Re: Did you miss any significant period of computer development?

Posted on Today, 00:22

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by zyzzle

in Milliways

in Milliways

The only period I've "missed" -- by intention -- is from 2010 to the present. I mean, that whole era has been a time of vastly dimenishing returns, especially in regards to Intel CPUs. It has been a terrible time of castratation as well, ie, of eliminating compability of older code, functions, and …

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Re: Cross-Lib: a universal 8-bit WORA development framework for about 200 consoles, computers, hand-helds, etc.

Posted on Today, 00:13

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by zyzzle

in Milliways

in Milliways

Yes, the power from a usability standpoint of making code compatible through an abstraction layer is fascinating... Many thanks. I'm certainly going to explore it and am glad you made it.

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Re: Cross-Lib: a universal 8-bit WORA development framework for about 200 consoles, computers, hand-helds, etc.

Posted on Yesterday, 12:11

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by zyzzle

in Milliways

in Milliways

Thanks kindly for the reply, Mr Caruso. I confess that I did not see the "releases" section and all of its "assets" on Github. I had only seen the source code to the fabulous games. Of course I was being somewhat fecetious in suggesting you post 200 versions of all 5 games! But, now that I see a " …

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Re: Cross-Lib: a universal 8-bit WORA development framework for about 200 consoles, computers, hand-helds, etc.

Posted on Yesterday, 01:12

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by zyzzle

in Milliways

in Milliways

This project looks fascinating. An "abstraction layer" which makes code compatible with all 8-bit systems?! Wow. Why do you not post binaries of the free sample games, compiled for the 200 systems? This would make things incredibly more useful. I'm on a DOS system, and getting a compilation …

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Re: YOUR favorate game era.

Posted on 2021-09-01, 23:59

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by zyzzle

in Milliways

in Milliways

1st gen: 1977 to 1982, the age of the 2600, coin-ops, and the Colecovision. The release of the C64, and the Apple II series going gangbusters all the while. "modern" gen: 1985 to 1995, is the overall best time, I think. When PC gaming came into its own, before things got bloated and crazy. Under A …

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Re: Happy 40th IBM PC

Posted on 2021-08-16, 03:33

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by zyzzle

in Milliways

in Milliways

IBM's loss was everyone else's gain. I can confidently say you'll never see as open a platform ever again. None of our current corporate behemoths are likely to repeat the mistake we're celebrating. Yes, very much to our extreme detriment and disadvantage. The spirit of "openess" is absolutely dead …

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Re: Most important games

Posted on 2021-08-16, 03:17

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by zyzzle

in Milliways

in Milliways

the Oregon Trail Generation , because many Xennials in this country were exposed to the game Oregon Trail , since it was a popular educational game that was installed on many computers in school labs at the time. The fact that this game was so prevalent and familiar to so many people that an entire …

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Re: CD-Burners

Posted on 2021-08-16, 02:53

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by zyzzle

in Milliways

in Milliways

Thank you all (especially bestemor) for outstanding info. The more we have on BD-Rs, the better, so it won't bother most, I'm sure, if this thread has more scans. But, it is just because of information like this that we, as consumers, can help each other avoid all the rubbishy products being sold …

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Re: Most important games

Posted on 2021-08-14, 10:23

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by zyzzle

in Milliways

in Milliways

Ah, yes, I forgot the original Need for Speed for DOS. It was for driving games what Doom was for the FPS. NFS required a beefy system for the 640x480 30fps graphics. I remember playing it with excellent speed on a Pentium 233 MMX overclocked to 292 Mhz back in the day! Everything else paled in …

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Re: CD-Burners

Posted on 2021-08-14, 08:00

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by zyzzle

in Milliways

in Milliways

Well, I still have some hopes for blu-ray discs, with the 'Panasonic' Japan-made ones being the only ones worth spending any money on. Sure, they cost up to 2x what the best Verbatims go for, depending on your location, but the error levels are/can be significantly lower (5x-10x !). (I intend to …

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Re: Most important games

Posted on 2021-08-14, 07:37

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by zyzzle

in Milliways

in Milliways

Wolfenstein 3D Doom and before those, probably Myst and the King's Quest series, particularly KQ5 with its wonderful and rich graphics. I remember reading at the time 1990 or so that all of the art in KQ5 was painted on canvas and scanned in. At crummy 320x190 resolution. I just wish those original …

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Re: Post covid price drop

Posted on 2021-08-11, 23:50

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by zyzzle

in Milliways

in Milliways

The price hike is scary. I've got stuff I've accumulated over the last 30+ years, just sitting around. I hesitate to go down the rabbit hole of selling any of it. For then you're dealing with potential problems of picky sellers, packaging fragile components to sell, dealing with "lost" packages, …

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Re: 4:3 4K

Posted on 2021-08-11, 23:35

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by zyzzle

in Milliways

in Milliways

No, 3:2 is 1.666 aspect ratio, not 1.5 Please, use your calculator. 3/2 = 1.5/1. I can not even imagine how you got your 1.666 result... It seems to be a brain fart that we can get while being sleepy. 2/3 ? 3/2 ? (2/3 = 0.666) + (minor correction to 1.5) = 1.666 Yes, that's exactly what it was! I …

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Re: 4:3 4K

Posted on 2021-08-11, 01:38

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by zyzzle

in Milliways

in Milliways

not 4:3 but the closest one so far :) Huawei MateView 4K HDR aspect ratio 1,5 No, 3:2 is 1.666 aspect ratio, not 1.5 What we need is a 4:3 HD display which is backwardly compatible with all the old standards 320x200,320*240, 640x480, 720x480, etc. I'm so tired of compromising with either stretched …

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Re: Legend of Sword and Fairy - english patch

Posted on 2021-08-02, 23:20

by

by zyzzle

in DOS

in DOS

There were rumors, or even some source code of SDL being ported to DOS, but no complete version. I thought all of this was given up years ago, but SDL port in DOS would be excellent, as then other games using SDL could also run in straight DOS.

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Re: Legend of Sword and Fairy - english patch

Posted on 2021-08-02, 01:01

by

by zyzzle

in DOS

in DOS

Thank you very much for your lengthy explanations, PalMusicFan. The depth of analysis is very much appreciated. This goes a long way into explaining why an English translation of the DOS version, running in DOS, has not been done yet! According to your #4 above, a new English bit-mapped (8x15) font …

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Re: Releasing some of my old DOS stuff

Posted on 2021-08-02, 00:36

by

by zyzzle

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Thanks very much for releasing these. There is some real gold, and it might have been lost for all time if you had not shared it with us. Truly appreciated.

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Re: FTP is dead (in Mozilla Firefox v90)

Posted on 2021-08-01, 01:10

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by zyzzle

in Milliways

in Milliways

Seems like lately there are a lot of threads about (some program) has ended....there was this, my thread on XP, the one about VGA BIOS support....etc ... because we're getting awfully upset with the castration of "old" features, which, if kept, would do no harm, and suddenly being eliminated throw …

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Re: Legend of Sword and Fairy - english patch

Posted on 2021-08-01, 01:02

by

by zyzzle

in DOS

in DOS

Where, if known, are the offsets in the DOS executable for the hard-coded Japanese language Kanji? And, would it even be possible to hard-code English text directly into the DOS executable? Probably not, or next to impossible, correct?

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Re: FTP is dead (in Mozilla Firefox v90)

Posted on 2021-07-28, 00:30

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by zyzzle

in Milliways

in Milliways

Bad news, indeed. The insecurity of FTP is totally irrelevant for sharing public stuff via anonymous FTP. DOWNLOAD ALL THE VALUABLE STUFF FROM FTP SERVERS WHILE YOU CAN! Heed this warning, please download FTP archives of useful old files before they're axed for good. Very bad, when things are …

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