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An interesting development in vintage system emulators

by lproven＠gmail.com

I (re-)discovered a remarkable tool last week, which absorbed a day and a bit. Even if you're not interested in the ZX Spectrum, I think it's worth a look. It's called BASin. There's no good homepage for it, alas. The current "official" one is here but it contains little content: http://sites.google.com/site/pauldunn/ There's also a blog: http://zxdunny.wordpress.com/ You can download it here (although v14c is not a very current version): http://www.worldofspectrum.org/emulators.html The latest stable version I've been able to find mention of is 14d - you can see a record of its deletion in the site activity page of the GooglePages site. I've not managed to find a download of it, though. There was an experimental build, 15.6, which I found a download of somewhere - just the binary, no installer or other resources. Past the EXE on top of the EXE of an installed copy of 14c and it works, though. A little more (obsolete) info: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.sinclair/msg/4eeb4ffc8725beec?pli=1 Essentially, it's a Spectrum emulator for Windows, reworked so that the display and the BASIC editor are 2 separate windows. One is a proper native Sinclair display, with attribute clash and all the other horrors that make Speccy fans nostalgic. The other is a Windows window, in which you get a 128K Spectrum-style editor - typed keywords rather than arcane keystrokes to enter keywords in a single keypress, but with modern Windows niceties: cut & paste, a ruler, a syntax helper, bracket matching, error messages as dialogue boxes with verbose text, line-by-line execution tracing, variable checkpoints, etc. etc. You can set the speed of the emulator, so you need not wait hours to see what a real 3.5MHz Spectrum would do - you can run stuff at an emulated 55MHz (on my PC) to see if it works, then slow it down to real speed to see what genuine hardware would do. The Help file contains the entire Sinclair manual turned into a modern hyperlinked Help system, along with program help. You can zoom the display, change the fonts used in the editor and so on. Files can be loaded and saved into the native Windows filesystem using the menus, but the emulator can still handle cassette-tape images and so on. It is a really pleasant environment to work in: you get the pleasure of working in the old environment, but also the facilities of Windows. It may not encompass all the very best of both worlds, but it is the closest I've ever seen. I really like the way it merges the fun of playing around with an emulated 1980s 8-bit environment with the luxuries of a modern GUI OS. Trying to write code with an emulated Spectrum brings back many of the horrors of working on those machines for real - lousy editors, tiny screens, poor file-storage, instability, slowness, etc. It strikes me that there's no need for this concept to be limited to the Spectrum, although that happens to be my favourite 8-bit machine & the one I'm far and away most familiar with. It would be an interesting way for emulators of almost any vintage system to develop - separating display and code editor, enhancing the editor with modern native-OS facilities while keeping the classic execution and display environment. It might be a little less applicable to text-only terminal-based OSs, but not exclusively so, I think. I'd love to see such an environment for a whole load of the old graphics-oriented 8-bit home computers of the 1980s, though. I'm sure some people would consider it heresy to pollute a classic platform with modernities, but it strikes me as a really productive blending. I'm going to try to resurrect some of my unfinished Speccy projects that were just too painful to try to finish on the original machine. By the way, although it's a Windows 32-bit binary, it runs fine on Windows 7 64-bit, under XP in VirtualBox on Linux, and stably if a bit slowly under WINE on 64-bit Ubuntu 10.04. -- Liam Proven ? Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AIM/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven ? MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? ICQ: 73187508

15 years, 6 months

US Library of Congress: Copyright is Destroying Historic Audio

by aek＠bitsavers.org

http://www.osnews.com/story/23888/US_Library_of_Congress_Copyright_Is_Destr…

15 years, 6 months

Evolution of the Apple Mouse

by marvin＠west.net

I saw an article on Mashable with photos of the evolution of the Apple mouse. Kind of interesting. http://mashable.com/2010/09/26/evolution-apple-mouse/ Marvin

15 years, 6 months

EPAY DEC Qbus Z-80

by alexander.voropay＠gmail.com

JFYI: I have one non-DEC Q-Bus card, a tape controller with Z80 CPU

15 years, 6 months

Ted Nelson autobiography

by evan＠snarc.net

New book .... Ted N.'s autobiography .... *http://tinyurl.com/23ewehv*

15 years, 6 months

An interesting isa card

by brianlanning＠gmail.com

I just picked up one of these: http://www.berkprod.com/Product_Web_Pages/isa_pc_watchdog.aspx >from ebay for $7. It looks like it watches the machine for locked up software, then presses the reset button for you. What else can I do with this? What's the db-9 port for? brian

15 years, 6 months

Another huge collection for sale

by billdeg＠degnanco.com

> > Message: 17 > Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2010 16:50:48 -0600 > From: Richard <legalize at xmission.com> > Subject: Re: Another huge collection for sale > To: cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <E1P3coy-0006l0-0x at shell.xmission.com> > > > In article <4CACED38.2000900 at snarc.net>, > Evan Koblentz <evan at snarc.net> writes: > > > See ebay # 170546160874 .... no affiliation. > > All microcomputer stuff that was made in the gazillions of units > quantities. I'm not sure how the owner determined that the value is > "$75K" to collectors. If you're going to list something for more than > $1,000 on ebay, the least you could do is make sure that the listing > is complete when you post it, particularly if you've got only ~30 > hours left on the listing. If this was me, I would sell each item separately, or find someone to do it for me, for the next few years. I'd have two or three items posted per week so that I could answer questions individually. You'll only get a wholesale price with such a huge lot, but I assume the seller is motivated by time. Certainly this is a two feet in the ocean vintage computer collection none the less, even if there are not a lot of really rare items. For all we know the seller is keeping the "good stuff" and purging his more common items. Or, it may be a must sell thing, we all have had our backs against the wall and need to sell of stuff to pay the bills. I wish him well and I hope that these items find themselves in the hands of a person who will keep them in good shape. Bill

15 years, 6 months

by ragooman＠gmail.com

-----Original Message----- Date: Thursday, October 07, 2010 5:15:40 pm To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> From: "Fred Cisin" <cisin at xenosoft.com> Subject: Re: 3D On Thu, 7 Oct 2010, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 7 Oct 2010 at 21:11, Tony Duell wrote: > > > > THIRTY years ago, CCTV monitors and home TV sets. > > There were (monochrome) high-resolution TV systems 50 years ago. In > particular, the Soviets were fooling around with an 1125-line > technology in 1958: > http://rus.625-net.ru/625/2007/01/tvch.htm And did that come with a mercury delay line frame buffer ? :) =Dan

15 years, 6 months

Odd Voltage Requirements (was: TU55 an ebay)

by silent700＠gmail.com

Here's an oddball, too: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220676550260 42V, 50hz. Apparently, there were mains lines that delivered those values to special plugs in Russian schools. How would one go about powering such a device in the US? -- jht

15 years, 6 months

MAC stuff that needs to go

by auringer＠tds.net

I currently have only an LC II, and it is headed to recycle heaven. I have the following MAC stuff that will go that way also, unless someone really wants it. I can't guarantee that all the floppies are readable. Link to photos below. Located in 53714. Make me an offer I can't refuse. -Jon -- Micronet model MS-120x external hard drive with manual and floppy disk - worked last time I tried it Tekalike terminal emulation - complete with manual and case Pile of original disks, including: -several versions of Excel -Pagemaker -MacDraft -Laserwriter -Mac System disks -Fullpaint -Expressionist -MS Basic -Cricket Graph http://www.flickr.com/photos/jja572/sets/72157625115800420

15 years, 6 months

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