We have been spoilt for qualify Retro computing books and documentaries over the past three to four years now and this week I watched another fantastic high-quality video called “Memoirs of a Spectrum Addict” which takes a detailed look at the ZX Spectrum, its history, developers, games, and fans.
The film is a unique tribute to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Memoirs of a Spectrum Addict has re-enactments, interviews like you’ve never seen before with major Spectrum industry figures, and features real people who grew up influenced by the Sinclair ZX Spectrum! Growing up in Australia where the Commodore 64 was king of all home computers we didn’t see too much of the ZX Spectrum accept in reviews and advertisements which appeared in the many UK magazines. While the Spectrum was sold in Australia by local distributors it never really gained a huge following due to availability, unlike the Commodore which was sold everywhere for computer shops to large chain outlets like K-Mart. The ZX Spectrum was very well supported by Australian companies like Melbourne House (Beam Software) and we never really got a chance to learn the in’s and out of the machine which despite its limitations like hardware scrolling, sprites and awesome sound of the Commodore SID chip managed to produced some fantastically good games.
During winter, last year I decided to head back to school, well online school and enrolled in a TAFE course called Certificate IV in Programming, the course covering quite a range of topics from JAVA, SQL, C# and ending with topics on copyright, user interface design and how to create technical documentation.
So why if I’ve been programming for 36 years would I want to do a TAFE course on programming? Well while I’ve coded tens of thousands of lines of code in many languages I’ve never actually received any certifications on the topic and thought it was about time I did.
It’s been a year I started the course and there are many things that I’ve learned during this time. Firstly, and most important was the rule of making sure that you read everything that is provided, don’t take anything for granted and even if you know a topic.
Firstly, and most important was the rule of making sure that you read everything that is provided, don’t take anything for granted and even if you know a topic quite well (such as SQL) don’t for a minute step through the learning material and jump straight into coding otherwise you’ll fail to deliver exactly what is being asked for.
Secondly, the whole topic of gathering requirements and producing technical documentation really showed me many areas in which I could get strong and that this would help me in my everyday work life.
Thirdly and probably the most important lesson I’ve learned is that while some of the materials have had mistakes, errors and some misleading information it is extremely important to open the lines of communication and seek clarity before continuing in the creation of code and documentation.
Now a few of my fellow students have not been happy with this but I have found that this tritely represents real life. Often clients aren’t always clear, often leave out critical information and unless you get good and reviewing what you have been supplied and learn how to ask questions you’ll always come off second best.
So, 12 months into the course I’m an approximately halfway through and still enjoying it, although finding the time and the necessary energy to sit down and study some evenings is sometimes difficult (especially after a long day in the office) but I’m persevering and before long I’ll have the Certificate IV.
Wow, its been years since I first tried the Atari Flashback console (the one that looked like a miniature Atari 7800) and while it was fun I was a little disappointed after a few hours. The result was to pack it up and hide it in the back of the wardrobe and pretty much forget about it.
Fast forward 12 years and I started to read articles and comments on a new Atari Flashback, a portable colour unit with 60 built-in games and the ability to run more Atari games from an SD card (if you have the ROMS).
So I tracked down a copy on eBay (from the UK) and ordered one to arrive just in time from my Christmas break and lucky for me it did.
I have gotten around to adding ROMS via the SD card yet but Ill soon attempt this to see just how easy it is. In the meantime, I found some time to play a few of my favourites like Adventure, Asteroids, Centipede and Frogger.
Every year I attempt to purchase a few books which Ill read and then find a home on my bookshelves for future reference and more than likely a possible re-read when time permits.
This year Ive been absolutely spoilt for choice and I cannot remember a previous time when so many good books on Video Games, Retro Software, Vintage computers and the companys than manufacture and produced them.
Starting with the Art of Atari which I think is one of the best coffee table books Ive ever read on Atari, focussing on artwork from the early arcades and VCS box art and telling the stories behind them.
If you’re into all things Atari or simply love the golden age of video games then this book will take you a walk down memory lane, and the artwork in simply amazing.
The next book is called Little Book of Video Games, and as the title says its little at only 128 pages and available in Kindle and Hard Cover (mine is the hardcover).
This fascinating book takes you through the history of computer games, from the golden age of arcade games in the late 1970s and 1980s, and the introduction of home computers, handheld games and, of course, all the classic consoles, right through to today’s revolutionary gaming without controllers.
Now the next few books come from Fusion Retro Books and written by Chris Wilkins. The first is The Story of the Commodore 64 in Pixels which is simply a great book covering much of the life of the worlds best-selling home computer which was of great interest to me as my company Alphaworks get a mention in the chapter on cartridges and the resurgence that occurred in the late 90s early 2000s.
The next few books were all based around the Sinclair Spectrum, while I only had a minor connection to this classic home computer I found two additional books again from Chris Wilkins which contain interviews with the programmers who wrote the classics and reviews of many popular titles. Unfortunately for me, I was only able to purchase volume 2 and 3 with volume 1 being out of print, so lets hope Chris does another print run so I can finish off my collection.
Being a longtime lover of Text Adventures since the late 70s I was surprised to see a book written about these wonderful titles. The Spectrum of Adventure: A Brief History of Interactive Fiction on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum written by Thomas A. Christie.
The Spectrum of Adventure chronicles the evolution of the text adventure on the ZX Spectrum, exploring the work of landmark software houses such as Melbourne House Software, Level 9 Computing, Delta 4 Software, the CRL Group, Magnetic Scrolls, and many others besides.
Covering one hundred individual games in all, this book celebrates the Spectrum’s thriving interactive fiction scene of the eighties, chronicling the achievements of major publishers as well as independent developers from the machine’s launch in 1982 until the end of the decade in 1989.
The last book added to my growing collection is probably my favorite simply based on the subject matter. Commodore VIC 20: A visual History which started life as a kick starter which I and many others backed has turned into an amazing book (only have the PDF version so far but the hard covered coffee table book is on its way).
A chronicling the history of the VIC 20, its peripherals, game cartridges and advertising this book has a wealth of history fully detailing all of Commodores releases and the box art scans are the best Ive ever seen for the VIC.
If you ever owned a VIC 20 or simply love retro computing Id strongly recommend grabbing a copy.
When I was a young kid back in the early 1980’s my parents decided that these new fang dangled video games machines would be fun to have but certainly wouldn’t encourage me to do my homework and to study harder so they turned instead to one of the many new and fascinating home computers coming onto the market and this is how I got introduced to the amazing little Commodore VIC 20 and BASIC 2.0.
It was Christmas morning 1981 and there is was, the Friendly computer along with a tape recorder and a couple of games on a cartridge and a manual describing how to plug everything together and what commands it understood.
Well knowing nothing about computers (except for a 20-minute play with an Apple II at school once) I set about following each page and diagram and before I knew it all the leads and connectors had homes and it was ready to turn on.
So what exactly is CBM BASIC V2 and why is there 3583 bytes free…
Ok, it’s on and by the looks of things READY. But really having no idea what to do or type I sat there watching the blinking blue cursor, just hoping something amazing would happen. Well, of course, nothing amazing happened and typing some random words achieved only a vague message stating there was a Syntax Error.
It was this stage that I continue to open the remaining packages, one of them with a huge dragon on the cover. Little did I know but I was opening Adventureland a text adventure game by Scott Adams and soon I’d be hooked. No only on adventure games but the idea of wanting to learn how such programs were made.
So there I was standing in a forest with exits all around and a voice BOOMING out to me. Treasures, adventure and a game that kept me entertained for many hours and when all treasures were safely stored away and the adventure was completed, including a map of everywhere I’d been and everything I’d seen, I was left wondering how was all this possible.
Over the next few months, I read page after page of commands, typed in line after line of example programs and cursed occasionally when errors in my typing caused SYNTAX ERRORS! But it wasn’t too long before I had some working and fun little programs which were great, but none of them were like Adventureland.
Soon I discovered more adventures, a whole series of Computer Classics which loaded in off cassette tape (slowly) and often would pause and need to load in additional information at certain points of the game but nonetheless these were fun.
I wasn’t looking before I ventured off to our local library to see whether they would have any computer books which I could borrow and learn from, maybe type in listings and perhaps information on how to create adventure games. Well, I was in luck, as now only did the library have books, it had two fantastic books on text adventures.
I couldn’t have asked for anything more, two books on adventure games. One of these books showed you how to create them and the other containing listings of complete text adventures including Adventureland by Scott Adams.
Now armed with information on how to makes these amazing little programs along with a number of examples from various authors on how they created adventures I set about creating my very own text adventure in just 3583 bytes of code.
Is there any other place in the world that has the charm of an old bookstore where millions of words and thousands of stories covering just about every topic you could possibly imagine reside at your fingertips.
On a recent visit to Brisbane, I dropped into one such bookstore, with isles and isles of books from floor to ceiling I spent quite some time reading, reviewing and eventually selecting a few pre-loved titles to had to my personal collection.
If you haven’t had such a journey in awhile then Id strongly recommend it.
Pokémon Go is the latest mobile game taking the world by storm. In a little over two weeks the interest in Pokémons has been nothing short of amazing, grabbing a new generation of players and rekindled older players interests.
Pokémon Go extremely easy to play, using swipes, taps and employing your phones built-in camera and GPS to give you walking AR experience which is simple a lot of fun.
Capturing Pokémons, hatching eggs and taking on the gym training ground will get you out of you lounge rooms and onto the streets and parks in search of these and more.
Ive never seen this level of impact on people before, being too young to remember when Space Invaders hit the arcades causing a coin shortage. Today I witnessed a large number of kids, young adults and not so young adults gathering in a local park all shuffling around, all with faces glued to their phone screens, it was truly incredible.
Back in the early 1980s Usborne Publishing released a series of computer programming books for the numerous 8bit computers that were available. These books served as a launch pad for many programmers and made complex functions simple.
Recently Usborne Publishing made these books available via their website free to download (PDF) so anyone wanting to relive the past or simply like to play around with some retro BASIC programming should check them out.
It’s been a long time since I started coding and over the past 30+ years if found that the continual challenges and enjoyment that coding has brought me to be a great way to past the time. Recently I was cleaning up some old paperwork and came across some early code of mine written from the Commodore 64 in 6502 assembler and I thought I’d share.
; ============================================================
; SAMPLE WEDGE - ADDING FOUR NEW BASIC COMMANDS
; 6502 ASSEMBLY CODE FOR THE COMMODORE 64
; ============================================================
; VERSION 2
; (c)1985 BY SCOTT JULIAN
; THIS SAMPLE SHOW YOU HOW TO ADD FOUR NEW BASIC COMMANDS. THE
; COMMANDS ARE SIMPLE AND USE SHOULD BE ABLE TO CREATE MORE
; COMMANDS OF YOUR OWN USING THIS FRAMEWORK.
; !CLS CLEAR SCREEN
; !BRD CHANGE BORDER COLOUR
; !SCR CHANGE SCREEN COLOUR
; !TXT CHANGE TEXT COLOUR
; !HELP DISPLAY LIST OF COMMANDS
; ============================================================
; STARTUP
; ============================================================
* = $C000 ; START ADDRESS 49152
; ============================================================
; KERNAL
; ============================================================
CHRGET = $0073
TXTPTR = $7A
IERROR = $0300
IMAIN = $0302
IGONE = $0308
GONE = $A7E4
CHKCOM = $AEFD
FRMNUM = $AD8A
GETADR = $B7F7
CHROUT = $FFD2
BORDER = $D020
SCREEN = $D021
TEXT = $0286
; ============================================================
; SETUP SCREEN DISPLAY
; ============================================================
LDA #4 ; CHANGE BORDER COLOUR TO
STA BORDER ; BLACK
LDA #147 ; PRINT CHR$(147) TO CLEAR
JSR CHROUT ; SCREEN
LDY #$00
DISPLAY LDA TITLE,Y
JSR CHROUT
INY
CPY #23 ; NUMBER OF CHARACTERS TO READ
BNE DISPLAY
; ============================================================
; CHANGE BASIC COMMAND POINTERS
; ============================================================
INIT LDX #<NEWBASIC
LDY #>NEWBASIC
STX IGONE
STY IGONE+1
RTS
LDX #$83
LDY #$A4
STX IMAIN ; ($0302)
STY IMAIN+1 ; ($0303)
; ============================================================
; CHECK FOR NEW COMMANDS, IS FIRST CHARACTER !
; ============================================================
NEWBASIC JSR CHRGET ; GET CHARACTER
CMP #'!' ; IS IT A "!" ?
BEQ CHK ; YES, CONTINUE
JMP GONE+3 ; NORMAL WORD
; ============================================================
; CHECK WHICH NEW COMMAND HAS BEEN ISSUED
; ============================================================
CHK JSR CHRGET ; GET NEXT CHARACTER
CMP #'C' ; IS IT A "C" ?
BEQ CLS ; YES, JUMP TO CLS
CMP #'B' ; IS IT A "B" ?
BEQ BDR ; YES, JUMP TO BRD
CMP #'S' ; IS IT A "S" ?
BEQ SCR ; YES, JUMP SCR
CMP #'T' ; IS IT A "T" ?
BEQ TEX ; YES, JUMP TEX
CMP #'H' ; IS IT A "H" ?
BEQ HELP ; YES, JUMP HELP
JMP (IERROR) ; JUMP TO ERROR CHECK
; ============================================================
; NEW COMMAND TO CLEAR SCREEN
; ============================================================
CLS JSR CHRGET ; GET THE L
JSR CHRGET ; GET THE S
LDA #$93 ; LOAD A WITH CHR$(147)
JSR CHROUT ; PRINT A
JMP GONE
; ============================================================
; NEW COMMAND TO CHANGE SCREEN COLOUR
; ============================================================
SCR JSR CHRGET ; GET THE C
JSR CHRGET ; GET THE R
JSR CHRGET ; GET THE ,
JSR CHKCOM ; SKIP THE COMMA
JSR FRMNUM ; EVALUATE NUMBER
JSR GETADR ; CONVERT TO A 2-BYTE INTEGER
; A HAS HI BYTE
; Y HAS LO BYTE
STY SCREEN ; PUT IN SCREEN COLOUR
JMP END2
; ============================================================
; NEW COMMAND TO CHANGE TEXT COLOUR
; ============================================================
TEX JSR CHRGET ; GET THE X
JSR CHRGET ; GET THE T
JSR CHRGET ; GET THE ,
JSR CHKCOM ; SKIP THE COMMA
JSR FRMNUM ; EVALUATE NUMBER
JSR GETADR ; CONVERT TO A 2-BYTE INTEGER
; A HAS HI BYTE
; Y HAS LO BYTE
STY TEXT ; PUT IN BORDER COLOUR
JMP END2
; ============================================================
; NEW COMMAND TO CHANGE BORDER COLOUR
; ============================================================
BDR JSR CHRGET ; GET THE D
JSR CHRGET ; GET THE R
JSR CHRGET ; GET THE ,
JSR CHKCOM ; SKIP THE COMMA
JSR FRMNUM ; EVALUATE NUMBER
JSR GETADR ; CONVERT TO A 2-BYTE INTEGER
; A HAS HI BYTE
; Y HAS LO BYTE
STY BORDER ; PUT IN BORDER COLOUR
JMP END2
; ============================================================
; HELP, DISPLAY ALL COMMANDS AND SYNTX
; ============================================================
HELP JSR CHRGET ; GET THE E
JSR CHRGET ; GET THE L
JSR CHRGET ; GET THE P
LDY #$00
DISHELP LDA HELPTX,Y
JSR CHROUT
INY
CPY #170 ; NUMBER OF CHARACTERS TO READ
BNE DISHELP
JMP GONE
; ============================================================
; RETURN TO BASIC PROMPT (READY)
; ============================================================
END2 SEC
LDA TXTPTR
SBC #$01
STA TXTPTR
LDA TXTPTR+1
SBC #$00
STA TXTPTR+1
JMP GONE
; ============================================================
; TEXT DISPLAY
; ============================================================
TITLE .BYTE $0D
.TEXT "SCOTTBASIC WEDGE V1.0" ; 20 CHARACTERS LONG
.BYTE $0D
HELPTX .BYTE $0D
.TEXT "!TXT,(0-15) CHANGES COLOUR OF TEXT"
.BYTE $0D
.TEXT "!BRD,(0-15) CHANGES COLOUR OF BORDER"
.BYTE $0D
.TEXT "!SCR,(0-15) CHANGES COLOUR OF SCREEN"
.BYTE $0D
.TEXT "!CLS CLEARS SCREEN"
.BYTE $0D
.TEXT "!HELP DISPLAYS COMMANDS"
Since the end of Commodore Business Machines in early 1993 there have been many attempts to revive the company and to use the name which is only remembered by us old timers and while these attempts have been made by various companies time and again they all fall by the wayside.
The latest attempt to bring the once famous brand back from the history pages has been a little different. Instead of attempting to cash in on a Commodore branded computer, either a Windows compatible or a remake of the classic Commodore 64 with the insides of a standard PC, this time, it is a mobile phone, something the original Commodore company never manufactured.
Commodore PET Android mobile phone
The original Commodore PET computer was released way back in 1977, it was one of a trio of computers which changed the world by making complete computers ready for business or home users (the others being TRS-80 model 1 and the Apple II).
It is believed that the new PET mobile phone will come bundled with a Commodore emulator.
