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Related to this, I am a Volunteer Curator at the Retro Gaming Museum, here in Vienna [1] - and we recently added a Retro 8-bit section, with Oric Atmos, Amstrad
by boffinAudio 3y ago
Related to this, I am a Volunteer Curator at the Retro Gaming Museum, here in Vienna [1] - and we recently added a Retro 8-bit section, with Oric Atmos, Amstrad CPC6128 and ZX Spectrum 128+ machines for folks to play with, interact with, etc.
The machines are there to showcase the 10-LINE BASIC Competition [2], which is one of the most entertaining things around, if you're a programmer .. basically the challenge is to write the best game you can, in only 10 lines of BASIC. Astonishingly, some of the entries that have won in the last few years are extraordinarily complete - a Lunar Lander clone, Pacman, etc. (The fact that my personal favourite machine, the Atmos, has won it over all the other machines in the past few years in a row is also quite a tickle. Makes one wonder, what would have happened if the Oric had gotten the attention it deserved back in the day..)
We can't write software like this on modern platforms, folks. Something went wrong! (OS vendors removing compilers, grr..)
All of these machines have modern USB storage now! This means that a machine, in the case of the Atmos, with 48K RAM - has a couple GIGS of storage! Every bit of software ever released for the thing, and still gigs and gigs of space left. :) This is kind of hilarious.
I also have an 8-bit Retro Hub [3], which I will set up some time soon with all the variety of machines it supports - a multiplayer networking platform with full compatability for C64/Atari/Atmos/AppleII machines to use in pitched battle!
The exhibit has been very fruitful - I watched some kids come into the room over the weekend, express disdain for the 'oldness' of the machines, but .. a few hours later .. they were still there, laughing and engaged and just as interested as ever. Took me way back, 40 years, to my first days doing pretty much the same thing, only it was a Computer Age store, and the machines were new. Its very fun to CTRL-C into BASIC and show the kids the code .. I dare say some minds were blown.
If you're in Vienna, stop by and check it out - would love to hear from other HN'ers ..
[1] - https://computermuseum.at/ https://computermuseum.at/
[2] - https://gkanold.wixsite.com/homeputerium https://gkanold.wixsite.com/homeputerium
[3] - https://8bit-unity.com/?page_id=551 https://8bit-unity.com/?page_id=551
- quercusa 3y agoCan you say a little bit about the storage system on the Atmos? How does a system that old access that much storage?
- boffinAudio 3y agoEach of these systems has expansion capabilities, in the form of some sort of data I/O ports - skilled hackers over the years have added storage features to each of them, giving us the interesting situation that the peripheral controller being used to give the machine access to a USB stick is about 1,000 times more capable than the original host CPU .. ;) The Oric Atmos has multiple forms of this peripheral available, which emulate the old physical disk systems that were used (but very rare now) back in the day, but in this particular case I'm using the "Erebus" expansion adapter which provides a means of loading programs, formerly available only on tape, instantly, akin to loading a ROM cartridge. (I'm using this instead of a disk emulator because the 10-LINE BASIC Competition entries we are displaying are distributed as .TAP - captured tape - files) There are other storage-emulation peripherals for the Oric Atmos (we have them all at the museum), such as the Cumulus adapter, and these basically use a PIC or some other MCU to emulate the old disk interface. Its extremely gratifying, as an old-school Oric fan, to be able to load up a single SD card or USB stick with all the software I can possibly find, and have a "fat" Oric loaded to the gills. As the Oric was an underdog back in the day, this is really rewarding nowadays .. ;) (I have one disk with nearly the entire contents of the software archive on https://oric.org/ https://oric.org/ ..) In terms of how the 64K machine accesses 8-gigabytes of memory addresses - it doesn't. The peripheral MCU 'brokers' this for us - the user selects a .DSK or .TAP file, stored on the USB stick, and the peripherals' onboard MCU exposes this to the old machine as if it were a physically loaded floppy disk - or tape, in case of .TAP. There aren't (yet) API's exposed in these peripherals to allow the original machine to mount/unmount .DSK files programmatically - the user still needs to physically 'mount' the binary blob they want to use, akin to inserting the media - but the firmware for all of this is open source so it probably won't be long until there is an onboard API for mounting/unmounting blobs. Thanks for the interest!
- quercusa 3y agoThanks for the explanation!
- boffinAudio 3y ago
- LaundroMat 3y agoDo you know that first link's security certificate fails and the website is under construction. I'd love to visit the museum when I'm in Vienna. Not that it will happen in the very near future, but I plan on revisiting Vienna one day (to watch The Third Man in that old cinema again :).
- anotheruser13 3y agoI'm going to be in Vienna in October. I'd love to visit the computer museum! Any chance of getting the first link fixed?
- boffinAudio 3y agoSorry, I realized I pasted the wrong URL - here is the correct link: https://www.gamingmuseum.at/ https://www.gamingmuseum.at/
- boffinAudio 3y agoDarn, I pasted the wrong link - here is the correct link: https://www.gamingmuseum.at/ https://www.gamingmuseum.at/