One of the quirky things Adam does is every time you pull the reset switch on the computer the SmartWRITER printer will do a noisy reset of its own including a linefeed which pushes the paper up one line. Trying out software using my ADE Lite drive requires me to reset the computer to load a different disk image so its something I do quite often. The noisy printer reset quickly became annoying. After looking at the ADAM Technical Reference Manual and asking around on the SmartBASIC forum I discovered that it’d be pretty easy for me to build an adapter that would prevent the computer from sending the reset signal to the printer. So a few weeks ago I ordered some wire and DB-9 ports and put it all together. Essentially it is just a straight connector with all the wires in place except the “reset” wire. Works perfectly! Okay, so it isn’t much of a hack but I was pretty happy about it. Gotta start somewhere, right?

I’m mainly a software guy. However, hardware has always fascinated me and one of the things I’ve learned since diving into the retro-computing world is that having some basic electronics skills can really come in handy. With that in mind I have registered for this course on Udemy. Hopefully it will help me level up!