1980s computer memories (split from MDMA thread)

[1 tryptameanie @tryptameanie Participant]

Think I got a ZX Spectrum that year for christmas. That’s how close I was to MDMa in 1987 lol.

Probably the closest thing I’d had to drugs at that age :laugh_at::laugh_at:

[1 Iliesse @iliesse Participant Subscriber]

@Tryptameanie 576369 wrote:

Think I got a ZX Spectrum that year for christmas. That’s how close I was to MDMa in 1987 lol.

Probably the closest thing I’d had to drugs at that age :laugh_at::laugh_at:

ohohoh, I know am old, but i had also the zx spectrum and it was 1984. MDMA came for the first time in switzerland in 1985 : I can remember it very good cuz it was while a very famous music festival in my city “Nyon” called “Paleo folk festival” and the papers had put it on the first page “new drug arrived in switzerland : Extasy”

nothing more to say than : LIFE GOES ON

[1 tryptameanie @tryptameanie Participant]

Just had a check. It was 1998 I got the spectrum, was the zx 128k. Had to check cos 1984 didn’t seem righ but you were on about the 48k.

[1 Iliesse @iliesse Participant Subscriber]

@Requiem 576678 wrote:

Just had a check. It was 1998 I got the spectrum, was the zx 128k. Had to check cos 1984 didn’t seem righ but you were on about the 48k.

I think u r totally wrong with dates A zx spectrum in 1998 ??? :laugh_at:, I bought my first PC Athena 386 in 1992 while I was studying in Geneva, i remember it was the first time u didn’t really needs to know DOS knowledge and one of the first Windows 3.1 version

and 1995, i bought my first pentium PC with the windows 95 version

So i think u have a decade problem with dates :laugh_at: around 1984 i had the ZX Spectrum 16k or 48k or 64k, And 2-3 years later came out the famous Comodore 64 and u had probably around 1987 a zx spectrum 128k (I still have my Spectrum but isn’t working anymore as they didn’t exist the flash memory (not sure), but at this time something was missing inside these first computers “family”, which avoid the lost off all the internal exploitation system machine code, so these kind of computers needed minimum once a year to be supplied with power.

BUT MAYBE U BOUGHT IN ON AN FLEA MARKET IN 1998, IF RIGHT, HOPE U DIDN’T GIVE MORE THAN 25 £

[1 tryptameanie @tryptameanie Participant]

Nooooooooo my fat fingers made me 10 years out lol was meant to be 1988.

Almost put 1888 then lol.

[6 General Lighting @general-lighting Moderator Staff]

lol I always though you were way younger than me or illesse but there can’t be that many years difference…

it is more likely the elcos have degraded in illesses ZX spectrum (or any other electronics of that age) than the ROM developing defects, (although this can happen); unfortunately if an elco has gone short circuit rather than open it will take a a fair few other components on the PCB with it 🙁

at least there are lots of emulators about and with all the features we could only have dreamed off as lads (this link is for an Amstrad/Schneider Z80 based micro but I got it from a whole load of links for emulators which included ZX Spectrums. the bulk of them seemed to be in German; writing these things is clearly a popular hobby out there)

https://www.partyvibe.com/forums/computers-gadgets-technology/74436-some-retro-stuff.html

Slightly related to the original thread is that the dude who wrote Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy was heavily into psychedelics (more so after becoming famous but I think he must have done a fair few when writing those games)

[1 tryptameanie @tryptameanie Participant]

I’m 33 GL.

[6 General Lighting @general-lighting Moderator Staff]

I’d thought you were somewhere between late 20s to mid 30s but wasn’t 100% sure – smarter young people can come across as older than they actually are, but a lot of people (both boys and girls) develop an interest in technology at a very early age. it was 1981 before I first was able to use a computer (in junior school) but in the late 70s I was even then interested in audio equipment, radios of all sorts (was listening to cops and fire brigade even then as their radios were in the middle of FM broadcast band (against international advice and agreements)) and in 1978 some hippy friend of my Dad had turned up at a launderette my parents once owned and waving a copy of the New Scientist; he was telling my parents quite excitedly “teach your son about these computers; soon they will be everywhere..”

[1 Iliesse @iliesse Participant Subscriber]

@General Lighting 596632 wrote:

lol I always though you were way younger than me or illesse but there can’t be that many years difference…

it is more likely the elcos have degraded in illesses ZX spectrum (or any other electronics of that age) than the ROM developing defects, (although this can happen); unfortunately if an elco has gone short circuit rather than open it will take a a fair few other components on the PCB with it 🙁

at least there are lots of emulators about and with all the features we could only have dreamed off as lads (this link is for an Amstrad/Schneider Z80 based micro but I got it from a whole load of links for emulators which included ZX Spectrums. the bulk of them seemed to be in German; writing these things is clearly a popular hobby out there)

https://www.partyvibe.com/forums/computers-gadgets-technology/74436-some-retro-stuff.html

Slightly related to the original thread is that the dude who wrote Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy was heavily into psychedelics (more so after becoming famous but I think he must have done a fair few when writing those games)

like i said (am not sure if it was the rom or ram) but i asked a computer shop in the late 90’s why my zx wasn’t working anymore and he explainesd me that at this time the rom or ram needed to be supplied to avoid the lost of machine code. maybe only to charge a condensator which released slowly his energy to keep the data inside.

So u surely knows the famous mame32 emulator project which is working on all arcade games released since the 70’s and all first computers systems like comodore, spectrum for maybe 20 years now. i uploaded all these games and are remembering me that game “JET SET wILLY” which i really was one of my likely games i played and was certainly my entry in the addiction world…
:sign0020:
I DON’T KNOW WHY , BUT IN EACH THREAD I GO, AM ALWAYS :sign0006: THIS THREAD TITLE WAS INITIALLY “Have You Tried MDMA?“

[1 tryptameanie @tryptameanie Participant]

Yeah I have copy of mame iliesse rea;lly love being able to play games from my youth and even before. Plus there’s an emulator available for every home system I ever owned and every ROM i ever dreamed of. Even typing this is bringing back memories :).

[6 General Lighting @general-lighting Moderator Staff]

I will split this thread so the computer stuff can go in a separate one as we are supposed to be usng the drugs threads for harm reduction; as there isn’t a tech section on here (or I haven’t found it) and I can’t split threads across the two sites I’ll put it in chat.

[6 General Lighting @general-lighting Moderator Staff]

thread is now in new place…

@Requiem 596737 wrote:

Yeah I have copy of mame iliesse rea;lly love being able to play games from my youth and even before. Plus there’s an emulator available for every home system I ever owned and every ROM i ever dreamed of. Even typing this is bringing back memories :).

there is MAME and also MESS that emulates computer systems as well as consoles (the project are linked) and many other Windows and Linux based emulators of 8-bit machines.

In the late 80s / early 90s I did dabble with Spectrum games development but it was becoming an obsolete platform (being eclipsed by consoles); there wasn’t the market demand for individual young developers and the screen memory mapping was really confusing and my assembler code wasn’t optimised well enough to deal with multiple sprites on screen. I have forgotten most of how to do that anyway over the years; the Amstrad assembler code was as much as I could stretch to today and I had to use multiple cheat sheets to remind me of the syntax and what registers were used for each function….

being able to get a nice big assembler editor screen and a monitor on the virtual machine is luxury compared to what devs had back in the day (until late 1980s it meant physically connecting up a CP/M business computer, a Tandy TRS series or the Japanese Sharp computers to a ZX spectrum with a DIY interface built from the PIO/SIO chips, veroboard and edge connector and writing your own low level kernel drivers to interface them…

[1 tryptameanie @tryptameanie Participant]

Never come across MESS GL so thanks for mentioning it,will look at it.

[6 General Lighting @general-lighting Moderator Staff]

theres a link to it on the MAME site; it might have been rebranded as something else. I remember the link taking me to an Italian site with a list of supported systems (the site was in English) so there could be yet another acronym for the same app in Italian.

In the end as I only wanted emulators for a few specific European 8 bit systems I downloaded Windows builds of these, but I think the Germans who write the bulk of these contribute the Z80 emulator core to MAME and work closely with its development; a lot of them build Z80 single board computers out of their hoard of chips which are becoming hard to find.

I think the electronics industry in DE, AT, DK and NL lets engineers have months of time off when work isn’t as plentiful but they still keep their job or have more supportive benefits as lads and lasses my age have loads of spare time for hobby projects compared to Blighty; its not uncommon for these folk to restart their high school computer project from the 80s and make it even better with todays tech…

[1 tryptameanie @tryptameanie Participant]

Wow I just looked at MESS and it looks immense and I have never even heard of vast numbers of them. List of supported systems is here:

http://www.progettoemma.net/mess/sysset.php

I’ve always used a separate emulator for each system in the past but maybe I’ll switch to that.

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