My new interest in amateur radio is taking off. After a couple of weeks studying, I took the ham Tech and General license exams on Saturday, and passed them both. Today the FCC updated their license database and created a new call sign for me, which means I can now legally transmit on the amateur radio bands. With my freshly-awarded operator’s license and a new radio, I tried getting on the air for the first time. It didn’t go exactly according to plan.

It’s finally here! After more than four years in development, I’m pleased to announce that BMOW’s Yellowstone Universal Disk Drive Controller for Apple II is available and shipping now. Yellowstone combines the power of an Apple 3.5 Disk Controller Card, a standard 5.25 inch (Disk II) controller card, the Apple Liron disk controller, and more, all in a single card. It supports virtually every type of Apple disk drive ever made, including standard 3.5 inch drives, 5.25 inch drives, smart drives like the Unidisk 3.5 and the BMOW Floppy Emu’s smartport hard disk, and even Macintosh 3.5 inch drives. Yes, pull the internal 3.5 inch drive from an old Mac and use it directly with your Apple II!

Yellowstone Features

• Add 3.5 inch drive and smartport hard disk support to your Apple IIe or II/II+
• Provide more disk connectivity options for your Apple IIgs
• Bring Macintosh 3.5 and naked Apple 3.5 inch drive mechanisms to the Apple II
• Drop-in replacement for an Apple Liron controller card (with optional DB-19F adapter)
• Drop-in replacement for a standard 5.25 inch or Disk II controller card
• Run two drives of different types on twin independent disk connectors
• Disk II controller emulation mode for tricky copy-protected disks
• Works with DOS 3.3, ProDOS, GS/OS, and more
• User-upgradable firmware for future feature enhancements
• 20-pin ribbon cable connectors or optional 19-pin D-SUB connectors

Yellowstone includes two independent disk drive connectors on the card, and supports drives with rectangular ribbon connectors as well as drives with D-shaped 19-pin DB-19 connectors. The standard Yellowstone card includes two rectangular connectors built-in on-board, and DB-19 female adapters are available separately if needed for use with 19-pin drives. There’s also a Yellowstone Everything Bundle that packs the Yellowstone card with two DB-19 female adapters into a single combined package.

The Yellowstone hardware is powered by an FPGA – a programmable logic device that replicates the behavior of the IWM chip and various support chips normally found on other disk controller cards. This gives Yellowstone unparalleled flexibility and control over every aspect of disk I/O, and the ability to change its behavior through firmware updates.

 
Limited Availability

If you’re interested in getting a Yellowstone card, don’t wait too long. At the risk of sounding like a late-night infomercial, “supplies won’t last”. The global chip shortage has created major problems for parts availability, and the FPGA chip at the heart of Yellowstone is no longer available anywhere, with estimated factory lead times of more than a year for new parts. If anyone has a lead on some Lattice LCMXO2-1200HC-4TG100 chips that could be delivered before 2023, let me know! The DB-19 female connectors have also become unobtanium. These aren’t manufactured anymore, and the only available sources are dusty new-old-stock from the 1990s. Once the supply of DB-19 females is gone, they’re gone and that’s the end. BMOW has enough Yellowstone hardware in stock to meet a few months’ worth of estimated sales, but beyond that the outlook is uncertain, and it may be 2023 or later before a resupply is possible. Lucky for you, there are plenty of them in stock right now.

 
Universal Drive Support

Need to attach a disk drive to your Apple II? Yellowstone has got you covered. Yellowstone is compatible with all the disk drives shown in this stack, plus many more. See the instruction manual for complete details.

 
Final Testing, One Last Moment of Panic

These Yellowstone boards were all tested by the contract manufacturer, using the automated Yellowstone test rig that I’ve described previously. But of course for this first batch, I’m going to spot test some boards at home before I put them in the store. So I grabbed a few from the shipping box, popped one into my Apple IIe, and… it didn’t work. After 10 minutes of troubleshooting I couldn’t figure out what was wrong, and I nearly had a heart attack imagining that the whole lot of Yellowstone boards had some systemic design error. Then I noticed the ribbon cable that I’d grabbed off my desk for testing:

Notice anything strange about this cable, like a giant hole in one of the conductors? Why, Steve, why?! I don’t remember why I originally made this hacked cable, but I curse myself now for leaving it on my desk where I’d accidentally pick it up six months later.

 
Available Now

If you own an Apple IIe, Apple IIgs, Apple II+, Apple II, or Apple II clone with expansion slots, Yellowstone is the disk controller card you’ve been waiting for! Check out the complete details in the Yellowstone instruction manual, or buy one now at the BMOW Store.

How do older electronics nerds have fun? With an amateur radio license, of course! Some recent conversations with friends spurred me to learn more about ham radio operation, and I threw myself into studying. I’m now scheduled to take the technician and general class license exams back-to-back on March 19, and if I pass I’ll receive a call sign and can get on the air. Watch out, world.

What exactly do amateur radio operators do? Until recently, I only knew what I’d seen in movies, where hams working at night try to make voice contact with other radio operators on the opposite side of the planet, using huge antennas. This is called DXing and it’s certainly a big part of the hobby, but now I’ve learned there’s much more. Many hams begin with simple handheld radios operating on VHF and UHF frequencies, where they can talk to others in their local area. Most cities have repeaters on hilltops and tall buildings that can rebroadcast these low-power transmissions, effectively increasing the coverage area. Where I live in California’s San Mateo County, there are over 50 such repeaters available for amateur radio use!

Other fun things to try: talking to the International Space Station, bouncing signals off the moon, and patching communications through amateur radio satellites. There are also radio-internet gateways that can stream radio traffic across the internet for part of its journey. And beyond voice communications, there’s all manner of digital radio communication too. Packet radio, RTTY, image and video transmission, you name it.

Much of the hobby revolves around building and tinkering with the radio equipment and antennas, in order to get the best performance. For people who enjoy experimenting with electronics, this is a good challenge.

To broadcast on an amateur radio frequency, you must be licensed. This theoretically prevents inexperienced people from accidentally screwing-up the EM spectrum for everybody else through improper operation of their radio. There are currently three levels of license, from the beginner-level technician license, to the general license, and the top-tier amateur extra license. Your license class determines what frequency bands you’re permitted to broadcast on, and the maximum permitted power level. Technicians are mostly restricted to VHF and UHF frequencies (with a few exceptions), while the general license opens up more lower frequency bands that propagate further and are better suited for chatting with people 10 time zones away. Amateur extra licensees can broadcast in any amateur band and are also eligible to get shorter, more-memorable call signs.

Before I knew anything, I assumed the amateur radio license exams would be quite difficult. “Difficult” is a relative idea, but now that I’m familiar with the tests, I’d say practically anyone could pass the technician exam with about 5-10 hours of study. If you already have some background in basic electronics and physics, like most readers of the BMOW blog likely do, then you’ll find it easier. The technician exam is roughly one-third electronics and radio theory basics, one-third practical radio operation skills, and one-third FCC regulations. The general exam goes deeper into the theory, but it’s nothing too scary. All the tests are multiple choice, and knowledge of Morse Code isn’t needed.

Initially I’d planned to study for the technician license, but after I realized I already knew about half the material on the general license exam, I decided to double-up and do them both at once. This seems to be a fairly common path for people who already have some electronics and physics background.

See you on the airwaves! If you’re in the SF Bay Area, hit me up after the 19th if you’d like to try some on-air conversation.