• Tag Archives 1983
  • Byte (October 1983)

    Source: Byte – October 1983

    Byte was probably the best general computer magazine of its time. It had a long publishing run starting in the 1970s and continuing into the 1990s. This issue is from October 1983 and includes:

    Cover Story

    • Product Preview: The HP 150 – The HP-150 somewhat unique machine. It ran MS-DOS but was not PC compatible. It was also one of the first computers with a touch screen (though it was optional). It was fairly powerful for its time. It used an 8088 CPU but it ran at 8 MHz instead of the 4.77 MHz of the IBM PC.
    • An Interview: The HP 150’s Design-team Leaders – An interview with Jim Sutton and John Lee, the leaders of the design team for the HP 150.

    Columns

    • Build the Micro D-Cam Solid-State Video Camera, Part 2 – The second part of a series on building a digital camera. This part covers serial interfaces for the Apple II and IBM PC and software for the Apple II.
    • BYTE West Coast: Shaping Consumer Software – Trip Hawkins of Electronic Arts talks about how he judges software and the programmer as an artist.
    • User’s Column: New Computers, Boards, Languages and Other Tidbits – Items covered include Modula-2/86, Problem Knowledge Coupler (medical software), Kaypro 4, Osborne Executive, and more.

    Themes

    • The Unix Operating System – An overview of the Unix operating system.
    • The Unix Tutorial, Part 3: Unix in the Microcomputer Marketplace – A look at licensed Unix OS versions as well as look-alikes and work-alikes (Linux would fall under this category though that wouldn’t exist for nearly another decade).
    • Unix and the Standardization of Small Computer Systems – A look at the history of Unix and how it helped to standardize software and hardware of “small systems” (i.e. workstation and mini-computers).
    • A Tour Through the Unix File System – A tutorial on the Unix file system.
    • The Unix Shell – A look at both the command interpreter and programming capabilities of the Unix shell.
    • Unix as an Application Environment – A look at how Unix compares to other operating systems in terms of development tools and end user applications.
    • Usenet: A Bulletin Board for Unix Users – In many ways, Usenet can be thought of as the beginning of the public Internet. This article covers the history and current state of Usenet.
    • The Unix Writer’s Workbench Software – A software package designed to help improve your writing. It includes spelling and grammar assistance among other things.
    • Typesetting on the Unix System – A look at troff (Typesetter RunOFF) and its offshoots.
    • Moving Unix to New Machines – Thoug Unix was extremely portable relative to other operating systems, there were still challenges to porting it to new systems. This looks at some of those challenges.

    Reviews

    • The NEC Advanced Personal Computer – This machine was designed to run CPM/86 so essentially this is a 16-bit CP/M machine with 128K RAM and two 8-inch floppy drives. I don’t know if it was clear at the time but CP/M would shortly disappear from the market in favor if PC compatibles. The 8-inch disk format wouldn’t really be around much longer either.

    • Radio Shack’s TRS-80 Model 4 – My high school was still using TRS-80 Model IIIs and 4s to teach BASIC programming at least through the early 1990s. These machines were Z80 based and had their own DOS. The Model 4 could also run CP/M software. With two 5.25″ floppy disk drives and 128K of RAM a Model 4 cost about $3000.
    • The Morrow Micro Decision – The Osbourne 1 and Kaypro II were considered to be the main competition for the Morrow Micro Decision. It is a Z80 based CP/M computer with 64K of RAM and 5.25″ floppy drive that starts at $1200.
    • The Microneye – A digital camera with a 256×128 sensor that could interface with various computers via an RS-232 Interface. It worked at least with the Apple II, IBM PC, Commodore 64, and Color Computer.
    • The M68000 Educational Computer Board – A single board computer with a 4 MHz 68000 CPU, 32K RAM, and various ports and interfaces for $495. This board fits in a Heathkit H-19 terminal.
    • Fancy Font – Software that lets you design your own fonts for Epson printers.
    • More Unix-style Software Tools for CP/M – A look at Microtools, a package of several utilities for CP/M that add Unix-like capabilities. Inclued are tools similar to grep, diff, sort, tree, echo, find, merge, and more.

    Features

    • Photographics Animation of Microcomputer Graphics – A technique for generating stop motion animation using a computer to generate the images and a video camera.
    • The Fourth National Computer Graphics Association Conference – A look at the latest graphics hardware and software.
    • Echonet, Part 2: The Compiler – Part two of a multipart series on Echonet, a programming language/system. This part covers the compiler.
    • Computer Crime: A Growing Threat – This article looks at real-life computer crimes and some of the requirements for a secure system. Most crimes at this point involved unauthorized access. A comparison is drawn between the fictional War Games (great movie) and a real-life incident several months before that movie was released in which several teenagers gaines access to the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory.
    • Mainframe Graphics on a Microcomputer – Techniques for saving mainframe graphical output via a terminal program and converting them for display on your home computer…assuming you have high resolution graphics capabilities.
    • Talker – A program to make writing talking programs for the TRS-80 and Vortrax’s Type-‘N-Talk easier.
    • Bitmaps Speed Data-handling Tasks – Programming techniques for using bitmaps to speed up list comparison and file searches.
    • Simplified Program Interfacing – Using jump and data tables to simplify the interface between two programs.

    Nucleus

    • Editorial: A Challenge to Education – Radio Shack’s “America’s Educational Challenge” initiative.
    • MICROBYTES – The latest news including the first 256K DRAM chips, memory and other componenet shortages, Telelearning electronic university, Texas Instruments and Times reduce prices on their computers, Interland announces a $400 per device Ethernet link, and more.
    • Letters – Letters from readers about Word Tools for the IBM PC, double-spacing with Wordstar, searching in Wordstar, and more.
    • User to User – Questions answered about copy protection and privacy, cache RAM, public key encryption, and more.
    • Ask BYTE – Questions answered about joysticks for the PC, Apple disks, sharing a color monitor with multiple systems, developing games for the Atari 2600, and more.
    • Software Received – Quick looks at Apple: Bookends (a reference management system), The Chambers of Voab (educational game), The Cheap Assembler (menu-driven editor/assembler), Home Investment Package (stock-trading and compound interest), Tactical Armor Command (World War II sim), Ultimaker II (Ultima II character editor, map printer, and hints); Atari: Paris in Danger (1814 military sim), Solar Storm (adventure game); CP/M: Fallout (a fallout prediction and shelter design program), Organizer II (creates menus), Pro Pascal (programming language), Z80ASM (Z80 assembler); Commodore: Casual Writer (word processor), Deadly Skies (arcade game), Dr. Floyd (AI sim game), Gold Fever (arcade game), The Math Teacher (educational math program), Neutral Zone (arcade game), Scorpion (survival game), Type For Your Life (teaches typing), Wordplay (various word games); IBM PC: C Compiler System, Electric Ledger (checking program), Financial Planning for Supercalc (spreadsheet enhancement), and more.
    • Clubs and Newsletters – A listing of some of the latest computer related clubs and newsletters.
    • What’s New? – A brief look at new product including unix benchmark programs, Unity (A relational database for Unix), a new Unix workstation with built-in C compiler (Minibox), CT/680 color graphics terminal from General Digital Industries, two new RGB monitors from Panasonic, Web Network for Kaypro computers, Novell Sharenet X allows up to 255 IBM PC XTs to share up to 320 MB of storage, an interface from Prowell Computer Services that allows Apple IIs and Atari 8-bit computers to share files, a 300 bps modem from Avcom for the IBM PC, CP/M Processor for the TI 99/4A, word processor and database manager from Mirage Concepts, and lots more.

    …and more!


  • Krull (Atari 2600)

    KRULL (1983)

    http://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/175964747150/ultrakillblast-krull-1983

    Krull for the Atari 2600 is based on the movie of the same name. It was released late in 1983 and video game sales were plummeting at this time so Krull probably didn’t sell as well as it could have. For a game based on a movie, it isn’t as terrible as most.

    Krull the movie is a cult classic and is sort of a fantasy/sci-fi hybrid. While it doesn’t have quite the name recognition of say Tron or Star Wars or probably even Willow, it was a decent movie for those that like that sort of thing. The game follows the plot of the movie pretty closely and consists of four different parts matching up with different parts of the movie. While the game received mixed reviews, it’s above average for a movie license and is worth a try, particularly if you are a fan of the movie.

    There aren’t any sequels, remakes or rereleases of this game that I know of so you will have to play on an original Atari 2600 or use emulation. The only other game based on Krull was an arcade game by Gottlieb but it is unrelated to the Atari 2600 game other than also being based on the movie.





  • Modems: Close Encounters Of The Computer Kind

    This article, written by Lindsey Van Gelder, was published in the
    September, 1983 issue of MS. magazine

    Last February, MS. published an article of mine entitled “Falling In
    Love With Your Computer.” Back then, my computer and I spent days and
    nights staring into each other’s eyes with the single-minded intensity
    typical of new relationships. But, as these things often go, after
    some months had passed and the initial mysteries became familiar, a
    certain restlessness set in. I wanted to reach out and touch another
    computer.

    I bought a modem.

    My modem is a Hayes 1200, a sleek silver box about the size of a book.
    It has three cables connecting it to my computer, my phone line, and
    an electrical outlet. Using special software – computer programs
    specifically designed to operate the modem – my computer can “call”
    other computers anywhere in the world and transfer any information of
    theirs onto my screen. If you’ve been following the computer field,
    you probably already know that a modem can get you stock prices,
    airline schedules, financial news, worldwide schedules, and a whole
    host of other services for the business community. Less publicized
    are some of the *really* interesting things you can do “on-line”:
    making friends, arguing about politics, playing chess, even (bizarre
    as it sounds) have “sex” with people thousands of miles away.

    Such carryings-on go under the general name of “telecommunications.”
    I do a lot of it on CompuServe, the largest “information service” in
    the country, which I and nearly 60,000 other people subscribe to. I
    paid a $20 initiation fee, and I’m billed at $5 an hour after 6 P.M.
    on weeknights and all day on weekends (prime business hours cost more
    than four times as much) to sample 800-plus different services. I
    would be severely remiss if I didn’t warn you that cruising around in
    this infinity of info can be awfully addicting, not to mention
    expensive – $5 an hour can add up when you’re having fun. But, come
    with me on a typical evening’s foray:

    After turning on my modem and computer and loading my software I tell
    my system to dial up CompuServe’s New York number. When CompuServe
    answers, I’m asked for my ID number and my secret password. Then I’m
    officially logged on. As often as not these days, I get a message
    informing me that I have “EMAIL” – electronic mail – sent by others to
    my ID number (73125,470) waiting for me. After I read and answer my
    mail, I’m presented with the “prompt” signal (“!”), and I can type
    in where I next want to go. (Beginners who aren’t sure where they
    want to go can call up “menus” with different choices.)

    My first stop after the mailbox tonight is the Special Interest Group
    (SIG) for Family Matters, a sort of electronic bulletin board devoted
    to child care and related topics. The 10-year-old child of two of my
    best friends is recovering from a car accident and is about to come
    home from the hospital in a full body cast; her parents have asked me
    to put a notice on the SIG asking for advice from other parents who’ve
    had to cope with similar experiences. Sure enough, there are several
    long replies, offering both practical advice (see if your health
    insurance will pay for an air conditioner, don’t let the child scratch
    inside the cast, make sure the child’s modesty is respected in such a
    vulnerable condition) and emotional support. I turn on my printer and
    automatically make a copy to read to my friends later on.

    My clothes dryer is dying a slow death and I want to buy a new one, so
    after entering in a few more keyboard commands, my next stop is the
    Comp-U-Store. I tell the computer what brand I’m interested in and
    the maximum I’m willing to spend; in seconds the computer spews out a
    discount price it can get me on a Whirlpool portable. At this point,
    my daughter Sadie wanders in, and I’m cajoled into heading over to the
    games data base and printing out her biorhythms chart for the month.

    From there I move on to see what’s doing in some of my other favorite
    SIGs: the Work-At-Home SIG (whose motto is “Take your coffee break
    with us”), the Good Earth SIG (camping, ecology, and farming), the IBM
    Owner’s SIG, and the Cooks’ Underground, (there’s an urgent message
    from a guy who needs to know if a recent recipe for cream cheese pie
    was for one pie pan or two).

    There are other SIGs and SIG sections for lawyers, educators,
    musicians, sports nuts, literary types, disabled people,
    science-fiction fans, ham-radio enthusiasts, firefighters, software
    authors, and people with medical questions. The general format is the
    same: someone leaves a question, news item or other message; anyone
    can reply to it, and anyone else can reply to that reply. (When
    you, the subscriber, enter a SIG, you can request to read all the
    messages on file, only those that have been filed since your last
    visit, or only particular messages.) Many SIG groups also hold
    regular on-line conferences, in which people all over the country
    gather to exchange information, argue, schmooze.

    For feminists, the heart of CompuServe is likely to be the Women’s
    Issues SIG (actually, a subgroup of a national issues SIG, which also
    has sections on politics, religion, and eight other issues). To get
    there I type “GO HOM-132” at the prompt. Then I electronically “leaf”
    though the bulletin board, where a debate is raging over whether one
    can ethically judge a male politician by how well he treats his wife.
    One person argues that delving into a politician’s private life is as
    unconscionable as the government’s prying into ours; we should judge
    the man purely on performance. Somebody else replies that a man
    who would lie to his wife would lie to the nation. Various people
    have added their two cents to this one.

    Tonight is Thursday, and at 9:30, the weekly women’s live, on-line
    conference takes place. Lori, Georgia, Pamela, Connie, Alex and I
    are at tonight’s session. There’s no agenda, but as one thing leads
    to another, we get into a “discussion” about street harassment and how
    we handle it. As each of us at home at our keyboards types a line
    and presses the Enter button on our computers, the line shows up on
    everyone else’s screen. (It takes a little while to get used to the
    rhythm, but once you’re used to it, it seems very comfortable – far
    more immediate and spontaneous than letters but more demanding of
    one’s thought processes and verbal skills than the phone. It combines
    what I like best about writing and talking.) Lori tells a funny story
    about faking out a lecherous guy on the street by pretending to be a
    prostitute. Georgia and Pamela want to know what Lori would have done
    if the guy had pulled out his wallet. I say that the desire to put a
    woman in her place on the street is different than the desire to have
    sex, and Lori agrees. Then Pamela admits that she minded the street
    harassment more when she was younger. Our bicoastal
    consciousness-raising group electronically chews this particular piece
    of fat for a while.

    When the conference is finished, I head on over to CB – CompuServe’s
    version of CB radio, and, along with its multiplayer games, its most
    popular service. Like the women’s conference, CB is live. The first
    thing I’m asked when I enter is my “handle,” and I enter my usual CB
    name, “Lynx.” (I chose it because it’s androgynous, but slinky – and
    because it sounds like my real name.) Then I’m asked which of the 36
    CB channels I want to tune in to. Channel 1 is the “adult” channel,
    33 has been unofficially taken over by gay men, 17 is developing into
    a channel for teenagers, and most of the rest are open. By simply
    writing “/tun” and the number of the channel I want to go to, I can
    move from channel to channel. Another company – “/ustat” – gives me
    an instant list of the ID numbers and handles of the other people
    tuned in to my channel or to all of CB. If I want to request a
    private talk with someone that no one can overhear, I can send that
    person a message using the “/talk” command; they can either agree to
    “/talk” or ignore the message.

    I “/ustat” to see if anyone I know is on CB. My best CB friend goes
    under the handle of “Lady Editor.” Her real name is Pamela Bowen, and
    she’s feature editor of the Huntington (West Virginia)
    ‘Herald-Dispatch’; she’s also the Pamela of the women’s SIG and a
    charter subscriber to ‘Ms.’ We met on CB when I happened to notice
    her handle and figured we’d have something in common. Lady Editor and
    I have now been talking via our computers for months – about our work,
    how she met her husband, how I met my lover, why we like computers,
    how we got to be feminists, why I wnated kids, why she didn’t, where
    we grew up…in other words, the usual things that new friends talk
    about. One night about two in the morning, we started to get very
    sentimental. It seems strange to me, I typed out on my keyboard, that
    we have this intimacy – but I wouldn’t know you if I fell over you on
    the street. Lady E. agreed, but said that there’s something special
    about CB friendships. In ordinary human discourse, people relate
    through categories of age, gender, race, appearance, and disability or
    lack thereof. Communicating on CB, she added, is different – it’s
    like getting past all that other stuff and speaking directly, one mind
    to another. Lady Editor and I can talk all night, and sometimes do.

    Another CB friend is Changeup. He came on line one night during an
    argument between me and someone whose handle was “Stormtrooper.” I
    was strenuously objecting to Stormtrooper’s Nazi-chic (he eventually
    agreed with me, changed his handle, and stuck around for a discussion
    about World War II), and Changeup backed me up. We later went into
    “/talk” and I discovered that he, too, was a former newspaper
    journalist, now working for a California software house. But if Lady
    Editor and Changeup are probably people I’d gravitate to at a
    real-life party, I’ve also met people on CB whom I’d probably never
    meet anywhere but CB – and I like that, too. I’ve had long talks with
    an Atlanta psychiatrist (we started by comparing the analyst-analysand
    and interviewer-subject relationships, and ended up discussing our
    feelings about aging, death, and dying); a just-coming-out Chicago gay
    man who spoke of his worries that his straight male friends won’t feel
    relaxed around him any more, even if they accept his gayness; and an
    Arizona farm woman who has seven children and 36 cats and who tried to
    explain her feelings as an antiabortion feminist – among others.

    My usual m.o. is to channel-hop until I find an interesting
    conversation, chime in, and later perhaps, go into “/talk” mode with
    someone who seems intelligent or funny. There’s a certain code of
    politeness among CBers. When you come on to a channel, you’re not
    supposed to “lurk,” i.e., hang around just eavesdropping. When people
    come and go, it’s considered rude not to say hello and good-bye.
    (This can get pretty boring if there are lots of people on the
    channel.) The CB equivalent of “come here often?” is “what’re you
    using?” in other words: What kind of computer do you have? Since we
    can’t see each other, it’s customary to describe what we’re doing and
    how we’re feeling; for instance, if someone doesn’t want to go into
    “/talk” with you, you might type: “sulking” or “looking downcast.”
    It’s de rigueur to respond to someone’s joke with at least a
    “he-he-he,” if not a “falling in the aisle, wetting pants.” People
    also tend to get fairly effusive when they know each other, blowing
    lots of “kisses,” “hugs,” and “warm fuzzies” across the screen.

    In describing some of this to people in recent months, I’ve frequently
    come up against knowing raised eyebrows; ‘ah,’ say the eyebrows, ‘this
    is all ersatz. Probably a bunch of nerds who can’t relate to people
    in real life.’ There’s undoubtedly a grain of truth in that view –
    although I must admit that I find it suspeciously akin to the
    scared-rabbit things parents said in the 1960s about hippies smoking
    marijuana only because they couldn’t hack “reality.” CB is a modern
    reality. As computers become as common as phones, the truth is that
    “real life” may involved more and more telecommunicating – possibly in
    forms we can’t even now imagine.

    Still, I was unprepared for the phenomenon known on the CB grapevine
    as “CompuSex.” The first time someone suggested it (to my 12-year-old
    and 9-year-old kids, who were masquerading as cool grown-up ladies), I
    thought it was a one-shot, perverted fluke. (The kids, of course,
    thought it was hilarious: when their CB correspondent typed “I’m
    French-kissing you now,” they typed “P-tooey!!!”) Later on, after
    several other come-ons, I decided to admit I was a reporter and ask
    people about it. One man who does it often (sometimes one-on-one,
    sometimes with his girlfriend in the room in an on-line orgy with
    another couple) described it as “like having a dirty book that talks
    back to you.” Another man pointed out that you can’t get AIDS or
    herpes from a keyboard. A woman told me that she even passes on the
    names of men who are “good CompuSex lovers.” (No, I didn’t try it –
    somehow it seemed to qualify as genuine infidelity.)

    Occasionally, the desire to meet one’s CB buddies face to face
    culminates in a party somewhere. There have also been a few on-line
    friendships that led to real-life romances and marriages. Last
    spring, the ultimate coupling occurred: an on-line wedding between two
    people who had originally met on CB, conducted with the bride and
    groom at one terminal, the minister at another, and dozens of
    assembled “guests” – CBers who had watched the relationship developing
    for months – at their terminals all over the country. In true CB
    fashion, the “organist” played “dum dum dee dum” at the appropriate
    moment, the official wedding photographer went “flash,” and there were
    lots of “sniffs” and “wiping eyes” during the ceremony. Afterward,
    the guests threw “”””””: CB rice.

    One of the things that puzzles me is why I like CB *so much*. In my
    civilian life as a typical New York glazed-eyed, fast- walking,
    don’t-lose-a-second-racing-through-the-revolving-door kind of person,
    I do my best to *avoid* strangers. True, I’ve met some lovely people
    on CB. But I’ve also met a few dullards and two or three truly nasty
    people, and on a couple of occasions (like the incident with
    Stormtrooper), I’ve run across folks who think nothing of spouting the
    most retrograde sort of racist and sexist comments. Still, a basic
    politeness on CB seems usually to prevail. Once when I was on
    the gay men’s channel, someone burst onto the screen and began hurling
    absolutely mindless abuse around, telling everyone they were sickies
    who were going to hell. I quickly did a “/ustat,” wrote down the
    abuser’s number, and followed him to another channel, where I heard
    him bragging about what he’d done to the CBers on line – and then
    heard *them* criticizing him for being out of line. The CB world is
    essentially a friendly one, full of people thrilled to be sitting in
    their bedrooms at 2 A.M., yacking intimately to a total stranger
    thousands of miles away.

    I have also noticed that there’s something about the medium that
    brings out the most patient side of me. Instead of flying off the
    handle and calling someone a moronic asshole, as is my wont in real
    life, I usually reason with people who offend me – and I’ve usually
    gotten an apology. Perhaps I feel less defensive at my keyboard, I
    can’t be raped, beaten, or bought out. CB is a democracy – we’re all
    equal here, reduced to some verbal essence. We are our brains and our
    emotions – and our typing fingers. It’s a fair fight.