33209: Headwinds -- Buggy Floppy Controller

Chapter 11.3: Headwinds -- Church

Chapter 11.4: Headwinds -- Buggy Floppy Controller 

[JMR2020101528 -- My apologies for the change in format. Google's messing around with the editor.]

Monday, after classes, I spent a couple of hours in the lab testing low-level control operations for the disk drives. Jeff and Mark stuck around again to watch and talk, helping me stay focused.

Julia dropped by to see how things were going, and Jeff and Mark went over her notes with her again while I was deep down the rabbit hole. She stayed until I came up for air.

"Thanks for helping Julia with these notes, guys."

"No problem," Jeff shrugged. "I've been checking my own while we're at it."

"Me, too."

"Let me see what we have." They showed me their notes, and Julia looked over our shoulders as I studied the three sets of notes.

"Okay, I think I can see what we need to talk about next time we get everyone together. In the meantime, do you guys want to get a jump on everyone else?"

"As in?" Julia asked.

Jeff and Mark nodded.

"I have a couple of extra 68701s, if you guys want to get started wiring something."

"Yeah!"

"Hell yeah! Uh, sorry, Julia. Heck yeah."

Julia and I both rolled our eyes. I refrained from philosophizing about the real problem with so-called swear words.

"Won't they need to make schematics?" Julia asked.

I spent a half an hour helping Jeff and Mark work out full schematics for 6801 trainers, referring to my data sheets and application notes as we went, with Julia watching and somehow getting useful notes from our work. When we were done, we had enough to make parts lists for Mark's and Jeff's schematics, and I gave them both 68701s stuck into anti-static foam pads.

(Don't leave ICs in anti-static foam for more than a few months. It will do bad things to the leads, especially if you forget and leave them there for years.)

"I need to go back down the rabbit hole again."

"Can I copy your schematic?" Julia asked.

"Sure," I agreed without thinking too deeply as I turned back to the scopes and my source code.

"Can you guys help me make a parts list out of Joe's schematic?" 

Dr. Brown came over to take a look. 

"I do hope you guys aren't forgetting about mid-terms next week."

"No prob."

"On top of 'em."

I looked over at Julia.

"I'm fine. How about you?"

"I'm ahead of everything, too."

"Don't want any of your teachers complaining to me."

"Okay," I said. "We'll keep this short."

Julia, Mark, and Jeff worked out parts lists for each of the trainers as I dug back in.

*****

At home, after delivering the newspapers, I studied what I had on the Shugart interface definition and the Western Digital interface commands for the 17XX series controllers, borrowing Giselle's computer to test my understanding.

Dad ducked in to see how things were going. I was struggling with timing problems I was having because BASIC was not fast enough, and I showed Dad how the program couldn't get back to the controller quickly enough to check results.

"What do you think you need?"

"Well, an ICE would be nice, but that's pretty expensive."

"Ice?"

"In-circuit emulator."

"Oh. And now I really know. Does it cost more than an Apple computer with all the needed options?"

"Yep. Especially since I'd need a decent scope and some other expensive tools to go with it. Something like double or triple what an Apple with the essential options would cost, at minimum, even if I were buying used test equipment."

"Well, we don't have the budget of a factory. Is there anything that would help that doesn't cost as much?"

"Uh, yeah. Radio Shack has an editor/assembler program called EDTASM that would allow me to write 6809 assembler code that would be fast enough."

"How much?"

I got out the Radio Shack catalog and showed it to him. "Maybe I should seriously consider buying this," I mused to myself.

Dad cocked his head. "It's only about the same as the disk version of the word processor cost. Maybe you should let me cover it." Then he pointed to a program cartridge with the same name. "This is cheaper, what is it?"

"It's a cartridge version of the same program."

"How much would it help?"

"Not much for the disk drives, at least without the MPI."

"MPI? What's that?"

I showed him the page where that was. "Multi-pak Interface. It allows you to use up to four cartridge paks at once -- game paks, program paks, I/O cartridges and whatnot."

"Now I remember Trina explaining that. Expandability is good. Would the MPI and the cartridge EDTASM help?"

"I'm not sure if they would help right now. No, probably not. If Radio Shack had used the 6809's 64K address space more carefully, so that using the cartridge version didn't require using the MPI to switch the floppy controller in and out of the memory map, maybe so. Or if the cartridge recognized the MPI and had provisions to work through it. It doesn't look like it does. So the switching back and forth is going to be a problem whose best solution is the disk version of the program anyway."

"Would Zed or your Mommy or I be able to use this?"

"I don't think so ..."

Giselle looked at me doubtfully, as if maybe I shouldn't decide such things for her.

"Well, it's pretty arcane ...," I tried to explain.

We continued to discuss my needs and Giselle's needs for another couple of minutes before I called Radio Shack to see if they had the disk version in stock. They did, and I rode my bike out to get a copy of the program, leaving unsettled the question of whether Dad would cover the cost if I needed the money later.

It turned out there was a sale, and I bought both the disk and cartridge versions for less than the catalog price of the disk version. Radio Shack was good for those sales.

When I got back, Julia had come over, and she joined us for dinner. After dinner, she waited and worked on homework while I went out to catch a few customers' late subscriptions.

When I got back, we talked while she worked on her homework and I used assembly language to write programs to investigate the Color Computer's disk drive controller and sketched out plans to implement a drive controller that presented a WD17XX compatible interface using a 68701 and some other parts instead of Western Digital's controller.

*****

Denny called during the cheap time after Julia left.

"So Dad says she's a real beaut."

"Dang if she isn't."

"What about church?"

"We've talked a little about that, and we both seem to be okay with keeping things cool and keeping the question of religion open."

"Keep your spiritual eyes and ears open, and make sure she talks with the missionaries as soon as possible."

"Right. And I'll need to spend time with her pastor. We both need information."

"So, about the Micro Chroma 68 boards, I've got good news and bad."

"Give me the bad news first."

"My boss said that there are more Micro Chroma 68 main boards somewhere, but they aren't really enthusiastic about selling them to students. They'd rather the students get experience on the 6801 or 6805."

"Not the 6809?"

"They really don't seem all that anxious to have people using the 6809."

"No?"

"We'll have to talk about it sometime."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Sometime later."

"And the good news?"

"Good news is they are interested in sampling 4K EPROM versions of the 68705 to you and your classmates to use building trainers, if this is an official class."

"What are the students going to do for tools?"

"Motorola can make a cross-assembler available to you on disks that can be read under MDOS or Flex."

"Cross assembler I can run on the Micro Chroma to write code for the 68705s?"

"Yeah."

"Great! But what do they mean by official class? It's not in the school catalog. There apparently is some talk about making an official project class, but nothing solid, yet."

"Your teacher involved?"

"Yeah. He keeps an eye on us while we're in the lab. He's letting me lead the project, though. Twenty-some students want to build computers."

"Can somebody from our student liaison office get in contact with him?"

"I'm sure he'll agree to that. You don't think they might sample us 68701s if some of the students were doing a 68701 daughterboard conversion to the Micro Chroma 68, I suppose? Some of the students are interested in that."

"Good question. I'll ask."

*****

I mentioned the interest from Motorola to Dr. Brown first thing when I saw him on Tuesday. He said he'd welcome contact from Motorola.

After classes, we were back in the lab, with professors and students dropping in to see what was happening while I was working in the electronics lab, then leaving when the interesting parts seemed to be too rare, or to end too quickly.

Mark and Jeff had 7-segment displays and other parts, so I showed them how to test their 68701s in single-chip mode. Then while I worked on the computer, they wired the test circuits. Julia watched as we worked, helping hold things when we needed a third or fifth hand.

After I ran some tests with my controller designs, Mark and Jeff were at a point where they could fully test their MPUs, so they got on the computer to burn some simple test programs into their 68701s' ROMs. The test programs were supposed to flash LEDs, but the results weren't what they expected.

So they used the scope to figure out why, with Julia again providing extra hands, holding scope probes and running commands on my computer. Pretty soon they had successfully tested the MPUs themselves, and went back to work on the wiring.

When I was done, the three of them listened to me explain what I was doing, and offered suggestions as I walked verbally through the program flow for the disk controller commands.

Mark and Jeff had made significant progress on their trainer boards by the time I was ready to leave.

Julia followed me in her car, and she studied while I folded and delivered newspapers. When I got back from throwing the route, I showed her how to strip the ends of wire-wrap wire and wrap it around the socket and component leads in point-to-point wiring, and how to wet the connections with solder.

Wire-wrap posts could have provided a more sure connection, but I was keeping my budget tight instead of buying wire-wrap sockets and a powered wrapper gun.

When she was confident of her work, we took turns wiring and checking. We got enough of the circuit done that I could program a 68701 with the code to test the seek command and watch the heads move over the spinning disk. Then we took an hour to work on her homework, reading her report drafts together and letting her practice explaining and defending her research approach.

"You know, I'm skipping Bible study class tonight."

I glanced at Julia. "It 's going on right now?"

"It just finished, I assume."

"Next week?"

"Every Tuesday."

"Let's plan to go together next week."

She smiled and nodded. "I'd like to. Do you guys have Bible study?"

"We call it Institute for adults, Seminary for teenagers."

"Seminary?"

"Not the seminary you're thinking of, just a one-hour class before school."

"Before school every day?"

"Yeah."

"That's dedication. Is, uhm, Institute every day, too?"

"Every Thursday, in Midland. I've been studying on my own, instead, fifteen minutes to an hour a day."

"Are you going to study today?"

"Yeah. You want to join me?"

"I think so. Sure."

"I'm working through Isaiah right now. Does that sound good?"

"Isaiah -- in the Bible?"

"Certain chapters of Isaiah are also in the Book of Mormon, and 'I'm studying them side-by-side."

"Isn't Isaiah hard to understand?"

"A few years ago, I had Boston cranked while I was reading the Isaiah 2 passage in the Book of Mormon."

"Boston?"

"Yeah, I know. Head-banger music. But it's not as raw as Van Halen."

She shrugged. "The name of groups?"

I had to laugh. "Sorry. I don't have any Van Halen. You want to listen to a little Boston on low volume?"

"I'm not sure."

I dug out Boston's eponymous album and put on "More Than a Feeling", volume low.

After about thirty seconds, she shook her head. "I don't think I hate it, but it doesn't really do anything for me."

I lifted the needle. "Probably just as well. Anyway, in the middle of that kind of storm, cranked, I heard the Holy Spirit."

"No way."

I dug out my Bible and Book of Mormon and opened the Bible to Isaiah 2 and the Book of Mormon to 2nd Nephi 12. I started with verse one in the Book of Mormon, reading out loud. She read along from the Bible, comparing the text as she went. Then she stopped me and read verse two out loud.

"What's this 'mountain of the Lord's house"?

"It's oversimplifying, but we think it means the temples."

She shook her head. "Okay, I'll ask more about that later. You take verse three."

I read, and she nodded. "I think I see what you mean about your temples. You did say that there is something you teach there, right?"

"Right. Take verse four?"

She read, stopping for thought at the plowshares and pruning hooks before finishing. "This is a favorite verse."

"Definitely."

"Is this where you heard the Spirit?"

"Yeah, but more to come." We alternated verses until I had read verse seven. "This is where I really started feeling the weight of the Spirit. Full of gold, no end to their treasures. Go ahead."

She read verse eight and then looked up at me. "Worship the works of their own hands?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Works of our own hands. I looked at my stereo when I read that and thought about what idols are. There's a lot of tiny bits of precious minerals, finely worked, in our electronics. And then I looked at an electronics project i was working on at the time. I think it was a sound generator of some sort."

"Gold?"

"Gold and rare earths, crystalline like jewels, if you look at it under a microscope. I'll show you that sometime."

"That would be interesting. But this next ...," she trailed off.

"Yeah," and I read verse nine. "Neither the mean man nor the great man will be humble. That's something we have to remember in all of this. Otherwise, the stuff we build with our own hands will condemn us before God." I nodded over at the computer.

She raised her eyebrows and breathed a deep sigh, then somewhat hesitantly continued with verse ten, and we traded verses until she read verse twenty-two.

"I guess the reason this chapter is repeated in the Book of Mormon is that God thought it was important?"

"Yeah. I think so."

"I see what you mean. I feel the witness of the Holy Spirit, too. But I think the devil is also whispering things in my ears."

"I stop to pray when that happens."

I reached for her hand, but she drew back.

"I need to do this myself."

We were both silent for a few minutes.

"Okay, I understand now. Thank you for showing it to me. This is important."

We talked a bit more, and she headed home.

Denny called again during the cheap hours.

"My boss asked if you were interested in designing a full Micro Chroma 6801 version. I told him I thought you were."

"Yeah, that's kind of in my plans."

"I'll tell him you said so. His boss is interested in watching what you demonstrate to the IBM people."

"Oh? I assume he won't be able to come on Thursday. What's he got in mind?"

"Motorola seems to be interested in having you do an internship with them, too."

"What have I gotten myself into?"

"Stress?"

"Feeling a little queasy. Too much happening too fast."

"If you'd done more merit badges in Scouts, you'd be more used to this kind of thing."

I let out a wry chuckle and a sigh. "There's something I can't argue with. Let me give you Dr. Brown's phone number to pass on to your boss." I read him the number from the school directory. "I'll check with him as soon as I see him in the morning."

"Okay, and let me give you the liaison office number, too."

I took it down.

"Julia helped me wire stuff today."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. She's good with her hands."

"Hmm?"

"Soldering."

"Ah. Soldering. Good. Sounds interesting."

I shook my head at the phone. "Knock that off."

"Heh. You'll understand some day when you're married."

"That'll be soon enough."

"True."

"We also read 2nd Nephi 12 and Isaiah 2 together before she went home."

 "She understood that?"

"Yep."

"Wonderful. Go get some sleep."

"Thanks. You, too."

After reading a few more verses in the New Testament, from Paul's discussion of avoiding eating food sacrificed to idols to avoid misleading people, for the first time in more than a month, I picked up Tera he and read myself to sleep. I did not stop to look any words up.

*****

When I took the Micro Chroma 68 in to the lab Wednesday morning, Dr. Brown was waiting for me.

"I hope you won't mind."

"What?"

"Members of the school board and some of the professors want to observe what you demo to Ms. Bight tomorrow. I took the liberty of calling her after you left yesterday, and she said it would be great to watch you perform before an audience."

I laughed. "My brother says Motorola wants to watch, too."

"He called me, and so did Motorola's student liaison office."

"Oh." I blinked.

"They're sending somebody from their student liaison office tomorrow."

"Well, I guess we might as well have all the project group come in, too, so they can watch us discuss the project."

"Didn't I say? A project meeting is what they want to see most."

I sighed. "Then we'd better let everyone who came last week know."

"We can mention it in class today. I've let Professor Crane know, so he can tell your friends from the BASIC class. There are students in the microprocessors class who are interested, too. Mind if I invite them?"

"How many?"

"Five or so."

"I think five more won't force us to move things to the gym."

Dr. Brown laughed, and I joined him. 

"Is this going to cause problems with teachers worried about mid-terms?"

He sighed and gave me a wry grin. "Prob'ly. But it's an opportunity that doesn't come around very often, so the guys upstairs have told me to go ahead with it."

Again, Julia, Jeff, and Mark worked with me after classes were done, and with their help, using the oscilloscope, I was able to get the seek command and the read and write track commands working enough to format a disk and test the format.

Jeff and Mark got their trainers wired in breaks from helping me, and wrote some simple test programs to burn into their ROMs. I didn't ask where they found their keypads.

"Where are the I/O versions of the unary instructions?" Jeff was looking at the 6800's datasheet, puzzled. He was typing his program in on the computer, and had gotten stuck.

"I/O? Those aren't 8080s, there are no I/O instructions."

Mark looked up, too. "But the binary instructions have the mode."

"You're talking about the direct page addressing mode?"

"Maybe so." Jeff checked the datasheet again. "Uhm, yeah."

"Bottom of the memory map. I guess the designers thought there was no room for the instructions. Nothing special to do, the assembler will just generate extended mode addresses for them."

"Isn't that going to be a problem?" Mark asked.

"It's all memory mapped on the 6800 series. Just takes a cycle longer. I'll admit, I think it would have been nice if Motorola had provided direct page mode op codes for the unary instructions, and brought out enough signals to separate direct page space from the rest of memory if one wanted to. That would have been way cool."

Jeff, Mark, and Julia all three looked at me blankly.

"Anyway, nothing to worry about. Just do it."

Neither Jeff nor Mark looked satisfied, but they returned to their programming.

Before I left, both of them had their trainers cycling through the segments on the 7-segment LEDs using the bit rotate instructions, using programs they had assembled by hand.

Julia didn't follow me home, but she dropped by again after I was done with the newspapers, and helped me get the sector read and write commands partially working, and then I helped her again with her homework.

Unfortunately, Giselle's Color Computer could not use the disk I formatted with the Micro Chroma 68, and my read and write sector routines would not work with a disk formatted on the Color Computer.

I spent some time checking my parity generation and testing, but it looked right, and didn't seem to be the cause of the problem. Julia got lost when I explained it to her, at least, she thought she did.

Giselle gave me permission to take the Color Computer to school the next day, telling me that she wanted to come and watch, too.

And she also joined us for scripture study before Julia left.

*****

I called Denny.

"Help?"

"Heh. Break a leg tomorrow."

(Yeah. This is a pure flight of fantasy. But in order to have been able to start a second microcomputer revolution, I would have needed something like this to happen.)

Chapter 11.5: Headwinds -- Presentation

TOC

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[Second backup at https://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2020/03/bk01-33209-headwinds-buggy-floppy-controller.html.
Original backup at https://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2020/03/bk-33209-headwinds-buggy-floppy-controller.html.]

33209: Headwinds -- Church

Chapter 11.2: Headwinds -- Differences

Chapter 11.3: Headwinds -- Church

The whole Cisneros family met me on Sunday morning, and I got to meet Julia's younger brothers and sisters before we walked together to their church.

Their pastor was greeting members as they came in. As we approached the door, he reached out to shake my hand. "Good morning, Brother."

"Reverend Johansen, this is my friend from college, Joe Reeves."

I sensed a stiffness in the reverend's nod, but he smiled warmly. "Welcome, Joe. Take some time and let people say hello, if you would?"

"Thank you, Reverend Johansen. I guess I can do that."

We entered the sanctuary to the strains of prelude music and greeted more of their congregation as we moved toward the front.

There were some people I recognized from high school, and their reactions varied from welcoming to amusement to veiled hostility. Reverend Johansen made his way to the rostrum, and we found seats near the front.

"He's heard of me, I suppose?"

"The reverend? I've mentioned both you and your dad to him. Why do you ask?"

"His reaction when he heard my name."

"I guess I missed it."

I decided not to explain, and not to mention the various reactions I had felt. I looked around the sanctuary behind us again. It's a habit from when I was a teenager.

"George."

Julia followed my gaze. "And Pat. And Mike. I think it's been at least a couple of years since Mike came last."

The three were sitting together. Pat gave us a little wave, and we raised our hands unobtrusively in reply.

We sang a hymn I didn't recall having heard to open with, then there were some announcements, a prayer, and more hymns, two of which I knew from our English Hymnal, but with some different words, and another of which I knew from our Japanese Hymnal, even though it was not in our English Hymnal. And then Reverend Johansen stood up for the sermon.

I have taken as my topic this morning, Proverbs 22 verse 6.

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

He looked from Julia's father to Julia, then to me. I nodded.

For several minutes he talked about the importance of the family and of studying the gospel as a family, drawing on various scriptures to support his text. I was thinking that this could well be a bishop or high councilor speaking in one of my own meetings.

Then he adjusted his tack.

Now, if, as I have proved from the scriptures, it is essential for the gospel to be taught in the home, it is essential that the parents be united in their teaching. I want to approach this particular subject with caution, but with boldness.

We have faithful part-member families with us, and I do not wish to take away from the sacrifices and efforts of our good brothers and sisters in those families. But, when we consider starting a family, it is important to carry in our considerations a consciousness of the significant additional burdens that are occasioned by differences in religion.

Julia drew a sharp breath and reached for my hand. I took hers in mine and gave it a squeeze. I leaned over and whispered to her. "This is something we might need to discuss at some point."

She bit her lip and looked down and squeezed my hand back.

Julia's parents did not react.

Sometimes, in my zeal against false doctrines, I have mentioned with special emphasis the doctrines of certain religions which are considered by some to be cultic, such as having more than one wife, or spurious ordinances in idolatrous temples, or the arrogance to entertain the idea that mere humans could ever become equal with God.

Julia's shoulders slumped, and her face fell. Her father's expression grew sharp, and her mother's pensive.

I reached an arm around Julia's shoulders and gave her a hug while I prayed in my heart.

The reverend paused. I could not tell whether he was considering his tactics or not. Then he continued.

Perhaps it is not right to tell a man what he ought to believe and what he ought not, but there are doctrines that cannot be mixed within a family to good results, and I strongly urge anyone considering marriage to carefully consider the results of mixing such doctrines in their future children's minds, if not in their own.

He paused again, not looking at anyone in particular.

I felt the spirit in the meetinghouse palpably darken.

Julia looked away from me and stood up, turning towards the aisle. I stood with her, and her parents moved their knees sideways to let us pass.

Pat stood to meet us, but Julia shook her head and passed by. I nodded to the three of them as I followed her, thinking the word "patience" to them, and Pat remained standing, watching us leave.

I caught up with Julia at the door as the ushers opened them.

We walked into the foyer together, and Julia turned and buried her face in my chest. "Not now," her voice was muffled by my sweater. "Not now."

I wrapped my arms around her and we stood together for a moment, then she turned toward the doors outside and we walked out together.

"Clouds. Was there a forecast for rain?"

Julia looked up. "They don't look like rain clouds." She started walking towards the nearby park, still brown and dry for the end of winter.

I followed her, and we walked together until we got to Prairie Dog Pete Park, the children's park within the park. We climbed together up into the UFO and sat with our legs dangling over the edge of the inner walkway, Julia's skirts billowing around her legs in the breeze.

(That UFO was taken down some twenty years later, replaced with something conventional and safe. Well, maybe a little safer.)

"Well, I guess that solves my problem. If I can't trust my preacher, I think I'm free to join your church."

"Actions taken in anger do not lead to salvation."

Julia looked at me in surprise, and I reached out and took her hand in mine.

"He isn't entirely wrong, you know. If we start dating seriously, we'll need to work on some common basis about religion."

"But I can't believe you and your dad are members of some devil-worshiping cult."

"We aren't, but members of any church can sometimes wander into worshiping the wrong things. We ourselves do not currently practice plural marriage, and the practice tends to evil, unless it is specifically directed by God. It's a hard enough thing when God commands it."

She gave me a double-take.

"My great-grandparents. I've read a bit in their journals."

"Then it really happened."

"Yes. I believe God commanded it for His own purposes, and I also believe He commanded us to stop it."

"Why?"

"One of my great grandfathers lost his first wife and their baby when the birth did not go well. He married again, but his second wife was in poor health, and could not have children. There was a woman from Sweden with six children, who lost her husband on their way to Utah, and he married her. There was always some jealousy between the second and third wife, and some disagreement among the children about rights of descent."

She shivered and retrieved her hand and started down, and I followed her back to the sandpit, where I removed my coat and wrapped it around her shoulders before we continued wandering around the playground area. We climbed up on the giant octopus's legs, being careful of our Sunday clothes, and she sat on one of its legs while I leaned against its head.

She looked at me quizzically. "Was polygamy about taking care of widows, then?"

"Not always. It was one of the means of taking care of widows mentioned in the Bible. It's a bit hard to understand now, but, in the better cases, it was about giving women options in a time when they didn't have many. But some of our men made it a matter of pride. And some of the women among us, as well."

"What does the Bible say about it?"

"The Law of Moses recommended that the brother of a dead man take care of his widow and her children by polygamous marriage. The New Testament strongly suggests that bishops should be monogamous. Going a bit further back, Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham to give him children when she couldn't."

"So, in Hagar's case, surrogacy, but by natural means?"

"Well, yeah. Jacob, on the other hand, was deceived by Laban, who wanted a good, hard working son-in-law to work his sheep ranch for him. And then Rachel couldn't have children at first."

"I guess I never really thought seriously about those stories."

"The Bible doesn't blanket condemn or endorse polygamy."

She stood up and climbed off the leg, and we walked around the bicycle path to the pirate's ship. It needed a coat of paint, so we didn't climb up on the deck.

She stared at the rusty mast. "So what about your temples?"

"Do your parents think they'll continue to be together after they die?"

"I don't know."

"Many religious families think so, but the doctrines of most churches say we won't."

"Being able to be together does sound better."

"It is, if we are really together in this life."

We walked away from the ship and wandered around to the big concrete Swiss cheese, and I climbed to the flat upper surface and turned and gave her a hand up.

(That Swiss cheese was also taken down in the safety renovations.)

She leaned against me, looking back at her church, some half a mile away.

"But how do we find each other on the other side of the veil?" I asked quietly.

She took a little time to answer. "That's something I've never thought about."

"In our temples, we perform ordinances which allow us to find each other and be together as families after we die. If we choose."

"Reverend Johansen and many other Church leaders say the ceremonies are pagan worship practices."

"Actually, the ordinances themselves are very simple. Do you agree to worship God? Do you agree to let Jesus Christ lead you away from sin, individually, and together? Do you commit to fidelity to your spouse and to God?"

She ducked her head and pulled my arms around her.

"There is some symbolism that requires prayer and study to understand, and some people misunderstand it."

She squeezed her lips together in thought, still not looking at me, then asked, "As in?"

"Well, there are promises we make which are a bit difficult to accept for some people. Various opinions about how to understand them exist. We aren't supposed to talk about them because talking about them outside the temples leads to misunderstanding."

"Talking about things usually helps."

I opened my mouth, then thought a little more before replying. "I'm not sure I could even agree that it usually helps, unless we can assume that everyone talking is looking for a solution."

"Don't most people want solutions?"

"Not if they think it's going to cost them."

She had to think about that. "I guess that's true." She looked up at the sky again. "Definitely not rain clouds."

I looked up, too. "Scattered clouds. Too high for rain."

We separated and stood silently for a minute.

"Those clouds are actually moving pretty fast."

"Strong winds up there."

"And down here." She shivered again, and we turned back towards the church.

"In this case, however, there's a bit more than just whether everyone is looking for solutions. We are supposed to learn what these things mean from God, not from fallible humans."

She shook her head. "How can that be? How can you learn without a teacher?"

"God is our teacher."

"But that's personal revelation. No scripture is of private interpretation."

"I don't just mean members of my Church when I say 'our'. I mean me, you, my parents and friends and yours, too. And Reverend Johansen. Without personal revelation, all human interpretations are private from God."

She stopped. "You're twisting words."

"Do you know God loves you, and wants you to be happy?"

She had to think about that. "I think so."

"If we trust God, He will give us understanding. If we don't, we tend to turn his promises inside-out, then upside-down trying to get them back to right, and then we think we understand when we completely miss the point. That's private interpretation."

"Can you give me an example?" She started forward again, and we walked side-by-side.

"Faith and works. James mentions the argument between faith and works, and then resolves it. Faith without works is as dead as works without faith."

"True, but I mean from your temple."

"Not from the actual ordinances of the temple, but maybe an allegory."

"Okay." She stopped again, and I turned back toward her. Her expression said anything but okay.

I prayed, and the Spirit let me proceed.

"Many people, even after they are cautioned, just don't listen carefully. There's a particular misunderstanding about something some people call a blood oath."

"I remember he mentioned blood oaths."

"There is a confusion over the meanings of words, I think, even among some of us. For instance, if a baseball coach threatens the players and makes them swear they will hit a home run or let the coach beat them with a baseball bat, that's bad, right?"

"No way that would be right."

"But if a coach urges the players to stand in the batter's box with courage, and not let the opposing team's catcher's threats to beat them with a baseball bat after the game deter them from getting good hits on any balls they can, that's still not easy, but it's different, right?"

"Surely catchers don't really do that?"

"Umpires are supposed to stop catchers when they say things like that, but they don't always hear. And catchers are usually just trying to break the batters' concentration, but there have been occasions of post-game violence."

"And you're saying that the thing that Reverend Johansen called a blood oath is like your second example, I guess?"

"That's the way I hear it."

"Still pretty tough." She shivered in the wind again, and I wrapped my arms around her and we turned back toward her church. She reached up and held my hand on her shoulder. "I guess that's why you didn't get upset back there in the meeting. You understand why people can misunderstand."

"Yeah, partly. I think he's a good man, really. Just misinformed and misunderstanding."

"What about the becoming equal with God thing? If I became a Mormon, could I be a Goddess?"

I laughed and gave her a sideways hug. "You already are."

"Be serious."

"I am. But, okay, aside from your being one very good-looking woman and a really pleasant person to hang around with, you are a child of God."

"Is that really Biblical, the child of God thing?"

"I can show you later, but there's a Psalm where God stands in the congregation of the mighty, judging among the gods. That's lower-case 'g', by the way. And God says, 'I have said ye are gods, all of you are children of the most High.' Eighty-second Psalm.

(This guy has a better memory than I have, too. I'd have had to dig in the Topical Guide.)

"I'm not sure what that means."

"It could definitely mean many things, but Jesus quoted it when some of the Jews were ready to stone Him for admitting He was the Son of God. And then He said, if David said they were gods, children of God, and the scripture couldn't be broken, then what complaint would there be if Jesus were also? The best argument I've heard against this interpretation is that Jesus was playing word games with them, but I don't think He played that kind of word game. That's in John ten, starting around verse twenty-four.

(Definitely got a better memory.)

"I want to see that."

"I left my scriptures on the pew. But that doesn't really answer Reverend Johansen's charge. Some of us do make it a matter of pride and power, rather than the duty it is to learn how to be more like our kind and loving Heavenly Father, and pride is not an attitude that will save anyone."

"So, the doctrine isn't what he claims it is, but some of your members treat it like it is?"

"Unfortunately. It's definitely a place where it's easy to miss the mark."

"Okay, I guess I can really see now why you didn't get upset."

"Thanks."

She turned to me, taking both my hands. "But I want to know something."

"What's that?"

"Is there any chance for you and me? I mean, you could have kissed me last night while we were listening to music, or ..."

"What do you think God wants?"

"I think He, ... I don't know."

"Is He leading us to be friends?"

"Yes."

"Then let's trust Him to lead us where we should go next."

"You're not going to kiss me now, either."

"Your choice."

We looked deep into each other's eyes, and then she nodded.

"Not yet, anyway. Let's get back. I want you to tell all this to Reverend Johansen.

"Well, if he's interested. He may have heard it all before."

On our return, Julia's parents met us in front of the church.

Her mother took her in her arms. "Are you okay, Hon?"

"Definitely, Mom. Joe's been busy helping me understand what Reverend Johansen was saying."

Her dad wrinkled his forehead and looked sharply at me. "Where do you stand on the subject?"

"I want Julia to be happy, and I don't want her to make any hasty decisions for my sake."

His expression cleared and he cuffed me on the shoulder. "Good boy."

I avoided rolling my eyes, and grinned back.

Pat, Mike, and George came out.

"There you are! Aren't you mad?"

"No, I'm not. Not anymore." Julia ducked her head. "Let's go to Sunday School."

Reverend Johansen came up from behind us and clapped me on the shoulder. "Son, could I have a word with you and Julia?"

Julia turned back and gave him a confident smile. "Could we do it after Sunday School?"

The reverend looked a little confused. "Of course."

He came with us to the class. Pat, George, and Mike were also there. I refrained from comments, except on points where I knew our doctrines agreed and we could share testimony. The reverend seemed rather impressed with my knowledge of the Bible on several points. I might even have heard him muttering to himself, "... for a Mormon."

After her Sunday School, we talked with him in his office. At Julia's insistence, I rehearsed what I had told her about the doctrines he had taken issue with, this time taking time to find and read the verses in question in my scriptures, including the relevant scriptures from the uniquely LDS canon. With help from unseen sources, we were all able to avoid arguing.

After considerable discussion, Reverend Johansen looked at me sternly and asked, "So what do you yourself think of these doctrines?"

"For now, I'm trying to learn to walk a godly walk, sir, trying to learn how to be guided by the Holy Spirit more than unholy spirits."

"How many wives do you plan to take in the resurrection?"

"If I can learn how to live well with one wife here, it will be an honor if she will still be friends with me there."

"What about Julia?"

"She and I seem to both be simply following where the Holy Spirit leads us. I do not intend to give her any reason to regret being friends with me."

Julia added, "Just reminding you, this guy treats me a lot better than some of the members of our congregation."

The reverend smiled a wry smile. "I have seen that you have been careful to confirm the faith of the members of my congregation, rather than press a Mormon agenda. You are welcome to continue to do so. And I think I am glad to find a friend among those whom I had so long considered to be enemies."

"I am, as well, sir, glad to find friends here."

(I can only wish the real me had been this spiritually guided.)

*****

I had lunch with Julia and her family, and the food and conversation were enjoyable. Then she decided to accompany me to my meetings in the afternoon.

"Well, if Mary doesn't have a friend today!"

"Good afternoon, Sister Patton."

"Mo-om, be nice!" Molly Patton Simmons approached quickly, Gary Simmons in tow. Gary was carrying their baby in his arms. Gary suddenly stopped.

I felt Julia stop beside me.

"Julia Cisneros?"

"Gary. It's nice to see you. Joe, Gary is a former member of our congregation."

He grinned. "Well, I hope you're letting Joe teach you the truth. By the way, meet little Gary."

I looked to Julia and we wordlessly agreed to let his comment about teaching go unanswered.

I responded with a grin. "I hadn't realized I would be visiting your old stomping grounds this morning, Gary."

"Maybe Molly and little Gary and I should go visit sometime."

"I know," Julia said quietly, "some people who would appreciate it, including Reverend Johansen."

"So you're friends?" Sister Patton looked back and forth. "And I guess Julia is a Baptist?"

"That's a good guess, Mom," Gary grinned with a nod.

I chuckled quietly. "How's the electrical business?"

Brother Patton was an electrician, and he and his wife and children operated an electrical services business. Gary had joined the business when he and Molly got together.

"It's good," Gary answered. "Say, I've heard something about you building computers."

We spent a few minutes talking shop until Little Gary interrupted. Gary checked his diaper and wrinkled his nose, looking at Molly.

"He's in your arms, Honey."

"Come help me with this, Sweetheart."

And they headed to the mothers' room together to change his diaper.

"Well, Julia, is it? I hope you enjoy our meetings today."

"I expect I will."

"It was nice to meet you. I need to go prepare for Relief Society." Sister Patton nodded pleasantly and left.

"Relief Society. You mentioned that to me on the drive over."

"The women's meeting."

"Will your mom be there, too? I do not want Gary's mother-in-law to be my only friend there."

"I think she's planning on it. I'll ask her to." I looked at her quizzically.

She looked back at me, just as quizzically. "You really don't understand what just happened, do you?"

I shrugged. "There are some things I have always thought it was safer not to understand."

She gave me a dirty look. "Maybe I'm glad I didn't know you when you were younger." Then she grinned and nudged my with her elbow, and we went into the chapel.

Julia sat with Giselle and my parents and me through the Sacrament meeting, joining in the hymns and listening to the talks, quietly asking me questions from time to time.  Then she came to the young single adult Sunday School class and enjoyed the discussion. My mom took her to Relief Society and, afterwards, she reported to me that she had a good time there, as well. And that her concerns about Sister Patton hadn't been necessary.

"But you really seem to be a cipher to most of the members of your own congregation."

I nodded. "I never felt like I belonged anywhere until I went to Japan. When I came home, God challenged me to try to fit into American culture, and I am trying to do so."

After meetings, Julia came over for dinner with my family, and then Giselle joined us when we went to the young adult family home evening.

In the car on the way to her house, she said she was a little disappointed that the young single adults in my congregation seemed to still be hunting for things they had already found. I agreed. Giselle thought about it before agreeing, as well.

At her doorstep, we parted with a hug, then Giselle and I went home.

Chapter 11.4: Headwinds -- Buggy Floppy Controller

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[Backed up at https://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2020/03/bk-33209-headwinds-church.html.]

33209: Headwinds -- Differences

Chapter 11.1: Headwinds -- 68701

Chapter 11.2: Headwinds -- Differences

"Cisneros residence, what can we do you for?"

"Uh, hello, Mr. Cisneros. This is Joe Reeves. I'd like to speak with Julia, if I could."

"Julia, somebody who says he is Joe Reeves wants to know if he can talk with you."

I could her Julia's voice in the background, but I couldn't tell what she was saying.

"Yes." Her father's voice was turned away from the phone.

More of her voice in the background.

"No."

Still more of her voice, mixed with her mother's voice.

"Don't ask me." He paused again before his voice returned to the phone. "Okay, you're in luck today. She says she'll talk to you."

"Dad, give me that phone!" This time her voice was distinct and indignant, though somewhat distant.

"Thank you."

I heard sounds of the phone changing hands, with Julia's father's chuckle in the background.

"Hi Joe."

I was still chuckling, myself.

"Don't laugh. You'll just encourage him."

"My dad gets on a roll sometimes, too."

"I know. Your dad's funny. Okay, it's cute when it's your dad."

"Maybe your dad is, too?"

"Well, when he's not being frustrating." There were spurts of laughter in the background. "So what's up?

"Thought I'd call and thank you for dropping by and taking notes today."

"I was just curious about what you were doing with the computers. You really seem to like working with that kind of stuff."

"It's like a math puzzle. No, it is a math puzzle, a bunch of 'em."

"I felt a little like Alice, down that rabbit hole Dr. Brown mentioned."

I nodded to the wall. "Sometimes I feel that way, too."

She laughed.

"So you know Pat," I commented.

"Yeah. And George and Mike, too. We sort of grew up together. Used to go to the same church."

"Used to?"

"Oh, Pat still comes sometimes, but lately she says she's leaning towards agnosticism." She paused. "Mike says he's an atheist." I heard a sigh. "And George is just too busy most Sundays. Busy watching basketball on the tube, is my guess."

"Small world on campus. But you're friends?"

"Not like when we were younger. But, yeah, we're," she paused again, "friends."

"I see. It's cool that you're friends."

"Yeah." Her voice brightened a bit. "It is. Hey, are you going to church Sunday?" 

"Yeah, I usually go."

"Would you like to come to mine?"

"What time?"

"There's a sermon at ten, and after that we'll have Sunday School."

"In the morning, eh? That should work okay. Our ward meets in the afternoon this year, so I could fit it in, no problem."

"Ward?"

"Congregation. As in ward of a city or a hospital."

She chuckled. "Hospital for sinners?"

I chuckled too. "Right. Where and when should I meet you?"

"Can you meet me at my house about fifteen before? We can walk from here."

"Sounds good."

"So Is that computer of yours going to keep you busy all day tomorrow?"

"'Fraid so, pretty much, whatever time is left over from collecting subscriptions for the paper route. I'd invite you over to watch, but it's a pretty deep rabbit hole."

"Have you been making any progress?"

"A bit. I realized I need more tools that I don't have for the group coded recording circuits. Also found out for sure that Giselle's Color Computer does MFM data, so I'm switching to work on MFM."

She laughed. "As if I would know what that meant."

"It means it should be more compatible with Radio Shack's and IBM's formats."

"Well, compatibility with IBM's, uhm, stuff? is a good thing, isn't it?"

"Who knows? Well, maybe I'll have a better idea about that when I'm done with this."

"Uhm," she hesitated. "Can I come by in the evening?"

"If you don't mind watching me running up and down that rabbit hole, sure."

 She laughed. "Now I'm imagining you as the White Rabbit."

I opened my mouth, but only an "Ah!" came out.

"What?"

"Never mind. I don't want to give you a bad impression."

"What?"

"Your parents are listening?"

"Yeah, they are."

"I really wouldn't want to give them a bad impression."

She snickered at that. "Now you've got to tell me."

"Well, I guess the only way out of this hole I just dug myself into is probably going further down. Are you familiar with Jefferson Airplane?"

"Jefferson Airplane?"

"The band."

"I don't guess so. But that name just got my parents' attention."

"There's a song they sang, called 'White Rabbit'."

"Mom just asked me, 'That White Rabbit?'." She covered the mouthpiece, and I heard a muffled, "What White Rabbit?"

"Do I dare sing a few lines? It's a drug culture song."

"Oh. Drugs. Yuck."

"Hold the phone away from your ear a minute. Okay?"

"Huh?"

"Ready?"

"Okay." Her voice sounded distant enough, so I held the mouthpiece away from my mouth and sang the first five lines, through asking Alice.

"Not a good lyric, huh?"

"Is that what that song says? I thought I liked it."

I heard a snort of laughter.

"My mom's laughing. Dad's trying to keep a straight face and look very strict."

Now I heard him laugh.

"Yep. That's what it says. They did sing some things slightly better. Only slightly." I sang a bit of the chorus of 'Somebody to love'."

"That's a song I like. Mom's says you have a good voice. Do you have the record?"

"Tell your mom thanks. I should probably plead the fifth."

She laughed.

"I bought it when I was fourteen and didn't really know any better. Like most of my record collection."

Her voice turned away from the phone. "He says he bought it when he didn't know any better." Now it returned. "You'll have to let me see your record collection."

"Got some Bach in there, too. 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring'."

"Bach's 'Joy'? That's good music."

"Performed on a synthesizer."

"Oh." She sounded a bit disappointed. "Well, can I listen to it tomorrow? Maybe it won't be as bad as it sounds." Her voice turned distant again. "'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring' ... on synthesizer, Mom."

I heard another spurt of laughter.

"Sure. But I've got a good straight orchestral arrangement of it, too."

"And I can listen to that, too."

"Well, I don't want to take too much of your time --"

"I don't mind."

"-- and I'd kind of like to see if I can make some more progress on this MFM data separator tonight after I go out to see how many of the rest of March's subscriptions I can collect tonight."

"You collect at the end of every month."

"Yeah. Collected about half between Wednesday and yesterday, still need about a quarter of the customers to pay for March's newspapers."

"Oh, okay, you can go back to your customers and your computer. If it's okay if I come visit tomorrow evening."

I chuckled quietly. "Sure. I'll call you when I get back from paying for the newspapers. I look forward to seeing what you think of my record collection."

"I'll bet it's interesting."

Neither of us said anything for a moment.

"Well, anyway, see you tomorrow."

"Yeah. Tomorrow. Have a good night."

After I got back from collecting and worked a bit more on the data separator, I called Denny to report my progress. I asked if he knew whether Motorola had any more of the Micro Chroma 68 boards that they could sell to students, and he said he didn't know, but he'd check. I also reported on my progress with the disk drives, and mentioned the scheduled meeting with Ms. Bight. He wished me luck getting the internship.

*****

Julia had been sitting patiently for about a half an hour while I worked on a program in BASIC to generate test data and write it to a floppy on Giselle's computer with her floppy drive, then write copies of it with my drives and compare the results. I had a Mormon Tabernacle Choir album playing in the background from my room that had Bach's 'Joy' as one of the tracks.

Giselle was waiting for me to give her her computer back, and they had been chatting while they waited.

I started yet another test run. It would take several minutes to complete, so I sat back and listened to the disk drives whirr and click.

"So you dance."

I looked at Giselle, questioning with my eyes why she had brought it up. She ignored me.

"You and Giselle were talking about dance? Yes, I dance."

"Is it fun?"

"Yeah. Great exercise, too."

"Giselle says she dances to strengthen her back."

"Modern dance," Giselle clarified.

"I've heard about it in my childhood education classes, but I'm not really sure what it is."

I stood and did some warm-up exercises -- plié and relevé, with port de bras. Giselle stood and mirrored the knee bends, the rising onto toes and returning, and the arm movement.

"Ballet?"

I went down to grand plié and shifted left, lifting my right leg high, like a sumo wrestler beginning shiko, and left it lifted for a few seconds before lowering it gently instead of stomping. Giselle copied me with laugh.

Julia drew back in surprise and amusement. "Expressive dance."

"-- is a part of modern. Modern's similar to ballet, sometimes," I explained. "But it's less formal and borrows from everything. It's more of a deliberate study in how the body moves, or, as somebody famous once said, a study in different ways 'to get from here to there'."

She looked at me doubtfully. "So you do it for exercise?"

"Training, coordination, self expression, not having to compete with anyone else, getting rid of stress, lots of reasons."

"Does everyone in your family dance?"

"Yeah, we all do, at least a little. Louise majored in dance education, didn't she, 'Zelle?"

"Yes, she did." Giselle nodded emphatically.

"Many Baptists think dancing leads to sin, but my preacher said expressive dance for childhood education, if it doesn't include too much hip movement, should be okay."

"Good for him. What do your parents think?"

"I've never seen them dance, but they sometimes watch ballet on TV. I guess your dad dances, too?"

"He does. Mom waltzes with Dad sometimes, but she isn't really a fan of dance."

"Professor Reeves dances!" She seemed to think this was a revelation.

"Yep," Giselle was quick to affirm. "He does foxtrot and swing and two-step and lots of older style dance steps."

"And he shadow-boxes to music, too," I added.

"Does he dance with other women besides your mom?"

"Sure. We have dances in the church's gym, and a lot of the men don't dance much, so Dad and some of the others who dance will dance with as many of the women as want to dance."

"Your mom doesn't mind?"

Giselle was glad to explain. "Mom says she's happy to just listen to the music and watch other people have fun."

Julia closed her eyes and breathed deeply, sighing, blinking several times.

The disk drive noises quieted.

I checked the screen. "Tests look good so far. I should let Giselle have her computer back. Could I put that Switched-on Bach on for you?"

"Sure."

I opened my drive and took the floppy out and put it in its sleeve, and we went to my room.

Julia stopped in the doorway of my room and shook her head. "Those aren't bunk beds. What do you call them?"

"Loft beds. They were Denny's idea, but it leaves lots of room for da--" I realized too late what I was revealing.

"Dancing." She had picked it up.

"Yeah. Dancing. And listening to music."

"Do you have girls in here to dance?" She sat down on an old bench seat Denny had saved when we had to junk the Fairlane van, and patted the space beside her.

I sat down too. "No. Well, I don't usually have girls in here at all. But I dance by myself a lot, especially when I'm feeling frustrated -- Wild dancing. Jumping and twirling."

"Do I want to see that?"

"Probably not. Not tonight, anyway. No real gymnastics, so it's not really all that interesting anyway."

She leaned forward to get a better view inside the tea box. "That's a lot of records."

"Not quite a hundred. I guess I spent way too much money on them, even though I got most of them at less than half-price through a record club." I leaned forward too, and scanned the spines of the albums, found the Switched-on Bach album, pulled it out, replaced the Tabernacle Choir disc on the turntable with it, and settled the needle on the disc.

Julia listened in silence for a bit. "It's different, but not ... bad." She stopped.

I followed her gaze to the photocube on the shelf between the desk and the bottom of the loft bed.

"Satomi."

"She's cute. Is she your girlfriend?"

"Brother Fukumasa would have issues with that. Satomi and Teruo will be marrying sometime this year."

"Who is ... who are they?"

"Missionaries I worked with in Japan."

"Do you have a picture of Terr ... Teroo ..."

"Teruo." I had to think. "I don't think so. Nice 'r', by the way. Most people tend to trill it too much, like a Spanish 'r'."

"Thanks, I guess."

"Satomi is one very special person. Genki. Uh, vivacious. Heh. Ancient English? That photo doesn't do her justice. Lots of positive energy. I think all the elders, uhm, male missionaries, had crushes on her."

"Special ..." I heard the disappointment in her voice.

"Crushes are not love, although I guess I do want her to be happy."

"Crushes." Her voice was tiny. "Love." She remained looking at the cube, or maybe past it, through the window to the darkness outside.

"My sister Louise explained the basics to me when I was, how old? Fourteen? Twelve? When you like the way someone looks, and even when being near someone makes you feel good, that's a crush. I have a crush on you, by the way."

"Really?" She turned and looked at me with amusement mixed with doubt.

"Huge crush. Since the day we met."

"Oh." She smiled.

"Anyway, crushes are separate from love, and people can have lots of them."

"Hmm."

"Love is when you want someone to be happy, and you can love lots of people, too."

"Well, if that's how you define it ..."

"When you want to be the one who makes someone happy, that can be love, too, but it can also become lust, as well. Louise didn't tell me that, it's something I've figured out for myself."

"Too much philosophy."

"I like figuring things like this out. It makes life easier when everyone around tries to be, what is that? Dogmatic."

She laughed. "So do you think you love me?"

"I want you to be happy. I'm not sure yet whether I want to dare to want to be the one to make you happy the rest of your life, but it's kind of early to be trying to figure that out."

She smiled. "Words." She laughed quietly. "Well, I guess I have a crush on your dad. Is that okay?"

"Sure. I have a crush on him, too. He's pretty cool."

"Really?" She looked at me in surprise and more than a little apprehension.

"Before I was a missionary, he embarrassed me. While I was out, I began to understand him. We teach English in Japan, you know? As a service activity."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I found myself using some of the techniques he uses in his Spanish classes, and wishing I'd taken the time to learn more from him. I figured out he's pretty cool."

"Oh!" The apprehension disappeared, replaced by relief and, well, happiness.

She become pensive. "I've thought I had a crush on you several times, but you keep turning out to be different from what I expect. You know, you're a little scary sometimes."

I laughed. "I've been told that."

"I'm not sure I can keep up."

"No problem. I won't ask anything of you that you're not ready for."

She thought for a moment. "That sounds like a promise easily made, and sometimes hard to keep."

"Well, I'll try not to, anyway."

"You're already not keeping it, but if you're trying, maybe that's good enough."

We both paused for thought, to digest what we had just exchanged.

"So, we're busy showing you what I do for fun. What about you? What do you do for fun?"

"Scripture games, crossword puzzles, ..."

"No card games, I guess?"

"Uno is okay."

"Pit?"

"Pit's fun."

"Good. Board games?"

"Depends. Some board games are too much like gambling."

"Is it pretty much a personal choice?"

"To some degree, although you can get in trouble with some of the stricter members if you aren't careful."

"Chess? Checkers?"

"I play both. Are you good at chess?"

"No, no patience for it, really. Hmm. I have both chess and checkers programs for the Micro Chroma 68. Interested?"

"Sure."

I loaded the chess program, and let her play against the computer. She beat it quickly and I laughed. Then we played two player and she gave me some pointers.

"So, can you use the disk drives on this yet?"

"No, I still have to write a bunch of code and wire up more circuitry. Putting data on the disk is only half the problem. You have to be able to find it again once it's there."

"Hmm. I wonder if I really want to know what that means."

We dragged Giselle and my parents into a couple of rounds of Pit before Julia said goodnight and went home about ten so I wouldn't be too sleepy getting up at five to run my newspapers in the morning.

Chapter 11.3: Headwinds -- Church

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[Backed up at https://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2020/03/bk-33209-headwinds-differences.html.]

33209: Headwinds -- 68701

Chapter 11.0: Headwinds -- IBM

Chapter 11.1: Headwinds -- 68701

I looked up at the tap at the open door.

"Pat. Hi. What brings you to the Electrical and Electronics Building? Slumming?"

"The profs were talking about your success yesterday with raw I/O. We wanted to see for ourselves."

"We? Ah, Mike. George. Hi guys."

"Yo."

"Hey."

"Well, come in and join the crowd."

They came into the electronics lab and joined the group of students gathered around the lab table where my lab partners, Jeff and Mark, were sitting in front of the Micro Chroma 68.

Dr. Brown hadn't wanted to take more class time, so he had suggested that I take time after class to let interested students watch me reproduce my results from the day before. I could chase them off after, if they distracted my progress too much.

Jeff and Mark were by this time familiar with the Micro Chroma 68, and had volunteered to help as soon as they saw me coming in with the computer again.

We had the video output connected through a splitter to both my TV and one of the lab's large-screen TVs so the other students could see what was showing on my TV screen. (A 40 inch screen was fairly large at the time.)

Jeff and Mark helped me walk through my work of the day before, operating the computer and setting up the circuits from my notes while I drew diagrams on the chalkboard and explained about the circuits and the timing issues as I understood them, starting with bit-banging and working up to the FM encoding. Dr. Brown added comments when he thought they were necessary.

Part way through the demonstration, I noticed Julia watching from the doorway. When I raised my hand to wave her in, Pat, George, and Mike turned and looked, and something passed between them that I didn't follow. Julia entered the room and sat in my seat at the lab table.

When we'd finished demonstrating recording and playing back test data in FM, Jeff looked up from the screen. "Is there some way we can look at a track before it gets written?"

I looked at Dr. Brown and he just grinned back at me. So I thought for a moment. I reached over to the breadboard and patched a line over the FM decode unit, effectively removing it from the circuit.

"We haven't written anything to track 30, yet, Jeff. Bump the heads up to track thirty."

He typed in the commands that moved the head.

"Run the read routine and let's look at the read buffer."

He did so, and we watched him list the results on the screen -- patches of mostly zeroes, of short repeating sequences, and of apparently random numbers.

"Does it look pretty random?"

Everyone thought it did.

"There actually isn't any track until you write one, although, I think, if we looked hard enough, we should find twelve cycles of line noise in there. Should we take the time?"

Julia frowned. "I hate to ask a stupid question, but what's line noise?"

Mike said, "Thank you for asking."

I gave her a nod I hoped was reassuring. "There are no stupid questions, right, Dr. Brown?"

"Except the ones you don't ask." He nodded sagely.

Dr. Brown's students all nodded, too. They'd heard it before.

"The sixty Hertz hum in the power line," Mark answered for me.

"Sorry?" Julia looked puzzled.

Jerry held up a power plug from one of the instruments on his lab table. "Wall power. If I'm following this right, 300 revolutions per minute means that a track takes a fifth of a second to read." He looked at Dr. Brown for confirmation.

"Right."

"And a fifth of a second," he continued, "is enough time for twelve alternating current cycles, from plus 120 volts RMS to minus 120 volts RMS and back again."

Julia tilted her head. "Volts I know. RMS, I don't. But is the noise by any chance related to the hum my stereo makes when I turn the volume way up and nothing is playing?"

"Yep, that's it."

"Oh, I get it!" Greg laughed. "Thank you for asking that question."

Several other students murmured agreement.

I added, "RMS is root mean square, a way of trying to talk about effective voltage when the voltage varies regularly."

Julia pursed her lips in thought at my explanation.

Winston shook his head. "Finding that line noise sounds to me like an exercise in advanced statistics."

Nobody seemed anxious to spend time on the required analysis.

"Oh, well," I said, "I'll just have to try this in the statistics class, I guess."

"So what about yesterday's data?" Mark asked. "Is it still there?"

"It should be. Jeff, can you bump the heads back down to track 5 and run the read routine?"

He did so, and listed the buffer again.

"Mathematical sequences," Julia commented in a low voice. Then Giselle's and Julia's names showed up.

"Hey, hey, hey, who are Giselle and Julia?" Mike wisecracked.

"Giselle is Joe's sister," Julia said with barbs in her voice.

"Yep." My eyes met Julia's.

She shook her head, barely perceptibly.

"My sister. Shall we type in everyone's names, and write them to track 30?"

There was some laughter, but Jeff started editing the buffer contents, grinning as he worked. He added Julia's and Giselle's names without prompting, and asked for Pat, Mike, and George's names, to add, too. He ran the write routine, cleared the buffer, and then ran the read routine, and it read back perfectly.

Julia clapped a slow clap, and others joined in, with some cheering and laughter.

"I stlll don't really follow what you're doing," she said when the cheers died down, "and your presentation could use some work, but now I believe you when you say it puts stuff on the disk."

"That wasn't the presentation for the board of directors, 'though, thank you." I chuckled, and Julia laughed. Some of the other students laughed nervously, and Dr. Brown chuckled.

"Okay, everybody. I now need to dive deep into some arcane math, so I can use these drives to share data with other computers. The fun stuff is over for the day, unless you're into really arcane math."

Mark and Jeff exchanged glances.

"So have you figured out yet how we can get computers like these?" Mark asked.

"There is Radio Shack's Color Computer, as I've mentioned before, and it has a better CPU."

Jeff shook his head. "We want to build our own."

"I can ask Denny if Motorola has any more of the Micro Chroma 68 PC boards that they would be willing to sell to students, but wouldn't you rather build something with a more modern processor?"

"Waiting for you to build something better has its own costs," Jeff groused. "This obviously works now."

There were murmurs of agreement.

"I'll ask. But I really think we could design something cool if we worked together."

There were murmurs of approval.

Jeff was not to be satisfied. "But when?"

"What do you think, Dr. Brown?"

Dr. Brown grinned. "I'm not going to tell anyone what they can't do with their own time."

"Okay." I rubbed my forehead and checked my watch. "But I want everyone to understand a few things. The reason I am using Motorola parts is that my brother Denny can get me lots of those. I don't think he can do that for non-family, so if you decide to build these with me, you'll be buying the parts yourselves."

Jerry gave two thumbs up. "No problems here."

Winston added, "All the more reason to get parts ordered now."

"And I'm not promising anything, especially if we start now. Don't blame me if you decide you wanted a 6502 or Z-80 or 1802."

"No problem."

"We've got this."

"What's a Z-80 got to do with it?"

(I wonder if anyone recognizes that this expression was common idiom in Texas and many other parts of the English speaking world well before Tina Turner borrowed it into her lyrics.)

"What indeed? But," I added, "no guarantees of anything. Strictly participate at your own risk."

"If you're saying we're going to see something today, I'm definitely in," Mark said, to general nods and murmurs of agreement.

"See something?"

"A parts list would be good."

"Okay, but what I have in mind for myself is replicating this box using the 6801, then the 6809, and then the 68000. But I'm sure most of you don't want to end up with three or four computers."

Jennifer shook her head. "Let us decide when to get off the train and where?"

I thought for a full minute before proceeding with a sigh. "How many of you want trainers like the 8080 trainers that the lab has?"

All the electronics students raised their hands.

I looked at Dr. Brown.

He grinned back. "What do you suggest?"

I tilted my head left and right, stretching the muscles in my neck while I thought.

"For a trainer, I've been thinking I want to start with an EPROM 6805 SOC, just enough to decode a keypad and a keyboard and send address and data to seven segment displays. A 6805 is powerful enough to build a calculator with, but it will quickly become uninteresting if you want to hang a graphical display on it and run a full OS and programming languages."

Lots of blank looks.

I went to the chalkboard and erased a panel while I thought.

"Starting with a 6801 will be one step quicker, but it will cost more money."

Winston spoke up. "Time is money for me, for what it's worth."

"Okay." I drew a square for the CPU. "68701 here." I wrote the number in.

"Should I take notes?" Julia offered, to my surprise.

"If you would, sure. Thanks."

She got a pencil and a pad of paper out of her backpack. "68 .. 68701, right?" She copied what I was drawing.

"Right. 68701. We'll probably have to find a source for buying that. The keyboard and keypad don't need exact timing so I think we can use an RC circuit for the clock. I'll work those out later." I skipped the clock circuit in the diagram. "Latches for de-multiplexing address and data can found at Radio Shack, too. Don't need full 6821s for most of the required ports, so we can use latches for some of those, too. We can talk about specifics next week." I drew them in.

"Hexadecimal keypad and six, no, seven seven-segment LED displays." And I drew those in. "We'll have to find part numbers for displays that can be persuaded to show hexadecimal codes. We may be able to find those at Radio Shack, or maybe not. The 7400 series logic to glue it all together can definitely be found there."

I continued filling in blanks, and most of the students had paper out and were copying the diagrams. Julia was checking the notes she was taking for me with Mark.

"Boy, I wish you guys had this much motivation in my classes." Dr. Brown deadpanned.

Laughter erupted.

"It's because of your classes that we can follow what this genius is doing."

"Winston," I shook my head. "We are all geniuses."

"Whatever, Joe Genius."

More laughter.

"Yeah. No. Anyway. This should be enough for a trainer that can be attached to a breadboard, like the 8080 trainers, and I'll find a source for the monitor program. The monitor for the Micro Chroma won't work because the hardware will be different, even though the CPU will be similar.

"And then maybe we can turn it into a keyboard controller, and from there turn it into a useful computer. Let's get together after class next week to make real schematics. What you guys should be doing over the weekend is sketching out your own ideas about what the schematic should look like, and looking around in stores, in magazines, and in the library or whatever, for information and sources for buying the parts. And we can share what we find next week. Probably want to hold off actually ordering anything until we've had some more time to get together and plan things out."

I stopped to think for a moment. "And I guess, if Motorola does have enough leftover Micro Chroma 68s, it should be possible to shoehorn a 6801 on a daughterboard into it, and still use the TVBUG monitor ROM. That would be another option."

George looked at Mike and Pat. "I think I'm in on this."

Mike responded with, "Me, too. Pat?"

Pat tilted her head. "I'm thinking about it. Julia, what do you think?"

"I'm here for my own reasons."

There were scattered chuckles.

Julia's and my eyes met, and something passed between us that I wasn't sure I understood.

Dr. Brown cleared his throat. "Was anyone hoping to build something with the 68000?"

Several hands went up.

"For what it's worth, you should start small. I do not plan on approving the 68000 for the microprocessors class, at least, not this time around, anyway. It's a bit too powerful and too expensive, and looks like a nice big rabbit hole to dive into. When the cost comes down, I'll rethink that, but for now, I very much approve of the decision to start with the 6801."

There were some groans, but mostly there were nods of agreement.

He continued, "Which isn't to say I'll try to stop you from doing something with the 68000. Just plan ahead, be sure you do your own work, take notes, make diagrams. Leave something you can show me for each step, and we can probably come up with something we can use in the microprocessors class."

More murmurs of enthusiasm.

I sighed. "Okay, I've got to get these disks running. Thanks for coming to encourage me, and let's get together again next week."

"When?"

"I'll tell Dr. Brown when I'm ready, and he'll let you know."

Most of the students stopped on their way out to say thanks. Pat, Julia, Mike, and George left together after Julia had me look over the notes she'd taken.

Mark and Jeff insisted on staying, said they'd work on homework while waiting to see what come up out of the rabbit hole.

Dr. Brown hummed an Eddie Rabbit tune for a minute, then stopped. "I've been talking with the school board."

I gave him a sharp look.

"You bet I have. I have permission, if there's interest, to turn this project of yours into a multi-semester project class, if things go well. You were going to be the pilot, but it looks like you'll have a lot of company."

"Now I really feel pressure." I chuckled wryly. "First the manager over at the local IBM, now the college administration breathing down my neck."

He just grinned.

I still had time, before I had to go home to deliver newspapers, to put an hour into working out math, turning the math into circuitry, and testing my results with the oscilloscope, with Mark and Jeff watching and helping.

Chapter 11.2: Headwinds -- Differences

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[Backed up at https://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2020/03/bk-33209-headwinds-68701.html.]

33209: Headwinds -- IBM

Chapter 10: Parameters

Chapter 11.0: Headwinds -- IBM

That afternoon, while I was folding newspapers, Ms. Bight called.

"How's it going?"

"Not bad." 

"Making progress on your computer?"

"Yeah. I discovered that what I thought was MFM when we talked last is not exactly what IBM calls MFM."

"Ah. Good for you. How did that happen?"

"I bought a couple of raw drives, and I'm doing research on how to build the interface electronics and driver software."

"Raw drives? How raw?"

"No op-amps, no electronics. Just the chassis, heads, motors, worm gear, solenoids."

She laughed. "Are you regretting that yet?"

"No way! I'm learning a lot. I just got some raw track writing and reading, with lots of errors, this afternoon. Then I got some FM tracks written and verified, so I'm pretty sure the heads are working . Should be able to work up a state machine for the data separator and modulator state machines for group code recording within a week or so."

"GCR? Not MFM?"

"Well, I'm working on compatibility with a variety of machines, so I'm planning to add the circuitry to do both."

"That's definitely ambitious. Raw tracks. Hot dang." She was quiet for a moment. I have some bad news, but I don't want you to think it's a permanent decision."

"Oh. Okay." I could feel disappointment draining the adrenaline of the afternoon's success.

"My boss questioned me closely about your interest in Motorola."

"Oh?" The adrenaline drain slowed.

"He didn't specifically say that was the reason, but said he would not approve the internship."

"Oh. Well, ...." With the bad news real, my heart settled down a bit.

"I was already intending to go over his head anyway, but, if what you're telling me about being able to read and write data is real, I think I have a strong chance of getting him to change his mind."

"Without FM, the raw read tends to lose sync and drop lots of bits over a track's length, of course."

"Of course. It's to be expected."

"FM encoding was pretty solid."

"Interesting. Sector size?"

"Whole track, not doing sectors yet."

"That's still impressive. Can I come take a look at your experimental rig?"

Knowing what the worst could be, it was easier to be positive.

"I think so, I'll check with Dr. Brown."

*****

While I was out delivering the newspapers, I thought about air.

When I was twelve, I would ride my bike and throw the the newspapers onto the customers' lawns, porches, sidewalks, and driveways as I road past. I learned how to bank the papers off the wind as if the newspapers were Frisbees, using the air to help me land the papers (usually) in safe, soft, dry spots.

But it only worked well when the wind was fairly constant, which meant I had to be careful not to be too ambitious about where I tried to place the newspaper.

I never broke any window or door glass, but came too close on one or two occasions.

Now I was walking the route instead of riding my bike. Walking was good exercise, and it allowed me to drop the newspaper directly on most of the customers' porches. For some customers, walking to the porch would require either walking through their flower gardens or backtracking, so I would still throw the paper there.

Air friction was useful, but wind could also make the throw tricky.

Before I got on with TI before my mission, I spent a little over a month working for a local small business machines company. They sold and serviced copiers, faxes, and similar machines as an independent dealer. The boss had hoped I would be able to help them get into the nascent small office computer market, but I had trouble getting into their workflow.

The company was close enough to home that I could ride my bike, so I did. Part of the road to work was uphill, and the west Texas wind was often in my face as I took that hill. I'd run out of energy at the top, and have to slack back on the pedals for a minute or two while I caught my breath. And it didn't help that I was often running too close to the wire, feeling like I needed the minutes lost to the wind.

Ideas from novels I had read would come to mind as I pumped the pedals, and I'd imagine things like gravity-normal propulsion for my bike, and friction-negating stasis fields to get rid of the push-back from the headwinds.

And one day I had this conversation with God:

No friction? Been reading too much Sci-Fi?

This wind bites. A friction negation field would let me slice through it like a knife through margarine that's been sitting out of the fridge all day in summer.

Friction, huh? All friction?

Well, it's easier to imagine a non-selective field.

My mind's eye was directed to my feet on the pedals.

Hmm. Okay, lack of friction could make it hard to keep my feet on the pedals.

True.

Then my focus was directed to my brakes,

Okay, it would be hard to stop, too, ...

... and to my tires.

... if I could even get started, or keep the bike in an upright position.

Now my focus was directed to the various threaded parts -- axles, cranks, brake levers, and so on.

Okay, okay, lack of friction could make it hard to keep the bike itself from falling apart.

Then I saw the bike frame at the molecular level, and the inter-molecular ionic forces which cause friction.

Where does friction come from?

Arrgghh. Interstitial ionic forces. Lack of those forces would lead to universal sublimation. The parts themselves would disappear in various vapors. I get it now. Friction is my friend. I'll quit complaining.

Heh. Just trying to help you get to work on time and in a better mood. Shall we talk about gravity again?

Heh. No thanks. I'll focus on pumping. I do remember that gravity is helpful, too.

On that job, I took the blame on myself for the times when I would get out to deliver supplies or do some simple maintenance, and the customer had problems that I did now know how to handle. After a month, I had no more room for self-blame. I took a day off, interviewed at TI, got an offer, and gave the business machines company notice.

So, you ask me why God didn't explain to me that the boss was making a mistake trusting the office manager to see to my training? Why God wouldn't encourage me to ask the boss for some different way to train?

I'm not sure He didn't try. Even now, I have a bit of pride that keeps me from hearing a lot of things He tries to tell me.

But maybe God wanted me to go to TI instead.

That office manager at the small business machines company tended to waste a lot of my training time talking about getting his metaphorical tubes cleaned, and other things a young single Christian shouldn't be thinking about.

Not that the exposure to his ideas was going to somehow put a permanent curse on me. It might have caused me problems, or I might have found valid ways to deal with other people having problems they needed to talk about. Or both. And it might have been a chance for me to set a better example for him.

But it was not good technical training, and the boss really didn't have anyone else who could train me. The other technician who could have trained me had a bad habit of going on benders and disappearing for a week or a month, and he went on one about a week after I started.

That doubled the pressure on me, because I felt I was expected to miraculously know all the things he hadn't had time to teach me. And I worried that I had precipitated him worrying about his job, and that might have been the cause of his going on the drunk. I didn't see him again before I quit.

They did end up getting into the small office computer market after I left, and last time I checked they were still in business, which is good.

So, how about the wind on your way home today?

It would be nice if it were a tailwind for a change. Sometimes I take it personal when the wind reverses directions before I head home.

I don't really remember if I had a tailwind that specific day. I do recall that, by the time I quit, I had gotten somewhat used to the winds, and to getting out of the house at least five minutes earlier in the mornings.

And, no, I did not try to ride my bike to the TI plant near the Midland Airfield. Not more than once, anyway. Mom and Dad arranged for me to be able to drive the Colt.

As I delivered those papers, I resolved myself that the world is not supposed to be frictionless. If things didn't work out with the internship with IBM, I could handle it.

Chapter 11.1: Headwinds -- 68701

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[Backed up at https://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2020/03/bk-33209-headwinds-ibm.html.]

33209: Parameters

Chapter 9: Interviewing IBM

Chapter 10: Parameters

(As I mentioned already, the real me was not brave enough or something, and never got disk drives for the Micro Chroma 68. Maybe he was a bit lazy in his thinking. But he seems to have thought saving up for tuition at a university where he could get a full bachelor's degree was more important than getting and developing his tools. Or something. And he had some other faults in his thought processes, but it is not my purpose to make this a confessional. Everybody makes mistakes. And sometimes mistakes are not.)

Friday after classes and newspapers, I loaded my stuff in the Colt again and headed to Austin. Got there late but got a look at Denny's computer. He was just finishing the box when I arrived.

With my coming as motivation, he had gotten his computer put together about as far as mine, but his box was much nicer. He had a router and other woodworking tools which I did not, and he had more experience working wood than I did.

I set mine up while he installed the mainboard and other parts in his box, and we booted both up and compared notes.

"Ought to be able to get these boxes to talk to each other."

 I scratched my head. "Write something in assembly language for a test?"

Denny thumbed through the Micro Chroma 68 manual. "Or, have them both pretend to be the other's tape recorder? Cross connect their tape interfaces and set one loading, then punch from the other."

"Hmm. How likely would that be to burn something out?"

"Both input and output are designed for cassette recorders."

We both looked at the circuit.

"Capacitive decoupling."

"Give it a try?"

We did, and it worked, but it was a little finicky.

"If we had Flex running, ..."

"I called TSC last night,"

"Oh?"

"They said we should be able to run Mini Flex on these, given floppy drives that work. But Flex 2 requires 48K contiguous RAM from address zero."

"Yeah?"

"The kernel loads and runs from $A000 to $BFFF."

"Hmm. Now that you mention it, Brad mentioned that when he saw your circuit. Putting the kernel in ROM won't work?"

"Variables and stack space in the 4K block between $A000 and $AFFF."

"Yep. How hard would it be to just overlay the empty areas?"

"The load on the top address lines is close to the max anyway."

"Then your idea for exclusive-or-ing the deselection signals with switch bits?"

"It's probably be the cleanest approach. Either way I'm going to be gating the deselect signals."
While we worked on the computers and discussed plans for Saturday, Denise listened, not saying much. When we talked about ways to tune the cassette interfaces without an oscilloscope, I saw her grimace.

*****

In the morning, I squeezed design work 0n the new dynamic RAM addressing in between helping Denny and Denise.

Then Denise brought the boys and went with us to the surplus store.

"Got to make sure my husband doesn't spend too much money," she commented with a wry, knowing smile as we left the house.

The two of them exchanged glances, and Denise wrinkled her nose at Denny.

He chuckled resignedly. "I know what our budget is, honey. I can keep things within limits."

I kept out of it.

At the surplus store, Denise kept an eye on the boys while wandering the isles with us.

The first thing we picked up was EPROM erasers. Then we checked our budgets and looked at floppy disk drives.

"Those eight inchers are a real steal," John said as we passed them by. Denny and I exchanged glances.

I shook my head. "Well, if I wanted compatibility with the school's 8080 trainer system floppies, I guess they would be. Or if I wanted compatibility with IBM's old minicomputers and mainframes. At least, I guess they aren't IBM's recent high density format."

"No, only capable of a quarter of a megabyte. But I'll give you two for the price of one."

That was tempting.

(These days, such drives go at really good prices among the retro community. Of course, inflation means that that it would not have been a good financial investment, even of the small sort. If you worry about the monetary value of such things.)

Denny shook his head. "Maybe later, but I don't think I have space for two drives that big."

"Ah, well," John grinned. "I guess I'll just have to show you the five and a quarter inchers I got in last week. A little more expensive, but they have opposing heads for double-sided disks, and the heads are double-density capable. If you don't want those, I have single-sided, double-density five and a quarter inchers for cheap, too."

"None of these have circuit boards, Denny, dear." Denise was frowning as she examined the drives on the shelves in front of us.

Denny sighed. "It's hard to get surplus drives with electronics that works, honey."

John raised his eyebrows and nodded. "Electronics that doesn't work, yeah, that's fairly easy to get, but, unless you have manufacturing docs, that's not a good idea."

He chuckled. Denny and I nodded. Denise pursed her lips in an ironic half-smile.

I picked up one of the single-sided, double density drives to look at. "Maybe, depending on a lot of things, a pair of these SS-DD drives for Giselle's Color Computer would be worthwhile. I understand the models Radio Shack is selling for it are SS-DD. But I'd have to replicate their electronics, and their controller, blind. And I don't think I'm ready for that, yet."

I put it back down and picked up one of the double-sided, double-density drives. "But I can only afford one of the DS-DD drives today, if we go that way."

"I'm going to need one of the DS-DD drives," Denny said.

John nodded. "How about one of each, and the SS-DD at half price?"

I calculated the prices. "I have enough money to do that, and it's often useful to have two drives, even if they aren't the same size."

John cocked his head. "If you want to share your electronics when you get it working, I could stock and sell some boards for you."

Denny and I looked at each other and nodded.

"Yeah. We'll think about that," Denny said with a grin.

"These floppy prices are pretty good."  I picked up a box of DS-DD diskettes and a box of SS-DD diskettes. Split half-and-half with you?"

"Let's do that."

"So where is this oscilloscope you want to buy, honey?" Denise asked. "I need to see the price on it or we can't budget it."

Denny and I looked at each other in surprise, and Denise rolled her eyes at us.

"You need it, Honey, so we need to plan for it. Joe, I think you'd better be planning for one, too."

So she got a look at the scopes and wrote down the prices before we left.

*****

Back at their house, I rewired the dynamic RAM mapping and we tested it. I left the I/O area and boot ROM/reset vector area in the memory map as they were, planning to work out a way to work with them later. When we got mine working and tested, we rewired Denny's as well.

Denny looked through the TSC catalog I had brought. Denise agreed that it would be right to purchase official copies of what we were using, and Denny took down the order information.

Then I helped with some of the honey-does Denny had waiting, helping him finish the sanding and put down the sealer coat on the hand-made bunk beds for their kids. And we did some laundry and took care of lunch while Denise rested. With their third on its way, she was a bit tired after the trip to the surplus store.

While we worked, we talked about what the interface and control circuitry for the floppy drives would need. Denise listened distractedly to our conversation.

When we were done with the non-computer stuff, we sat down again with the computers, and I checked the patches for the official copies of the assembler and the debugging environment, then we burned both into ROMs and started figuring out how to use them.

Just for fun, we decided to burn some of the TSC games collection into an EPROM.

"Good for testing and demonstrations," I reasoned.
"Yeah. And for looking at the object code and stealing ideas from it."

"Ideas, only."

"Yeah."

And we wrote a menu program to select a program from the ROMs, to select and enable ROMs, and to execute programs in the ROMs we had.

TICTAC FDB $B008 ; START ADDRESS
      FCB $40 ; ROM select/enable bit (set only one bit!)
      FCC "TIC-TAC"
      FCB 0 ; NUL TERM

 "That looks like a good layout for the table of programs."

"Reasonably long label names is sure nice."

"Six characters is a lot better than BASIC's one or two character names."

"Now how do we pass the address of the program name to the routine to show it on the screen?"

"Put it in a global variable called STRADR?"

"Global. We don't need to worry about interrupts, but I sure don't want to remember to check whether there's something else allocated at the address."

"Push it on the stack."

"Where're the PSHX and PULX instructions?"

"This isn't 6801. They don't exist."

"That's awkward."

"We can use immediate mode to load the top half in an accumulator and push it, then repeat for the bottom half."

"That gets it on stack, but then we still need to get it into X in the called code. The only way is to use a global variable."

"How about a software stack pointer in a global variable?"

(The real Denny actually made a comment like this to the real me. The real me blew it off, thinking that the 6801 and the 6809 were just a design away, and then failed to do the design work to get there for either of the more powerful processors.)

"Hmm. And if all the software I write uses that software stack pointer, and saves and restores it on when switching tasks, we're actually golden."

(That was an important realization, okay? Maybe software from other people would make conflicting use of the memory location, but, when I wrote my own software, I could write it to recognize and use it.)

"The CPU registers themselves are also just fast globals everyone recognizes as global."

"True."

At some point in the evening, we hooked the SS-DD drives up to the power supplies and our computers' parallel ports, carefully using level adjusters, op amps, and other parts from Denny's parts boxes to avoid driving them with too much current, and Denny showed me how we could prove to ourselves that the drive motor, the stepper motor, and the head-load solenoids worked.

Of course, we made sure we had a floppy between the heads for padding before we tried getting them to load.

And of course we took notes of voltages and currents as we worked. The numbers we recorded would help me parameterize the drive's operation, and knowing the operating parameters would help me design the electronics.

Denise watched us work, and celebrated with us when the wormgear to move the heads between tracks moved and when the heads loaded.

"So we can believe these floppy drives will actually work some day!"

"Den, honey, just have a little faith."

"I do."

"Yeah, I guess I know."

I turned my head to let them have a kiss in peace.

*****

At the student ward on Sunday, I re-acquainted myself with some of the members I'd met the previous month, and spent some time finding out a little more about the university. Got home in time for the home ward's young adult home evening.

*****

On Monday, I took the computer and the single-sided drive in to school, and Dr. Brown coached me while I used a scope to repeat what Denny and I had done Saturday evening. With curves and signals, instead of just simple numbers from a meter, I was able to work out programming and hardware for a test rig.

Then I began trying to parameterize the heads themselves, but was not able to get reads and writes.

Dr. Brown suggested some resources to check at the library. So I stopped in the library on the way home and did some research, borrowing issues of some technical magazines and making copies from books the library would not let me check out.

*****

"Watcha readin'?"

I was in the living room, taking advantage of the sofa and the living room floor. "IEEE magazine. An article about group code recording."

"Group what?"

"A way to make sure you can get the data you put on a floppy disk back off."

Dad gave me a blank look. "Now I know one more thing I don't know."

Mom laughed.

Dad grinned. "That pile of magazines more of the same?"

"Yeah."

Dad grew serious. "You're working hard on this."

"It's educational."

"How does this writing on the disk work?"

"Well," I thought for a bit, then pulled out a piece of scratch paper and used the magazine table as a desk, and drew a line:

____

"Is that a one or a zero?"

Dad looked at it sideways. "Trick question, I assume."

"Right. Hard to tell, isn't it?" I added a bit to the left side of the diagram:

¯¯¯¯\____________

"Still looks like a trick question. Or one of those doodles, where the answer is something about mama bowling balls or sinking ships."

Mom and Dad chuckled. Giselle slipped quietly into the room and peeked at the paper

I grinned. "You can see a transition from high to low, right?"

Dad sat down beside me. "If I'm looking at it from the same angle as you, yeah, I can see it that way."

"But without the transition, you can't tell whether it's low or high, right?"

"If it were graph paper, ...," Giselle began, but didn't finish.

I nodded. "If it were labeled graphing paper, we wouldn't need the transition. Floppy disks are more like completely blank paper than labeled graphing paper."

"Can't they put rules and labels on them?"

"Engineers tend to do things as cheap as they can. Otherwise, it's hard to make a profit."

"Isn't that like, stupid?"

Dad grimaced, then grinned. "Sometimes, honey, getting things done is more important than doing them pretty or smart."

I nodded.

"Well!" Giselle huffed in exasperation, then came around and sat on the other side of me. "So, okay."

"So, let's see if there's a way to make it easier to read without grid lines."

I added a bit more:

¯¯¯¯\____________/¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯\________/¯¯¯¯

"Could you see that as a 1, a 0, a 1, a 0, and a 1?"

Doubtful nods were what I got in response.

"How about as 1-0-0-0-1-1-1-1-1-0-0-1?"

"The length between?" Giselle asked.

"Very good. The problem is that length is hard to measure on the floppy."

"It's hard to measure on the paper you're writing on, honey." Mom shook her head.

"Exactly. So we limit the length, and instead of high being 1 and low being 0, a flip is a 1 and no flip is 0." I drew a new line:

¯\_/¯¯¯\___/¯¯¯\_/¯\_/¯\_/¯\_/¯\_/¯\___/¯¯¯\_/¯\

Giselle's face lit up in recognition. "It looks like a sound wave."

"Wave, yes. Electromagnetic waves are important with sensing magnetic fields. Hard to sense without them."

She counted. "1-0-0-0-1-1-1-1-1-0-0-1. It's the same."

"Right. Transitions where there are 1s and no transitions where there are 0s. And there's a transition at the end of each bit, so it's easier to track the length. It's essentially two frequencies, so this is called frequency modulated data recording, or FM. Or maybe it's Manchester encoding. I'm still not quite seeing how they are different."

"Son, I believe you." Dad grinned.

Mom and Giselle laughed.

"Well, this takes more space on the disk than people want it to, so IBM has a modified FM, or MFM, that is more compact. I thought I understood it when I was working with the fast cassette, but what I was doing was not what IBM calls MFM. And the microcomputer industry has several other ways called group coded recording, or GCR, that I'm trying to figure out now. And I'm trying to figure out which I'm going to do with these drives."

Mom smiled and nodded. "Which method does the floppies for Giselle's computer use?"

"Well, according to what I've read, it seems to be one of the more common GCR formats. But I'm not sure about that, either. I find conflicting information."

Dad looked at Mom and she raised her eyebrows and nodded.

"You think you'd have a better time of it if you had a working drive to compare it to?"

I looked at Dad and raised my eyebrows. "Yeah. I could definitely make more progress with more parameters known."

He frowned and tilted his head and nodded to Mom, and he and Mom went to Giselle's room, taking Giselle with them. I heard Giselle complain for a moment, then the three of them left. They returned some time later, when I was in my room doing some calculations on the Micro Chroma 68. Dad called me into Giselle's room, where together we worked out how to hook the new floppy disk drive they had bought up to her computer.

They had also bought the disk version of the word processing program, and we experimented with it.

"I think the ROM pack is easier to use," Giselle muttered under her breath.

"Definitely more commands to remember with the floppy drive," I agreed.

Dad and Mom nodded in agreement.

"But you can do a lot more with software loaded from a floppy, and you can make larger files," I added.

Mom frowned. "I wonder if it's worth it."

"Well, let's just try to avoid forcing things. Use what's easiest for now, and I'll help with the disk commands when you need help."

Dad wrinkled his forehead. "Can we save files from the tape to the disk?"

"I think so." I looked in the Disk BASIC manual that came with the disk controller, and tried using a small BASIC program to do that, and displayed the saved file names in the directory. The commands worked, and we succeeded in copying the files from tape to disk, and Dad and Giselle grinned in relief.

"Can I take the whole rig to the lab sometime this week?" I asked.

"Can I come with, and watch?" Giselle's response surprised us all.

*****

Thursday, I took Giselle with me, and we took both computers to school. She set her computer up in Dad's office and worked while I went to class.

When I finished classes and returned to Dad's office, Julia had come in to do some work for Dad, and Giselle was showing her how to use the computer. We packed her computer up and Dad wished us "Have a funny time!" as we left his office and headed to the electronics lab with both computers.

Julia dropped by the electronics lab after about an hour to watch.

With the clues I got from using the oscilloscope to watch what the Color Computer disk drive was doing, I was able to align the read/write heads on the drives and get the drives to see the data signal that the Color Computer wrote on the disks. I knew the alignment was not perfect, but it was close enough to allow me to proceed.

Next I worked out a way to read and write raw data by bit-banging, using a single bit of a parallel port under direct control of the CPU, writing and reading a track of 2500 bytes at an approximate 100 kilobaud. There were uneven gaps between bytes where the index register was updated to get the next byte from the buffer, but I adjusted the code with NOPs to make the timing for the read and write equal, and it sort-of worked.

That proved the heads worked, so I changed the circuit to use a shift register fed by the whole parallel port, with no stop, start, or parity bits. That allowed me to almost reliably write and read tracks with byte values that had easy bit patterns, at 150 Kilobaud. But it tended to drop bits on sequences of four or more bits the same, as I expected.

Just for fun, I inserted Giselle's and Julia's names in the data. The stream always lost sync from the "a" in Julia. That's ASCII code $61 in hexadecimal, or 01100001 in binary, four zeroes in a row.

Then I added a simple circuit between the output bit and the disk head, to FM encode the data on write, and to decode it on read, and I could get whole tracks with no dropped bytes, at 250 kilobaud.

"Cool." Giselle was impressed.

Julia shook her head. "I don't understand anything of what you just did, other than my name messing up your data."

"Only until I got the data properly FM encoded. It's a good test pattern."

"I can't even begin to understand what that means."

"Uhm," I started to get some scratch paper out.

"No, don't bother. I don't think it would help."

"Well, okay."

"I don't get it."

"What?"

"Why don't you just borrow the money and buy an Apple? Wouldn't that be faster and easier?"

"Ah, faster, yes." Dr. Brown nodded.

"But I wouldn't be learning nearly as much."

"And that's the down side of buying someone else's, besides having to pay the loan back." Dr. Brown took my side.

"I see." Julia pursed her lips with a frown.

Giselle refrained from saying anything, although she told me when we got home that now she could definitely understand why I hadn't fallen head over heels for Julia.

I have to admit, I still wasn't sure, myself.

Chapter 11.0: Headwinds -- IBM

TOC

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[Backed up at https://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2020/03/bk01-33209-parameters.html.
Earlier backup at https://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2020/03/bk-33209-parameters.html.]