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 ‘Retrocomputing’ Category

“Everybody should have an obsession with Lisp-like language at least once in their life” @KevlinHenney

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/27

The tweet [WaybackSave/Archive] Jakub Koฤรญ on X: “”Everybody should have an obsession with Lisp-like language at least once in their life” @KevlinHenney I’m glad that I had one with Clojure.” mentioned a great talk:

[Wayback/Archive] The Past, Present & Future of Programming Languages โ€ข Kevlin Henney โ€ข GOTO 2024 – YouTube

The quote brought instant memories to my early computing days that I had almost forgotten: the muMATH (the muMATH-80 version on Apple II) computer algebra systemย which was based on muLISP (the German muLISP page has more detailed information), a LISP dialect.

In retrospect, I was way too young to really grasp LISP which was way harder than just using the muMATH wrapper. But it was also my first encounter to reasoning systems, or what we now collectively would call AI systems as back in the 70s there was a strong LISP connection to artificial intelligence . Do not confuse muMath with MuMath-Code however, that is a different LLM beast: [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – youweihao-tal/MuMath-Code

So hopefully I will have a chance to revisit LISP with a LISP-like language one day, maybe even using the discontinued muMATH-83 on MS-DOS (also named “Microsoft LISP“), maybe even the (also discontinued) Derive 6.1 for Windows which is also based on muLISP, or even Clojure itself.

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Posted in AI and ML; Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Development, History, LISP, LLM, Power User, Retrocomputing, Software Development | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Jeroen Wiert Pluimers @wiert@mastodon.social on X: “@_ObomheseR Since JavaScript is in the group of curly based programming languages influenced by the B programming language, integer constants starting with zero are tried first in octal base. 017 octal is 15 decimal 018 octal is not possible, so becomes 18.”

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/20

With the constant influx of JavaScript programmers, it keeps worth repeating that you should always run JavaScript in strict mode via "use strict"; (like in the past Visual Basic 6 developers should use option strict and option explicit) to forget risky JavaScript syntax like implicit ocal constants (which were removed from the documentation in the 2009 ECMAScript 5 specification for JavaScript), and every codeline should have a test code covering it, especially for comparisons involving non-strict behaviour like the use of leading zeros.

As of the succeeding 2015 standard (ECMAScript 6), octal numbers in JavaScript start with 0o or 0O followed by a series of octal digits.

Oh, and the history of octal in computing of course has to do with 6-bit systems and also lead to 6-six bit character codes including BCD character encoding..

My tweet back earlier this year: [WaybackSave/Archive] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers @wiert@mastodon.social on X: “@_ObomheseR Since JavaScript is in the group of curly based programming languages influenced by the B programming language, integer constants starting with zero are tried first in octal base. 017 octal is 15 decimal 018 octal is not possible, so becomes 18.”

Inhteritence:

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Posted in B, BASIC, C, Development, JavaScript/ECMAScript, MarkDown, Retrocomputing, Scripting, Software Development, VB6, Visual BASIC | Leave a Comment »

10 years ago, Toru Iwatani showed his original drafts for Pac-Man : gaming

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/12

I missed this back then, so here is a reminder: [Wayback/Archive] Toru Iwatani shows his original drafts for Pac-Man : gaming

Of course these had a big red stamp on them marking them classified. The detailed game experience and sprite transformations in just a few pages really shows how great Toru Iwatani was.

Images were posted first on [Wayback/Archive] Toru Iwatani shows his original drafts for Pac-Man – Imgur:

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Posted in History, Retrocomputing | Leave a Comment »

GitHub – PascalCorpsman/FPC_DOOM: FPC Port of DOOM

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/03

Indeed: DOOM in Pascal. Not Delphi: Free Pascal.

Repository: [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – PascalCorpsman/FPC_DOOM: FPC Port of DOOM

It is based on [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – fabiangreffrath/crispy-doom: Crispy Doom is a limit-removing enhanced-resolution Doom source port based on Chocolate Doom..

Hopefully, this summer I can play around with it a bit.

Via [Wayback/Archive] International Pascal Congress on X: “DOOM in Pascal!! ๐Ÿ˜๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘ Do you want to play or compile it? ๐Ÿ˜‰ #Pascal #ObjectPascal โ€ฆ”.

--jeroen

Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Delphi, Development, Event, FreePascal, Pascal, Power User, Retrocomputing, Software Development | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

GitHub – PiSCSI/piscsi: PiSCSI allows a Raspberry Pi to function as emulated SCSI devices (hard disk, CD-ROM, and others) for vintage SCSI-based computers and devices. This is a fork of the RaSCSI project by GIMONS.

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/08

Cool (and available both for regular Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi Zero):

[Wayback/Archive] GitHub – PiSCSI/piscsi: PiSCSI allows a Raspberry Pi to function as emulated SCSI devices (hard disk, CD-ROM, and others) for vintage SCSI-based computers and devices. This is a fork of the RaSCSI project by GIMONS.

I wonder how it compares feature wise and performance wise to [Wayback/Archive] BlueSCSIย (which is Raspberry Pi Pico based, see [Wayback/Archive] index – BlueSCSI v2 Documentation, and now has a [Wayback/Archive] BlueSCSI Wi-Fi Desk Accessory – joshua stein which is open source at [Wayback/Archive] jcs/wifi_da – BlueSCSI Wi-Fi Desk Accessory for classic Mac OS – AmendHub and important to for instance [Wayback/Archive] Adding Wi-Fi to the Macintosh Portable – joshua stein).

Via [Wayback/Archive] The RaSCSI is MAGIC for Old Macs (and Much More!) – YouTube

More links:

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Posted in Apple, Classic Macintosh, Development, Hardware Development, Hardware Interfacing, Macintosh SE/30, Power User, Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi Pico, Retrocomputing, RP2040, SCSI, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Happy 50th birthday Microsoft!

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/04

Some beautiful old Microsoft logo material posted on their Twitter profile in 2021 on its 46 birthday and a few of their tweets:

B&W logo

B&W logo

Colour logo

Colour logo

Looking at the Wayback Machine Archivals of the banner logo, I saw two things:

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Posted in History, Power User, Retrocomputing | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

ASCII art generator: GitHub – cmatsuoka/figlet: Claudio’s FIGlet tree

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/03/27

Just in case I ever need ASCII art in a document again:

[Wayback/Archive] GitHub – cmatsuoka/figlet: Claudio’s FIGlet tree

Via:

--jeroen

Posted in ASCII, ASCII art / AsciiArt, Development, Encoding, Fun, History, Power User, Retrocomputing, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Embedding a Floppy Emu in a standard APPLE II Floppy Disk Drive – YouTube

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/03/25

Interesting modification: [Wayback/Archive] Embedding a Floppy Emu in a standard APPLE II Floppy Disk Drive – YouTube

STL: [Wayback/Archive] FermuAssembly.STL – Google Drive [Wayback] FermuAssembly.STL

Buttons: [Wayback/Archive] 3/4/5-Bit Independent Button Module MCU External Button Module Micro Switch Button Board Bluetooth-compatible Power Amplifier – AliExpress 502

--jeroen

Posted in //e, 6502, Apple, Apple ][, Development, Hardware Interfacing, History, Power User, Retrocomputing | Leave a Comment »

Cleaning PlexWriters – Gammitin (Ben) ๐Ÿ’พ on X: “@jpluimers Usually the trays are a little sticky on these: I take them apart, grease up the tray mechanism and any gears (use lithium grease), clean the laser with Isopropyl alcohol, clean all the connectors with WD40 contact cleaner, retro-bright the front – job done!”

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/02/14

Back in the days, Plextor made a series of great PlexWriter CD and DVD/RW devices. This is how to get them working again:

[Wayback/Archive] Gammitin (Ben) ๐Ÿ’พ on X: “@jpluimers Usually the trays are a little sticky on these: I take them apart, grease up the tray mechanism and any gears (use lithium grease), clean the laser with Isopropyl alcohol, clean all the connectors with WD40 contact cleaner, retro-bright the front – job done!” (retrobright thread further down this blog-post)

Via [Wayback/Archive] Gammitin (Ben) ๐Ÿ’พ on X: “I’ve fully refurbished the Plextor PlexWriter on the bottom, inside and out, I need to get these other three sorted! ๐Ÿ‘ ๐Ÿ’ฟ๐Ÿ“€๐Ÿ“€๐Ÿ“€”

[Wayback/Archive] GZEEApaXQAAB1Tz.jpg (1130ร—1200)

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Posted in Hardware, LifeHacker, Power User, Retrocomputing | Leave a Comment »

The Search Engine for Vintage Computers: FrogFind!

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/02/12

[Wayback/Archive] FrogFind! (archived as “Server Error”, but working fine on my end) andย [Wayback/Archive] FrogFind!

FrogFind!

a pixelated cartoon graphic of a fat, lazy, unamused frog with a keyboard in front of them, awaiting your search query

The Search Engine for Vintage Computers

 

Leap to:
Built byย Action Retroย on YouTube | Logo byย Mac84ย |ย Why build such a thing?Powered by DuckDuckGov1.2

More information at [Wayback/Archive] About FrogFind!

Based on [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – fivefilters/readability.php: PHP port of Mozilla’s Readability.jsย and DuckDuckGo.

--jeroen

Posted in Development, LifeHacker, PHP, Power User, Retrocomputing, Scripting, SearchEngines, Software Development, Web Browsers | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »