- It’s a caret indicator, also known as a ‘meter indicator’ or ‘meter movement’, used in navigation devices and on slide rules to indicate two states - a ‘value’ and a ‘register’, where the register state is indicated inside the box, and the value by whatever the arrow edge is pointing to. In a slide rule application, two independently movable bars are contained within the area of the symbol, with the pointer side used to select values on a scale, and the register ‘box’ side showing the results according to slide bar positioning.
It is also commonly used in compass devices to indicate a direction/bearing set by the user as a waypoint, and in digital navigation systems common at the time, would often be used in combination with the filled-in version to indicate course accuracy - when filled, the navigator is on-course, when emptied, a correction must be made.
There are also archaic physical versions of this symbol in the form of paper clips which can slide along the edge of a form, indicating the next step of a form for a department or staff member to be working on.
It was also used to indicate end of line positions in IBM typewriters, as mentioned by others in this thread.
So, a general purpose cursor/caret indicator…
- Its not 'retro', but I find this to be a very soothing font on my amber ("hazeltine palette") scheme:
- There were other "-comm" programs back in the day, I remember using TeleComm and zComm, and other things, in independent Quarterdeck desqView windows .. there was a period in the late 80's/early 90's where the modem 'terminal/comm' program selection was later reflective in the mid-90's "browser wars" .. I went through a few different 'comm' programs before settling finally on minicom because: linux.
But I'm sure, on one of those floppies in the vast collection on the shelf, there are at least 12 different MSDOS "comm" programs that I tried out, for a while ..
- 1337, an excellent remake for the Oric Atmos computer, which is also 6502-based, is missing from the list:
- 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
- More
I never dived into the C64 video architecture much back in the day when C64 was fresh - I instead had an Oric-1/Atmos and thus had other thorns to deal with - but I have always respected the levels to which the C64 has been pushed.
In the Oric-1/Atmos world, we too have strange attributes to exploit and derive new tricks, never once considered feasible, for the platform.
I have often thought of what it'd take to add a camera to the Oric, and thought to just glom an ESP32 with a realtime libpipi [1] or Pictconv [2] implementation, generating LDA/STA's for the Orics very humble HIRES mode straight into its DATA lines.
There is a great deal of satisfaction in seeing such insane optimisations being developed with 21st century optimism for the 'retro' computers. Making them do insane new things makes them new again.
[1] - http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/libpipi/oric [2] - https://www.osdk.org/index.php?page=documentation&subpag...