Two Stop Bits | shdon's comments

shdon 389 days ago | parent | on: A C64 SID Replacement With Built-in Games
I'm really intrigued by how the data transfer works. In the video linked in the article, you can see them triggering the configuration panel of the chip by doing SYS54301, which effectively amounts to a jump instruction to address 0xD41D. The SID addresses range from 0xD400 to 0xD41F, with these addresses only being assigned to registers up to address 0xD41C. So, this is a jump to the first non-register address, with 3 bytes in the SID's address space that are normally being unused. Enough for a jump instruction itself. You could then technically have the Pico dispense the programme code in a tight loop using those 32 bytes as a tiny memory window into the code, 32 bytes at a time, each of them ending with a jump instruction to the start.
shdon 389 days ago | parent | on: Winevdm on 64-bit Windows
The NTVDM link reminded me of this. I still use this regularly to run 16-bit Win 3.x software on 64-bit Windows 10.
- Retro 388 days ago
  Curious to know what Win 3.x software you are still using regularly today, if you don't mind me asking. Is it mostly games perhaps?
  - shdon 388 days ago
    Some games indeed. But I've also done art (graphics and music) and programming on Win 3.x with some of it being in proprietary file formats that can't be loaded by modern software. I could export music to MIDI and load that in modern software like Sibelius or Musescore, but I'd lose much of the notation. So instead I use the old software to have it on-screen or print it, then transcribe it.
shdon 389 days ago | parent | on: ntvdm: portable "NT" Virtual DOS Machine
It may be text-mode only, but I absolutely love that there are still people doing this kind of thing and that such projects appear regularly, making sure that there are plenty of options for keeping the classic software alive.
shdon 392 days ago | parent | on: 3dfx Voodoo 4 video card in MXM format
I'm always in awe of people who are capable of designing hardware themselves. Somehow this feels even more amazing, as it's coaxing an ancient piece of hardware into working in a system and architecture that isn't even close to what it was designed for.
shdon 406 days ago | parent | on: Microsoft open-sources GW-BASIC
Is this a different version of GW-BASIC? The article mentions MS-DOS 4.01. Perhaps it is the version of GW-BASIC included with that? I thought a version of GW-BASIC had already been open-sourced a few years back?
- zxm 406 days ago
  from wikipedia 'On May 21, 2020, Microsoft released the 8088 assembler source code for GW-BASIC 1.0 on GitHub under the MIT License.[1] '
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GW-BASIC
  - shdon 406 days ago
    Yeah, that's the version this post actually links to. I don't see any links to newer versions of GW-BASIC. It's weird, as the post title refers to GW-BASIC, but everything else is about DOS 4.xx
shdon 406 days ago | parent | on: ICQ messenger shuts down after almost 28 years
Heh, I just checked my old ICQ number and the account is marked as "[deleted]" yet still has my old profile picture from more than a decade ago.
shdon 410 days ago | parent | on: Space Quest 2's master disks accidentally included...
Sierra's AGI and SCI and Lucasfilm/LucasArts' SCUMM were strokes of genius and have been a major factor in these companies' success. It allowed them to not just churn out games at a far greater pace than if every game's tech had to be built from the ground up, but also made porting to other platforms much easier. In that sense they are the predecessors of Unity and Godot and all the other game engines we have today.
shdon 410 days ago | parent | on: Psion 5x emulator
Had a Siena, 3c, 5, 5mx and a netBook. Loved every one of them. Great little machines.
Quick nitpick for the title and tags: it's the 5MX not the 5X (there was no such machine)
shdon 414 days ago | parent | on: How Sierra Was Captured, Then Killed, by a Massive...
Such a tragedy. Sierra games were responsible for my love of adventure games and if it wasn't for them, I never would have made the games I have.
- bmonkey325 414 days ago
  That the scenes were vector drawn that materialized unlike the raster images that just appeared as you saw in graphical text adventures gave it a visceral quality I can’t explain. But totally enjoy seeing.
  Also. The story telling was good. Which helped :-)
  - shdon 414 days ago
    With the very first version of the GAL (Game Adaptation Language) that would later evolve into AGI, you could actually see the images being drawn... That was with the self-booting floppy versions of King's Quest 1 and 2.
shdon 417 days ago | parent | on: F-15 Strike Eagle II: The origin story
This is really interesting stuff. I really appreciate that the author goes into a lot of detail, including all the failed attempts, and doesn't just post the final results. Will have to subscribe to get further updates.
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