Date : Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:04:54
From : heyrick.beebsoc@... (Rick Murray)
Subject: [BeebSoc] Bloody hell!
On 16/12/2011 08:38, Anders Carlsson wrote:
> OTOH you might have a bigger space outside for any Retr0brite
> treatments, assuming your mom allows you to handle such chemicals...
You know, I'm not the slightest bit fussed. The RiscPC that CJE sold me
has something marked on the lid. It came from a school. Doesn't freak me
out.
Because, you see, what a machine means to me is not how it looks, but
the memories I have of using it. I learned (modern) BASIC on my A3000
with the !WimpEd utility (from a coverdisc). I really liked WimpEd's
code generation stuff. It didn't work so well with RO3 but by the time I
upgraded, I'd hacked WimpEd enough that I could lay down the basics of
the program a lot quicker by hand.
To me, BASIC is yellow text on blue. In !Edit. I tried everything else
and hated it. Yes, even Zap. I love colourised C, but just can't get on
with colourised BASIC. That's BBC BASIC, not this VB stuff.
When I got my A3000, I ran home with it, unpacked it, and played Lander,
like, nonstop all night. It didn't even really do anything much, but
moving up from a Beeb, it was mindblowing. As was 65Host.
I always have a fond memory when I hear somebody playing Seal/Adamski's
"Killer". I just got Starfighter 3000, put it on my A5000, and was
listening to a compilation CD. Something went 'odd' with the CD player,
but I was so absorbed in the game I didn't bother to sort it out.
Eventually mom came in and yanked the power out of the back of the CD
player, having been thoroughly annoyed at hearing the same damn song
some thirty-forty times.
You know, I can't play SF3000 without humming that song.
My A5000 was a failed BBS. I got ArcBBS, designed a big BBS, but never
really got around to putting it online. I spent too long on other BBSs
myself (running up obscene phone bills).
My A5000 was the one that taught me C. It came with the Desktop C kit.
I'd dabbled, but didn't like C much. But I was determined to try to do
something after I nearly wet myself at a large data separation operation
taking around two and a half seconds (exact same algorithm in BASIC took
almost a minute). I tried. And tried. And tried.
And one day, it just clicked. It just, you know, made sense. I can't
explain it. It was like C and I were against each other, and then we
hugged and made up.
My RiscPC is the first thing I unpacked when I got to France, like for
good. Actually, mom wanted to visit a rock shop down the south coast (I
forget where, near Portsmouth). I said I'd pop in to CJE to pick up the
computer. It got late. Even though I went to boarding school near Bognor
Regis, we totally misunderestimated how far away they were, plus we got
hopelessly lost. So there was Chris, bless him, talking to me on my
ancient lame mobile (I think he called me!) giving directions as mom
drove them. We were only like half an hour late, after closing time, but
there he was, a box in his hands. Go on, smile, you wouldn't get that
from a PC box shifter!
My RiscPC was the one that got me online. I mean, I wrote QuickVoy to
get the most space for network software on a 4Mb A5000 (the Argo default
dialler was horribly bloated), but it wasn't until the RiscPC that it
became "good". I mean, I could load pretty much anything and not worry
about memory. And this was with a mere 32Mb onboard. I had the lame
standard 486 co-pro, but I ran DOS and Windows, TurboC and such. In the
back of my head I have a plan, now that the Aleph1 stuff is open source,
to cobble together something so that RISC OS can execute a Windows (3.1,
probably) .EXE application "natively" by faking Windows and running the
actual code on the co-pro. Just, like, for the hell of it. But I don't
have enough time to consider something of that scale.
It was nice to move beyond MODE 31. :-)
I'll stop here, it's 9am and I've been up since 2pm. But you get the
idea. It's the memories that are important to me, not how white the case is.
Best wishes,
Rick.