Vintage Computing and Gaming | The Retrogaming and Retrocomputing Blogazine

Time 2020-09-10 04:02:49

Web Name: Vintage Computing and Gaming | The Retrogaming and Retrocomputing Blogazine

WebSite: http://www.vintagecomputing.com

ID:41585

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[Editor s Note: I recently asked Steve Wozniak via email about why the original Apple II did not support lowercase letters. I could have guessed the answer, but it s always good to hear the reason straight from the source. Woz s response was so long and detailed that I asked him if I could publish the whole thing on VC G. He said yes, so here we are. Benj]In the early 1970s, I was very poor, living paycheck to paycheck. While I worked at HP, any spare change went into my digital projects that I did on my own in my apartment. I was an excellent typist. I was proficient at typing by touch using keypunches with unusual and awkward special characters even though some used two fingers of one hand.I saw a friend typing on a teletype to the six computers on the early ARPAnet. I had to have this power over distant computers too. After building many arcade games on computers, how to build it was obvious to me instantly. I’d create a video generator (as with the arcade games) and display text using a character generator chip. But I needed a keyboard.I d show up at HP every morning around 6 AM to peruse engineering magazines and journals to see what new chips and products were coming. I found an offer for a $60 keyboard modeled after the upper-case-only ASR-33 teletype.That $60 for the keyboard is probably like $500 today [About $333 adjusted for inflation Benj]. This $60 was the single biggest price obstacle in the entire development of the early Apple computers. I had to gulp just to come up with $60, and I think my apartment rental check bounced that month they put me on cash payment from then on. Other keyboards you could buy back then cost around $200, which might be $1000 or more now. There just wasn’t any mass manufacturing of digital keyboards in 1974.So my TV Terminal, for accessing the ARPAnet, was uppercase only.The idea for my own computer came into my head the first day of the Homebrew Computer Club.Maybe a year prior, I had looked at the 4-bit Intel 4004 microprocessor and determined that it could never be used to build the computer I wanted for myself based on all the minicomputers that I’d designed on paper and desired since 1968-1970. But at the Homebrew Computer Club, they were talking about the 8008 and 8080 microprocessors, which I had not kept up with after my 4004 disappointment. I took home a data sheet for the 8008, based on a version of it from a Canadian company. That night, I discovered that this entire processor was capable of being a computer.I already had my input and output, my TV Terminal. With that terminal, I’d type to a computer in Boston, for example, and that far-away computer, on the ARPAnet, would type back to my TV. I now saw that all I had to do was connect the microprocessor, with 4K of RAM (I’d built my tiny computer with the capability of the Altair, 5 years prior, in 1970, with my own TTL chips as the processor). 4K was the amount of RAM allowing you to type in a program on a human keyboard and run it.My computer wasn’t designed from the ground up. I just added the 6502 microprocessor and 4K DRAMS (introduced that summer of 1975 and far less costly than Intel static RAMs) to have a complete computer with input and output.So the uppercase keyboard was not designed as part of a computer. It already existed as my TV Terminal.I truly would have wanted lower case on a keyboard, but I was still totally cash strapped, with no spare money. After already starting a BASIC interpreter for my computer, I would have had to re-assemble all my code. But here again, I did not have the money to have an account on a timeshare service for a 6502 interpreter. The BASIC was handwritten and hand-assembled. I’d write the source code and then write the binary that an interpreter would have turned my code into. To implement a major change like lower case (keeping 6 bits per character in my syntax table instead of 5 bits) would have been a horrendous and risky job to do by hand. If I’d had a time-share assembler, it would have been quick and easy. Hence, the Apple I wound up with uppercase only.I discussed the alternatives with Steve Jobs. I was for lower case, but not for money (cost). Steve had little computer experience, and he said that uppercase was just fine. We both had our own reasons for not changing it before the computers were out. Even with the later Apple II (as with the Apple I), the code was again hand-written and hand-interpreted because I had no money. All 8 kB of code in the Apple II was only written by my own hand, including the binary object code. That made it impossible to add lower case into it easily.So, in the end, the basic reason for no lowercase on the Apple I and Apple II was my own lack of money. Zero checking. Zero savings. How is everyone doing out there? We re living through historic times, with most of the world on lockdown due to COVID-19 (AKA novel coronavirus).My family and I have been staying at home since early March. We stocked up on supplies in February when it seemed things were getting really bad in China, so we ve been ok regarding food. We ve also received some supplemental grocery deliveries every few weeks. We typically buy non-perishables and let them sit for a few days before touching them, then wash them off before using. Any perishables get a scrub down immediately then sit quarantined in a bag in the fridge. Checking the mail involves surgical gloves and a multi-day quarantine in a safe spot before opening.We re fortunate enough to have a large enough house and a big enough yard that we don t get cabin fever too badly. The weather has been nice in general, so me and the kids have spent a lot of our free time outside catching toads, gardening, and repeatedly washing the pollen off of everything.And every night since it came out, I ve been playing a little bit of Animal Crossing: New Horizons on the Switch. It s a fun diversion.Since February 10th, I ve worked for How-To Geek as a Staff Writer. It s a work from home job, so not much has changed there I work 8 hours a day Monday-Friday. The kids have mostly left me alone, but it can be stressful. Luckily, my wife has kept them busy. They just recently started doing online schoolwork, and that has been a stressful adventure unto itself. But I think they will soon get into the rhythm of it.I hope everyone out there stays healthy and safe during these strange times. They re not permanent; We will get through this, and I hope we will all be wiser and kinder for having lived through the experience.Discussion Topic: How are you and your family coping during these times? Have you played any games or used any old computers to keep yourself busy? In Memoriam: Lawrence G. Larry Tesler (1945-2020), inventor of Copy/Paste at Xerox PARC, member of Apple Lisa team, human-computer interaction expertTesler was a giant in the field of human-computer interaction, having pioneered modeless interfaces at Xerox PARC and carried those over to Apple as part of the Lisa team. While at PARC, he and Timothy Mott created a text editor called Gypsy that included the first implementation of the now-common Copy and Paste features for moving blocks of information easily within a document. According to Robert Scoble, Tesler was also on the committee at Apple that decided to re-hire Steve Jobs in the mid-1990s. He will be missed. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Atari 400 and Atari 800 home computers Atari released them in the fall of 1979. (Many sources say November 1979, but I found some newspaper references to retailers having them in stock in October 1979.)To celebrate the birthday of my favorite computer and game machine, I investigated the story behind its creation for FastCompany. I threw in some personal nostalgia and vintage photos of my older brother using an Atari for good measure.Forty years ago, Atari released its first personal computers: the Atari 400 and 800. They arrived in the fall of 1979 after a prerelease marketing campaign that had begun the previous January when the company unveiled the machines at what was then called the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.Then as now, “Atari” was synonymous with “video game,” and the new machines packed more technological potential than any game console at the time, with custom graphics and sound chips, support for four joysticks or eight paddles, and the ability to play games on cartridge, cassette, or disk. At launch, one of the machines’ first games, Star Raiders, defined cutting-edge home entertainment.To research the piece, I spoke in depth with former Atari engineer Joe Decuir and former Atari software evangelist Chris Crawford (also a game designer best known for Eastern Front: 1941 and Balance of Power). Crawford is a fascinating guy, and I should probably publish my full interview with him at some point.I ve been meaning to write a piece like this about the Atari 800 since 2009 when the console turned 30. (Read more about that on this post about my 30th anniversary teardown.) What can I say I play the long game.I hope you enjoy it and Merry Christmas! The Christmas Games of YesteryearOf the tens of thousands of video and computer games released since the 1970s, few have featured Christmas themes. That s surprising considering that the holiday is an insanely popular topic in other forms of media (especially movies the number of Christmas-themed films could probably fill the Grand Canyon).Here are twelve video and computer games, all released more than ten years ago, that dared to buck the trend. Some failed, some succeeded, but all tried to deliver holiday cheer with Santa, sleighs, elves, evil snowmen, flying turkey helicopters, and other beloved symbols of Christmas.Many were released on more than one platform; whenever possible, I ve included the cover art for all of the versions. Some of the games are still available, and I ve given links to the ones you can download online. Our list of Christmas games is not exhaustive, though, so if you have a favorite that we left out, please share it in the comments. [ Continue reading [ VC G Anthology ] The Ghosts of Christmas Games Past ] It s that time of year again: the Yuletide. Over the past eight years, I ve been posting an annual collection of all the Christmas-related tech material I ve written (both for this site and for others) into one place for easy reading. Below, you ll find list of off-site Christmas slideshows, other features, and of course, plenty of Retro Scans of the Week.This year, I updated the PC World/MacWorld/Techhive links to Archive.org WayBack Machine links. The images on all of my old PCWorld features are now sadly broken.I have a soft spot for Christmas, having been raised with the tradition, so this list is for me as much as it is for everyone else. After going through these things again, it s amazing to see how much Christmas stuff I ve posted over the years. I hope you enjoy it. [ Continue reading The VC G Christmas Collection (2019 Edition) ] Take a good look at this sentence. You re reading it thanks to the magic of a computer display whether it be LCD, CRT, or even printed out on paper. Since the beginning of the digital era, users have needed a way to view the results of programs run on a computer but the manner in which computers have spit out data has changed considerably over the last 70 years. Let s take a tour. [ Continue reading [ VC G Anthology ] The Evolution of Computer Displays ] Gaming used to be very painfulOn September 9, 1999, Sega launched the Dreamcast in America. This is one of its pre-launch print ads.20 years later, I am still not sure exactly how to interpret this advertisement. The tagline in the corner seems the most obvious part. To me, it s thinking, implied that the Dreamcast packed a powerful CPU and could generate complex gaming experiences.But the screaming, eye-pain stuff? At the time, video game advertisement in the US leaned toward cryptic and edgy. This was drumming up interest for a launch date, so it threw in some mystery, not even naming the console itself.But if taken literally, the ad makes it look like playing games on this upcoming console could be a painful or negative experience. Somehow marketers calculated that dark and painful imagery attracted American gamers. What this cultural masochism says about American gamers, I am not sure. That s a deep one to unravel.I didn t like the ad much at the time. But I was hyped for the Dreamcast launch, so maybe it worked.9.9.991999 was a big year for me. In June, I graduated high school and started my first full-time job. A month later, I moved out of my parents house. I had money to burn, my own bank account, my own credit card. So I did what came naturally to an 18 year-old at the time: I bought a Sega Dreamcast. It was one of the highlights of my adult life a symbol of independence. [ Continue reading [ Retro Scan ] 9.9.99 Dreamcast Turns 20 in America ]VC&G is a blog about computer, video game, and technology history founded in 2005 and run by Benj Edwards.If you're a fan of VC&G, please consider supporting this site and the history work of Benj Edwards on Patreon.Your support on Patreon keeps this site ad-free and ensures it will continue long into the future.[ About Benj Edwards ]

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Adventures in vintage computers and retrogaming. Includes articles on classic games and obsolete computers.

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