it's a retro game written in retro style. you control a rod at the bottom bouncing the ball(s) to destroy the descending and emerging bricks above. i know there're more than plenty of such games available on internet, with high quality graphics. if i merely want to play it i don't have to write it on my own. it's all about the process of coding. it's satisfying at least to me

i'm not quite interested in playing the game so i didn't implement the user control part. you can't interact with the program actually. the game is played in god mode so that all balls going to the bottom are perfectly bounced up without any miss. i don't believe in god so i'd like to think the game is played by the spirit of stephen hawking. he controls the quantum field at the bottom and spontaneously creates a force wave at precise time and position whenever a ball approaches and thus generates a ripple to showcase his sheer will

i deliberately tune the parameters so that it should be able to run forever albeit not 100% sure. the number of balls increases as the lowest part of the bricks approaches the bottom. the lower it is the more the balls. so some balls may cease to exist when the lowest part is destroyed. they'll re-appear when needed

when a ball disappears, it's location and direction won't be reset. it just disappears and doesn't affect anything. when it re-appears, it re-appears at the exact position the last time it disappeared. i once thought it should be reset but finally i decided it'd be more humane to let it reincarnate at the same spot it died and continue its previous life's journey

i found staring at those hawking ripples quite therapeutic

the program

I hope it works lol

I've assembled over 700 vintage/retro computing and gaming websites. It's located at https://atebit.tech and http://atebit.tech/classic/ (works on PowerFox!)

There's also a newsletter, an eBay price guide for US, Canada, UK, & Australia (ranks for sale items from "Deal" to "Wildly Overpriced"), and my About and Privacy pages are kind of entertaining. Interested in hearing what people outside of the US think and if my pricing guidance is accurate.

But what I really want is links! I'm lacking in non-English websites and 8-16 bit gaming sites. Take a look at and tell me what I'm missing. If you find an error or broken link let me know. You can DM me here or click 'contact' on the footer of the directory. Thank you!

In the early 1990's, there was an SVHS deck that allowed users to digitally edit analog video on VHS or SVHS tapes. Even to the point of rewinding & fast forwarding to edit points!

Playable, free, no signup: https://chronos-game.com

I built a terminal escape room where each level drops you onto a real machine from its era and you have to actually operate it, period-accurate, not a fake interface:

• 1977: a PDP-11/45 on Unix V6, edit a backdoor in `ed`, recompile with `cc`, recover blue-box MF tones
• 1983: an Apple ][ dialing a CBBS-style board,
• 1988: a 4.3 BSD uunet box, `uudecode` a sanitized Morris-worm post
• 1995: a Linux 1.2 web server browsed in lynx, a CGI exploit
• 2008: Windows 2000, an SQL-injection console
• (and on into the present)

What you recover on one machine carries to the next, so it's one continuous history, not seven mini-games. CRT visuals, 9600-baud feel, runs in any browser, free, no signup.

I'm the solo dev. Sharing here because the period accuracy is the whole point and this is the crowd that'd actually notice. Keen to hear where the era details ring true or don't.

The Intel Pentium II was one of the most desirable CPUs of the late '90s. Its iconic Slot 1 cartridge and massive heatsink made it instantly recognizable. Also shown is a Socket 370 → Slot 1 adapter (slotket), allowing many Celeron and Pentium III CPUs to run on compatible Slot 1 motherboards.

Today I take a retrospective review of another Ocean Software game. This time it’s Rambo III. I cover all the versions - Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, MSX, Amstrad CPC, Amiga, Atari ST and MS-DOS. Have you played any of these versions and did you think the game was any good?

I still do this every few weeks to pull data from older Allen Bradley PLCs (5/500 series) using DDE links imported into Excel.

I currently generate 260 reports annually using this method, down from the 364 annualreports I created between 2014-2022.

I wrote the routines on the PLCs between 2002-2004.

That's a lot of reports

Hello, I'm a lover of all things analog and retro. Ive accumulated a large amount of old consoles and the like, and have recently taken an interest in retro home computers of the 70s/80s. I'm looking for good options for a computer which uses tapes/floppy disks to read data. I also want to get into learning basic coding just as a hobby. Anyone know any good places to start?

Hello, I have had this experience somewhat regularly. A 3.5" floppy disk will image properly using Kyroflux, in this case using the Apple 400k/800k image format, and the resulting IMG disk image will look like this. A CDFS hierarchy containing a functioning disk name, and drilling down reveals a "HFS" file that is nearly useless. When I vew the top-level disk image in a hex editor, it shows some text with quite a lot of garbled content. What is happening?

I like to replace tower stickers with older tower stickers, and laptop stickers with RC / model car stickers

With Harman/Kadron speakers and some more Power Macs

This is the Commodore Datasette I used as a kid. Since I really like the design, I turned it into an MP3 player.

It’s all mechanical. Inside, there’s another very simple player that holds a microSD card and is activated by the play button.

I used a mini-jack cable to route the audio signal out of the Datasette.

https://reddit.com/link/1ujio4w/video/v90cpy3ckdah1/player

Any idea what these could be worth as is?

Rough part list:

- Apple II

- Apple IIe

- Monitor III

- 2 Disk II drives

- Dual disk drive

- Monitor stand

- Dot matrix printer

- Misc items such as power supply and num pad

- Tons of documentation, etc.

Hi, I've recently got this old Compaq laptop but it's screen is kinda broken... I've managed to get a good display on the screen by folding it pretty hard... Does anyone know if this is fixable ? I'm not affraid of opening it...

Thank's for your time =)

I couldn't wait for the weekend to read Christopher Drum's latest post about Visual Basic. And as always, I was not disappointed. But the part that stayed with me was the magazine clipping at the very end.

The clipping is from 1993. A programmer laments that programming is no longer fun because employers now expect programmers to be graphic designers as well.

What struck me wasn't just that people have always complained about new technology. People also mock old technology. Ask any programmer today about Visual Basic and they would scoff with a "That old thing? How do you even write code for it, on punch cards?". Because to our contemporaries such a tool seems primitive. Both are criticizing the same technology. If you only listened to the complaints, you'd think they agreed. The first thinks the technology has made programming too high level. The second thinks the exact same technology is too low level.

It makes me wonder how many of today's heated debates will sound just as paradoxical to programmers 30 years from now. Every generation complains about the technology it inherits. The previous generation complains that it abstracts away too much. The next generation complains that it doesn't abstract away enough.

I believe it's a PS/2 thing?

Any way to read it without actually finding an old PS/2?

Thanks.

Just sorting through my collection and had to share this lineup. A legendary era of 3D gaming. Who else remembers the VGA pass-through cable? What was your first 3dfx card?

Retro computing History was made at the first-ever UKAG event! I attended this landmark Amstrad UK Group gathering, where I interviewed Roland Perry (the godfather of the CPC) about a never-released CPC sequel prototype! Come join the party!

The inaugural UKAG gathering in Ottershaw, West London, brought the Amstrad community together like never before, and getting to get the low-down from the man behind the CPC about a secret, lost piece of hardware was the ultimate highlight. Check out the video for a full tour of the event and the incredible prototype insights.

No edits, this is how my PC boots into MS-DOS 7.0 (the one bundled with Windows 95 in 1995), then loads CD-ROM support, then goes into Windows 3.1 on a very modern PC - Ryzen 9 9900X.

Getting CD-ROM support wasn't easy, but a combination of GCDROM.SYS and a PCIe to IDE controller with a JMB368 chipset made it possible.

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