All -
Since everybody has been so helpful with my previous queries, I have one
more...
In 1983/84, DEC came out with their own versions of the Infocom games.
They were in DEC's 'Digital Classified Software' line and were for the
Rainbow and the DECMate II (and perhaps other systems). They came in large
gray sleeves that were different than the usual Infocom packaging. Here's
an example:
http://yois.if-legends.org/vault.php?id=553
I've been having a heck of a time finding someone who still has these
things. I'd very much like to scan the covers to use with the book. If
anyone has any of these, I'd appreciate hearing from you.
Also, I understand there was a version of Deadline that came with the
Osborne. If anyone has this I'd like to hear from them as well.
Thanks!
- Rick
Zane, Ethan's list of PDP-11 games agrees with mine. Note that the PDP-11
games would have come in Infocom's regular packaging, not the DEC gray
sleeve packaging.
Stefan, I have a press release which mentions that Infocom was going to do
games for the Professional, but I haven't actually found any nor are any
listed in their catalogs.
- Rick
Here's the majority of the lecture and workshop lineup for Vintage
Computer Festival East 8.0, May 5-6, Wall, N.J. (we will announce one
more lecture in the near future):
On the lecture front:
- Saturday opening: me
- History of Commodore part 2: Bil Herd
- Life, Death, and Afterlife of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No.
2: Marcin Wichary
- The Invention of BASIC: Thomas Kurtz
- Sunday opening: me
- History and Impact of Analog Computing: Kent Lundford
- Apple's Early Years: Dan Kottke
On the workshop front, we've got:
- Intro to Vintage Software Restoration: Bill Degnan
- Intro to Minicomputer Care & Feeding: Dave McGuire
- How it's Done: 8-Bit Chiptune Music: Don Miller & friends
- Intro to Commodore 8-Bit Maintenance: Bil Herd
- Intro to Apple II Maintenance: Mike Willegal
- Intro to S-100 Zen & Innerworkings: Jon Chapman
- Build a Vector Graphics Kit: Dan Roganti
Hi Tony,
> I beleive that for the Diskferret I can get sources for everything (of
> course soembody might write closed-source softwre to work with it). For
> your device, which parts can I get the soruce for, and which can I not
> get it for? Are there any file formats involved that are not fully
> docuemtned?
You get the schematics for the hardware (PDF) and you get the software
(binary). Both are free for private, non-commercial usage. You also have
access to our own formats, STREAM (as documentation) and IPF (storing
the mastering data, created by us; comes as fully documented source and
you have the forums with more information as well). That means you have
full control over the data you ingested.
> No, I think you misunderstood me here. I was talking aobut modifying
> the hardware to talk to other types of drives, other devices even. Not
> hadnling unusual ewncoding schems on devices (such as flopy drives)
> that are supported by the hardware.
You can of course modify the hardware you built, or ours, as needed, as
you will know where the signals go to. You would however need to work
with us, to make us support the new formats. Nevertheless this would
mean going beyond what it does now and what it was designed for.
> That is correct (well, actually, I can't be sure becuase I don;t know who
> is in yor organisation)/
You would for sure have noticed, as the team working on KryoFlux is
pretty small (Istv?n, Kieron, two porters (Adam, Alex), me). I still
hold on to my opinion that if someone does not know someone else, how
can he make statements about them or their work ethic?
> That is not what I am doing at all. I feel that money is not a motivator
> at all (or at beast a very minor motivator) for good programmers and
> designers. And thus that there's no correlation between whether or not
> something costs money and how well-designed it is. I interpretted your
> original message as implying that you clained your device was better than
> the Diskferret becuase it was commercial amd you employed commerical
> progrmmers. My ecperience suggests that is faulty reasoning.
Then why do people get paid in their daytime job? I do like my daytime
job, I get paid for it. But how could I afford leaving it for a week,
working for free, to make something happen? This has grown beyond a
hobby. We already support the formats we ever needed or wanted. We do
enjoy doing this, but I don't see why I would assign someone to reverse
and implement a format (take Emulator I+II for example), which takes a
lot of expertise and manpower, to e.g. support a commercial studio that
wants to recover sampling data from their old floppies. These people pay
for the unpaid leave from daytime work, we make it happen, and private
users enjoy the updates they get for free. I see no evil in this.
> I fail to see how an open-source program cna be discontinmued.
Ok, let's call it stalled then. I've "heard" the following pretty often:
"Look, there's only one main developer, and he's so busy. Maybe if you
would donate..?". I think it's really overestimated how many people
would have the knowledge to continue with such a project. And how many
of them would want to work on this? There aren't many floppy controller
projects around apparently. Does that ring a bell?
> Does this design inovle any programmed parts (microcontrollers, FPGAs,
> etc)? If so, do you relase the code that goes into them? If not, then
> presuambly I buy them from you, and toy do 'make a cent from me'.
We don't have any. KryoFlux is so versatile and simple by design that
all the magic happens in the microcontroller. The firmware is uploaded
into RAM each time you use it, you don't even notice. It's included with
the software distribution as a firmware.bin. No flashing needed.
>
> That is preceisely what I don't want or need. I want the information to
> solve the problems myself. The reason is simple, you (and your company)
> will not be around for ever, waht happens when I have problems in 10
> years time?
If this was the case you'd have to write your own software for the board
you have, but maybe USB would also not be around anymore to attach the
board. I can't look into the future, but you would still be able to
access the data ingested because the formats are documented. What I can
say is that we don't have plans to let it fade into oblivion, so my
understandig is that should we ever decide to not continue with the
project, we'd pass it on and / or open it up or even make the latter
happen before. We just don't have any intentions doing this now as this
would discourage those that can help funding it. We're obviously not as
exposed as a top notch browser or similar that would get large donations
>from companies, financially, or by assigning engineers to it.
As a sidenote: Even if you only had the binary and some STREAM dumps in
the future, you could still decide to run it in emulation, like I do
today for my Amiga stuff. Why you would want to do this: KryoFlux has a
hardware independent, deviceless mode. It is able to "replay" any STREAM
file and treat it like the data was coming in from the hardware this
very moment. Because of this you can always use the software to
transform any STREAM dump to a sector dump of your choice.
>
>> > Again, you never worked with us. How insulted would you feel if someone
>> > judged about you in public, without ever having worked with you?
> It happens all the tiem, I can assure you...
That's sad but I don't see how this could be my or our fault.
> Now, let me ask some spcific questions beased on statements that have
> been made on this list and which you have not commetned on :
>
> 1) Did you use a 74HC244 buffer is the receiver for the drive cable. Did
> you then cause Phil (I think) to be thrown off a forum/facebook group
> when he commented on this?
If you browse the net, you will find many comments on KryoFlux by Phil
and maybe none on his solution by me/us. We really try to avoid this.The
reason is we don't comment on competitive products as, being
professional or not, your view is always biased to some extent. I call
doing so bad style. I believe in word of mouth and others doing the
comparison.
If you'd come to my house and you continuously make fancy statements and
suggest things (and have done so in other places in the past) it might
happen you get thrown out for not behaving politely. We therefore make
use of our householder's rights as needed. This also applies to our
Facebook wall.
> 2) Is there any truth to the comments about a 'conflict of interests' if
> somebody wants to devleop both for your device and the Diskferret?
Suggestions like that (the original statement, not your question here)
would you get thrown out of my house for sure. Why would any large, big,
mighty institution be hindered by us to look at a competitive product?
Why would they let us hinder them? If they could get something better
that would be completely free, why would they want to take the solution
that needs to be paid for? How could I stop them from using publically
available sources? This makes no sense. It really helps looking at this
>from their point of view.
I did not comment on this (and other statements) because I was under the
impression that such a statement speaks for itself.
Same friend who is selling the SAM Coup? and the UK101 also has a Lisa for sale:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/230756673113
By the way, yes, he will ship internationally, at cost.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884
>> I do like my daytime job, I get paid for it. But how could I afford
>> leaving it for a week, working for free, to make something happen?
>
> I don't know. Perhaps _you_ can't. But people regularly do build
> things for no direct pay as a side-line, either while working for pay
> or while between for-pay jobs. I, for example, worked for the second
> half of '02 at a job that paid well enough I lived on the resulting
> money for all of '03, which time I spent, in large part, creating
> software to give away because I felt like it.
>
Mouse, I really envy you. I've I/we would be in this position, we'd enjoy this
very much. If we could afford doing this because this would be funded somehow,
we'd love to give it away for free, with GPL and all kinds of stuff.
As prince charming did not come along yet, we still fund the preservation work we
do, e.g. buying games to preserve them, with our own private money and what
comes in via sales.
>
> Indeed. Was it lack of politesse, though, or was it criticism? There
> is a very important difference. (I haven't seen any of the text in
> question, so I don't know whether it was a questino of politeness. But
> my experience has also been that honest technical criticism (and
> pointing out a choice to use inappropriate line drivers/receivers is
> that, even if it is also rude) usually is not impolite. The rabid
> flamers generally don't have valid technical points.
It's all about how you address things. You can send things in an email,
or you can suggest something somewhere in public that will give people
that don't have the skills the impression something is completely wrong.
>
>> Why would any large, big, mighty institution be hindered by us to
>> look at a competitive product? Why would they let us hinder them?
>
> Perhaps they wouldn't. But if you consider it a conflict, and I have
> seen companies take very similar stances often enough, then they would
> have to choose between the two of you. (As a simple example of such a
> conflict, it is extremely hard to find a restaurant, at least around
> here, that serves products of both PepsiCo and Coca-Cola - the only
> explanation I have heard suggested is that, in order for either to be
> willing to sell to a restaurant, it has to agree to not deal with the
> other.)
Yes that's because both of them will require you to sign a contract that
will not allow competing beverages to be sold. You also depend on them
because the finance some of your interior.
We don't have NDAs, and I don't see why we'd need those. We don't sell
by telling stories about someone else, or by hindering someone to look
at the competition. We sell because we care, and because we deliver.
Can anyone point me to a reasonably priced programmer for the 8755?
Lots of programmers but none seem to program this chip.
The one I have found is pretty expensive, as in out of my range ( a
couple of Elnec at $1k and more).
Was the 8755 that different?
Thanks in advance,
Kelly
On 2012-03-06 12.45, Ethan Dicks<ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 12:48 PM, Stefan Skoglund
> <cpuser_stefskog at bredband.net> wrote:
>> > On Tue, 6 Mar 2012 09:21:09 -0800,healyzh at aracnet.com wrote:
>>>> >>> In 1983/84, DEC came out with their own versions of the Infocom games.
>>>> >>> ?They were in DEC's 'Digital Classified Software' line and were for the
>>>> >>> Rainbow and the DECMate II (and perhaps other systems). ?They came in
>>>> >>> large
>>>> >>> gray sleeves that were different than the usual Infocom packaging. ?Here's
>>>> >>> an example:
>>> >>
>>> >> Do you have examples of the games they released for the PDP-11?
>> >
>> > Hmm, would they work on P/OS ??
> Infocom's releases for the PDP-11 ran on RT-11. I know you can run
> RT-11 binaries under RSTS/E, but I can't remember if there was a way
> to do that with RSX-11 (which is what P/OS descends from). You could
> get RT-11 for the DECprofessional, so the hardware can do it, but I
> only ever used P/OS at the menu level.
There was this product called RTEM, which allows you to run an RT-11
environment under RSX. But that might not work under P/OS. Besides, that
is more complex than the RT-11 runtime system under RSTS/E.
>> > ANY GAMES for DEC Professional series ?
> I don't remember for certain, but I don't think so, at least not
> packaged games that were advertised for the machine. There were often
> playable games that came as part of various operating systems, and, of
> course, written by users and shared via DECUS and Usenet and such.
There might have been a few around the time when P/OS was recently
announced, but I doubt they sold many, and I would very much doubt you'd
have much luck finding any of those today.
There is atleast a Chess program for the windowing system for P/OS that
DEC released.
Johnny
On 2012-03-06 12.45, Stefan Skoglund<cpuser_stefskog at bredband.net> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 6 Mar 2012 09:21:09 -0800,healyzh at aracnet.com wrote:
>>> >> In 1983/84, DEC came out with their own versions of the Infocom games.
>>> >> They were in DEC's 'Digital Classified Software' line and were for the
>>> >> Rainbow and the DECMate II (and perhaps other systems). They came in
>>> >> large
>>> >> gray sleeves that were different than the usual Infocom packaging. Here's
>>> >> an example:
>> >
>> > Do you have examples of the games they released for the PDP-11?
>> >
>> > Zane
> Hmm, would they work on P/OS ??
Most anything for RSX would also work on P/OS. That said, Infocom never
released anything for RSX. They only did an RT-11 version of their games
as far as I know.
> ANY GAMES for DEC Professional series ?
Any? Sure. ZEMU should work just fine under P/OS for one (well, maybe
you need to change one thing or two, and recompile it, but it I think
that the actual basic task, with no shared libraries and stuff should
just work as is as well).
Apart from that, I know I saw some weird graphic game for P/OS when I
worked at DEC in the 80s, which I've never seen since, but which I'd
like to find out more about. If I remember right, it was sortof a grid
base, on which you had a robot which you moved around, and which fought
others things. I'm very fuzzy on the details, since it was so long ago
since I saw it, and I never played it myself, only watched other playing it.
Looked cool though.
You might find some stuff in the DECUS library, and as long as you are
satisfied with text based stuff, almost anything for RSX will work as well.
Johnny
I had someone lined up to take my DEC systems, but it fell through. So,
here we go again. Any interest in:
Alpha UP2000+ system
Large tower case, 2 x 700MHz. 21264 CPU, 512MB of memory. Onboard chipset
is succumbing to electro-migration and will not drive more than one bank
of memory - thus the 512MB (board can take 2G). Has Tru64 installed on an
internal SCSI drive.
Alpha PC64 system
Medium tower case, 1 x 266Mhz 21164 CPU, 256MB of memory. Has Tru64
installed on internal RAID array.
DecStation 5000
Bare-bones system, but worked the last time I fired it up (10+ years ago)
VaxStation 3100
I know very little about this unit, but believe it's operational.
2 x Multia
These are little mini-format machines using the 21066 CPU @ 166Mhz. I have
(somewhere) a 266Mhz. upgrade motherboard also - unknown whether it
functions.
Other odds and ends:
A couple of Alpha motherboards, misc parts.
I'm located in Burlington, VT. No reasonable offer refused, I need the
space.
No, I will not ship them. I don't have the time to deal with packing
and/or any associated shipping damage issues. Life is too short.
Steve
--
