Chapter 11.7: Headwinds -- License
Chapter 11.8: Headwinds -- Fixes
[JMR202005032002 -- cleanup:]
Ms. Bight looked over at Mr. Goldwater, and Mr. Goldwater tilted his head in acknowledgement. "I think," he said, "although nothing you've covered so far is really news to IBM, we should probably have a similar discussion at some time."
"I can do that."
"By the way, how is your little exercise in masochism coming?"
"Ehhh?" I had to think about that a moment. "Ah, you're referring to the floppy controller."
"Right."
"Do you want to see what I showed Ms. Bight?"
"No, going back over that won't be necessary."
"Current status is not-quite-there-yet. I have routines to write tracks and sectors in MFM, so I should be able to format a disk for Giselle's Color Computer, but the Color Computer doesn't recognize the formatted disk. And my controller doesn't recognize tracks laid down by the Color Computer."
"Alignment?"
"I think I've got that taken care of."
"Let's see you prove it."
I looked around and addressed the students. "Uh, this isn't directly related to the project, and I think we've covered a lot of ground on the project today. So if anyone needs to go, go ahead."
Suzanne said, "If Mark and Jeff are willing to walk me through how they put their designs together, I'd like to see that before I go."
"Are you guys up for that?"
Mark and Jeff looked at each other and nodded.
Mark said, "You talk about how showing stuff to others helps you learn it better yourself. I'm willing to try it."
Jeff added, "I'm game, too."
"But I also want to watch while you work on your floppy controller." Suzanne raised her eyebrows apologetically.
"So you could keep an eye on what we do with the floppies while you work on your trainer design?"
"I could probably do that."
"Okay. And anyone who wants to leave, somebody will take notes."
"Oh." Mom stood up. "That's me. Your papers should be coming soon."
Dad stood up, too. "I will help you," he said in his pseudo-mock seriousness.
"Thanks for coming, Mom, Dad."
"Wouldn't have missed it, Hon. See you at home."
"Do the good, son."
And they left, along with most of the school board members. None of the students left.
Jeff asked, "Who wants to get started working on your trainers?"
Several students said they did, so Mark and Jeff moved around to help them.
Ms. Steward asked, "So, Joe, are you going to design another of those trainers for yourself?"
"I'm thinking I'll design one with the 6805, since Julia already built the design she helped me put together. But, I need to get Flex running first."
Julia was sitting near me, in front of the computer, and gave me a quiet sideways kick.
"Hey. I'm glad you built it. And it gives me an excuse to do another."
She crinkled her eyebrows in a smirk.
"Hah. Well, let's look at your floppy controller," Ms. Steward prompted me
Julia and Giselle helped me demonstrate the parts of the controller I had gotten working, showing how the controller and drive were able to address track and sector, how I had used floppies written by the Color Computer to align my drives, and how the floppies formatted with the 68701 controller on the Micro Chroma 68 were not yet compatible with those the Color Computer produced.
Mr. Wells asked, "Do you have an idea what's wrong?"
"Nothing clear, but the first thing I'm going to try is using the Micro Chroma to get a raw read of a track written by the Color Computer drive. That'll tell us a lot. Ran out of time for it last night."
Julia murmured, "Sorry."
"For what?"
"Taking your time last night."
"I'm not sorry. It was a good homework session." I wasn't sure if it was Ms. Bight or Ms Philips that snickered, but I ignored it, and it seemed Julia did, as well. "Let's see what that raw read looks like."
Using the programs and circuits that I had put together earlier, I used Giselle's disk drive with the Micro Chroma 68 and my controller to write full tracks at track zero, track 18, and track thirty-five, then used my drive to read the tracks back and make sure that what was written was exactly what was read back. I explained that it was not proof that my drives and heads were correctly aligned, but that it did raise my confidence level on the alignment.
Then I read the first track on a floppy formatted by the Color Computer and on a floppy formatted by the Micro Chroma 68. Comparing the tracks, it quickly became apparent that my controller was writing the sectors too early.
"Ah." I showed the track read results to those who were watching at the time. "See that? My calculations for the timing to reach each sector is a bit quicker than the timing for the Western Digital controller."
Then I set an oscilloscope up to trigger on the end of a sector, and confirmed for myself that the controller needed to wait about fourteen micro-seconds longer in the disk rotation before starting a sector write, and wait about that much longer before giving up on a sector read.
I showed the timing signal patterns on the scope, then showed the source code for the section that set the timing up.
Some of the students were not seeing what was happening, so I wrote more test data and showed more measurements.
Wallace asked, "Can you fix it?"
"I guess I can."
I rewrote the sector timing code, burned it into another 68701 to avoid waiting for the EPROM eraser to finish, and also to keep the old version around for reference. I plugged the newly burned 68701 into the drive controller board, and used it to format a new disk on the Micro Chroma 68.
Then I used the newly formatted disk to save and load files on the Color Computer, and the students watching cheered when the files came back successfully.
Ms. Bight looked surprised. "You managed to construct an empty directory with that already?"
"The Color Computer Disk BASIC just assumes that empty directory sectors are an empty directory, so just formatting everything blank is enough."
"Oh. Simple is useful."
"Sometimes."
Everyone watched while the Micro Chroma, with the later timing in the read, successfully read individual sectors from the Color Computer formatted disk.
Then we checked the data patterns again with the scope. My controller still did not produce identical patterns to those produced on the Color Computer, but they were much closer.
"I'll write code to exercise the entire drive later, when I can take the time to do it right, but I should be able to install Flex pretty soon, and then I'll have a proper operating system."
"Flex is the OS?" Freddie asked.
Pat answered, "It's supposed to be similar to CPM."
"It's the OS I'm going to use for now."
Bob asked, "So that floppy disk controller is basically the 68701?"
"Right. The same one that I'm going to use in a redesign of the Micro Chroma 68."
"Then the Western Digital floppy disk controller is just a microprocessor?"
"With a bit of internal circuitry that's external on my controller."
"So it's a pretty good controller."
"I think so."
"If I make a controller for oil field gear using the 68701, will Motorola require royalties or something?"
"Royalties." I muttered. It occurred to me that the term "royalty" itself spoke volumes to the issues of whether current patent and copyright law were in effective contradiction to the Constitution, but I decided to save that discussion for later.
"Depends on what the design looks like," Ms. Philips filled in for me. "It's quite possible to build many things with the 68701 that don't infringe Motorola's patent claims, but we have a legal department that can help vet the design. Let me get your name and address and we'll send you some information about that."
"And the school board says the school can help while you're a student here," Dr. Brown added. "Come talk to me about it."
"Sounds good." Bob seemed happy with this information as he wrote his contact information down for Ms. Philips.
"How is everyone coming on designing their trainers?" I asked.
Mark looked up from where he was helping Wallace. "Pretty good. Anyone else going to work on theirs today?"
I looked around at the students. "Looks like everybody who isn't working on their design now thinks they are already finished?"
"Think." Jennifer laughed. "That's probably accurate. We'll see how complete our designs are as we get them put together, I guess."
There were scattered chuckles.
"It'll be a good thing to do next week?" Dr. Brown suggested, to general agreement.
"What about Julia?" Suzanne asked, looking up from the schematic that Jeff was helping her with. "Is she going to build her own design? Why does she get to use your design?"
I chuckled as I turned to Julia, and I noticed Mike had looked up from his work at her, too. I had the impression she was deliberately ignoring him.
"What do you think, Julia? Do you want to try your own design?"
She smirked. "I suppose I'd have to spend even more time at your house, so you could teach me all the electronics I don't know yet."
In the corner of my eye, I could see Mike's face fall.
I turned back to Suzanne. "Julia's in a different field. She's here because she's my friend. And she's helping make this project possible. And if she wants to get credit for this as a project class, yeah, she'll do her own. If it's possible to get credit without taking the prerequisites."
"Credit. I wonder if it would be useful in my field." Julia tilted her head and pulled her mouth to one side.
"Helping, huh?" Suzanne looked over at President Flyer, and pulled her lips into a faint grimace.
"I can be incredibly bad about writing things down. Perhaps I shouldn't let her help me with that, but, if she weren't helping me keep track of what I'm doing, we would not be here today." I looked around the room. "Does anyone else take exception to these arrangements?"
"No way!" Jennifer was quick to speak, and others echoed her sentiment. Mike remained silent.
Rather than escalating things further, I waited for Suzanne to respond, trying to read her intent from her expression, but there was too much mixed in to read clearly.
After maybe half a minute, she said, quietly,"Sorry, Julia. I'm not really a bitch all the time."
"No offense taken. It's probably good to clarify things, anyway."
"Yeah. My fault for not explaining why she's here," I added.
Suzanne turned back to her design, and several of the students gathered around to back-seat drive as Jeff continued helping her work out something she was having trouble with. I went over to check, too, but Jeff had already figured out what she was stuck on and was quickly getting her untangled without my help.
"Just so Dr. Brown and I have some idea where things are headed, how many of us are building 6805 trainers?" I asked.
All of the students raised their hands.
"Oh. Then nobody building 6801 trainers?"
More than half raised their hands.
"Ah, okay, how about 9940s?"
Four students.
And three were targeting 6502, two were targeting Z-80, two were targeting 8085, one was targeting 1802, and one was targeting Z-8.
"Great. Many of you are already planning your second and third steps. Any others?"
Bob raised his hand. "8088."
"Very good."
Jeff and Mark raised their hands and said, practically in unison, "6809."
"Great."
Mike raised his hand, as well. "68008."
"Okay." I looked around, and it appeared no one else wanted to announce more plans.
"So, I think we're done with this week's installment, and I think I need to give my attention to some non-students for a bit. Will next Thursday be okay for everyone to get together and compare progress, as Dr. Brown suggests?"
"Wait!" Winston called out. "What about the Micro Chroma 68 boards?"
Lots of faces turned.
I looked over at Ms. Steward. "What is the official word on that? Can they be made available?"
"I've brought five, with 6803s instead of 6802s in the included chipset, if anyone is really anxious to have one. One is for you, Joe, to work on the daughterboard with, since I assume you want to keep the one you've got running for the tools it has."
"True, it's probably safer to do that on a different board."
"6803s?" Terry asked.
"A 6803 is a 6801 that doesn't have ROM," Jeff explained. "The 6846's monitor ROM should work, shouldn't it?" he asked Ms. Steward.
"Yes, the engineers say it should. It just needs the daughterboard, to convert between the pinout of the 6803 and the 6802 pinout laid out on the board."
Dr. Brown asked, "Could I buy a couple of those for the school?"
Ms. Steward looked perplexed. "I think I can get you a couple, but I'll have to check with my boss. These are only cleared for students, and non-students should be paying a non-student price. On the other hand, we might be able to just donate a couple to the school. Can I borrow your phone to check with the office later? They didn't send us out with one of our portable phones."
"Sure. That would be really great."
Julia said, quietly, "Could I get one, even though I'm not really in the project?"
I exchanged glances with her. "It's not compatible with the Color Computer."
"I know."
"What do you think?" Ms. Steward asked Ms. Philips.
"At present, there's nothing in our plan that says the students have to be in a technology or engineering major, so, yes, you could, Julia."
Mark asked, "Say, Joe, you're pretty busy, you think Jeff and I could work out the daughterboard design?"
I didn't even have to think about it. "Mostly a matter of hard-wiring the boot mode, setting up some latches to de-multiplex the buses, and then routing the demultiplexed buses. I think there's a control signal or two to be synthesized. Sure."
I thought for a moment. "Well, I might add wiring for a DMA controller .... Nah, not relevant. Most of you guys could do it. I'll check what you come up with before we break up, and I'll bet somebody could get a board booting to the monitor over the weekend."
"But it looks like there's more interest than we have boards with us," Ms. Steward pointed out. "We'll dig up more when we get back to Austin, and have them shipped, but I don't want to suggest how we should distribute these that I've brought."
"Dr. Brown, what do you think?"
"Who's ready to buy one now?"
Mark and Jeff raised their hands, as did Winston and Suzanne. I had the impression most of the rest of the students were holding back.
Mr. Cisneros said, "Julia?"
"I'm willing to wait, Dad."
Jennifer spoke up. "I think Julia should get one."
"She'll get the one I use to develop the daughterboard. She's likely to be helping me with it anyway."
Jennifer looked like she wanted to try to convince Suzanne to wait, but she backed off.
"If everyone else is willing to wait, there is also the redesign I'll be working on when I get the disk drive controller working and the daughterboard ready. That will be a lot more work, since it'll be all point-to-point wiring, unless you're willing to wait until Motorola gets it ready to make a PC board."
Greg said, "I'd rather have something that's known to work."
"Okay, how many of us want one, if they can find that many?"
All the students raised their hands.
Ms. Steward nodded and said, "I'll see what we can do."
With that, the meeting broke up. Many of the students and the rest of the school board and staff other than Dr. Brown left. Julia's parents said goodbye, too.
Mark, Jeff, Winston, and Suzanne stayed to buy their boards and discuss building the computer, and several others stayed as well -- Bob, Jennifer, Pat, Mike, and George among them, wanting information.
While Ms. Steward was getting them taken care of for them, I went over to talk with Dave and Jayne. Mr. Wells and Ms. Philips were deep in discussion nearby.
"Sorry I never dropped by."
"I must say, I don't blame you. TI's 9900 has not been well received."
"I never was very confident of my productivity while I was working for you guys."
Dave looked at me straight-on. "You're one of those slow but steady types. Management was disappointed when you decided to leave."
I ducked my head. "Well, what can I do from here?"
"Do you think you could you work up an analysis of the 9900 like you've done with the 6800 and present it to our board of directors? There is a group working on an advanced controller design, but it would be something of a coup if we could directly recover our investment in the 9900. Or, if the 9900 is just not going to work, it would be good to have some better reasons why."
"Better?"
Jayne shook her head. "Lots of negativity in the company towards it."
I nodded. "It'll take me a bit of time. I'll have to work with the four who want to work with the 9940. Can you at least sample me a couple of parts?"
"I'm pretty sure we can sample parts for both you and the four who have expressed interest, we just can't promise more than two for you without checking upstairs first."
"Specs?"
"We held a set back for you," Jayne grinned as she handed me the datasheets and application notes.
"Okay." I accepted what she gave me and examined it. "I'll take a closer look at these over the next few days and call you with some initial plans."
I turned to Ms. Bight.
She didn't make me ask. "There's a lot of interest in how this project is coming together. We're not really ready to make an offer on your summertime until we see the results. We do want you to join us for an internship, but we don't want to make specific plans too far ahead of time. We also may be interested in accepting internship applications from one or two other students from this group, if you want to recommend someone."
"Okay."
Mr. Goldwater grinned. "I still have doubts about some of this, but I think you're doing a great job, really."
Mr. Wells nodded. "And I'm going to talk with Ms. Steward about sharing your summer with Motorola, as one possibility."
"I'm in agreement on that," Ms. Philips said.
Ms. Steward returned. "So, what would you think of writing an article on the Micro Chroma 68 and the Micro Chroma 6801 over spring break? -- as an internship project."
I had to think about it.
"Yeah, I guess I could do that. But I don't want to lose my whole spring break." I looked over at at the group where Julia was sitting. "Would there be a problem with me enlisting help?"
Ms. Philips answered. "Shouldn't be, if you can work it out the details with, uhm, the people you ask, I suppose." She grinned, knowingly. "Just be fair with them and make it clear in your reports to us who did what."
We talked a bit more about technology and microprocessors while Ms. Steward and Ms. Turner put their cameras and recorders away. I tried a couple of times to bring up the 6809, but both Ms. Steward and Ms. Philips seemed to be avoiding the topic.
After the three corporate contingents left, I joined the discussion about the Micro Chroma 68 daughterboard and checked the schematics they had drawn. Mark's and Jeff's were essentially the same, and looked workable. Bob's attempt looked too complicated, and the others had given up.
"You know, I'd kinda like to try to put mine together tonight," Winston said.
Suzanne gave me a look that I suppose she thought was meaningful. "Yeah, me, too. I suppose you're busy tonight?"
"Yeah, I've got a bit to do. A lot to do, really."
"I'm definitely not in a rush to get mine built," Julia said.
"Parts. You all need parts. Do you know what parts you need?"
Jeff dug through the manuals that had come with the board, and started through the parts lists. "Got one of these. Need this. ..."
Jeff watched for a moment, then started working through the parts list, checking what he had, and then Winston and Suzanne did the same.
Julia and Giselle and I exchanged glances, and Julia and I both shrugged. I sat down and drew up a parts list for the daughterboard before checking my own parts bins. "Are you guys going to all converge on the Radio Shack on Andrews Highway?"
"There's also the one in the mall," Mike pointed out.
"Dad does business with the supply shop next to the surplus store out on West County Road." (That highway has long since been renamed.)
"Let's get what parts we can tonight and tomorrow after lunch, then get together again here," I suggested. "Would that be okay, Dr. Brown?"
"Sure."
The rest left, and Julia and Giselle and I packed up the computers and loaded them in the Colt. Giselle road with Julia in her car.
*****
"So are there any papers left for me to deliver?" I asked my parents as we brought stuff in from the Colt.
"Nope. Sorry. We done it all by ourselves." Mom grinned at me.
"Sorry. Thanks."
"How did it go?"
"I guess I'll know soon enough. I did fix a bug in the controller code. And it looks like we've started a club."
[JMR202005041414 -- missing details:]
"Oh. You've got a couple of packages." Mom pointed at the coffee table, where there were two thick envelopes, one with the TSC logo and the other with the Mountain View Press logo.
Julia looked at them curiously.
"Order for Flex and some compilers from TSC, and for something called Forth, from a place in California."
She looked at me. "Why aren't you excited?"
"Trying to decide which to look at first. After dinner and homework."
[JMR202005041414 -- missing details.]
[JMR202005032002 -- cleanup.]
[JMR202004291048 -- original:]
Ms. Bight looked over at Mr. Goldwater, and Mr. Goldwater tilted his head in acknowledgement. "I think," he said, "although nothing you've covered so far is really news to IBM, we should probably have a similar discussion at some time."
"I can do that."
"By the way, how is your little exercise in masochism coming?"
"Ehhh?" I had to think about that a moment. "Ah, you're referring to the floppy controller."
"Right."
"Do you want to see what I showed Ms. Bight?"
"No, going back over that won't be necessary."
"Current status is not-quite-there-yet. I have routines to write tracks and sectors in MFM, so I should be able to format a disk for Giselle's Color Computer, but the Color Computer doesn't recognize the formatted disk. And my controller doesn't recognize tracks laid down by the Color Computer."
"Alignment?"
"I think I've got that taken care of."
"Let's see you prove it."
I looked around and addressed the students. "Uh, this isn't directly related to the project, and I think we've covered a lot of ground on the project today. So if anyone needs to go, go ahead."
Suzanne said, "If Mark and Jeff are willing to walk me through how they put their designs together, I'd like to see that before I go."
"Are you guys up for that?"
Mark and Jeff looked at each other and nodded.
Mark said, "You talk about how showing stuff to others helps you learn it better yourself. I'm willing to try it."
Jeff added, "I'm game, too."
"But I also want to watch you work on your floppy controller." Suzanne raised her eyebrows apologetically.
"So keep an eye on us while you work on your trainer design?"
"I could probably do that."
"Okay, anyone who wants to leave, somebody will take notes."
"Oh." Mom stood up. "That's me. Your papers should be coming soon."
Dad stood up, too. "I will help you," he said in his pseudo-mock seriousness.
"Thanks for coming, Mom, Dad."
"Wouldn't have missed it, Hon. See you at home."
And they left, along with most of the school board members. None of the students left.
Jeff asked, "Who wants to get started working on your trainers?"
Several students said they did, so Mark and Jeff moved around to help them.
Ms. Steward asked, "So, Joe, are you going to design another of those trainers for yourself?"
"I'm thinking I'll design one with the 6805, since Julia already built the design she helped me put together. But, I need to get Flex running first."
Julia was sitting near me, in front of the computer, and gave me a quiet sideways kick.
"Hey. I'm glad you built it. And it gives me an excuse to do another."
She crinkled her eyebrows in a smirk.
"Hah. Well, let's look at your floppy controller," Ms. Steward prompted me
Julia and Giselle helped me demonstrate the parts of the controller I had gotten working, showing how the controller and drive were able to address track and sector, how I had used floppies written by the Color Computer to align my drives, and how the floppies formatted with the 68701 controller on the Micro Chroma 68 were not yet compatible with those the Color Computer produced.
Mr. Wells asked, "Do you have an idea what's wrong?"
"Nothing clear, but the first thing I'm going to try is using the Micro Chroma to get a raw read of a track from the Color Computer. That'll tell us a lot. Ran out of time for it last night."
Julia murmured, "Sorry."
"For what?"
"Taking your time last night."
"I'm not sorry. It was a good homework session." I wasn't sure if it was Ms. Bight or Ms Philips that snickered, but I ignored it, and it seemed Julia did, as well. "Let's see what that raw read looks like."
Using previous programs and circuits, I used Giselle's disk drive on the Micro Chroma 68 to write full tracks at track zero, track 18, and track thirty-five, then used my drive to read the tracks back and make sure that what was written was exactly what was read back. I explained that it was not proof that my drives and heads were correctly aligned, but that it did raise my confidence level on the alignment.
Then I read the first track on a floppy formatted by the Color Computer and on a floppy formatted by the Micro Chroma 68. Comparing the tracks, it quickly became apparent that my controller was writing the segments too early.
I showed the track read results, then set an oscilloscope to trigger on the end of a segment, and confirmed for myself that the controller needed to wait fourteen micro-seconds more in the disk rotation before starting the sector write.
"Ah. See that? My calculations for the timing to reach each sector is a bit quicker than the timing for the Western Digital controller." I showed the patterns on the scope, then showed the source code for the section that set the timing up.
Some of the students were not seeing what was happening, so I wrote more test data and showed more measurements.
Wallace asked, "Can you fix it?"
"I guess I can."
I rewrote the sector timing code, burned it into another 68701 to avoid waiting for the EPROM eraser to finish, and also to keep the old version around for reference. I plugged the newly burned 68701 into the drive controller board, and used it to format a new disk on the Micro Chroma 68.
Then I used the newly formatted disk to save and load files on the Color Computer, and the students watching cheered when the files came back successfully.
Ms. Bight looked surprised. "You managed to construct an empty directory with that already?"
"The Color Computer Disk BASIC just assumes that empty directory sectors are an empty directory, so just formatting everything blank is enough."
"Oh. Simple is useful."
"Sometimes."
Everyone watched while the Micro Chroma, with the later timing in the read, successfully read individual sectors from the Color Computer formatted disk.
Then we checked the data patterns with the scope. My controller still did not produce identical patterns to those produced on the Color Computer, but they were much closer.
"I'll write code to exercise the entire drive later, when I can take the time to do it right, but I should be able to install Flex pretty soon, and then I'll have a proper operating system."
"Flex is the OS?" Freddie asked.
Pat answered, "It's supposed to be similar to CPM."
"It's the OS I'm going to use for now."
Bob asked, "So that floppy disk controller is the 68701?"
"Right. The same one that I'm going to use in a redesign of the Micro Chroma 68."
"Then the Western Digital floppy disk controller is just a microprocessor?"
"With a bit of internal circuitry that's external on my controller."
"If I make a controller for oil field gear using the 68701, will Motorola require royalties or something?"
"Royalties." I muttered. It occurred to me that the term "royalty" itself spoke volumes to the issues of whether current patent and copyright law were in effective contradiction to the Constitution, but I decided to save that discussion for later.
"Depends on what the design looks like," Ms. Philips replied for me. "It's quite possible to build many things with the 68701 that don't infringe Motorola's patent claims, but we have a legal department that can help vet the design. Let me get your name and address and we'll send you some information about that."
"And the school board says the school can help while you're a student here," Dr. Brown added. "Come talk to me about it."
"Sounds good." Bob seemed happy with this information as he wrote his contact information down for Ms. Philips.
"How is everyone coming on designing their trainers?" I asked.
Mark looked up from where he was helping Wallace. "Pretty good. Anyone else going to work on theirs today?"
I looked around at the students. "Looks like everybody who isn't working on their design now thinks they are already finished?"
"Think we are." Jennifer laughed. "That's probably accurate. We'll see how complete our designs are as we get them put together, I guess."
There were scattered chuckles.
"It'll be a good thing to do next week?" Dr. Brown suggested, to general agreement.
"What about Julia?" Suzanne asked, looking up from the schematic Jeff was helping her with. "Is she going to build her own design? Why does she get to use your design?"
I chuckled as I turned to Julia, and I noticed Mike looking up at her, too. I had the impression she was deliberately ignoring him.
"What do you think, Julia? Do you want to try your own design?"
She smirked. "I suppose I'd have to spend even more time at your house, so you could teach me all the electronics I don't know yet."
In the corner of my eye, I could see Mike's face fall.
I turned back to Suzanne. "Julia's in a different field. She's here because she's my friend. And she's helping make this project possible. And if she wants to get credit for this as a project class, yeah, she'll do her own. If it's possible to get credit without taking the prerequisites."
"Credit. I wonder if it would be useful in my field." Julia tilted her head and pulled her mouth to one side.
"Helping, huh?" Suzanne looked over at President Flyer, and pulled her lips into a faint grimace.
"I can be incredibly bad about writing things down. Perhaps I shouldn't let her help me with that, but, if she weren't helping, we would not be here today." I looked around the room. "Does anyone else take exception to these arrangements?"
"No way!" Jennifer was quick to speak, and others echoed her sentiment. Mike remained silent.
Rather than escalating things further, I waited for Suzanne to respond, trying to read her intent from her expression, but there was too much mixed in to read clearly.
After maybe half a minute, she said, quietly,"Sorry, Julia. I'm not really a bitch all the time."
"No offense taken. It's probably good to clarify things, anyway."
"Yeah. My bad for not doing so," I added.
Suzanne turned back to her design, and several of the students gathered around to back-seat drive as Jeff continued helping her work out something she was having trouble with. I went over to check, but Jeff had already figured out what she was stuck on and quickly got her untangled without my help.
"Just so Dr. Brown and I have some idea where things are headed, how many of us are building 6805 trainers?" I asked.
All of the students raised their hands.
"Oh. Nobody building 6801 trainers?"
More than half raised their hands.
"Ah, okay, how about 9940s?"
Four students.
And three were targeting 6502, two were targeting Z-80, two were targeting 8085, one was targeting 1802, and one was targeting Z-8.
"Great. Many of you are already planning your second and third steps. Any others?"
Bob raised his hand. "8088."
"Very good."
Jeff and Mark raised their hands and said, practically in unison, "6809."
"Great."
Mike raised his hand, as well. "68008."
"Okay." I looked around, and it appeared no one else wanted to announce more plans.
"So, I think we're done with this week's installment, and I think I need to give my attention to some non-students for a bit. Will next Thursday be okay for everyone to get together and compare progress, as Dr. Brown suggests?"
"Wait!" Winston called out. "What about the Micro Chroma 68 boards?"
Lots of faces turned.
I looked over at Ms. Steward. "What is the official word on that? Can they be made available?"
"I've brought five, with 6803s instead of 6802s in the included chipset, if anyone is really anxious to have one. One is for you, Joe, to work on the daughterboard with, since I assume you want to keep yours running for the tools it has."
"True, it's probably safer to do that on a different board."
"6803s?" Terry asked.
"A 6803 is a 6801 that doesn't have ROM," Jeff explained. "The 6846's monitor ROM should work, shouldn't it?" he asked Ms. Steward.
"Yes, the engineers say it should. It just needs the daughterboard, to convert the pinouts between the 68701 and the 6802 layout on the board."
Dr. Brown asked, "Could I buy a couple of those for the school?"
Ms. Steward looked perplexed. "I think so, but I'll have to check with my boss. These are only cleared for students, and non-students should be paying a non-student price. On the other hand, we might be able to just donate a couple to the school. Can I borrow your phone to check with the office later? They didn't send us out with one of our portable phones."
"Sure. That would be really great."
Julia said, quietly, "Could I get one, even though I'm not really in the project?"
I exchanged glances with her. "It's not compatible with the Color Computer."
"I know."
"What do you think?" Ms. Steward asked Ms. Philips.
"At present, there's nothing in our plan that says the students have to be in a technology or engineering major, so, yes, you could, Julia."
Mark asked, "Say, Joe, you're pretty busy, you think Jeff and I could work out the daughterboard design?"
I didn't even have to think about it. "Mostly a matter of hard-wiring the boot mode, setting up some latches to de-multiplex the buses, and then routing the buses. I think there's a control signal or two to be synthesized. Sure. Most of you guys could do it. I'll check what you come up with before I head home, and I'll bet somebody could get a board booting to the monitor over the weekend."
"But it looks like there's more interest than we have boards with us," Ms. Steward pointed out. "We'll dig up more when we get back to Austin, and have them shipped, but I don't want to suggest how we should distribute these that I've brought."
"Dr. Brown, what do you think?"
"Who's ready to buy one now?"
Mark and Jeff raised their hands, as did Winston and Suzanne. Most of the rest of the students were hesitating.
Mr. Cisneros said, "Julia?"
"I'm willing to wait, Dad."
Jennifer spoke up. "I think Julia should get one."
"She'll get the one I use to develop the daughterboard. She's likely to be helping me with it anyway."
Jennifer looked like she wanted to try to convince Suzanne to wait, but she backed off.
"If everyone else is willing to wait, there is also the redesign I'll be working on when I get the disk drive controller working and the daughterboard ready. That will be a lot more work, since it'll be all point-to-point wiring, unless you're willing to wait until Motorola gets it ready to make a PC board."
Greg said, "I'd rather have something that is known to work."
"Okay, how many of use want one, if they can find that many?"
All the students raised their hands.
Ms. Steward nodded and said, "I'll see what we can do."
With that, the meeting broke up. Most of the students left. Mark, Jeff, Winston, and Suzanne stayed to buy their boards and check the integrated circuits that were included.
While Ms. Steward was getting that taken care of for them, I went over to talk with Dave and Jayne. Mr. Wells and Ms. Philips were deep in discussion nearby.
"Sorry I never dropped by."
"I must say, I don't blame you. TI's 9900 has not been well received."
"I never was very confident of my productivity while I was working for you guys."
Dave looked at me straight-on. "You're one of those slow, but good types. Management was disappointed when you decided to leave."
I ducked my head. "Well, what can I do from here?"
"Do you think you could you work up an analysis of the 9900 like you've done with the 6800 and present it to our board of directors? There is a group working on an advanced controller design, but it would be something of a coup if we could directly recover our investment in the 9900. Or, if the 9900 is just not going to work, it would be good to have some more reasons why."
"More?"
Jayne shook her head. "Lots of negativity about it."
I nodded. "It'll take me a bit of time. I'll have to work with the four who want to work with the 9940. Can you at least sample me a couple of parts?"
"I'm pretty sure we can sample parts for both you and those four, we just can't promise more than two without checking upstairs."
"Okay, I'll take a look at it tonight and call you tomorrow with some temporary plans."
I turned to Ms. Bight.
She didn't make me ask. "There's a lot of interest in how this project is coming together, and we're not really ready to make an offer on your summertime until we see the results. We do want you to join us for an internship, but we don't want to be too specific about what it will be ahead of time. We're also interested in one or two other students from this group, if you want to recommend someone."
"Okay."
Mr. Goldwater grinned. "I still have some doubts about all this, but I think you're doing a great job, really."
Mr. Wells nodded. "I'm going to talk with Ms. Steward about sharing your summer with Motorola, as one possibility."
"I'm in agreement on that," Ms. Philips said.
Ms. Steward returned. "So, what would you think of writing an article on the Micro Chroma 68 and the Micro Chroma 6801 over spring break? -- as an internship project."
"Yeah, I think I can do that. Would there be a problem with enlisting Julia's help?"
Ms. Philips answered. "Shouldn't be, if you can work it out with her, I suppose."
We talked a bit more about technology and microprocessors while Ms. Steward and Ms. Turner put their cameras and recorders away. I kept trying to guide the conversation towards the 6809, but both Ms. Steward and Ms. Philips seemed to be one step ahead, and kept shifting the conversation away.
Julia and Giselle helped me pack up our stuff, and followed me home again in Julia's car.
"Well, are there any papers left for me to deliver?" I asked as we brought stuff in from the Colt.
"Nope. Sorry, we done it all by ourselves." Mom grinned at me.
"Sorry. Thanks."
"How did it go?"
"I guess I'll know soon enough. I did fix a bug in the controller code."
[JMR202004291048 -- original.]
Chapter 11.9: Headwinds -- what?
[Backed up at https://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2020/04/bk-33209-headwinds-fixes.html.
Some notes in https://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2020/04/notes-33209-headwinds-license.html.]
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Keep it on topic, and be patient with the moderator. I have other things to do, too, you know.