1980s computer memories (split from MDMA thread)

[1 salviashop @salviashop Participant]

I have CoinOps installed on a modded original xbox, it has thousands of games emulated from systems such as Atari, Commodore, Nintendo, sega and a whole lot more. Its extremely fun.

I once wrote a chess based game for the Atari ST and it got published on a ST user magazine front disc, think I got about £20 or £25 for it and obviously a mention in the magazine so was cool. I started coding back in the day on a Vic 20 so I go back awhile lol.

I collect retro computers and items and have 3 Atari ST’s, 3 Atari 65xe’s, 2 Commodore Vic 20’s, 3 Atari 2600’s, 4 Original XBox’s plus other consoles. im currently on the lookout for a Atari 130xe and Acorn Achimedes 3010.

[1 tryptameanie @tryptameanie Participant]

You fuckers make me feel like a technical retard.

A technitard.

[6 General Lighting @general-lighting Moderator Staff]

there are a lot of single board computers used in University for teaching purposes on there as well as Soviet equipment (often copies of Western microcomputers but with additions for the character sets and even some enhancements) and kit from elsewhere in Europe where they had mixed vocational / academic STEM courses at colleges.

I only know of some myself due to having an interest in both technology and languages which comes in handy today as I can read stuff in German, Dutch and Danish that retired profs put on line. I get the impression they do this for people like me who do not fit in well with conventional University teaching but still want to learn….

Britain did have a lead on IT in the early 1980s but by the late 80s the rest of Europe had eclipsed us as our govt was obsessed with defence/aerospace applications of technology and neglected its peaceful use particularly in the public utilities (as it wanted to privatise them) which put a lot of people (boys and girls alike) off technology as it had a bad reputation.

the rest of Europe didn’t rush to privatise these, and kept a lot of entry level jobs for apprentices and students who didn’t want to go to more academic universities; there were a lot of real time embedded systems based around Z80, 6502 and 68000 processors used in SCADA / building control.

Often we in Britain invent things (such as ARM chips) but the govt doesn’t realise you do need to still spend public money on education/training – everywhere in Europe the rush to privatisation (which led to apprenticeships being stopped for a few years) and bad use of technology has created a skills gap where your age group was the last generation to want to know “how and why does it work?” rather than just taking it for granted. Although its less worse elsewhere they too are now suffering with skills gaps and gender gaps (both are very bad); as younger people today are used to having everything handed to them already working or are overwhelmed with features/concepts before they get a chance to learn the basics!

[1 salviashop @salviashop Participant]

The reason the raspberry pi was created was to provide a lowcost computer for schools so that it could get more of the younger generation into coding, whilst the pi has been a success it is yet to been seen how the schools adoption of it has worked out. I think the idea was amazing and hope that it pays off. I learnt to code on a bbc micro at school so hopefully the pi has done the samething for the new generation.

Also the raspberry pi makes a great little retro game player using RetroPie.

[6 General Lighting @general-lighting Moderator Staff]

I also grew up in the generation that had access to BBC micros (which was why I picked the Z80 based computers to experiment with via emulators as they remained more of a challenge than 6502 assembler). I’m not a parent so don’t know what is happening at the frontline in my towns high schools (unlike nearby Cambridge this is not a particularly academic town, nor as it as high tech as Reading where I grew up (it is catching up fast though) – but from what I’ve seen on IT blogs and press particularly the junior schools aren’t doing too badly. They have got nearly 3 decades of neglect to catch up with, so getting round this would have to start with junior schools (at least high school kids today can afford to buy the equipment for themselves unlike when we were teenagers)

I did have RISC OS on one of my Raspberry PI’s (the other one is used as a specialist clock and control signal display for an online radio studio I am rebuilding) but I went back to Raspbian as I found the differences between RISC OS and Linux too much for my advancing years (these things all started up in early 90s when I was way too distracted by the rave scene starting up…)

[1 Iliesse @iliesse Participant Subscriber]

@Requiem 596749 wrote:

You fuckers make me feel like a technical retard.

A technitard.

For THIS Answer i wish give u 100 “likes” , certainly a new english word u just created.

[1 tryptameanie @tryptameanie Participant]

@iliesse 596835 wrote:

For THIS Answer i wish give u 100 “likes” , certainly a new english word u just created.

hahahaha.

[[deleted] @[deleted] Guest]

I started creating music on the Amiga 500..music x when /i was about 25 I think..

[6 General Lighting @general-lighting Moderator Staff]

TBH should have just got one of those 68000 based machines instead of going to University; would have learned a damn sight more but my parents especially Dad were insistent that getting a degree was the only way forward; the profs in my uni said in 1992 “no one will ever be able to afford these multimedia computers to make “pop music”; that is far too frivolous a use for them (which is a worryingly outdated viewpoint as “pop musicians” had been doing that already for 10 years ffs…)

unfortunately there is a 10 year gap in my knowledge roughly matching the heyday of the 1990s rave scene; that might not make sense given I used computers throughout all that time and had a few tech related jobs but the education system and IT industry of the 90s easily destroyed a young persons passion and interest through bad management and excessive stress.

I still had great fun adapting tech for underground purposes my knowledge gap is a bit of an annoyance today (thankfully so many systems of that era are obsolete so I can bluff my way round it, but I now have to spend my spare time reading downloaded papers from undergraduate uni courses to remind me of what I was supposed to have learned back then.

that said, there are young staff who work for me who actually have supposedly IT-related degrees but for some reason they do not teach those youngsters coding or problem solving skills; more importantly there really seems to be (in England at least) a lack of younger people with the passionate interest in technology of previous generations; which is not something you can just learn in school or college; although these places giving access to the technology does help. Requiem is to be fair one of the smarter lads of his generation (that is probably why I thought he was a Scot at first)

[1 tryptameanie @tryptameanie Participant]

@pikachops 596855 wrote:

I started creating music on the Amiga 500..music x when /i was about 25 I think..

I had completely forgotten the amigas. Maybe it’s dementia kicking in.

[6 General Lighting @general-lighting Moderator Staff]

in my case it was drugs; in spite of these being popular machines for first generation VJs and digital effects enthusiasts to use as their composite or RGB output was ideal to distribute to banks of monitors or TV screens. It wasn’t because me and my mates at the time didn’t see the value in this technology but most of us were too busy trying to find raves, drugs, maybe scrape together the kit to do a bit of DJ’ing and buy records – all this took a great deal of our available time, energy and resources and unless you were lucky to have a daytime job in a high tech IT role with lots of spare time and holidays and/or could get away with dealing without landing up inside, until the late 90s a lot of this stuff really wasn’t that affordable….

[1 tryptameanie @tryptameanie Participant]

Yeah thats true. I never managed to get the funds for an amiga 1200.

[6 General Lighting @general-lighting Moderator Staff]

its amazing how things have changed; I got given an obsolete DELL desktop which has a SVHS output as well as the usual DVI / VGA on its graphics card; it struggles with HD video playback but I’ve put Milkdrop on it, connected it to a 2005 era Philips CRT TV set [was the set in our old family house] and its impressive what graphics it can produce…

[1 tryptameanie @tryptameanie Participant]

Wow. Does that use AGP or does it even predate that?

[6 General Lighting @general-lighting Moderator Staff]

I think is an AGP card (must admit I am not an expert on GFX cards and just know of it as “the slot into which no other expansion cards will fit with a extra clip to hold the card in”)

you can even grab the composite video (not Y/C split) from the back of the SCART adaptor (that isn’t even supposed to work; I thought it would come out black and white) and feed it into a UHF modulator The video below shows this in action, the two cheap flat screen TV’s are tuned to a spare analogue frequency. The Toshiba flat screen (my mums old one; I gave her a better one as its not that good a picture close up) usually displays a time clock and control signal display.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR1kZx_rNCo

TBH I tried that “just because I could”; it was using cheap coax and the signal quality is rough by todays standards. Such experiments are discouraged in Germany where folk have communal antenna systems for the telly as if I were to accidentally (or deliberately) backfeed an antenna outlet that can also leak signals out which find their way into the TETRA radio sets of the blue light services and I’d end up like the dude below, the cartoon was from BNetZA (Communications Ministry) website.

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