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  • boofar 3 days ago | parent | on: History of UNIX - Brian Kernighan
    I highly recommend Kernighan's book "UNIX: A History and a Memoir".
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  • boofar 44 days ago | parent | on: Commodore 64 ultimate
    I'm skeptical about this venture for several reasons, but this is a good first product launch. The bundle seems like a great deal, at least for people who know what they're really buying.

    I'm also curious about how many of these kinds of machines the market can absorb. It's more of a replacement/backup unit for serious C64 enthusiasts than a casual "nostalgia" gaming platform, which is to their credit IMHO, but maybe a harder sell. RG's THEC64 Maxi reportedly sold in the tens of thousands but it was roughly half the price.

    reply
    • bmonkey325 42 days ago
      I estimate that there are only about 32,000 working C64 left in the wild. Anything, even FPGA, to keep the ability for the machine to be alive is awesome. The SID, VIC II are becoming more and more rare by the day. The supply has all but dried up in Canada where I live. Tarrif anxiety is having a chilling effect of sourcing parts from USA
      reply
  • boofar 45 days ago | parent | on: 10 Desktop Publishing Tools That Didn’t Make It
    There was a Swedish Commodore magazine that did all of their DTP in Publishing Partner Master on Amiga... for a couple of years, until they silently switched to Macs. :)
  • boofar 56 days ago | parent | on: Commodore trademark bought by youtuber
    Copyrights for the AmigaOS software is contested between Cloanto and Hyperion. Cloanto is however the uncontested copyright holder for the C64 KERNAL. Some very vague hints were dropped in this latest video about acquiring the ROM:s. Alas, I have no insider info.

    I get a very vague feeling about all of it and I wonder if even the key people involved are completely sure about which direction they want to take. The various possible endeavors mentioned in the two videos combined seems to amount to "something for everyone" - replacement C64 parts, an "official" web shop, educational platforms, the internet - before facebook made it suck, early noughties cellphones, generic merch, retro-ish gaming devices, modern PC hardware in C64 cases...

    I guess we'll have to wait and see.

  • boofar 65 days ago | parent | on: Interview with 80s Computer Nerd
    Some of his other videos are funnier (such as "Interview with Esoteric Language Academic"), but I thought this fit well here.
    • viler 63 days ago
      I remember an "interview with an ffmpeg enthusiast" which hit incredibly close to home with me. :-D
      • bmonkey325 63 days ago
        Ffmpeg devs are in it for the love of the game:

        Patch added to support sanm codec31/c332 decoding as used on the Sega-CD release of Rebel Assault 1 from 1993.

        FFmpeg aims to play every video file ever made. —-

        https://x.com/ffmpeg/status/1931128047358578954?s=61&t=t...

  • boofar 77 days ago | parent | on: Programmers At Work: Bill Gates (1986)
    Interesting! A lot of his answers and thought processes are naturally influenced by the limitations of early home computer hardware. Others are still highly relevant, especially about code reviews.
  • boofar 96 days ago | parent | on: Forgotten Graphical Interfaces: the RISC OS GUI
    > Most applications simply append an icon to the icon bar; the screenshot below shows the effect of launching !Edit, with the extra icon in the icon bar being the only clue that anything happened: This new icon in the icon bar has to be clicked to cause the program to appear.

    This little idiosyncrasy confused me copiously when first trying RiscOS.

  • boofar 96 days ago | parent | on: The Computer Collection: Unix Workstations
    I mostly posted this because it seems very rare with photos/screenshots of InterGraph's EnvironV. If anyone is sitting on a rare image goldmine, please share. :)
    • Borg 93 days ago
      Well, I found it ages ago, its still online and even got updated:

      http://miod.online.fr/machineroom/years/index.html

    • IcePic 95 days ago
      This might make you happy?

      http://www.datormuseum.se/

      • boofar 95 days ago
        It certainly does, though I can't find any Intergraph stuff there.
    • classichasclass 96 days ago
      Always wanted to play with a Clipper RISC. It's about the only significant 90's RISC not represented in my collection.
    • bmonkey325 96 days ago
      Thats some vintage workstation pr0n....
  • boofar 129 days ago | parent | on: 80 Columns in Software on the Commodore VIC-20
    I love seeing these kind of "can it be done?" experiments, limitations be damned. But I also have to admit it appears absolutely unreadable :) The 40 column mode looks nice, though.
    • glhaynes 128 days ago
      As the last line says: Here there's a bill there's a key!
      • boofar 128 days ago
        lol :D
    • rocky1138 120 days ago
      I wonder if there's some low hanging fruit of changing a few of the most unreadable characters to 3x8 instead.
  • boofar 169 days ago | parent | on: Aztec C compiler for retro computers
    Haven't tried Aztec but there's a free (as in beer) Amiga compiler called North C that'll fit on a single floppy together with its standard library, an assembler and an editor. It's K&R (pre-ANSI) of course.
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