Two Stop Bits | qingcharles's comments

qingcharles 137 days ago | parent | on: Q&A with: Game designer Steve Meretzky (The Hitchh...
I'm 100% convinced those books will never get finished now. I wish I hadn't read the first five.
- bmonkey325 137 days ago
  Facts. We can only hope that George appoints a successor like Robert Jordan did for his Wheel of Time series. I mean even Dune got finished eventually....
  - qingcharles 133 days ago
    I was amazed when I got to the end of Dune to find that there was an ending completed by his son. I'm still suspicious about the story of finding a loose 5.25" disk containing the plot. Regardless, I actually loved the writing of the final books and felt that his son's books were actually toned down a little in a such a way that made them more enjoyable to read.
qingcharles 140 days ago | parent | on: How I ported Windows XP to the original Apple TV
That one was a lot of work! Hat off to the guy for managing to finally get it working.
qingcharles 141 days ago | parent | on: I explored Nintendo's Family BASIC on the Famicom ...
This was a really fantastic, really in-depth examination of the Family BASIC cart.
- barbeque 138 days ago
  Thanks! I would like to do more with it, but I think I may want to start looking at doing my own cart (with more RAM, and maybe SD) first.
  - ddingus 137 days ago
    Yeah. You should add both. The BASIC appears to deserve it.
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    This is a bit off topic, at least for this thread, but I am doing some similar activities related to pocket computers.
    Back in the day, what I really wanted was a Model 100 by Tandy. I have one now, and yeah. It would have done the work back then. Well.
    My use case was manufacturing. Actually still is! I have an opportunity to make some parts similar to ones I did then. At the time, I used a combination of a Tandy PC-6, I believe? The folding one. And also a Casio scientific.
    The Tandy had just enough to be useful, but no graphics. Only 20 character, one line display too. Ugh.
    But that was enough to help lay out parts and crank out some g-code, which I would just type into a machine and run.
    Well, little didnI know, but SHARP was flat out killing it in this space. They got really good at designing little, fast organizers that ran an bit CPU of their own design I think, and button cells!
    Their displays were often super too. Clear, fast, respectable pixel counts.
    The SHARP G850VS is basically a whole darn workstation. Battery requirements went up to AA cells, but worth it!
    Display has 20x5 lines too. Pixel addressable.
    But get this!
    It has a huge system ROM containing:
    BASIC with graphical, scientific, statistical and robust logic commands.
    System Monitor
    Z-80 Assembler
    C Compiler! ! ! (Seriously?)
    PIC Assembler
    And one other pseudo machine assembler for education I do not fully understand other than the consensus it it being useless.
    System Bus, like for cartridges or and / dock.
    10 Pin GPIO block, similar to the Raspi machines.
    IR comms capability.
    That is nuts! And back then it was easy to miss this kind of thing. No Internet meant a lot of us just did not get info. Heck, I learned 6502 out of the magazines in the grocery store magazine racks!
    I am on the hunt. And they are not too hard to find right now, so I really just gotta save my pennies and pull the trigger on a good one.
    That kind-of capability would have enabled a little CAM system with back plotting to verify g-codes!
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     End Sidebar
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    Seems to me you found enough here in your exploration to want the same thing. Flesh it all out and go! Bet you it ends up worth it. :)
    Very enjoyable write up, BTW.
    - barbeque 133 days ago
      Thanks! I happen to have have a G850V (non-S,) but the zebra cables on the LCD have gone spotty. I'm going to see if I can reflow it somehow, or simply put a block of foam behind to re-establish contact.
      Truly impressive machines, but vulnerable to the classic Sharp durability issues. I'm still hopeful I can bring it back :)
      - ddingus 88 days ago
        I hope I get one that is revivable
qingcharles 141 days ago | parent | on: Working on twostopbits' code
The only change I would make are these three links at the bottom of the user page which always seem like an afterthought -- just needs a little CSS to make them not look out of place:
> submissions comments rss
- jgrahamc 136 days ago
  I'll fix that.
qingcharles 141 days ago | parent | on: The Curious Case of Jupiter Ace
The Jupiter Ace was a massive fumble. What a shame. I bought one from a charity shop for a quid in about 1988, but I couldn't figure out the Forth syntax :(
qingcharles 141 days ago | parent | on: MilliForth-6502 - The smallest Forth real programm...
Did you post this after reading the Jupiter Ace article? ;)
qingcharles 141 days ago | parent | on: Working on twostopbits' code
Just a thank you for everything :)
qingcharles 175 days ago | parent | on: A love letter to Opera Mini
I work with people leaving prison and they end up with phones with only about 3GB of transfer a month. They burn it all up in 3 days and then they can't use Google Maps to get around, they can't apply for jobs, can't get their benefits or healthcare.
There are many important sites that have multi-hundred megabyte homepages and it's not as easy to uBlock things on mobile. A sad situation.
qingcharles 192 days ago | parent | on: Text Based Adventure Game
If you find the answer, please come back and let us know :)
- sc4556 191 days ago
  Thank you! I certainly will. I have looked several times over the years. Perplexing.
qingcharles 194 days ago | parent | on: Getting the Newton MessagePad 2000 and 2100 to wor...
Before 2040 arrives AI will be able to decompile the entire ROM binary into beautifully commented C code, assuming Apple don't do the nice thing.
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