The Penguicon that never was

Penguicon was this weekend.  We didn't even notice that we had missed it until today.

What I did this year was go through the panel list and pull out everything that I wanted to see.  After thinking about each one, I pared that list down to about 5 panels.  Pretty bad.  Out of 48 hours of panels, I could only find 5.

I researched the topics on the 5 panels in less than one day.

So I believe that we made the right decision to skip it.  Unless I see big changes for next year, we probably won't be going ever again.


Today (5/2/2017), a message to the Penguicon-General mailing list from Eric S. Raymond (if he posts it on his web site, I'll edit to add the link here) basically echoed the issues that I already documented with Penguicon.  But I guess this year, it was even worse, vindicating our decision to not attend.

I didn't realize, but one of the GOHs was a SJW (Social Justice Warrior).  I'm really glad I didn't waste my time and money going this year.  Penguicon has been taken over by the left-wing regressives as I thought.

RDOS - Beta version ready

The beta version of rdos is ready.

Features:

• "Boot" everything from a clean Tandy.  This will load the "RLOAD" program which will let you load all the other programs.
• Load, Save data files (sorry, the BASIC doesn't let me load tokenized BASIC files).  You can still load programs as text files, then "LOAD XXX.DO in the BASIC interpreter.
• List files on the drive.
• Change directories on the drive.
• Rename and delete files on the drive.
• You can "reference" a file on the drive.  Then you can LOAD "COM:98N1D the file at the touch of a button.
• Also, file seek is supported plus the reading of a number of bytes (writing was already supported).  This will allow you to write a program that uses the drive as "virtual memory".

The project has all the clients written and fairly well tested.  Also examples for the file seek feature.

I haven't "beat the heck out of it" yet as far as use.   It seems to work just fine for the limited use and testing that I did.  So I'm pleased right now.

RDOS - Arduino TPDD Reborn

The programs that I wrote to talk to my Arduino set up worked, even though the original clients didn't.  So, I decided to write my own clients to talk to it.

The new project is called RDOS (for Ron's Disk Operating System - hey, I created it, so I get to name it).  You can get it here.

Since I now control both the client and the device, I decided to simplify things.  So it no longer does the full TPDD protocol.

Commands:

• Directory Reference - Option 0, 1 and 2 are used.  Option 3 was changed from "request previous directory block", to "change directory". Option 4 is removed.
• Open file - Implemented
• Close file - Implemented
• Read file - Implemented
• Write file - Implemented
• Delete file - Implemented
• Format Disk - Unsupported
• Drive Status - Unsupported
• DME Req - Unsupported
• Drive Condition - Unsupported
• Rename file - Implemented
• TS-DOS Mystery Command - Unsupported
• TS-DOS Mystery Command - Unsupported

File names were padded, internally, to be 6 bytes, dot, 2 bytes. This restriction was removed.  You can use the full 24 bytes for the remote file name.  You still need to name it to be only 6 bytes on the Tandy size, though.

Checksum will not be supported (since the communications is much better, it's no longer needed).

Client programs:

• RLIST.BA - List the files in the current directory
• RLOAD.BA - Load the file into the Tandy - the program loaded by the boot button
• RSAVE.BA - Save the file into the SD card
• RUTIL.BA - Delete/rename files, change working directory

Notes:

• Tandy BASIC does not permit you to open a .BA file for writing, so you can't load a tokenized BASIC program. You can only load it as a .DO file and then do a LOAD "xxx.DO" in the BASIC interpreter. Note that you can SAVE a .BA file, though. So this project only works for data files, not binary program files.
• Don't bother trying to save a file with any extension other than .DO. You will get an "?MN Error". Just leave the extension off for the Tandy file name and let it default to .DO.
• It will "boot" the loader program by doing a LOAD "COM:98N1D and pressing a button. Once the loader program is there, you can load the save, list and utility programs.
• I implemented directory handling, so you can use a nice, big SD card and subdirectories.

I've booted up from a hard reset on my T102, loaded up all the programs, and played for a bit. I still need to really kick it around, so it's in alpha test right now.