- Here is a much better link about the maze: https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2024/01/the-endless-maze-alg.../
- This is probably more than your friend ever wanted to know, allow me to introduce you, er them, to "IEC dissected", by Jan Derogee.
https://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/programming/serial-b...
- I remember seeing this a while ago, and my memory was jogged when reading this thread about Timex / Sinclair printers on the ZX World forums.
- That sure sucks, but there are cases where one side of the story ain't enough... and this specific source is known to be one of them. It'd be interesting to hear what the VCF team has to say about this.
- Responsible organizations have other options, such as stopping accepting new submissions when storage space runs out, or looking for a new good home for the excess material they can no longer store. Or, at the very least, notify the original submitter they can no longer store the material.
- My first 8 bit computer was an Amstrad CPC 464 and that one had a _nearly_ modern keyboard ;-) https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amstrad_CPC464_keyboard.j...
- Not retro and vintage focused for today but good to see for future 2SB. As N archivist of sorts no telling what will happen to the retro gear I have accumulated after I slide off this mortal coil. Will a museum or curator be interested or have the capacity to take my accumulated Atari gear and games in the era post 2040 era where my life probability becomes vanishingly small.
- At the dawn of binned parts. The odd part was having a 487sx released. I guess it was probably for those that could enjoy the 486sx upfront and then when the funds became available later to enjoy the 487sx rather than buying a combined DX part and motherboard upfront ?
- Vi has two modes. The mode you make mistakes in and the mode that beeps at you. :-)
I used Stevie on OS/2 and I carrried a vi 3.5” floppy I got from watcom for a long time because it was a standard editor I could use at alien DOS computers I would be asked to troubleshoot.
- played it on zx spectrum, a LOT great game. computer hide and seek. always on the move, trying to stay ahead of the sentinel or it's sentries.
what amused me at the time was that there are 10,000 levels loaded in from tape and within a few weeks of it being released magazines had accumulated codes for all of them from readers playing at home iirc. pre internet that was a lot of information gathering.
- I played it on my Spectrum and Amiga. It’s one of those games that has a particular feeling, it always struck me as lonely and a little weird. TIL it was written originally for the Beeb. Also I didn’t know it was released as “The Sentry” in the US.
There’s some download links for the C64 on this page at the very bottom, scroll down quickly to avoid gameplay spoilers! Looks like there are other remakes linked there too.
- Wow. What a beautiful remake. I never played or even heard of the original gsme. Anyone know if it’s available in an archive for the c-64. Was it ever ported to any other system?
- That’s pretty cool, I might have a go at that.
There’s also a mod for the Jaaaag for Tempest.
- The wifi and NTP are really really interesting parts of this card. The HD speed is nice bonus. Its cards like this add new features that were never imagined that amaze me the most.
- So far, others have pointed out 9 and I remembered two I meant to include and forgot. So I'll be adding those 11 very soon.
- eMachines also had the bad luck of going IPO at the worst time possible. NASDAQ hit its all time intraday high of 5,132.52 on Mar 10, 2000. It dipped about 300 points for about 1-2 weeks, before eMachines went IPO on Fri, Mar 24. NASDAQ hit an intraday high of 5,078.86 that day, then went into a free fall from that peak. That was the beginning of the "dot com crash". It would take 15 years for NASDAQ to recover (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/apr/23/nasdaq-new-...).
eMachines IPO'd at $9 on Mar 24, climbing to $10, then closing at 8 13/16. It would never again hit $9. It was delisted from NASDAQ slightly over a year later, in May 2001. I cannot find a source for the exact date of delisting. Wikipedia says that the price was hovering around $0.38 when it was delisted, but I think I recall seeing its price hitting lows of $0.12 before delisting.
- The 6809 was almost certainly the ultimate 8-bit processor design since it had many 16-bit features as well as advanced addressing modes, stack handling and advanced instructions including a multiply.
The crown of "Best 8-Bit CPU" should probably go to the little known 6309 CPU, an advanced variant of the 6809 made by Hitachi under license from Motorola (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitachi_6309). It booted up fully compatible with the 6809 but could be switched to a 'native mode' where it would execute 6809 instructions 30% faster, have more registers added and a significant number of additional instructions including divide. Being fabbed in CMOS, it could also be clocked much higher than the 6809's 2 Mhz, up to 3.58 Mhz.
Anyone wanting to create "The Ultimate 8-Bit Microcomputer" from early 80s components would want to start with a 6309 as the CPU and perhaps marry it to the 9958 video display processor used in 8-bit MSX2 computers which was probably the most advanced VDP of the era since the 6847 VDP Motorola designed for the 6809 was extremely basic with no sprites or extended palette features. For sound the best 8-bit era chip would be one of the Yamaha FM chips commonly used in MSX2 machines. Unfortunately, no manufacturer ever married these components into a world-beating Ultimate 8-Bit. It would have been an amazing machine for the time and certainly held the position as top hobbyist lust-bait - at least until the arrival of the 68000-based Amiga.
- What a wild thing. A university level course writing code for a machine that’s over 45 and very rare to have. Just wow ….
If I ever get the chance to purchase one I will …
- And here is a tool to browse and navigate it: https://github.com/rochus-keller/LisaPascal
- You can check out the source code of the OS and the 7/7 office applications, written in Pascal (and a bit of 68k assembler, of course) at the CHM: https://computerhistory.org/press-releases/chm-makes-apple-l.../
- I used to run it on my 286 with half of it on a 3.5" floppy and the other half of the files on a disc in my 5.25" drive. I didn't have a HDD to run it from at first.
- Kinda blazed over the Talkspot/WorldStream thing. Was actively involved in that and my boss had the "pleasure" having technical debates with Ken (a billionaire at the time). A lot of ex-Sierra folks were there and ended up working in Fintech with me. Some will still tell tales of how they coded some of those early games.
- Glad to see them enjoying themselves and enjoying their well deserved earnings. Sierra games were great, and have aged amazingly well. I still play through King's Quest 3 every couple of years.
- By definition, everything on this site is out of date :-)
If there is a more complete, up to date account that covers the past and the intervening time available please share.
- Seriously out of date. Based on the screen shot, this is from 2014 or 2015? Since then they've changed to a new boat (Grand Banks GB60). They've also returned to gaming, with the release of "Colossal Cave".
- The old machines have a soul. Built by people who made the machine they wanted for themselves. From the era before Google when many of the many joys things could be discovering what the machine could do. Or gathering at user groups to ask questions or share tips. Like alchemists fiddling about trying to make gold.
Modern computers . The magic is gone. More gigabytes , gigahertz than you can shake a stick at. Now there are a million blogs or YouTube channels proclaiming :(Solved) whatever the curiosity.
Now. With attrition. It’s back to discovery again. I recently met a friend 2 blocks from home who has an Atari 800. We drink scotch and play tag team defender. We take turns piloting while the other hitters the smart bomb spacebar.
- not everything needs to be connected to the internet. it's nice to have an old simple system that is secure because it's connected to nothing. it's solid, reliable and doesn't need megabytes or gigabyte of updates to keep secure.
solid hardware built to last. this is selection bias at it's best mind as the ones we collect are the ones that have survived and not the flimsy cheap systems that died early. problems that do exist have been rectified or worked around so there should be no nasty shocks in the next 10 years with them.
single tasking. it allows us to focus on doing one thing and doing it well. we've grown too used to having 10-20 programs running at same time and swapping between them. it can be beneficial to concentrate on just one thing avoid distractions.
- Loved this game! A few weeks ago I actually took the train to Dundee and saw the lemmings statues and the site of the original office the company built the game from!
- This is so pointless and great. I love it!
- I love this so much. When I was a lad - I could pick out Mac floppy and hard disk sounds vs Seagate MFM vs Conner Peripherals 40mb IDE drives in movies. Such an oddly satisfying thing! Made my week!
- More
