[Guest Blogger] 40 Years in the Field (Part 10)

re: [Guest Blogger] 40 Years in the Field (Part 10)

Sean Kearney1 — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 17:00:56 GMT

Ok so you saw that episode of "Myth Busters" too Huh?

re: [Guest Blogger] 40 Years in the Field (Part 10)

Rodney Buike — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 14:46:28 GMT

You can leave the device on, you just have to disable all receiving and transmitting functionality :) As a good passenger I always comply even though I know the truth behind that myth!

Rodney Buike

IT Pro Advisor

re: [Guest Blogger] 40 Years in the Field (Part 10)

Sean Kearney1 — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 09:10:25 GMT

Hey wait! I thought you couldn't turn those on Planes! I'm telling on you Rodney!

Uncle Bill! Uncle Steve! Uncle Paul!

re: [Guest Blogger] 40 Years in the Field (Part 10)

Sean Kearney1 — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 09:08:42 GMT

Or you COULD just buy a handheld video game for your Smartphone... I hear Pinball can rock on Windows Mobile 2003SE... :

re: [Guest Blogger] 40 Years in the Field (Part 10)

Rodney Buike — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 07:20:28 GMT

I worked with a guy in Winnipeg who had found a 19" CRT with similar enough specs he got it to work with his Commodore. He is a huge Commodore fan and tweaked it so the CRT would sit sideways (think 3:4 aspect ratio) so when he played driving type games he could see further down the road :)

All this reminds me I need to get my NES emulator back on my Moto Q so I have in-flight entertainment back!

Rodney Buike

IT Pro Advisor

re: [Guest Blogger] 40 Years in the Field (Part 10)

Sean Kearney1 — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 06:27:11 GMT

Graham...

Here's another Commodore one for you. For the butchers of us out there who couldn't grab a proper adapter for the Vic20 or Commodore 64 Expansion port, if you plugged the cartridge in while the unit was on "Just right" (IE: Straight in, no static) You could get the system to access the memory in the Cartridges to back them up to a Tape or Floppy disk.

An adapter wired properly to the Modem slot (or whatever that darn thing was called) could produce CB2 music just like the Commodore Pet could. All square wave but still neat combined with the internal Sound chip.

With the Vic20, if you had the most hallowed 8k Ram cartridge (or God forbid a 16k (Kilobytes people!) you could reload them suckers back on and play them without the original. The Commodore 64 (with a WHOPPING 64 Kilobytes of ram in 1982?) was untroubled by this and could use the games all over.

Scott Adams (not the Dilbert Guy) wrote Text Adventure games on the Vic 20. They were tranlations of his earlier work on the Exidy Sorceror. The Count (My first game ever played on a computer) was cool!

I still remember emailing him years later. Got a response along the lines of "Oh God I feel so old... grin...". I thought that was pretty cool back then in the "Early '90s" that one of the big wigs of his time answered me personally... ;)

re: [Guest Blogger] 40 Years in the Field (Part 10)

Sean Kearney1 — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 03:08:02 GMT

By the way. Commodore monitors are still sought after by one of our clients who does video Editing. They're almost impossible to kill and are GREAT little high quality TV monitors.

I had a 1084s, 1084 and I think a few 1702's (Commodore Amiga, 128 and 64) Monitors for a while there as "Alternate TV's" or something to slap onto a Nintendo for the kids.

re: [Guest Blogger] 40 Years in the Field (Part 10)

Sean Kearney1 — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 00:15:11 GMT

Graham.

Ahhhm a Vic guy myself. Vic, was drooling over the original Sinclair as a kid in the magazine....

I think I still have a very handy Vic Emulator for floppy disk. And somewhere I think I MIGHT have the Commodore 64 Emulator for the SonyEriccson P800 Cell phone (I'm not being funny, had it!)

Still remember teaching myself 6502 assembler for the Pet/Vic/64 and handing in a REALLY cheesie game at a Computer science fair on the Vic20 in 1984.

Honourable mention at least. It had background music run through interrupts on a 3.5k Vic with (*Gasp!*) Reprogrammed Graphics.