[Cadetwriter] Announcements

[Dave Babcock]

To all,

The Computer History Museum's IBM 1620 Jr. project team has several 
announcements about Cadetwriter:

1)  Congratulations to Paul Williamson as the first person, besides our 
project team, to successfully build his own Cadetwriter.  We know that a 
number of people are building or planning to build one, but Paul is the 
first person we've heard from that has completed it.

     If you are building, or planning to build, a Cadetwriter, please 
let us know about it.

     Paul's WheelWriter 1000 seems to have a different version of the 
logic board and/or its firmware than the CHM WheelWriters. This exposed 
several issues that Paul diagnosed which led to changes in the 
Cadetwriter firmware that make it more robust.

2)  A new version (5R5) of the firmware is available with these 
important changes:
     -  Added support for semi-automatic paper loading.
     -  Increased the Interrupt Service Routine delay time to deal with 
overlapping column scans.
     -  Adjusted the timing of unshifted, shifted, and code characters.

     This firmware is available at: https://github.com/IBM-1620/Cadetwriter

3)  There is a new Cadetwriter message board at: 
https://cadetwriter.slack.com

     There are actually 5 channels available:
     -  Cadetwriter/announcements - for announcements of new versions of 
the firmware, documentation, hardware, etc.
     -  Cadetwriter/description - for a general description of 
Cadetwriter and links to resources.
     -  Cadetwriter/building - a discussion forum for those building a 
Cadetwriter.
     -  Cadetwriter/operating - a discussion forum for those using a 
Cadetwriter.
     -  Cadetwriter/suggestions - a discussion forum for proposed 
additions/changes to Cadetwriter.

     If you have interest in Cadetwriter, please register and 
participate in the discussion.


Thanks,
IBM 1620 Jr. Team