5 ms·

Ergonomy was so much worse. Programming Basic in front of the CRT TV in the livingroom was not pleasant for the eyes.

by mongol 5y ago

rbanffy 5y ago
OTOH, it was decades before I had a 26" monitor again ;-) Most of the time I used a 12" white phosphor screen (soft-switched between board video and a Videx card) and a 16" color TV attached to motherboard color/graphics of the Apple II+ clone. You couldn't do that on the Apple //e with native 80-column video, sadly.
- ddingus 5y ago
  The Videx was cool. I had one in my Plus for a while, and remember missing that when I scored my favorite machine, which was the Platinum. I have one today, and it's still my favorite. :D What end up doing was just chain the video together. Run both screens. The other 8 bit machines with a similar capability ended up being the Commodore 128. It's a real two display machine along with the original PC 5150? One could install both monochrome and a color display adapter and get use out of both displays independently.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    What I would LOVE today is a modern clone of the UltraTerm. Extra points if it has an input for the motherboard video that can be overlaid or obscured by the UltraTerm, and outputs via VGA and HDMI. I never saw an MDA/CGA PC, but I saw a couple with Hercules and CGA and a few with an [CG|MD]A and a high end something paired with a gigantic screen fed with 4 BNC connections. Normally the card with the BNC outputs would have more memory and a faster CPU than the PC.
    - ddingus 5y ago
      You got me to go looking at Videx stuff this morning. I keep an Apple //e on my workbench, just like it was so many years ago. I use it for some light gaming, and the current games are whatever INFOCOM text adventure I am poking at and Nox Archaist. I bought that one new, and it was developed as a labor of love. Fantastic! ULTIMA style game as if it were seriously developed today, and I suppose it was, but I digress. I also use it for writing and calculations and quickie tasks. So, I just learned the Videx cards work in the //e machines just fine. I could have kept mine back then, but I let it go with the Apple 2 Plus I sold off a while back. About 10 years ago, I decided to get a Platinum because the retro scene was heating up and I just miss having a good 8 bit workstation around for the occassional fun project. Given the Videx cards work in all Apple 2 8 bit machines with slots, a clone makes sense! I would use it myself, ideally with CP/M and or Appleworks for writing. But, it would also be cool to have it to do dual screen development too. So yeah, could be a fun project. Making an apple card and doing something with it is on my retro project list. Who knows? Next time I free up, I may look at this. I have been looking for a video related project for a while. Neat idea! Just for fun, I am sharing my current setup. FastChip 65C802 / 65C816 accelerator card. This one runs any clock from about 0.3Mhz up through a little over 16Mhz! Absolutely great card. Works reliably and comes with a little control and cable for you to adjust in real time, while programs are running! It does the job glitch free. CFFA 3000 Storage emulation. This one makes modern storage available for use with the Apple. Super Serial card, stock, unmodified. Got a CP/M card in the mail due to arrive sometime this month. These Apple machines are fun to just tinker with, and slowly build up to an interesting computer. Hardware demand is actually respectable enough to support projects like this. I wonder how many others would be interested in a similar card? I will ask around. Just curious at this point.
    - ddingus 5y ago
      I used a PC setup with MDA and CGA back in the day. Was spiffy and seemed futuristic and powerful. A Hercules card would be superior. Maybe the BNC one was the Professional Graphics Adapter. Amazingly, IBM did setup things to allow all three devices to un together and offer independent addressable displays! Someone showed a setup like that at the Midwest retro computing show last year.
ddingus 5y ago
Indeed, and that experience was one of my first exposures to display factors leading to eye strain. I started on an Apple ][ connected to one of those nice green screen monitors. Never felt eyestrain. Everything was sharp. But green. Got a machine at home, and it was an Atari. On a color set, the white on blue worked pretty well. Moderate eye strain. Moved that computer to a smaller blak and white TV, and it was all much better. White on grey mostly. Brought an Apple home, and the white on black was harsh on TV screens, a bit better on the black and white TV. Turns out the color set was just not sharp and that was the primary driver of eyestrain. The right colors helped. Atari picked that white on blue because it made the most of a 70's era color TV. And it mattered. After a time, I got hold of a newer smaller color set and tweaked it to the max, going for as monitor like as I could get it. Everything was improved and I ended up using that set for a number of years, until I got myself a green screen suitable for 8 bit computers. My first PC was a CGA unit, and those were a little rough for text, and it was due to a poor CRT with a coarse phosphor layout. Life got much better when I could get hold of basically any VGA screen. Was sharp enough, good color selection, good resolution. 640x480 seemed so damn roomy for longer than it should have, but it was the 8 bit experiences contributing to that. My programming experiences were similar to many here. 8 bit basic, 6502 assembly, and the Apple was luxurious with a fast disk drive and included monitor / assembler. Was great to develop a piece of something in assembly, BSAVE it, then BLOAD it into the main BASIC program. Compared to cassette it was awesome! I did use a cassette for about two years and ended up making custom tapes, just the right length for programs I used frequently. Could just LOAD, and do the thing, flip the tape over, and do that again. Also used the shorter ones for assembly bits, and a similar process. Didn't even know what a linker was. I would map out the RAM, plan out what was going to happen, then develop in pieces, each thing written where it's going to live, saved off, and then combined with the main program, until at one point, it all gets loaded in for a master save and then run to check.

Ergonomy was so much worse. Programming Basic in front of the CRT TV in the livingroom was not pleasant for the eyes.

by mongol 5y ago

Ergonomy was so much worse. Programming Basic in front of the CRT TV in the livingroom was not pleasant for the eyes.

OTOH, it was decades before I had a 26" monitor again ;-) Most of the time I used a 12" white phosphor screen (soft-switched between board video and a Videx card) and a 16" color TV attached to motherboard color/graphics of the Apple II+ clone. You couldn't do that on the Apple //e with native 80-column video, sadly.

ddingus 5y ago
The Videx was cool. I had one in my Plus for a while, and remember missing that when I scored my favorite machine, which was the Platinum. I have one today, and it's still my favorite. :D What end up doing was just chain the video together. Run both screens. The other 8 bit machines with a similar capability ended up being the Commodore 128. It's a real two display machine along with the original PC 5150? One could install both monochrome and a color display adapter and get use out of both displays independently.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  What I would LOVE today is a modern clone of the UltraTerm. Extra points if it has an input for the motherboard video that can be overlaid or obscured by the UltraTerm, and outputs via VGA and HDMI. I never saw an MDA/CGA PC, but I saw a couple with Hercules and CGA and a few with an [CG|MD]A and a high end something paired with a gigantic screen fed with 4 BNC connections. Normally the card with the BNC outputs would have more memory and a faster CPU than the PC.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    You got me to go looking at Videx stuff this morning. I keep an Apple //e on my workbench, just like it was so many years ago. I use it for some light gaming, and the current games are whatever INFOCOM text adventure I am poking at and Nox Archaist. I bought that one new, and it was developed as a labor of love. Fantastic! ULTIMA style game as if it were seriously developed today, and I suppose it was, but I digress. I also use it for writing and calculations and quickie tasks. So, I just learned the Videx cards work in the //e machines just fine. I could have kept mine back then, but I let it go with the Apple 2 Plus I sold off a while back. About 10 years ago, I decided to get a Platinum because the retro scene was heating up and I just miss having a good 8 bit workstation around for the occassional fun project. Given the Videx cards work in all Apple 2 8 bit machines with slots, a clone makes sense! I would use it myself, ideally with CP/M and or Appleworks for writing. But, it would also be cool to have it to do dual screen development too. So yeah, could be a fun project. Making an apple card and doing something with it is on my retro project list. Who knows? Next time I free up, I may look at this. I have been looking for a video related project for a while. Neat idea! Just for fun, I am sharing my current setup. FastChip 65C802 / 65C816 accelerator card. This one runs any clock from about 0.3Mhz up through a little over 16Mhz! Absolutely great card. Works reliably and comes with a little control and cable for you to adjust in real time, while programs are running! It does the job glitch free. CFFA 3000 Storage emulation. This one makes modern storage available for use with the Apple. Super Serial card, stock, unmodified. Got a CP/M card in the mail due to arrive sometime this month. These Apple machines are fun to just tinker with, and slowly build up to an interesting computer. Hardware demand is actually respectable enough to support projects like this. I wonder how many others would be interested in a similar card? I will ask around. Just curious at this point.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    I used a PC setup with MDA and CGA back in the day. Was spiffy and seemed futuristic and powerful. A Hercules card would be superior. Maybe the BNC one was the Professional Graphics Adapter. Amazingly, IBM did setup things to allow all three devices to un together and offer independent addressable displays! Someone showed a setup like that at the Midwest retro computing show last year.

ddingus 5y ago

Indeed, and that experience was one of my first exposures to display factors leading to eye strain. I started on an Apple ][ connected to one of those nice green screen monitors. Never felt eyestrain. Everything was sharp. But green. Got a machine at home, and it was an Atari. On a color set, the white on blue worked pretty well. Moderate eye strain. Moved that computer to a smaller blak and white TV, and it was all much better. White on grey mostly. Brought an Apple home, and the white on black was harsh on TV screens, a bit better on the black and white TV. Turns out the color set was just not sharp and that was the primary driver of eyestrain. The right colors helped. Atari picked that white on blue because it made the most of a 70's era color TV. And it mattered. After a time, I got hold of a newer smaller color set and tweaked it to the max, going for as monitor like as I could get it. Everything was improved and I ended up using that set for a number of years, until I got myself a green screen suitable for 8 bit computers. My first PC was a CGA unit, and those were a little rough for text, and it was due to a poor CRT with a coarse phosphor layout. Life got much better when I could get hold of basically any VGA screen. Was sharp enough, good color selection, good resolution. 640x480 seemed so damn roomy for longer than it should have, but it was the 8 bit experiences contributing to that. My programming experiences were similar to many here. 8 bit basic, 6502 assembly, and the Apple was luxurious with a fast disk drive and included monitor / assembler. Was great to develop a piece of something in assembly, BSAVE it, then BLOAD it into the main BASIC program. Compared to cassette it was awesome! I did use a cassette for about two years and ended up making custom tapes, just the right length for programs I used frequently. Could just LOAD, and do the thing, flip the tape over, and do that again. Also used the shorter ones for assembly bits, and a similar process. Didn't even know what a linker was. I would map out the RAM, plan out what was going to happen, then develop in pieces, each thing written where it's going to live, saved off, and then combined with the main program, until at one point, it all gets loaded in for a master save and then run to check.