Entry 1509: Blog: 1

I received a request from a guy for three demo disks ...

Miller
Holsten
Loadsamoney

Where do I start. With like thousands of disks the challenge 
was probably the biggest I have undertakenfor anyone thus far.... 
But I succeeded.

The disks were from a collection of demo disks from the late 
eightees. 1988 to be precise. One of the disks is from the PD 
House 17 Bit Software. Not sure about the others. I have 
included the images here for download and this is my response.


Hi
 
Completed my week long project to provide a guy with 
images of three demo disks. This is what I just wrote. 
I will put the images on the website in a blog that 
I am currently composing.
 
By the way the demos were distributed by PD house 17 Bit 
Software... established in 1988.
 
Aaron
 
I hope these are what you were looking for. Can I say 
this has been an interesting project. May sound odd but 
I don’t actually use ADF files. I only have the real thing 
here so have no use for them. So, one of my challenges 
was working out how to create an ADF image.
 
The disks came from two sources. The Miller and Holsten 
are labelled in the same way and came from an unknown 
source. I have collected so much in my years. The Loadsamoney 
came from a guy in London.
 
The contents of the disks in their entirety are not of my 
origin. Therefore the contents are the contents as provided 
by others and so the copyright etc is that of others also. 
I take no responsibility for the disk contents and ask that 
in reproducing them no credit or reference is given to me. 
I give these to you freely and you do with them what you 
so choose.
 
As to the processes in creating the disks, this too represents 
a journey through time. I searched through in excess of 6000 
disks before I found the last disk which was the Loadsamoney disk. 
 
I then used a red power light 1.3 Amiga 500. Sadly I managed 
to blow a 500 brick PSU in the process, but that was always 
going to happen at some time given the age of the kit. The 
disks would not work in an A1200, A600 or A500Plus. 
 
I then used a piece of software called ADFBlitzer with an 
Amiga 1200 running OS3.9. I transferred the files to a ZIP 
disk connected via a Squirrel SCSI. The PC formatted ZIP 
disk was then taken to an external ZIP drive on a Windows 95 
machine and then transferred over a network to an XP machine 
where they were burnt to CD. The CD then brought to this 
Windows 7 machine which does not have a floppy drive. The 
journey then is to you across the internet.
 
I do applaud all those that try to maintain the history of 
the Amiga and I hope in some way we have managed to preserve 
these items for future generations.
 
All the very best 
 
scuzz

Entry 1509: Blog: 2

Great line from Big Bang Theory where Howard tries to 
impress Penny by suggesting that Raj was unable to
communicate cus he's a bit of a nerd. AND then goes
on to offer her a juicebox. Classic.

Anyway, I have thought often and long about how my
world is littered with every known computer gadget
and associated magazines etc. And how I cling to the
fun things in life with little regard to grown up
habits. Does it bother me.... Nah !!! I'm having way
too much fun. But then I guess I'm a nerd. Juicebox ?

Entry 1509: Blog: 3

Hi
 
Never, and I mean never get hooked on Manic Miner. You 
will be forever uttering the words ‘ I’ll have just one 
last go ‘. Seriously. This game dates from the dawn of 
computer gaming and I swear it has yet to be beaten for 
addiction. Simple you might think, a platform game 
involving collecting keys and avoiding stuff. But the 
game plays on limited lives, limited air and the platform 
disappear and move.

You start by working things out and then you progressively 
get better at obtaining the keys. Thing is with so many 
wrong moves you can make you are bound to make a mistake. 
And this is just one level... and there are like twenty. 
So you finally get that last key and still have to open the door. 
 
And then it starts all over again. Nothing and I mean 
nothing, from Space Invaders to Duke Nukem to Tomb Raider 
to Final Fantasy to World of Warcraft has been so addictive, 
frustrating and yet fun. Just proving you don’t have to 
have high end graphics, blood lust, sex and a large weapon 
to have fun in a game.
 
Anyway.... enough said. May just have one last go... no... 
I must be strong.
 
Going now.
 
scuzz

Entry 1509: Blog: 4

This has been a month of salvaging and repairs. The biggest 
issue being the failure of CMOS on all my old tin boxes. 
I must have replaced at least six batteries this month. 

Some of the challenge has been finding the little coin 
shaped battery on the motherboard. At least there was no 
risk of leakage.

Entry 1509: Blog: 5

Hi
 
My first experience of data loading was with the ZX81 and 
then the Spectrum. On the Spectrum you got this black box 
and colourful lines. The art was adjusting the volume on 
the tape machine to improve the chance of load success. Yet 
another sound from the past that is burnt into my memory. 
The time it took to load games was massive. 
 
Seems lost these days the use of sound to identify data 
transfer. The last time I actually sat and listened for a 
sound response to a computer loading activity was with the 
modem.  Was like looking into the Matrix. In the end you 
became one with the transfer process almost able to understand 
what the noises meant. Changed my whole perspective of fax machines.
 
Dial up. Interesting period I have to say. At least then you 
knew when the computer was trying to interact with the internet. 
It was its calling card. Today you have no idea when your 
computer is talking to the world. I miss those little green 
monitors in my tool bar telling me there was active communication. 
Right click and switch them off.
 
Bugga... my cup of tea has gone cold.
 
scuzz

Entry 1509: Blog: 6

Hi

Not sure if you have seen Wayne’s World but he would gaze 
at a guitar in a glass case in a shop and utter the words 
it will be mine. Well back in the early eighties I was at 
college and I had to travel by bus to a place called Walsall 
in the West Midlands on route to Birmingham Polytechnic just 
outside Birmingham. Anyway next to the bus station there 
was Smiths the book store. In the middle of the display there 
was a ZX81 in a glass case. An actual computer that you could 
buy. I too uttered the words it will be mine. I just couldn’t 
wait to get my hands on it. 
 
I had the same happen to me regarding the Vic20 which was 
on display in Birmingham as I travelled to work there. 
Unfortunately I was hindered by a girlfriend that wanted me 
to spend money on her. So strange, cus in the end I talked 
her into buying a Spectrum 16K so we could play games over 
Christmas. We managed to break the computer and Menzies in 
Walsall exchanged it for the 48K version at no extra cost. 
I never did get my Commodore. Sad that. I have one now though.
 
Good luck fixing the Timex. Well worth the effort. I have an 
Adidas bag in the pantry full with C30 cassettes with programs 
for the ZX81 and Spectrum. Put the tapes in a player and 
there is a mix of Radio 1 and electronic noise from programs. 
Trouble is you could never find anything on them. You would 
have to play every tape. One of my biggest regrets was throwing 
away a box full of my early Sinclair magazines. To this day 
I have no idea why I did it. Puzzles me.
 
scuzz

Entry 1509: Blog: 7

Hi
 
I copied my 1.3 disk today and used a single DD floppy disk 
formatted 720K. I then played Space Invaders which occupied 
a very small part of yet another 720K disk. Amazing that so 
much has been created from that tiny disk....
 
My Windows folder on this computer stands at 43 126 755 328 bytes. 
Maybe that is progress. Byte for Byte I am not sure.
 
So to Joe Pillow....
 
And Joe Pillow? At one point an early Amiga prototype was 
taken to be shown somewhere, and they didn't trust hold 
baggage, so they booked an airline seat for the Amiga as 
well as the couple of employees looking after it. The airline 
insisted on a name for the "passenger" so Joe Pillow was born."
 
Joe Pillow extended his fifteen minutes of fame when the Amiga 
went to production. All 53 Amiga team members who worked on 
the project signed the Amiga case. This included Joe Pillow 
and Jay Miner's dog Michy who each got to "sign" the case 
in their own unique way
 
http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/wb_13.html
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Pillow
 
And dreams do come true.
 
 
scuzz
 

Entry 1509: Blog: 8

Hi
 
And dreams do come true..
 
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly 
consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number 
of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer 
and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of 
memory in many computer architectures.
 
The world of computing and the essence of small is better.
 
When I first saw the ZX81 I became convinced that we were 
striving to make things smaller faster and better. The 
essence of microchip technology and micro circuits etc. If 
you could have seen the monster that occupied a whole room 
at my college that was loosely called a computer, you would 
have realised that the technology had to get smaller. The 
early Intergraph systems that ran drawing programs in the 
office were in special air conditioned rooms that filled a 
whole floor. And yet in no time what so ever it seemed we 
were using PC units doing more work that sat on the disk.
 
When I first saw an Amiga 500, then a 600 and 1200 I just 
knew that the limit to size was the literal size of the human 
finger and the ability of the eye to read text. The Amiga was 
for me a work of art. It not only was very functional, it 
really did look the part.
 
I am not sure what happened to the dreamers that wanted to 
develop smaller, faster and efficient into a working art form. 
I really am no great fan of the telephone. For me I need to 
enjoy what I am doing. I don’t want to be bent over and struggling 
with finger painting. I like the keyboard and I like a big flat 
screen. I fear I may be a dying breed. But for me the Amiga 1200 
will always epitomise everything that I needed in a computer. 
 
Sad the dream had to end before it had realised its full potential.
 
Thought for the day..........
 
Early in the development of the Amiga computer operating system, 
the company's developers became so frustrated with the system's 
frequent crashes that, as a relaxation technique, a game developed 
where a person would sit cross-legged on the joyboard, resembling 
an Indian guru.
 
 
 
scuzz 

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Last updated 12th October 2015

Chandraise Kingdom

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