I'm thinking that Oric Atmos has to be added to the build-platform/, ASAP ..

Oh, the memories this brings back .. painful .. sad .. dreadful memories .. ;)

I have in my collection an Oric Atmos system, which was used for 40 years as the database and logging system for a motorbike club, member records, logs of fuel from the club tanks, leave/arrival times, and so on ..

It was finally retired and replaced with an Android app - but I have it preserved in my archives, disks and all (minus the data), for display some day .. with demo data, though, still an awesome little system, chugging away ..

This OCC competition is a really inspiring event .. I will have to try to enter it next time. Seems like a great way to promote the use of old computers to do new things…

10PING:EXPLODE:SHOOT:ZAP:PING

20PAPERRND(1)7:INKRND(1)7:GOTO10

A friend of mine recently revealed that he had one of these in his attic.

I think we are going to have to try very hard to get it set up - and particularly, soon after, install all of these great development tools! We already have the rest of the machines .. ;)

In that era, I had first seen a 2D 'computer maze' game on teletype (i.e. paper) terminals of the student friends I knew, who were learning mainframe things at home in a period (70's/80's) before computing got personal.

We kids weren't allowed to play that game much (better, Chess), since it emitted reams and reams of updates, but there was always about a 60cm pile of green teletype paper around, for re-using with a different colour ink ribbon ..

Seeing it on a ZX81 in this manner is just glorious!

And now, watching my kids playing Counter Strike in the background while I hack on some playDate thing or two .. what a change in resolution.

I had an 8-bit (Oric-1) for my first computer, and I definitely lusted after a bigger machine - the Atari ST - for a few years in my teens, but circumstances happened (I got a modem wired up to the Oric) and I got access to much bigger metal, and professionally ended up with a MIPS Magnum pizzabox, a couple hazeltines, and a brand new PC on my desk by 1988, so I quite skipped the Atari habit.,,

But I sure would like to have one now! I once found one for 50eu in a second-hand shop in The Hague, complete with disks and monitor, which I drunkenly convinced a colleague to get, on a whim/dare, thinking we'd just have fun with it for a weekend .. but he managed to get quite hooked with its MIDI port in particular, so I'm on the hunt for another ..

In any case, I have most of the other 8-bit machines in my collection these days (its big), including an Enterprise 128, which I really should hack on a litlte more often, since I seriously lusted for this system too, Back In The Day™ ..

I'm really curious about the tech in this game, and this is for sure an adventure in architecture like no other - so I'll enjoy doing those notebooks and getting as far as I can to my own builds running, next time I'm in the 'lab kind of mood.

What's really fascinating, is all the modding that has already started on this. Those of us who have really, really fond memories of Tempest, Back In The Day™, are sort of getting our minds blown, that the source is not only available, the PDP11 is there for the taking, and MAME can give you that ol' happy feeling, but also there are new versions not just to be played, but to be made .. SVG to playable tunnel, wtf?! Delightful!

Kinda neat, imho. I think this aspect of the retro- scene is one of the reasons its so compelling - and important - as it quite clearly demonstrates that technology doesn't get old - its users do. There is always a new way to apply technology, even if it was created 'ages' ago ..

A lovely little machine, it would've been nice to see how things had proceeded, had this been successful enough to warrant a few more revisions. Certainly, it had relevance to the music-making computer users of the period. I wonder if its MIDI was ever used for productive purposes ..