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by **seige** » Nov 9th, '06, 15:33

Well, I've been using a computer since the age of eight, learned to program a ZX80 by the age of nine, and gone on from strength to strength ever since.

However...

Things like this still amaze me:
http://www.nofear.org/Archives/2003/05/demos.html

Don't worry, they're not viri.

Imagine: the first demo is 11 minutes long, WITH a soundtrack, and fits into 64kb of memory—about 1/1000 of a small digital photo (about the same size in graphics terms as a full screen pic at very low resolution/compression).

Bear in mind that a CD ROM can hold 650Mb, or 665,600kb.

For those of you interested, as far as CODE goes, 64kb of code is 524,288 digits long. Yes. That's right.

Amazing stuff

by **Charles Calthrop** » Nov 9th, '06, 16:00

I used to do this kind of stuff on my Amiga (with a couple of other guys - an artist and a musician). It's great, on a technical level, to see people squeezing as much as they can out of limited resources, whether it's pushing the hardware or fitting into tiny memory constraints.

Makes you wonder what Microsoft could do with modern PCs if they really tried!

by **seige** » Nov 9th, '06, 16:08

Ahhh yes, the days of Amiga and Atari 'Demos'.

Used to be quite a trend, spinning chequered balls with 'tracker' music pumping away.

Ooooohhhh, the good old days. These youngster's don't quite know what they missed

by **IAIN** » Nov 9th, '06, 16:12

10 PRINT "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10
RUN

the genius of a Spectrum, having to type in pokes from CRASH magazine to cheat at ATIC ATTAK and jet set willy....aaah lords of midnight was one of my favourites...and deathchase 2000...

by **Mandrake** » Nov 9th, '06, 16:15

Aaargh, after all these years - the nightmare of a GOSUB without a RETURN comes back to haunt me :evil:

!!!

by **seige** » Nov 9th, '06, 16:21

Actually, the thing which haunted me most wasn't programming 'Basic', it was using machine code... at least with Basic you could check subroutines etc. out to test them, whereas, with machine code, it was a LOT of work before you got a result!

Talking of pokes, peeks and the like, I happened across a Spectrum emulator, and an Amiga emulator t'other week.

I can't WAIT to have a whack at Manic Miner or Zool

by **Mandrake** » Nov 9th, '06, 16:23

Anyone for Horace and the Spiders?

by **IAIN** » Nov 9th, '06, 16:28

my mate's got a working 48k speccy still, we played Mugsy over a few beers the other week - genius...

i remember the drum machine you could get for it - and the talking chess game you had to wire up to your tape player and leave playing...

i loved my spectrum...i was a keyboard purist though, no joysticks thank you very much...

im getting mad flash backs now!

Barry mcguigan's boxing - superb, a white daley thompson's decathalon, and the sudden heartbrake of a poke or gosub routine going wrong... :cry:

by **Pcwizme** » Nov 9th, '06, 16:31

i have a working BBC mirco in mo posession (i am younger than it lol) and a working Atari ST!

and best game on the micro... REPTON!!!!!

and on the atari...Double Dragon!!!

by **seige** » Nov 9th, '06, 16:39

Here's a post of mine from another thread

lol

Yep, I still have, packed away for all eternity:

1. My original ZX80
2. Original ZX81
3. Sinclair Spectrum, 48k
4. Spectrum, 128k
5. Sinclair QL
6. BBC Micro
7. Various Commodores, Amigas, 64 etc.
8. Various Atari etc.

Now, all of those above machines are the FORERUNNERS for most modern TV games systems, in my opinion. Bear in mind that the ZX80 had 1k of memory. This was for the OS AND the applications.

For the uninitiated, in those days, games started off being provided as pages of code, which you could key in from a magazine, line by line. At the end of your coding, you had a game!

Then came tape cassette drives, allowing you to load/save data to standard auto tapes.

Sinclair then produced a Microdrive, allowing you to save bigger files, faster.

Floppies arrived a bit later, and then with my Atari's I got into the VERY expensive world of hard drives (I think my 2MB HD cost around £180).

Now, a lot of these systems would run a playable, addictive game in less than 48k of memory. Trouble was, loading times were slow.

Modern games consoles are such a leap ahead, and desktop computers even further in terms of graphics and scale.

In terms of addictiveness, nothing even comes close to Manic Miner on the Spectrum... possibly the forerunner of all Platformer games.

Call me a magpie, but I just cannot part with my old computers

by **Charles Calthrop** » Nov 9th, '06, 16:43

This is going to turn into a swamp of geeky nostalgia very quickly.

Repton was indeed great, as were a lot of of the games Superior produced. I've had Amiga and BBC emulation going for a while. Since I know I've got those games in a box in the loft somewhere I don't mind downloading them. And there's some great stuff. Some of those old Infocom text adventures....Time-eating genius.

Games haven't really got any better in the last 25 years, just flashier. I still don't think I've played a better sports game than Speedball 2.

Oops. I think I just lost my shoe. Someone pull me out!

by **IAIN** » Nov 9th, '06, 16:43

i remember a physics teacher in secondary school berating us for owning a 48k spectrum and some who dumped or sold their ZX80s - he reckoned he had them wired up around his house to turn switches on and off...

whether thats true or not, i cannot say - i never got invited round his house for conkers and gin...

i imagined him to live within a giant robot he built in his backyard...wearing a tinfoil suit....

by **Charles Calthrop** » Nov 9th, '06, 16:47

A QL?! You mean you were the one?
Did they ever get those bloody microdrives to work? Or the keys for that matter?

by **seige** » Nov 9th, '06, 16:55

Charles Calthrop wrote:A QL?! You mean you were the one?
Did they ever get those bloody microdrives to work? Or the keys for that matter?

The Microdrives were fantastic, but very temperamental! And no, the QL keyboard never quite felt right or worked for that long.

With all Sinclair kit, I remember constantly having to beg Dad to send it back and get it replaced with one that worked... very poorly made.

As far as home automation, all was possible. I had an expansion for the Spectrum which had a four way relay switch setup, allowing you to turn each on or off from a program running. Highly cool for it's day.

And I also had the fortunate luck to have one of these:
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/hardware/feat38.html

Oh, and a thermal printer for my Speccy... which 'burned' black imagery onto silver paper. All very ingenious, but sadly lost in the mists of time.

Oh, and by the Chuckie Egg.

by **IAIN** » Nov 9th, '06, 17:01

Fairlight! Genius...

remember all those 3-d isometric games by Ultimate...a little chubby Batman...

ah enough, i shall just go on and on...

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