RetroRetrospective

RetroRetrospective – Fun today with yesterday’s gear……..
Posts Tagged ‘80s’

February 24th, 2014

It’s not an Apple][ !

6 Comments, Dick Smith, Random Thoughts, VZ200, by Michael.

Boldly stepping into the retro world that is not Apple][ related.  Just arrived is my ‘new’ Dick Smith VZ200. I still need to find an old cassette player recorder to go fully retro, but in  the meantime I intend to digitise the tape, and play the audio file from my iPhone to the the input port of the VZ200.   Should be able to save files by recording to the iPhone. I’ve downloaded a VZ200 emulator, so I can at least look at the basic programming in my spare moments.

There is a new podcast coming from the Retrobits family by Earl Evans for all us  ‘ancient’ programmers.  Called “?NEXT WITHOUT FOR” it aims to discuss retro programming languages and systems, as well as new tools for current systems for creating programs to run on the old iron. This got me thinking and remembering, that back in the 80’s and 90’s I used a mainframe document generation system called DCF (Document Composition Facility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCRIPT_(markup)) and as well as a GML (Generalised Markup Language) extension it had quite a powerful scripting language itself. One inadequacy that I encountered early on using DCF, was that there was very little loop control/processing available, so I created my own FOR/NEXT command, and to celebrate Earl’s new  “?NEXT WITHOUT FOR” podcast, I’ve decided to post the code for my FOR and NEXT commands.

November 21st, 2012

Classic Arcade Machines

6 Comments, Random Thoughts, by Michael.

Remember those days in the 80’s going to TimeZone, dropping in all those coins (or tokens), to play the latest machines, or playing Space Invaders down at the local shops.  Well, here is the podcast to bring those memories back, as well as find out the history of those games, and trivia about them that you just won’t know how you survived without.