos #vintagelaptops
Acquired an Apricot Portable a while ago, but sadly ran into an issue, it seems electrically OK, but, the heads were completely broken off in the floppy drive, which caused several problems being that this is a single drive device with no kind of fixed disk.
To compound this, the drive model is an early Sony 3.5 inch drive, OA-D32W, in which broken heads are quite regular due to them being stuck down on the disk when ejecting, and being early drives, they're very irregular and so really need to be replaced like for like, so it took a number of years to finally come across one on eBay in a working state and for a price that I was willing to pay, which thankfully happened on Friday, so as of this morning, I have a working, booting Apricot Portable!
#apricotportable #apricotpc #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #dos #msdos #vintagelaptops
Rhii Alexander 🏳️⚧️
Thomas Cherryhomes
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