Stephan Paukner :: syslog

I recently managed to reactivate my dear old Epson HX-20, a retro computer released in 1983 which I used at the end of the 1980’s and early 1990’s to learn programming. Since I even could read in some BASIC programs that were still stored on the micro cassette, I wondered if I could rescue the code directly, without using OCR on printouts or even typing it off by hand. I was aware that I was very lucky that this machine still worked after all those years—the soldering seemed to have been much more rigid back then, it might cause more issues to attempt to run old PCs which are a decade younger! To be on the safe side, I invested into a new NiCd battery pack and replaced the original one.

My research first led me to the machine’s RS-232 output, internally called “COM0”. Someone had used that some years ago to directly connect an HX-20 to a PC’s serial port, using a special cable and some adapters. Sadly, it seems that this is no longer an option, since these cables disappear, and serial-to-USB adapters only seem to work with a certain chip in this case.

Then I stumbled upon the GPL software HXTape, and I was totally baffled: What, the Epson HX-20 had an external cassette interface as well? I knew that concept from our even older machine, the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. It connected to a special music cassette recorder and encoded data into simple “magnetic bits” onto the tape:

It was quite funny to listen to the noisy sounds when playing the MCs on an ordinary player.

This bidirectional data transfer works over ordinary mono audio cables, one for each direction. And now, it turns out the HX-20 had such an interface as well, and we never used it. But the point is, one could exploit it to decode the audio signals into the original bits and bytes by connecting the HX-20’s “MIC” port to the microphone input of a PC using a simple mono audio cable with standard 3.5 mm jacks! (How tremendous the analog world was! Keep a music cassette lying around in the basement for decades and then just play it. Try this with your ¡Phone!) And that audio decoding is exactly what HXTape is doing.

Eight years ago, I wrote in the history of my computer usage,

In 1988, when I entered grammar school, [...] I did a bit more serious BASIC programming on an Epson HX-20, which I still own today, but isn’t working anymore. [...] My cousin René taught me some BASIC things like how to use the random number generator.

Well, it turns out that this machine is still alive, as you can see in this video:

You can even watch me loading my cousin’s learning program from the micro cassette—that very lines he’d written for me on Dec 29th, 1988. Though, its output was designed for a separate and larger screen that I don’t own anymore.

I’m pretty sure that this machine had slept from ~1995 until I woke it up now. I hope I can also have a look at my other programs on that micro cassette.

1983_kerze_du_musst_verschwinden.mp3

Kerze, du musst verschwinden
Kerze, du musst verschwinden
Du bist also da
Kerze, du musst verschwinden
Und der Rauch auch, mach ein Feuer
Jetzt ist Weihnachten
Du bist hier, du bist weg und du bist hier
Mach ein Feuer, uh!
MICHIII!!! Jetz wü i wos singa!
Plötzlich brennt das ganze Haus
Und das Fenster, und der Blumenstrauß
Alles, alles brennt doch auf
Alles ist doch alles schwarz
Schere, Blumenstock, Sessel, Kerze
Aschenbecher, Tisch, Decke, Boden
Alles, alles ist doch kaputt
Und das ganze Haus explodiert
Und der Blumenstrauß ist fort

Copyright © 1983 by Stephan Paukner

On April 1st, 2008, it’s 10 years that I’m a netizen. I already had an e-mail address a few months before, but it was April 1998 when I seriously started to use the internet. This gives me some motivation to round it all up a bit.

I took my first programming steps around 1986 on a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. It was a home computer similar to the later following Commodore 64: It had a black/silver keyboard with a slot for cartridges. It could be connected to an ordinary TV, and own software was saved on ordinary MCs by a special tape drive—It was quite funny to listen to the noisy sounds when playing the MCs on an ordinary player. We had two game cartridges: TI Invaders (screenshots) and Hunt The Wumpus (screenshots). The computer had a TI BASIC interpreter built in. The first program my stepdad taught me was:

Recently I wrote about a history of my cell phones and wondered whether I still own my very first cell phones. Yes I do! I took some pictures of my Philips Fizz and my Motorola StarTAC 75. Unfortunately, I don’t have any battery chargers anymore, so I couldn’t verify their function.

We’re writing the year 1996. TV commercials start to add something like “www.companyname.com” at the bottom corners of the screen. Cell phones start to become popular. Some mates I met at the Austrian Federal Armed Forces used such things to phone with their girlfriends. As I didn’t have a girlfriend, I didn’t need a cell phone. It was the time when cell phones began to drop down from the managers to the rednecks, who carried them on their belts as if they were revolvers, always ready to draw.

It took me until October 1997 to receive my first one, due to opening a student’s account at a local bank. It was a Philips Fizz. I think I still have it somewhere at my parents, and it still should work, except for the display which has been broken by my brother. It was a cute thing. Philips seemed to have different designs which they didn’t distinguish. The antenna could be pulled out and the SIM-card had the size of a credit card. As I only had a prepaid card at that time, calls became rather expensive. I’m not quite sure if everyone was worth it.