News from the Editor

February 7th, 2010
An interesting thing happened the other day: I turned 40 years old. Now usually birthdays are a depressing fair for me, full of lame gifts from people who barely understand your likes and dislikes. This year was completely different, and it was easily the best birthday I’ve ever had (thank you, Vikki!!). It was a re-invigorating experience, and I’m really glad I went with the flow (after some initial grumblings… I’m such a jerk sometimes).

We went to Vancouver for a few days. Not that big of a deal, you may think… but Vancouver is my favorite city, and the weather was beautiful. After freezing temperatures, it was great to walk along the Stanley Park seawall without a jacket, the warm sunny rays lifting my spirits.

Of course, no trip to Vancouver would be complete without some computer-related shopping. We hit up the Apple store, Future Shop, and Macstation, and I bought a new graphics tablet. But we also got a chance to go to John’s Jukes, a repair/restoration shop for old jukeboxes, pinball machines, and arcade machines. I love being around arcade machines, and somehow this year it has become a rare thing. It was a total rush to find a Computer Space in one corner, and a Robotron 2048 machine in another.

I also found a pawn shop that specialized in LP’s, cassettes, and old video games. Mixed in with the NES, Genesis, PlayStations and GameBoys were also a few classics like Atari 2600 cartridges. Good times.

On the emulator front, on the AtariAge forum a member was looking for someone to convert a small program from the TI 99-4/A to the Commodore 64 and Tomy Tutor. Someone else got to the C64 answer before I could, but I re-worked the program to be a little closer to what they were asking for. I also fired up the MESS emulator and played with the Tomy BASIC environment. It was…interesting. I can see why that machine was a flop, though. Too slow, and too strange. Hate Microsoft all you want, but it’s nice when you can jump from one machine to another and get some rudimentary programming done without a complete re-write.

The other emulator I’ve been playing with completely contradicts what I just said, and I love it for that. I’ve never actually seen one in real life, but over on RetroThing I found an article about the Oric 1 computer. It was pretty much a Europe-only machine, and that’s a shame. It has most of the Microsoft BASIC commands, but a few unique ones, too. Imagine being able to write something like “10 ZAP:FOR I=1 TO 200:EXPLODE” and when you run the program, it makes a “ZAP” noise, followed by an explosion. Probably the easiest machine I’ve ever dealt with for simple sound effects and tune generation. Oh, and forget complicated POKES and COLOR statements, if you want to change the background and foreground colors, use the simpler PAPER and INK commands. It’s a crime this computer didn’t have a broader acceptance.

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