Two Stop Bits | qingcharles's comments

qingcharles 543 days ago | parent | on: Materials for getting into C programming for MS-DO...
This is a great resource, thanks. Was just looking at getting back into DOS 3D programming after a 30 year break. A lot has changed in algorithms since then and I feel there are some speed-ups possible that I didn't know about at the time.
qingcharles 543 days ago | parent | on: Palmer Luckey is now selling pixel-perfect Game B...
It's a lot easier being a hardware hacker when you're a billionaire. Need a totally custom from-scratch LCD display that no factory makes? No problem!
qingcharles 543 days ago | parent | on: Flicker-free Elite on the BBC Micro (like the BBC ...
That's awesome! A lost "update patch" for the original Elite :)
Reminds me of the near-weekly update patches Braben put out for Frontier when it was released...!
qingcharles 543 days ago | parent | on: Jungle Hunt for the 2600
Have you played it? Is it better than Tarzan? It looks really nice -- has parallax scrolling on the background?! The vines look very similar to Tarzan.
- bmonkey325 541 days ago
  I was never fortunate enough to play Tarzan but the 2600 and 8bit especially were faithful to the quarter snatching coin operated arcade game. The lost Tarzan game seems more like burger time or load runner than Jungle Hunt. That’s just an impression.
qingcharles 555 days ago | parent | on: Japanese Attractions: Kana on the PET 2001
Interesting! I always wondered what happened with really constrained 8-bit platforms like this when they tried to make them work for complex logographic languages with thousands of characters.
Also interesting that they chose katakana over hiragana, but perhaps the choice was because katakana is more readable at pixel resolutions? I don't know enough Japanese to know if it was based on a technicality of the language.
I don't think you mention it, but three of those characters are technically kanji -- the ones for day/month/year that are included.
Did you get a copy of the actual Jap ROM or did you have to retro-convert a Western ROM?
- masswerk 555 days ago
  Regarding the character ROM, this can be found at Bob Zimmers' great Commodore 8-bit archive, see: https://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/firmware/computers/p...
  Regarding kana/kanji – well, my terminology may be fuzzy. But the emulator has "kanji" in the menu…
  Regarding katakana vs hiragana: I guess, the simpler strokes were one of the reasons. Moreover, it seems that in daily use it can be distilled down to more or less the size of the Western alphabet. While there are 46 syllabograms in use, 8-bit computers managed to get away with about half of this. (The Sharp MZ-80 is another example.)
  For fun, have a look at my own attempt at squeezing hiragana into an 8-bit character generator: https://www.masswerk.at/char8/#U3040 (A rendering demo can be found here: https://www.masswerk.at/rterm/ )
  - qingcharles 543 days ago
    They're totally readable, so hiragana is definitely doable at a tiny resolution.
qingcharles 555 days ago | parent | on: LEGO Ideas : iMac G3
Voted :)
qingcharles 555 days ago | parent | on: ICQ messenger shuts down after almost 28 years
I wish I knew how to figure out my ICQ ID so I can log in. I had a 5-digit starting with 4.
- bmonkey325 554 days ago
  Even if I knew my id it’s probably tied to an email I no longer control.
qingcharles 555 days ago | parent | on: “Windows 1.0 and the Applications of *Tomorrow*” k...
Great article! CP hasn't updated his blog since 2015, but looks like he wrote a book in 2016 and was still working at Xamarin until 2018.
I just fixed a bug in his Wikipedia biography too lol
qingcharles 578 days ago | parent | on: XBOX360 RGH3 (Reset Glitch Hack) guide
"The Orange Site" LOL! I feel you :)
qingcharles 580 days ago | parent | on: filetype:php3
How is Google determining that these pages are PHP3?
This is one of the pages from the SERPs:
https://www.therealjackrussell.com/trial/height.php
But there is nothing in the page or its HTTP headers that would tell you the page is even PHP (except for the extension which might be misleading...)
- Lammy 580 days ago
  It's just based on the file extension of the URL and nothing more. No way to tell if it's actually PHP behind the scenes.
  I see that page in my results too and the one you linked is post-redirect from an older domain that has the php3 URI scheme:
```
  [lammy@popola] curl -I http://www.terrier.com/trial/height.php3
  HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
  Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2024 20:51:07 GMT
  Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
  Content-Length: 258
  Connection: keep-alive
  Location: http://www.theRealJackRussell.com/trial/height.php
```
  It is admittedly a little fuzzy since Google can just decide not to honor the `filetype:`/`ext:` operator like they do for so many others. I also included the `lr=lang_en` parameter which limits the results quite a bit, but I figured that would be more enjoyable as a submission to an English-language community like this one :)
  Kagi's results are even better but I submitted Google instead due to the paywall: https://kagi.com/search?q=filetype%3Aphp3
  The idea for this submission came from this xltronic-dot-com URL when I was looking up some old 808state stuff yesterday, a site which was not listed by either search engine: http://xltronic.com/mb/99108/faq.php3
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