The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘History’ Category

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Science Fiction Writer Robert J. Sawyer: WordStar: A Writer’s Word Processor

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/07/24

20+ years old and still relevant: [WayBack] Science Fiction Writer Robert J. Sawyer: WordStar: A Writer’s Word Processor.

Besides doing a very quick and thorough introduction in the what and how of the WordStar keyboard shortcuts, he also explains a lot about the why.

Recommended reading, especially because of a user-experience perspective.

Markdown, Atom and Visual Studio code are not that different from WordStar.

Via:

–jeroen

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Posted in Development, History, Power User, Software Development | 2 Comments »

ThinkPad USB Keyboard With TrackPoint – Overview

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/07/13

I wish this keyboard was still on the market [WayBack] ThinkPad USB Keyboard With TrackPoint – Overview.

Known as 55Y9053, 55Y9003 and 57Y4641 (and a few others like  the English/EUR 55Y9042 if you count the various localised layouts at [WayBack] ThinkPad USB Keyboard with TrackPoint – Service parts), it was one of the best keyboards made apart from the big delete key (that was better in the predecessor, but that one lacked windows keys: [WayBack] Lenovo ThinkPad USB Keyboard Review | NotebookReview).

It is about the same as the Thinkpad25, which added a touchpad: [WayBack] The 25th-anniversary ThinkPad: Every laptop should add some retro appeal | Ars Technica Review: A seven-row keyboard? Matte screen? TrackPoint? The all-business black body? Swoon

--jeroen

Posted in History, Power User, ThinkPad, UltraNav keyboards | Leave a Comment »

Level 29: The BBS

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/07/13

How retro can you get? [WayBack] Level 29: The BBS gets very far: it runs on an Apple IIgs and provides access via modem (via a landline!), telnet or web to the same text interface.

Web access via [WayBack] Shell In A Box

                                                                                                                                                                                    
Welcome to the *NEW* Level 29 BBS!                                                                                                                                                    
916 965 1701 - bbs.fozztexx.com                                                                                                                                                       
                                                                                                                                                                                      
 .             .   _,  _,                                                                                                                                                             
 |    _ .  , _ |  '_) (_)                                                                                                                                                             
 |___(/, \/ (/,|  /_.   |                                                                                                                                                             
                                                                                                                                                                                      
The official BBS of                                                                                                                                                                   
RetroBattlestations.com                                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                                                                      
Enter your username or NEW or VISITOR                                                                                                                                                 
User:

It

Related:

Via: [WayBack] Got this TV yesterday at a garage sale and hooked up the Apple II through the Sup R Mod and installed the Hayes Micromodem IIe to call Level 29 BBS. No … – Chris Osborn – Google+

–jeroen

Posted in 6502, BBS, History | Leave a Comment »

EDSAC Simulator

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/07/08

Cool historic stuff: [WayBack/Archive.is] Edsac Simulator.

It simulates the 1949 built EDSAC computer.

Via: EDSCA Simulator – Computerphile (video below) which explains concepts like the mercury memory “tank” used for memory.

Related:

–jeroen

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Posted in Development, Hardware Development, History, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Programming Wisdom on Twitter: `”The strength of JavaScript is that you can do anything. The weakness is that you will.” – Reg Braithwaite`

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/07/01

[WayBack] Programming Wisdom on Twitter: "The strength of JavaScript is that you can do anything. The weakness is that you will." - Reg Braithwaite

It got commented at by [WayBack] Henrik Hain on Twitter: “My personal highlight :) … “ pointing to [WayBack] is-thirteen/README.md at master · jezen/is-thirteen · GitHub: is-thirteen – Check if a number is equal to 13.

That is an npm I don’t even want to know the dependencies it pulls in (:

I recognised it as Kristian Köhntopp pointed me to it a while ago: FizzBuzz as interview question – video by Tom Scott

–jeroen

 

Posted in Development, History, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

The Piet programming language.

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/07/01

From a while back, an even older (2002, maybe even earlier) graphical programming language named after Piet Mondriaan: [WayBack] The Piet programming language. – Thomas Mueller (dummzeuch) – Google+:

–jeroen

 

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Posted in Development, History, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

“Here’a nickel, kid. Get yourself a better computer.” 25th anniversary

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/06/24

Today 25 years ago: [WayBack] Dilbert Comic Strip on 1995-06-24 | Dilbert by Scott Adams

Wally approaches another employee and says, “Hold it right there, buddy.”

Wally continues, “That scruffy beard . . . those suspenders . . . that smug expression . . .”

Wally concludes, “You’re one of those condescending Unix computer users!”

The man responds, “Here’a nickel, kid. Get yourself a better computer.”

It was a play on the tiny Here’s a nickel kid. Go buy yourself a real computer fragment from [WayBack] single.h:

#if _FP_W_TYPE_SIZE < 32
#error "Here's a nickel kid. Go buy yourself a real computer."
#endif

Not much has changed for Dilbert, apart that by now, the transcripts have been put on-line, something I wanted to do some 15 years ago with OCR.

Seems somebody did it, and made it official too. Woot!

On the computing side, we still seem to be well in the 64-bit era, just like when I posted 20 years ago today: Here’s a nickel kid. Go buy yourself a real computer.

I wonder that really has changed in the past 5 years, and how long the “here’s a nickel” will stay relevant.

Via these tweets that helped me remind to post:

There is more gold in that thread. See below (:

–jeroen

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Posted in Fun, History | Leave a Comment »

Computing History – The UK Computer Museum – Cambridge

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/06/19

On my places to visit:

The Centre for Computing History is a computer museum based in Cambridge, UK. With a collection of vintage computers and game consoles, many of the exhibits are hands on and interactive.

[WayBack] Computing History – The UK Computer Museum – Cambridge.

When I bumped into it, this was their collection size, ranging from the 1960s until recent history:

Archive Statistics :

  • Computers = 993
  • Peripherals = 1446
  • Mobile Devices = 31
  • Game Consoles = 213
  • Video Games = 10259
  • Software Packages = 2605
  • Books = 2045
  • Manuals = 4106
  • Magazines = 9057

Looking at their archived brands (having [WayBack] MITS – Altair and [WayBack] Raspberry Pi in the collection) is such a joy.

Archiving the older parts is a tough job, as they stem from way before the web era, so information has been lost, parts are hard to source, a lot of hardware got thrown away or is hard to find at all, people have died. More on that at [WayBack] About – Computing History.

Without a physical visit, you can find what they have at [WayBack] Search Our Archive – Computing History.

The video below on their archive is impressive.

–jeroen

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Posted in 6502, 68k, Apple I, BBC Micro B, BBS, C64, Commodore, CP/M, dial-up modems, FidoNet, History, IBM SAA CUA, PowerPC, Tesseract, VIC-20, Z80 | Leave a Comment »

Chr equivalent for Unicode in Delphi 7 – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/06/17

From a long time ago: [WayBack] chr equivalent for Unicode in Delphi 7 – Stack Overflow answered by David Heffernan:

Q

I need to initialize a Widestring in Delphi 7 but I can’t use chrfunction which is ANSI

var
  ws : Widestring;
begin

 ws := chr($FFFF) + chr($FFFF) + chr($FFFF);

end;

What can I use, then ?

A

I’m not sure there’s a simply way to do what you wish. You can convert a Word into a WideChar with a simple cast:

WideChar($FFFF)

but you cannot concatenate WideChar. So this is a compiler error:

WideChar($FFFF) + WideChar($FFFF)

You could use a helper function to get the job done:

function InitialiseWideString(const chars: array of Word): WideString;
var
  i: Integer;
begin
  SetLength(Result, Length(chars));
  for i := 0 to high(chars) do
    Result[i+1] := WideChar(chars[i]);
end;

Then you can call it like this:

ws := InitialiseWideString([$0054, $0069, $006D, $0065, $0020, $0074, $006F, 
  $0020, $0075, $0070, $0067, $0072, $0061, $0064, $0065]);

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Delphi 7, Development, History, Software Development | 3 Comments »

GitHub – dschmenk/apple2pi: Apple II client/server for Raspberry Pi

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/05/28

[WayBack] GitHub – dschmenk/apple2pi: Apple II client/server for Raspberry Pi: hybrid computer of a Raspberry Pi inside an Apple II (either ][, or ][+, or //e) so the Apple II can be a front-end to the Raspberry Pi which then can run an Apple IIGS emulator, talk to the Apple II storage hardware and much more.

It can run [WayBack] RASPPLE II: A2CLOUD, A2SERVER, Apple II Pi for Raspberry Pi

Lot’s of videos below, all by David Schmenk https://www.youtube.com/user/dschmenk/videos

Via:

–jeroen

 

 

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, //e, 6502, Apple, Apple ][, Development, Hardware Development, Hardware Interfacing, History, Power User, Raspberry Pi, USB | Leave a Comment »

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