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Pictures from Seattle's Classic Gaming Weekend
Cyberroach has pictures from last week's Classic Gaming Weekend in Seattle. The pictures include an "Obsolete Media Festival" with a guy who makes music with an Atari 2600, Commodore C64, and a dot-matrix printer; old hardware from the NorthWest Classic Gaming Enthusiasts' Meeting; and the 6th Annual Atari Championship.
Pressing SHIFT+RUN to load & run a tape game, yeah, a real drag. What did you have to do, consult the manual after pressing SHIFT?
Yeah, yeah, I know, you had a disk drive which was somewhat more esoteric. It didn't have a DIR command so you had to LOAD the directory as a Basic program and LIST it, with the line numbers indicating file size. Pretty ingenious if you ask me, but then I have a soft spot for that Seattle-based corporation who made the Basic.
here is my classic game - Space War on a MITS Altair (8080), two DAC channels, a 'scope, and two 4 switch boxes for CW, CCW, Fire and Thrust and a lot of assembly language. Get the quicktime movie to see it in action.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
An old Epson LQ-500.. all the Epson dot matrix printers were very good quality (for their time), and noisy as hell.. they also seemed to have a much higher pitch in noise than most printers, especially when you'd stick them in a graphics mode, or something funky..
but listening to one for more than 5 minutes would probably drive me insane once the nostalgia wore off.. I certainly don't miss the jammed paper, the noise, the low dot-pitch which screamed "Done on a computer"..
actually, I think it would have been more interesting if he sampled a lot of different printers.. like an old VAX line printer.. chunga-chunga-chunga..
ChuckyG
I see you're alarmed by the C-64's blue screen. You obviously never saw the Atari 8-bit's default blue screen (!!^2). I had to do a poke 752...poke 756...poke 82...uhhh...oh yeah, a POKE 710,10 to get a nice grey background color to keep my eyes from crossing. CAK
You'd think they'd realize not to put sites with pictures on slashdot.
Yeah, but how about those pictures of the Vectrex TV set?
That's a cool idea.
You can find Vectrex schematics in about 100 places on the 'Net, so I could even build my own Vectrex motherboard... (that way, I wouldn't have to take mine apart!)
I think that I have worries about the use of the color CRT, however.
Color tube means three beams of electrons to focus and accelerate instead of only one, which means a higher second anode voltage. Higher second anode voltage means more X-Ray production. Color TV sets and monitors are full of circuitry to keep this voltage very carefully regulated; lots of components in the power supply, horizontal deflection and cathode drives are very carefully specified for this reason - in fact, lots of TV schematics put a big border around those areas of the schematic, with "SAFETY CRITICAL - X-RAY" warnings all over them to make sure that technicians don't try to sub in a 47 ohm resistor when the schematic calls for a 42 ohm resistor, etc.
This Vectrex TV must have had some huge mods made to the deflection systems, and, as a direct consequence, the flyback supply which produces the high voltage for the second anode.
I hope he was careful...
Otherwise, it's a pretty simple hack. Build a Vectrex (rather than gutting an original). Find a large black and white monitor - Electrohome used to make 25" closed circuit and broadcast monitors - or an old large Sun monochrome display. Disconnect the deflection yoke, yank out the monitor's chassis, and put in the Vectrex. A larger tube will require more deflection current, so you'll need to beef up the output stage, and make any adjustments to the output stages to match the impedance of the monitor's yoke. CRT filaments can usually be lit from a 6VAC power supply - just a transformer from the power line. And, as for the high voltage, I'd throw a couple of 2N3055s onto a flyback (just a small solid state Tesla coil), rectify the output, and toss it at the CRT's high voltage ultor. Though the Vectrex flyback might even do it reasonably well... Adjust the voltage on the CRT's grids for best focus.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
The pictures include an "Obsolete Media Festival" with a guy who makes music with an Atari 2600, Commodore C64, and a dot-matrix printer
A dot-matrix printer? Interesting. I remember a program for the C64 that played the Blue Danube - through the floppy disk drive. It downloaded the code into the drive and you could actually turn off the computer and it still kept playing.
It worked by rapidly moving the head back and forth. I guess it wasn't too healthy for the drive.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.