TechTinkering - Retro Posts

The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park

15 Jun 2010 00:00:01 BST

The National Museum of Computing is the UK’s largest museum dedicated to computing. It is located on the Bletchley Park estate just south of Milton Keynes and is easy to get to by car, bus or train. Tickets are £10 for an Adult, with a discount for booking on-line. They allow you access to ...

xAce is Back in Active Development and Looking For Contributors

06 May 2010 00:00:01 BST

xAce is a great Jupiter Ace emulator and is in fact the one that I use the most, however it hasn’t been actively developed since 1997 and therefore has some shortcomings. I am keen to improve the emulator and have quite a few plans for it. I have been in touch with Edward Patel, the origina...

Introducing TextPix v0.1 - A program to convert an image into a character set and text mode screen data

16 Apr 2010 00:00:01 BST

I have today released TextPix v0.1 This is a program to take an image and convert it into a redefined character set and the associated text mode screen data referencing that character set. The program came about because I wanted to be able to load images on the Jupiter Ace, but the Ace has no wa...

Getting Colour ANSI Emulation to Work Properly When Connecting to a BBS With Telnet Under Linux

14 Feb 2010 00:00:01 GMT

I have noticed that the number of people interested in using telnet to access BBSs seems to be growing, which I’m really pleased to see. However lots of people seem to be having trouble getting colour ANSI emulation working properly with telnet under Linux. I have therefore put this tutoria...

My Top 10 Classic Text Mode BSD Games

11 Aug 2009 00:00:01 BST

Recently, I have been playing a collection of text mode games that were commonly found on Unix Systems during the 70s and 80s. These games are surprisingly playable and, for me, they really show that there is more to gaming than flashy graphics. As with any top 10 list, everyone will have their o...

Running 4K FORTRAN on a DEC PDP-8

14 Jul 2009 00:00:01 BST

4K FORTRAN was a subset of FORTRAN II and was the first high-level language available for the DEC PDP-8. It consisted of two parts: the 4K FORTRAN Compiler (nicknamed “Fivetran”) and the 4K FORTRAN Operating System. The compiler was written by Larry Portner and the operating system wa...

A Quickstart Guide to Editing Paper Tape With the Symbolic Tape Editor on the DEC PDP-8

16 Jun 2009 00:00:01 BST

Before re-writable storage devices, such as tape drives, become popular for the DEC PDP-8, owners had to rely on paper tape. This was fine for loading programs on pre-punched tape, but left the problem of how to put new data onto punched tape and how to edit existing data. This could be done off-...

Book Review: Electronic Brains: Stories from the Dawn of the Computer Age by Mike Hally

03 Jun 2009 00:00:01 BST

This is an interesting history of computer development around the world during the 1940s and 50s. The book grew out of a radio series on BBS Radio 4 and contains lots of original material gained from interviews in 2001 and 2004. It is very accessible as it focuses slightly more on the...

Emulating a DEC PDP-8 with SimH

26 May 2009 00:00:01 BST

The DEC PDP-8 mini-computer was launched on 22 March 1965 and was a great success. It was fairly cheap for the day and could easily be expanded. What attracts me most to the PDP-8 is its simple design. I therefore decided to experiment with the SimH emulation of this machine, but found that the d...

Connecting a Parallel Printer to a Modern Linux Machine Using a LogiLink USB to Parallel Cable, D-SUB 25pin

06 May 2009 00:00:01 BST

I have a number of older printers that I would like to connect to my modern machine, but have been unable to do so because my computer doesn’t have a parallel interface. After searching the internet for a review of a usb to parallel cable that works reliably with Linux, I pretty much drew a...

An Introduction to Corewar

30 Apr 2009 00:00:01 BST

I remember reading about Corewar roughly 20 years ago and thinking that I will have to have a go at that when I get the time. As often happens in life, things got in the way and I only recently managed to give it a go. I love the challenge of programming and the competitive aspect of this program...

The Smallest Communication Program in the World?

23 Apr 2009 00:00:01 BST

I was going through a backup of my dos machine, taken in 1998, and came across some source code which I haven’t seen for a long time. It was great to see that old code, and I must set-up a machine so that I can run some of it again. In particular I came across an attempt at writing the worl...

xAce - A Jupiter Ace Emulator for Unix (Patched to correct garbled display)

12 Feb 2009 00:00:01 GMT

The only Jupiter Ace emulator that I found, which would work under Linux, was written by Edward Patel and is called xace. There is also a Windows version available, but I don’t know anything more about that. The following instructions, taken partially from the site’s help instructions...

Book Review: The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

26 Jan 2009 00:00:01 GMT

This book, written in 1975, offers a fascinating insight into the software engineering process used at that time. The author draws from his experience as project manager for the IBM System/360 and OS/360, and in doing so also sheds light on how they were put together. The 1995 edition, reviewed h...

Bouncing Babies

16 Dec 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Bouncing Babies is one of the first games I remember playing on an IBM PC Compatible. I recall looking at this funny game and thinking that it really was a strange concept. It was released as Shareware by Dave Baskin, but I believe that it is now Freeware. Here you can see the CGA graphics as th...

My Top 10 Commodore 64 Demos

24 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

There are so many great demos for the Commodore 64 and the demo scene is still thriving. Surprisingly there are even new effects being created for this machine. I have spent many hours going through a huge amount of demos to compile this list and I know that some of the entries are controversial,...

Beneath a Steel Sky, My Favourite Graphical Adventure Game

13 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Beneath a Steel Sky was released for the PC in 1994 by Revolution Software. It was received well and has gone on to be considered a cult classic. It uses the Virtual Theatre engine which was first used in Lure of the Temptress and among other things allows the non-player characters to have a basi...

Using ScummVM to Play Classic Adventure Games

10 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

ScummVM is Virtual Machine, that allows you to run adventure games created for a number of game creation engines. This is a great way of playing those classic adventure games that you loved so much, or never got a chance to play at the time. Some of them such as Beneath a Steel Sky have rarely be...

Writing my First Program to Toggle in to the IMSAI 8080

05 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

I have long been fascinated with entering programs into computers by methods not involving a standard keyboard and monitor. This interest was peeked by my last article: Using the latest z80pack, version 1.17, to emulate an Altair 8800 or IMSAI 8080 using the new graphical FrontPanel. I have there...

Using the latest z80pack, version 1.17, to emulate an Altair 8800 or IMSAI 8080 using the new graphical FrontPanel

29 Oct 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Udo Munk has just released the latest version of his z80pack emulator, version 1.17, which now includes John Kichury’s FrontPanel library. As well as being a superb emulator to run CP/M on, it now gives you a great graphical representation of the Altair 8800 and IMSAI 8080 with fully functi...

Using DOSBox to Run DOS Games and Applications

24 Oct 2008 00:00:01 BST

There were some brilliant games and applications released for DOS, and some of the games such as Command and Conquer are still very playable. There are a number of options to play these games today, from using a Virtual Machine such as QEMU, to DOSBox which is a dedicated DOS emulator. Both of th...

Installing the HI-TECH Z80 C Compiler for CP/M

22 Oct 2008 00:00:01 BST

My language of choice is C and I am currently getting more involved with the CP/M operating system. I have therefore decided that it would be nice to have a C compiler working under CP/M. There are a number of options available in the archives, but I have found that HI-TECH are allowing their CP/...

Installing ZDE 1.6, a programmers editor for CP/M

21 Oct 2008 00:00:01 BST

To do any serious programming under CP/M, the first thing you need is a good programmers editor. There aren’t many in the archives, but I have tried most of them and found ZDE to be the best. It is small, has lots of features, and uses Wordstar commands which are familiar to me and easy to ...

Setting up z80pack to create an emulated CP/M sytem

17 Oct 2008 00:00:01 BST

I have decided to try out some old CP/M software, but need something to run it on. I could either do this on my Commodore 128 or through emulation. Unfortunately the 1571 disk drive for my Commodore is currently out of action, so that leaves me with emulation. I was going to use...

PDP 8 in 'Three Days of the Condor'

14 Oct 2008 00:00:01 BST

I watched ‘Three Days of the Condor’ the other night and loved seeing what I believe is a Dec PDP 8/E being used. Also featured in connection with this machine was a DecWriter, paper tape reader and possibly a VT-52 video terminal. The film revolves around a CIA researcher, Robert Re...

Book Review: Fundamentals of Operating Systems by A.M. Lister - Second Edition

07 Oct 2008 00:00:01 BST

It was fascinating to read this book from 1979 and see how operating system design was viewed then, compared to now. The biggest change being the shift in importance from batch processing to the interactive use of computers. Despite the advances since this book was written, it is surprising how m...

Is COBOL really understandable after 14 years?

08 Aug 2008 00:00:01 BST

COBOL has been in the news quite a lot recently and I have been reading that there are still huge amounts of COBOL code running and being written. This led me to wonder why this language was still being used. I therefore decided to look at a few sites about COBOL and see what they said was good a...