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Much as I hate to say it the blame does often lie with the person packing the parcel rather than the courier. Unless Hermes are involved of course. I have received a number of shoddily packaged parcels with some or more damage to the contents. I have never had a well packaged parcel arrive damaged (...

ash73 wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 21, 2021 12:51 pm

Microsoft were the real winners, and we're still paying the price. The hours I wasted dealing with that stupid 640k limit...

DOS=HIGH,UMB...

(Shudder)

It staggers me people can write whole games in 8-10k when it's taken me 1k just to plot a few lines on the screen :) You should see some of the high-res 1K games Dr Beep has produced for the unexpanded ZX81! Mind blowing. A few examples on here https://sinclairzxworld.com/viewtopic.php?p=34581#p34581

A nice condition Apple II Europlus.

I'm totally confused by the assembler including BASIC functions, I don't get that at all. The thing to remember is that the BASIC returns a result which is used by the assembler at the point of assembling the code. When you run the machine code you have produced the BASIC is no longer being called....

Each of my locations has a byte for flags. These are used to determine light / dark, under water and out in space etc. Each direction from a location also has a set of flags (door locked etc.) You could do similar and have a direction flag per NPC. When determining a move you could have a random val...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-Computer-Acorn-BBC-Model-B-Micro-Computer-Boxed-with-all-the-books/124519857967?hash=item1cfdf63f2f:g:IVkAAOSwbd5ekgs1 The £599 model B is back now with a "cash only" request in the description. edit: they have the same thing listed three times ... The f...

Good luck with the IA motivations! To quote Hitch Hikers... “ A robot was programmed to believe that it liked herring sandwiches. This was actually the most difficult part of the whole experiment. Once the robot had been programmed to believe that it liked herring sandwiches, a herring sandwich was ...

I moved to a new build house nearly three years ago (and it may even be finished at some point) and was surprised to find out a year ago that we were to have a dry stone wall out the front. It looks lovely! The guy who built it used to work in IT amongst other things and was out of work. He did vari...

Agreed! Some of the weird things you are expected to guess and syntax you are expected to use can be really irritating. Trying to give a computer commands in Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy (Tatung version, not sure about others) drove me up the wall. Strictly speaking you could examine a rug witho...

The parser is relatively easy, I wrote a half decent one when I was a kid. The lesson I learned is the most frustrating thing about text adventures is finding the right word when you know what you want to do... so in future I'm going to simplify that as much as possible. I have a synonym system - w...

Lots of chips:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Over-300-vin ... 890.l49292

My adventure language process accepts Verb Adverb Noun 1 Noun 2 and effectively tokenises the statement to allow logic such as IF V%=5 AND N1%=2 AND N2%=10 AND R%=10 THEN ... It also supports AND and IT so you can TAKE LAMP AND LIGHT IT. This all allows for seemingly complex statements such as SHOOT...

Sounds good. Which beeb are you targeting? Sounds like a lot of code and data!

I watched a video about using the z88dk on YouTube - it was impressive stuff.

This is about using the actual hardware though - I have a number of retro computers and everything always seems to turn into a PC project meaning the actual computer is only ever used for final testing which seems a shame.

Ah, so if functions like an API. Any machine specific stuff is presumably included in a ‘machine.LIB’ (EIN.LIB in the HiSoft manual) but the basics would work regardless. I did see in the HiSoft ED80 manual a section on filling in the correct settings for the terminal commands. I need to find time t...

Thanks. I managed to download the Amstrad version and find a program to copy from Amstrad to Einstein (http://www.tatungeinstein.co.uk/front/imagefiles.htm) and have just finished running it. Will see if I can build Hello World!

After a bit of work, I managed to get the HiSoft C compiler files from here onto an Acorn Z80 co-pro system disk. The C syntax is a bit strange but, following the example in the manual, I was able to get it to build and run a simple "Hello World" program. I strongly suspect that it'll als...

I had read a bit of the manual and saw that (I was hoping to get a copy of HiSoft C as it looks pretty comprehensive) but then it does mention specific sections for different computers. The obvious assumption is that there are machine specific versions of the disc. I guess the proof will be in tryin...

I have the 80 column card too but haven't used it. Is the Einstein version different to the CP/M version of the HiSoft C compiler? The CP/M version seems to be here: https://cpcrulez.fr/applications_coding-hisoft-compiler.htm I’m not sure to be honest. I assume that as a minimum the included librar...

I have just got an 80 column card for my TC01 and have been looking to download (or buy) copies of any C compiler for it. The internet has not been forthcoming as of yet. I can find manuals for Hisoft C for the TC01 for example but no disc images. I have asked the same question on the Tatung forum b...

Good to hear a note of positivity!

To continue it I got to spend way more time with my kids than I would have otherwise and while them being at home has had its challenges over all it was good.

Happy new year all.

Mark at Retrclinic does a full PSU service and repair.

He may also be able to supply parts? He did replace the bridge (possibly the bridge rectifier?) in one of mine.

After a brief break from this I have started adding some notes and fixing some general infrastructure issues that have crept in: https://github.com/LardoBoffin/AdventureLanguage/blob/master/Notes.txt The tokeniser is very much a work in progress... :? I'm about 3/4 of the way through rebuilding Buck...

pixelblip wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 29, 2020 2:53 pm

Moff Tarkin

Superb!

A boxed A310 That's been on eBay for months. Starting price always £600 and rightly never any bids. I fear two fools have had too much Christmas sherry as it's currently (27/12/20) showing as 12bids and £1131. For a bog basic A310 with the wrong sticker on the front. Doubtless it will be re-listed ...

Thanks. I only work with leaded solder personally! Possibly the hardest thing to do (in terms of bringing myself to actually do it) that people have suggested was to actually add solder to existing solder in order to desolder something! However once I took the plunge and did this I found it to be ve...

Cheers all. Good advice as ever!

I have some dead stuff to practice with before I give it a go ‘live’. I think I have pretty much got the hang of the solder sucker so hopefully will adapt to this relatively easily.

danielj wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 25, 2020 8:34 pm

You want it hot enough it doesn't congeal in the pipes and you're not hanging around too long. Go for 380.

Thanks.

My xmas pressie from the family was a desolder station (Duratool D00672). This will only be used for desoldering 8 bit PCBs such as (mostly) ZX81s and occasionally various Spectrums - rubber key, +2 and +3 etc. What is the ideal temperature for desoldering these? I’m sure the answer is in part ‘it d...