This might be perhaps more suitable to off topic than general amiga, but since we are amigans, perhaps general amiga after all.

I have had idea about a book or internet blog articles, something like that for some time now, but havent really done anything about them.

Hence when Commodore Amiga: a visual Commpendium - Kisckstarter sent a message about xcopy memories, it reminded me about this thing, especially, since i had completly forgotten my X-copy memories already.


My thought is, that there is lot of Computer history, that are about to be forgotten, since no one is talking about them, and no one is doing, or likely, going to do anymore. There are also some things that might remain, but might be bit hard to come out anymore.

As example. There are still pixel arists, and will be, but it is different from 90s, when everyone was a pixel artist by default. And from those days you can remember figuring out how to make percet small rectangles.

Example of something that will be totally forgotten, is X-copy memories. People wont be using X-copy anymore, and 100 years later, no one can for sure tell what it was to use X-copy for common people, unless we leave our memories to them.

so, since i havent got that book idea anywhere concrete, i better share this idea, before it ends 6 feet deep, like many otehr great ideas have ended.

Heres some from me, and feel free to add your memories of things you think are right now going towards forgotten realm.

Some of these are based upon being a kid in those days, hence kids logic isnt always so solid, like the first X-copy memory from me:

- Trying to copy one third of blocks from one game, next third from second game, and last third from third game, in hopes of creating new game. An ultimate space shooter jump n run puzzle game by mixing XENON, Gianna Sisters and Treasure Island dizzy perhaps - Never worked. not a single time...

- Friends father who would use hes workplaces photocopy machine to copy game protections.

- Disks with my own drawings, like wings had a picture of an airplane, and powermonger had a picture of a knight.

- Gamelists that had such obscure categories as "Frog jumping game" and "pig jumping game", since obviously jump n run game with main character being frog or a pig were clearly worth their own cateogry.

- Tweaking the screw to right position for game to load (C64)

- Playing around with paint programs using that color cycling feature and using that color cycling to create some (obviously) short animations. plus that color cycling pictures of course too.

- breaking joysticks and at least one button not working. They dont break that easily anymore.

- being able to play computer 24/7, parents werent so worried of them yet when i was a kid, and like one friends mother commented when i asked about it "It is better he is inside playing computer, than outside stealing apples"

- programs in magazines.

- The world that was a new computer magazine each month. Today we get news everyday and live on it, but then, each month we leaped to next month of computer world. we didnt have watch taht showed seconds, but a clock that would only report months.

- computer magazines Cover disks and later Cds full of stuff.

- the missing/broken disk from a multidisk demo or a game.

- The additional stuff that came with games. For example a paper map about games world. that was excellent thing. Like augmented reality. It was a dreaming of great additional stuff coming with game that would make you feel more like you are in that game world. Today that doesnt interest anymore.

- Cassette games that contained games background story or music on other side for example, instead of them being in game as beeps.

- Books that contained listings of several games that you could make for your home computers.



Theres a good start. Let someone else continue for now.

Last edited by Bugala on 02-Dec-2014 at 09:44 PM.
Last edited by Bugala on 02-Dec-2014 at 09:42 PM.

Those mini games that you could playing whilst waiting for your chosen game to actually load!

_________________

@Bugala
Hole punchers for 5 1/4 inch disks to remove write protection.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Squareholepunch.jpg

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Weighty message. You should to read.

Once I was visited a relative family whose kids got a C64 without any storage device, nor cartridge.
In a half hour I wrote the simple "Ski" game on it and so the kids could play.
They were amazed to see that it is more than the flashing cursor on a blue screen. :)
The sad thing was, that when the machine turned off, the game is vanished hoplessly.

Quite unbelievable today, that you can do anything on a computer without any storage device.

@alexw

That reminds me of another i have forgot. Making HD disks into FD disks (or was that the purpose of it? cant remember) by drilling another hole to the other side of disk using schools drill.

@Lazi

Oh, I so hated turning off my MSX after i had made the game from one of those game books, since i didnt have cassette drive.

Never gave a try for the longest game listing on that book for that reason.

@Bugala and @Lazi
On the C64 I wanted to buy SEUCK, but none of the copies I bought worked at all, so I got a version from a friend which seemed to be some kind of demo version. Fully functional, but you couldn't save the game you created. So I created several nice games, played them for one session and lost them forever after turning off the computer. I especially remember one game, just a simple vertically scrolling endless labyrinth of 2 or 3 screens where 2 players tried to shoot each other. Had lots of fun with my brother on this game.

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Weighty message. You should to read.

Well, although this post looks like those comments from grandads about their houses with toilet in the garden, or about BW TV Sets with RF signal mixers and physical sliders for tuning, etc, I will add some, the first ones that come to my mind:

- a little box with a slider to attach both antenna and computer RF cables to the only ANT IN plug of the TV Set

- actually using a 2nd hand, refurbished or low-quality BW TV for computer output (that's what I did for my Commodore 16, for at least 1 whole year)

- learning coding in BASIC, simply modifying programs that someone else published on magazines or books

- bug fixing those damn numeric DATA lines used to code ML instructions on specific memory locations through BASIC lists

- going by bycicle to friend's home, at the exact opposite of the city, just to play a new game with him

- trying to copy a game using double cassette stereo decks

- the final cartridge III on the Commodore 64

- using Commodore 128's internal Monitor program to hack games running in 64 mode, turning back to 64 mode again and launching the game, still in RAM, issuing a SYS command

- "I will never switch from my Commodore 128 to any Amiga!"

- Hand made cable to handle both composite and RGBI signals of the Commodore 128 to a euro-SCART TV Set

- discovering that the cable was soldered right, however the TV Set was plainly crap, and that deadly flickering wouldn't occurr on a Philips CM8833 monitor

- the Xmas day I connected both my brand new Commodore 154I and a TV-color set to my C16

- buying a compatible cassette unit just to be able to hear data sounds while loading games, since Commodore original units lacked of that

- later on, remembering this every time my analog modem made handshacking to the Internet provider

there one big problem with your idea and that is how do you get people who are not of that era of computing interested, I love herring stories of old Amiga uses and old tech software and solution that people did on there Amiga but many kids of today are just not interested and I do feel its a shame when a lot of people now a day will have never even herd of the Amiga or so many only really remember it as a gaming machine when it was so much more, I personally really feel like it was the third platform of choice back in the day, PC, MAC and Amiga, of course there where many others OS back then but I'm guilty of the same problem I've just pointed out, if wasn't really Amiga back then I'm not as interested in the history of say the Acon OS, Atari OS etc and there famous software solutions.

So I do feel we need a way in to interest users in our platform history, that kinda why I came up with my Youtube videos, "way before....." as example very few even in the Amiga scene I feel are aware that Amiga had a role in the early Virtual Reality tech, so I made a little vid called "Way before Oculus and Morpheus, Amiga had VR 1000CS" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7mtN7Sxk-E ) as they are the current VR tech that people are interested in and maybe some people would be interested in the early days of this tech.

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Bringing home a disk of prince of persia for the.schools lciii mac hoping it against hope that.if could find a.way.*somehow* it would run on my apple iigs

Hoping I was included in on the grade 7 teachers setting up of the schools IIe network. And being told no.

Copying all of the schools iie 8bit software onto 5.25. Piece by piece(what does error bad blocks mean?)(dad was a teacher)

Begging dad for a.box of 3.5" floppies -$20 ur out of your mind!

Not knowing where the other kids got all their cool software from.

Dubbing music tapes for my siblings and wondering if I could use the 3.5mm audioport at the rear of the machine with a cassette icon.

Dad buying 100 5.25 disks in two boxes of 50.

Trying to explain to some ibm compatible user kid that I had no 'a' drive or 'b' drive I just inserted the disk and switched it on and it booted...or no a or b. I dont have cpm.


Playing with a friend on his c64 involved watching him play the coolest game I had ever seen. Giana sisters


W

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@paolone
Speaking of self-made cables: Carrying the A1200 with a self-made null modem cable to a friend's house to play Lotus 2 or Stunt Car Racer.

On the C16, my first computer: Playing the game "Tom" and trying to view the BASIC source code by entering "GRAPHIC 0" to turn off the graphics mode, not knowing that 1. the game is written in Assembler, 2. you can't enter commandos during the game, 3. it doesn't use the graphic mode anyway. But I found a nice cheat that way: Pressing "I" (or Joystick down) after you died will continue the game at the last collected treasure chest, key or opened door.

Playing games and writing programs on a black and white portable tv set.

Computer manuals which taught you a programming language.

Waiting 20 minutes for a game to load on datasette.

Replacing burnt fuses in my C16.

Multicolor modes with half the horizontal resolution by combining two pixels into one double pixel of one of four colors.

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Weighty message. You should to read.

@alexw

Also, the hole puncher could be used to make a one sided floppy a two sided floppy. You had to put a hole on the other side.

As I remember, you had to cover the hole with tape to write protect it...

Here are some things I remember:

Playing a computer tape in an audio player to hear the awful sounds it makes.

Having to hold down the lid on my Vic 20 Tape drive so the game would load correctly. Having to try two or three times to get a game to load.

Having my mom read code to me out of books line by line, to make a very simple game, or only to find out there is a bug in the code.

Making art out of the commodore graphics (ASCII?)

Finding random poke commands on the Commodore 64 to make the screen go crazy.

My dad selling mail order games on cassette tape (he made a Boggle game once for the C64)

Having to first load software to make your games load faster.

And, I'm sure we ALL did this:

10 PRINT "I AM AWESOME"
20 GOTO 10

Last edited by jabeck on 03-Dec-2014 at 02:37 PM.
Last edited by jabeck on 03-Dec-2014 at 02:35 PM.

Hi jabeck ,

In the late 80's I was lucky, I got a Spectrum+3 so I could save work on floppy disk.

Then in Christmas 1993 I got my Amiga 1200, complete with a massive 120 Meg 2.5 inch Hard Drive.

Back at work day 1 1994 I walked into my office to be told by one of my Sergeants "Chiefy you have a personal computer".

"Yes at home" I replied.

"But no this is a "real" computer" (He knew I had an Amiga).

"Show me" I said. And he went through some bloody awful palaver using a Huge Beige box involving pressing "F" Keys and typing, eventually saving his work to a floppy disk. (there was no Mouse).

"Now all I have to do is take this floppy disk across to Sqn Head Quarters and the Clerk will print off the document, good eh"

So that afternoon I took my A1200 in and formatted a disk MSDOS, loaded the Disk into the Amiga Computer (using a mouse) and typed some text using "Wordworth ver 4" then swapped the disk into the office IBM Computer which of course displayed the document which I corrected, saved and swapped back to my A1200 which displayed it.

"How's that then ?" I said, and handed my disk over so the document could get printed.

I used my A1200 at work until MS changed Document format that Wordworth ver 7.1 couldn't use.

I still use my A1200 (now towered) for DTP/Scanning and Printing with Turboprint etc.

Regards,

Michael

aka

rockape

Last edited by rockape on 05-Dec-2014 at 12:34 PM.
Last edited by rockape on 03-Dec-2014 at 08:02 PM.

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@amigang

My point with this is especially things like drawings on our own disks that we did. I dont remember ever seeing anyone mention those in any articles. Hence, they are about to get forgotten.

And although people in general might not be interested in these things, we must not forget that right now there are lots of people who are interested and studying in what people thousands of years ago did on their daily lives. Therefore this topic could be a goldmine in future for some archeologist trying to figure out how did they experience computers in 80s. Of course this can also result in someone else writing the book i was thinking myself, and dont seem to really be doing.

By the way, i have watched at least one of your videos, and if i correctly remember, i enjoyed watching it. Thanks from them.



Couple more memories came from other peoples comments:

- Trying to load normal song C-Cassette on C64 in hopes of getting game featuring that band. didnt work.

- Hopefully trying out if perhaps my A500 emulating PC could run Wolfenstein, at least 1 frame per 5 secs rate perhaps? Or even more desperate was the kid who was asking me if doom would work with at least 1 frame per hour rate on a500 emulating pc.

- Since same disks were used several times for several games, some smarter guys figured out to use numebrs on their disks instead of names, and they kept the names of the games on their book, making the disks look tidy all the time, and easier to find out your games and which to delete from way of new ones etc.

@Bugala
edit:
It would be great if they had commodore style 8 bit computers for sale.

Last edited by Trekiej on 04-Dec-2014 at 11:18 PM.

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John 3:16

@Trekiej

C-one, chameleon c64dtv cusa's c64 some pretty cool fpga cores.

_________________
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.

I serve King Jesus.
What/who do you serve?