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- VIC-20 Adventures: The Return Journey
- River Software Down Under: Bringing British Adventures to Australia
- Rian Rookaby and the Quest for the Sun: How a School Work Experience Became a Professional Game
- The Night the Modem Answered: How We Built a BBS from Scratch in 1986
- Relics from the Past: Rescuing a Lost Adventure, 39 Years Later
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Category Archives: Software
VIC-20 Adventures: The Return Journey
An Update Five Years in the Making Back in May 2020, I wrote about a collection of text adventures I’d created for the Commodore VIC-20 between 1983 and 1984. At the time, I reflected on those six games—two released, four … Continue reading
Posted in Commodore, Commodore, Uncategorized
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River Software Down Under: Bringing British Adventures to Australia
1991. The home computer industry was moving fast — CD-ROMs were looming on the horizon, console gaming was muscling in on the market, and the golden age of the text adventure was flickering like a candle in a storm. I was … Continue reading
Rian Rookaby and the Quest for the Sun: How a School Work Experience Became a Professional Game
September 1986. I was a Year 10 student at a regional high school in New South Wales, and I was about to get my first taste of the computer industry. My work experience placement was at a local computer shop called RAMROD — … Continue reading
Posted in Atari ST, ATARI ST, Programming, Retro, STOS
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The Night the Modem Answered: How We Built a BBS from Scratch in 1986
Monday, June 30, 1986. The cursor blinked. The modem crackled. And then — it happened. A phone line in Umina, NSW, rang in the dead of night, and a Commodore 64 answered it. That was the moment everything changed. After six months … Continue reading
Posted in 8 Bit Computer, BASIC, Commodore, Programming, Retro
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Relics from the Past: Rescuing a Lost Adventure, 39 Years Later
2020. The world had stopped. Locked down, grounded, and suddenly confronted with more time than I knew what to do with, I did what any self-respecting hoarder of computing history would do: I dragged out the boxes. Dozens of them. … Continue reading
Posted in Commodore, Programming, Software
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SNAKE – VIC 20
Had a few nights free recently so was inspired to create a simple game for the unexpanded Commodore VIC – 20 using BASIC v2.0. For those who have programmed the VIC 20 in BASIC realise that you only have 3.5KB … Continue reading
Posted in BASIC, Commodore, Programming
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Discover a utility from the past
I’ve been continuing to clean up old documents, backup, and take the time to sort these out. Unsurprisingly, after 40 years of working with, programming and running various computer/software-related businesses, I would gather so much stuff. I’m slowly putting it … Continue reading
STM8 BASIC
Well continuing on from my last post with an Arduino Nano running TinyBASIC with it 1k of memory I’ve gone one step further and picked up an STM8 BASIC dev board (STM8S103F3 Microcontroller) which is running BASIC and has 611 … Continue reading
Posted in Hardware, Micro controller, Software
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SC131 ‘Z80’ SBC
I’ve had this item on my to do list since 1991 and at the time I got hold of some great books on the topic and sketched out some basic designs I never found the time to design/build my very … Continue reading
Posted in 8 Bit Computer, CPM, Hardware
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Vital Message
My second BASIC to C conversion using the classic Usborne 1980s computer books which helped many of today’s tech professionals were inspired by the Usborne computing books they read as children. The books included program listings for such iconic computers as the … Continue reading