Notices by vga256 (vga256@dialup.cafe)

til the DEC VT100, VT220 and VT320 terminals all had built-in pixel doubling circuitry that stretched compressed fonts into their proper size in realtime. this exceptionally well written post describes the mechanism and shows the various forms of output:

https://www.masswerk.at/nowgobang/2019/dec-crt-typography

#retroComputing #dec

i've been having fun creating a DEC VT-320 styled interface for https://tomo.city which led me to rediscovering the Dynix unix system that powered many of our public libraries' catalogue searches in the 80s and 90s.

just found out that until at least 2013, there were still telnettable dynix catalogues out there. sadly, the IPs I tried are all vacant. some of those systems were replaced.

has anyone tried discovering ancient telnettable library catalogues via shodan? share your results!

photo credit @skylarstrickland https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dynix-Author-Search.jpg

#tomo #libraries

urgh. after a week of very interesting research and digging, i've located the source code for a very popular 3d rendering/modelling program from the 90s and 2000s: Caligari trueSpace

does anyone in the digital preservation world know someone at the Microsoft Open Source Programs (OSPO) office?
i'd love for this to be officially sanctioned as an OSS project.

#digitpres #softwarePreservation #windows98

someone local to me is selling this 5-foot tall 700 CD-ROM scsi pioneer disc changer

with storage like this i could finally have the --=490GB 24/7 oNLiNe 14.4/28.8/33.6k=-- bbs i've been dreaming about for 30 years 😎
#bbs #retroComputing

once a year i pull out this wondrous history of myst/riven coffee table book for inspiration. each page is a work of art.

#myst #riven #cyan

when i was a kid, you could build a simple game or application by dragging and dropping a few UI controls, and gluing them together with a few dozen lines of BASIC or Pascal. it might take 15 minutes, at most, to get your little character walking around on the screen. this is how we ended up with a lot of hilariously good and cheap shareware you could share on BBSes in the 90s.

for the past year i've been quietly working on building a software thingie that doesn't exist anymore. i've been building a software toolkit that's kinda like Visual Basic and Borland Delphi, designed for making tile-based 2d games.

i've been using it to build my own little goofy games, and improving on the drag'n'drop IDE as i figuring things out. it's not done yet, and has a long ways to go before it's ready for other people to start making their own little applications and games. think PICO-8 or ZZT if they had grown up on a steady diet of Windows 3.1 and GeoWorks Ensemble instead.

i'm really, really bad about polishing turds to infinity and never releasing them. to break that habit, i've built a mini-website for the IDE/Shareware Creation Kit. it's called Exigy, named like a bad 80s metal hair band or richard garriott game.

https://exigy.org

i'll be posting weekly blog/devlog updates there, so i don't irritate anyone with them on this account. there is an rss feed button at the top right if you hate my demonic php and css.

#shareware #ultima #php #blog #smolweb #zzt #indiedev

for fun, i used ebay's Personal Data request tool to extract out my ebay purchases from 2001 to 2010, so i could get a picture of how prices have changed over the decades when it comes to old computer/video junk

Aug 26, 2003: Ultima Worlds of Adventure: The Savage Empire
$13.49 USD
Currently: $100 USD

May 23, 2003: LC PDS style Ethernet adapter $5 USD
Currently: $50 USD

Apr 12, 2003 Druid: Demons of the Mind $2.99 USD
Currently: $40 USD

Apr 07, 2004 1988 Interplay Commodore C64 / C128 Game Neuromancer $9.99 USD
Currently: $150 USD

Apr 23, 2004 ULTIMA THE SECOND TRILOGY IV V VI BOX SET PC GAME $11.86 USD
Currently: $150 USD

Nov 10, 2004 PRINCE OF PERSIA (SEGA CD) EXCELLENT CONDITION $5.00 USD
Currently: $50 USD

As you can see, it's approximately a 1000% price increase on retrocomputing products since 2002. Without having to show you the entire history, the price stayed relatively flat until about 2010, when it started to creep slowly, and then went up several orders of magnitude by 2015-2020.

It's a silly, bad time to buy old computer games on ebay. prices are still hyperinflated (starting to drop, very slowly).

i've bought almost everything i have locally, for $5-10 each, just by keeping an eye on local listings - and ignoring the people trying to sell at ebay prices.

if you want to see your entire ebay history, you can request it here. it takes about a week to get your history.
https://www.ebay.com/help/account/requesting-personal-data/requesting-personal-data?id=5089

#retroComputing #retroGaming

@foone may have you covered:
https://archive.org/details/ftp.epson.com_199706

filename is AN500C.EXE

suspect it's the utilities disk, but unsure if the vga utility is on it

@foone i'm not sure what creational means in this context, but louis rossman's macbook repair videos are exceptionally useful

https://www.youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup

wondrous Boardwatch BBS magazine "top 100" boards in north america from 1994. this was based on a reader's choice vote-in.

the first two boards are (respectively) the homes of Apogee software and Epic MegaGames shareware publishers.

now just guess how many of the remaining 98 are porn boards!

credit: @fearfair on /r/bbs: https://i.redd.it/5pb1m577m9pd1.jpeg

#shareware #bbs #retroGaming

@foone yup. i didn’t really show it in the video, but all of the rooms are 360 degrees

happy to report that after minor surgery to replace a faulty cd lens assembly, this sega cd model 2 is operational for the first time in 15 years

featured: the best first person adventure game on sega consoles that nobody ever played: Jurassic Park

#sega #retroGaming #adventuregamers

@foone it's going to be a deep, neurotic joy when you find out only 2 of those pins are actually being used

@foone the most enjoyable part is when it worked perfectly at home with every permutation of equipment, and then it won't display on their aliexpress projector

@amigalove wow, great find! local classifieds?

@foone oh slick. do you have a working drive for it?
i've got a sony MO 5 1/4" scsi drive, but i haven't tried using it in decades.

game dev career not working out?

if you need a side hustle, can hook you up

#alberta #canada #dinosaurs

so this app has been lost for a good decade -

the Asus Surf 4G (and many other netbooks) use interesting resolutions like 800x480, and do not offer normal 4:3 resolutions like 640x480 via their winXP display driver

that means games like Thief or Doom 3 or Half-Life won't fit on the screen in windowed or full screen modes

this is where Netbook Resolution Customizer comes in. it lets you set custom resolutions so older win9x games can use the resolutions they expect

dredged this application out of a bunch of old EeePC forums that went defunct 10 years ago, and uploaded to IA:

https://archive.org/details/netbook-resolution-customizer-1b2

@Gammitin this is the first time i have ever seen a board that has both slot-1 and socket 😆

norton disk doctor 8.0 for windows 3.1 let you play midis in the background while it scanned/repaired your drive 😎

#win31 #msdos #dosgaming #retroComputing