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Satellite tracking software
"Andy Clews" wrote in message ... Thus spake Jim unto the assembled multitudes: The BBC Master machines were _wonderful_ computers for their time. Implying that they were somehow not a 'real' computer is doing them a grave disservice. They were, I admit, quite long in the tooth by that point though. dons rose-tinted glasses I spent several days typing in all the programs in Peter Duffett-Smith's "Astronomy with your Personal Computer" into a BBC B and saving each to a 5.25" floppy disk, then spending several more days debugging them all, and eventually having great fun running them. Also had huge fun writing my own moon-phase program, which superimposed on to a primitive moon map in order to provide a simple observation planner. Happy days. removes rose-tinted glasses harks back... That said, I used to have a 48K rubber keyed ZX Spectrum and on that, I had a game called Academy. On the B-Side of the tape - TAPE! - was a program that had a star cat that would display stars of various magnitude with an inverted display. /harks back... Cheers, Jim |
#32
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Satellite tracking software
"Tom" wrote in message ... "Martin" wrote in message ... These PC V Mac debates pale in compasison to the Amiga V Atari ST debates of old. Many a good argument there. Must admit I love the old Amiga, although being able to buy a new PC these days and run my old software is something all these newbie's to computing take for granted. As an owner, of a Vic 20, Atari 800, Commodore 128, Amiga then finally a PC the cost of buying new software each time was murder! I'll bet it was! You should have bought a PC in the first place, instead of all those toys. ;-) brag I remember bringing in my IBM PS/2 Model 70 486 PC to school as part of a talk on astronomy, and ran several programs during the hour talk, including GrandTour. At the time (1990), the school had BBC Master 128 machines everywhere. My talk was the first time many of them had actually seen a real computer, and my little ol' PC was more powerful than all of them put together. They also had two A3000 Archimedes machines which approached something like a real computer, but were still just toys. /brag GrandTour still runs on 2000/XP. Well the PC was non existent at the time of the VIC 20, unless you consider the Commodore PET which came out in the mid 80's if I remember. In those days, Commodore, dragon, Sinclair, Atari & Apple were the big players Martin |
#33
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Satellite tracking software
"James Hill" jay ay undaskor hill on microsoft's hot mail dottcomm system wrote in message ... "Andy Clews" wrote in message ... Thus spake Jim unto the assembled multitudes: The BBC Master machines were _wonderful_ computers for their time. Implying that they were somehow not a 'real' computer is doing them a grave disservice. They were, I admit, quite long in the tooth by that point though. dons rose-tinted glasses I spent several days typing in all the programs in Peter Duffett-Smith's "Astronomy with your Personal Computer" into a BBC B and saving each to a 5.25" floppy disk, then spending several more days debugging them all, and eventually having great fun running them. Also had huge fun writing my own moon-phase program, which superimposed on to a primitive moon map in order to provide a simple observation planner. Happy days. removes rose-tinted glasses harks back... That said, I used to have a 48K rubber keyed ZX Spectrum and on that, I had a game called Academy. On the B-Side of the tape - TAPE! - was a program that had a star cat that would display stars of various magnitude with an inverted display. /harks back... Cheers, Jim Well should all be having this chat sat around a manky wooden table in some pub drinking foul smelling beer called old belly stretcher or something going on about the "old days" Martin |
#34
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Satellite tracking software
Martin wrote:
Well the PC was non existent at the time of the VIC 20, unless you consider the Commodore PET which came out in the mid 80's if I remember. In those days, Commodore, dragon, Sinclair, Atari & Apple were the big players The first PET was around in 1977 or 78 as I recall. The big three at that point were Commodore (with the PET - the VIC hadn't happened yet), Apple (with the Apple ][ ) and Tandy with the TRS-80 range. Jim -- Find me at http://www.ursaminorbeta.co.uk AIM/iChatAV: JCAndrew2 Is anyone interested in helping contribute to a whisky podcast? If so, please visit http://www.ursaminorbeta.co.uk/theDram/ thank you. |
#35
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Satellite tracking software
"Jim" wrote in message ... Martin wrote: Well the PC was non existent at the time of the VIC 20, unless you consider the Commodore PET which came out in the mid 80's if I remember. In those days, Commodore, dragon, Sinclair, Atari & Apple were the big players The first PET was around in 1977 or 78 as I recall. The big three at that point were Commodore (with the PET - the VIC hadn't happened yet), Apple (with the Apple ][ ) and Tandy with the TRS-80 range. Jim. Was the PET late 70's? That makes me feel even older. The good old Tandy TRS-80, nearly bought one of those as well!! Funnily enough the best games I ever playted were on the old Atari 800 which was one hell of a machine for its day. Martin |
#36
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Satellite tracking software
James Hill wrote
dons rose-tinted glasses I spent several days typing in all the programs in Peter Duffett-Smith's "Astronomy with your Personal Computer" into a BBC B and saving each to a 5.25" floppy disk, then spending several more days debugging them all, and eventually having great fun running them. Also had huge fun writing my own moon-phase program, which superimposed on to a primitive moon map in order to provide a simple observation planner. Happy days. removes rose-tinted glasses harks back... That said, I used to have a 48K rubber keyed ZX Spectrum and on that, I had a game called Academy. On the B-Side of the tape - TAPE! - was a program that had a star cat that would display stars of various magnitude with an inverted display. /harks back... I did much the same with a Sinclair QL: its native SuperBasic was more akin to Pascal than to other basics of the time, and third-party enhancements made it better still, with a robust multitasking OS. SuperBasic was also great for the sort of quick hacks I use Perl for now. With bits of code from Duffett-Smith's books and elsewhere I got as far as an animated sky chart and graphical satellite tracking, but the 512x256x4 display was restrictive even by the standards of the time. Happy days indeed! -- Hil |
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Satellite tracking software
Martin wrote:
Well the PC was non existent at the time of the VIC 20, unless you consider the Commodore PET which came out in the mid 80's if I remember. In those days, Commodore, dragon, Sinclair, Atari & Apple were the big players The first PET was around in 1977 or 78 as I recall. The big three at that point were Commodore (with the PET - the VIC hadn't happened yet), Apple (with the Apple ][ ) and Tandy with the TRS-80 range. Was the PET late 70's? Yep :-) The PETs were late 70's up until about 82(ish). That makes me feel even older. The good old Tandy TRS-80, nearly bought one of those as well!! The TRS-80 Model 1 Level 2 was the first computer I owned. Loved it to bits. Funnily enough the best games I ever playted were on the old Atari 800 which was one hell of a machine for its day. No arguments here. sigh Ok, I'm off for a pint at "The Old Motherboard And Solder". Jim -- Find me at http://www.ursaminorbeta.co.uk AIM/iChatAV: JCAndrew2 Is anyone interested in helping contribute to a whisky podcast? If so, please visit http://www.ursaminorbeta.co.uk/theDram/ thank you. |
#38
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Satellite tracking software
"Jim" wrote in message m... Martin wrote: Well the PC was non existent at the time of the VIC 20, unless you consider the Commodore PET which came out in the mid 80's if I remember. In those days, Commodore, dragon, Sinclair, Atari & Apple were the big players The first PET was around in 1977 or 78 as I recall. The big three at that point were Commodore (with the PET - the VIC hadn't happened yet), Apple (with the Apple ][ ) and Tandy with the TRS-80 range. Was the PET late 70's? Yep :-) The PETs were late 70's up until about 82(ish). That makes me feel even older. The good old Tandy TRS-80, nearly bought one of those as well!! The TRS-80 Model 1 Level 2 was the first computer I owned. Loved it to bits. Funnily enough the best games I ever playted were on the old Atari 800 which was one hell of a machine for its day. No arguments here. sigh Ok, I'm off for a pint at "The Old Motherboard And Solder". Jim -- Find me at http://www.ursaminorbeta.co.uk AIM/iChatAV: JCAndrew2 Is anyone interested in helping contribute to a whisky podcast? If so, please visit http://www.ursaminorbeta.co.uk/theDram/ thank you. Great thing about Atari cassette player was they used to put an audio track on the tape so as you were waiting for a game to load you could listen to some nice music. Oh that 15 minute wait!!! Martin |
#39
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Satellite tracking software
Martin wrote: "James Hill" jay ay undaskor hill on microsoft's hot mail dottcomm system wrote in message ... "Andy Clews" wrote in message ... Thus spake Jim unto the assembled multitudes: The BBC Master machines were _wonderful_ computers for their time. Implying that they were somehow not a 'real' computer is doing them a grave disservice. They were, I admit, quite long in the tooth by that point though. dons rose-tinted glasses I spent several days typing in all the programs in Peter Duffett-Smith's "Astronomy with your Personal Computer" into a BBC B and saving each to a 5.25" floppy disk, then spending several more days debugging them all, and eventually having great fun running them. Also had huge fun writing my own moon-phase program, which superimposed on to a primitive moon map in order to provide a simple observation planner. Happy days. removes rose-tinted glasses harks back... That said, I used to have a 48K rubber keyed ZX Spectrum and on that, I had a game called Academy. On the B-Side of the tape - TAPE! - was a program that had a star cat that would display stars of various magnitude with an inverted display. /harks back... Cheers, Jim Well should all be having this chat sat around a manky wooden table in some pub drinking foul smelling beer called old belly stretcher or something going on about the "old days" It's called news:uk.comp.vintage and has a whole load of reminiscences! -- Graham W http://www.gcw.org.uk/ PGM-FI page updated, Graphics Tutorial WIMBORNE http://www.wessex-astro-society.freeserve.co.uk/ Wessex Dorset UK Astro Society's Web pages, Info, Meeting Dates, Sites & Maps Change 'news' to 'sewn' in my Reply address to avoid my spam filter. |
#40
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Satellite tracking software
"Martin" skrev i melding ... "Jim" wrote in message m... Martin wrote: Well the PC was non existent at the time of the VIC 20, unless you consider the Commodore PET which came out in the mid 80's if I remember. In those days, Commodore, dragon, Sinclair, Atari & Apple were the big players The first PET was around in 1977 or 78 as I recall. The big three at that point were Commodore (with the PET - the VIC hadn't happened yet), Apple (with the Apple ][ ) and Tandy with the TRS-80 range. Was the PET late 70's? Yep :-) The PETs were late 70's up until about 82(ish). That makes me feel even older. The good old Tandy TRS-80, nearly bought one of those as well!! The TRS-80 Model 1 Level 2 was the first computer I owned. Loved it to bits. Funnily enough the best games I ever playted were on the old Atari 800 which was one hell of a machine for its day. No arguments here. sigh Ok, I'm off for a pint at "The Old Motherboard And Solder". Jim -- Find me at http://www.ursaminorbeta.co.uk AIM/iChatAV: JCAndrew2 Is anyone interested in helping contribute to a whisky podcast? If so, please visit http://www.ursaminorbeta.co.uk/theDram/ thank you. Great thing about Atari cassette player was they used to put an audio track on the tape so as you were waiting for a game to load you could listen to some nice music. Oh that 15 minute wait!!! Martin I remember my Sinclair ZX-81 that gave me only one try when saving on tape, if that failed the program was lost! My later Commodore 64 had also some strange ideas, the cassette player had to be put under a pillow to work well. But I still keep these things, once in a while I take them out from the shed, just to think back and remember those good days. Kjell Rømma, Norway http://home.online.no/~romma/ |
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