Old farts reminiscing about computers

[21miDay]

I have boxes of reference books from orphaned (or almost orphaned) CPU families that I once knew inside out, but can't bring myself to throw out (68K, 29K, i960, i860, PPC)

Check with the Computer History Museum. They wanted some manuals that I couldn't bear to throw out.
Donate Artifacts | Computer History Museum

 

[scaesare]

1980 freshman year, McHenry Illinois, I was in a sophomore math class where our teacher gave us homework a month at a time. Second week of the second month he had to do something, so told us to work on homework. Midway through the class he walked around to see if anybody was needing help and questioned why I was working on my english paper instead of math. So I pulled out my completed math homework for the month, including stuff we hadn't covered yet. He took me into the math teachers' office, showed me a Commodore PET, gave me the BASIC manual, and said have fun.

Following summer I was working at my grandparents' place in Wisconsin to save up money for a TRS-80 CoCo. We went into town and grandma wanted to see this new-fangled thing I was saving up for, so we stopped in at a Radio Shack. Display model had no power, so I asked the guy if he'd power it up. He flat out lied to me - "there's a password that I don't know, and if I type it wrong it will destroy the computer". Soured me on my plans for the CoCo. Soon after I learned about the VIC-20, which I ended up getting instead. It turned out to be a much better fit since I was already familiar with the PET.

We moved to Portland Texas summer of 82, where I was introduced to BBSes. I ended up writing one for my VIC, which I eventually ported to the 64 and the 128. My BBS software worked hand-in-hand with my custom MusicTerm software for real-time music at 300 baud, on the fly font-changes, sprite usage, you could play games online with your joystick, etc. More on that in my blog entry.

I was porting my BBS software to the Amiga when I discovered the internet at the University of Houston, and soon after lost all interest in the BBS scene.

My first IT job was at a healthcare company on a Wang VS, which led to my next job at an electronics manufacturing company, which also had Wang VS systems. They eventually migrated to an AS/400. My job after that was another manufacturing company where everything ran on Windows servers. My current job is in the space industry, working on Windows software used to design spacecraft.

As a hobby I write homebrew games for the Atari 2600. It's unlike any console out there - only 128 bytes of RAM, not enough for video RAM so its video chip is scanline based - you must update the registers scanline-by-scanline in real time to create the display. My finished games are Medieval Mayhem (Warlords), Stay Frosty (an original holiday mini-game in Stella's Stocking), Space Rocks (asteroids), and Stay Frosty 2(original). Under development I have Draconian (Bosconian), Frantic (Berzerk/Frenzy), and Timmy!. Timmy!'s a Jumpman inspired game that was originally going to be one of Think Geek's "April Fools - no, it's actually real" products like the iCade and Tauntaun sleeping bag ended up being. Sadly that fell apart due to management shakeup they had, but I intended to finish it someday without the ThinkGeek theme.

Impressive stuff!

The Atari 2600 homebrew stuff is cool... I read "Racing the Beam" a bit back, and that really helped me to appreciate how rudimentary the architecture of the TIA really was, and what a feat it was to get some of the more sophisticated games (Pitfall, etc..) crammed in there. Are you burning ROMs for an actual VCS console, or running in an emu?

 

[S'toon]

On my POET course for the digital section of the course we used 8088s. They were used for demonstrating how a processor interacts with the various components of a computer via machine language, if I recall correctly. It's been decades, so my memory is a bit hazy. I think we were the last course to use them, the school was selling them for $50 each.

 

[SpiceWare]

Impressive stuff!

Thanks!

The Atari 2600 homebrew stuff is cool... I read "Racing the Beam" a bit back, and that really helped me to appreciate how rudimentary the architecture of the TIA really was, and what a feat it was to get some of the more sophisticated games (Pitfall, etc..) crammed in there. Are you burning ROMs for an actual VCS console, or running in an emu?

One benefit of that rudimentary architecture is that it's so flexible we're still figuring out how to do new things with it. One of the more recent things was how to display a 128x200 bitmap image:


Can even display it in color by cycling the scanlines between red/green/blue. It photographs well, but is super flickery to the naked eye.


I currently use a Harmony for development, just put the ROMs on an SD cart then use the joystick to select what to run from the menu. In the past I used a Krokodile Cartridge, which was programmed via a serial connection:


Al* over at AtariAge produces cartridges, complete with professional labels, manuals, and boxes, and sells them via his online store. We often have contests for the labels.


If anybody's interested, I've written a tutorial on how to write a 2K game. The blog lists newest first, so start at the bottom of page 2. I'll also be giving a presentation on it at the Houston Arcade Expo next month.


* he's a member here as well. When he showed me the supercharger map in his Model S was when I realized a Tesla would be a viable car for me as I'd be able to make it from Houston to my brother's place in Wisconsin with a minor change to the route I normally take.

 

[scaesare]

Very cool stuff... I'll check out the blog...

 

[tga]

I read "Racing the Beam" a bit back, and that really helped me to appreciate how rudimentary the architecture of the TIA really was

Thanks for mentioning. The book looks interesting - I just ordered it.

If anybody's interested, I've written a tutorial on how to write a 2K game. The blog lists newest first, so start at the bottom of page 2. I'll also be giving a presentation on it at the Houston Arcade Expo next month.

This is all pretty cool - I (and several of my friends) had 2600's growing up. I had no idea people were doing this. Guess it's a good thing I didn't donate my 6502 books to the Computer History Museum yet (had a bunch of 6502 stuff from my high school days writing games for the C64)

 

[scaesare]

Hope you enjoy the book @tga.

Man, this makes me want to dig up my Hitchhikers Guide to GEOS programmers reference ands start coding for my C64!

 

[cwerdna]

I was at Vintage Computer Festival West XI – Vintage Computer Federation in Mountain View, CA few months ago.

There was quite an assortment of stuff (VCF West — Exhibits – Vintage Computer Federation) on display and working. I did see the IBM 1130 (IIRC) in action. The guy was running jobs on it and instead of using an actual punch card reader, he had some software on his laptop that let him interface w/virtual devices, including a virtual card reader w/virtual decks. His line printer was definitely working.

The first Amiga off the assembly line was there, as well.

 

[cwerdna]

I have boxes of reference books from orphaned (or almost orphaned) CPU families that I once knew inside out, but can't bring myself to throw out (68K, 29K, i960, i860, PPC)

Contribute Historical Items - Living Computer Museum (Paul Allen's (yes, Microsoft co-founder and buddy of Bill Gates) museum) might also want some items. Not clear if they'd want those books though...

 

[SpiceWare]

This might be interesting to some of you: Stella at 20 - An Atari 2600 Retrospective

In the summer of 1997, Atari veterans gathered together to reminisce about the golden age of videogames and to celebrate the 20th birthday of the Atari 2600.

These are the original, uncut interviews and discussions shot for the resulting documentary - Stella at 20. (Stella being the Atari 2600's code name during development.)

Interviews include: Atari founder Nolan Bushnell; engineers: Al Alcorn, Joe Decuir, Steve Mayer, Ron Milner; programmers: David Crane, Steve DeFrisco, Tod Frye, Rob Fulop, John Harris, Jim Huether, Larry Kaplan, Dennis Koble, Rick Maurer, Al Miller, Doug Neubauer, Carol Shaw, Bob Smith, Larry Wagner. Also included is rare footage of Atari and Amiga engineer Jay Miner from 1989.

For the backstory on these videos check this blog post over at AtariAge.

 

[bestellen]

Surely there are young programmers that still code using assembly? Or am I dreaming?

 

[wdolson]

Surely there are young programmers that still code using assembly? Or am I dreaming?

I used to write in assembly for several processors, but I haven't in nearly 20 years. C and C++ produces very efficient, compact code if you know what you're doing and there is always the option to write small sections in assembly if necessary. I've done a lot of embedded programming over the years and we started using C in the early 90s because it was just as compact and fast as assembly and it was a lot easier to maintain as well as faster to write.

I don't think there are all that many younger programmers writing in C or C++ anymore. The more abstracted languages allow for faster development than older native languages, but they are so inefficient with system resources.

 

[S'toon]

xkcd: Old Days

 

[NikeWings]

Moving a 5MB IBM hard drive 60 years ago.
Here's How Hard it Was to Move a 5MB IBM Hard Drive in 1956

 

[scaesare]

Fun thread.

I find myself fascinated with the mini-computer era that I was born too late for... DEC in particular. Perhaps that's becasue I found the story of Dave Cutler leaving them and re-implementing DEC's Mica (the planned next foundation for VMS) as Windows NT for Microsoft, and what was Prism (his cancelled CPU project), was largely re-born as Alpha.

So, in the vein of fun reading about the good ol' days and computing history, I present my recommended reading list:

• The Ultimate Entrepreneur (Rifkin) - Interesting, if somewhat dry, look at how Olsen built, and ultimately ran DEC
• DEC is dead: Long Live DEC (Schein) - Fascinating look at the rise and fall of DEC and many of the factors
• Inside Windows NT 1st Edition (Custer) - Mostly technical detail about the NT OS, but interesting forward from Cutler, and insights as to what they built
• Showstopper! (Pascal) - The inside scoop on how Cutler and the boys Gates hired away from DEC built NT
• Dealers of Lightning (Hiltzik) - Fascinating story of PARC, how it came to be, and what they did
• Soul of a new Machine (Kidder) - Classic reading of the inside story of building a new OS for Data General's hot new machine
• Where Wizards Stay Up Late (Hafner) - the story of DARPA/Arpanet/Internet, and how BBN, Stanford, etc... brought it all to be
• Fire in the Valley (Swaine & Freiberger) - The story of the birth of the PC revolution
• Accidental Empires (Cringely) - The rather famous columnist's account of the PC era origins
• Inside the Plex (Levy) - The inside story of the rise of Google
• Steve Jobs (Isaacson) - The account of Apple's origins and history, with unfettered access to Jobs by the author
• Inside the Cuckoo's Egg (Stohl) - Great tale of chasing a hacker in the early micro/mini days
• Ghost in the Wire (Mitnick) - Kevin's accout of his own life as the world's most sought after hacker
• Masters of Doom (Kushner) -Interesting story iD software and their ground-breaking game Doom!
• Folklore.org - Inside accounts from the guys who built the Mac. Presented as snippets.
• Dave Cutler, PRISM, Mica, Emerald, etc. - Some interesting first hand notes regarding DEC's Alpha, Prism, Mica, etc... projects.

I've found many of the above fascinating... and I have a few more floating around. I'd be interested in recommendations from others as well...

A few more I've read in the ~ year or so ago since I posted my initial list:

• Insanely Great (Levy) - Another account of the effort to build the Mac, with a focus on how Jobs influenced the team
• The Macintosh Way (Kawasaki) - Product development, team building, and marketing lessons drawn from the Macintosh project, written from the perspective of perhaps Apple's most famous technical evangelist
• Ultimate History of Video Games (Kent) - History and insider perspective on the rise of the video game industry (first coin-op and then home) as a bunch of individual insider snippets woven together
• Crypto (Levy) - Account of how modern digital crytptography was born, and the battle against the gov't to ever get it out in the open
• iWoz (Wozniak & Gina Smith) - First hand account of The Woz's life leading up to and through his career with Apple (And an interesting insight on how 'simple' Steve's thught processes are..)
• Commodork (O'Hara) - Personal account of a guy who ran a C64 BBS in the good ol' days. Not enthralling, but good for a mostalgia kick
• Hackers (Levy) - Great history of hackers in the original 'MIT" sense (guys who wanted to cool stuff with technology), and how they formed the basis for all personal computing.
• Racing the Beam (Montfort & Bogost) - Inside story of what designing for the Atari 2600 was really like
• Hard Drive - Bill Gates and the Making of Microsoft (Wallace & Erickson) - The title says it all
• Stella At 20 (archive.org) - Bunch of interview footage of folks including Jay Minor (father of Amiga), Nolan Bushnell (Atari), David Crane (Atari, Activision), etc... regarding the early Atari and personal computer history. A lot to wade thru.
• The King of Kong: A Fist full of Quarters (video-Mitchell) - Documentary on the competition between high-score addicts that started in the golden era of coin-op
• TILT: The Battle to Save Pinball (video) - Documentary about Williams' last effort to save a dying classic arcade game
• Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade (video) - A retrospective on the arcade World Champions of 1982

I've found Levy's stiff, in particular, to be especially good...

Hope some folks might enjoy...

 

[bestellen]

Surely there are young programmers that still code using assembly?

 

[Xenius]

Surely there are young programmers that still code using assembly?

Don't know about current, but when I was in college I did a little bit of assembly. Mostly when working with microprocessors on a board doing wiring by hand. Was good times. Haven't used it since though.

 

[SW2Fiddler]

Jay Minor (father of Amiga)

Jay Miner credited his dog Mitch with helping design the Amiga. Mitch would wag his tail when Jay was drawing efficient layout, he could feel it under the table.
Jay told me that's why there's a paw print in the EM Shielding foil of the Amiga 1000 along with signatures of Miner and other designers.

 

[scaesare]

Jay Miner credited his dog Mitch with helping design the Amiga. Mitch would wag his tail when Jay was drawing efficient layout, he could feel it under the table.
Jay told me that's why there's a paw print in the EM Shielding foil of the Amiga 1000 along with signatures of Miner and other designers.

Awesome...

 

[S'toon]

Don't know about current, but when I was in college I did a little bit of assembly. Mostly when working with microprocessors on a board doing wiring by hand. Was good times. Haven't used it since though.

Yeah. Same. Only time I ever used it was in college. Learning how microprocessors work.