I love that we're able to relive our youth, not only through collecting and emulation, but through brilliant podcasts and youtube channels such as This Week In Retro. If I could travel back in time and tell my 12 year old self that at age 55 I'd have my very own Mister powered arcade machine that plays pretty much everything I encountered in the arcades, and on consoles and computers, my 12 year old self would've been grinning from ear to ear, excited about getting older. Thanks again for all the great memories Neil and Dave!
early doors pedant here - strictly speaking, you can't technically have an infinite number of random procedurally generated planets, by the same principle that you would need an infinite number of dice to generate an infinite number of combinations. There comes a point where (1) they are so similar as to be indistinguishable and (2) you would need several thousand years to explore them all, which appears to be the case with Elite Dangerous. Also, Z80 forever :)
Hi, the atari 400 mini joystick (also called the cxstick) issue has a good recently devised community modification that is described in the genxgrownup video “is it junk or is it me”. It pretty much resolves the issue (while of course voiding your warranty)
Back in "the day" I was an assembler programmer. Mostly 6502 back then. My parents got me a C64 and then the 5.25 floppy drive. And I worked the floppy drive had 8k of NVRAM. Which I then used to detect when a disk was put in, detected the boot block to see if it was a commercial disk and if not and empty then write a boot block with a bit of code that had a bouncing sprite. The floppy drive functions where independent to the C64 so you could be playing a game and then put a floppy disk in and it would still write the boot block and code. You could remove it with the commodore key and c and it removes the boot block and clears NVRAM on the drive. so an early virus on a C64. Ironically I work in the encryption and security field of IT now...
Yes, Star Trek: The Next Generation is definitely something that takes me back too. And cool, Captain Blood on the ST uses part from Ethnocolor I. Nice!
While I haven't taken the time to count them myself I can find one review of Frontier Elite 2 from back in the day in which it states the game consists of 200,000,000,000 star systems, 30,000 of them being inhabited. The galaxy is considerably bigger than the star map that was included in the box. I've often wondered just how big it is and if a trip to the galactic core could be completed... EDIT: Picking up on the comments about the dos machines and accessibility I would have to partly disagree with Dave on the accessibility front. Yes exodos is great for what it does (when it works) but there is something to be said for booting up a vintage rig and learning the basic dos commands to launch a game. There are memory issues with certain titles but I think once you get into the 486 era most of those problems go away. It may be a bit of a learning curve but surely that's all part of the fun. I'm all for the new hardware for retro systems, not so sure the PCI-E card is that useful just yet but once it goes PCI or dare I say ISA I think it'll be a very sought after thing. If I had a request in the regard, give me an ISA card that can do VESA resolutions at a decent rate... that always felt like the missing thing. You had a VLB card with an option for 800x600 VESA resolutions but the game can't render quickly enough to be playable.
6502 was what I started on with my Apple ][. I self-taught myself basic, then 6502 machine language and then assembler language. It helped me learn how to logically think and plan out programs, which to this day (after 30+ years in the IT industry) has helped me grow into the lead app support/developer/engineering person I am at my company. Just celebrated my 24th year with them after leaving the consulting field after 6 years. How I miss the days of simplicity with the 6502 architecture. Those were fun times. Also, I eventually got a Z-80 card to add to my Apple so I could run CP/M and learn another architecture.
Fantastic show, as always. Descent will always bring me to a happy place. I just built a "new" gaming rig with my son and when he was out of his room, I installed Descent 1 and 2, just for the nostalgia and to see how great it played on an Nvidia RTG 2060. Obviously overkill and regardless of the age of the 2060 at this point, still a great GPU for most of the gaming out there.
The FPGA GPU is the beginning of my dream vision - a retro PC platform designed around pluggable modules. I want to see an entire ecosystem of interchangeable PC components, just like when you walked into a computer store in 1994. Pick your case (old yellowed classic, modern ATX, or something bespoke), your motherboard with FPGA chipset and real or FPGA CPU, your sound and graphics card with FPGA cores, FPGA-based controller card that gives you real game and serial ports, and real floppy and IDE interfaces (or, if you would rather, an SD or CF slot)… Imagine being able to build your dream system. Output to VGA to plug into a real CRT, or HDMI for compatibility. Plug in PS/2 input devices, or do on-the-fly conversion from USB, or BT. Run actual DOS and games, unmodified, on for all intents and purposes “real” hardware. It would be cool as well, or instead, to take advantage of density to design this into a 3/4 scale system. Maybe you wouldn’t be able to mount physical drives, or mix and match with actual ISA cards, but having repro cases inspired by classic OEM systems or beloved mystery Taiwanese cases.. I would love that.
i have a similar idea. and it is based on the atari 2600. the reasons: * it needs to be based on an existing attractive system and community * cartridges are a nice sustainable way to sell / trade games * the old 2600 sells at 100€, the newer jr. - which has the same hardware inside - 20€. that means the old iconic case ist the most beautiful console of all consoles * constructing a new module based PCB with minimum original parts that can do the same like the atari 2600. that allows the user to have a simple starting point. * pimping the system: 65816 cpu 512kb or more memory rgb out, hdmi out, audio module, rom-module, i/o- module bluetooth/wifi,... new fpga based video module. retro people like to upgrade 🙂 step by step with the single component like the cpu, ram etc. being cheap but the whole upgrade cost is not that important.
I would really like a BBC Micro keyboard. The original key layout just doesn't fit a normal PC keyboard at all. Appreciate it's quite niche and we'll probably never see one though 😢
Jeah, i have that mikrobitti that reviewed of illuminatus :D And 6502 was used worldwide because of C64, not just in UK like that tsed 80 sinclair machine never heard anywere else. ;)
Oh, yeah. The "MikroBitti" sounded pretty close to what it is supposed to sound. And I definitely remember the Illuminatus - I was a subscriber to the magazine when that article was first published. Other april fools -articles from other years that I remember was around the time when the cash machines were a rather new thing and the inkjet printers were new. The banks were supposed to start handing out special inkjet cartridges sets, with the correct type of banknote paper so that you could start printing your own money - which was of course taken from your bank account (it wasn't FREE money, after all). But the handing out of those sets were supposed to start April 1st when the banks opened... 😃
Great show. It baffles me how people upgrade their TV to HD but haven’t got a Bluray player. I do have some DVDs still (even laserdisc for the sound) for films etc I can’t get on Bluray or that have been altered (the awful DNR version of True Lies that’s has come out on 4K) but I find the format doesn’t look right on anything that isn’t a CRT. Glad folk going back to physical media anyway it’s far better as they can’t alter the content as you own it. I’m not a fan of streaming bar RU-vid as the sound and picture isn’t up to a good 4K disc.
I did have books on Z80 for the Spectrum back in the day. Much later I learned myself 68A09 for the Vectrex. Now I'm learning 6507 for the ATARI 2600. Assembly isn't really that hard to learn. You just need to know a bit about how the actual hardware works.
What retirement home are you going to Neil? Stuff the 6502. I'll bring over an RS232 cable and a couple of copies of Falcon. You know this needs to happen ;) :D
Apparently Microsoft created this arbitrary limit of to 32GB because FAT is ineficient and the larger the drive the more exponentially significant the amount of wasted space becomes. They did it to compel people to choose the new NTFS format for large drives, which is much more efficient. You can get third party apps that will format larger drives in FAT16/32 if you need to. Windows also offers "exFAT" in the good old format menu for larger drive sizes.
"complete fully formed audio tracks into tiny amounts of code" or IDCFFATITAOC was once considered as an alternative to "smashing pumpkins into small pieces of putrid debris". but Carmack wasn't into Amigas.
No doubt that the 6502 was the single most important 8-bit chip from a purely American perspective, but the Z80 was more influential in both Europe and Japan, powering both the Spectrum and Amstrad as well as the MSX range as well as the Master system and most of the golden age Japanese arcade games of that era. 8-bit guy has a track record of being a little partisan in that respect.
This stuff fascinates me. The 6502 and Z80 sold similar numbers. Both MOS Technology and Zilog were US companies and had significant worldwide impacts to 8 bit computer development. Oddly, they were also both “evolutions” of earlier processors (the Motorola 6800 and Intel 8080 which was itself a further development of the 8008 and 4004).
I doubt that the 6502 was in more computers than the Z80 - "Category:Z80-based home computers" on Wikipedia lists 86 different models, while "Category:6502-based home computers" lists only 31. Even if the 6502 Evangelists have been slacking and not keeping Wikipedia up to date, I believe Z80 was the most common CPU. People like 8-bit guy has a retro world revolving around Atari 2600, PETs and Apple IIs. There is more out there.
VPin is fantastic however it's a steep learning curve. High FPS Playfield TVs seem to be preferable. Got a Sharpin King, the CNC woodwork is great, software support was shit. Getting an AtGames one is another option, the 4k one seems to need some refinement. But in addition to the AtGames ecosystem you can also connect a PC.
in frontier it's millions at least in I think? or billions? it's a seed system, it's same for everyone. it's random-not random since the seed systems remain same, it's same for every player. the amount of inhabited stars is just hundreds I think. but you can scroll the map as long as you have patience for basically. you can scoop fuel to do that and you need to do that to finish the 'story' in FFE. few of the systems are handcoded like sol. and the regions for the factions
its heavy-T, the double T, like whitty. eeek/s! not so whitey. if you stop counting time, you have time for all the things. even being pro in assembly. whats the hurry even. updating whole hardware firmware microcode. to update hardware algorithms protocols generations compatibility etc is nice. yep you can take a cyclone v pci-e card and program it to gpu. yep terasic has that off-the-shelf. fpga gpu can use whatever driver interface it wants. like opengl. how many logic units in the xilinx soc chip. older laptop gpu's did not have so many cores. and the terasic acceleration card has pci-e connector and stock outputs. ie mister gpu core. 110K logic units at 400-800MHz. 1g of ddr3 memory etc. well, terasic DE10 nano with cyclone V soc, you can try making an fpga GPU to be used in linux on the arm side of the soc. compared to God you have barely any age. yes I mean a full opengl compatible fpga gpu on the DE10nano.
Watched 8-bit Guy's 6502 video, worth a watch for some interesting facts*. First computer i used with a 6502 was a Commodore Pet, Vic20, C64 then BBC Micro. All of those at school and in that order. I've always thought of the C64 when i hear 6502. Although these days i often think of the Apple II and variants, mainly as a watch a lot of Adrian's Digital Basement. // TODO remove before posting void iThinkYouWillFind() { I think you'll find... The 6502 in the SNES was a 65816, the 16-bit version. 24-bit addressing like the 68000. 16-bit internally, externally 8-bit, its like Dr Who's Tardis, or... bigger on the inside like the 68000. I suppose 6502 to 65816 is more like 68000 to 68020. Well not really as the '020 went full 32-bit. Maybe 286 to 386SX? Wait... that makes the SNES 8-bit, not 16-bit! I'm sure this has never been discussed before? 😆 } *Oh and Bender from Futerama runs on a 6502, obviously much faster than today's models even if the data bus is still 8-bit.
