I just wish I’d come across it sooner (in time to have a shot at solving the Easter Egg and winning a 1981 DeLorean, complete with a sadly non-functioning flux capacitor). Teddy told me that in Greek, "nostalgia" literally means "the pain from an old wound." It's a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. Ready Player One definitely had me pining to relive some of my early computing experiences – whether programming or playing – and so I decided to have a bit of fun with my second Raspberry Pi device (the first is a little busy… I’ll be telling you more about its exploits over the coming weeks). I’ve mentioned a few of these experiences before, but over a recent rainy weekend I decided to see if I could track down and build or install emulators for the main computing platforms of my youth onto the Raspberry Pi. Here’s what I found… (the images of the emulators have been taken on my Mac with the graphics streamed down from the Raspberry Pi and displayed using X11, mainly to make it easier to grab screenshots.) #SDLTRS PROBLEMS INSTALL# I can’t remember whether I first programmed on the BBC Micro or the TRS-80, but the TRS-80 Model III was certainly the first computer I had access to at home (well, in my father’s home office). It was also my first exposure to computer games – I remember even now many of the problems in Ghost Town, an early text adventure from Scott Adams (one that you can now play on-line, of all things). The emulator I ended up building for the TRS-80 was SDLTRS, which actually proved to be straightforward to download and build. The dates seem a bit off – I guess I’m using a really recent version of the LDOS ROM in order for it to say copyright 1991, and as for the date being 1912… Y2K issues, anyone? I couldn’t track down a posted ROM for the Model III, but I did get one for the Model I, which then allowed me to load LDOS from an emulated floppy-drive: #SDLTRS PROBLEMS DOWNLOAD# I’m yet to do anything useful with this emulator – I’m really struggling to remember how to load data from a floppy, for starters – but just seeing it again brings back floods of memories.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |