On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:27:19 -0400, Warp wrote:

>  That kind of mocking attitude isn't really helpful.

Nor is it particularly helpful to mock the abilities of someone you've 
only just met.

This thread needs a whole lot of "lighten up, folks!".  Seriously.

Jim

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On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:56:03 -0500, David H. Burns wrote:

> The Commodore PET was one of those desk tops with a built in monitor. It
> had, I guess, a 16K ROM and 16K of RAM. (That's K) and
> programs we stored on a cassette tape.

The earliest PET computers had 2K of RAM in them, not sure what the ROM 
size was, but it wasn't big.

Those older models also had the "chicklet" keyboard - good for elementary 
students (which I was at the time), not so good for people with "grown 
up" hands.

Jim

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"David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> A convenient excuse anyway. "Everybody needs someone to look down on. If you
> ain't got nobody else, well help yo'self to me!" -Kris Kristofferson
> (quoted from
> memory) :)

"Jesus was a capricorn"

(Identified from memory... man, it's been ages since I've last heard that song.)

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Bill Pragnell wrote:
> "clipka" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> [snip basic info]
> 
> For BASIC fans, the Rolls-Royce of traditional BASIC:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_BASIC
> 
> This is the language in which I first learnt programming. Only available on
> 1980s-1990s Acorn computers in the UK (and parts of Europe), unfortunately, so
> not widely known. However, on those 8-bit and 32-bit platforms, it was a very
> complete inbuilt language, practically part of the OS. As well as named
> functions, procedures, debugging tools and a built-in assembler, it had very
> powerful graphics and sound abilities courtesy of its close alliance with the
> OS. There were even keywords for directly poking and peeking to memory
> (although that probably makes most people shudder these days!). It was often the
> easiest tool for writing multitasking desktop apps too... :)
> 
> 
> 
Thanks it sound to me like it was the way programming should have gone, 
I'll look it up.
A peek function would still be useful, but a poke function on a multi 
tasking system where
the operating system is in RAM ... well at best, you might reboot a lot.

BTW the PET instruction manual warned if you poked into the wrong area 
you might have to
reboot the computer. At that time, I had no idea what this meant and 
stayed away from poking
around until I realized all rebooting invoved was pressing the reset button.

David


David

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clipka wrote:
> "David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
>> A convenient excuse anyway. "Everybody needs someone to look down on. If you
>> ain't got nobody else, well help yo'self to me!" -Kris Kristofferson
>> (quoted from
>> memory) :)
> 
> "Jesus was a capricorn"
> 
> (Identified from memory... man, it's been ages since I've last heard that song.)
> 
> 
Me too. I have it somewhere on a reel to reel tape. I wonder how long it 
would take
me to find it.:)

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Warp wrote:

>> Ah, maybe this little monkey should just snope away and play in his own 
>> tree and
>> not bother the *real* men at work. ;)
> 
>   That kind of mocking attitude isn't really helpful.
If you really take it as mocking, I'm sorry. Of course it was tongue in 
cheek and
referenced earlier posts. :)

David

>

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:27:19 -0400, Warp wrote:
> 
>>  That kind of mocking attitude isn't really helpful.
> 
> Nor is it particularly helpful to mock the abilities of someone you've 
> only just met.
> 
> This thread needs a whole lot of "lighten up, folks!".  Seriously.
> 
> Jim
I *thought* my monkey comment was light. Maybe we have just harped on 
this same,
rather tangled, thread to long. :)

I ought to apologize for my typos and irregular lines. The keyboard on 
this Timex Sinclair
is rather small and my tail keeps getting in the way.

David

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:56:03 -0500, David H. Burns wrote:
> 
>> The Commodore PET was one of those desk tops with a built in monitor. It
>> had, I guess, a 16K ROM and 16K of RAM. (That's K) and
>> programs we stored on a cassette tape.
> 
> The earliest PET computers had 2K of RAM in them, not sure what the ROM 
> size was, but it wasn't big.

Wow! I actually took those numbers from my TRS 80 Model III. They did a 
lot with a little
memory in those days. The PET I had had a full-sized normal keyboard, 
IIRC (If I
remember correctly).
> 
> Those older models also had the "chicklet" keyboard - good for elementary 
> students (which I was at the time), not so good for people with "grown 
> up" hands.
> 
> Jim

David

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"David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> > I wouldn't be too surprised if people found a way to provide a BGI driver that
> > could open a window of a particular size and use it as a canvas. Heck, I even
> > personally wrote a driver for the SuperVGA modes of my own Trident TVGA 8900
> > card (except for the blitting operations which I found I didn't need) =B)
>
> I have several graphics "packages" which use the "Mode 13h" but programs
> compiled
> with them, even pre-compiled examples don't work with XP (and I suspect
> the graphics
> card I have is also incompatible).

I guess the graphics card would be perfectly fine with it - even today's
graphics card still include backwards compatibility with VGA, if only for
booting and just in case someone decided to run some old DOS.

XP (for good reason) doesn't allow you to access the graphics card directly
(just guess what happened if every application you have running on your
computer - say, browser, calculator, Windows Explorer and your own home-brewn
program - would try to poke around at the graphics hardware, maybe even trying
to run in different modes... perfect chaos.

But a suitable driver might provide a frame buffer of, say, 640x480 pixels for
you to use freely, and do the interfacing to Windows (including event handling)
for you, instead of directly accessing real hardware.


> The graphics routines in John Beales wonderful
> heightfield programs don't work, though the rest of the program does.

The name doesn't ring a bell.

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clipka wrote:
> (just guess what happened if every application you have running on your
> computer - say, browser, calculator, Windows Explorer and your own home-brewn
> program - would try to poke around at the graphics hardware, maybe even trying
> to run in different modes... 

They call that SunView / OpenWindows. That's what SunOS used before X was 
around.  Linux still allows this stuff, too, as in the Linux FrameBuffer.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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