Vintage Computing!

[kendor]

or chess, amazing what programmers of the day could cram into such small spaces, nowadays they seem to be lazy and it's up to the consumer to upgrade for each new game or application.
when i mention upgrading i'm talking about memory as opposed to graphics cards.
Yes it does seem more tranquil down here

 

[jtaunton]

Gah ! I'd have come down here if I'd known about it, rather than have to give up forumming for three days. Could have talked about my ZX81 space invaders. The Invader was <x>, The spaceship was a half-block, inverted speech march, half-block. Invader appeared at a random place heading vertically downwards, and then you went left or right and shot it down with an invisible bullet (my 1K of memory didn't run to real bullets).

After that I went onto a SORD M5 and then a Toshiba MSX, thus cementing myself as the only person at Brentwood Computer Club withe either of those, whilst everyone else swapped stuff for their C64 and Spectrum....

Think my variant of the shop-programming went:

10 Input A$
20 Print A$;"is cool ! ";
30 Goto 20

 

[ninebob]

Well, as I said at the start of this topic, I missed a good opportunity on eBay to buy a ZX Spectrum, my first ever computer, at a good price.

Not disheartened, however, I turned my attention to my second ever computer, the Atari ST. I've got a 520STe for £2.20!!!! Don't even have to pay postage because it's 15 miles down the road! The one I used to have was a 1040STe but I'm sure this one will bring back all the memories, especially as it comes with over 50 floppy disks full of games and utilities....

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5222033339&rd=1&sspagename=STRK:MEWN:IT&rd=1

I love eBay.... (Nigel doesn't, it's his paypal account )

Now, do you think it will run FireFox?

 

[AdamW]

Hmmm, well the ST operating system is called "TOS" is it not?

Presumably someone has ported linux over to it, and I know there are Amiga web browsers and web servers so presumably there are ST ones too.

You might be able to get some heary upgrades cheaply now too. Couldn't you put 8mb in an ST? More memory than the whole computer was worth back then, but probably available cheaply on e-bay.

Upgrading memory on PCs? I have 1.5GB and hope that will see me through 2006... optimistic or what!

assembler prog only, 128 bytes (yes bytes) of memory, 27 instructions and only 3 registers

Real men program in assembler. 27 instructions? The first ever RISC machine?

Right, I'm going to get myself a t-shirt printed up with 68000 assembler source code on it to say something profound or rude.

 

[ninebob]

I always liked the idea of this T-shirt, but I can't decide which side of the coin it lands on - "cool" or "geek". Let me know and I might order it! :

 

[Allenm]

The Blue Shirt of Death

Don't do it!

 

[jtaunton]

I suppose it would be cool at a geek-club.......

 

[AdamW]

Might go down well amongst Linux geeks especially...

Personally, I would sooner design my own t-shirt. I had one made for a mate, cost something like £14 including delivery.

There is a t-shirt that I like, that says "If only you and dead people can read hex, how many people can read hex?"

 

[jtaunton]

There are 10 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary and those that don't.

P.S. Is it 57006 ?

 

[Allenm]

I wish I didn't know...... but yes 57006 it is!

This is very 2989!!!

Merv

 

[AdamW]

Or even "this is very 1453!"

 

[jtaunton]

Don't think this is making us look very 3072. i'm going to get a 12648430

 

[pipme]

Found this ... http://web.onetel.com/~richardweston/

BBC Basic

Download
"BBC Basic for Windows" (BB4W)
in 4 minutes and start programming today!

Ah, but !! Shell out 30 holes and get the real deal .... never ends does it?

 

[Spark123]

Atari ST, speccy 48k bringing back memories.......Still in the loft.
DEC PDP11 urghhh!
BBC micro, they had 2 of these when I first started at junior school back in 1984. I remember doing the sponsored walk to raise money to buy the school its first dot matrix printer. I was at the school a few weeks back and it is now full of PCs, TFT displays, lazer printers, laptops & the works.
Nothing more annoying than waiting ages for the speccy tape to load, only for it to crash at the last second .
Normal STe (enhanced) was upgradable to 4mb using 4x1mb sims. The 520STe came with 2x256b sims. You had to throw these to upgrade to 4mb. The also STe had problems running some games produced for the FM due to its enhanced colour pallette.

 

[AdamW]

I remember getting a 1.5mb upgrade for the A500 (to take it up to 2mb of RAM) that cost the best part of £100!

Yet the 1.5GB of RAM in my PC would now cost about £100.

1000-fold (or 1024-fold? ) increase in capacity per pound over about 15 years. Not even taking into account inflation!

Reminds me of that alleged comparison between cars and PCs made by Bill Gates, and the rebuttal from Ford... Although I suspect it might be an urban myth.