Thanks

This page is to give thanks to the kind people who have donated time, loaned materials, or otherwise helped me in my efforts to understand, document, and archive the information on the Sol computer. In semi-chronological order:

• Susan Battle (nee Thomas)

  What more could a guy ask for in a wife and best friend? Intelligence, beauty, humor, kindness, and enduring patience, especially when it comes to my preoccupation with decrepit computers. Susan has let me indulge my child-like (childish?) fascination with old computers, even when it has meant giving over large parts of the house to cobweb ridden boxes of junk.

  I love you, Susan!
• Bob Stek

  When I first obtained my Sol, I only had vague recollections of the machine, as I never owned nor operated one. The machine didn't have any documents, so it was tough sledding at first. After searching the web for documents and not finding much, I came across Bob Stek, "Saver of Lost SOLs". Bob sent me quite a few really helpful emails, and even photocopied and sent a couple chapters of the Sol manual. That really got me on my way, enough to make real progress.

  More recently, Bob sent along a few tapes packed with precious Sol software, and a box full of Sol documents. I'm still going through the docs, but most of the programs have made it up on the web page.

• Doug Coward

  Doug has quite a stash of old computers and documentation. On a number of occasions, Doug has loaned to me a number of documents, including all of his Sol docs so I could make my own copy. He once loaned to me the personality module from his Sol so I could check it against mine.

• David Keil

  David Keil runs a great TRS-80 website. Not only has he written the best TRS-80 emulator out there, he has also OCR'd a ton of documents, producing really gorgeous results. I wish I could produce docs as nice as his. Anyway, David helped me iron out some of the problems I was having getting things OCR'd without spending inordinate amounts of time getting results.

• Tim Shoppa

  Tim has a great web site over at http://www.trailing-edge.com/ for PDP stuff. Tucked away in a hidden subdirectory of his FTP site, Tim put on-line some binary images of some Sol tapes he had archived more than twenty years ago. Tim pointed me at these files and it helped me get more than one of the programs that I have up online in a runnable state.

• Mike Noel

  Mike outbid me on a pair of P.T. Access newsletters --- but then was kind enough to scan them for me so that I could OCR them and get them up online. He has also contributed a scan of the ALS-8 manual.

• Dennis Toeppen

  When I started running out of web space for the Sol site from one of the free web providers, Dennis stepped in and offered me free hosting and no disk limits. It probably helps that Dennis and I go back 18 years and used to be roommates in college. One more twist in the vine of life.

• Paul Schaper

  Paul has owned a Sol since way back when, and he still has a lot of original documentation and programs. Big kudos to Paul for having the foresight to have archived his cassettes in hex files two decades ago, and even more kudos for taking the time and effort to share them.

  Subsequently, Paul donated a large number of manuals and magazines to the web site.

• Doug Quebbeman

  Doug is a Sol user from back in the day. He sent along a large collection of source code for various programs for the Sol that he wrote or significantly modified.

• Ray Borrill

  Ray provided copies of the very interesting ROM magazine article written by Lee Felsenstein and also a brief article on adding minimal string support to BASIC/5.

• David Wendt

  David sent a copy of Access, Vol 1, Num 3.

• Dudley Henderson

  Dudley has sent in a number of interesting things, including the manual for Electric Pencil, a number of utility programs, an interesting word processor program, and Vista VOS, a flavor of CP/M. He was also the inspiration for the "alternate font" feature in Solace.

• Gilbert Gutierrez

  Gil has scanned and OCR'd a few interesting articles from various magazines. Not all of them have been posted yet, due to copyright issues that need to be worked out.

• Marilyn Missimer

  Out of the blue, Marilyn wrote me an email and asked if I wanted her old Sol w/Helios. This will be the basis of resurrecting some PTDOS software and getting Solace to emulate the Helios system.

• John MacPherson

  John was kind enough to trust me with some manuals and disks that he was about to auction off on Ebay. This is the source of the FOCAL and Music System manuals that are now online, and also a number of NSDOS disks that I have yet to convert for use with Solace.

• Joseph F. Gaffney

  Joe contributed the tinytrek zip file containing the executable, along with some docs on the version of Palo Alto Tiny BASIC that is part of the bundle.

• Steve Maguire

  Steve generously donated two Sol-20's, including one with the Helios disk system. Also included were quite a few manuals and a lot of disks and other assorted docs. Steve was on the Sol scene from the very beginning. He also is the author of a highly regarded book on programming, Writing Solid Code. Later, Steve recovered the executable to a great space invaders clone he wrote for the Sol, called RAIDERS.

• Jerry Brockway

  Jerry sent me a few interesting Sol items he had "found" in his basement, including a Parasol debugger and the corresponding software. This is a hardware-based debugger that uses one Sol to control the operation of the target Sol.

• Leslie Smith

  Leslie sent me source code for PTDOS 2.0, the 8080 assembler program, and the disk copy program. I haven't seen this source anywhere else.

• Ray White

  Ray sent a raft of very well written games, written especially for the Sol.

• Ralph Hopkins

  Ralph invested a lot of time recovering files from his Sol system, resulting in over 500 files, many of which were Ralph's original works. Not all of them have been processed yet, but the bulk of them are now online.

• Barry Watzman

  Barry has been a Sol contact for a number of years, almost from the start of my involvement in this web site. He has contributed in a number of ways, the most recent of which (which also prompted me to remember to issue this cumulative thanks) was scanning the Solus/Proteus newsletters.

• Jay West

  Jay is the host/moderator/voice of reason on the classic computer mailing list. Being a supporter of all machines classic, he very generously hosted this web site for a number of years.

• Andy Wardley

  Andy is responsible for creating and maintaining the Template Toolkit. This is a nice open source templating system that makes creating and maintaining the web pages of this site a lot simpler.

• Charles Eicher

  Charles goes way back with the Sol-20, and has put his back in operating condition. He took the effort to scan some documents that were missing from this site, and sent them along so we all could benefit.

• Don Senzig, Jr. and Bob Senzig

  Bob sent an interesting computer product catalog and a few tapes containing Sol software (most interestingly, Peter Jenning's MICROCHESS). These had been Don's, but sadly Don passed on a few years ago. Thanks to them both, we can all enjoy these programs again.

• Bruce Jones

  After years of not finding any new manuals, I had stared to suspect I already had all the ones PT produced. But then Bruce popped up and supplied Software #2, which is the source code listing for the BASIC/5 interpreter.

• Gregory R. Perry, PE

  Well, it happened again. Another Proc Tech listing is now available, this time for an early listing of the Focal interpreter distributed by Processor Technology, thanks to Gregory Perry.

• Paolo Binotti

  Paolo scanned is Sol System Manual and very carefully compared his vs. what was available online. He noted all the differences, which let me assemble an improved manual by adding a number of missing pages and the two final chapters. He also scanned the Software #2 manual, which is the precuror to the BASIC/5 sold for the Sol computer. Later, he scanned the 4KRA and 8KRA User's manuals.

• Phil Lord

  Phil created binary ROM images for both character generator versions; scanned the manual for his CDC 64KB RAM card; contributed the memory test programs he used to verify its operation; and scanned the PT press release announcing the Sol-20. Phil also figured out how to patch the ALS8 binary to make it run on the Sol.

• Martin Eberhard

  Martin might be the last soldier standing. He has a restored and running Sol-20, including a Helios disk system (which was finicky even when it was new) running PTDOS. He has written new software for it and shared the source, and has also created a custom EPROM programmer for the type of EPROM used for the Sol-20 personality modules. Recently he recreated the plug in card for the MUSIC software system, and had released a trove of useful drivers and programs for PTDOS.

• Russel Alikberov

  Russel has written a couple programs, one requiring Quicktime, and a more recent attempt using Javascript, so no plug-ins are required.

• Mike Douglas

  Mike figured out how to get ENT programs to download to his Sol at 9600 baud reliably (see the top section of the programs page for the details. That tip should help a lot of people. He has created a website with a lot of useful and interesting documents on a number of system, including the Sol-20.

• Doug Smythies

  Doug has managed to find three documents which haven't been available here before.

• Emmanuel Roche

  Emmanuel found and patiently typed up the article and source code for the Sol CP/M program "balloon". Over the years he has been an interesting correspondent on a number of vintage computer topics.

• John Gord

  John supplied the source code for PT Software Package #1, which is a resident assembler. The site already had the manual, so it is nice to have both parts now.