Old Skool Blog

The town where I spent my high school years (1981-1986) was small and somewhat remote. There were no stores selling computers or video games in town. The nearest electronics store, such as Tandy (aka RadioShack) or Dick Smith Electronics, was a couple of hours drive away. As such, my friends and I had limited access to these cool toys. In fact, I can count on the fingers of both hands the number of people I knew who had either a computer or video game - I had a Vic 20; my brother’s ids had an Atari 2600; my best friend had a Commodore 64; a family friend had a Vic 20, Commodore 64, Philips VideoPac and one other game system I cant recall; the town doctor had a Dick Smith VZ-200 and later a Macintosh; another family friend had an Atari 800XL; another had a Coleco Adam; and there were a further couple of systems I had a chance to play with. So in some respects, I was lucky enough to be able to experience a number of different systems, but compared to some people who grew up in the same era, my access was somewhat limited. For example, I never got to use the Sinclair Spectrum, the BBC, Oric, Tandy TRS80 or the CoCo, nor did I get to play with the Arcadia 2001, Fairchild Channel F, Bally Astrocade, Nintendo NES, Interton VC 4000, or the Intellivision.

In recent years, thanks to eBay I have been able to acquire some of these systems which were so influential on home computer and video game development. Many of the early game systems in particular can be found very cheaply - in fact I have a HUGE collection of Hanimex/Radofin/Acetronic systems and their variants (aka 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System) which sell for as little as $5. Some systems however attract premium prices, among them the Dick Smith Wizzard (aka Creativision) and the Intellivison. (Although a few Intellivisions have been popping up lately and prices appear to be coming down.)

While emulation remains an option for some, another alternative can be found in the emerging “all-in-one joystick” market. These devices are not much bigger than typical joysticks and plug directly into your television, allowing you to play a number of classic games that you might not otherwise have access to. The variety of these devices is astounding - several based on the Atari 2600, a couple of Commodore 64 collections, a variety of arcade conversions (such as Jakks TV’s Namco series) and a couple of Intellivision models.

A few weeks ago I won an auction for an Intellivision 25 Direct to TV system for $9. Never having played any Intellivision games before, I was interested to see what they were like. I can’t speak for how representative this sampling of games is, so I will leave a review for a later post, but my initial reactions are reservedly positive. Compared to the Atari 2600, the graphics are definitely more detailed yet the gameplay is somewhat lacking. There appears to be a few bugs in the model I have, with some games resetting for no apparent reason and some of the games seem to be unfinished - for example, Motocross only has a single level/course which just doesn’t give the game any real replay value.

Overall, the Intellivision 25 is a neat little pick-up. I may start looking for other all-in-one joystick games to add to my collection even though my first preference is and always will be for the real hardware.

Have you had any experience with an all-in-one joystick? If so, leave a comment and share your stories.

I really need to organise my colllection of old skool computers and video games. In fact, part of the reason for this site was my desire to create on online system for organising such a collection - that’s why I registered the domain name OldSkoolComputing.com.

So what do I need this syetm to do?

• List the computers and video games in my collection

• Brand
• Model
• Serial Number
• Manufacturer
• Configuration
• Condition
• General notes

• Name
• History
• Computers and video games produced
• Notable people

• Title
• Author(s)
• Publisher
• Relevant systems
• Notes

• Make/model
• Compatible systems
• Manufacturer
• Condition
• General notes

• Title
• Publisher
• Platform
• Media
• Condition
• Notes

Each item could have an information page (or pages) containing technical details, history, pictures, and any other relevant information that fits. Items should be able to be marked as “for sale” and the ability to create “want lists” would be handy. Plus I’d like to make this a multi-user system, so anyone can track their collections with the ability to search for other users and trade with them.

So does anyone have any thoughts on this idea?

I have moved this blog over onto its own domain - OldSkoolBlog.com. Please update any bookmarks and links. Old links to OldSkoolComputing.com/blog should still work, I hope. (Update: I’ve managed to get the redirection happening properly now.)

If you find anything that appears to be broken, please let me know by commenting here, or arb {at} OldSkoolComputing {dot} com.

2001: A Space Odyssey is one of my favourite movies of all time. I never realised the significance of the song that HAL sings as he is shut down until I read this blog post. According to Wikipedia, Arthur C Clarke was so impressed with hearing a speech synthesis demonstration at Bell Labs in 1961 that he used the song in the climactic scene where HAL is shit down.

You can hear a recording of the demonstration here. (The clip is only about 2 minutes long - HAL’s song is near the end.)

Yesterday I received an email from a fellow collector in New South Wales, offering me his collection. I’d love to take it off his hands, but there are two small problems:

1. He lives about 920km away; and
2. There are over 40 computers on the list he sent! I doubt I’d have the room to store them all!

I’d really like to take at least some of the computers off his hands so I’ll see if he’ll let me cherry-pick the ones I want. I just have to work out an affordable way to get them shipped here…

Sometime in the early 90s I acquired a PET 2001 via the Trading Post. A 2001-16N to be precise - 16KB RAM, full keyboard, external tape drive. I paid more for shipping than I did for the computer itself - the thing weighs a tonne! The casing is made out of steel - not the plastic that most dinky home computers were made out of!
To be honest, I have never done a great deal with the PET. It hooks up to standard Commodore tape drives (so it is a trivial matter to transfer data between a Commodore 64 and the PET for instance) but I have no other peripherals such as disk drives) for it.

The PET uses Commodore BASIC (v1 I presume - there is no version number) and starts up with 15,359 bytes free. Unfortunately there are no graphic capabilities to speak of apart from the PETCSII graphic characters. The characterset is stored in ROM and unlike later Commodore computers, the characterset cannot be copied to RAM and modified. Also, there are no lowercase characters available - uppercase only.

I’v just plugged it in and turned it on - the inbuilt 9″ monitor is still looking nice a crisp even after all these years. (No, I was never tempted to try the killer poke!) About the only problem with the old beast is some of the keys are not terribly responsive, but that should be easily fixed with a little cleaning and TLC. Please excuse my while I indulge…
10 PRINT "OLD SKOOL COMPUTERS ROCK!"

20 GOTO 10

RUN

I found the tape containing the program I mentioned in my last post! Yay!
Unfortunately I can’t find a Vic-20 tape drive that works. Boo!
So far I have tried three tape units - one has a busted connector (loose wires) which I should be able to fix when I can find my soldering iron. The second did work for a moment, but now the motor doesn’t work. The third unit has the wrong connector for the Vic - I think it is a Plus 4/C-16 connector.

Time to dive into the back room again and hunt for a working tape drive - I know I’ve got another three or four units at least. Somewhere…

Update:

I found a working tape drive but it appears that the start of the tape is corrupt. I can load stuff saved after the initial loader, but it appears that I wrote a boot-loader which then loaded the letterhead and/or SpeedScript. Maybe I have a copy on floppy somewhere… :-/

For some reason, the first “real” program I ever wrote popped into my head today. It was written in BASIC on the Vic-20 sometime in 1984 and it would print out a letterhead on my new printer - an MPS-801. Coupled with Speedscript, my father was able to print out letters for our motel, though it really didn’t get much use to be honest. Still, I was quite proud of my work - I spent ages copying our logo to graph paper, counting the pixels, then calculating the hex codes required to reproduce the image on the printer.

This wasn’t the first program I ever wrote, but it was the first serious program designed and written for specific purpose. I had tinkered with modifying all manner of type-in programs from magazines, and had come up with a few neat little hacks such as the password protection I put on my Appple II disks. (The password was 3.141592653589793237462643383279 or JIHAD or you could hit ctrl-C at the right moment.) And the games on the infamous “Druggies and Dice” were too trivial and esoteric to really count…
You know what? I think I still have a cassette tape with the letterhead program on it stashed away in my back room. I wonder if it is still readable?

A year or so later I mostly wrote a database app for a local travel agency but that was a step up from what I had - the job was to be done on a Commodore 64 with a disk drive! Wow! I had fun with that one. Shame they never got a chance to use it…

So what are your earliest coding memories? Ever wrote a word processing system? Database? Simple spreadsheet? I’d done those three by the time I was 17, and all were done in BASIC. Surely some of you can remember better stories than mine!
I will make it a goal to enter the dig and try to locate the Vic-20 tapes so I will be able to see i they still work. If they do I will run the letterhead program and take a picture of the output. One or two of you take it amongst yourselves to keep on my back ’til I do this please. My email address is arb @ oldskoolblog dot com

Okay, so, this theme isn’t really working for me. It is a nice enough theme, but it really doesn’t capture the essence of “Old Skool Computing”. This site should really have a theme that incorporates the look and feel of 1980’s 8-bit computing.

Here’s where you can help. I’d like to create a new theme (or themes) that more accurately reflects what I’m trying to do here. With that aim in mind, I’m throwing a challenge out: Build me a new WordPress theme which brings to mind 8-bit computing. I’m thinking something along the lines of Commodore 64 sprite-style graphics, or Sinclair Spectrum-style bold primary colours, but if you have a better idea, go for it.

If you’ve got an artistic bent (and a bit of spare time) I’d really appreciate your help here. (I haven’t got an artistic bone in my body - there’s a good reason why I stick to the writing of code and leave graphic design the the experts!) Even a couple of logos and other graphic elements will be greatly appreciated, and a complete WordPress theme would be ideal. I’m willing to offer some CafePress schwag (t-shirt, mousepad, etc) to the best design(s) as incentive to do my work for me.

Today’s post has nothing to do with old skool computing. Instead I’d like to tell you how I came to be listed on IMDB as a producer and how you too can become a bona fide movie producer for as little as $1!

A few weeks ago, a saw a link to the 1 Second Film project on kottke.org. The idea sounded weird enough to catch my attention - it started as a collaborative project where a 1 second animation (12 frames) was painted on giant canvases by hundreds of participants at an all-night event. In an effort to raise funding for this project, producer credits were sold for a dollar and it has snowballed from there. Now the goal is to release the film - 1 second of animation with an estimated 90 minutes of credits!

Anyone can buy themselves a producer credit for as little as $1, or as much as you can afford. The fund-raising target is $1,000,000 and all profits will go to the Global Fund for Women. A DVD release is planned and there will be a 70-minute documentary about the project.

A number of famous people (some even more famous than me!) have already signed on as producers: George Clooney, Tom Arnold, Andy Dick, Selma Blair, Steve Buscemi, Bret Ratner and many more. To date, around 4,900 people have donated to the project and you could be next!

Becoming a producer is easy. Simply go to the official site, click on the “buy a credit” link and you are on your way to joining the ranks of the Hollywood elite! You can sign up using PayPal or a credit card - if you do, tell them Amos Bannister sent you!