tom_

25 ms·

481.
by tom_ 1y ago
Cheap and ubiquitous is what people want, and if PCs became successful because people other than IBM started producing the same hardware, then perhaps Commodore should have done that too. Software seems to have proven itself the better moat
482.
by tom_ 1y ago
Oh, good point, yes. It's just a combination of inputs rather than some kind of stream of states isn't it. I'm rusty. The 9 pin pinout has 2 spare button inputs anyway. Maybe it'd be feasible to use those.
483.
by tom_ 1y ago
The tiny ST with the external disk drive had the joystick ports at the side - a far superior design. I quite liked the STe. The mono monitor was great, RAM upgrades were easy, and they'd improved some of the display hardware's wor
484.
by tom_ 1y ago
You can't go up and down simultaneously on a joystick anyway! The stick can't go both ways at once. So this gives you the option of reusing these signal combinations for other kinds of input.
485.
by tom_ 1y ago
DPack (free) has a useable file browser. I use Visual Assist (commercial) these days and that has one too. Both pop up pretty much instantly. Both available from the extension marketplace.
486.
by tom_ 1y ago
Interesting, thanks. I'd missed that particular detail, possibly because I used to do this stupid shit on the Atari ST and its instructions were quantized to the nearest nop (and so 6 cycles wasn't really a thing). Address registe
487.
by tom_ 1y ago
The cycle counts really don't back this theory up. And indeed, from that link: > Internally, it uses a 16-bit data arithmetic logic unit (ALU) and two more 16-bit ALUs used mostly for addresses,[4] and has a 16-bit external data bus
488.
by tom_ 1y ago
The 68000 is 16 bit internally, and can access memory only 16 bits at a time, but the instruction set was designed with future iterations in mind, and most instructions can operate on 32 bit quantities - with a performance penalty. (Because
489.
by tom_ 1y ago
I switched to dvorak about the same time I switched to using a split keyboard, and it feels like I've ended up with separate muscle memory for these two different arrangements. I imagine something similar could apply for this sort of t
490.
by tom_ 1y ago
And the best thing about doing this is that you can also change your keyboard to something else and use a different keyboard layout as well. They are not mutually exclusive.
491.
by tom_ 1y ago
That's a good point, though it's not like they'd be able to release stuff that they'd lost. (What the chances are of things getting lost - who knows. Apple may well be unusually well-organised. But my bet stands. There a
492.
by tom_ 1y ago
I wonder what the chance would be of getting a replacement ROM from Apple? For items of this age, even when the original vendor is still in business the distinction is typically moot. (Maybe I'm wrong and they'd do it though! But
493.
by tom_ 1y ago
Click the comment timestamp and use the favourite link to add it to your favourites, accessible from your profile page.
494.
by tom_ 1y ago
It possibly isn't, and you can typically do without by telling VC++ to build without linking to it - though the compiler has a bad habit of generating calls to memcpy, so you may have to provide your own implementation of that (and hop
495.
by tom_ 1y ago
I built it with VC++ and it's 23,552 bytes. Close enough. Command line: cl /Zi /MD /Os /Fetest.exe gui.c main.c todo.c comctl32.lib user32.lib gdi32.lib shell32.lib advapi32.lib /link /opt:ref /
496.
by tom_ 1y ago
This only works with the VC++ CRT, which is potentially a bit limiting! Also, the DEBUG_NEW thing is useless in practice since, from memory, it stops you using placement new, and dependencies typically don't participate, so a zillion u
497.
by tom_ 1y ago
But "Hello world\n" is a format string. The format strings with no % chars in them are the best type of format string! They're nearly impossible to get wrong!
498.
by tom_ 1y ago
I'd never heard of them before! But I'm sure some people that disapprove will come along soon enough to balance things out.
499.
by tom_ 1y ago
Yeah, but until Windows 11 it was the notification area! But for Windows 11 it looks like they gave up on this fight, finally, and the general UI in Windows 11 actually now calls it the system tray. So presumably that is now its official na
500.
by tom_ 1y ago
qmodem probably makes a perfectly good terminal program. So presumably the 3rd PC gets its internet connection (so to speak) by being a terminal for one of the other 2.
501.
by tom_ 1y ago
Actually only since (i think) windows 11: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030910-00/?p=42...
502.
by tom_ 1y ago
That's a good point, thanks - I was thinking of this from the point of view of the client downloading a file and then trying to examine it, but of course you'd be much better off fucking up their shit at an earlier stage in the pi
503.
by tom_ 1y ago
It has to cater for any possible input. Even with special case handling for this particular (generally uncommon) case of vast runs of the same value: the compressed data will probably be packetized somehow, and each packet can reproduce onl
504.
by tom_ 1y ago
It takes fewer keypresses to refer to it simply as #, which is worth doing as its name is locale dependent.
505.
by tom_ 1y ago
I'm not sure. Times change, and things that were acceptable become not so - and vice versa.
506.
by tom_ 1y ago
I wonder how many people think of the call stack as running left to right, most recent return first, rather than top to bottom, likewise? If you stare at enough hex dumps, it makes perfect sense.
507.
by tom_ 1y ago
Menu items on Windows can have 2 shortcuts - a keyboard shortcut like the macOS equivalent, that can activate the item when the menu is closed, and an access key, that can be used to activate it when the menu has keyboard focus. See https:
508.
by tom_ 2y ago
And a BBC link, from the article, which is apparently currently HN'd: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy0332y7xzo
509.
by tom_ 2y ago
Its page calls it Emacs: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
510.
by tom_ 2y ago
Thanks for the tip. I'd managed to miss the addition of these. I had somehow noticed the addition of the newer string- functions though, and immediately found them a huge improvement over the mishmash of randomly-named crap that was

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