Matthew’s Workbench

The Boston Herald published an interesting article recently: Designers on quest to build $12 computer. The idea seems to be to develop educational software for inexpensive 8-bit computers that are commonly available in China and India. What caught my attention was the mention that those 8-bit computer are based on the Apple II.

That didn’t make much sense to me. The ROMs inside an Apple II are very important for compatibility and they are still copyrighted. I would consider it unlikely that Apple would license them, even at this late date. Not only that, but the Applesoft BASIC ROM is owned by Microsoft, not Apple, making that idea even less likely. Any computer with copied ROMs would be illegal, making the whole project suspect.

But a later Computerworld article gave more details: $12 Indian ‘TV computer’ a knockoff of ’80s Nintendo system, not Apple II. According to that article, the computer mentioned is manufactured by Victor and named the Victor-70. It is actually a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) clone. Both the Apple II and the NES used a 6502 processor, which was probably the basis for the confusion. I don’t know how large a boot ROM the NES used, but it would probably have been easier to reverse engineer than the Apple II. Of course, that assumes that the Victor-70 doesn’t just include a copy of the NES ROM.

All of the information available is somewhat contradictory, but you can see a wiki with more details here: The $10 TV Computer Project. I would have thought that NES clones are rare, but there seem to be at least three of them available for sale in the United States:

• Generation NEX
• Neo Fami System Silver/Black US Version
• FC Mobile

I’ve used rechargeable batteries for many years, mostly nickel-cadmium batteries, also known as nicads, which are ideal for infrequently used items such as radios or flashlights. They can be stored safely and they don’t lose their charge over time. Even though nickel-cadmium batteries can last far longer than most people think, they do eventually wear out and need to be replaced.

When I recently tried to buy some replacement nickel-cadmium batteries, I was surprised that I couldn’t find them anywhere. Nickel-cadmium batteries must have gone out of favor while I wasn’t paying attention. Environmental concerns may have played a role because cadmium is a heavy metal and difficult to dispose of safely.

Rechargeable Alkalines

Another option used to be rechargeable alkaline batteries. I’ve never used any rechargeable alkalines myself, but I have read some accounts suggesting that they weren’t very reliable. That might explain why they disappeared from stores not too long after their introduction.

I have had several people tell me that the best idea is to recharge ordinary alkaline batteries, despite the fact that every battery manufacturer warns you not to. But I’ve seen too many electronic items damaged or destroyed by leaking alkaline batteries to seriously consider that option. I don’t want to encourage batteries to burst.

Nickel-Metal Hydride Batteries

Now the stores are full of nickel-metal hydride and lithium-ion batteries. Consumer lithium-ion batteries seem to be quite new (some sources still say that they don’t exist). But I already use nickel-metal hydride batteries in a number of items. Many high-powered devices, such as digital cameras, require nickel-metal hydride batteries and won’t work properly with alkaline batteries.

But nickel-metal hydride batteries have two related disadvantages:

• they need to be charged before they can be used
• they discharge a good deal of their capacity in storage.

The need to charge the batteries before use doesn’t bother me. But the rapid loss of charge does make them unsuitable for the very applications for which nickel-cadmium batteries are best suited. Some of my nickel-metal hydride batteries lose half of their charge in just a matter of days.

Low Self Discharge Nickel-Metal Hydride Batteries

Fortunately, there seem to have been some advancements in nickel-metal hydride battery technology since I last purchased any. There is a new class of batteries called low self discharge (which has an unfortunate acronym). They address the two disadvantages of nickel-metal hydride batteries:

• they come precharged when you buy them
• they discharge much more slowly

Some of the low self discharge batteries appear to discharge even slower than nickel-cadmium batteries, and are advertised to keep nearly their full charge if stored for six months or a year.

I have always liked to visit Radio Shack stores. I owned several TRS-80 computers (and still do), and I liked to examine the computers on display. It was somewhat less interesting once they got out of that business, but I still liked to look at their electronic supplies and tools.

All Radio Shack stores used to have large electronic sections. They had drawers of LED’s, resistors, capacitors, diodes, connectors, and even some integrated circuits. The parts were overpriced compared to mail-order merchants, but the convenience of being able to walk out with just the part you needed was worth a lot.

But now the selection of electronic parts in a Radio Shack store varies greatly depending on the store. One store I like to visit still has a large electronic section. They even have some unusual items that you wouldn’t expect to see there, such as BASIC Stamp modules and starter kits. The manager is friendly and has an interest in electronics, probably explaining the large number of parts.

A more local Radio Shack is, I suspect, more typical. It is almost all cell phones and televisions, with only a small corner containing a few shopworn electronics parts. Who would want to buy PCB etchant in a box faded nearly to white, coated with a thick layer of dust?

I can understand why Radio Shack (or RadioShack as they are known now) wanted to move away from their electronic parts image. But it is still a shame that they have abandoned so much of what made their stores different.

This episode of Gunsmoke was first broadcast on CBS Radio on July 19, 1952.

In a Dodge City saloon, Thorne Finley provokes a fight with a man he believes to be a “pasty-faced tenderfoot”. Unbeknownst to him, that “dude” is actually the notorious gunfighter, Doc Holliday. Marshall Dillon recognizes his old friend, and throws Thorne in jail before the fight can continue.

Thorne’s father is Big Jack Finley, a cattle baron who owns a good portion of Kansas. Big Jack has coddled Thorne his whole life, and now uses his influence to keep his son out of jail. As Marshall Dillon notes, Thorne been arrested for 18 offenses, convicted of 10, but has spent no time in jail and paid only $15 in fines. Matt Dillon refuses to release Thorne and rejects Big Jack’s offer of a $200 a month job “protecting his interests” by ignoring Thorne’s crimes in the future. But Big Jack manages to get a judge to sign an order releasing Thorne from jail.

Doc Holliday is quite ill and under orders to go to Arizona where the dry air will be better for his lungs. He was invited by Wyatt Earp and his brothers to visit the mining town of Tombstone. But he has a “chore” to do in Dodge City first: avenge the murders of Ruth Davis and her brother. Both of their deaths were thought to be accidental, but Holliday believes they were murdered. He intends to shoot the killer: Big Jack Finley.

This is one of my favorite episodes of Gunsmoke. Veteran old time radio actor Harry Bartell’s portrayal of Doc Holliday is superb. He comes across as a seemingly mild man with an undercurrent of ruthlessness just beneath the surface.

This episode stars William Conrad as Matt Dillon and Parley Baer as Chester Proudfoot. It features Harry Bartell as Doc Holliday and also Lee Millar, Nestor Paiva, Ralph Moody, and Tom Tully. You can download it from the old time radio section of the Internet Archive here:

Download Gunsmoke - Doc Holliday - July 19, 1952

You’re a detective sergeant. You’re assigned to homicide detail. A thirty-year old woman is missing. Three months passed before her disappearance is reported. There’s not a trace of the woman.  No lead to her whereabouts. Your job: find her.

“It was Monday, June 9. It was warm in Los Angeles. We were working the day watch out of homicide detail. My partner’s Ben Romero. The boss is Thad Brown, chief of detectives. My name’s Friday. I was on the way back from the stats office and it was 10:18AM when I got to room 42:  Homicide.”

No one has heard from Ruth Daley’s twin sister Bernice for three months. Ruth wasn’t initially concerned because Bernice has a history of leaving without telling anyone, even traveling to Arizona for a month the previous year. But the behavior of Bernice’s husband, James Butler (Harry Bartell), concerns her. When Ruth last spoke to him, he refused to speak about Bernice. His only comment was: “You’d be surprised if I killed her, wouldn’t you? You’d be surprised.”

Ruth describes Butler as a “milquetoast character, timid, skinny, most of the time afraid to say boo”. But when Friday and Romero question Butler, his behavior is anything but timid. He claims to be a gangster, brags about previous problems with the law, and mentions that he beat his wife and threatened to kill her several times. He also states that he is clever enough to dispose of a body without getting caught.

Friday and Romero can find no confirmation for Butler’s wild claims, and are inclined to dismiss his statements as insane boasting. Even the discovery of a blood-stained hammer in his attic leads nowhere. When Friday and Romero help Ruth in an attempt to trap Butler into a confession, things goes badly wrong. The truth is finally revealed, but it is stranger than anyone could have expected.

This episode was first broadcast on NBC radio on August 30, 1951 and was sponsored by Fatima Cigarettes. It was reworked for television in 1958 as The Big Irony. You can download it from the Internet Archive here:

Download Dragnet - The Big Crazy - August 30, 1951

Robert Scoble wrote an thought-provoking article titled Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you. It addressed an idea I have been considering for a while: are technology weblogs just not as interesting and relevant as they used to be? Have they become too focused on the business of ideas and not the ideas themselves?

There are so many weblogs out there that no one person could possibly follow them all. You have to narrow it down, and I have some definite ideas of what I am looking for. I want to read weblogs by people who are doing interesting things, or at least people who are talking about people who are doing interesting things. I want to read weblogs by people who express creative ideas that challenge the status quo. I want a weblog to be different, not just the same as what I can find from a dozen other sources.

A Seemingly Unrelated Story

Many excellent early computer magazines were produced by people who had little or no magazine experience. You might say that they were too ignorant of the accepted wisdom of the magazine business to realize that what they were attempting couldn’t work. So sometimes they went ahead in their ignorance and created a great magazine anyway.

One way they did this was by actively soliciting reader contributions and building up a community around their magazine.  The end result was a magazine that catered to their readers better than any other could. This was a brilliant approach, but it’s not the way you’re supposed to run a “professional” magazine.

Once the magazines lost sight of that approach and tried to imitate their peers, they lost their focus. They started to use more staff writers, switched to printing only in-house reviews, and reduced the amount of reader-created content. They turned their backs on their community of readers, which was the very thing that made their magazine special in the first place.

The Moral

So what is the moral of this story? The crucial mistake they made was changing their focus to try to impress their peers rather than serve their readers. I frequently see the criticism of weblogs that they need to “grow-up” and become more like magazines or newspapers. But this is completely wrong. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it doesn’t make for very interesting reading. It would be a grave mistake for weblogs to give up the very qualities that make them unique in an ill-fated attempt to mimic their more “professional” brethren.