The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley ParkWritten by Lawrence Woodman on 15th June 2010 Tags: Museum, Retro
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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 the Bletchley Park museum and The National Museum of Computing for as many visits as you would like in 12 months. The museum has quite a few rare computing systems which the volunteers, that staff the museum, seem to be knowledgeable about and happy to discuss. There is plenty to look at and there is even a "hands-on" area where you can play with several computers from the 80s. I found it quite funny seeing some of those in particular as they seemed to have either shrunk or got bigger with time.
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Read more xAce is Back in Active Development and Looking For ContributorsWritten by Lawrence Woodman on 6th May 2010 Tags: Emulation, Jupiter Ace, Retro
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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 original author of xAce, and he is happy to see xAce development continued. The code is licensed under the GPL v2 and I know that people are working separately on improvements to it, but think it would great if we could all work together to get the most out of this emulator and to make sure that we can use each of our strengths to best advantage.
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Read more My Top 10 Classic Text Mode BSD GamesWritten by Lawrence Woodman on 11th August 2009 Tags: BSD, Games, Retro, Text Mode
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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 own opinions. While you may disagree with my choices, my main aim is to encourage more people to check out these games and see that text mode still has a lot to offer.
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Read more Running 4K FORTRAN on a DEC PDP-8Written by Lawrence Woodman on 14th July 2009 Tags: DEC, Fortran, PDP-8, Programming, Retro, Tutorials
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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 was written by Henry Burkhardt. The introduction of this compiler made the PDP-8 much easier to program and was particularly useful to those using the machine for scientific calculations. Below is a guide to using 4K FORTRAN.
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Read more A Quickstart Guide to Editing Paper Tape with the Symbolic Tape Editor on the DEC PDP-8Written by Lawrence Woodman on 16th June 2009 Tags: DEC, Editors, PDP-8, Retro, Tutorials
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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-line, but a better way was to use DEC's Symbolic Editor. This made life much easier as it allowed you to interactively edit a tape in a buffer, check the alterations and then output a new tape. This editor was used for quite a few years by those wanting to edit Assembly or FORTRAN source code. What follows is a brief introduction to using this editor.
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Read more Emulating a DEC PDP-8 with SimHWritten by Lawrence Woodman on 26th May 2009 Tags: DEC, Emulation, PDP-8, Retro, SimH, Tutorials
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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 documentation wasn't always straightforward. This article intends to show how easy SimH is and how powerful it can be. |
Read more An Introduction to CorewarWritten by Lawrence Woodman on 30th April 2009 Tags: Corewar, Programming, Programming Games, Retro
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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 programming game really appeals to me. The object of the game is to write a battle program that will take over a virtual computer and kill the other battle programs running upon it. Since the game recently celebrated it's 25th birthday, I thought that I would write the following brief introduction to the game to whet peoples' appetite and encourage new interest.
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Read more The Smallest Communication Program in the World?Written by Lawrence Woodman on 23rd April 2009 Tags: 80x86, DOS, Programming, Retro
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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 world's smallest communication program for an x86 based PC running DOS. I used to love writing these sort of little programs to test different things. I know we get more done these days, but it was fun tinkering around at such a low-level. So here follows the program.
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Read more An Introduction to Test-Driven DevelopmentWritten by Lawrence Woodman on 18th March 2009 Tags: Debugging, Programming, Test Driven Development
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For the past 6 months I have been using Test-Driven Development (TDD) on a new project. It has made such a difference to the quality of my code, that I feel I just have to share it's benefits with those who may not have heard of it. TDD reverses the normal order of testing as it requires developers to create automated unit tests before code is written not after. This takes some getting used to, and it can be quite difficult to resist the urge to write code first and then a test, but it really is essential to test first in order to gain the full benefits of TDD. The beauty of this is that it allows you to concentrate on what you want the code to do before you concentrate on how to implement it.
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Read more The SUBLEQ URISC (Ultimate RISC) / OISC (One Instruction Set Computer) ArchitectureWritten by Lawrence Woodman on 5th March 2009 Tags: Computer Architecture, OISC, SUBLEQ
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I have been interested in the limits of RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) architecture for a while and recently came across OISC (One Instruction Set Computer) \ URISC (Ultimate RISC) architecture when looking for a simple way to implement a Virtual Machine for an A.I. project I was working on. It has to be one of the easiest architectures to implement in either software or hardware and this is the main reason for its design as a teaching aid. It has only one instruction, hence the name, which isn't the best name considering that most processors have one instruction set. URISC is good, but perhaps OIC (One Instruction Computer) would have been more accurate. |
Read more xAce - A Jupiter Ace Emulator for Unix (Patched to correct garbled display)Written by Lawrence Woodman on 12th February 2009 Tags: Emulation, Forth, Jupiter Ace, Retro
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I love the idea of the Jupiter Ace and think that the choice of the forth programming language was perfect for such a low-spec machine. It is a real shame that forth wasn't chosen for more computers of the period, instead of their using basic. I have not found many emulators for this machine and only one that I could run natively under Linux. This did, however, need patching, as without it the screen wasn't displaying properly. I will show how to patch it in this short post.
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Read more Bouncing BabiesWritten by Lawrence Woodman on 16th December 2008 Tags: DOS, Games, Retro
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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.
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Read more Chinese Man Spotted On TissueWritten by Lawrence Woodman on 8th December 2008 Tags: Off Topic
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It really is funny the things that we spot sometimes. Most of us must have looked up at the clouds and spotted animals, houses and other imagined objects. We are also used to the occasional news report of people finding images they recognise in the strangest of places, such as the girls who found the Arabic word for God, 'Allah', in a Tomato. My find is not as thought provoking as what those girls found, but it did amuse me when I noticed it.
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Read more My Top 10 Commodore 64 DemosWritten by Lawrence Woodman on 24th November 2008 Tags: C64, Commodore, Demos, Retro
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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, but they are my personal favourites. There are plenty of demos that people will wonder why they have been left out. This is mainly because the demos in this list already contain most of what they offer and I wanted to show a broad range of styles and effects.
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Read more How to File Good Bug ReportsWritten by Lawrence Woodman on 12th November 2008 Tags: Debugging, Open Source
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The real advantage of Open Source software is that many people from all around the globe can work to make it better. This means that bugs can be detected and often fixed much more quickly than with closed source software. The software does tend to be run on lots of platforms however, so there is no way that a developer can test their software on all the configurations possible, therefore it is important that bug reports are filed accurately and promptly.
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Read more Is this steamer really not to be used by girls?Written by Lawrence Woodman on 28th October 2008 Tags: Off Topic
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I was preparing the walls of our nursery on the weekend, ready for the arrival of our first child in December. I was about to start steaming off the border and thought I'd better look at the instructions on the steamer. The only writing on the steamer is the label pictured below and I couldn''t help but wonder: Was it really saying that the steamer wasn't to be used by girls?
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Read more Using DOSBox to Run DOS Games and ApplicationsWritten by Lawrence Woodman on 24th October 2008 Tags: DOS, Emulation, Retro, Tutorials
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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 these are included in most Linux distributions. I have chosen DOSBox as it is quick and very easy to use, you don't need to install a DOS compatible operating system on it, and it uses your native file system for storage.
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Read more Installing the HI-TECH Z80 C Compiler for CP/MWritten by Lawrence Woodman on 22nd October 2008 Tags: C, CP/M, Programming, Retro, Tutorials, Z80
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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/M C compiler to be downloaded for free. This is a very good product, has good documentation, is almost ANSI C compliant and can be used for commercial and non-commercial use. This, therefore, is the one I have chosen.
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