I love Apple II series and compatibles and have been involved with Apples since the beginning. I remember during the 80s there was a big interest in robotics and robotic arms.
1) Rhino Robotics XR-2 Arm with Rev4 Motors(equal to XR-3) Mark III controller, RS-232
2) Microbot Teachmover RS-232 and keypad and PowerSupply
3) Scorbot RS-232 and controller and conveyor and Linear Slide (1 large and 1 mid-size)
4) Quickshot Robot Interfacing and Joysticks
5) D&M Computing Armdroid 1000 and Aprmdroid 2001 controller, conveyor, turntable, teach pendants
6) Paxton-Patterson CNC lathe interface and software I have this from a friend who refused to have his CNC lathe Apple II powered and didn't even want to hook it up one timeto see if it worked. He upgraded it to Mach III PC controller. I was able to save the software and card and glad to have it.
7) Slide Printer for Apple IIc made by Seary Pic-Mount Corp have original software and Apple IIc works great to print 8 lines of red/black color dot matrix to 35mm slide paper or plastic mount. Needed repairs and I can answer questions on what was done to repair.
8)TrackstarE Apple II emulator card for PC works well and I have book and sofware
9)Echo II speech card no software and no information on it would love to make it run
10) A long time ago I had a C-Vue LCD monitor about 15 years ago I traded it for needed items and always regretted it
11) I worked at Laser Computer when a young man and could answer some procedural questions on what to do to repair Laser 128, 128EX 128EX/2 and interfacing using the expansion slot on side etc. BTW I did see a Laser 3000 at that company which is quite rare. No longer exists. It was a viable growing home computer company while I was there.
12) I'm interested in attaching a 3.5" disk drive to my Apple IIe (have 3) and have an unidentified controller that I would like to know what the brand name is and how to get it to read 800k 3.5" floppies. Important to identify as some used unidisk 3.5" and some used superdisk. Hook up the wrong one and PSSSSFF (smoke)
No teachpad for some of the above robots I have means I would like to find software which is hard to come across.
My Microbot Teachmover runs well but have no software for it
My Rhino robot powers up and does the homing routine but has no software and no teachpendant. The website seems to have a mistake in the cabling pinouts and have had no luck programming it from books like, "Fundamentals of Robotics by Larry Heath" which lists programming examples but have no effect on my Rhino XR-2 with Rev4 motors. I wonder if teachpendant needs to be hooked up to work (I don't have a teach pendant for it) I wonder if someone out there has a Rhino and is able to answer the question whether the software commands will work even when the teach pendant is fully disconnected (not just the flipswitch but fully unattached)
Also there were several other robots and robotic arms in the 80s sold to schools etc which are now being sold on ebay which lack teachpendants, software, or need repair. I would like to create this new topic for users to exchange ideas.
I am currently repairing my Armdroid 1000 which doesn't light up at all and ordered some parts which need to be soldered in. My Armdroid 2001 is a big one and my best. It responds to teachpendant commands and I have a full set of software for it. It has a stripped belt and I ended up movingthe belt position so the stripped part is on a portion that the gears don't reach (shifted belt position by loosening then moved it around a little)
I would like to program two of my robots to fold a paper airplane, or tie a shoelace, or other such project. Two arms is my goal. AT this time I would love to get one Apple powered robot up and running. No software is my problem or no teachpendant. The idea is to make it repeatable which means saving the steps to disk.
Understanding the output needed to control any of these devices would be appreciated. Likewise vise-versa for answers to questions that I know.
Let me know if you have questions or have an answer to my questions.
Sincerely,
Appledude