- soft modem like winmodem and winprinter is a term that strikes terror into my heart. ibm thinkpads experimented with softmodems making the sound card pretend to be a modem. they were awful awful devices. was not surprised when they went back to real modems installed.
- I played with this a long time ago when Apple first introduced it. Interesting to see there's some folks still working on it.
- Emulators are going nowhere. They'll outlast Nintendo.
- This is a super hack. I knew the hardware in my Atari 410 tape drive made it essentially a modem but I never really thought to move upstream and use the computer itself to generate the FSK tones for data communication.
- Yes, lower right pane contains the source code for the version of the game on the left. Very, very cool. It’s essentially an interactive debugger; I assume Zarf compiled Zork I from the source using ZILF and somehow got a symbol table out of it, to support the interactive features, but I don’t know.
- Definitely pulling this down. Every now and again I contemplate the obscene luxury of paying for Berkeley Mono. Maybe now I don’t have to.
- Is that the actual ZIL code running or being listed on the right?
So we play Zork and see the code?
If so, yeah! Spiffy.
- Yeah, my 800XL is sick too, but I don't think it's bad chips yet. Had it here at work, and one day the video signal got really crappy. I think I have some bad caps.
Been a bit busy, but I want to fix it because it's the best FujiNET device right now.
Agree with you completely on that hammer not needing to swing.
- My point is that, by 1985, Apple had the resources to develop a floating point BASIC of their own for the Apple II series. BASIC isn't that hard even with the primitive tools of the era; you may recall there were simple "open-source" versions in early personal computer magazines.
- I understand somewhat the emulation and really the piracy of current devices like the Switch that aren't EOL. However, I feel there are existing legal avenues for that without swinging a legislative hammer.
I have two dead 800xls - one that has a bad pokey and the other that needs some resister love. my only hope now is to find the parts and ship my devices across the pond to flashjazzcat and hope that he has time and will to fiddle with my sad devices. otherwise, I have to live the emulation life.
I want a revive machine bad, but goddamn - it is coming like the next ice age....
- Same, and it's politics we NEED to care about. If enough of us don't, then we will have to live with the will of people we very seriously disagree with.
Emulation, virtualization, compartmentalization are all basic ideas in computer science and they are used all over the place in general computing.
The difference between an emulation and virtual machine are quite interesting as well.
Consider that in the context Nintendo is claiming: Emulation is illegal (based on how it's used).
That (based on how it's used) is EVERYTHING in this discussion, and similar ideas exist in copyright too.
The DMCA boils down to making smart people illegal. George Hotz vs SONY is a prime example, and morally SONY was in the wrong by updating "Other OS" away, thus taking Linux away from many Playstation owners.
Copyright was originally put in place to insure sufficient motivation to create remained a part of society.
Of course Disney extended it to the point of silliness, yet it's law now.
Disney is now leveraging Trademark, which they should have done before fucking copyright up for generations to come by the way, and it's likely to cause similar harm.
Nintendo is the Disney of gaming, and these things can very easily take root!
Fact is damn near every, and maybe every game group has went back to the emulation / preservation communities to fetch accurate copies of their own work they lost or discarded!
Free expression, and the importance of gaming in society today, more or less demands we preserve these games somehow, and emulation is the primary way we can do that.
Which brings me back to emulation vs virtualization...
Both feature a meta code body that runs outside the scope of a target code body. In the case of gaming, it's the presenting of virtual hardware to a body of game code in order to obtain the correct responses with the real game media and game hardware being the authority in much the same way nature is the authority in science.
These companies basically refuse to commit to maintaining working machines and or some means to explore old works. Maybe they can't actually do that?
It may be true! I am unsure. But I tend to think long term, it's true. We won't have 8 bit era hardware much longer. Or, if we do, it won't be generally avaliable.
What is an FPGA?
Emulation or virtualization?
Interesting isn't it?
I'll stop there. Just wanted to share a few thoughts with the community here and see what, if anyone else's take, will come in response.
- Political. But I hope this doesn’t take hold. Emulation is how I often experience long dead platforms that no one cares about or supports. Clean room design is a time honoured methodology I hope will keep this nonsense at bay.
- DRAT!!! I just submitted this and of course, one of you already had posted it.
This software is great! I am going to make sure I start using it because it can assemble just about anything. Being portable, I'm really interested in how endian issues, big endian vs little endian, are handled. Those are subtle problems too.
Just a couple days ago, I was using one of those compiled BASIC language tools for windows to write some color data to a file, and little endian vs big endian bit me hard for quite a few compile, curse and yell, edit, compile again, "Why the F is it STILL BLUE?", cycles!!
24 bit color is basically RRGGBB00 and 32 bit color is RRGGBBAA.
When one looks at a little endian system the byte order matters when plucking values out of a number to be used elsewhere as plain text. Ask me how I know :)
- We already blew through the metric where the average web page was bigger than a DOOM install
https://www.theregister.com/2016/04/22/web_page_now_big_as_d.../
- The comment at the end of the article sums this up perfectly:
>> It‘s amazing what 21st century programming skill brings to a machine that originated basically halfway between today and the 2nd World War.
- bring back bbses, usable at 2400baud :-)
- Has anyone tried this in VR?
- Thanks for posting that! This is a cool project, and that comes across much better on a video than on the site, which lacks even a single screenshot.
- Yeah, except the site hosting the blog is bloated to hell. What a times...
- I am, yeah. I'll check the settings. Thanks!
- while it might be too far into the weeds for some, it does show a need to fit large things into small computers that is a skill and mindset that a site dedicated to antique and smaller computers should bear in mind when they hit a wall. :-)
- You on android?
You can force the pinch zoom function. Look for "pinch" in your settings. I found "force pinch zoom" under Internet settings.
The one that annoys me is "double tap and drag to zoom", because I use that constantly and there appears to be no similar override.
- That’s some amazing footage for the game. It’s updated and smooth.
- @2SB friends this tells how they were able to fit a dictionary of 250k into 64kb on a pdp11. Amazing how it was done.
If this is too far into the weeds for the site I will note it for the future
- Off topic, but it sucks that pinch coming zooming is disabled on this site. I wanted to look at that image of the dev with the game on in the background.
- On C64, all neat stuff is cheats. =)
- It's even better: the crucial parts of the source code are in the article, in plain sight! :-)
- This looks fantastic. The jump scare was frustrating and sometimes shocking even when you knew it could be coming.
I too played this on an Atari 800.
- Little more to it than that. Bill Gates and Microsoft held the cards and killed it - Because Apple still depended on AppleSoft BASIC in the Apple ][ and their license expired during this time. Apple would have to stop shipping AppleSoft BASIC in Apple ][ without the license.
- More