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4 episodes with Commodore PET
6 episodes with Commodore PET
3 episodes with Commodore PET
3 episodes with Commodore PET
3 episodes with Commodore PET
2 episodes with Commodore PET
2 episodes with Commodore PET
4 episodes with Commodore PET
2 episodes with Commodore PET
Konu bilgisayarların tarihi olduğunda hep bir en birinci kimdi rekabetinin ortasında buluyoruz kendimizi. Fakat bu kavgaların dışında birbiriyle daha iyisini yapmak için rekabet eden devler de var. Ki esas farkı yaratanlar da onlar oluyor. Onlar sayesinde “bir tıkla” tüm dünya parmaklarımızın ucunda artık. Bilgisayarların tarihinin ikinci bölümünde, o bir “tıka” nasıl geldiğimiz üzerine konuşacağız. Bugün cebimize sığan teknolojinin gelişimine tanık olacağız. Ve bölümün sonunda şunu çok net bir şekilde anlayacağız aslında: Her şeyin bu kadar kolay olması, hiç de kolay olmadı.Dijital sağlık platformu Eczacıbaşı Evital ile alanlarında uzman psikolog ve diyetisyenlerle internetin olduğu her yerden online görüşmelerinizi hemen yapabilirsiniz. Ücretsiz ön görüşme fırsatına ek olarak görüşmelerinizi %25 indirimle planlamak için PODBEE25 kodunu kullanabilirsiniz. Evital'i deneyimlemek için hemen tıklayınSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
On this episode Dr Obsoleto deep dive into 1970s-1980s technology like the Commodore PET and 64
En este programa hacemos un repaso a algunas noticias de la actualidad commodoriana y a los lanzamientos de las últimas semanas, y veremos una revista nueva, al menos para nosotros: la italiana RetroComputer, concretamente su número especial 1 dedicado a Commodore Todo esto lo veremos con el equipo habitual formado por David Asenjo (https://twitter.com/darro99), Toni Bianchetti (https://twitter.com/seuck), Narciso Quintana "Narcisound" (https://twitter.com/narcisound), Jonatan Jiménez (https://twitter.com/jsabreman) y Paco Herrera (https://twitter.com/pacoblog64). Las noticias comentadas son: - K&A Plus número 26: https://ka-plus.pl/en/ - Nueva KungFu Flash 2: https://github.com/KimJorgensen/KungFuFlash2 - Commodore Plus y Retro Barcelona en el SAGA 2024: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1X4fMQR1BZq12cuxWLuW197k0KBeYnUeD/view?usp=drive_link - Actualización del File server Commodoregames.Net con juegos de Commodore PET: https://www.commodoregames.net/fs/index.htm#/PET%20Gamebase%20v3.5/FILES - Vinny va a por todo, se dedicará solo a la FREEZE64 durante un tiempo: https://x.com/FREEZE64UK/status/1857142243427045454 - Explora Commodore fanzine en versión "disk mag"": https://csdb.dk/release/index.php?id=247568 - Commodore Plus/4 GameDev: https://plus4gamedev.hu/ - Revisitando el Commodore HHC-4: https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-unreleased-commodore-hhc-4s-secret.html - Actualización del portal C64 intros: https://intros.c64.org/ - Actualización del portal de demos C64.ch: https://c64.ch/ - Publicadas imágenes del Commodore Amiga SX-500: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1gbnAwgySKkS1CmocVaCIxiAeP-oTLyVz?usp=drive_link - Preservada información del KIM-5: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1FC6L9uqKH95jycI7f2r_SP91jCm5ULv3?usp=drive_link http://retro.hansotten.nl/6502-sbc/kim-1-manuals-and-software/kim-system-products/?fbclid=IwY2xjawG5F_FleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHQPigVAN1L1luVy43HQSakosupW5ZsGc8PYTYVeAxq2siniaeHS9bvewCg_aem_-6O3KP7WT7fFlQYmJp_5lw - Michael Tomczyk entrevistado en el programa italiano Wine Down Friday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjZeSKQQvZs - QuickShot II Plus Joystick: a la venta "new, old stock"": https://www.polyplay.xyz/QuickShot-II-Plus-Joystick_1 Las actualizaciones mencionadas son: - SEUCK Title Screen Maker V1.8+: https://richard-tnd.itch.io/seuck-title-maker/devlog/830494/putting-your-new-front-end-on-to-your-seuck-game-using-vice - Frodo v4.4: https://frodo.cebix.net/ Los juegos y programas nuevos comentados son: - Battle For Cronos (WindigoProductions, C64): https://windigoproductions.itch.io/battle-for-cronos - Pentagorat II (Misfit, C64): https://misfit.itch.io/pentagorat2 - Herra47 (Vector5 Games, C64): https://vector5games.itch.io/herra47 - InfeZtation (Monte Boyd, C64): https://monteboyd.itch.io/infeztation - Aquarius (Aleksei Eben, C64): https://aleksi-eeben.itch.io/aquarius - C64 Game Maker v1.0.3 (AGPX, C64): https://agpx.itch.io/c64-game-maker - Nixy and the Seeds of Doom (Haplo, C64): https://h4plo.itch.io/nixy2 - Sid Sfx Editor v0.1.2 (AGPX, C64): https://agpx.itch.io/sid-sfx-editor - VIC-20 2FER 24k (huffelduff, VIC-20): https://huffelduff.itch.io/vic-20-2fer-24k - VR 500 (Toolkitman, Amiga): https://matteo-trevisan.itch.io/vr-amiga-500 - Orbix (fleischgemuese, C64 y C128): https://fleischgemuese.itch.io/orbix - sidplaywx (bytespiller, C64): https://github.com/bytespiller/sidplaywx - VIC-Paint (Page Murray, VIC-20): https://pagemur4.itch.io/vic-paint - Battle Squadron 2 (bitwise brains, Amiga): https://bitwisebrains.itch.io/agj24-battlesquadron2 - A. F. Asteroids (Milasoft, PET): https://milasoft64.itch.io/a-f-asteroids - VIC Advenger (Jeffrey Daniels (Denial), VIC-20): https://jeffdaniels.itch.io/vicadvenger - Island (KWAYNE, C64): https://kwayne.itch.io/island - Make 10 or 50 (KO-KO, PLUS/4 y C64): https://ko-ko74.itch.io/make-10-or-50 - The Last Z-8 (Dr Terror, C64): https://drterrorz.itch.io/the-last-z-8 - Lancess Priya (Dr Terror, C64): https://drterrorz.itch.io/lancess-priya - Fallout C64 2025 Calendar (Back2the8bit, C64): https://back2the8bit.itch.io/fallout-c64 - Character-X-Editor (NemanjaV, C64): https://nemanjavuj.itch.io/character-xe-editor - Rivera '79 (No Nonsense Games, Amiga): https://nngaming.itch.io/riviera-79
From Commodore PET gaming to revolutionizing pinball machines with Scorbit, Jay Adelson discusses his entrepreneurial journey (Equinix, Digg, Revision3) and shares wisdom on navigating the ever-changing tech landscape.
Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Quinn Dunki, and Carrington Vanston Topic: 1977 In 1977, XMODEM, VAX, and FAT arrived. And the Atari VCS (2600). And the TRS-80 Model 1, Commodore PET, and Apple II. Topic/Feedback links: Retro Computing News: Vintage Computer(-related) commercials: Retro Computing Gift Idea: Auction Picks: A2Stream file: Feedback/Discussion: Intro / Closing Song: Back … Continue reading RCR Episode 277: Trinity →
Interview with Steve Leininger, Designer of the TRS-80- Model I Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper 0 Floppy Days Tune 1 min 13 sec Vintage Computer Ads 1 min 42 sec Intro 9 min 03 sec bumper - Peter Bartlett 9 min 11 sec New Acquisitions 17 min 11 sec bumper - Ian Mavric 17 min 19 sec Upcoming Computer Shows 21 min 53 sec bumper - Myles Wakeham 21 min 58 sec Meet the Listeners 28 min 37 sec Interview with Steve Leininger 1 hr 20 min 29 sec Closing This particular episode has a special meaning for me, personally. You see, as I've mentioned on earlier episodes, the TRS-80 Model I from Tandy/Radio Shack was my first home computer (even though my first programmable device was a TI58C calculator). I recall the joy and wonder of playing with the machine (it wasn't called the Model I at that time; just the TRS-80; as it was the first of the line) in the local Radio Shack store in 1977 and 1978 and the incredible rush of owning one in 1979; after my wife purchased a Level I BASIC machine for me as a gift for college graduation. That machine only had 4K of RAM and 4K of ROM (Tiny BASIC), as it was the entry-level machine, but it was a thing of beauty. I felt like I could do anything with that machine, even though my justification to the wife was that we could track our checkbook and recipes on it. I think she knew better, but went along with it anyway. The computer came with everything you needed, including a tape drive and black-and-white monitor, which was good for a poor recent college graduate. I quickly, as finances allowed with my new engineering job, upgraded the computer to 16K of RAM and Level II BASIC (a powerful Microsoft 12K ROM BASIC) and enjoyed the machine immensely, even using it in my job supporting the build-out of a new nuclear power plant back in those days. I eventually sold off the Model I, in favor of a computer that had color graphics and sound (the Atari 800), but have always continued to have a huge soft spot for that first computer. When I started the Floppy Days Podcast, one of the people that has always been on my bucket list to interview has been Steve Leininger, who, along with Don French while at Radio Shack designed the TRS-80 Model I, among other things. A few years back, I had the opportunity to participate in an interview with Steve for the Trash Talk Podcast, when I was co-hosting that show, but an ill-timed trip to the hospital for my son meant that I was not able to participate. While my son's health is of paramount importance, of course, I always wanted to get another chance to talk with Steve. Not only was Steve the designer of one of my favorite home computers of all time, but he also was a fellow Purdue University Boilermaker, who graduated just a year before I started there. The thought that I could have met Steve on campus if I'd been there just a year earlier was very intriguing to me, and fueled my desire to talk with Steve even more. In the last episode (#141 with Paul Terrell) I talked about VCF Southeast in Atlanta in July of 2024. After I had made plans to attend that show, I was flabbergasted to find out that Earl Baugh, one of the show organizers, had somehow managed to contact Steve and get him to come to the show! I have to thank Earl for the work he did to make that happen. Here was my opportunity to certainly meet Steve, and perhaps even talk with him! I prepped some questions, just in case I was able to get an interview. While at the show, I met Steve and asked him if he would be willing to do a short interview for Floppy Days while at the show. Amazingly, he was very kind and agreed to do that. We found a quiet room and I was able to talk with Steve for almost an hour. This show contains that interview. Another note on this: as you'll hear in the interview, the connection to Steve is even stronger than I realized! He not only went to my alma mater, but also grew up in some of the same towns that myself and my wife did. We personally peripherally know some of his relatives. Things like this really do make you think the world is small! One other, final, note: This interview even ties into the recent and continuing interviews I've been publishing with Paul Terrell. As you'll hear in upcoming episodes with Paul, and in this interview with Steve, Steve actually worked at the Byte Shop before getting the first job with Tandy, and in fact his work at the Byte Shop directly led to him getting hired by Tandy to design the Model I. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I enjoyed getting it. I am overjoyed I finally got the chance to talk to one of my vintage computer heroes, Steve Leininger! New Acquisitions C64 Sketch and Design by Tony Lavioe - sponsored link https://amzn.to/4dZGtt2 Compute's Mapping the IBM PC and PC Junior by Russ Davies - sponsored link https://amzn.to/3yQmrlP The Best of SoftSide - Atari Edition - https://archive.org/details/ataribooks-best-of-softside-atari-edition ZX81+38 - https://github.com/mahjongg2/ZX81plus38 magnifying glasses - sponsored link https://amzn.to/4cBQYla Japanese power adapter - sponsored link https://amzn.to/3XjeUW5 Upcoming Shows VCF Midwest - September 7-8 - Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - http://vcfmw.org/ VCF Europe - September 7-8 - Munich, Germany - https://vcfe.org/E/ World of Retrocomputing 2024 Expo - September 14-15 - Kitchener, ON, Canada - https://www.facebook.com/events/s/world-of-retro-computing-2024-/1493036588265072/ Teletext 50 - Sep 21-22 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, UK - https://www.teletext50.com/ Portland Retro Gaming Expo - September 27-29 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/ Tandy Assembly - September 27-29 - Courtyard by Marriott Springfield - Springfield, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/ AmiWest - October 25-27 - Sacramento, CA - https://amiwest.net/ Chicago TI International World Faire - October 26 - Evanston Public Library (Falcon Room, 303), Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/ Retro Computer Festival 2024 - November 9-10 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England - https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/ Silly Venture WE (Winter Edition) - Dec. 5-8 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-we Schedule Published on Floppy Days Website - https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSeLsg4hf5KZKtpxwUQgacCIsqeIdQeZniq3yE881wOCCYskpLVs5OO1PZLqRRF2t5fUUiaKByqQrgA/pub Interview Steve's Workbench at radioshack.com (archived) - https://web.archive.org/web/19980528232503/http://www.radioshack.com/sw/swb/ Transcript of Interview-Only Randy Kindig: All right. I really appreciate your time today, Steve. Steve Leininger: Thank you for having me, Randy. Randy Kindig: So let's start out maybe just by talking about where You live today, and what you do? Steve Leininger: I live in Woodland Park, Colorado, which is 8, 500 feet, right out in front of we got Pike's Peak out our front window. Randy Kindig: Oh. Oh, that's nice. Steve Leininger: Yeah we get snow up through about June, and then it starts again about September. But it's not as much snow as you would imagine. Randy Kindig: I've got property in Montana, and I lived out there for a couple of years, Steve Leininger: so there you go. Randy Kindig: We probably got more snow up there. Steve Leininger: Hey, you asked what I did. I'm involved with Boy Scouts, a maker space with a church based ministry firewood ministry, actually. Some people call it a fire bank. So we provide firewood to people who can't afford that. Randy Kindig: Oh. Steve Leininger: So it's like a food bank, but with fire, firewood. Randy Kindig: I've never heard of that. Steve Leininger: We source the firewood. We cut it down and we split it. Lots of volunteers involved; pretty big project. Randy Kindig: Yeah. Okay, cool. I also wanted to mention, I'm a fellow Boilermaker. Steve Leininger: There you go. Randy Kindig: I know you went to Purdue, right? Steve Leininger: I did go to Purdue. Randy Kindig: Did you ever get back there? Steve Leininger: Yeah, and in fact they've got a couple learning spaces named after us. Randy Kindig: Oh, okay. Steve Leininger: We've been donating to our respective alma maters. My wife went to IU. Randy Kindig: Oh, is that right? Oh my. Steve Leininger: Yeah, oh my and me. Yeah, the fact that the family who's all IU, their family tolerated me was, quite a remarkable thing. Randy Kindig: Okay. I find it interesting because I think you graduated in 76, is that right? Steve Leininger: 74. Randy Kindig: Oh, 74. Steve Leininger: Yeah. Yeah. I was there from … Randy Kindig: Oh yeah, you actually were gone before I started. Steve Leininger: Yeah. So I was there from 70 to 73. 70 to 70 four. When I graduated in four years, I got both my bachelor's and master's degree by going through the summer. I managed to pass out of the first year classes because of some of the high school stuff yeah. Randy Kindig: Okay. I started in 75, so I guess we just missed each other. Steve Leininger: Yeah. Yeah. You're the new kids coming in. Randy Kindig: Yeah. . So I, I found that interesting and I wanted to say that. Do you keep up with their sports program or anything like that? Steve Leininger: Yeah, they play a pretty good game of basketball in fact, I ribbed my wife about it because she was from the earlier days, the Bobby Knight days at IU that were phenomenal. Randy Kindig: Yeah, exactly. For those of you listening, I'm talking with Steve Leininger, who was the primary developer, if not the developer, of the TRS 80 Model I.. Steve Leininger: I did all the hardware and software for it. I'll give Don French credit for sticking to it and getting a project started. And for refining, refining our product definition a little bit to where it was better than it would have been if I would have stopped early. Randy Kindig: Okay. And I have talked with Don before. I've interviewed him on the podcast, and I met him at Tandy Assembly. But I'm just curious, when you were hired into Tandy and you were told what you were going to do; exactly what were you told? Steve Leininger: They had a 16 bit microprocessor board that another consultant had developed. And they were trying to make a personal computer out of this. It was the Pace microprocessor, which was not a spectacular success for National, but it was one of the first 16 bit processors. But they had basically an initial prototype, might have been even the second level of the thing. No real documentation, no software, ran on three different voltages and didn't have input or output. Other than that, it was fine. I was brought in because I was one of the product one of the engineers for the development boards, the development board series for the SCAMP, the S C M P, the National Semiconductor had a very low cost microprocessor that at one point in time, I benchmarked against the 8080 with positive benchmarks and ours was faster on the benchmarks I put together, but as I was later told there's lies, damn lies, and benchmarks. But so they said take a look at using that, their low cost microprocessor that you were working with. And it really wasn't the right answer for the job. Let's see, the Altair was already out. Okay. That was the first real personal computer. The Apple, the Apple 1 was out. Okay. But it was not a consumer computer. Okay. They, it was just, it was like a cookie sheet of parts, which was very similar to what was used in the Atari games at the commercial games. Okay. pong and that kind of stuff at that time. And I had been working, after Purdue, I went to National Semiconductor. There's a long story behind all that. But in the process, some of us engineers would go up to the Homebrew Computer Club that met monthly up at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. We're talking Wilbur and Orville Wright kinds of things going on. Yeah. Everyone who was in the pioneering version of computing had at one time been to that meeting. Randy Kindig: It's very famous. Yeah. Steve Leininger: Yeah. And Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were basically a couple guys working out of their garage at the time. I was still working at National Semiconductor, but I also had a Moonlight job at Byte Shop number 2. The second computer store in all of California. Randy Kindig: And So you worked with Paul Terrell. Steve Leininger: I actually worked with one of, yeah, Paul, I actually worked for Paul's I don't know if it was a partner, Todd, I don't even remember the guy's name. But I just, it was. Randy Kindig: I was curious because I'm talking to Paul right now and getting interviews. Steve Leininger: Yeah. I, I'm sure we met, but it wasn't anything horribly formal. Since it was the number two shop, it still wasn't the number one shop, which Paul worked out of. And so we had an Apple 1 there. I actually got the job because I when I When I went in there, they were trying to troubleshoot something with what looked like an oscilloscope that they pulled out of a tank, and so it had, audio level kind of bandwidth, but could not do a digital circuit. And I said what you really need is a, I told him, a good tectonic scope or something like that. He said do you want a job here? I ended up moonlighting there, which was, as fortune would have it, was a good deal when the folks from Radio Shack came down to visit. Because when they came down to visit the sales guy wasn't there. We'll let the engineer talk to them, they almost never let the engineers talk to them. Randy Kindig: So you had to talk with them. Steve Leininger: Yeah. It was John Roach, Don French, and it was probably Jack Sellers, okay and Don was probably the; he was the most on top of stuff electronically because he was a hobbyist of sorts. The other two guys: Mr. Sellers ran the engineering group. John Roach was the VP of manufacturing. And they were basically on a parts visit. They do it once a year, once, twice a year. And they also did it with Motorola and a couple other places. But I told him about this microprocessor and that I was writing a tiny BASIC for it. Okay. Tiny BASIC was a interpreted basic that a guy named Li-Chen Wang actually had the first thing in Dr. Dobbs, Dr. Dobbs magazine. We're talking about, we're talking about things that you don't realize are the shoulders of giants that turned out to be the shoulders of giants. And in fact, we reached out to Mr. Wang as we were working on it. We thought we had the software already taken care of because I'm jumping ahead in the story, but we were going to have Bob Uterich, and you'd have to chase that back. We had him signed up to write a BASIC interpreter for us, but because he'd already done one for the 6800, and it was included in Interface Age magazine. on a plastic record. You remember the old plastic records you could put in a magazine? Randy Kindig: Yeah, I did see that. Steve Leininger: Yeah, so this was called a floppy ROM when they did it. Yeah. So if you had the right software and everything you could download the software off of the floppy ROM and run it on 6800. I think he used the Southwest Technical Products thing. And so we'd signed him up to do the BASIC. This was independent of the hardware design I was doing. And he went into radio silence on us; couldn't find him. And so we get to, in parallel, I was using the Li-Chen Wang plan to do at least a demo version of BASIC that would run on the original computer. And when the demo went successfully on Groundhog Day in 1977. This is the time frame we're talking about. I I started work on July 5th, the year before it. With Tandy? Yeah. Okay. We rolled into town on the 3rd, and of course they're closed for the 4th. And on the 5th I started, and there was the wandering around in the desert at the beginning of that, and Don's probably talked about how I was moved from there to their audio factory and then to the old saddle factory. Tandy used to be primarily a leather company before they bought Radio Shack in 1966 or something like that. And anyway, when the software didn't come out, I ended up writing the software, too. So I designed all the hardware and all the software. I didn't do the power supply. Chris Klein did the power supply. And, a little bit of the analog video circuitry, but it was very little part of that. Because we were just making a video signal. I did all the digital stuff on that. Yeah. Randy Kindig: So the software ended up being what was the level one ROM, right? Steve Leininger: Yeah, the level one ROM started out as the Li-Chen Wang BASIC. But he had no I. O. in his software, so I was doing the keyboard scanning. I had to do the cassette record and playback. Had to implement data read and data write Peek and poke, which is pretty simple. Put in the graphic statements. Yeah, oh, and floating point. Now, floating point, luckily, Zilog had a library for that, but I had to basically, this was before APIs were a big deal, so I basically had to use their interface, To what I had written and had to allocate storage, correct? We're talking about 4K bytes of ROM. I know, yeah. Very tiny, and to put all the I. O. in there, and to make it so that you could be updating the screen, when you're doing the cassette I put two asterisks up there and blinked the second one on and off, you remember that? Randy Kindig: Oh yeah. Steve Leininger: Sort of as a level set. Randy Kindig: Yeah. Steve Leininger: And someone said, oh, you should have patented that thing. And actually I have seven or eight patents, U. S. patents, on different parts of the computer architecture. Randy Kindig: Oh, do you? Steve Leininger: But not the blinking asterisk, which is probably a patentable feature. Randy Kindig: Yeah, I wish I'd had that on other machines, that I ended up having. So that would have been nice, yeah. I liken what you've done with what Steve Wozniak did, for the Apple II. You're somebody I've always wanted to talk to because I felt like you were one of the important pioneers in their early years. What do you have to say about that? Do you feel like what you did was ... Steve Leininger: in retrospect, yes. And I have a greater appreciation for people like the Wright Brothers. If you think about the Wright Brothers they took all their stuff from their Dayton, Ohio, bicycle shop down to Kill Devil Hills. We now know it as Kitty Hawk. But they would take the stuff down there by train, and then they would have to put it in horse driven wagons. Think about that. And people would ask them, what are you going to use the airplane for? It's what are you going to use a home computer for? Yeah, to maintain recipes and to play games. Randy Kindig: Do your checkbook. Steve Leininger: Do your check, home security. There's a whole lot of stuff that we talked about. And other giants entered the field: Multiplan, which became Lotus 1 2 3, which became Excel. Not the same company, but the idea, could you live without a spreadsheet today? Very difficult for some things, right? Randy Kindig: Yeah. Yeah, it's ubiquitous. People use it for everything. Yeah. Yeah. So you've been, I talked with David and Teresa Walsh. Or Welsh, I'm sorry, Welsh. Where they did the book Priming the Pump. Steve Leininger: That's very that's pretty close to the real thing. Randy Kindig: Is it? Okay. They named their book after what you did and said; that you primed the pump for home computers. Can you expand on that and tell us exactly what you meant by that? Steve Leininger: It again goes back to that shoulders of giants thing, and I forget who said that; it's actually a very old quote, I can see further because I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. And I think the thing that we brought to the table and Independently, Commodore and Apple did the same thing in 1977. There were three computers that came out inexpensive enough that you could use them in the home. They all came with ROM loaded BASIC. You didn't have to load anything else in. They all came with a video output. Some had displays. Some Commodore's was built in. One of ours was a Clip on and you had to go find one for the apple. For the Apple, yeah. Apple had a superior case. Apple and Radio Shack both had great keyboards. Randy Kindig: apple was expandable, with its... Steve Leininger: yeah, Apple Apple was internally expandable, yeah. And, but it cost $1,000. Without the cassette. Without the monitor. It wasn't the same type of device. Randy Kindig: I was a college student. And, I looked at all three options. It was like the TRS-80; there are Radio Shacks everywhere. You could go in and play with one; which was nice. And they were inexpensive enough that I could actually afford one. Steve Leininger: And, Radio Shack can't duck the, if you did something wrong, you had to fix it. Randy Kindig: That's right. Let's see here. So initially the idea was to have a kit computer by Tandy? Steve Leininger: Yeah. I'm not sure whose idea that was. It made some kind of sense. Because that's the way the Altair was, and Radio Shack did sell a number of kits, but in the process of still kicking that around, saying it could be a possibility. I was one of the ones that said it could be a possibility. Within the same group that I did the design work from, they also would take kits in that people had built and troubleshoot the things if they didn't work. We had a couple engineers that would see if you connected something wrong or something. If you didn't, sometimes it was a matter that the instructions weren't clear. If you tell someone to put an LED in, yeah. You specifically have to tell them which way to put it in. And might be an opportunity to tweak your timing. Yeah. Anyway, we get this clock in, and it was a digital clock. Seven segment LEDs probably cost 50 bucks or more. Which is crazy. But It says, put all the components in the board, turn the board over, and solder everything to the board. And, pretty simple instructions. This had a sheet of solder over the entire bottom of the board. Someone figured out how to put two pounds of solder on the back of this thing. And, as we all got a great chuckle out of that, You realize, oh, you don't want to have to deal with a computer like this. You really don't. And Lou Kornfeld, who was the president at the time, didn't really want the computer. But he said, it's not going to be a kit. All right. That, that, that took care of that. great idea. Great idea. Randy Kindig: Were there any other times when you thought the computer might, or were there any times, when you thought the computer might not come to fruition? Any snags that you had that made you think that maybe this isn't going to work? Steve Leininger: Not really. I was young and pretty well undaunted. Randy Kindig: Pretty sure you could, Steve Leininger: yeah I, it wasn't any, it wasn't any different than building one at home. I'd been building kits since, night kits, heath kits, that kind of stuff, since I was a kid. And home brewed a couple things, including a hot dog cooker made from two nails and a couple wires that plugged into the wall. Don't try that at home. Randy Kindig: No kidding. Steve Leininger: But, it's funny if you If you look it up on, if you look that kind of project up on the internet, you can still find a project like that. It's like what's it called? Anvil tossing, where you put gunpowder under an anvil, shoot it up in the air. What could possibly go wrong? Don't, Randy Kindig: It's very well documented in books like Priming the Pump, Stan Veit's book, which I assume you're familiar with, and Fire in the Valley, what your involvement was with the Model 1. But there was some mention of your involvement with the Expansion Interface and other TRS 80 projects. What else did you work on while you were there? Steve Leininger: The Color Computer, the Expansion Interface. The model three to a little. Randy Kindig: Okay. Steve Leininger: Little bit. The model two was the big one. And point I just got tired of the management there. Randy Kindig: Did you? Okay. Steve Leininger: Yeah. I my mind was going faster than theirs, and they made the conscious decision to do whatever IBM has done, but do it cheaper. That, to me, that's not a. Didn't say less expensively either, so the whole thing just troubled me that, we're not going to be able to do anything new unless IBM has done it. And at about the same time the Macintosh came out and a superb piece of work. Yeah. Randy Kindig: Okay. So what education training and previous work experience did you have at the time you got hired by Tandy that made you uniquely qualified for that project that they were looking for? Steve Leininger: I'd been playing around with electronics since I was in the third grade. Actually, electricity. Randy Kindig: The third grade, wow. Steve Leininger: Yeah. My, my mom got me a kit that had light bulbs and bells and buzzers and wire from, I think it might have been the Metropolitan Museum. They had a kit. They, they've got a, they still today have an online presence. It, of course the materials have changed, but the kit had all these parts and it had no instructions. And I don't know if that was by design or it didn't have instructions, so I had to learn how to hook up wires and light bulbs and bells and switches to make it do things. And, in the process, I found out that if you put a wire right across the battery terminals, it gets hot. And, interesting stuff to know. Pretty soon, I was taking this stuff in to show and tell in the third grade. Look, and I was very early in electronics. It's electricity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then my mom would take me to the library. She was quite a voracious reader, and I'd go to the library. technical section specifically the Dewey Decimal 621, which was electronics and things like that. Randy Kindig: you still remember that. Steve Leininger: Yeah. And in the 590 series, there's some good stuff too. And I would usually take out a stack of books, even though I was a horrible reader because I'm dyslexic and ADD. So I have an attention span and reading problem. But the technical stuff I was reading about pipeline architecture processors while I was still in junior high. And not that was important to where I ended up, but it was important because I understood the words and data flow, and stuff like that. And between that and building the kits and things like that, I When we moved to Indianapolis, my dad moved jobs down to Indianapolis. Randy Kindig: Oh, you lived in Indianapolis? Steve Leininger: Yeah. So I moved from South Bend down to Indianapolis. So I probably passed your house as . Actually we came down through Kokomo, but but yeah. Randy Kindig: I actually grew up in that part of the state. Just south of South Bend. Steve Leininger: Okay. So yeah La Paz, Plymouth, Randy Kindig: yeah, Warsaw, Rochester. Steve Leininger: Yeah, I was born in Rochester. Randy Kindig: Oh, okay. So that's where I grew up in that area. Steve Leininger: Okay, there you go. My dad's from Akron. Randy Kindig: Are you serious? Steve Leininger: I am serious. Randy Kindig: Akron's where my wife grew up. And I was just 10 miles from there. Steve Leininger: The general store there, Dan Leininger and Sons, that's my great grandfather. Randy Kindig: Really? Steve Leininger: Yeah. Randy Kindig: I'll be darned. Okay. Okay. Steve Leininger: So now it all makes sense. Randy Kindig: That's amazing. Steve Leininger: Anyway, we started a garage band. This is before Apple's garage band. And I made my own amplifier. It basically had the sun sun amplifiers back end on the thing and a Fender Showman front end on it. Completely home brewed really loud amplifier. And I had a friend who had a guitar amplifier that was broken, and he had taken it down to the music store there. And after six weeks of not getting it back, they said we've had trouble with our technician and all that. I asked if I could go down and look at it, and in 15 minutes I had his amplifier fixed. And they said, do you want tom so you want a job? All right. Yeah, because I'd been doing, I'd had a paper route before and I don't think I was doing anything since we'd moved and ao I started working in a music store and they ended up with two music stores and then an organ store next door and I started repairing that kind of stuff. And this was the end of my first year in college. Went to the extension in Indianapolis. Randy Kindig: Oh, okay. And Was that I U P U I? Steve Leininger: IUPUI, yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, I U P U I. Randy Kindig: Huh. I went there as well. Steve Leininger: Yeah and learned Fortran there, got all my first year classes out, and then moved on up to the campus. And because we'd always go to the library, and because my mom would often take me to the library, the newsstand not too far from the library, and she'd get a couple magazines, but she let me get an electronic magazine. And, I didn't understand these things, pretty soon you start understanding the pic, you start understanding it. This is a resistor, I built a little shocker box based on a design in probably elementary electronics. And It's like a handheld electric fence. Randy Kindig: Oh, wow. Steve Leininger: Yeah. Think hot dog cooker. Anyway, so I learned some electronics that way. A lot of that was self taught. I learned quite a bit more by working in the music store, again, this was before I was taught any formal electronics. And actually when I moved up to campus on Purdue, I thought I was going to be a world class guitar amplifier designer. That's where I thought. And it turns out my analog gut feelings aren't, weren't as good as other people's. Paul Schreiber does a much better job with electronics, with analog electronics than I do. But digital electronics, I understood this stuff. I would hang out in the library and I'd read the trade magazines. So I was up to date on, I was way more up to date than a typical professor would be on current electronics. And in 1973, which was the end of my junior year, Electronics Magazine had an article on the Intel 8008. And I said, Oh, I understand this. See, I'd already been taking assembly language. Now they didn't teach assembly language programming in the electronics school. They had Fortran, but there was no way to get from Fortran to ..they weren't teaching programming languages. I had to go to the business school where I learned assembly language on the school's CDC 6600 mainframe. Randy Kindig: Really? Steve Leininger: Yeah. Randy Kindig: Through the business school? Steve Leininger: Yeah. And for those of you who have never tried assembly language programming, it looks like a foreign language until you just internalize it in your brain: there's ADD, A D and A D C for ADD with carry, and there's a whole bunch of different things. There's different ways to move data around, but you're only doing a few really basic things, and if you do it fast enough, it looks like it's instantaneous. That's the way even your phone works today. It's because you're doing it fast enough. It fools you. Randy Kindig: Yep. Wow. Do you ever look back at these days, at those days, with amazement? As far as how far the industry has come? Steve Leininger: Oh yeah. And, it's funny because you wouldn't, you couldn't probably, but you wouldn't start over again. I had to learn, I had to learn digital video. Actually the giant that I, whose shoulders I stood on there was the late Don Lancaster. He had a book called TV Typewriter Cookbook. And actually that came out a little bit later, but he had a TV typewriter series in Radio Electronics Magazine. And basically alphanumeric display. If you think about it, just the glass teletype, the keyboard display and a serial interface at the time that the RadioShack computer came out was selling for 999. Another 400 on top of what we were selling the whole computer for. Because we had a microprocessor in there. We didn't have a whole lot of options. We didn't have a whole lot of fluff. In fact Motorola said, send this to your schematics and your parts list and let's see if we can minimize your circuit. And after two weeks they sent it back. He said, you did a pretty good job here. . . Randy Kindig: Okay. Huh. You still stay in touch with people at Tandy? Steve Leininger: A few of them. It's actually been more lately. Because it's almost more interesting now. It's like the, I don't know whatever happened to Atwater and Kent, of the Atwater Kent radio. But, that's an old school radio that now you've got people that rebuild them and got them all polished up and all this kind of stuff. But for a while they ended up in the dump. I'm sure, there are some trash 80s that ended up in the trash. Randy Kindig: I'm sure. Steve Leininger: Yeah but I've gotten rid of lots of PCs that don't meet my needs anymore, right? Randy Kindig: Sure. Yeah, we all have, somewhere along the way. It seemed like you were really quiet there for a long time and that you were difficult to get in contact with. Steve Leininger: I wasn't really that difficult. I didn't maintain a social media presence on the thing, but things that I had my own consulting company for quite a while. I actually came back to Radio Shack two more times after I left. One was to come back as a technologist there. The politics still didn't work out well. Then I came back as a contractor to help them with some of their online things. I actually had a website called Steve's Workbench. Steve Leininger: And you can find it on the Internet Archive. The Wayback Machine. And it had some basic stamp projects. And we were going to do all sorts of other things. But I managed to upset the people at RadioShack. com. They didn't have a big sense of humor about someone being critical about the products that they'd selected. And I, I did a... I was going to start doing product reviews on the kits, how easy it was to solder, whether it was a good value for the money and all that kind of stuff. And I gave a pretty honest review on it. And Radio Shack didn't appreciate the power of an honest review. It's what makes Amazon what it is, right? You go in there and if there's something that's got just two stars on the reviews, Yeah, you really got to know what you're doing if you're going to buy the thing, right? And if you see something that's got a bunch of one star and a bunch of five star reviews Yeah, someone's probably aalting the reference at the top end. And so I mean they had such a fit that when they changed platforms For RadioShack. com, they didn't take Steve's Workbench with it And I basically lost that position. Radio Shack should own the makerspace business right now. They at one time, one time I suggested, you ought to take a look at buying Digikey or maybe Mouser. Mouser was right down the street from us. They already had their hands into Allied, but these other two were doing stuff, more consumer oriented, but they didn't. They were making, they were flush with money from selling cell phone contracts. And they thought that was the way of the future until the cell phone companies started reeling that back in. At a certain point, you don't want to be paying your 5 percent or 10 percent royalty to Radio Shack for just signing someone up. Randy Kindig: Yeah. Okay. I didn't realize you had ever gone back and worked for them again. Steve Leininger: Yeah, twice, Randy Kindig: and so I'm curious, did you meet any other famous figures in the microcomputer revolution while you were working at Tandy? Steve Leininger: At Tandy, let's see. Randy Kindig: I'm just curious. Steve Leininger: Yeah, Bill Gates, of course. I went out when we were working on level two BASIC. And Bill Gates I think was probably a hundred- thousand- aire at that time. And, working in a, thhey had a floor in a bank building in Seattle. He took me to the basement of his dad's law firm, and we had drinks there, and I went out to his house on the lake. This was not the big house. I've never been there. It was a big house on the lake, but it wasn't the one That he built later on. So I knew him early on run across Forest Mims a couple times. And of course, he's the shoulders upon which a lot of electronic talent was built and some of the stuff is lost. Jameco is actually bringing him back as a… Jameco is a kinda like a Radio Shack store online. It's yeah it is, it's not as robust as DigiKey or Bower, but they've held their roots. Someone I've not met Lady Ada from Adafruit would be fun. Randy Kindig: Yeah. Would, yeah. Steve Leininger: I, that, that's another thing that, if we had something along those lines, that would have been cool, but the buyers weren't up, up to the task and they when you don't want criticism at a certain point you've got to quit doing things if you don't want to be criticized. Randy Kindig: Sure. When you finally got the Model 1 rolled out and you saw the tremendous interest, were you surprised in the interest that it garnered? Steve Leininger: I wasn't. I wasn't. In fact, there's a quote of me. Me and John Roach had a discussion on how many of these do you think we could sell? And, this is actually quoted in his obituary on the, in the Wall Street Journal. I, Mr. Tandy said you could build 3, 500 of these because we've got 3, 500 stores and we can use them in the inventory. And to take inventory. And John Roach thought maybe we could sell, up to 5, 000 of these things in the first year. And I said, oh no, I think we could sell 50, 000. To which he said, horseshit. Just like that. And that, now I quoted that to the Wall Street Journal, and they put that in his obituary. Yeah I don't know how many times that word shows up in the Wall Street Journal, but if you search their files you'll find that it was me quoting John Roach. So … Randy Kindig: I'll have to, I'll have to look for that, yeah, that's funny. So you were not surprised by the interest, Steve Leininger: no, it, part of it was I knew the leverage of the stores I'd been working, when we introduced the thing I'd been working for the company for just over a year. Think about that. And it wasn't until just before probably, it was probably September or October when Don and I agreed on the specs. I'd keep writing it up, and he'd look at it. Don actually suggested that, demanded, he doesn't, in a, but in a good natured way, he made a good case for it, that I have, in addition to the cassette interface on there, that I have a way to read and write data. Because if you're going to do an accounting program, you got to be able to read and write data. I actually figured out a way to do that. There were a couple other things. John Roach really wanted blinking lights on the thing. And my mechanical, the mechanical designer, there said that's going to cost more money to put the LEDs in there. What are you going to do with them? And, Mr. Roach was, you know, familiar with the IBM probably the 360 by then? Anyway. The mainframes. Yeah, mainframes always had blinking lights on them. Randy Kindig: Exactly. Steve Leininger: And since it's a computer, it should have blinking lights. And Larry said, Larry the mechanical guy said what are you going to do with them? I said, I can't, I said I could put stuff up there, It's… Randy Kindig: What are they going to indicate? Steve Leininger: Yeah. And then, he said, I'll tell you what, I'm going to make the case without holes for the lights and just don't worry about it. That was the end of the discussion. Mr. Roach was probably a little disappointed, but yeah, no one else had them, Randy Kindig: it's funny to think that you'd have blinking lights on a microcomputer like that. Yeah. Yeah. Is there any aspect of the Model one development you would do differently if you were doing it today? Steve Leininger: Yeah, I would, I would've put the eighth memory chip in with the, with the video display so you get upper and lower case. Randy Kindig: Yeah, there you go. Okay. Steve Leininger: Might've put buffers to the outside world. We had the, the microprocessor was buffered, but it was, it was very short distance off the connector there. Otherwise, there's not a whole lot I would have changed. Software could have been written a little better, but when one person's writing all the software the development system that I had was a Zilog development system. And 30 character percent a second. Decorator, line printer. The fact that I got it done is actually miracle stuff. Randy Kindig: Yeah, and you got it done in a year, right? Steve Leininger: And it was all written in assembly language. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Got it all done in a year. Randy Kindig: That's a good year's work. Steve Leininger: It is. Randy Kindig: Building a computer from scratch, basically, and then getting it... Steve Leininger: and back then we had to program EEPROMs. We didn't have flash memory. Okay. Didn't hardly have operating systems back then. Not that I was using one. There was something in the Zilog thing, but yeah we were so far ahead of things, we were developing a product rather than a computer. And maybe that's the whole difference is that we had a product that you pull it up, plug it in, and it says these are TRS 80 and it wasn't the Model 1 until the Model 2 came out. Randy Kindig: Yeah, exactly. It was just the TRS 80. Yeah. So I have to know, do you have any of the old hardware? Steve Leininger: I've got a Model 1. I don't use it except for demonstrations now. I actually have two. I've got one that works and one that's probably got a broken keyboard connector from taking it out of the case and holding it up too many times. Randy Kindig: Were these prototypes or anything? Steve Leininger: They are non serial production units. I've got the, I've got a prototype ROM board that's got the original integer basic that I wrote. I don't have the video boards and all that kind of stuff that went with it when we did the original demonstration. Let's see we had four wire wrapped, completely wire wrapped industrial wire wrapped versions that we used for prototyping the software. One went to David Lein, who wrote the book that came with the thing, the basic book. One I had at my desk and there were two others. Yeah. And they got rid of all of those. So a cautionary tale is if you do something in the future where you've got that prototype that was put together in Tupperware containers or held together with duct tape, you need to at least take pictures of it. And you might want to keep one aside. If it turns out to be something like the Apple III, you can probably get rid of all that stuff. If it turns out to be something like the Apple II, The RadioShack computer, the Commodore PET, you really ought to, enshrine that. The original iPhone. Apple did stuff that was, what was it, can't remember what it was. They had a they had a thing not unlike the... 3Com ended up getting them. Anyway the hand of the PDAs, no one knows what a Personal Oh, digital assistant. Yeah. Yeah. We call that a, we call that a phone ... Randy Kindig: Palm Pilot. Yeah. Steve Leininger: Yeah. Palm Pilot. That's the one. Yeah. I've got a couple of those. I've got three model 100's. I've got one of the early… Randy Kindig: Did you work on the 100s? Steve Leininger: I used it, but I didn't work on it. The design. No. Okay. That was an NEC product with Radio Shack skins on it. Randy Kindig: Oh, that's right. That's right. Steve Leininger: Kay Nishi was the big mover on that. Yeah. Let's see I've got an Altair and an ASR 33 Teletype. Yeah, we're talking about maybe the computer's grandfather, right? I've had a whole bunch of other stuff. I've probably had 40 other computers that I don't have anymore. I am gravitating towards mechanical music devices, big music boxes, that kind of stuff. Randy Kindig: Oh, okay. Cool. Interesting. Steve, that's all the questions I had prepared. Steve Leininger: Okay. Randy Kindig: Is there anything I should have asked about that? Steve Leininger: Oh my, Randy Kindig: anything you'd want to say? Steve Leininger: Yeah, I, I've given talks before on how do you innovate? How do you become, this is pioneering kinds of stuff. So you really have to have that vision, man. The vision, I can't exactly say where the vision comes from, but being dyslexic for me has been a gift. Okay and this is something I tell grade school and middle school students that, some people are out there saying I, I can't do that because, it's just too much stuff or my brain is cluttered. Cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what's an empty desk the sign of? Embrace the clutter. Learn a lot of different things. Do what you're passionate about. Be willing to. support your arguments, don't just get angry if someone doesn't think the way you do, explain why you're doing it that way. And sometimes it's a matter of they just don't like it or they don't have the vision. The ones that don't have the vision, they never, they may never have the vision. I've quit companies because of people like that. But When you've got the vision and can take it off in your direction, it could just end up as being art. And I shouldn't say just art, art can be an amazing thing. And that behind these walls here, we've got a pinball machine and gaming conference going on. And it is nutcase. But is there stuff out there you look at and say, Oh, wow. Yeah. And I do too. Keep it a while going. Randy Kindig: Very cool. All right. That's a great stopping point, I think. All right. I really appreciate it, Steve taking the time to talk with us today. Steve Leininger: Thanks, Randy.
Retro gaming is making a comeback, and it's not just for nostalgia's sake. Avram Piltch discusses his son's interest in retro games and how it has sparked a renewed interest in old consoles and games. Avram's son, who is only 12 years old, is more interested in retro games than in the latest games. He watches videos about old games, quizzes his father on trivia about old consoles and games, and gets excited about playing old games in their original format.Retro gaming is in the spotlightAvram discusses his visit to a retro game festival in New York, where he shares pictures of his son looking at old consoles and games. The festival had every major console in historical order, starting from the Magnavox Odyssey, and attendees could play on them. Avram also came across a tool called Taz bot, which automates gameplay on certain old consoles like the GameCube. This tool allows players to program joystick moves and button presses to play the perfect game.While some may question the purpose of using a tool like Taz bot to automate gameplay, it highlights the growing interest in retro gaming and the desire to experience old games in new ways. The festival also featured old consoles like the RCA Studio II, Atari Lynx, PSP, Xbox 360, and original Game Boy, showcasing the variety of retro gaming options available.One of the key reasons for the resurgence of retro gaming is the unique experience it offers. Playing old games on original consoles and CRT TVs provides a different feel and look compared to modern gaming setups. Additionally, there is a sense of nostalgia and appreciation for the history of gaming that comes with playing retro games.Furthermore, retro gaming is not just about reliving the past but also about preserving gaming history. Events like retro game festivals and tools like Taz bot help keep old consoles and games alive for future generations to enjoy. The interest in retro gaming is not limited to older gamers but is also seen in younger generations like Avram's son, who are discovering the charm of old games.Old school gaming nostalgia festIn addition, Avram discusses a wide range of gaming devices, from the Space Ace and Dragon's Lair DVD games to the Virtual Boy and N64 playing Banjo-Kazooie. He also highlights unique consoles like the Game Tank, a homebrew console with its own set of games and cartridges, and the Dreamcast with its quirky peripherals like the fishing rod game.One of the most interesting aspects of the event was old educational systems like the Socrates and Sega pods, as well as handheld games like Merlin. The hosts also explore the evolution of gaming technology, from the Commodore PET and K-Pro computers to the Amstrad with its tape drive built into the keyboard.Avram and Scott share their experiences playing retro games and exploring the history of gaming, highlighting the creativity and innovation of early game developers. They also discuss the appeal of retro gaming for both seasoned gamers and newcomers, emphasizing the nostalgia and sense of nostalgia that comes with revisiting classic games and consoles.Controller matters for retro gamingAvram and Scott discuss the importance of controllers in retro gaming. They highlight the significance of using the original controllers that were designed for specific gaming consoles, as opposed to using modern controllers or emulators. They emphasize that the controller matters greatly in the gaming experience, as it affects the feel and gameplay of the retro games.Avram mentions examples of retro gaming controllers, such as the Atari joystick and the wheel controller for Atari Pong games. He discusses how the design and functionality of these controllers contribute to the overall gaming experience and how using the original controllers can enhance the nostalgia and authenticity of playing retro games.Additionally, the pair touches upon the idea of modifying retro gaming controllers to work with modern devices, such as installing USB connections in the controllers to use them with newer gaming systems. They explore the technical aspects of retrofitting retro controllers and the potential challenges involved in the process.Furthermore, Scott discusses the significance of Nintendo releasing wireless NES and SNES controllers for the Switch to enhance the gameplay experience of playing classic games on modern consoles. He emphasizes that the design and functionality of the controllers are integral to the gaming experience and that using the original controllers can enhance the overall gameplay and nostalgia of retro gaming.
The Vintage Computer Festival East is an annual event held in New Jersey that celebrates the history and nostalgia of old computers. Attending this festival is like taking a trip down memory lane, where you can see, touch, and even play with vintage computers from the past. The Vintage Computer Festival East was a showcase of a wide array of old computers, each evoking a sense of nostalgia and admiration. The unique features of each computer were highlighted, from the small keyboard of the Cosmac to the green CRT monitors that are no longer commonly used.Vintage Computer Festival East memoriesOne of the highlights of the festival is the museum portion, where visitors can see a collection of old CPUs, including the 8086, 286, 386, and 486. These CPUs may bring back memories for those who have used them in the past, and it's a reminder not to throw away old technology as it can still hold value and significance.Another interesting exhibit at the festival was the Xerox Star 8010, a computer with a GUI that predates the Macintosh GUI. This computer was primarily used for business purposes but had a user interface that resembled the iconic Mac interface we know today. It's fascinating to see the evolution of technology and how certain features and designs have influenced modern computing.The festival also featured the PCjr, a less successful sibling of the IBM PC, and a TI-branded luggable computer. These computers may not have been as popular or successful as their counterparts, but they still hold a special place in computer history.One of the most memorable experiences at the festival was playing with an original Commodore PET. The PET was Commodore's first major personal computer, released around the same time as the Apple II and the TRS-80 in 1977. Playing with this computer brought back memories of the early days of personal computing and the excitement of exploring new technology.Overall, the Vintage Computer Festival East is a unique and nostalgic experience for computer enthusiasts and history buffs alike. It's a reminder of how far technology has come and the impact that these vintage computers have had on the evolution of computing. Attending this festival is not just a trip down memory lane, but a celebration of the history and innovation of old computers.Old computers evoke nostalgiaA key theme that emerged from the event was the sentimental value that these old computers hold for the attendees. Stories were shared about first computers, such as the TI-99/4A and the Apple II, and anecdotes about the software and games that used to run on these machines. These old computers evoke a sense of nostalgia, transporting individuals back to a simpler time when computing was still in its infancy.Technical aspects of the vintage computers were also discussed, such as the PowerPC chip inside the BeBox and the monochrome screens of the Osborne and TRS-80 computers. There was a fascination with the sharpness of the text on these old monitors and a lament for the inability to replicate the same experience on modern LCD screens. This longing for the unique features of old computers speaks to the emotional connection that individuals have with these machines, beyond just their functionality.The history of certain prototype computers, such as Microsoft Neptune and the Mac OS version that never came to fruition, was also explored. These failed attempts at innovation serve as a reminder of the risks and challenges that come with pushing the boundaries of technology. Despite their lack of success, these prototype computers still hold a special place in the hearts of computer enthusiasts, as they represent a glimpse into what could have been.Conclusion: History and nostalgia at onceIn conclusion, the Vintage Computer Festival East exemplifies the nostalgia and reverence that old computers evoke in individuals. These vintage machines are not just relics of the past, but symbols of innovation, perseverance, and the enduring impact of technology on society. Events like the Vintage Computer Festival allow individuals to connect with the history of computing and appreciate the journey that has led to the advanced technology we have today.
Don't fret, it's time for the COMMODORE PET! ARG Presents is going OLD school with the grand daddy of Commodore computers! Today we play the games of JIM SUMMERS, and talk about his high school programming days! Join Amigo Aaron and THE BRENT LIVE as we examine about Astro Rescue and Star Spores! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/amigospodcast/message
Don't fret, it's time for the COMMODORE PET! ARG Presents is going OLD school with the grand daddy of Commodore computers! Today we play the games of JIM SUMMERS, and talk about his high school programming days! Join Amigo Aaron and THE BRENT LIVE as we examine about Astro Rescue and Star Spores! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/arg-presents/support
In this episode, John and Dave talk all about the ins and outs of the Steam Deck handheld gaming console, including how it works as a great way to emulate retro games and other consoles. The guys also talk about the Commodore PET and some cool new PETSCII based games for the PET computer, and some of John's recent auction finds. Links: Steam Deck: https://www.steamdeck.com/en/ Emudeck: https://www.emudeck.com/ Jimbo's PETSCII games: https://jimbo.itch.io/
We're back for Episode 112! In this episode Cody and Eric catch up on the news + Battle Of The Systems: 8 Bit Batman games (NES and PC Engine) We are doing news for the first monthly episode and then "catching up" later in the month. Episode Guide ---------------- 6:16 - Quick Questions 23:16 - Patreon Song 27:15 - Tea Time With Tim - TheC64 & MiSTer Multisystem 47:58 - Eric's Take - Favorite Games On Owned Systems 1:12:09 - News 2:05:15 - Battle Of The Systems: 8 Bit Batman Games NEWS Tim - Sams Journey from the wonderful people at Knights of Bytes takes a step closer to coming to you on the NES. Pre orders are now open on the PolyPlay website. A disappointment that at the moment there is no USA distribution announced yet. However, you can pre order for the sum of 60 Euros for the NES and they also are doing a Famicom version. There is also the Ultimate Edition for 180 Euros https://www.polyplay.xyz/search/?lang=eng&qs=sams+journey+nes (Cody) - Evercade Showcase Vol. 2 - Indie Special Tim – Our show friend and retro game maker legend Juan J. Martínez has done it again! This time Juan is delighting us with a fantastic little platformer for DOS... yes that's right a DOS game! The game is Gold Mine Run! Its heavily influenced by Night Knight on the MSX another game by Juan... but that's no bad thing as that's also a great game. Check it out on Juan's website, if you do download and play it, don't forget to throw Juan a few bucks / pounds / euros his way on his Kofi site. He does not do it for the money, but it helps to show appreciation for his continued efforts making games for us mere game playing mortals that cant code for toffees! It's a Bobby Dazzler (also a good name for Juan's next game!) https://www.usebox.net/jjm/gold-mine-run/ Tim - Sonic Fans Want To Raise $4,000 To Preserve Insanely Rare 'SegaSonic' Arcade Game. SegaSonic The Hedgehog is one of the blue blur's lesser-known adventures. Released in Japan in 1993, it has never been re-released on any home system – nor has it been included on any of Sonic's many respective collections. https://www.timeextension.com/news/2023/07/sonic-fans-want-to-raise-usd4000-to-preserve-insanely-rare-segasonic-arcade-game Cody - https://www.timeextension.com/news/2023/08/capcom-arcade-classic-1942-just-got-a-stylish-p349-watch Cody - https://retrododo.com/shantae-risky-revolution/ Eric – Whiplash Taxi Co for Pico 8 - https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=53583 Tim – New game for your PET.. Nope it's not an RPG for your pet Rat. It's a new game for the Commodore PET. A new homebrew has been relased by Fuzzybad (Mastodon: @fuzzybad@mastodon.social) called PET Light Cycles this is a take on the Tron light cycle game. Not only has this game got great use of the PET graphics but also has sound and music on the title screen. Available as a free to download on Fuzyybad's Itch site, but please leave a tip to show your appreciation. https://fuzzybad.itch.io/pet-light-cycles Cody - https://www.amazon.com/Mechanical-Keyboard-Bluetooth-Swappable-Programmable-PC/dp/B0CCP8KYGG/ref=sr_1_1?crid=B425IJKVJWW0&keywords=8bitdo+keyboard&qid=1690928998&s=videogames&sprefix=8bitdo+keyboard%2Cvideogames%2C148&sr=1-1 Eric - The CRT Eliminator Is a VGA Card Add-On That Supplies Native Digital Video https://www.hackster.io/news/the-crt-eliminator-is-a-vga-card-add-on-that-supplies-native-digital-video-b5a461c4f696 Tim – Dig Dug Revival for the C64 - This game is a homage to Dig Dug, an arcade game developed by Namco in 1982. In this version, the playfields are generated randomly. The game works perfectly on both PAL and NTSC models. https://lowcarb.itch.io/dig-dug-revival-c64 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLaQW8Jr7Wg (Cody) - https://retrododo.com/8bitdo-retro-receiver/ (Cody) - https://retrododo.com/retro-fighters-strikerdc/ Eric – Wrestlequest is FINALLY out! Aug 7th - (Psych! It's now pushed back to the 21st) https://store.steampowered.com/app/1867510/WrestleQuest/ Tim – Rogue Declan Zero is now out for the Amiga. A challenging, procedurally generated, roguelite twin-stick shooter for the Classic Amiga platform! https://nivrig.itch.io/rogue-declan-zero https://youtu.be/qnbKKsjwA7E (Cody) News of the WIERD!!! https://retrododo.com/pizza-scented-xbox-controllers/ https://whynowgaming.com/atari-launches-new-range-of-replica-arcade-circuit-boards/ https://www.timeextension.com/news/2023/07/an-earthbound-pop-up-shop-is-about-to-tour-japan Tim – Ron Gilbert (He of Monkey Island fame) Tooted the release of the Android OS version of Monkey Island is now available on the play store. So if you like Monkey Island and you're an Android user go get it I guess! https://oldbytes.space/@grumpygamer@mastodon.gamedev.place https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.devolverdigital.com.rtmi&pli=1 (Cody) - https://www.timeextension.com/news/2023/07/lost-taito-game-crescent-tale-resurfaces-26-years-later Please give us a review on Apple Podcasts! Thanks for listening! You can always reach us at podcast@pixelgaiden.com. Send us an email if we missed anything in the show notes you need. You can now support us on Patreon. Thank you to Henrik Ladefoged, Roy Fielding, Matthew Ackerman, Josh Malone, Daniel James, 10MARC, Eric Sandgren, Brian Arsenault, Retro Gamer Nation, Maciej Sosnowski, Paradroyd, RAM OK ROM OK, Mitsoyama, David Vincent, Ant Stiller, Mr. Toast, Jason Holland, Mark Scott, Vicky Lamburn, Mark Richardson, Scott Partelow, Paul Jacobson, and Adam from Commodore Chronicles for making this show possible through their generous donation to the show. Support our sponsor Retro Rewind for all of your Commodore needs! Use our page at https://retrorewind.ca/pixelgaiden and our discount code PG10 for 10%
Nelumbo nucifera, or the sacred lotus, is a plant that grows in flood plains, rivers, and deltas. Their seeds can remain dormant for years and when floods come along, blossom into a colony of plants and flowers. Some of the oldest seeds can be found in China, where they're known to represent longevity. No surprise, given their level of nitrition and connection to the waters that irrigated crops by then. They also grow in far away lands, all the way to India and out to Australia. The flower is sacred in Hinduism and Buddhism, and further back in ancient Egypt. Padmasana is a Sanskrit term meaning lotus, or Padma, and Asana, or posture. The Pashupati seal from the Indus Valley civilization shows a diety in what's widely considered the first documented yoga pose, from around 2,500 BCE. 2,700 years later (give or take a century), the Hindu author and mystic Patanjali wrote a work referred to as the Yoga Sutras. Here he outlined the original asanas, or sitting yoga poses. The Rig Veda, from around 1,500 BCE, is the oldest currently known Vedic text. It is also the first to use the word “yoga”. It describes songs, rituals, and mantras the Brahmans of the day used - as well as the Padma. Further Vedic texts explore how the lotus grew out of Lord Vishnu with Brahma in the center. He created the Universe out of lotus petals. Lakshmi went on to grow out of a lotus from Vishnu as well. It was only natural that humans would attempt to align their own meditation practices with the beautiful meditatios of the lotus. By the 300s, art and coins showed people in the lotus position. It was described in texts that survive from the 8th century. Over the centuries contradictions in texts were clarified in a period known as Classical Yoga, then Tantra and and Hatha Yoga were developed and codified in the Post-Classical Yoga age, and as empires grew and India became a part of the British empire, Yoga began to travel to the west in the late 1800s. By 1893, Swami Vivekananda gave lectures at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago. More practicioners meant more systems of yoga. Yogendra brought asanas to the United States in 1919, as more Indians migrated to the United States. Babaji's kriya yoga arrived in Boston in 1920. Then, as we've discussed in previous episodes, the United States tightened immigration in the 1920s and people had to go to India to get more training. Theos Bernard's Hatha Yoga: The Report of a Personal Experience brought some of that knowledge home when he came back in 1947. Indra Devi opened a yoga studio in Hollywood and wrote books for housewives. She brought a whole system, or branch home. Walt and Magana Baptiste opened a studio in San Francisco. Swamis began to come to the US and more schools were opened. Richard Hittleman began to teach yoga in New York and began to teach on television in 1961. He was one of the first to seperate the religious aspect from the health benefits. By 1965, the immigration quotas were removed and a wave of teachers came to the US to teach yoga. The Beatles went to India in 1966 and 1968, and for many Transcendental Meditation took root, which has now grown to over a thousand training centers and over 40,000 teachers. Swamis opened meditation centers, institutes, started magazines, and even magazines. Yoga became so big that Rupert Holmes even poked fun of it in his song “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” in 1979. Yoga had become part of the counter-culture, and the generation that followed represented a backlash of sorts. A common theme of the rise of personal computers is that the early pioneers were a part of that counter-culture. Mitch Kapor graduated high school in 1967, just in time to be one of the best examples of that. Kapor built his own calculator in as a kid before going to camp to get his first exposure to programming on a Bendix. His high school got one of the 1620 IBM minicomputers and he got the bug. He went off to Yale at 16 and learned to program in APL and then found Computer Lib by Ted Nelson and learned BASIC. Then he discovered the Apple II. Kapor did some programming for $5 per hour as a consultant, started the first east coast Apple User Group, and did some work around town. There are generations of people who did and do this kind of consulting, although now the rates are far higher. He met a grad student through the user group named Eric Rosenfeld who was working on his dissertation and needed some help programming, so Kapor wrote a little tool that took the idea of statistical analysis from the Time Shared Reactive Online Library, or TROLL, and ported it to the microcomputer, which he called Tiny Troll. Then he enrolled in the MBA program at MIT. He got a chance to see VisiCalc and meet Bob Frankston and Dan Bricklin, who introduced him to the team at Personal Software. Personal Software was founded by Dan Fylstra and Peter Jennings when they published Microchips for the KIM-1 computer. That led to ports for the 1977 Trinity of the Commodore PET, Apple II, and TRS-80 and by then they had taken Bricklin and Franston's VisiCalc to market. VisiCalc was the killer app for those early PCs and helped make the Apple II successful. Personal Software brought Kapor on, as well as Bill Coleman of BEA Systems and Electronic Arts cofounder Rich Mellon. Today, software developers get around 70 percent royalties to publish software on app stores but at the time, fees were closer to 8 percent, a model pulled from book royalties. Much of the rest went to production of the box and disks, the sales and marketing, and support. Kapor was to write a product that could work with VisiCalc. By then Rosenfeld was off to the world of corporate finance so Kapor moved to Silicon Valley, learned how to run a startup, moved back east in 1979, and released VisiPlot and VisiTrend in 1981. He made over half a million dollars in the first six months in royalties. By then, he bought out Rosenfeld's shares in what he was doing, hired Jonathan Sachs, who had been at MIT earlier, where he wrote the STOIC programming language, and then went to work at Data General. Sachs worked on spreadsheet ideas at Data General with a manager there, John Henderson, but after they left Data General, and the partnership fell apart, he worked with Kapor instead. They knew that for software to be fast, it needed to be written in a lower level language, so they picked the Intel 8088 assembly language given that C wasn't fast enough yet. The IBM PC came in 1981 and everything changed. Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs started Lotus in 1982. Sachs got to work on what would become Lotus 1-2-3. Kapor turned out to be a great marketer and product manager. He listened to what customers said in focus groups. He pushed to make things simpler and use less jargon. They released a new spreadsheet tool in 1983 and it worked flawlessly on the IBM PC and while Microsoft had Multiplan and VisCalc was the incumbent spreadsheet program, Lotus quickly took market share from then and SuperCalc. Conceptually it looked similar to VisiCalc. They used the letter A for the first column, B for the second, etc. That has now become a standard in spreadsheets. They used the number 1 for the first row, the number 2 for the second. That too is now a standard. They added a split screen, also now a standard. They added macros, with branching if-then logic. They added different video modes, which could give color and bitmapping. They added an underlined letter so users could pull up a menu and quickly select the item they wanted once they had those orders memorized, now a standard in most menuing systems. They added the ability to add bar charts, pie charts, and line charts. One could even spread their sheet across multiple monitors like in a magazine. They refined how fields are calculated and took advantage of the larger amounts of memory to make Lotus far faster than anything else on the market. They went to Comdex towards the end of the year and introduced Lotus 1-2-3 to the world. The software could be used as a spreadsheet, but the 2 and 3 referred to graphics and database management. They did $900,000 in orders there before they went home. They couldn't even keep up with the duplication of disks. Comdex was still invitation only. It became so popular that it was used to test for IBM compatibility by clone makers and where VisiCalc became the app that helped propel the Apple II to success, Lotus 1-2-3 became the app that helped propel the IBM PC to success. Lotus was rewarded with $53 million in sales for 1983 and $156 million in 1984. Mitch Kapor found himself. They quickly scaled from less than 20 to 750 employees. They brought in Freada Klein who got her PhD to be the Head of Employee Relations and charged her with making them the most progressive employer around. After her success at Lotus, she left to start her own company and later married. Sachs left the company in 1985 and moved on to focus solely on graphics software. He still responds to requests on the phpBB forum at dl-c.com. They ran TV commercials. They released a suite of Mac apps they called Lotus Jazz. More television commercials. Jazz didn't go anywhere and only sold 20,000 copies. Meanwhile, Microsoft released Excel for the Mac, which sold ten times as many. Some blamed the lack os sales on the stringent copy protection. Others blamed the lack of memory to do cool stuff. Others blamed the high price. It was the first major setback for the young company. After a meteoric rise, Kapor left the company in 1986, at about the height of their success. He replaced himself with Jim Manzi. Manzi pushed the company into network applications. These would become the center of the market but were just catching on and didn't prove to be a profitable venture just yet. A defensive posture rather than expanding into an adjacent market would have made sense, at least if anyone knew how aggressive Microsoft was about to get it would have. Manzi was far more concerned about the millions of illegal copies of the software in the market than innovation though. As we turned the page to the 1990s, Lotus had moved to a product built in C and introduced the ability to use graphical components in the software but not wouldn't be ported to the new Windows operating system until 1991 for Windows 3. By then there were plenty of competitors, including Quattro Pro and while Microsoft Excel began on the Mac, it had been a showcase of cool new features a windowing operating system could provide an application since released for Windows in 1987. Especially what they called 3d charts and tabbed spreadsheets. There was no catching up to Microsoft by then and sales steadily declined. By then, Lotus released Lotus Agenda, an information manager that could be used for time management, project management, and as a database. Kapor was a great product manager so it stands to reason he would build a great product to manage products. Agenda never found commercial success though, so was later open sourced under a GPL license. Bill Gross wrote Magellan there before he left to found GoTo.com, which was renamed to Overture and pioneered the idea of paid search advertising, which was acquired by Yahoo!. Magellan cataloged the internal drive and so became a search engine for that. It sold half a million copies and should have been profitable but was cancelled in 1990. They also released a word processor called Manuscript in 1986, which never gained traction and that was cancelled in 1989, just when a suite of office automation apps needed to be more cohesive. Ray Ozzie had been hired at Software Arts to work on VisiCalc and then helped Lotus get Symphony out the door. Symphony shipped in 1984 and expanded from a spreadsheet to add on text with the DOC word processor, and charts with the GRAPH graphics program, FORM for a table management solution, and COM for communications. Ozzie dutifully shipped what he was hired to work on but had a deal that he could build a company when they were done that would design software that Lotus would then sell. A match made in heaven as Ozzie worked on PLATO and borrowed the ideas of PLATO Notes, a collaboration tool developed at the University of Illinois Champagne-Urbana to build what he called Lotus Notes. PLATO was more more than productivity. It was a community that spanned decades and Control Data Corporation had failed to take it to the mass corporate market. Ozzie took the best parts for a company and built it in isolation from the rest of Lotus. They finally released it as Lotus Notes in 1989. It was a huge success and Lotus bought Iris in 1994. Yet they never found commercial success with other socket-based client server programs and IBM acquired Lotus in 1995. That product is now known as Domino, the name of the Notes 4 server, released in 1996. Ozzie went on to build a company called Groove Networks, which was acquired by Microsoft, who appointed him one of their Chief Technology Officers. When Bill Gates left Microsoft, Ozzie took the position of Chief Software Architect he vacated. He and Dave Cutler went on to work on a project called Red Dog, which evolved into what we now know as Microsoft Azure. Few would have guessed that Ozzie and Kapor's handshake agreement on Notes could have become a real product. Not only could people not understand the concept of collaboration and productivity on a network in the late 1980s but the type of deal hadn't been done. But Kapor by then realized that larger companies had a hard time shipping net-new software properly. Sometimes those projects are best done in isolation. And all the better if the parties involved are financially motivated with shares like Kapor wanted in Personal Software in the 1970s before he wrote Lotus 1-2-3. VisiCalc had sold about a million copies but that would cease production the same year Excel was released. Lotus hung on longer than most who competed with Microsoft on any beachhead they blitzkrieged. Microsoft released Exchange Server in 1996 and Notes had a few good years before Exchange moved in to become the standard in that market. Excel began on the Mac but took the market from Lotus eventually, after Charles Simonyi stepped in to help make the product great. Along the way, the Lotus ecosystem created other companies, just as they were born in the Visi ecosystem. Symantec became what we now call a “portfolio” company in 1985 when they introduced NoteIt, a natural language processing tool used to annotate docs in Lotus 1-2-3. But Bill Gates mentioned Lotus by name multiple times as a competitor in his Internet Tidal Wave memo in 1995. He mentioned specific features, like how they could do secure internet browsing and that they had a web publisher tool - Microsoft's own FrontPage was released in 1995 as well. He mentioned an internet directory project with Novell and AT&T. Active Directory was released a few years later in 1999, after Jim Allchin had come in to help shepherd LAN Manager. Notes itself survived into the modern era, but by 2004 Blackberry released their Exchange connector before they released the Lotus Domino connector. That's never a good sign. Some of the history of Lotus is covered in Scott Rosenberg's 2008 book, Dreaming in Code. Others are documented here and there in other places. Still others are lost to time. Kapor went on to invest in UUNET, which became a huge early internet service provider. He invested in Real Networks, who launched the first streaming media service on the Internet. He invested in the creators of Second Life. He never seemed vindictive with Microsoft but after AOL acquired Netscape and Microsoft won the first browser war, he became the founding chair of the Mozilla Foundation and so helped bring Firefox to market. By 2006, Firefox took 10 percent of the market and went on to be a dominant force in browsers. Kapor has also sat on boards and acted as an angel investor for startups ever since leaving the company he founded. He also flew to Wyoming in 1990 after he read a post on The WELL from John Perry Barlow. Barlow was one of the great thinkers of the early Internet. They worked with Sun Microsystems and GNU Debugging Cypherpunk John Gilmore to found the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF. The EFF has since been the nonprofit who leads the fight for “digital privacy, free speech, and innovation.” So not everything is about business.
Floppy Days 126 - Interview with Bob Frankston, Co-developer of Visicalc Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper Hello, everyone! Welcome to episode 126 of the Floppy Days Podcast, with yours truly, Randy Kindig, as the host. Everyone, and I mean everyone, listening to this podcast has surely heard of the ground-breaking application (for its time) Visicalc. Visicalc was the first spreadsheet computer program for personal computers, originally released for the Apple II by VisiCorp on October 17, 1979. It is considered the killer application for the Apple II, turning the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool, and then prompting IBM to introduce the IBM PC two years later. More than 700,000 copies were sold in six years, and up to 1 million copies over its history. Initially developed for the Apple II computer, VisiCalc was ported to numerous platforms, both 8-bit and some of the early 16-bit systems, such as the Commodore PET, Atari 8-bit, TRS-80 (TRSDOS), CP/M, MS-DOS, and even the HP Series 80. VisiCalc was later replaced in the market by Lotus 1-2-3 and eventually by Microsoft's Excel, which is the dominant spreadsheet today. Spreadsheets, along with word processors, and presentation tools are still today considered one of the key applications for computing. Bob Frankston, along with Dan Bricklin, are the co-inventors of VisiCalc. This month, we have an interview with the aforementioned Bob Frankston. Bob was kind enough to take time to talk with me about what it was like to create such a ground-breaking tool. Before doing that, I have a few new acquisitions to discuss and I'll tell you about upcoming computer shows. New Acquisitions/What I've Been Up To Retro Innovations Lige and the YouTube show “The Commodore Room” - https://www.youtube.com/@thecommodoreroom4554 Console5 (cap kits) Upcoming Shows The 64 bits or less Retro Gaming Festival - June 3-4 - Benton County Fairgrounds in Corvallis, Oregon (sponsored by the Portland Retro Gaming Expo) - https://www.64bitsorless.com/ Boatfest Vintage Computer Exposition - June 23-25 - Hurricane, WV - http://boatfest.info VCF Southwest - June 23-25 - Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX - http://vcfsw.org Pacific Commodore Expo NW v4 - June 24-25 - “Interim” Computer Museum, Seattle, WA - https://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=pacommex:start Kickstart Amiga UK Expo - July 1-2 - Nottingham, UK - https://www.amigashow.com/ KansasFest, the largest and longest running annual Apple II conference - July 18-23, 2023 (in-person) - July 29–30, 2023 (virtual) - Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri - https://www.kansasfest.org/ Southern Fried Gaming Expo and VCF Southeast - July 28-30 2023 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/ ZZAP! Live 2023 - August 12 - The Holiday Inn, Kenilworth, CV8 1ED - https://fusionretroevents.co.uk/category/zzap-live/ Silly Venture SE (Summer Edition) - Aug. 17-20 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2023-se Fujiama 2023 - Aug. 30 - Sep. 3 - Lengenfeld, Germany - http://atarixle.ddns.net/fuji/2023/ VCF Midwest - September 9-10 - Waterford Banquets and Conference Center, Elmhurst, IL - http://vcfmw.org/ Tandy Assembly - Sep. 29-Oct. 1 - Courtyard by Marriott in Springfield, Ohio - http://www.tandyassembly.com/ AmiWest - October 14-15 - Sacramento, CA - https://retro.directory/browse/events/4/AmiWest.net Portland Retro Gaming Expo - October 13-15, 2023 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/ Chicago TI International World Faire - October 14, 2023 - Evanston Public Library, Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/ World of Commodore - Dec. 2-3, 2023 - Admiral Inn Mississauga, Mississauga, ON - http://www.worldofcommodore.ca/ http://chiclassiccomp.org/events.html Facebook show listings - https://www.facebook.com/VintageComputerShows/ Interview Bob's Website - https://www.frankston.com/ New York Times article on Bricklin and Frankston joining Lotus (acquisition) - https://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/10/business/business-people-former-friendly-rivals-joining-forces-at-lotus.html Bob interview on TwitTV - https://twit.tv/shows/triangulation/episodes/4
Leonard Tramiel shares his memories of growing up in the computer industry, working on various projects such as the Commodore PET, the Atari ST, and the Jaguar. He also discusses his current involvement in the Computer History Museum and his passion for education and science outreach. Listen to this fascinating conversation and learn more about the history and legacy of some of the most iconic computers and games of all time. Leonard has a PhD in Physics from Columbia University and these days is most interested in improving the image and understanding of science and critical thinking.
This week on TechTime with Nathan Mumm®, Facebook probably owes you money, we explain how to collect this. Plus China is looking to take on the world in many technologies. This week we will pause on TikTok but talk about the other technologies China is diving into. James Riddle joins the show to discuss a specific area of China's interest in collecting Genetic Data. Next, we look back to April 16th, 1977, when two significant computers were released that changed the world. Finally, "What we found on the Web" as we discuss a few topics that will make you go Hummmmm.Join us on TechTime Radio with Nathan Mumm, the show that makes you go "Hummmm" Technology news of the week for April 16th – 22nd, 2023Episode 149: Starts at 1:30--- [Now on Today's Show]: Starts at 2:53--- [Top Stories in Technology]: Starts at 4:30Facebook likely owes you money. How to see if you're eligible - https://tinyurl.com/2p82z48a Chinese Satellite Goes on Inexplicable Sightseeing Tour After Researchers Put AI in Control - https://tinyurl.com/4x99h58r Three criminal complaints filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York were unsealed today in federal court in Brooklyn charging 44 defendants with various crimes related to efforts by the national police of the People's Republic of China (PRC) -- the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) - https://tinyurl.com/mt8uatza --- [Pick of the Day - Whiskey Tasting Reveal]: Starts at 16:32Paniolo Blended Whiskey | 80 Proof | Price: $39.40--- [Ask the Expert with James Riddle]: Starts at 18:12James Riddle our expert, talks about issues with China in the field of Genetics.--- [This Week in Technology]: Starts at 38:41 April 16, 1977 - releases of Apple II and Commodore PET On the same day at the first annual West Coast Computer Faire, both the Apple II and Commodore PET 2001 personal computers are introduced. Ironically, Commodore had previously rejected purchasing the Apple II from Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, deciding to build their own computers. Both computers used the same processor, the MOS 6502, but the companies had two different design strategies. --- [Marc's Whiskey Mumble]: Starts at 41:31--- [What We Found on the Web]: Starts at 44:46Elon Musk's plans for his own AI company are starting to come into focus.A retired NASA spacecraft will re enter Earth's atmosphere on Wednesday, with some parts of the vehicle expected to crash to Earth. --- [Technology Fail of the Week]: Starts at 49:05This week's “Technology Fail” comes to us from Google as Google Stock Drops as Samsung Considers Switching Its Devices to Bing --- [Mike's Mesmerizing Moment brought to us by StoriCoffee®]: Starts at 50:14Why do people in the US fear China? --- [Nathan Nugget]: Starts at 52:42GameStop's buy one, get one free sale includes popular PS5 and Nintendo Switch games --- [Pick of the Day Whiskey Review]: Starts at 54:19Paniolo Blended Whiskey | 80 Proof | Price: $39.40Mike: Thumbs UpNathan: Thumbs Up
It's BIG episode 257 of ARG this week, and it's time to play with our PET...our COMMODORE PET to be exact! YES, this time around join THE BRENT and Amigo Aaron as we look at games for one of the THREE PILLARS of computing from the 1970's, the Commodore PET! First, we discuss the PET and some of the other games we checked out, and then we're OFF THE LEASH! Kick back and DO SOME YARD WORK with LAWN!, and then it's high stakes hotel stock trading with the classic boardgame turned PET game ACQUIRE! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/amigospodcast/message
It's BIG episode 257 of ARG this week, and it's time to play with our PET...our COMMODORE PET to be exact! YES, this time around join THE BRENT and Amigo Aaron as we look at games for one of the THREE PILLARS of computing from the 1970's, the Commodore PET! First, we discuss the PET and some of the other games we checked out, and then we're OFF THE LEASH! Kick back and DO SOME YARD WORK with LAWN!, and then it's high stakes hotel stock trading with the classic boardgame turned PET game ACQUIRE! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/arg-presents/support
No family name is more associated with the early popularization of computers than Tramiel. We speak with Leonard Tramiel, son of Commodore co-founder Jack Tramiel about his life growing up around tech, his role in Commodore's earliest machines and becoming VP of Software at Atari. In this second part of our interview, Leonard talks about the reshaping of Atari after the crash, the creation of the Atari ST, working with Greg Kildall on TOS, relaunching the VCS and 7800, the development of the Lynx and Jaguar, working with greats like Jon Carmack and Jeff Minter, and the ultimate end of Tramiel Atari. Recorded March 2022. Get us on your mobile device: Android: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly92aWRlb2dhbWVuZXdzcm9vbXRpbWVtYWNoaW5lLmxpYnN5bi5jb20vcnNz iOS: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/video-game-newsroom-time-machine And if you like what we are doing here at the podcast, don't forget to like us on your podcasting app of choice, YouTube, and/or support us on patreon! https://www.patreon.com/VGNRTM Send comments on twitter @videogamenewsr2 Or Instagram https://www.instagram.com/vgnrtm Or videogamenewsroomtimemachine@gmail.com Links: https://www.seti.org/leonard-tramiel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_International https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Tramiel http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/commodore_calculators.html https://vintage-technology.club/pages/calculators/commodore/calcrefcom.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Peddle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Door_into_Summer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_PET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PETSCII https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_VIC-20 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari#Atari_Corporation_(1984%E2%80%931996) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiraz_Shivji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Mensch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST#Operating_system https://vintagecomputerstories.blogspot.com/2022/01/if-looks-could-kill.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_TED https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Panther https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Jaguar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Minter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack Virtual Light Machine - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V21Dv9zfDhc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Jaguar#Jaguar_VR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JT_Storage Leonard Tramiel Scepticism - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=936ORwrr7AM Leonard Tramiel TEDx - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRBU8pEDWwY Atari Annual Report 1994 - https://archive.org/details/AtariCorporationAnnualReport1994/page/n12/mode/1up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amazing_Meeting Leonard Tramiel at CommVEx 2015 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfJzMAyDh_I Other resources: https://dayintechhistory.com/news/jack-tramiel-family-years-atari/ https://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/leonard-tramiel/
No family name is more associated with the early popularization of computers than Tramiel. We speak with Leonard Tramiel, son of Commodore co-founder Jack Tramiel about his life growing up around tech, his role in Commodore's earliest machines and becoming VP of Software at Atari. In this first part of our interview Leonard talks about programming Commodore calculators, advising his dad on the entry into computers, creating PETSCII, Jack's departure from Commodore, and the start of what would become the Atari ST. Recorded March 2022. Get us on your mobile device: Android: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly92aWRlb2dhbWVuZXdzcm9vbXRpbWVtYWNoaW5lLmxpYnN5bi5jb20vcnNz iOS: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/video-game-newsroom-time-machine And if you like what we are doing here at the podcast, don't forget to like us on your podcasting app of choice, YouTube, and/or support us on patreon! https://www.patreon.com/VGNRTM Send comments on twitter @videogamenewsr2 Or Instagram https://www.instagram.com/vgnrtm Or videogamenewsroomtimemachine@gmail.com Links: https://www.seti.org/leonard-tramiel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_International https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Tramiel http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/commodore_calculators.html https://vintage-technology.club/pages/calculators/commodore/calcrefcom.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Peddle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Door_into_Summer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_PET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PETSCII https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_VIC-20 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari#Atari_Corporation_(1984%E2%80%931996) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiraz_Shivji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Mensch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST#Operating_system https://vintagecomputerstories.blogspot.com/2022/01/if-looks-could-kill.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_TED https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Panther https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Jaguar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Minter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack Virtual Light Machine - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V21Dv9zfDhc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Jaguar#Jaguar_VR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JT_Storage Leonard Tramiel Scepticism - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=936ORwrr7AM Leonard Tramiel TEDx - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRBU8pEDWwY Atari Annual Report 1994 - https://archive.org/details/AtariCorporationAnnualReport1994/page/n12/mode/1up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amazing_Meeting Leonard Tramiel at CommVEx 2015 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfJzMAyDh_I Other resources: https://dayintechhistory.com/news/jack-tramiel-family-years-atari/ https://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/leonard-tramiel/
En este programa haremos un repaso a algunas noticias de la actualidad commodoriana y haremos un pequeño homenaje al Commodore 64, que en este mes de agosto de 2022 cumple 40 años. Posteriormente destriparemos la nueva Zzap!64 número 8 con el equipo habitual formado por David Asenjo (https://twitter.com/darro99), Narciso Quintana "Narcisound" (https://twitter.com/narcisound), Jonatan Jiménez (https://twitter.com/jsabreman) y Paco Herrera (https://twitter.com/pacoblog64), y tendremos como invitado especial a Bieno64 (https://twitter.com/commodoreplus). Las noticias commodorianas que hemos comentado: - GoatTracker Ultra. Nueva versión del excelente editor musical para la creación de ficheros SID y que ha sido actualizada por Jason Page: https://csdb.dk/release/?id=218024 - Nuevo demo de un juego estilo Doom: https://twitter.com/kamilgorgh/status/1556183336351039489?s=24&t=O2Q8-klM1w--UaIGsb0n5w - Nuevo adaptador doble de puerto de joystick para Commodore PET: http://blog.tynemouthsoftware.co.uk/2022/08/commodore-pet-dual-userport-joystick.html - Commodore Employees Panel, presentación en VCF East 2022, Andy Finkel, Al Charpentier, Benny Pruden, Bil Herd, Bob Russell, Cary Sagedy, Dave Esposito, Dave Haynie, Hedley Davis, Joe Myshko, Neil Harris, Von Ertwine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cvu_iRvM-Y
On this day in 1977, electronics retailer RadioShack unveiled the TRS-80, one of the first personal computers marketed to the average consumer.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
It's podcast time again, and this week Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams sat down with Staff Writer Dan Maloney to review the best hacks on the planet, and a few from off. We'll find out how best to capture lightning, debate the merits of freezing water -- or ice cream -- when it's warm, and see if we can find out what R2D2 was really talking about with all those bleeps and bloops. Once we decode that, it'll be time to find out what Tom Nardi was up to while the boss was away with his hidden message in episode 174, and how analog-encoded digital data survives the podcast production and publication chain. But surely you can't watch a YouTube video on a Commodore PET, can you? As it turns out, that's not a problem, and neither apparently is 3D printing a new ear. Check out the show notes!
With Gareth Myles and Ted SalmonJoin us on Mewe RSS Link: https://techaddicts.libsyn.com/rss iTunes | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Tunein | Spotify Amazon | Pocket Casts | Castbox | PodHubUK Feedback and Contributions: Jeremy Harpham says Sinclair's 8-bit home computer, ZX Spectrum, turns 40 My first real intro to computing, as I owned it (if I forget the occasional acoustic coupler experience). And lucky enough to be in the first few months of deliveries, meaning that I started at 16K and eventually moved up to 48k, microdrives, et al. Only replaced 6 years later with an Atari ST - I sold the last one, one broke but I still have a Spectrum Plus 48K in the attic. Might have to dig it out, complete with tape recorder. What was your first foray into computing? Ted Salmon I think it was a BBC Micro (or Acorn) at home and IBM XT at work. Mid-80's. Adrian Brain Mine was the Sinclair ZX81, after having played with my (at the time) girlfriend's brother's ZX80, which he assembled himself. Phillip Wray Vic-20 for me. After polytechnic I became a software engineer so multiple other types of machines mainly DEC before PCs came along! Wayne Kelly Vic 20 for me too. We used to have zx80 and zx81s at school running on old massive black and white TVs. Always thought the zx80 looked better and more futuristic than the zx81. Chris Kelly The first I had at home was the ZX80 but before that I had used the Commodore PET to learn BASIC (Beginners' All Purpose Instruction Code) at college in the late 70's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_PET?wprov=sfti1 Matt Jones I was a ZX81 guy! A while back I discovered a ZX81 emulator on the iPad, and managed to remember enough to write a simple program that ran first time with no syntax errors ! I was really impressed considering it was nearly 40 years ago and I was only about 12 at the time, and have had nothing to do with even trying to program these things since.
Este é o Repórter Retro 078, produzido pela A.R.N.O. (Agência Retropolitana de Notícias)! Do que falamos? 40 anos do BBC Micro Lembrado pelos nossos parças do Museu Capixaba 45 anos do Commodore PET 40 anos do Commodore 64 O Perifratic comemora esta efeméride remasterizando um vídeo sobre como o Commodore 64 e o 6502 eram … Continue lendo Repórter Retro 078 → The post Repórter Retro 078 first appeared on Retrópolis.
Welcome to a fun and exciting ARG Presents, as we take a DEEP dive into the world of the COMMODORE PET! WE have a look at the origins of the machine, it's formative years, and it's amazing success. Then, it's GAME TIME as we tackle two of the offerings with FIRE! and Meteorite! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/amigospodcast/message
Welcome to a fun and exciting ARG Presents, as we take a DEEP dive into the world of the COMMODORE PET! WE have a look at the origins of the machine, it's formative years, and it's amazing success. Then, it's GAME TIME as we tackle two of the offerings with FIRE! and Meteorite! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/arg-presents/support
Array Cast - February 19, 2022 Show NotesMany thanks to Bob Therriault for collecting these links.[01] 00:01:43 TryAPL.org https://tryapl.org/[02] 00:02:20 J promotional video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV936cVrN0I[03] 00:04:30 BASIC computer language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC[04] 00:05:04 Commodore Pet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_PET[05] 00:05:50 Nascom One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nascom_(computer_kit)[06] 00:06:44 I.P. Sharpe Associates https://aplwiki.com/wiki/I.P._Sharp_Associates[07] 00:11:26 Gitte Christensen Episode 12 ArrayCast https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode12-gitte-christensen[08] 00:13:20 Futhark Computer Language https://futhark-lang.org/[09] 00:19:50 Smalltalk Computer Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk[10] 00:20:13 Romilly Cocking Presentation Dyalog '08 https://dyalog.tv/Dyalog08/?v=thr-7QfQWJw[11] 00:20:52 OS/2 operating system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2[12] 00:21:37 ODBC https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/odbc/microsoft-open-database-connectivity-odbc?view=sql-server-ver15[13] 00:21:45 AS400 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_AS/400[14] 00:23:45 Adaytum Software https://aplwiki.com/wiki/Adaytum_Software[15] 00:25:22 Cognos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognos[16] 00:26:45 Simcorp APL Italiana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCorp[17] 00:33:49 John Scholes https://aplwiki.com/wiki/John_Scholes[18] 00:34:00 Geoff Streeter https://aplwiki.com/wiki/Geoff_Streeter[19] 00:34:00 Pete Donnely https://aplwiki.com/wiki/Pete_Donnelly[20] 00:34:31 "Mastering Dyalog APL" 1st edition PDF: https://dyalog.com/mastering-dyalog-apl.htm[21] 00:34:50 Rodrigo Girão Serrão Episode 20 ArrayCast https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode20-rodrigo-girao-serrao[22] 00:35:30 John Daintree https://aplwiki.com/wiki/John_Daintree[23] 00:35:50 ASP.NET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASP.NET[24] 00:38:08 Dyalog Problem solving competition https://aplwiki.com/wiki/APL_Problem_Solving_Competition[25] 00:59:32 Roger Hui Episode 13 ArrayCast https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode13-roger-hui[26] 00:41:50 Functional Conf https://functionalconf.com/[27] 00:41:55 LambdaConf https://lambdaconf.us/[28] 01:00:43 Aaron Hsu Codfns https://www.sacrideo.us/projects/[29] 01:03:06 APL2000 https://aplwiki.com/wiki/APL2000[30] 01:06:00 MicroAPL documentation https://microapl.com/apl_help/[31] 01:11:25 Link presentation https://dyalog.tv/Dyalog21/?v=K_-E1tnH06k[32] 01:14:31 Nick Nickolov https://aplwiki.com/wiki/Nick_Nickolov[33] 01:16:38 Dyalog Careers https://www.dyalog.com/careers.htm
The Dungeon of Death...ominous...but exciting! Wes & Ben check out this RPG on the Commodore Pet, learning its secrets and surprises along the way! They also rate the RPG 'Quest', Apple Bowl, and some Odyssey 2 games!Website -https://historyofvideogamespodcast.comTwitter - https://twitter.com/HistoryofVideo1Email - historyvgpodcast@gmail.comHosts - Ben & WesMusic - Arranged and recorded by BenCan you guess this week's transition music? The theme is 'Best of Ben'
Some may not realize, but growing up as a nerd in the 80s wasn't like it is today. In our High School of just 500 kids, there were only 4 or 5 nerds in the entire school. They were not considered cool.
AML Talk Show brought to you by KYC360 and hosted by Martin Woods
Since co-founding the organisation back in 2012, Peter Bainbridge-Clayton has overseen the implementation of kompany's proprietary global live network, which offers users real-time access to official and audit-proof information for regulated and unregulated industries. He is a true blockchain and AI enthusiast with a varied background in high throughput telecoms and government systems, including leading the redesign and implementation of the UK Government Business Register, Companies House.Peter has spent all his working life in various IT and scientific projects after teaching himself programming on a Commodore PET at the age of 11. His productive pursuits followed during and after his BSc. in Astronomy, Astrophysics and Physics from St. Andrews University: In a career which has spanned among many several others between designing and developing embedded control systems for bakeries, the world's first ever implementation of a distributed java application in a manufacturing environment, the first ever implementation of SMS based content services and vending machine payment in telecommunications; the conversion of one of the first software-based telecommunications switches to European standards – including the world's first transatlantic SIP-based telephone call – or the complete re-design and implementation of the core system for Companies House, the UK's official company registry See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode we take a look at piracy from our perspective. The good, the bad, and the ugly. And let's be honest. It's mostly ugly. We talk about our lives as teen pirates with the Commodore 64; the ridiculous ways...
AML Talk Show brought to you by KYC360 and hosted by Martin Woods
Since co-founding the organisation back in 2012, Peter Bainbridge-Clayton has overseen the implementation of kompany's proprietary global live network, which offers users real-time access to official and audit-proof information for regulated and unregulated industries. He is a true blockchain and AI enthusiast with a varied background in high throughput telecoms and government systems, including leading the redesign and implementation of the UK Government Business Register, Companies House.Peter has spent all his working life in various IT and scientific projects after teaching himself programming on a Commodore PET at the age of 11. His productive pursuits followed during and after his BSc. in Astronomy, Astrophysics and Physics from St. Andrews University: In a career which has spanned among many several others between designing and developing embedded control systems for bakeries, the world's first ever implementation of a distributed java application in a manufacturing environment, the first ever implementation of SMS based content services and vending machine payment in telecommunications; the conversion of one of the first software-based telecommunications switches to European standards – including the world's first transatlantic SIP-based telephone call – or the complete re-design and implementation of the core system for Companies House, the UK's official company registry See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
AML Talk Show brought to you by KYC360.com, with host Stephen Platt
Since co-founding the organisation back in 2012, Peter Bainbridge-Clayton has overseen the implementation of kompany's proprietary global live network, which offers users real-time access to official and audit-proof information for regulated and unregulated industries. He is a true blockchain and AI enthusiast with a varied background in high throughput telecoms and government systems, including leading the redesign and implementation of the UK Government Business Register, Companies House.Peter has spent all his working life in various IT and scientific projects after teaching himself programming on a Commodore PET at the age of 11. His productive pursuits followed during and after his BSc. in Astronomy, Astrophysics and Physics from St. Andrews University: In a career which has spanned among many several others between designing and developing embedded control systems for bakeries, the world's first ever implementation of a distributed java application in a manufacturing environment, the first ever implementation of SMS based content services and vending machine payment in telecommunications; the conversion of one of the first software-based telecommunications switches to European standards – including the world's first transatlantic SIP-based telephone call – or the complete re-design and implementation of the core system for Companies House, the UK's official company registry Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The most advanced operating system ever invented, as everyone knows is NitOS9, and the EASE OF USE edition keeps getting better, learn all about it in this episode. 00:00:00 - Start 00:02:54 - Start of the show! 00:04:02 - Start of Show... we finally got the audio DLC... 00:04:10 - Panel Introductions 00:05:25 - Viewer Introductions 00:06:42 - Who's new to the CoCoDiscord 00:08:08 - Who's new to the CoCoTalk world map! 00:08:58 - PUA} Stevie aka "The OG" aka El Jeffe aka The Man with the Master Plan! 00:14:40 - CoCo Thoughts, by Samuel Gimes 00:15:10 - Game On! Results, With Nick Marotta! 00:16:58 - Game On! discussion 00:28:28 - Game On! Game for next week, With Nick Marotta! 00:30:25 - Game On! News, with L. Curtis Boyle 00:30:48 - Game On! News} Amigos Retro Gaming/YT- subject of "Manager games - Non Sports" 00:42:10 - Game On! News} Jamie Cho/FB- released an update of his Coco 3 space shooter game, Space Bandits 00:47:20 - Game On! News} Jim Gerrie/YT- ported a game originally from the Commodore PET called Maxit 00:49:52 - Game On! News} Cuthbert Dragon/YT- New games/Videos, Home Base, River of Fire, Dungeon Destiny 01:00:05 - Game On! News} Rob's Retro Rambles/YT- official Frogger for the Dragon 32 01:04:25 - Game On! News} Robos/YT- video of Dragon games starting with "S"... and W, Z, and R... 01:18:06 - End of Line for... Game On! News, with L. Curtis Boyle 01:18:40 - Commercial Break! **CoCo/General News** 01:22:02 - CoCo News} Amigos podcast- 300th episode released 01:26:12 - CoCo News} John Laury- tutorial video on programming a Coco 3 to go into the 80 column mode 01:50:52 - CoCo News} Sheldon MacDonald- video on his Flash ROM boot loader for the PSG cartridge 01:55:52 - CoCo News} Retro Computing Roundtable/YT- episode 234 CoCoMax hardware interface 01:57:40 - CoCo News} Tim Lindner- blog post fixing an issue in MAME 02:03:10 - CoCo News} chibiakumas (Keith)/YT- released next Dragon 32 assembly language episode 02:08:00 - CoCo News} Ken@Canadian Retro Things/YT- video of Mr Dave 6309's prototype cartridge boards 02:17:32 - CoCo News} Jerry Stratton- blog (and code) for a BASIC program to explore the BASIC ROM's, and how tokenization works 02:18:35 - CoCo News} Barry Nelson/FB- utility to reverse the red/blue artifact colors on a Coco 3 02:21:04 - CoCo News} Richard Kelly/FB- utility for Coco 1/2's with 64K, tests to see if the Coco is already in 64K RAM mode and copies ROM to RAM 02:22:20 - CoCo News} Raymond Jett/FB- picked up 26-3022 floppy controllers, and selling them $8.00 each 02:24:00 - CoCo News} Digital Soup Podcast- digging his Coco 3 out, and running with some modern equipment 02:26:25 - CoCo News} Frank of Retro Rewind- thinking of getting into the Coco market, possibly with a very fast 6809 replacement 02:27:15 - The dumpster fire went out of control... aka, Panel talking about various things... **MC-10 News** 02:53:38 - MC-10 News} Robert Sieg- Video/Images to show a 32x32x9 color screen **Dragon News** 02:54:25 - Dragon News} Stewart Orchard- memory testing utility for the Dragon 02:56:40 - CoCo News} Bill Nobel and L. Curtis Boyle (along with contributors like Frank Provenchko, Todd Wallace, Jeff Teunissen, Walter Zambotti, etc.) are proud to release NitrOS-9/EOU Beta 6.1 (this is over an hour of either... NitrOS-9 goodness, or a nice afternoon nap time!) 03:58:28 - End of Line for... News, with L. Curtis Boyle 03:58:00 - Jason The CoComan, is put on the spot! 03:59:38 - Closing Credits/Outtro 04:02:30 - Final Thoughts/CoCoTalk Caboose! 04:04:00 - NitrOS-9 is the most advanced operating system ever invented! 04:05:15 - Stevie basically needs a new computer with a 6809! 04:06:41 - Goodbye Everybody! 04:06:44 - The end of Line. (note: there was a dumpster fire in there, but I did not timestamp it cause there was not enough room in this description section to list and timestamp it cause it was so large.) Email any suggestions you have for the show to cocotalk@cocotalk.live Visit us on the web at http://cocotalk.live Join us for daily conversations on Discord: http://discord.cocotalk.live To find out more about the Color Computer visit http://imacoconut.com Custom artwork designed by Instagram artist Joel M. Adams: https://www.instagram.com/artistjoelmadams/ Custom CoCoTALK! and retro merchandise is available at: http://8bit256.com Consider becoming a patron of the show: https://patreon.com/ogsteviestrow
The most advanced operating system ever invented, as everyone knows is NitOS9, and the EASE OF USE edition keeps getting better, learn all about it in this episode. 00:00:00 - Start 00:02:54 - Start of the show! 00:04:02 - Start of Show... we finally got the audio DLC... 00:04:10 - Panel Introductions 00:05:25 - Viewer Introductions 00:06:42 - Who's new to the CoCoDiscord 00:08:08 - Who's new to the CoCoTalk world map! 00:08:58 - PUA} Stevie aka "The OG" aka El Jeffe aka The Man with the Master Plan! 00:14:40 - CoCo Thoughts, by Samuel Gimes 00:15:10 - Game On! Results, With Nick Marotta! 00:16:58 - Game On! discussion 00:28:28 - Game On! Game for next week, With Nick Marotta! 00:30:25 - Game On! News, with L. Curtis Boyle 00:30:48 - Game On! News} Amigos Retro Gaming/YT- subject of "Manager games - Non Sports" 00:42:10 - Game On! News} Jamie Cho/FB- released an update of his Coco 3 space shooter game, Space Bandits 00:47:20 - Game On! News} Jim Gerrie/YT- ported a game originally from the Commodore PET called Maxit 00:49:52 - Game On! News} Cuthbert Dragon/YT- New games/Videos, Home Base, River of Fire, Dungeon Destiny 01:00:05 - Game On! News} Rob's Retro Rambles/YT- official Frogger for the Dragon 32 01:04:25 - Game On! News} Robos/YT- video of Dragon games starting with "S"... and W, Z, and R... 01:18:06 - End of Line for... Game On! News, with L. Curtis Boyle 01:18:40 - Commercial Break! **CoCo/General News** 01:22:02 - CoCo News} Amigos podcast- 300th episode released 01:26:12 - CoCo News} John Laury- tutorial video on programming a Coco 3 to go into the 80 column mode 01:50:52 - CoCo News} Sheldon MacDonald- video on his Flash ROM boot loader for the PSG cartridge 01:55:52 - CoCo News} Retro Computing Roundtable/YT- episode 234 CoCoMax hardware interface 01:57:40 - CoCo News} Tim Lindner- blog post fixing an issue in MAME 02:03:10 - CoCo News} chibiakumas (Keith)/YT- released next Dragon 32 assembly language episode 02:08:00 - CoCo News} Ken@Canadian Retro Things/YT- video of Mr Dave 6309's prototype cartridge boards 02:17:32 - CoCo News} Jerry Stratton- blog (and code) for a BASIC program to explore the BASIC ROM's, and how tokenization works 02:18:35 - CoCo News} Barry Nelson/FB- utility to reverse the red/blue artifact colors on a Coco 3 02:21:04 - CoCo News} Richard Kelly/FB- utility for Coco 1/2's with 64K, tests to see if the Coco is already in 64K RAM mode and copies ROM to RAM 02:22:20 - CoCo News} Raymond Jett/FB- picked up 26-3022 floppy controllers, and selling them $8.00 each 02:24:00 - CoCo News} Digital Soup Podcast- digging his Coco 3 out, and running with some modern equipment 02:26:25 - CoCo News} Frank of Retro Rewind- thinking of getting into the Coco market, possibly with a very fast 6809 replacement 02:27:15 - The dumpster fire went out of control... aka, Panel talking about various things... **MC-10 News** 02:53:38 - MC-10 News} Robert Sieg- Video/Images to show a 32x32x9 color screen **Dragon News** 02:54:25 - Dragon News} Stewart Orchard- memory testing utility for the Dragon 02:56:40 - CoCo News} Bill Nobel and L. Curtis Boyle (along with contributors like Frank Provenchko, Todd Wallace, Jeff Teunissen, Walter Zambotti, etc.) are proud to release NitrOS-9/EOU Beta 6.1 (this is over an hour of either... NitrOS-9 goodness, or a nice afternoon nap time!) 03:58:28 - End of Line for... News, with L. Curtis Boyle 03:58:00 - Jason The CoComan, is put on the spot! 03:59:38 - Closing Credits/Outtro 04:02:30 - Final Thoughts/CoCoTalk Caboose! 04:04:00 - NitrOS-9 is the most advanced operating system ever invented! 04:05:15 - Stevie basically needs a new computer with a 6809! 04:06:41 - Goodbye Everybody! 04:06:44 - The end of Line. (note: there was a dumpster fire in there, but I did not timestamp it cause there was not enough room in this description section to list and timestamp it cause it was so large.) Email any suggestions you have for the show to cocotalk@cocotalk.live Visit us on the web at http://cocotalk.live Join us for daily conversations on Discord: http://discord.cocotalk.live To find out more about the Color Computer visit http://imacoconut.com Custom artwork designed by Instagram artist Joel M. Adams: https://www.instagram.com/artistjoelmadams/ Custom CoCoTALK! and retro merchandise is available at: http://8bit256.com Consider becoming a patron of the show: https://patreon.com/ogsteviestrow
I've been struggling with how to cover a few different companies, topics, or movements for awhile. The lack of covering their stories thus far has little to do with their impact but just trying to find where to put them in the history of computing. One of the most challenging is Apple. This is because there isn't just one Apple. Instead there are stages of the company, each with their own place in the history of computers. Today we can think of Apple as one of the Big 5 tech companies, which include Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. But there were times in the evolution of the company where things looked bleak. Like maybe they would get gobbled up by another tech company. To oversimplify the development of Apple, we'll break up their storied ascent into four parts: Apple Computers: This story covers the mid-1970s to mid 1980s and covers Apple rising out of the hobbyist movement and into a gangbuster IPO. The Apple I through III families all centered on one family of chips and took the company into the 90s. The Macintosh: The rise and fall of the Mac covers the introduction of the now-iconic Mac through to the Power Macintosh era. Mac OS X: This part of the Apple story begins with the return of Steve Jobs to Apple and the acquisition of NeXT, looks at the introduction of the Intel Macs and takes us through to the transition to the Apple M1 CPU. Post PC: Steve Jobs announced the “post PC” era in 2007, and in the coming years the sales of PCs fell for the first time, while tablets, phones, and other devices emerged as the primary means people used devices. We'll start with the early days, which I think of as one of the four key Apple stages of development. And those early days go back far past the days when Apple was hocking the Apple I. They go to high school. Jobs and Woz Bill Fernandez and Steve Wozniak built a computer they called “The Cream Soda Computer” in 1970 when Bill was 16 and Woz was 20. It was a crude punch card processing machine built from some parts Woz got from the company he was working for at the time. Fernandez introduced Steve Wozniak to a friend from middle school because they were both into computers and both had a flare for pranky rebelliousness. That friend was Steve Jobs. By 1972, the pranks turned into their first business. Wozniak designed Blue Boxes, initially conceived by Cap'n Crunch John Draper, who got his phreaker name from a whistle in a Cap'n Crunch box that made a tone in 2600 Hz that sent AT&T phones into operator mode. Draper would actually be an Apple employee for a bit. They designed a digital version and sold a few thousand dollars worth. Jobs went to Reed College. Wozniak went to Berkely. Both dropped out. Woz got a sweet gig at HP designing calculators, where Jobs had worked a summer job in high school. India to find enlightenment. When Jobs became employee number 40 at Atari, he got Wozniak to help create Breakout. That was the year The Altair 8800 was released and Wozniak went to the first meeting of a little club called the Homebrew Computer Club in 1975 when they got an Altair so the People's Computer Company could review it. And that was the inspiration. Having already built one computer with Fernandez, Woz designed schematics for another. Going back to the Homebrew meetings to talk through ideas and nerd out, he got it built and proud of his creation, returned to Homebrew with Jobs to give out copies of the schematics for everyone to play with. This was the age of hackers and hobbyists. But that was about to change ever so slightly. The Apple I Jobs had this idea. What if they sold the boards. They came up with a plan. Jobs sold his VW Microbus and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator and they got to work. Simple math. They could sell 50 boards for $40 bucks each and make some cash like they'd done with the blue boxes. But you know, a lot of people didn't know what to do with the board. Sure, you just needed a keyboard and a television, but that still seemed a bit much. Then a little bigger plan - what if they sold 50 full computers. They went to the Byte Shop and talked them into buying 50 for $500. They dropped $20,000 on parts and netted a $5,000 return. They'd go on to sell about 200 of the Apple Is between 1976 and 1977. It came with a MOS 6502 chip running at a whopping 1 MHz and with 4KB of memory, which could go to 8. They provided Apple BASIC, as most vendors did at the time. That MOS chip was critical. Before it, many used an Intel or the Motorola 6800, which went for $175. But the MOS 6502 was just $25. It was an 8-bit microprocessor designed by a team that Chuck Peddle ran after leaving the 6800 team at Motorola. Armed with that chip at that price, and with Wozniak's understanding of what it needed to do and how it interfaced with other chips to access memory and peripherals, the two could do something new. They started selling the Apple 1 and to quote an ad “the Apple comes fully assembled, tested & burned-in and has a complete power supply on-board, initial set-up is essentially “hassle free” and you can be running in minutes.” This really tells you something about the computing world at the time. There were thousands of hobbyists and many had been selling devices. But this thing had on-board RAM and you could just add a keyboard and video and not have to read LEDs to get output. The marketing descriptions were pretty technical by modern Apple standards, telling us something of the users. It sold for $666.66. They got help from Patty Jobs building logic boards. Jobs' friend from college Daniel Kottke joined for the summer, as did Fernandez and Chris Espinosa - now Apple's longest-tenured employee. It was a scrappy garage kind of company. The best kind. They made the Apple I until a few months after they released the successor. But the problem with the Apple I was that there was only one person who could actually support it when customers called: Wozniak. And he was slammed, busy designing the next computer and all the components needed to take it to the mass market, like monitors, disk drives, etc. So they offered a discount for anyone returning the Apple I and destroyed most returned. Those Apple I computers have now been auctioned for hundreds of thousands of dollars all the way up to $1.75 million. The Apple II They knew they were on to something. But a lot of people were building computers. They needed capital if they were going to bring in a team and make a go at things. But Steve Jobs wasn't exactly the type of guy venture capitalists liked to fund at the time. Mike Markkula was a product-marketing manager at chip makers Fairchild and Intel who retired early after making a small fortune on stock options. That is, until he got a visit from Steve Jobs. He brought money but more importantly the kind of assistance only a veteran of a successful corporation who'd ride that wave could bring. He brought in Michael "Scotty" Scott, employee #4, to be the first CEO and they got to work on mapping out an early business plan. If you notice the overlapping employee numbers, Scotty might have had something to do with that… As you may notice by Wozniak selling his calculator, at the time computers weren't that far removed from calculators. So Jobs brought in a calculator designer named Jerry Manock to design a plastic injection molded case, or shell, for the Apple II. They used the same chip and a similar enough motherboard design. They stuck with the default 4KB of memory and provided jumpers to make it easier to go up to 48. They added a cassette interface for IO. They had a toggle circuit that could trigger the built-in speaker. And they would include two game paddles. This is similar to bundles provided with the Commodore and other vendors of the day. And of course it still worked with a standard TV - but now that TVs were mostly color, so was the video coming out of the Apple II. And all of this came at a starting price of $1,298. The computer initially shipped with a version of BASIC written by Wozniak but Apple later licensed the Microsoft 6502 BASIC to ship what they called Applesoft BASIC, short for Apple and Micorosft. Here, they turned to Randy Wiggington who was Apple's employee #6 and had gotten rides to the Homebrew Computer Club from Wozniak as a teenager (since he lived down the street). He and others added features onto Microsoft BASIC to free Wozniak to work on other projects. Deciding they needed a disk operating system, or DOS. Here, rather than license the industry standard CP/M at the time, Wigginton worked with Shepardson, who did various projects for CP/M and Atari. The motherboard on the Apple II remains an elegant design. There were certain innovations that Wozniak made, like cutting down the number of DRAM chips by sharing resources between other components. The design was so elegant that Bill Fernandez had to join them as employee number four, in order to help take the board and create schematics to have it silkscreened. The machines were powerful. All that needed juice. Jobs asked his former boss Al Alcorn for someone to help out with that. Rod Holt, employee number 5, was brought in to design the power supply. By implementing a switching power supply, as Digital Equipment had done in the PDP-11, rather than a transformer-based power supply, the Apple II ended up being far lighter than many other machines. The Apple II was released in 1977 at the West Coast Computer Fair. It, along with the TRS-80 and the Commodore PET would become the 1977 Trinity, which isn't surprising. Remember Peddle who ran the 6502 design team - he designed the PET. And Steve Leininger was also a member of the Homebrew Computer Club who happened to work at National Semiconductor when Radio Shack/Tandy started looking for someone to build them a computer. The machine was stamped with an Apple logo. Jobs hired Rob Janoff, a local graphic designer, to create the logo. This was a picture of an Apple made out of a rainbow, showing that the Apple II had color graphics. This rainbow Apple stuck and became the logo for Apple Computers until 1998, after Steve Jobs returned to Apple, when the Apple went all-black, but the silhouette is now iconic, serving Apple for 45 years and counting. The computers were an instant success and sold quickly. But others were doing well in the market. Some incumbents and some new. Red oceans mean we have to improve our effectiveness. So this is where Apple had to grow up to become a company. Markkula made a plan to get Apple to $500 million in sales in 10 years on the backs of his $92,000 investment and another $600,000 in venture funding. They did $2.7 million dollars in sales in 1977. This idea of selling a pre-assembled computer to the general public was clearly resonating. Parents could use it to help teach their kids. Schools could use it for the same. And when we were done with all that, we could play games on it. Write code in BASIC. Or use it for business. Make some documents in Word Star, spreadsheets in VisiCalc, or use one of the thousands of titles available for the Mac. Sales grew 150x until 1980. Given that many thought cassettes were for home machines and floppies were for professional machines, it was time to move away from tape. Markkela realized this and had Wozniak design a floppy disk for the Apple II, which went on to be known as the Drive II. Wozniak had experience with disk controllers and studied the latest available. Wozniak again managed to come up with a value engineered design that allowed Apple to produce a good drive for less than any other major vendor at the time. Wozniak would actually later go on to say that it was one of his best designs (and many contemporaries agreed). Markkula filled gaps as well as anyone. He even wrote free software programs under the name of Johnny Appleseed, a name also used for years in product documentation. He was a classic hacker type of entrepreneur on their behalf, sitting in the guerrilla marketing chair some days or acting as president of the company others, and mentor for Jobs in other days. From Hobbyists to Capitalists Here's the thing - I've always been a huge fan of Apple. Even in their darkest days, which we'll get to in later episodes, they represented an ideal. But going back to the Apple 1, they were nothing special. Even the Apple II. Osborne, Commodore, Vector Graphics, Atari, and hundreds of other companies were springing up, inspired first by that Altair and then by the rapid drop in the prices of chips. The impact of the 1 megahertz barrier and cost of those MOS 6502 chips was profound. The MOS 6502 chip would be used in the Apple II, the Atari 2600, the Nintendo NES, the BBY Micro. And along with the Zylog Z80 and Intel 8080 would spark a revolution in personal computers. Many of those companies would disappear in what we'd think of as a personal computer bubble if there was more money in it. But those that survived, took things to an order of magnitude higher. Instead of making millions they were making hundreds of millions. Many would even go to war in a race to the bottom of prices. And this is where Apple started to differentiate themselves from the rest. For starters, due to how anemic the default Altair was, most of the hobbyist computers were all about expansion. You can see it on the Apple I schematics and you can see it in the minimum of 7 expansion slots in the Apple II lineup of computers. Well, all of them except the IIc, marketed as a more portable type of device, with a handle and an RCA connection to a television for a monitor. The media seemed to adore them. In an era of JR Ewing of Dallas, Steve Jobs was just the personality to emerge and still somewhat differentiate the new wave of computer enthusiasts. Coming at the tail end of an era of social and political strife, many saw something of themselves in Jobs. He looked the counter-culture part. He had the hair, but this drive. The early 80s were going to be all about the yuppies though - and Jobs was putting on a suit. Many identified with that as well. Fueled by the 150x sales performance shooting them up to $117M in sales, Apple filed for an IPO, going public in 1980, creating hundreds of millionaires, including at least 40 of their own employees. It was the biggest IPO since Ford in 1956, the same year Steve Jobs was born. The stock was filed at $14 and shot up to $29 on the first day alone, leaving Apple sitting pretty on a $1.778 valuation. Scotty, who brought the champagne, made nearly a $100M profit. One of the Venture Capitalists, Arthur Rock, made over $21M on a $57,600 investment. Rock had been the one to convince the Shockley Semiconductor team to found Fairchild, a key turning point in putting silicon into the name of Silicon Valley. When Noyce and Moore left there to found Intel, he was involved. And he would stay in touch with Markkula, who was so enthusiastic about Apple that Rock invested and began a stint on the board of directors at Apple in 1978, often portrayed as the villain in the story of Steve Jobs. But let's think about something for a moment. Rock was a backer of Scientific Data Systems, purchased by Xerox in 1969, becoming the Xerox 500. Certainly not Xerox PARC and in fact, the anti-PARC, but certainly helping to connect Jobs to Xerox later as Rock served on the board of Xerox. The IPO Hangover Money is great to have but also causes problems. Teams get sidetracked trying to figure out what to do with their hauls. Like Rod Holt's $67M haul that day. It's a distraction in a time when executional excellence is critical. We have to bring in more people fast, which created a scenario Mike Scott referred to as a “bozo explosion.” Suddenly more people actually makes us less effective. Growing teams all want a seat at a limited table. Innovation falls off as we rush to keep up with the orders and needs of existing customers. Bugs, bigger code bases to maintain, issues with people doing crazy things. Taking our eyes off the ball and normalizing the growth can be hard. By 1981, Scotty was out after leading some substantial layoffs. Apple stock was down. A big IPO also creates investments in competitors. Some of those would go on a race to the bottom in price. Apple didn't compete on price. Instead, they started to plan the next revolution, a key piece of Steve Jobs emerging as a household name. They would learn what the research and computer science communities had been doing - and bring a graphical interface and mouse to the world with Lisa and a smaller project brought forward at the time by Jef Raskin that Jobs tried to kill - but one that Markkula not only approved, but kept Jobs from killing, the Macintosh. Fernandez, Holt, Wigginton, and even Wozniak just drifted away or got lost in the hyper-growth of the company, as is often the case. Some came back. Some didn't. Many of us go through the same in rapidly growing companies. Next (but not yet NeXT) But a new era of hackers was on the way. And a new movement as counter to the big computer culture as Jobs. But first, they needed to take a trip to Xerox. In the meantime, the Apple III was an improvement but proved that the Apple computer line had run its course. They released it in 1980 and recalled the first 14,000 machines and never peaked 75,000 machines sold, killing off the line in 1984. A special year.
On this Black Friday episode : retro 1980s Amiga Nes Atari Commodore : rapid fire controller : sega : Atari portfolio memory upgrades 64kb backup battery ROM for Atari : rare East German computers : Japanese 8801 PC : SCSI 4 CDTV : Commodore PET:die cast model cars in video games : Ataris, Coleco, Intelli, Famicom, S Famicom, TGfx, PCE, NG AES, MegaDrive, Master System ? send a voicemail to 313-MAN-0231.............. ° ͜ʖ ͡°) ◕_◕ ༽ 1980s*‿'*(•_•)じゃ ┌༼ຈل͜ຈ༽┐ ¬^(-¬)!! ( ᵖᴼᵒʳ ᶦᶠᶦᵉ ᵐ⁸) _(ツ)_/¯ ಠ_
On this episode Man vs Machine : what chess can Teach is about AI warfare. sega replacement console and mini pc and Atari sales and memory ROM/RAM upgrades : rare Japanese retro computers: collector worries SCSI controller for CD TV and Commodore PET repairs : CD drive w controllers and preserving vintage technology Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, NES, Gameboy Advance, Gameboy Color, Super NES, SNES, Genesis, Neo Geo Pocket Color, and the Nintendo DS.
This week we talk about the Commodore PET, Fleetwood Mac, Star Wars (of course), and much much more!
Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we conclude our series on Populous with a special guest interview with Glenn Corpes, the original programmer who came up with a little generator for height maps that ended up launching a whole genre; we'll talk about that and tons of other topics. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary. Podcast breakdown: 0:45 Interview 1:18:41 Break 1:19:02 Next time Issues covered: how Glenn got in, seeing a computer for the first time, being a computer operator, getting a job for your woodgrain, getting hired as an artist, porting a game without the code, winging it on things like collision detection, being unable to port something and casting about for something else, writing a level generator to avoid writing an editor, having to add the ability to raise and lower land, having the whole world with a pixel per cell, the game on top being all Peter's, working backwards from mouse coordinates, having the original disk, the potential for the landscape to rise up over the interface elements, updating the map every frame, limiting the use of the blitter, size of Bullfrog at the time, the musician/salesman, understanding the "metal-bashing aspect" or not, three man weeks of graphics, blocks vs sprites, one thing per square and no more than 256 total, managing character state, no pathfinding, map steps: the opposite of pheromones, buildings based on the flat space around, people as groups of people, the interaction of weapons multipliers and population, getting an explanation of what all the bars mean, the most significant digits, the strategy for managing population, the strategy for clearing land, a clarifying button on the SNES, near-launch title, sales and the UK Chart, multiplayer only until shortly before ship, communicating through a networked file, writing the game in 7 months, watching two AIs play each other, the ways in which AI difficulty is managed, reimplementing all the gameplay in two weeks, faking out the AI because it will always attack your oldest building, AI speed, responding to flood, the manna rules, going into a manna debt and paying it off, making inroads for the knights, stuck messages, adding a campaign two weeks from the end, having an accountant QA the game, the most difficult level of the game: Biloord, how to beat "Biloord: The Hardest Level in Populous," slowing the game vs arcade-ing it up, faking out a sphere, making the cube without the stickers, flat land as currency, synergy and serendipity, revolutionary gameplay from an unexpected place, last minute additions, fights on Populous: The Beginning, heretical choices in game development. Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Bullfrog Productions, Magic Carpet, Dungeon Keeper, Syndicate, Lost Toys, Moho, Battle Engine Aquila, Kuju, EA, Weirdwood, 22 Cans, Edge, Topia, Fat Owl with a Jet Pack, Ground Effect, powARdup, Commodore PET, ZX-81, Sinclair, Telex, Amiga, Taurus, Peter Molyneux, DPaint, Druid 2: Enlightment, Gauntlet, Spectrum, Fusion, The Ultimate Database, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Alienate, Knight Lore, Spindizzy, Marble Madness, Dungeon Master, Ultima Underworld, Andrew Bailey, Dene Carter, Big Blue Box, Fable, Lionhead, Kevin Donkin, Powermonger, GDC, SNES, The Sentinel, The Promised Lands, LEGO, Black&White, Godus, Sean Cooper, Civilization, Alan Wright, Alex Trowers, Command & Conquer, Ernő Rubik/Rubik's Cube, X-COM, Wayne Frost, Julian Gollop, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Leonard Boyarsky, Fallout, Tim Cain, The Outer Worlds, Obsidian, Microsoft, Dungeons & Dragons, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers. Next time: Vampire: the Masquerade: Bloodlines (up through.... some of Santa Monica) Twitch: brettdouville, instagram:timlongojr, Twitter: @timlongojr and @devgameclub DevGameClub@gmail.com
Panelists: Earl Evans (hosting), Paul Hagstrom, and Blake Patterson Topic: Unexpected Bonuses Along the way as we collect things, strange things turn up in what we get. We talk a bit about unexpected bonuses in amongst our finds. Topic/Feedback links: Charles finds whimsical characters on chips TRS-80 Model I (article, Nuts and Volts, May 2002) Adding Color to the Commodore PET (preview, Nuts and Volts, Sep 2015) Retro Computing News: Total Replay v4.0-alpha 3 Septandy Ample MAME launcher Crash and Burn: The Amiga ST Story The Augmentation of Douglas Englebart (YouTube) The Augmentation of Douglas Englebart (Amazon) Curt Vendel (VintageIsTheNewOld) Curt Vendel (Jason Scott, Twitter thread) Vintage Computer-related commercial: Tandy PC from 1988 Retro Computing Gift Idea: Making Games for the Atari 2600 See also: 8bitworkshop.com Auction Picks: Blake: Olympia EX 100 Typewriter Extension CP/M Computer Word Processor Atari PC4 IBM 9331-011 8" External Floppy Drive See also: IBM 9331-012 5.25 External Floppy Disk Drive - AS/400 (Walmart) Earl: Osborne 1 with monitor Paul: IBM PC/AT Mac LC 475, with ethernet DCA IRMAprint See also: AppleLine and Apple Cluster Controller sales reference guide (on bitsavers.org) See also: AppleLine (on vintagecomputing.com) Feedback/Discussion: @rcrpodcast on Twitter Vintage Computer Forum RCR Podcast on Facebook Throwback Network Throwback Network on Facebook Intro / Closing Song: Back to Oz by John X - link Show audio files hosted by CyberEars Listen/Download:
James Vlahos is the founder of Hereafter AI, a company that enables anyone to create a chatbot avatar of a real person. James' interest in chatbots started in the 1980s on a Commodore PET computer and was rekindled in 2015 when, as a reporter, he wrote a story about PullString's work on Hello Barbie. That led to him creating Dadbot, a chatbot that captured the memories and thoughts of his father that at the time was battling Stage IV cancer. After completing a book on tech's many decades of voice assistant innovation called Talk to Me, James founded Hereafter AI in 2019. We discuss what he learned from his early experience with rudimentary chabot designs of the 1980s and how his experience building a chatbot to memorialize his father offered unique insights into the tradeoffs of these types of endeavors. We cover a series of questions James has not been asked before and he offers some interesting insights that will be of value to any voice assistant designer. James earned a degree in journalism from the University of Oregon. Over his career, he has written for many publications including The New York Times, GQ, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, National Geographic Adventure, and WIRED.
Today’s episode features Scott Hunter who is the PM director for the .NET team. We chat about the challenges that come with growing your scope, applying the lessons learned in startups and consulting to large corporations, and his early days working on BBS (bulletin board systems) for fun lead to meeting the people he’d need to know to grow his career.00:39 - Meet Scott Hunter, Director of Program Management for .NET01:46 – What does a director of program management do day to day?05:26 – How did Scott managed his transition to director of all of .NET from his previous role?08:41 – How did Scott get the role? Taking initiative to find the right place.12:31 – Growing scope and managing perceived identities, from ASP.NET to just .NET17:31 – Why team cultures differ and don’t align even when they ship in the same product19:14 – How did Scott learn and build the skills to make these transitions? Practicing integration in early startup days, consulting.22:47 – Most important lesson from previous managers: Don’t surround yourself with people like yourself and building a team with diverse opinions25:13 – Deciding between going with a new project or continuing along on a journey not complete28:00 – Accidentally attending Microsoft’s conference and joining Microsoft31:55 – Moving from dev to PM and learning communication skills33:45 – Becoming a manager and intentionally stopping himself from coding37:20 – How did Scott into computers? Typing programs into the Commodore PET he stole from his dad.38:35 – Scott’s history of working on Wildcat BBS to avoid forklift driving41:52 – Turbo Pascal and hanging at Anders Hejlsberg’s house and serendipity43:58 – Failing his first Microsoft interview, knowing what you want.45:36 – Trust your internal sense of when to act fast#MicrosoftCareers #CareersBehindTheCode #Director #ProgramMangement
Kai and George Esbensen, Micro-Ed Software I first heard about the Micro-Ed software company when a member of the Atari community sent me a batch of educational cassette tapes to digitize. The tapes had titles like Maps and Globes, Punctuation, and Spelling Level E. Intriguingly, the tape labels said "Micro-Ed, creators of more than 2,500 programs, pre-school through adult." 2,500 programs? Why had I never heard of this company? I asked 4AM, a software preservationist specializing in the Apple II — and specializing in little-known educational software — if they had heard of the company. The answer was also no. So I started to research. A two-page advertisement in Compute! magazine issue 4, May 1980, provided my first glimpse into the company: "LOOK at all the MICRO-ED programs for the PET!" The titles listed include Agreement of Subject and Verb; Run on Sentences; Higher, Same, Lower; Word Demons; and (oddly) Usage Boners. Many of the software tapes were sold in packs, for instance $84 for a pack of 12 elementary school programs. $49.95 for a grade's worth of spelling lessons on 7 tapes. An item in the Washington Apple Pi journal, four years later, January 1984, intrigued me: "$10,000 EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE GIVEAWAY. Micro-Ed Incorporated has announced its willingness to donate up to $10,000 worth of software to any school district, Special Education cooperative, or parent group willing to establish a school-to-home lending library. No limit has been established on the number of grants Micro-Ed will make. The donation is not contingent upon the purchase of any Micro-Ed products. ... Thorward Esbensen, Micro-Ed's president, 'envisions the establishment of a free lending library of educational software for families.'" Less than a year later, in November 1984, the Commodore magazine The Transactor (v5n3) wrote that Micro-Ed had donated "more than a half million dollars worth of its instructional programs to school systems" for those free software lending libraries. So. Micro-Ed was established in 1979 by Thorward (Tory) Esbensen. Based in Eden Prairie, MN, the company specialized in low-cost educational software. The software, written in the BASIC programming language, was available for Commodore PET, VIC-20, and Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit, Apple II, TRS-80, and Texas Instruments computers. Micro-Ed's best-known title was perhaps "Trail West," an Oregon Trail-like game. Mr. Esbensen died in 2012. I interviewed two of his sons, both of whom worked with their father at Micro-Ed. First, I talked with Kai Esbensen, the youngest in the family. Kai told me in email: "My siblings had all moved out by the time Micro-Ed was in motion, but I lived it. Helping out with Micro-Ed was my first paid job, in 2nd/3rd grade, and I was still on the payroll helping out through age 22." This interview took place on May 28, 2020. ... Next, I talked with Kai's older brother, George Esbensen, who was a salesman for Micro-Ed, and later was president of Cycle Software Services, a software duplication company that spun off from Micro-Ed. This interview took place on June 3, 2020. Very old Micro-Ed/Thorwald Esbensen web site AtariMania's partial list of Micro-Ed Software for Atari Micro-Ed advertisement in Compute! magazine May 1980 Thorwald Esbensen obituary in StarTribune Thorwald Esbensen obituary in Duluth News Tribune Washington Apple Pi, January 1984 The Transactor v5n3
Rob Griffiths worked for Apple (1990-95), founded macosxhints.com in 2000, went on to write for Macworld Magazine, has done some podcasting, and is currently a partner at Many Tricks Software, makers of great Mac utilities such as Moom, Witch and Name Mangler. Rob recalled his early years with the T.I. Silent 700, Commodore PET, and Apple II. At Colorado State University, Rob realized programming was not for him and followed a business track. Later, after graduate school, he landed a job with Apple. We chatted about his career, moving on to great years at Macworld Magazine, and then his current partnership at Many Tricks Software. We then delved into WWDC 2020, challenges as an Apple developer, the transition of Macs to Apple Silicon, and the evolution of macOS as a partial touch-screen OS. Good stuff here!
Season 2 Episode 17 Episode 49 News: G-Boy: Wii / GameCube Portable DIY Kit Game Gear title Eternal Legend gets an English fan translation Raspberry Pi 4 Beta Firmware Brings True USB Boot for High-Speed Storage, No microSD Required Sega Saturn Fenrir ODE Firmware Updates When SimCity got serious: the story of Maxis Business Simulations and SimRefinery The Future Was 8 bit announces Mini PET, a modern take on the Commodore PET 2001 For Pac-Man's 40th birthday, Nvidia uses AI to make new levels You Can Play A New Dance Dance Revolution In Your Browser Right Now Sonic 3 Alternate Intro Puts The Hedgehog On A Surfboard PCE CD Support Added to MiSTer Source code releases - intentional and otherwise EA is releasing the source code for two classic Command and Conquer games Microsoft GW-BASIC source code now available on Github Xbox and Windows NT 3.5 source code leaks online American Classic Arcade Museum Go Fund Me Topic: Emulating on 3ds: Sky3ds & R4 cards Game Club Discussion: Dynamite Cop Chrono Cross New Game Club Games: Kabuki: Quantum Fighter Virtua Fighter Music By: I Love Lightning Bugs Game Club Master List
Today we look at one of the "Big 3" computers of 1977, as well as some more games for the Fairchild Channel F!Website - https://historyvgpodcast.wixsite.com/historyofvideogamingTwitter - https://twitter.com/HistoryofVideo1Email - historyvgpodcast@gmail.comHosts - Ben & WesMusic - Arranged and recorded by BenCan you guess this week's transition music?
Today we're going to look at the history of the dial-up computer modem. Modem stands for modulate/demodulate. That modulation is carying a property (like voice or computer bits) over a waveform. Modems originally encoded voice data with frequency shift keys, but that was developed during World War II. The voices were encoded into digital tones. That system was called SIGSALY. But they called them vocoders at the time. They matured over the next 17 years. And then came the SAGE air defense system in 1958. Here, the modem was employed to connect bases, missile silos, and radars back to the central SAGE system. These were Bell 101 modems and ran at an amazing 110 baud. Bell Labs, as in AT&T. A baud is a unit of transmission that is equal to how many times a signal changes state per second. Each of those baud is equivalent to one bit per second. So that first modem was able to process data at 110 bits per second. This isn't to say that baud is the same as bitrate. Early on it seemed to be but the algorithms sku the higher the numbers. So AT&T had developed the modem and after a few years they began to see commercial uses for it. So in 1962, they revved that 101 to become the Bell 103. Actually, 103A. This thing used newer technology and better encoding, so could run at 300 bits per second. Suddenly teletypes - or terminals, could connect to computers remotely. But ma' Bell kept a tight leash on how they were used for those first few years. That, until 1968. In 1968 came what is known as the Carterphone Decision. We owe a lot to the Carterfone. It bridged radio systems to telephone systems. And Ma Bell had been controlling what lives on their lines for a long time. The decision opened up what devices could be plugged into the phone system. And suddenly new innovations like fax machines and answering machines showed up in the world. And so in 1968, any device with an acoustic coupler could be hooked up to the phone system. And that Bell 103A would lead to others. By 1972, Stanford Research had spun out a device, Novation, and others. But the Vladic added full duplex and got speeds four times what the 103A worked at by employing duplexing and new frequencies. We were up to 1200 bits per second. The bit rate had jumped four-fold because, well, competition. Prices dropped and by the late 1970s microcomputers were showing up in homes. There was a modem for the S-100 Altair bus, the Apple II through a Z-80 SoftCard, and even for the Commodore PET. And people wanted to talk to one another. TCP had been developed in 1974 but at this point the most common way to communicate was to dial directly into bulletin board services. 1981 was a pivotal year. A few things happened that were not yet connected at the time. The National Science Foundation created the Computer Science Network, or CSNET, which would result in NSFNET later, and when combined with the other nets, the Internet, replacing ARPANET. 1981 also saw the release of the Commodore VIC-20 and TRS-80. This led to more and more computers in homes and more people wanting to connect with those online services. Later models would have modems. 1981 also saw the release of the Hayes Smartmodem. This was a physical box that connected to the computer of a serial port. The Smartmodem had a controller that recognized commands. And established the Hayes command set standard that would be used to connect to phone lines, allowing you to initiate a call, dial a number, answer a call, and hang up. Without lifting a handset and placing it on a modem. On the inside it was still 300-baud but the progress and innovations were speeding up. And it didn't seem like a huge deal. The online services were starting to grow. The French Minitel service was released commercially in 1982. The first BBS that would become Fidonet showed up in 1983. Various encoding techniques started to come along and by 1984 you had the Trailblazer modem, at over 18,000 bits a second. But, this was for specific uses and combined 36 bit/second channels. The use of email started to increase and the needs for even more speed. We got the ability to connect two USRobotics modems in the mid-80s to run at 2400 bits per second. But Gottfried Ungerboeck would publish a paper defining a theory of information coding and add parity checking at about the time we got echo suppression. This allowed us to jump to 9600 bits in the late 80s. All of these vendors releasing all of this resulted in the v.21 standard in 1989 from the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T). They're the ones that ratify a lot of standards, like x.509 or MP4. Several other v dot standards would come along as well. The next jump came with the SupraFaXModem with Rockwell chips, which was released in 1992. And USRobotics brought us to 16,800 bits per second but with errors. But we got v.32 in 1991 to get to 14.4 - now we were talking in kilobits! Then 19.2 in 1993, 28.8 in 1994, 33.6 in 1996. By 1999 we got the last of the major updates, v.90 which got us to 56k. At this point, most homes in the US at least had computers and were going online. The same year, ANSI ratified ADSL, or Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Lines. Suddenly we were communicating in the megabits. And the dial-up modem began to be used a little less and less. In 2004 Multimedia over Coax Alliance was formed and cable modems became standard. The combination of DSL and cable modems has now all but removed the need for dial up modems. Given the pervasiveness of cell phones, today, as few as 20% of homes in the US have a phone line any more. We've moved on. But the journey of the dial-up modem was a key contributor to us getting from a lot of disconnected computers to… The Internet as we know it today. So thank you to everyone involved, from Ma Bell, to Rockwell, to USRobotics, to Hayes, and so on. And thank you, listeners, for tuning in to this episode of the History of Computing Podcast. We are so lucky to have you. Have a great day.
Today we're going to talk through the history of the Commodore. That history starts with Idek Trzmiel, who would become Jack Tramiel when he immigrated to the United States. Tramiel was an Auschwitz survivor and Like many immigrants throughout history, he was a hard worker. He would buy a small office repair company in the Bronx with money he saved up driving taxis in New York and got a loan to help by the company through the US Army. He wanted a name that reflected the military that had rescued him from the camp so he picked Commodore and incorporated the company in Toronto. He would import Czeck typewriters through Toronto and assemble them, moving to adding machines when lower-cost Japanese typewriters started to enter the market. By 1962, Commodore got big enough to go public on the New York Stock Exchange. Those adding machines would soon be called calculators when they went from electromechanical devices to digital, with Commodore making a bundle off the Minuteman calculators. Tramiel and Commodore investor Irving Gould flew to Japan to see how to better compete with manufacturers in the market. They got their chips to build the calculators from MOS Technology and the MOS 6502 chip took off quickly becoming one of the most popular chips in early computing. When Texas Instruments, who designed the chips, entered the calculator market, everyone knew calculators were a dead end. The Altair had been released in 1975. But it used the Intel chips. Tramiel would get a loan to buy MOS for $3 million dollars and it would become the Commodore Semiconductor Group. The PC revolution was on the way and this is where Chuck Peddle, who came to Commodore from the acquisition comes in. Seeing the 6502 chips that MOS started building in 1975 and the 6507 that had been used in the Atari 2600, Pebble pushed to start building computers. Commodore had gotten to 60 million in revenues but the Japanese exports of calculators and typewriters left them needing a new product. Pebble proposed they build a computer and developed one called the Commodore PET. Starting at $800, the PET would come with a MOS 6502 chip - the same chip that shipped in the Apple I that year. It came with an integrated keyboard and monitor. And Commodore BASIC in a ROM. And as with many in that era, a cassette deck to load data in and save it. Commodore was now a real personal computer company. And one of the first. Along with the TRS-80, or Trash 80 and Apple when the Apple II was released they would be known as the Trinity of Personal Computers. By 1980 they would be a top 3 company in the market, which was growing rapidly. Unlike Apple, they didn't focus on great products or software and share was dropping. So in 1981 they would release the VIC-20. This machine came with Commodore BASIC 2.0, still used a 6502 chip. But by now prices had dropped to a level where the computer could sell for $299. The PET would be a computer integrated into a keyboard so you brought your own monitor, which could be composite, similar to what shipped in the Apple IIc. And it would be marked in retail outlets, like K-Mart where it was the first computer to be sold. They would outsource the development of the VICModem and did deals with the Source, CompuServe, and others to give out free services to get people connected to the fledgeling internet. The market was getting big. Over 800 software titles were available. Today you can use VICE, a VIC-20 emulator, to use many of them! But the list of vendors they were competing with would grow, including the Apple II, The TRS-80, and the Atari 800. They would sell over a million in that first year, but a new competitor emerged in the Commodore 64. Initially referred to as the VIC-40, the Commodore 64 showed up in 1982 and would start at around $600 and came with the improved 6510 or 8500 MOS chip and the 64k of ram that gave it its name. It is easily one of the most recognizable computer names in history. IT could double as a video game console. Sales were initially slow as software developers caught up to the new chips - and they kinda' had to work through some early problems with units failing. They still sold millions and millions by the mid 1980s. But they would need to go into a price war with Texas Instruments, Atari, and other big names of the time. Commodore would win that war but lost Tramiel along the way. He quit after disagreements with Gould, who brought in a former executive from a steel company with no experience in computers. Ironically, Tramel bought Atari after he left. A number of models would come out over the next few years with the Commodore MAX, Communicator 64, the SX-64, the C128, the Commodore 64 Game System, the 65, which was killed off by Irving Gould in 1991. And by 1993, Gould had mismanaged the company. But Commodore would buy Amiga for $25 million in 1984. They wouldn't rescue the company with a 32 bit computer. After the Mac and the IBM came along in 1984 and after the downward pressures that had been put on prices, Commodore never fully recovered. Yes, they released systems. Like the Amiga 500 and ST, but they were never as dominant and couldn't shake the low priced image for later Amiga models like one of the best machines made for its time, the Amiga 1000. Or the 2000s to compete with the Mac or with entries in the PC clone market to compete with the deluge of vendors that did that. They even tried a MicrosoftBASIC interpreter and their own Amiga Unix System V Release variant. But, ultimately by 1994 the company would go into bankruptcy with surviving subsidiaries going through that demise that happens where you end up with your intellectual property somehow being held by Gateway computers. More on them in a later episode. I do think the story here is a great one. A person manages to survive Auschwitz, move to the United States, and build a publicly traded empire that is easily one of the most recognizable names in computing. That survival and perseverance should be applauded. Tramiel would run Atari until he sold it in the mid-90s and would cofound the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He was a hard negotiator and a competent business person. Today, in tech we say that competing on price is a race to the bottom. He had to live that. But he and his exceptional team at Commodore certainly deserve our thanks, for helping to truly democratize computing, putting low-cost single board machines on the shelves at Toys-R-Us and K-mart and giving me exposure to BASIC at a young age. And thank you, listeners, for tuning in to this episode of the History of Computing Podcast. We are so lucky you listen to these stories. Have a great day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMD2nF7meDI.
Join Jonathan and Rob as they encounter sex and drugs and rock and roll! Not to mention big hair, leotards and a Commodore PET computer precariously perched on a wicker occasional table! Starring John NettlesTerence AlexanderSean ArnoldDeborah GrantAnnette Badland Written by Robert Holmes Directed by Oliver Horsbrugh Guest starring Primi Townsend, Rosalind Lloyd, Peter Birrel, Frank Mills, Derek Smith Music is the Bergerac theme by George Fenton, performed by Youngr (many thanks to Youngr for permission to use the track!)
Computing In Poland Welcome to the History of Computing Podcast, where we explore the history of information technology. Because understanding the past prepares us to innovate (and sometimes cope with) the future! Today we're going to do something a little different. Based on a recent trip to Katowice and Krakow, and a great visit to the Museum of Computer and Information Technology in Katowice, we're going to look at the history of computing in Poland. Something they are proud of and should be proud of. And I'm going to mispronounce some words. Because they are averse to vowels. But not really, instead because I'm just not too bright. Apologies in advance. First, let's take a stroll through an overly brief history of Poland itself. Atilla the Hun and other conquerors pushed Germanic tribes from Poland in the fourth century which led to a migration of Slavs from the East into the area. After a long period of migration, duke Mieszko established the Piast dynasty in 966, and they created the kingdom of Poland in 1025, which lasted until 1370 when Casimir the Great died without an heir. That was replaced by the Jagiellonian dynasty which expanded until they eventually developed into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. Turns out they overextended themselves until the Russians, Prussians, and Austria invaded and finally took control in 1795, partitioning Poland. Just before that, Polish clockmaker Jewna Jakobson built a mechanical computing machine, a hundred years after Pascal, in 1770. And innovations In mechanical computing continued on with Abraham Izrael Stern and his son through the 1800s and Bruno's Intergraph, which could solve complex differential equations. And so the borders changed as Prussia gave way to Germany until World War I when the Second Polish Republic was established. And the Poles got good at cracking codes as they struggled to stay sovereign against Russian attacks. Just as they'd struggled to stay sovereign for well over a century. Then the Germans and Soviets formed a pact in 1939 and took the country again. During the war, Polish scientists not only assisted with work on the Enigma but also with the nuclear program in the US, the Manhattan Project. Stanislaw Ulam was recruited to the project and helped with ENIAC by developing the Monte Carlo method along with Jon Von Neumann. The country remained partitioned until Germany fell in WWII and the Soviets were able to effectively rule the Polish People's Republic until a socal-Democratic movement swept the country in 1989, resulting in the current government and Poland moving from the Eastern Bloc to NATO and eventually the EU around the same time the wall fell in Berlin. Able to put the Cold War behind them, Polish cities are now bustling with technical innovation and is now home some of the best software developers I've ever met. Polish contributions to a more modern computer science began in 1924 when Jan Lukasiewicz developed Polish Notation, a way of writing mathematical expressions such that they are operator-first. during World War II when the Polish Cipher Bureau were the first that broke the Enigma encryption, at different levels from 1932 to 1939. They had been breaking codes since using them to thwart a Russian invasion in the 1920s and had a pretty mature operation at this point. But it was a slow, manUal process, so Marian Rejewski, one of the cryptographers developed a card catalog of permutations and used a mechanical computing device he invented a few years earlier called a cyclometer to decipher the codes. The combination led to the bomba kryptologiczna which was shown to the allies 5 weeks before the war started and in turn led to the Ultra program and eventually Colossus once Alan Turing got a hold of it, conceptually after meeting Rejewski. After the war he became an accountant to avoid being forced into slave cryptographic work by the Russians. In 1948 the Group for Mathematical Apparatus of the Mathematical Institute in Warsaw was formed and the academic field of computer research was formed in Poland. Computing continued in Poland during the Soviet-controlled era. EMAL-1 was started in 1953 but was never finished. The XYZ computer came along in 1958. Jack Karpiński built the first real vacuum tube mainframe in Poland, called the AAH in 1957 to analyze weather patterns and improve forecasts. He then worked with a team to build the AKAT-1 to simulate lots of labor intensive calculations like heat transfer mechanics. Karpinski founded the Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He would win a UNESCO award and receive a 6 month scholarship to study in the US, which the polish government used to spy on American progress in computing. He came home armed with some innovative ideas from the West and by 1964 built what he called the Perceptron, a computer that could be taught to identify shapes and even some objects. Nothing like that had existed in Poland or anywhere else controlled by communist regimes at the time. From 65 to 68 he built the KAR-65, even faster, to study CERN data. By then there was a rising mainframe and minicomputer industry outside of academia in Poland. Production of the Odra mainframe-era computers began in 1959 in Wroclaw, Poland and his work was seen by them and Elwro as a threat do they banned him from publishing for a time. Elwro built a new factory in 1968, copying IBM standardization. In 1970, Karpiński realized he had to play ball with the government and got backing from officials in the government. He would then designed the k-202 minicomputer in 1971. Minicomputers were on the rise globally and he introduced the concept of paging to computer science, key in virtual memory. This time he recruited 113 programmers and hardware engineers and by 73 were using Intel 4004 chips to build faster computers than the DEC PDP-11. But the competitors shut him down. They only sold 30 and by 1978 he retired to Switzerland (that sounds better than fled) - but he returned to Poland following the end of communism in the country and the closing of the Elwro plant in 1989. By then the Personal Computing revolution was upon us. That had begun in Poland with the Meritum, a TRS-80 clone, back in 1983. More copying. But the Elwro 800 Junior shipped in 1986 and by 1990 when the communists split the country could benefit from computers being mass produced and the removal of export restrictions that were stifling innovation and keeping Poles from participating in the exploding economy around computers. Energized, the Poles quickly learned to write code and now graduate over 40,000 people in IT from universities, by some counts making Poland a top 5 tech country. And as an era of developers graduate they are founding museums to honor those who built their industry. It has been my privilege to visit two of them at this point. The description of the one in Krakow reads: The Interactive Games and Computers Museum of the Past Era is a place where adults will return to their childhood and children will be drawn into a lots of fun. We invite you to play on more than 20 computers / consoles / arcade machines and to watch our collection of 200 machines and toys from the '70's-'90's. The second is the Museum of Computer and Information Technology in Katowice, and the most recent that I had the good fortune to visit. Both have systems found at other types of computer history museums such as a Commodore PET but showcasing the locally developed systems and looking at them on a timeline it's quickly apparent that while Poland had begun to fall behind by the 80s, it was more a reflection of why the strikes throughout caused the Eastern Bloc to fall, because Russian influence couldn't. Much as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth couldn't support Polish control of Lithuania in the late 1700s. There were other accomplishments such as The ZAM-2. And the first fully Polish machine, the BINEG. And rough set theory. And ultrasonic mercury memory.
Season 2 Episode 1 News MAME 0.217 - “The most exciting thing this month is the recovery of the Sega Model 1 coprocessor TGP programs for Star Wars Arcade and Wing War, making these games fully playable. We’ve been working on Virtua Fighter as well” Wii7800 updated after 9 years Megaman 2 - HOT NEWS as NES Megaman may be coming to the Intellivision! AI Researchers want to use Mega Man 2 to evaluate AI The man who made the “worst” video game in history PlayStation Sound Designer Takafumi Fujisawa on Creating the Iconic Startup Sound Guerrilla dev: PS3's Cell CPU is by far stronger than new Intel CPUs Random: Remembering When One Company Ruined Christmas For Some NES Owners LAPTOP LIKE IT’S 1979 WITH A 16-CORE Z80 ON AN FPGA THE BOXY ALL-IN-ONE NINTENDO 64 YOUR 1990S SELF ALWAYS WANTED Unplanned Atari computer section Atari Home Computer Turns 40 Compile and run an assembly language program for the Atari computer Unplanned legal news section Choose Your Own Adventure publisher cracks down on Itch.io devs Hundreds of knock-off consoles with Nintendo ROMs seized by North Carolina’s Anti-Counterfeiting Task Force Unplanned vaporware section Akira's Long-Lost Video Game On Sega Genesis Has Been Discovered Unreleased '3D Gunner' for Master System Shenmue dev confirms Sega Saturn 2 Black Belt console existed Unplanned obituary section Randy Suess, Computer Bulletin Board Inventor, Dies at 74 Chuck Peddle, father of the 6502 and Commodore PET passed away Topic: News & 2020 preview Game Club Discussion Wipeout Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past New Game Club Games Empire Strikes Back 2600 Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
More Than Just Code podcast - iOS and Swift development, news and advice
As the 2010's end, we debate when the decade ends. We fact check iOS 13.3's fix on UWB bug and ATP increments. We follow up on TCC, and the $100K Mac Pro. iDevices get key-based protection, webAuthn, IBM Workgroup Updates on Swift.org, Hype Cycles, and a cheaper Apple Arcade cost are also covered. We look back at the last 10 years of Apple innovation, news and changes. Amazon, Google, Apple and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard. Picks: Swift For Good, Fork - a fast and friendly git client for Mac and Windows. Special Guest: Mike Vinakmens.
Hoy te presentamos un nuevo «SpinOff» de La Ysla de los Macníficos, … El Icono ⇥Prólogo: ¿A ti también te han contando el cuento de que Apple, la compañía de nuestros amores, fue la primera ... Sigue leyendo... La entrada El Icono, Commodore PET 2001 se publicó primero en YslaMac.
The Microchip Welcome to the History of Computing Podcast, where we explore the history of information technology. Because understanding the past prepares us for the innovations of the future! Todays episode is on the history of the microchip, or microprocessor. This was a hard episode, because it was the culmination of so many technologies. You don't know where to stop telling the story - and you find yourself writing a chronological story in reverse chronological order. But few advancements have impacted humanity the way the introduction of the microprocessor has. Given that most technological advances are a convergence of otherwise disparate technologies, we'll start the story of the microchip with the obvious choice: the light bulb. Thomas Edison first demonstrated the carbon filament light bulb in 1879. William Joseph Hammer, an inventor working with Edison, then noted that if he added another electrode to a heated filament bulb that it would glow around the positive pole in the vacuum of the bulb and blacken the wire and the bulb around the negative pole. 25 years later, John Ambrose Fleming demonstrated that if that extra electrode is made more positive than the filament the current flows through the vacuum and that the current could only flow from the filament to the electrode and not the other direction. This converted AC signals to DC and represented a boolean gate. In the 1904 Fleming was granted Great Britain's patent number 24850 for the vacuum tube, ushering in the era of electronics. Over the next few decades, researchers continued to work with these tubes. Eccles and Jordan invented the flip-flop circuit at London's City and Guilds Technical College in 1918, receiving a patent for what they called the Eccles-Jordan Trigger Circuit in 1920. Now, English mathematician George Boole back in the earlier part of the 1800s had developed Boolean algebra. Here he created a system where logical statements could be made in mathematical terms. Those could then be performed using math on the symbols. Only a 0 or a 1 could be used. It took awhile, John Vincent Atanasoff and grad student Clifford Berry harnessed the circuits in the Atanasoff-Berry computer in 1938 at Iowa State University and using Boolean algebra, successfully solved linear equations but never finished the device due to World War II, when a number of other technological advancements happened, including the development of the ENIAC by John Mauchly and J Presper Eckert from the University of Pennsylvania, funded by the US Army Ordinance Corps, starting in 1943. By the time it was taken out of operation, the ENIAC had 20,000 of these tubes. Each digit in an algorithm required 36 tubes. Ten digit numbers could be multiplied at 357 per second, showing the first true use of a computer. John Von Neumann was the first to actually use the ENIAC when they used one million punch cards to run the computations that helped propel the development of the hydrogen bomb at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The creators would leave the University and found the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation. Out of that later would come the Univac and the ancestor of todays Unisys Corporation. These early computers used vacuum tubes to replace gears that were in previous counting machines and represented the First Generation. But the tubes for the flip-flop circuits were expensive and had to be replaced way too often. The second generation of computers used transistors instead of vacuum tubes for logic circuits. The integrated circuit is basically a wire set into silicon or germanium that can be set to on or off based on the properties of the material. These replaced vacuum tubes in computers to provide the foundation of the boolean logic. You know, the zeros and ones that computers are famous for. As with most modern technologies the integrated circuit owes its origin to a number of different technologies that came before it was able to be useful in computers. This includes the three primary components of the circuit: the transistor, resistor, and capacitor. The silicon that chips are so famous for was actually discovered by Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius in 1824. He heated potassium chips in a silica container and washed away the residue and viola - an element! The transistor is a semiconducting device that has three connections that amplify data. One is the source, which is connected to the negative terminal on a battery. The second is the drain, and is a positive terminal that, when touched to the gate (the third connection), the transistor allows electricity through. Transistors then acts as an on/off switch. The fact they can be on or off is the foundation for Boolean logic in modern computing. The resistor controls the flow of electricity and is used to control the levels and terminate lines. An integrated circuit is also built using silicon but you print the pattern into the circuit using lithography rather than painstakingly putting little wires where they need to go like radio operators did with the Cats Whisker all those years ago. The idea of the transistor goes back to the mid-30s when William Shockley took the idea of a cat's wicker, or fine wire touching a galena crystal. The radio operator moved the wire to different parts of the crystal to pick up different radio signals. Solid state physics was born when Shockley, who first studied at Cal Tech and then got his PhD in Physics, started working on a way to make these useable in every day electronics. After a decade in the trenches, Bell gave him John Bardeen and Walter Brattain who successfully finished the invention in 1947. Shockley went on to design a new and better transistor, known as a bipolar transistor and helped move us from vacuum tubes, which were bulky and needed a lot of power, to first gernanium, which they used initially and then to silicon. Shockley got a Nobel Prize in physics for his work and was able to recruit a team of extremely talented young PhDs to help work on new semiconductor devices. He became increasingly frustrated with Bell and took a leave of absence. Shockley moved back to his hometown of Palo Alto, California and started a new company called the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. He had some ideas that were way before his time and wasn't exactly easy to work with. He pushed the chip industry forward but in the process spawned a mass exodus of employees that went to Fairchild in 1957. He called them the “Traitorous 8” to create what would be Fairchild Semiconductors. The alumni of Shockley Labs ended up spawning 65 companies over the next 20 years that laid foundation of the microchip industry to this day, including Intel. . If he were easier to work with, we might not have had the innovation that we've seen if not for Shockley's abbrasiveness! All of these silicon chip makers being in a small area of California then led to that area getting the Silicon Valley moniker, given all the chip makers located there. At this point, people were starting to experiment with computers using transistors instead of vacuum tubes. The University of Manchester created the Transistor Computer in 1953. The first fully transistorized computer came in 1955 with the Harwell CADET, MIT started work on the TX-0 in 1956, and the THOR guidance computer for ICBMs came in 1957. But the IBM 608 was the first commercial all-transistor solid-state computer. The RCA 501, Philco Transac S-1000, and IBM 7070 took us through the age of transistors which continued to get smaller and more compact. At this point, we were really just replacing tubes with transistors. But the integrated circuit would bring us into the third generation of computers. The integrated circuit is an electronic device that has all of the functional blocks put on the same piece of silicon. So the transistor, or multiple transistors, is printed into one block. Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments patented the first miniaturized electronic circuit in 1959, which used germanium and external wires and was really more of a hybrid integrated Circuit. Later in 1959, Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor invented the first truly monolithic integrated circuit, which he received a patent for. While doing so independently, they are considered the creators of the integrated circuit. The third generation of computers was from 1964 to 1971, and saw the introduction of metal-oxide-silicon and printing circuits with photolithography. In 1965 Gordon Moore, also of Fairchild at the time, observed that the number of transistors, resistors, diodes, capacitors, and other components that could be shoved into a chip was doubling about every year and published an article with this observation in Electronics Magazine, forecasting what's now known as Moore's Law. The integrated circuit gave us the DEC PDP and later the IBM S/360 series of computers, making computers smaller, and brought us into a world where we could write code in COBOL and FORTRAN. A microprocessor is one type of integrated circuit. They're also used in audio amplifiers, analog integrated circuits, clocks, interfaces, etc. But in the early 60s, the Minuteman missal program and the US Navy contracts were practically the only ones using these chips, at this point numbering in the hundreds, bringing us into the world of the MSI, or medium-scale integration chip. Moore and Noyce left Fairchild and founded NM Electronics in 1968, later renaming the company to Intel, short for Integrated Electronics. Federico Faggin came over in 1970 to lead the MCS-4 family of chips. These along with other chips that were economical to produce started to result in chips finding their way into various consumer products. In fact, the MCS-4 chips, which split RAM , ROM, CPU, and I/O, were designed for the Nippon Calculating Machine Corporation and Intel bought the rights back, announcing the chip in Electronic News with an article called “Announcing A New Era In Integrated Electronics.” Together, they built the Intel 4004, the first microprocessor that fit on a single chip. They buried the contacts in multiple layers and introduced 2-phase clocks. Silicon oxide was used to layer integrated circuits onto a single chip. Here, the microprocessor, or CPU, splits the arithmetic and logic unit, or ALU, the bus, the clock, the control unit, and registers up so each can do what they're good at, but live on the same chip. The 1st generation of the microprocessor was from 1971, when these 4-bit chips were mostly used in guidance systems. This boosted the speed by five times. The forming of Intel and the introduction of the 4004 chip can be seen as one of the primary events that propelled us into the evolution of the microprocessor and the fourth generation of computers, which lasted from 1972 to 2010. The Intel 4004 had 2,300 transistors. The Intel 4040 came in 1974, giving us 3,000 transistors. It was still a 4-bit data bus but jumped to 12-bit ROM. The architecture was also from Faggin but the design was carried out by Tom Innes. We were firmly in the era of LSI, or Large Scale Integration chips. These chips were also used in the Busicom calculator, and even in the first pinball game controlled by a microprocessor. But getting a true computer to fit on a chip, or a modern CPU, remained an elusive goal. Texas Instruments ran an ad in Electronics with a caption that the 8008 was a “CPU on a Chip” and attempted to patent the chip, but couldn't make it work. Faggin went to Intel and they did actually make it work, giving us the first 8-bit microprocessor. It was then redesigned in 1972 as the 8080. A year later, the chip was fabricated and then put on the market in 1972. Intel made the R&D money back in 5 months and sparked the idea for Ed Roberts to build The Altair 8800. Motorola and Zilog brought competition in the 6900 and Z-80, which was used in the Tandy TRS-80, one of the first mass produced computers. N-MOSs transistors on chips allowed for new and faster paths and MOS Technology soon joined the fray with the 6501 and 6502 chips in 1975. The 6502 ended up being the chip used in the Apple I, Apple II, NES, Atari 2600, BBC Micro, Commodore PET and Commodore VIC-20. The MOS 6510 variant was then used in the Commodore 64. The 8086 was released in 1978 with 3,000 transistors and marked the transition to Intel's x86 line of chips, setting what would become the standard in future chips. But the IBM wasn't the only place you could find chips. The Motorola 68000 was used in the Sun-1 from Sun Microsystems, the HP 9000, the DEC VAXstation, the Comodore Amiga, the Apple Lisa, the Sinclair QL, the Sega Genesis, and the Mac. The chips were also used in the first HP LaserJet and the Apple LaserWriter and used in a number of embedded systems for years to come. As we rounded the corner into the 80s it was clear that the computer revolution was upon us. A number of computer companies were looking to do more than what they could do with he existing Intel, MOS, and Motorola chips. And ARPA was pushing the boundaries yet again. Carver Mead of Caltech and Lynn Conway of Xerox PARC saw the density of transistors in chips starting to plateau. So with DARPA funding they went out looking for ways to push the world into the VLSI era, or Very Large Scale Integration. The VLSI project resulted in the concept of fabless design houses, such as Broadcom, 32-bit graphics, BSD Unix, and RISC processors, or Reduced Instruction Set Computer Processor. Out of the RISC work done at UC Berkely came a number of new options for chips as well. One of these designers, Acorn Computers evaluated a number of chips and decided to develop their own, using VLSI Technology, a company founded by more Fairchild Semiconductor alumni) to manufacture the chip in their foundry. Sophie Wilson, then Roger, worked on an instruction set for the RISC. Out of this came the Acorn RISC Machine, or ARM chip. Over 100 billion ARM processors have been produced, well over 10 for every human on the planet. You know that fancy new A13 that Apple announced. It uses a licensed ARM core. Another chip that came out of the RISC family was the SUN Sparc. Sun being short for Stanford University Network, co-founder Andy Bchtolsheim, they were close to the action and released the SPARC in 1986. I still have a SPARC 20 I use for this and that at home. Not that SPARC has gone anywhere. They're just made by Oracle now. The Intel 80386 chip was a 32 bit microprocessor released in 1985. The first chip had 275,000 transistors, taking plenty of pages from the lessons learned in the VLSI projects. Compaq built a machine on it, but really the IBM PC/AT made it an accepted standard, although this was the beginning of the end of IBMs hold on the burgeoning computer industry. And AMD, yet another company founded by Fairchild defectors, created the Am386 in 1991, ending Intel's nearly 5 year monopoly on the PC clone industry and ending an era where AMD was a second source of Intel parts but instead was competing with Intel directly. We can thank AMD's aggressive competition with Intel for helping to keep the CPU industry going along Moore's law! At this point transistors were only 1.5 microns in size. Much, much smaller than a cats whisker. The Intel 80486 came in 1989 and again tracking against Moore's Law we hit the first 1 million transistor chip. Remember how Compaq helped end IBM's hold on the PC market? When the Intel 486 came along they went with AMD. This chip was also important because we got L1 caches, meaning that chips didn't need to send instructions to other parts of the motherboard but could do caching internally. From then on, the L1 and later L2 caches would be listed on all chips. We'd finally broken 100MHz! Motorola released the 68050 in 1990, hitting 1.2 Million transistors, and giving Apple the chip that would define the Quadra and also that L1 cache. The DEC Alpha came along in 1992, also a RISC chip, but really kicking off the 64-bit era. While the most technically advanced chip of the day, it never took off and after DEC was acquired by Compaq and Compaq by HP, the IP for the Alpha was sold to Intel in 2001, with the PC industry having just decided they could have all their money. But back to the 90s, ‘cause life was better back when grunge was new. At this point, hobbyists knew what the CPU was but most normal people didn't. The concept that there was a whole Univac on one of these never occurred to most people. But then came the Pentium. Turns out that giving a chip a name and some marketing dollars not only made Intel a household name but solidified their hold on the chip market for decades to come. While the Intel Inside campaign started in 1991, after the Pentium was released in 1993, the case of most computers would have a sticker that said Intel Inside. Intel really one upped everyone. The first Pentium, the P5 or 586 or 80501 had 3.1 million transistors that were 16.7 micrometers. Computers kept getting smaller and cheaper and faster. Apple answered by moving to the PowerPC chip from IBM, which owed much of its design to the RISC. Exactly 10 years after the famous 1984 Super Bowl Commercial, Apple was using a CPU from IBM. Another advance came in 1996 when IBM developed the Power4 chip and gave the world multi-core processors, or a CPU that had multiple CPU cores inside the CPU. Once parallel processing caught up to being able to have processes that consumed the resources on all those cores, we saw Intel's Pentium D, and AMD's Athlon 64 x2 released in May 2005 bringing multi-core architecture to the consumer. This led to even more parallel processing and an explosion in the number of cores helped us continue on with Moore's Law. There are now custom chips that reach into the thousands of cores today, although most laptops have maybe 4 cores in them. Setting multi-core architectures aside for a moment, back to Y2K when Justin Timberlake was still a part of NSYNC. Then came the Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Celeron, Pentium III, Xeon, Pentium M, Xeon LV, Pentium 4. On the IBM/Apple side, we got the G3 with 6.3 million transistors, G4 with 10.5 million transistors, and the G5 with 58 million transistors and 1,131 feet of copper interconnects, running at 3GHz in 2002 - so much copper that NSYNC broke up that year. The Pentium 4 that year ran at 2.4 GHz and sported 50 million transistors. This is about 1 transistor per dollar made off Star Trek: Nemesis in 2002. I guess Attack of the Clones was better because it grossed over 300 Million that year. Remember how we broke the million transistor mark in 1989? In 2005, Intel started testing Montecito with certain customers. The Titanium-2 64-bit CPU with 1.72 billion transistors, shattering the billion mark and hitting a billion two years earlier than projected. Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced Apple would be moving to the Intel processor that year. NeXTSTEP had been happy as a clam on Intel, SPARC or HP RISC so given the rapid advancements from Intel, this seemed like a safe bet and allowed Apple to tell directors in IT departments “see, we play nice now.” And the innovations kept flowing for the next decade and a half. We packed more transistors in, more cache, cleaner clean rooms, faster bus speeds, with Intel owning the computer CPU market and AMD slowly growing from the ashes of Acorn computer into the power-house that AMD cores are today, when embedded in other chips designs. I'd say not much interesting has happened, but it's ALL interesting, except the numbers just sound stupid they're so big. And we had more advances along the way of course, but it started to feel like we were just miniaturizing more and more, allowing us to do much more advanced computing in general. The fifth generation of computing is all about technologies that we today consider advanced. Artificial Intelligence, Parallel Computing, Very High Level Computer Languages, the migration away from desktops to laptops and even smaller devices like smartphones. ULSI, or Ultra Large Scale Integration chips not only tells us that chip designers really have no creativity outside of chip architecture, but also means millions up to tens of billions of transistors on silicon. At the time of this recording, the AMD Epic Rome is the single chip package with the most transistors, at 32 billion. Silicon is the seventh most abundant element in the universe and the second most in the crust of the planet earth. Given that there's more chips than people by a huge percentage, we're lucky we don't have to worry about running out any time soon! We skipped RAM in this episode. But it kinda' deserves its own, since RAM is still following Moore's Law, while the CPU is kinda' lagging again. Maybe it's time for our friends at DARPA to get the kids from Berkley working at VERYUltra Large Scale chips or VULSIs! Or they could sign on to sponsor this podcast! And now I'm going to go take a VERYUltra Large Scale nap. Gentle listeners I hope you can do that as well. Unless you're driving while listening to this. Don't nap while driving. But do have a lovely day. Thank you for listening to yet another episode of the History of Computing Podcast. We're so lucky to have you!
An airhacks.fm conversation with Mark Little (@nmcl) about: the 250 miles terminal connection, Commodore PET, battle ships on paper tapes, mocking the login screen on Commodore, reverse engineering Space Invaders, the lack of games in UK was a motivation for writing games, learning peek and pokes, Commodore engineering team wrote a book about machine code, Basic on BBC model B, Pascal and C on EPROMs, building a hotel booking system on Pascal, building a pseudo operating system with C, Concurrent Pascal, Cfront - the early version of C++, Atari ST came with C support, C++ over Concurrent Euclid, working with Andy Tannenbaum and Bjorne Stroustroup on Minix, porting Minix to Atari ST, Arjuna the Indian god, Indian Gods over Celtics, Arjuna -- the object oriented transaction system, started in 1985, inheriting transactions, transactions are not about HA, transactions are about recoverability, starting Java as Oak, the shiny object syndrome and transition to Java, writing web browsers in Java, porting Arjuna to Java with Blackdown Java, Jim Waldo and Note on Distributed Computing, opaque over transparent, Johan Vos was a member of the Blackdown team, RPC with C++ and Arjuna, almost serverless, packing and unpacking instances and the Lock Manager, 2PC was the default, without X/Open XA heuristics the system would block forever, XA heuristics were introduced to make independent decisions, enforcing consistency in microservices with 2PC/XA is hard, SOA and microservices come with similar challenges, there is no a single transaction model applicable for every single use case, XA/2PC is lesser suited for long running actions, transactions were out-of-fashion - now they are back, Google Spanner is transactional, Arjuna was acquired by Bluestone, Arjuna Technologies was acquired by HP, JBoss did a partial acquisition of Arjuna, before the Arjuna acquisition, JBoss couldn't handle 2PC properly, Bluestone became the HP application server, JBoss was always opensource and good quality code, J2EE came before annotations - metadata was attached with partially redundant XML, Mark became RedHat CTO in 2009, MicroProfile is great and there is a lot of interests in evolving Java into clouds by the community, Jakarta EE was a great move by Oracle in 2017, Jakarta EE has to move faster, Jakarta EE is more like the stable OS, MicroProfile is where the innovation happens, there are no more monolithic application server, what does "enterprise" mean?, QuarkEE is opinionated Quarkus, Mark Little on twitter: @nmcl, Mark's blog
Doug Hennig talks about his start in the computer industry from Commodore Pet and how much FoxPro development he does today. He's also excited about the Southwest Fox conference and what he's learned from past conferences and the real reasons people should attend (hint, it's not just the sessions).
Steve Newman is the Founder of Scalyr which offers a cloud platform for high-speed log management and server monitoring. The company has raised over $30 million from investors such as Google Ventures, Shasta Ventures, or Bloomberg Beta. His most recent company prior to Scalyr, Writely, was acquired by Google to become Google Docs. Steve Newman has co-founded 6 companies so far. In this episode you will learn: How to pick an idea that serves you where you are a representative of the customer How to survey customers to get to product-market fit, quickly Why he finally raised money for his latest startup, after bootstrapping all the others What traits to look for when seeking investors The importance of competition – and of sharing your ideas The advantage of being the underdog, even against a giant like Google SUBSCRIBE ON: For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash. Moreover, I also provided a commentary on a pitch deck from an Uber competitor that has raised over $400 million (see it here). Remember to unlock for free the pitch deck template that is being used by founders around the world to raise millions below. About Steve Newman: Steve Newman is the Founder and Chairman of Scalyr. Steve learned to program at the age of eight and is a lifelong engineer and entrepreneur. Scalyr is the sixth company he has founded. His most recent company prior to Scalyr, Writely, was acquired by Google to become Google Docs. Prior to Writely, Steve started San Andreas Systems (the second graphical web page builder, acquired by Claris), Bitcraft (acquired by Macromedia), and Peninsula Game Works (makers of Spectre). He also spent a few years at Intuit, where he built the Quickbooks Customer Manager. Steve studied mathematics at the University of Michigan and received his Master of Computer Science at Stanford University. Connect with Steve Newman: Website Linkedin Twitter * * *FULL TRANSCRIPTION OF THE INTERVIEW: Alejandro: Alrighty. Hello everyone and welcome to the DealMakers show. Today, we're going to speak with someone that has the engineering chops, and I think that we're going to learn quite a bit from all of his experience. So without further ado, Steve Newman, welcome to the show today. Steve Newman: Thank you. Alejandro: Steve, originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan. How was life growing up there? Steve Newman: It was nice. It's a college town. It's the University of Michigan. I grew up outside of town. Just a nice, classic, mid-western upbringing with the addition of a computer. I was one of those kids who was on my computer from a young age. A nice place to grow up. Alejandro: Cool. At what point did you start engaging with mathematics and with computers? Steve Newman: It was pretty early on. My father was in the computer business, and he brought a Commodore PET home when I was eight years old. I started learning to code in Basic all the way back then. Alejandro: Really cool. Then you got your mathematics degree from the University of Michigan, and then you did Stanford. What was Stanford about? What happened there. Were you studying the Masters of Computer Science? Steve Newman: Yes. Side note: I never actually finished my undergraduate degree. The Masters in Computer Science is the only degree I ever finished. I dropped out of Michigan to go work at a software startup. A decision I don't necessarily recommend, but it turned out okay. That was mathematics. My passion has always been computers. I found myself working at a software startup. That led to a move out to California. But I never had any formal education in computer science or software.
1977 – Apple Computer shows off the Apple II home computer at the West Coast Computer Faire. The $1,298 Home machine featured a 6502 processor, 4kb RAM 16kb ROM and for the first time – A home computer with color graphics. Apple II was the most recognizable home and school computers in the 80s and […]
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Panelists: Paul Hagstrom (hosting), Earl Evans, and Carrington Vanston Topic: Revoking end of life status There have been a few modern updates to operating systems that were long done with development, e.g., ProDOS, GS/OS, DOS 4.1 in the Apple world. And new plugins and things made for old systems. Um. Thoughts? Topic and feedback notes: Sheep who love Car Talk DOS 4.1 for the Apple II DOS 4.1 announcement ProDOS 8. Covers updates to ProDOS 8. for the Apple II GS/OS System 6.0.4 SpartaDOS X NitrOS-9 FreeDOS Fixing the IIc Plus Beep Apple IIc Plus accelerator control Book: ZX Spectrum Games Code Club Why 80’s BASIC still matters Altair-duino Commodore PET mini A look at the short-lived 3” compact floppy disk. Retro Computing News: Jim Henson technology films Paperwork Explosion, 1963 film about MT/ST word processor Robot Charlie Magnetico Rowlf the dog meets an IBM typewriter Cookie Monster for IBM AT&T Archives RetroChallenge 2019/03 is underway TimeOut Edit BASIC Call-A.P.P.L.E. announcement of TimeOut Edit BASIC The Atari Accountant Spectrum Addict 2.5 documentary kickstarter The Sparkstone: Tales of Florb Sinclair ZX Spectrum prototype donated to Centre for Computing History Javascript: the good parts Upcoming Shows: Computer Conservation Society lecture series, Manchester and London VCF Pacific Northwest, Living Computers: Museum+Labs, Seattle, WA, Mar 23-24, 2019 VCF East, InfoAge Science Center, Wall, NJ, May 3-5, 2019 GORF (The Great Oz-stralian Retro-technology Festival), Melbourne, Apr 24-28, 2019 WOzFest 12:00, Sydney, Apr 27, 2019 QFest 12, Brisbane, Apr 27, 2019 CoCoFest, Lombard, IL, May 4-5, 2019 KansasFest, Kansas City, MO, Jul 15-21, 2019 Fujiama 2019, Lengenfeld, Germany, Aug 26-Sep 4, 2019 Vintage Computer-related Commercial: My Talking Computer Lemon Pledge (1966) Retro Computing Gift Idea: Lemon clock kit Auction Picks: Carrington: New ImageWriter colour ribbons Earl: IBM Model 5150 Collection Paul: My Talking Computer BacPac 100 HD Teleram Portabubble™/81 DASCO Word Processing catalog Commodore 264 TI 9900 book Closing comments: Nybbles & Bytes Feedback/Discussion: @rcrpodcast on Twitter Vintage Computer Forum RCR Podcast on Facebook Throwback Network Throwback Network on Facebook Intro / Closing Song: Back to Oz by John X - link Show audio files hosted by CyberEars Listen/Download:
Welcome to the 8-bit Bookmobile Podcast, where each season we read a vintage programming book and argue about it the whole time. In the first season, we are covering the much-revered Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide! In our very first episode, we introduce the book, talk about what was going on in the world when it came out, and go on a wild goose chase to learn who wrote this iconic book. We also introduce the hosts of this podcast, just three regular nerds from Cincinnati: Carl Danowski, Chris Moyer and John Cook. Listen in as Carl talks us through a rather unconventional method for warming up snacks. John recalls borrowing a Commodore PET from his grade school. And Chris judges us all, finding our character lacking and our knowledge of programming suspect.
GUEST BIO: Eric Lippert is a programmer who builds tools for other programmers. He’s worked on Visual Basic, JavaScript and C# at Microsoft, designed code analyzers at Coverity, and is now working on a variety of programming language design problems at Facebook. EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Phil’s guest on today’s show is Eric Lippert. His career has been a long and varied one. He was a Principal Developer at Microsoft and a member of the C# language design team. Eric was also involved in the design and implementation of VBScript, JScript, Windows Script Host and Visual Studio Tools for Office. Over the years, Eric has published and edited numerous programming books and is now working at Facebook. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (01.00) – Phil asks Eric to expand on his brief introduction. Eric said that he studied computer science and maths at the University of Waterloo. There they run a co-operative education system where you study for 4 months and work for 4. He was an intern at Wacom and Microsoft. When he left Microsoft he went to work at Coverity. He is now working on developer tools at Facebook. (3.39) – Phil asks Eric for a unique IT career tip. When Eric was a young developer at Microsoft his manager told him to “find a source of questions and learn to answer them”. He put that advice to work straight away and read every question in the JavaScript group. If someone asked a question that related to his area that he did not know the answer to, he would go away and find out. That taught him to answer queries concisely, which in turn honed his own knowledge. (5.54) – Can you tell us about your worst IT career moment and what you learned from the experience? Eric says it was probably the morning he woke up to the headline “Worst Security Flaw Ever Found in Internet Explorer”. Eric had worked on the piece of code that was involved in the issue. At first, he thought that he may have made the error. It turned out that his code had been changed and that change had not been properly reviewed, so the potential weakness was not found. The security flaw was nowhere near as serious as reported by the press. It would have required a virtually impossible hack to be executed in order to take advantage of the flaw. After that, a much stronger culture of code reviews was put into place. (9.17) – Phil says to Eric - Can you maybe take us through your career highlights or greatest success? Eric says there were two. The first was his work on a new version of VisualStudio. They met the completion target date and every single planned feature was included in the release. His other highlight was being involved in the “from scratch” C sharp rewrite. That massive project was also successfully completed and shipped. C sharp now has over 5 million lines of code, it is truly huge. (14.42) – Looking to the future Phil wants to know what excites Eric about the IT industry. Eric says it is the fact that we have still only really scratched the surface. There are so many features that can still be added to the various languages. For example, we can take features from programming languages and add them to production languages which would immediately raise the bar. We want to be able to write programs that can reason naturally about all kinds of probabilistic things and we are getting there. There is still a ton of stuff to do in the programming languages and tools space. (17.43) – What first attracted you to a career in IT? Eric started programming before he owned a computer. He would write them out on paper and type them into the school’s Commodore PET. He had intended to study either mathematics or physics. But, he soon realized that he was not good at physics. He was much better at computer programming and enjoyed it, plus he could work while studying IT. (19.22) – What is the best career advice you have been given? Eric reiterated the advice to find a source of questions and answer them. But, he added that it was important to learn how to write well. Learn how to be concise and convince people that you’ve written correct code. To do that you need to write convincingly. (20.29) if you were to begin your IT career again, right now, what would you do? Eric says he would study statistics. Much of the machine learning and probabilistic programming is about understanding statistics. With differential programming there is even calculus involved, something Eric never expected to see. (21.27) – What objectives are you focusing on now Eric? He responded by saying, "Building cutting-edge tools and helping real developers to get real stuff done". The same focus he had at the start of his career. (21.30) – What would you consider to be your most important non-technical skill? Being able to communicate effectively, it is crucial. (22.57) - Eric, can you share a parting piece of career advice with the IT Career Energizer audience. Know your tools. I get pitched features for tools and programming languages that already exist. It shows that a lot of people do not know their tools well. It also indicates that the tools are not as discoverable as they should be. Users need to dig in and understand them better and tool providers need to make their tools more discoverable. BEST MOMENTS: (2.18) ERIC – “I have a keyboard on my desk that is older than my intern.” (4.09) ERIC – “Find a source of questions and learn to answer them” (9.27) ERIC – “I want to ship actual code that solves actual developer’s problems” (14.34) ERIC – “It’s immensely satisfying to build something really, really big that actually works.” (17.25) ERIC – “Every time you build a tool, you magnify your impact across the entire industry.” (20.54) ERIC - “So much of machine learning and probabilistic programming is about understanding statistical concepts.” CONTACT ERIC LIPPET: Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericlippert @ericlippert LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-lippert-a3893485/ Website: https://ericlippert.com
The Personal Philosophy Episode: Fan Mail, Philosophy, Life Changes, Sharing Information, Vulnerability, The Commodore Pet, Narratives, The Hidden and Unhidden, A Lost Month, 50, This Life.
Larry Breakwell, Toronto Atari Programmers Society Larry Breakwell was founder of the Toronto West Atari Computer Support Group, then president of the Toronto Atari Programmers Society, which was the largest Atari user group in Canada. He adapted the Atari version of the book "Academy on Computers Hands-On Atari 400/800 Beginner's Manual" from a version of the book focused on the Commodore PET. These beginners manuals were part of the Academy on Computers, a self-directed learning activity based on "Bits and Bytes", a television program produced by the TVOntario network. This interview took place on May 10, 2018. Academy on Computers Hands-On Atari 400/800 Beginner’s Manual Bits & Bytes TV show
Today on Purse Strings our host Maria Reitan is joined by Bryce Austin, the CEO of TCE Strategy and a leading voice on emerging technology and cybersecurity issues. With over 10 years of experience as a Chief Information Officer and Chief Information Security Officer, Bryce actively advises the boards of companies in industries as diverse as financial services, retail, healthcare, technology and manufacturing industries. He was the CIO and CISO of Wells Fargo Business Payroll Services from 2004 to 2012, and a Senior Group Manager at Target Corporation during the 2013/2014 PCI data breach.Bryce holds a CISM certification and is known as a thought leader, cybersecurity expert and internationally-recognized professional speaker. He started his technology career on a Commodore PET computer and a cassette tape drive.
Sobre o episódio Fechamos a nossa série sobre a Santíssima Trindade de 1977 com o PET, a primeira linha de computadores da Commodore. Nesta parte do episódio Finalizamos a cronologia da linha Commodore PET, comentamos o legado da linha e aproveitamos para falar um pouco dos três da Santíssima Trindade de 1977. Ficha técnica: Número … Continue lendo Episódio 80 – Commodore PET – Parte B →
RetroDiario Bunker401 Podcast 0003 – 2-8 Octubre 2017 RetroDiario Bunker401 Podcast 0003: Con la perspectiva de emitir el podcast en directo en las próximas ediciones seguimos adelante con las noticias de la semana. Por tanto, bienvenidos al resumen semanal del RetroDiario de Bunker401 . Esta vez con noticias de más de 36 plataformas distintas Ordenadores y consolas!!. Plataformas como: Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Arcades, Atari 2600, Atari 400, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, Atari 8bit, Atari Jaguar, Atari Lynx, Atari ST, CGE Vectrex, Commodore 64, Commodore PET, Commodore VIC20, Linux, Mac, Moviles iOS, MSX, MSX2, NEO GEO, Nintendo NES, PC, Pinballs, Sega Dreamcast, Sega Master System, Sega Megadrive, Sega Saturn, Sony Playstation, Sony PS4, Spectrum, Super Nintendo, Tandy TRS-80, Texas Instruments Ti99/4A, XBOX One por citar algunas.. RetroDiario es una sección a partir de ahora semanal dentro del canal de Youtube de Bunker401 donde cada semana en directo se recogen y muestran todas las noticias que hayamos podido encontrar de todo el mundillo retro tanto ordenadores como consolas. Con diferentes apartados como Software y utilidades, Cursos y Tutoriales, Hardware nuevo o del pasado, Demoscene, Compos, Eventos y retrosaraos, los últimos juegos homebrew lanzados, previews de juegos futuros, hacks, juegos unreleased y todo tipo de noticias miscelánea que no entren en las otras categorías. Con un mundillo tan enorme es imposible cubrir todo el espectro pero se hace lo que se puede. De unos sistemas conocemos más, de otros menos pero la buena intención es repasar todos los sistemas con buen humor y tratando de ser lo más precisos posibles. Todos tienen sus puntos buenos malos y regulares. A veces hay más noticias de un sistema, otras veces de otro.. Si hay algún error hacédnoslo saber y si hemos acertado y os gusta también nos gustaría saberlo. Podéis y me encantaría si alguien como tu, oyente, se animara a participar conmigo en este proyecto Bunker401 como en otros que tengo o que salgan en el futuro. Si te animas las formas de contacto están más abajo. Espero que os guste y que el chico del periódico, el amigo Paperboy, nos traiga noticias sorprendentes por mucho mucho tiempo. Bunker401 El último almacén atemporal de Videojuegos(retro y actuales), Películas(clásicas y modernas), Series(del pasado o del presente), Libros (De papiros a tablets), Comics (manga, europeo, americano), Música de todas las épocas.. y todas esas cosas que tanto nos gustan ---- Bunker401 Web: http://bunker401.com Bunker401 Twitter: @Bunker401 Luismi Herrero Twitter @Sir Arthur72 Bunker401 Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Bunker401 Bunker401 Canal Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Bunker401 Bunker401 Tienda Camisetas y merchandising: http://www.latostadora.com/bunker401
Sobre o episódio Fechamos a nossa série sobre a Santíssima Trindade de 1977 com o PET, a primeira linha de computadores da Commodore. Nesta parte do episódio Chuck Peddle, JACK TRAMIEL, Commodore, MOS, 6502, KIM-1 e o caminho até o PET 2001. E iniciamos a cronologia da linha Commodore PET. Ficha técnica: Número do episódio: … Continue lendo Episódio 80 – Commodore PET – Parte A →
This episode features PaperClip, originally released in 1985 by Batteries Included. It was originally released in 1982 for the Commodore PET. The PET version was written by Steve Douglas. The Atari port was written by Steve Ahlstrom and Dan Moore. This word processor is unique in that it uses a hardware security device that plugs … … Continue reading →
PaperClip was released in 1985, by Batteries Included. It was originally released in 1982 for the Commodore PET. The PET version was written by Steve Douglas. The Atari port was written by Steve Ahlstrom and Dan Moore. This word processor is unique in that it uses a hardware security device that plugs into the joystick port. … Continue reading →
Eddy Carroll is the Irish author of the legendary SnoopDOS application for Amiga. From the Commodore PET to Amiga and beyond, Eddy’s experiences and contributions had a profound effect on the scene. SnoopDOS in particular spread like wildfire around the globe and is still a staple of many Amiga users today. Music by Radix licensed under … Continue reading "SnoopDOS author Eddy Carroll [Interview]"
Jay Balakrishnan, HESWare Welcome to an interview-only episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Computer Podcast. My name is Randy Kindig. Jay Balakrishnan bought his first Commodore PET in 1978, which spurred him to found Human Engineered Software (HES or HESWare) in 1980. HESWare got its start on the Commodore PET but later moved into many other platforms. They developed or sold software for C64, Vic-20, Atari 8-bit, Apple II, Atari ST, Amiga, ZX Spectrum, Dragon, TI-99, DOS and others. Many Llamasoft games, through an alliance with Jeff Minter, were published in the US by HESWare. For the Atari 8-bit, they published games like Pastfinder, River Raid, Decathlon, Space Shuttle, Attack of the Mutant Camels, Gridrunner. By early 1984 InfoWorld estimated that HES was tied with Broderbund as the world's tenth-largest microcomputer-software company and largest entertainment-software company. In early 1984 they made their biggest splash when they acquired the services of Leonard Nimoy as spokesman. This interview took place on November 20, 2016. Links: HESWare at Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Engineered_Software List of HES games at AtariMania - http://www.atarimania.com/pgelstsoft.awp?system=8&type=G&publisher=1702&step=25 Another list at AtariMania - http://www.atarimania.com/list_games_atari-400-800-xl-xe-hesware_publisher_18_8_G.html Attack of the Mutant Camels at YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJVoDTz9LHM
Sunset silhouette of Flying Fortress, Langley Field, VA, 1942. Library of Congress The Wire Casablanca Lost Babylon 5 Battlestar Galactica The Plan The X-Files Dexter Independence Day The Independence Day PC Game that Time Forgot MCAS El Toro Wing Commander II Tux Racer Gopher VAX pine Doom Harpoon X-Wing Cherry MX Blue F-4 Phantom II Windows CEMENT DHMO Aluminum PowerBook G4 Power Mac G5 Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.0 Rainbow Six Rogue Spear Chuck Yeager’s Advanced Flight Trainer Gato Jet Red Baron Falcon 3 Falcon 4 Duke Nukem 3D Doom II Simpsons Mod VIC-20 Oregon Trail Zenith Z-89 CP/M Commodore PET Red Storm Rising Time Chapter 00:00 It’s Dawn Somewhere 00:43 Desert Island Show 04:13 We Don’t Talk About The Plan 10:22 Hack the Alien Ship 16:23 Paper Towel Power Button 23:43 CEMENT 28:47 The Stormtrooper 36:32 Wargaming Nerd 44:32 Shoot the Paradactyl 56:34 Maximum Impact Point 57:51 Support Dawn Patrol
The Trash Talkers start the show by discussing a bunch of TRS-80 related items such as the Exatron Stringy Floppy and Mailgrams. Then, Peter Cetinski interviews team members from the TRS-80, Apple II and Commodore PET mega-exhibits at this year's VCF East. Finally, Randy Kindig interviews Jim McGinley about his well received TRS-80 games presentations.
We get the story on classics like Superfrog, Body Blows, Super Stardust, Worms and many more with Team 17's Martyn Brown! Plus, our review of the long awaited Viva Amiga movie. Win a copy of The Oliver Twins' book: [http://www.theretrohour.com/win-a-signed-copy-of-the-oliver-twins-book/](http://www.theretrohour.com/win-a-signed-copy-of-the-oliver-twins-book/) Thanks to our amazing donators: Scott Marsden, Colin Reid, Sebastian Kiernan Our website: [http://theretrohour.com](http://theretrohour.com) Our Facebook: [http://www.facebook.com/theretrohour/](http://www.facebook.com/theretrohour/) Our Twitter: [http://twitter.com/retrohouruk](http://twitter.com/retrohouruk) Show notes: Viva Amiga is out today: [https://amigafilm.com/](https://amigafilm.com/) The first ever NES ad found: [http://bit.ly/2iZ1tp0](http://bit.ly/2iZ1tp0) 90 year old youtube lets play star: [http://bit.ly/2i12yyh](http://bit.ly/2i12yyh) New Atari Lynx game: [http://bit.ly/2jjJ0XN](http://bit.ly/2jjJ0XN) 3d print your own Commodore PET: [http://bit.ly/2jcmjAw](http://bit.ly/2jcmjAw)
Carl Moser and JR Hall, Eastern House Software Carl Moser and JR Hall were founders of Eastern House Software, the company that created several products for Atari 8-bit users, including Monkey Wrench and Monkey Wrench II, and the KISS word processor. They also created the MAE assembler/software development system, which was available for Commodore PET, Apple //, Atari 8-bit, and other computers. This interview took place on October 17, 2016. Teaser quote: (Carl) "JR and I would work — we was working at AT&T a regular day, then we'd probably work 'til 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, then get up, go to work the next morning." Universal 6502 Memory Test in issue 1 of Compute! magazine Eastern House Software Advertisement Eastern House Software - product catalog Eastern House Software - dealer brochure
More Than Just Code podcast - iOS and Swift development, news and advice
We start the show with a discussion of 2 Factor Authentication on Apple IDs. We discuss the Best Burritos in the US. We answer Allan Edmonds #askMTJC question about our first computers and our predictions for the next 5 years. We follow up on Mark's iPhone swollen battery. We discuss whether to buy AppleCare, the discuss the delay in Apple Mac hardware, SoftBank's purchase of Arm, the rumored iPhone 7 Pro and iOS Beta Periods. We also discuss iOS 9.3.3 security update. Picks: Scrivener for iOS Effective Objective-C 2.0 Episode 101 Show Notes: Apple Two Factor Authentication 1Password America's Best Burrito Ferry Farmer’s Market at the Embarcadero Allan Edmonds Mac Classic Commodore PET Atari 800 Power Macintosh Macintosh IIcx SE/30 Macintosh II PDP 11 QWERKYWRITER Computer History Museum Tech Museum of Innovation AppleCare Plus So where are all the new Macs for 2016 MacRumors Buyer's Guide - Mac Hackintosh ARM: the weightless corporation that outweighs Intel P.A. Semi Apple might announce 3 different iPhone 7 models this year iOS version release date history About the security content of iOS 9.3.3 Beware! Your iPhone Can Be Hacked Remotely With Just A Message Reversing the wall Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard Erin Thomas (Mrs. Aaron) Episode 101 Picks: Scrivener for iOS Effective Objective-C 2.0 Flixel wins Best Startup
TCW Podcast Episode 016 - Early Computer Game Platforms: The Trinity, and the Disciples We go over the early computer systems as they apply to games in the United States. Starting with the first home computer of note the Altair 8800. We then go into the Trinity of systems released in the same year for the home; the Apple II, the Commodore Pet, and the TRS 80. We then go into the systems that came after and how the Apple II was able to remain dominant as a gaming platform for much longer than it should have untill it was dethroned by the Commodore 64. Popular Electronics Archive: http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Popular-Electronics-Guide.htm Altair 8800 Popular Electronics: http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Poptronics/70s/1975/Poptronics-1975-01.pdf Net Hack: http://www.nethack.org/ Old school Graphics Part I Commodore 64 & Nintendo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfh0ytz8S0k Old School Graphics Part II Apple & Atari: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rsycfDliZU&nohtml5=False Temple of Apshai TRS 80: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiMtY5BxdM0 New episodes on the 1st and 15th of every month! TCW Email: tcwpodcast@gmail.com Twitter: @tcwpodcast Alex's Blog: http://videogamehistorian.wordpress.com Intro Music: Josh Woodward - Airplane Mode - Music - "Airplane Mode" by Josh Woodward. Free download:http://joshwoodward.com/song/AirplaneMode Outro Music: RolemMusic - Bacterial Love - http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Rolemusic/Pop_Singles_Compilation_2014/01_rolemusic_-_bacterial_love Copyright: Attribution: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Hoy Hablando De Tecnología regresa a su formato original discutiendo las noticias tecnológicas del momento. Y comenzamos hablando de AT&T quienes han enfocado su estrategia de mercadeo en las tabletas, los automóviles y el Internet de las cosas. Luego hablamos de Chrysler y de los 1.4 millones de vehículos que van a tener que recoger para corregir fallas en los nuevos sistemas de entretenimiento que permiten que los “hackers” tomen control de los vehículos y cometan todo tipo de fechorías. También hablamos del paso atrás que está dando la gente de Google al desvincular su red social Google+ de todos los demás servicios que ofrece la Compañía. Y si eres un aficionado a las computadoras como yo seguramente debes recordar la Commodore 64 y la Commodore Amiga. Pues pronto vas a ver el nuevo Commodore PET, un teléfono Androide que no tiene nada de innovador y se vale de la poca plusvalía que pueda quedarle a esta marca de fábrica para tratar de abrirse paso en el mercado. También hablamos de la operación de falsificar teléfonos inteligentes que acaba de desmantelar la policía china. ¿Sabías que llegaron a fabricar sobre 40,000 aparatos? Y para terminar hablamos de StageFright, una falla seria de seguridad que está presente en casi el 100{91b45456afaff95aeea87caf28c9c1c0c94699ab34a183c04d9327ca422fb932} de los teléfonos Androide. ENLACES: AT&T crece gracias a las tabletas y a los automóviles Chrysler recoge 1.4 millones de vehículos por problemas en su nuevo sistema de Internet. Google desvincula a Google+ de sus demás propiedades en la Internet Commodore sale de la tumba para vender teléfonos Androide Policía china cierra operación que falsificó 40,000 iPhones Falla de seguridad amenaza a prácticamente toda la población de teléfonos Androide Información sobre el DVD: “[easyazon_link asin="B00PV09C6W" locale="US" new_window="default" nofollow="default" tag="accuratcommun-20" add_to_cart="no" cloaking="default" localization="default" popups="default"]Terms and Conditions May Apply[/easyazon_link]” [sc:FirmaOrlandoMergal21015 ] [sc:EnlaceDeAfiliado ]
This week Dave and Gunnar talk about: Kommisars in the board room, Akron Police Department’s compulsory feeling of safety, more warm fuzzies from OPM, and more Yahoo! news than you ever thought possible. Lauren strikes again: US Air Force lab: robots, open source, and virtual reality D&G Mailbag: Thanks to Red Hat Middleware Solutions Architect David Murphy for finding our episode 89 Easter egg! Soylent Shake: Burger chain adds bugs to the menu…on purpose ‘Private’ biz Xiaomi sets up Communist Party exec committee Police stop Akron drivers to build safe relationships Iowa school district asks principals to wear body cams OPM, ODNI turn to paper forms to keep security clearance process going Let’s not forget: Digital Photocopiers Loaded With Secrets Russian Security Now Using Typewriters to Thwart the NSA D&G Uber Evil Move of the Week: FTC asked to block Uber from getting location data in background D&G Ad Experience Optimization of the Week: The Next Java Update Could Make Yahoo Your Default Search Provider Speaking of getting optimized: US Bombs ISIS Command Center After Terrorist Posts Selfie Online D&G This Week in Vendor Abandonment: Yahoo does Spring Cleaning: Shuts down Maps, Pipes & more No, seriously, they’re really out D&G This Week in Things We Wish Vendors Would Abandon: Flash Ironically(?), occupyflash.org uses Flash to see if Flash is installed Worldwide PC shipments biggest drop in 2 years thanks to mobile No joke? Commodore Pet smartphone Top 500 Supercomputer List Reflects Shifting State of Global HPC Trends D&G Red Hat Summit Replay Video of the Week: Security compliance automation with Red Hat by Matt Micene See it reenacted live at Defense in Depth! It’s like Netflix for Red Hat Training: Red Hat Learning Subscription So Long Voicemail, Give My Regards To the Fax Machine The Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative The CII Census Project White paper by Dr. David A. Wheeler! D&G Term of the Week: Truck Factor Cutting Room Floor PG-13: Ultra Hal AI Chatbot Talks with another Ultra Hal AI Bot Top Secret: The goofy retro ‘undercover’ fashion guide for East German secret police spies Baby goats in pajamas America Used to Give Out Weird Participation Awards for Nuclear Tests Now you finally know: Why Do Some Guitarists’ Fingers Smell Like Garlic? 600 years of war casualties visualized e-NABLE provides open, 3-D printed protheses for children, will make you cry Disney business plan Warhammer 40k Mr. Potato Head Iterating on large projects like Google Hybrid Cloud is not a Strategy, It’s a Symptom Open source chess with http://lichess.org (h/t robinpriceii) Google proves machines dream of more than Electric Sheep (h/t matt.micene) html5 games made from crack (h/t robinpriceii) littlebobby encryption (h/t robinpriceii) condo high rise with drone landing pad (h/t emorisse) We Give Thanks Thanks to Red Hat Middleware Solutions Architect David Murphy for finding our episode 89 Easter egg! The whole dgshow Slack crew
Brian and Corey are all over the board on this week's podcast as they experienced a little (read: more than a bit) technical connectivity issues. They discuss the new Journey collectible statue, Iwata's funeral, the Commodore PET, Shenmue 3's Kickstarter results, your EA Account and more. We're looking for your feedback! We need topics and your comments. Tweet us through the podcast, or to Corey or Brian. Or there's always through email at StartingPointFeedback [at] gmail dot com.
Brian and Corey are all over the board on this week's podcast as they experienced a little (read: more than a bit) technical connectivity issues. They discuss the new Journey collectible statue, Iwata's funeral, the Commodore PET, Shenmue 3's Kickstarter results, your EA Account and more. We're looking for your feedback! We need topics and your comments. Tweet us through the podcast, or to Corey or Brian. Or there's always through email at StartingPointFeedback [at] gmail dot com.
Rob, Shawn, Jesus and Daniel get together for another fantastic week of insane video game talk. On this weeks episode we talk..Commodore PET phone is coming, RIP Mr. Satoru Iwata. Telltale Game of Thrones, Telltales Borderlands, Alien Isolation, Skyrim, Crysis, Dead Space 3, Witcher 3, The Last of Us Remastered, Dead Island 2 developer dropped and much much more.Thank you for your support and downloadsBe sure to join in on the conversation on our facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/horriblegamerz/And watch us game horribly on our you tube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0Ljqd17XUf6VMHXVV1vhwwPlease follow us on twitter @HorribleGamerz
It’s 2015, and here is the first installment of the History of Personal Computing podcast for the year! This is show nine, and we complete the coverage of the “Personal Computer Trifecta”, or “Holy Trinity”, depending on which host you ask. Or you can just fast forward to the end and hear some news about […]
News, reviews, and a discussion of the Commodore PET: history peripherals tech specs books/magazines/software emulation user groups current Web sites Links mentioned in the show: Better World Books - http://www.betterworldbooks.com VCF Midwest - http://vcfmw.org 2013 Chicago TI International World Faire - http://www.chicagotiug.com/tiki-index.php?page=Faire World Longest Yard Sale - http://www.127sale.com Historically Brewed book by David Greelish - http://www.classiccomputing.com/CC/HB_Book.html The Commodore Pet at wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_pet Commodore's version of PET history - http://www.commodore.ca/products/pet/commodore_pet.htm Book, Commodore a company on the edge by Brian Bagnall - http://www.amazon.com/Commodore-Company-Edge-Brian-Bagnall/dp/0973864966 VICE Emulator - http://sourceforge.net/projects/vice-emu/?source=directory Chicago B128 Users Group (CBUG) software archive - http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/b/CBUG/ Toronto PET User's Group - http://www.tpug.ca/ World of Commodore – http://www.worldofcommodore.ca Terry Stewart (Tezza) video demonstration of PET 2001 - http://youtu.be/bBJNSX_DKvo Port Commodore - http://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=larry:comp:commodore:pet:start Edward Shockley's Pet B&P-series Website - http://www.insectria.org/b128.html CBM Pet File Archive - http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/pet/index.html PET Index at 6502.org - http://www.6502.org/users/andre/petindex/index.html
In the second installment of my interview with Bill Volk, we chat about his days at Avalon Hill and the dawn of the computer games industry. Bill was a programming machine, writing games and ports for TRS-80, Commodore Pet, Atari 400s, and CoCo! We also talk about his games Controller and Voyager. Support Matt Chat with a one-time donation or recurring "set it and forget it" subscription! http://www.armchairarcade.com/neo/node/3793 Download the video here. read more
BoingsWorld Episode 011 Themen: - Emulation auf dem Amiga Gameboy, Nes, SNes, Sega, Commodore Pet, +4, VC20, C64, C128, Amiga500, ScummVM, Schneider CPC, M.A.M.E, Playstation One,... - Amiga vor 20 Jahren
Computers for the masses, not the classes... Welcome to Show #132! This episode's topic: The Commodore 64, Part I! In part I of this series on the Commodore 64, I cover my initial experiences with the machine (back in "the day"), and also provide an overview of the C64 hardware specifications. Have an old 680x0 based Mac? Interested in them? If so, be sure to visit the 68K Macintosh Liberation Army site!Commodore reborn, again? Have a look at the article on The Register, and the website itself at Commodore USA, LLC, and you be the judge...Read "The Bob Chronicles", and remember one of the most famous software failures of all time!KansasFest 2010 is open for registration!Join in on PET Alive!, a 10-day event to celebrate the Commodore PET! Be sure to send any comments, questions or feedback to retrobits@gmail.com. For online discussions on Retrobits Podcast topics, check out the Retrobits Podcast forum on the PETSCII Forums page! Our Theme Song is "Sweet" from the "Re-Think" album by Galigan. Thanks for listening! - Earl This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License.
Hi again!Welcome to Show #125! This episode's topic: An Interview With Chuck Peddle, Part II! In this episode, Chuck Peddle, lead creator of the 6502 microprocessor and the Commodore PET, continues our conversation on the early history of the 6502 and Commodore computers, and the market dynamics of the day! It's a great conversation. A modern-day Commodore 64 laptop, created by the famous "Ben Heck", is auctioned for $6,000 for charity!Juiced.GS, the last remaining print magazine for the Apple II, continues in 2010 for another publication year!Win994a, a TI 99/4A simulator for Windows, introduces a new version with improved user interface!Be sure to send any comments, questions or feedback to retrobits@gmail.com. For online discussions on Retrobits Podcast topics, check out the Retrobits Podcast forum on the PETSCII Forums page! Our Theme Song is "Sweet" from the "Re-Think" album by Galigan. Thanks for listening! - Earl This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License.
Hi there!Welcome to Show #123! This episode's topic: An Interview With Chuck Peddle, Part I! In this episode, I'm happy to bring you the first part of an interview with Chuck Peddle, lead designer of the 6502 microprocessor, Commodore PET, and many other innovations in the computing industry. In Part I, Chuck talks about his early history in computing, distributed intelligence, and the development and launch of the 6502. Enjoy! Be sure to send any comments, questions or feedback to retrobits@gmail.com. For online discussions on Retrobits Podcast topics, check out the Retrobits Podcast forum on the PETSCII Forums page! Our Theme Song is "Sweet" from the "Re-Think" album by Galigan. Thanks for listening! - Earl This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License.
(A)bort, (R)etry, (S)mash with large hammer? _Welcome to Show #118! This week's topic: The Commodore PET 2001! Check out the Wiki page for the N8VEM single board computer, an exciting new CP/M system with lots of activity going on!The VICE Emulator supports the Commodore PET series very well. Give it a try...Be sure to send any comments, questions or feedback to retrobits@gmail.com. For online discussions on Retrobits Podcast topics, check out the Retrobits Podcast forum on the PETSCII Forums page! Our Theme Song is "Sweet" from the "Re-Think" album by Galigan. Thanks for listening! - Earl This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License.
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