- Yes! I often draw from experiences during that time.
SGI made absolutely fantastic workstations, for example.
I was 3D gaming with full video and audio chatter in the mid to late 90's, viewing models in stereo, running powerful applications remotely over X, with the 3D GLX extensions.
Man so many good ideas in the Indigo Magic Desktop!
Package management that included the ability to pause on events such as disk full so a guy could remove other software, or add disk, whatever.
8 bit machines have relevance in embedded spaces.
And it is fun to wonder what would have happened had the Amiga gained traction.
It really was a beautiful time filled with all sorts of great tech people can draw inspiration from today.
- What a class act! It was a pleasure to read Ken giving that native art full respect. I think it is cool, and obviously Ken did too.
I think about the bridge in culture... from the old world ways and how many of those who maintain them carry it all forward through today. Nice. Then comes the new world. A cpu and all we have seen from these little devices that are hard sometimes to imagine living without.
Clearly a lot of us did. Myself included.
In this sense, we are the last, but for some people living their old world culture today. They hold things we may forget or that might be lost when all of us last ones finally tip over for our final time.
Good on them. We are very likely to find we need or will seriously benefit from their ways.
And as I journey though this life we are all gifted, I realize those things from before are important, as important as the new tech is. I bet many of us here lived before we were all communicating on this network. Remember how we knew one another, kept state to know who is likely to be where, with whom, doing stuff? And reference materials! Databooks, and the like. How about how important other people could be? A quick chat could save a week!
Here is one thought from that time I dearly wish I had photographed: The wall phone, standard dial, bell type. On that wall was a handwritten directory. I started it as a kid.
Mom complained, until she needed the number for my friends house. Dad was on board when he found the pizza place, diner and local market numbers right there with the phone!
When I left the house to go at it on my own, I started another one briefly, but apartment living plus the phone not being mounted on the wall saw the thought distilled down to a book that was no where near as good, though it did work. The bonus is we have that book, though I would be surprised if any number still worked. Well, my Moms landline still does. That means the local market still existing probably does too. Who knew?
The last I looked at the one I started was amazing! Our lives organized visually by need: emergency, that poison control sticker with police, EMS, other numbers surrounding it. Food was grouped in a similar way, as were friends and family, some with little stars or hearts nearby. I never did a count, but somewhere south of 100 numbers would not be out of line.
And what do we do today? We keep those numbers right by the phone for max usability! Interesting isn't it? I sure think so and thanks for entertaining my ramble here.
That rug speaks to some of that and those thoughts are why I think the rug is cool.
- I used this on the Atari computers.
The Apple version included a card with an 8 bit DAC on it that sounded pretty good. The Atari 8 bit computers have a primitive Amiga like set of 4 bit DAC channels. SAM used one of those and also sounded pretty good, though not quite as good as the Apple did.
And let's be clear, none of them were great, but speech synth in the 80's was near magic so people largely did not care.
Never used this tool with a C64.
- Yes. Agree
- I agree! This is my first time seeing this device.
- Cool! I want to play with this a bit.
What happens on a monochrome display?
Panel vs CRT. Can a CRT even do this with the fidelity needed.
My phone has an irregular pattern of AMOLED emitters. Text could be formed, but it would look odd.
- Great write up. I have stumbled into the vast majority of these.
Getting a good color CRT photo is hard!
Monochrome one are a lot easier and for me, were good practice.
- Wow! That game is fantastic! All the clever analog means and methods combined to yield what appears to be a very compelling game experience, especially for the time period.
I will definitely want to play this should the opportunity ever arise.
The thing I love about methods like this is how robust they are. When your system is running on the rules of the world, so many things just blend to work. It is a bit of magic.
For a similar thing, and to get at the magic part, look up the Disney sodium lamp compositing system.
It was recently recreated and it can combine video images that trouble even our best digital capabilities. Analog baby! It has its place still.
https://youtu.be/UQuIVsNzqDk?si=m7lv4MjC_TypFUHx
Yet another example might be the automatons. Some were created to perform handwriting using cams, levers, linkages and gears! It is crazy what can actually be done.
https://youtu.be/zpJEP6O6-Ho?si=p8rVqxhWQ9ySqiWa
Fran by the way, along with Sarah at the Seattle Telephony Connections Museum, are among my favorite people in the world. They are humble, and love tech and to share and it is just nice to learn from them.
Analog, relay based switching is crazy, and yet another example I will leave you all to seek out as you may be inclined to do.
- It was.
- I have not yet looked through the archive so forgive me it's this question doesn't make sense. But I didn't want it to be forgotten. Are you archiving current offerings like Fuji net various video and sound cards that are out there?
- More
“Come, come, elucidate your thoughts..”
Once I had it ask the local Sherrif what time it was ...at 3AM.
No, was not my phone. I do know the peeps who contributed the phone never saw trouble. And that was after asking him again.
Yeah, I was part evil as a kid. I wish I had audio of the second call. Good grief! He was hot, but some how picked up on it being kids with a toy and gave us a scary, but hilarious earfull!
Others included dialing local James Bond numbers, and there were more than a few, and having SAM outline a brief mission after the classic, "Mr Bond? James Bond?" intro. A couple played along.
A friend had the TI with its speech system and did a few too.
One thing we learned on the TI was how misspelling things could really improve how understandable the voice was.
A girlfriend was named Teresa, as an example. Treeza worked great.