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This site started as my blog on ITToolbox. Along the way I found: First, I found that I enjoyed writing a blog; Second, I found that a surprising number of people were reading me regularly; Third, I found that I had a lot to say, mostly about delivering quality software, but also about my adventures in code, and about the people close to me; Fourth, I found that my readers enjoyed the "non-IT Stuff" as much as the down and dirty details of managing software development. So it is the coneblog because it is by me, Larry Cone. My goal is to entertain and educate. I hope that you get some of both!

Skycam Images > Early Skycam (9) > Skycam Osborne 2

A very early shot of the author and the original Skycam control system, an Osborne 2 with a custom GPIB control interface box. This early portable computer ran CPM, had twin floppies, about 64K of RAM, and a smokin' 1 MHZ Z-80 processor. We chose this unit because it was (somewhat) portable, and had an addressable two way interface (GPIB) built in. The lack of much support for this unit meant that I ended up hand coding some key items in Z-80 assembler, including the GPIB interface and the square root algorithm. Along the way I discovered the Z-80's unique HCF (Halt and Catch Fire) op-code. (Sorry, an old assembler coder's joke that I couldn't resist throwing in). This picture was taken at our first field trial at Havertown HS in Havertown, PA, around (gulp) late 1982. The amazing thing was that the darn thing flew with this rig.