retro

As previously mentioned, I was thrilled to have been invited to talk at Au Contraire, even if on a different topic to the one they originally asked me to do. I was offered a one hour speaking slot, which at first seemed a long time to fill. I aimed for 45 minutes, giving some time for questions, interjections and dithering. Over the week and a half before the day I prepared my presentation. It soon became clear that keeping within one hour would mean failing to cover a lot of material I really wanted to cover. Nonetheless, I persevered and eventually (read "early hour of the morning before the event") has something that seemed to work. Sadly none of the multimedia slides would work outside of my desktop machine, so I had to do it task-switching between the slides and a media player.

I thought the talk went well. I covered most of the things I really wanted to cover and the audience seemed engaged and interested throughout. When I finished I got a good round of applause which was pleasing. I did run a little too long, though I note that my audio recording was just under one hour. I had to hurry the last few slides, and skipped a few of the videos to keep it under time.

Attached here is a PDF of the slides as presented, and a copy of the audio. The audio quality is terrible, so if anyone thinks they can improve it for me, get in touch and I'll send you the original file.

Download Presentation
Download Audio

Links to media used in the presentation:

• Altair 8800b Fool On The Hill
• Apple 1 Replica Plays Chess
• TV Program Bits & Bytes
• Atari 800 - Ballblazer
• Sinclair ZX81 - 3D Monster Maze
• Commodore 64 Advertisement*
• Apple IIc Movie Star*
• Apple Macintosh - Big Brother Advertisement*
• Apple Macintosh - The Computer for the Rest of Us*
• Amiga Bouncing Ball Demo
• Hey Hey 16K*

* These videos were skipped during the Au Contraire talk.

I have just been confirmed to speak at Au Contraire , New Zealand's 31st National Science Fiction convention in Wellington. If you're keen to come along, I'll be on at 10 or 11am on Saturday 28th - watch the programme for details. Registrations close this week I think. I'm sure it will come as no surprise to those who know me that I will be speaking about old computers:

The 80s in 8-bits: The Home Computer Revolution

The late 1970s through to early 1990s were a golden age of personal computing. For a decade and a half hundreds of manufacturers produced thousands of models, all unique with their very own capabilities, programming languages and software. Many of us today got our first taste of computing on computers like the Apple II, Sinclair ZX81, Commodore Vic-20 or Atari 400.

The venerable Ars Technica has coverage of a new official Pac-Man release to celebrate Pac's 30th birthday; Pac-Man Battle Royale. Ars wites:

The gameplay change is pulled off with some slightly tweaked mechanics. A level map is empty at the start of the round, only becoming randomly populated with dots and power pellets after a short time. Any player that grabs a power pellet temporarily doubles in size, affecting Pac-Man's speed and range of attack—get eaten by a powered-up Pac-Man and you’re out for the round.

Count me in!

This gorgeous case by Jeffrey Stephenson is beautifully crafted in cherry wood and aluminium for a look that is as timeless as it is stunning. Taking its inspiration from the Thermaltake Level 10 this houses a tiny Pico-ITX board, hard drive, slimline DVD and power supply. The VIA P820 Pico-ITX powering this is capable of full speed 1080p video playback.

Be sure to read through the build log to see the skill that went into this build.

Last weekend I acquired my first (and possibly only) arcade cabinet. It appears to be a custom cabinet (i.e. not the original manufacturer's cabinet) from the early 1980s.

Uniwar S looks like a conversion of the Galaxians PCB, and has very similar gameplay. It is not a particularly well known game and is probaly not especially collectable. Nonetheless, I will be trying to restore the original PCB and monitor if possible. I will also be doing a MAME conversion, but hope to run them both in the same cabinet. The game is from Irem, the company that later released Moon Patrol and R-Type which are two of my favourite arcade games.

Links:

• KLOV (Killer List of Videogames) Game information
• VAPS (Video Arcade Preservation Society) collector info
• Solarfox's Uniwar S info page

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