Nostr notes by vga256

aw, that's too bad. the puzzle design is incredibly ...

2025-10-03T04:07:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…cxsc
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aw, that's too bad. the puzzle design is incredibly prescriptive/linear, so i ended up needing a walkthrough for most of it.

it's surprisingly consistent with animation quality from beginning to end.

DreamWeb got a generally lukewarm reception from many gaming mags ...

2025-10-03T02:49:18Z

DreamWeb got a generally lukewarm reception from many gaming mags at release, but almost all of them mentioned how extreme some of the depicted violence was.

one of the early scenes in the game has some incredibly detailed animation worthy of a second glance in spite of the grisly violence.

in particular, watch the can of pop thrown into the pool, and how it leaves little ripples before it burps out a final gasp of air

all of this was done without the benefit of alpha transparency and layers. every pixel was animated by hand by david dew.

#dosGaming #retroGaming

in case anyone is curious about the underlying cause of it being ...

2025-10-02T17:07:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…rrfc
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in case anyone is curious about the underlying cause of it being impossible to migrate a mastodon server from one domain to another, this limitation is due to the activitypub protocol itself, which (simplifying for brevity) uses the equivalent of absolute/hardcoded URLs for posts

@silverpill wrote this fediverse enhancement proposal that would allow for relative domain names. given that it was written a year ago, and with the molasses-like development the protocol has, i sadly suspect it's unlikely to be integrated any time soon.

more here:
https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/e3e9/fep-e3e9.md

#mastoAdmin #fediverse #activityPub

who even does circles anymore. that’s so 1978

2025-10-02T00:07:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…qf4m
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who even does circles anymore. that’s so 1978

Due to technical limitations with mastodon's architecture - ...

2025-10-01T20:12:57Z

Due to technical limitations with mastodon's architecture - which does not support domain name changes or data migration - dialup.cafe will be closing permanently in one month.

Dialup.cafe instance users: please see the server announcement and get thine affairs in order. 💀

holy crap: mastodon server does not support domain name changes. ...

2025-10-01T16:47:17Z

holy crap: mastodon server does not support domain name changes. 😆

i now have to give some serious thought to migrating dialup.cafe -> dialup.party

it would mean setting up a new server from scratch, migrating users to the new server, and losing all of their post history in the process. i am truly dumbfounded at how bad this architecture is.

#mastoAdmin

i haven't had any interest in their products in 25+ years, ...

2025-09-29T13:50:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…edsu
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i haven't had any interest in their products in 25+ years, but they own an unbelievable amount of IP, including the ultima series.

Nostr event nevent1qqsv3nf7x7vhc6epgx940au5vdaslcfetk5kfgf9sup834gmtwrp9qgzyqspm0ksfar6ys4p397r05nu4pytk6tm90maklq7mvu4z2rfjprqgruy6pa

2025-09-29T13:12:57Z

huh. https://apnews.com/article/ea-electronic-arts-video-game-silver-lake-pif-d17dc7dd3412a990d2c0a6758aaa6900

#ultima

the frightening gap between my birth and UO launch, and UO launch ...

2025-09-24T21:48:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…739d
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the frightening gap between my birth and UO launch, and UO launch and now

hahaha i peeked at his source code as he walked through some of ...

2025-09-24T19:08:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…vr32
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hahaha i peeked at his source code as he walked through some of the scripts, and it was *loaded* with hardcoded magic numbers for things like combat and movement.

he's 100% correct that he, and only he, can understand his source tree.

wow! that is fascinating. i had assumed everything there was ...

2025-09-23T15:30:52Z

In reply to nevent1q…8haz
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wow! that is fascinating. i had assumed everything there was concrete by the 70s. i forgot that earthquake proofing was a relatively recent development across the world

i imagine it’s a lot of concrete and rebar?

2025-09-23T15:04:12Z

In reply to nevent1q…n6dn
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i imagine it’s a lot of concrete and rebar?

this interview with jeff vogel has a fascinating 15-minute tour ...

2025-09-22T16:19:57Z

this interview with jeff vogel has a fascinating 15-minute tour of jeff's homebuilt IDE and engine for building spiderweb software RPGs

in an age where the vast majority of developers are building games using general purpose platforms like unity/godot, it's fascinating to see how jeff has crafted his tile-based engine to do exactly what he needs.

his editor/engine was built in 1994 on a classic macintosh, and then modified and improved upon every year since. his new games are all essentially running on the core of an engine built 30 years ago.

i most enjoyed seeing his homebrewed scripting language, which reminds me of terse MUD languages of the 90s.

https://youtu.be/F9zYiHllEcU?t=3565

#macintosh #vintageApple #retroGaming #dosgaming

whoa, those are huge tadpoles! what do the frogs look like?

2025-09-21T13:06:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…ja4r
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whoa, those are huge tadpoles! what do the frogs look like?

on the prairies of western canada it is harvest time for hops and ...

2025-09-20T16:34:42Z

on the prairies of western canada it is harvest time for hops and apples

with the hot and dry autumn, we got a surprisingly bountiful harvest of both

#gardening #bloomscrolling #autumn #fruit

Nostr event nevent1qqsz7y7c84p50vy55wy8yk56hfzdyl4n55zqdp0ejs599a9fvncvrwczyqspm0ksfar6ys4p397r05nu4pytk6tm90maklq7mvu4z2rfjprqg5spurm

2025-09-20T13:33:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…dnfu
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https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/member-behavior-policies/reporting-product-violates-ebay-policy?id=4838

hahah yes. and most often worst in my experience - nothing worse ...

2025-09-19T01:17:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…3xxa
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hahah yes. and most often worst in my experience - nothing worse than gifting someone a 20 hour commitment, like giving them a puppy for christmas

me too. i see very few pencil illustrations on mark’s site, and ...

2025-09-17T16:22:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…spnk
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me too. i see very few pencil illustrations on mark’s site, and it gives me the feeling he was working entirely digitally in his amiga years. it would be fascinating to see his process in dpaint. no layers, figuring out the palette, and then (?) cutting the image up into slices/tiles that can be rendered isometrically.

the best part is that this was his first shipped game. (not counting one earlier game that he drew the title font for). top of his game, first game. none of his later work in daggerfall/morrowind/3d rpgs (imho) comes even close to the artistry

i see so much fantastic low res art these days, but the subtler job of turning a background/scene into reusable assets is not often shown

today's software preservation task one of the great crimes of ...

2025-09-16T01:20:04Z

today's software preservation task

one of the great crimes of the 21st century was that Mark Jones' (Core Design) Darkmere - an isometric adventure-RPG for the amiga - was poorly visually documented by the usual places like lemonamiga/mobygames/etc.

perhaps for that reason alone, few remember just how incredible mark's pixel work is. using a tightly compressed palette of 16 colours for title screens and 32 colours in-game, he produces some of the best-lit scenes i have ever seen. all hand-dithered, no less.

it's one thing to paint beautiful pixel art stills for circulating on social media; it's entirely another to build them as modular assets to be used in a game. mark's ability to tackle both jobs is a masterwork.

thankfully, mark is his own best archivist, and kept a treasure trove of screenshots from the project. he provides an extensive commentary on the creation of each sprite/tile and the overall style of the game, as well as his memories of designing and building it.

(daggerfall fanatics may recognize some of the assets - trees and mushrooms - re-used in that game!)

read his entire writeup on Darkmere here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20171104143619fw_/http://www.mjonesgraphics.com/darkmere.html

#amiga #pixelArt #retroGaming

we are cousins. my beloved blacktron and its fluorescent glass ...

2025-09-16T00:31:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…csp4
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we are cousins. my beloved blacktron and its fluorescent glass

discovered this ad for a Panasonic PV-SD4090 in a march 2000 ...

2025-09-11T17:10:10Z

discovered this ad for a Panasonic PV-SD4090 in a march 2000 issue of Wired mag

99% of the time i see sony mavica posts for retro digicams, but this one is a real treasure. those LS-120 drives did not really catch on at the time, and it’s a shame because iomega zip/jaz sure were shitty products.

i’d love to see some stills taken from this camera some day. i never liked the mavica’s webcam-like optical quality even back in the day, and always thought olympus and other companies produced far more interesting prints

#cameras #retroComputing

those inflation calculators don't make sense for many kinds ...

2025-09-08T17:51:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…ah62
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those inflation calculators don't make sense for many kinds of products. $2233 will buy a top of the line imac today.
https://www.apple.com/ca/shop/buy-mac/imac/blue-24-inch-standard-glass-apple-m4-chip-with-10-core-cpu-and-10-core-gpu-16gb-memory-512gb#

found a 20 year old receipt for my iMac G5 20-inch, ordered brand ...

2025-09-08T17:31:39Z

found a 20 year old receipt for my iMac G5 20-inch, ordered brand new from the apple store when i was a grad student. this was their flagship imac at the time.

it has been a long, long time since i even imagined spending that kind of money on a new computer 🤯

#vintageApple #macintosh #retroComputing

sometimes life presents you with a choice: you can spend a sunday ...

2025-09-08T14:07:03Z

sometimes life presents you with a choice: you can spend a sunday in the comforts of home, or you can drive 4 hours to rescue 40 issues of Wired mag from hitting the recycle bin

the seller planned to toss these the next morning if someone didn’t pick them up. these 42 issues span 2000 to 2004 - fairly fascinating time in big tech, during and after the dotcom crash.

when he handed over the magazines he noticed I was smiling. he asked what I was planning to do with them.

“Read them!”

I handed him $20 and he looked genuinely sad, like he had just sold a six year old a bag of magic beans.

#retrocomputing #vintageApple #macintosh

agreed. although i did notice a ton of complaints about ...

2025-09-06T22:46:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…t53e
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agreed. although i did notice a ton of complaints about amazon-ordered “oem” parts failing after 6 months. quality is a relative term in that biz i guess

it’s particularly weird because it didn’t come at a time when ...

2025-09-04T23:36:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…ycfx
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it’s particularly weird because it didn’t come at a time when sierra was suffering. they were flush with multimedia cash at the time. the ONE time they had more money than active projects.

😂i’d love to hear the story there some day.

2025-09-04T23:20:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…k7lj
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😂i’d love to hear the story there some day.

exactly. it’s sad how quickly medium-res disappeared. it is ...

2025-09-04T22:42:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…d5f9
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exactly. it’s sad how quickly medium-res disappeared. it is very pleasant to look at

although this article and the book are more focused on economics, ...

2025-09-03T19:13:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…hrhn
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although this article and the book are more focused on economics, the concept of "process knowledge" is an interesting one that received much deeper treatment in the 70s and 80s (second-order) systems theory and cybernetics academic literature.

thinking here of michael polanyi's books "Personal Knowledge" and "The Tacit Dimension".. which are basically about how we come to embody (in ourselves) a practical and tacit relationship with the world.

those ideas got picked up by sociologists and psychologists, and some of the best work produced really deep phenomenologies and cultural studies of work environments. the vast majority of theorists still believe that knowledge is information that you can beam/transfer from person to person (via the aether!). these cyberneticists really decimated that 19th century view and offered an ecological/human perspective to replace it

for me, the sad part about working remotely, and solo, has been the absolute dearth of creative problem solving that can only be done in pairs or threes. i miss being able to think out a problem as a group, and come up with a bunch of very different solutions out loud. my software development has totally suffered for a lack of it.

oh shit. retro guy passed away? :( i knew he was sick two years ...

2025-09-03T12:32:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…l92c
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oh shit. retro guy passed away? :(
i knew he was sick two years ago, but had hoped his treatments had been successful.

https://michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/ and ...

2025-09-03T12:29:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…6ahn
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https://michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/ and https://parsedown.org

ahh interesting.

2025-09-02T20:44:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…gjyp
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ahh interesting.

oh that is wild. i had just assumed you were using era-specific ...

2025-09-02T20:34:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…cg50
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oh that is wild. i had just assumed you were using era-specific tools!

that's fantastic you were able to use open watcom. i've never tried it.

I'd love to read a post about the porting process some time. ...

2025-09-02T20:26:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…54u4
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I'd love to read a post about the porting process some time. I'm totally unfamiliar with win3.1 winsock programming.

I had no idea ALG had a wargaming division. if someone had told ...

2025-09-01T15:17:56Z

In reply to nevent1q…n0p6
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I had no idea ALG had a wargaming division. if someone had told me Space Pirates people did Perfect General back then, I would have never believed it.

yes, exactly. it's really well balanced with food/time. that ...

2025-09-01T14:25:48Z

In reply to nevent1q…xthn
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yes, exactly. it's really well balanced with food/time.
that being said...: keep an old save handy if you haven't already. like, from your early days in kalamontee. there is a walking dead problem that makes the game totally unfinishable unless you get things done in a certain order/time.

this is the one infocom game that i find myself going back to ...

2025-09-01T14:18:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…uzs3
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this is the one infocom game that i find myself going back to year after year. it's just small enough to be edible, but big enough to forget the puzzle solutions and mapping

anyone else remember the html code you could add from icq to show ...

2025-08-31T21:52:37Z

anyone else remember the html code you could add from icq to show your on/offline status on your homepage 😅

source:
https://web.archive.org/web/19980212183219/http://www.icq.com/respondpanel/

#icq #1990s #softwarePreservation

that is just wild. i did know that they had japanese published ...

2025-08-29T23:40:12Z

In reply to nevent1q…68pt
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that is just wild. i did know that they had japanese published titles, but i had no idea there was a japanese division, nevermind that it was still alive!

oh weird. interesting that they made it far enough into ...

2025-08-29T23:36:48Z

In reply to nevent1q…4y5r
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oh weird. interesting that they made it far enough into development to have a 1.5. so surprised this never made it into north america.

these are great little drives. i use them for cold storage ...

2025-08-29T20:12:47Z

In reply to nevent1q…6n82
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these are great little drives. i use them for cold storage backups and toss em in the safe

ahhhh i see! i imagine there was probably never english ...

2025-08-29T14:46:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…7r0q
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ahhhh i see! i imagine there was probably never english documentation made for it then. fascinating. i hope it crops up some day.

for now, i’ll just have to munge together my own Director based experience. thankfully they added RTF support in 5, so it can at least support basic text formatting

wow! i've never heard of it until now. i wonder where on ...

2025-08-29T14:21:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…txjh
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wow! i've never heard of it until now. i wonder where on earth a copy exists

i feel so absolutely silly answering my own question with the ...

2025-08-29T03:24:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…6dgw
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i feel so absolutely silly answering my own question with the most obvious software staring me in the face the whole time.

what cross platform win 3.1/95/mac system 7 software existed for writing and reading multimedia ebooks in the 90s?

Macromedia Director 4.0

I can’t *wait* to start making an interactive version of my book once the ebook has been published!

#vintageApple #macinosh #win31

woe betide he who was born beneath the stars of #5

2025-08-27T23:04:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…vpdy
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woe betide he who was born beneath the stars of #5

instead of memorizing our birth years, most millennials could ...

2025-08-27T22:02:09Z

instead of memorizing our birth years, most millennials could just have logitech logo tattoos inked at birth

source: https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Logitech

cool! hadn’t known that this movement type had a name.

2025-08-27T14:49:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…86vg
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cool! hadn’t known that this movement type had a name.

that is fascinating. i hadn’t realized there were hz variations ...

2025-08-26T23:02:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…rc7c
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that is fascinating. i hadn’t realized there were hz variations now! i’m in canada - I have no idea if that’s an international issue

oh wow! those are a lot more issues than i had expected. was ...

2025-08-26T18:57:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…v4pu
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oh wow! those are a *lot* more issues than i had expected. was expecting it was just a loose belt.

thanks for letting me know. will make diagnostics SO much easier

i've never taken the time to fix my slot loaders. what is the ...

2025-08-26T18:12:56Z

In reply to nevent1q…92dp
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i've never taken the time to fix my slot loaders. what is the (most often) underlying mechanical issue with ejection?

some time ago i discovered the 1940s General Electric Epicure ...

2025-08-26T16:39:16Z

some time ago i discovered the 1940s General Electric Epicure 2QH2 kitchen wall clock and fell in love with the modernist face design

it took a few months, but i finally tracked one down today for $20 locally.

i was surprised to learn that the movement is continuous, so the hands sweep gently across the face instead of the harsh thok-thok-thok of cheaper movements

i’ll be taking this apart to remove the face plate and scanning it in for archival and clock repair.

#clocks #typefaces #design

i wonder if this is the world’s only repainted lisa. they sure ...

2025-08-25T20:03:52Z

In reply to nevent1q…jgd3
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i wonder if this is the world’s only repainted lisa. they sure went into a lot of effort for a correct color match

Haha wow! I love that they even offer a mail-in order.

2025-08-25T14:24:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…fp32
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Haha wow! I love that they even offer a mail-in order.

i wrote a 120,000 word book on my experience growing up in the ...

2025-08-24T22:18:05Z

i wrote a 120,000 word book on my experience growing up in the BBS and dial-up internet era, from ~1985-1997

it's chock full of stories about ibm pc and macintosh hardware and gaming

it's going to be published this autumn as an ebook and might get a print edition

but i have a far more stupid idea for it: how about a floppy disk edition with a custom dos/windows 3.1 & macintosh system 6 ebook version

has anyone written a Voyager Expanded Book using the VEB Toolkit in 30 years?

is there an ms-dos or windows 3.1 equivalent to VEBs? I swear that back in the 90s someone made ebooks using "Asymetrix Multimedia Toolbook", but i can't seem to find any examples of it

#macintosh #dosgaming #books #retroComputing #vintageApple

hahah i've kept way, way too many of these drives just to ...

2025-08-24T19:43:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…hwcx
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hahah i've kept way, way too many of these drives just to make sure i have a few working ones.

all of them needed replacement belts, but only a couple had weak lasers.

there were never any guarantees that a dvd-rom drive could read DVD+-R back in the day, unless it specifically said that in the manual (and even then, it was hit/miss depending on the DVD brand/formulation)

i've found that if a laser can't read a +-R disc, it's not worth trying to force it to.

my sega cd, however, did teach me that when they stop reading factory-pressed discs, it's because the laser has weakened and *can* be replaced!

haha learned this lesson the hard way with my PS1

2025-08-24T19:32:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…777k
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haha learned this lesson the hard way with my PS1

haha the domain still resolves too. someone paid up til the end ...

2025-08-24T03:44:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…2v99
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haha the domain still resolves too. someone paid up til the end of 2025. the weird thing is that it clearly expired in 2006, and then someone re-registered it.

bbs enthusiasts might remember the name Telegard - a bbs server ...

2025-08-23T16:53:55Z

bbs enthusiasts might remember the name Telegard - a bbs server written based on wwiv's source code and hugely popular with the ibm pc/ms-dos crowd

telegard had a long and tumultuous history by its authors, and its own source was eventually leaked and was modded into many more popular (pirate-friendly) ms-dos boards like Renegade, Oblivion and Iniquity.

while i was doing research a few months ago on the history of those systems, i found out that telegard.net - the original home of tg - was taken over by a domain squatter in 2010, populated with ads for the past 15 years.

two months ago, i noticed that the squatter had not renewed the domain, and it went into the long grace/redemption/auction/expiry cycle. i checked on it every single morning, and to my absolute delight, it was released this morning for purchase. 💸

the domain will be used purely for historical preservation of telegard and its many descendants

#bbs #warez #softwarePreservation

me too. i'm <3 for 16-bit windows trashware. i hope ...

2025-08-22T19:04:56Z

In reply to nevent1q…zelh
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me too. i'm <3 for 16-bit windows trashware. i hope it's a director projector

TIL a toy company released a line of Independence Day toys in the ...

2025-08-22T18:38:36Z

TIL a toy company released a line of Independence Day toys in the late 90s; each toy included a different "mission disk" floppy with a little game on it for windows 3.1

toy collector @eisnerguy1 managed to collect all 11 of the toys and uploaded disk images to IA 🙏

https://archive.org/details/iD4_Independence_Day_Mission_Disks

#retroComputing #softwarePreservation #win31

it really is as good as advertised i’m afraid. even my potato ...

2025-08-22T15:17:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…s8l4
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it really is as good as advertised i’m afraid. even my potato espresso machine can’t screw it up

starting the creative day off correctly my local roaster had ...

2025-08-22T15:04:42Z

starting the creative day off correctly

my local roaster had begun carrying brazilian peaberry beans more regularly, and the flavour is exquisite - like warm dark chocolate with a hint of vanilla

#coffee

haha, so the P3-450 booted! no, this wasn't a case of super ...

2025-08-20T23:56:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…r6as
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haha, so the P3-450 booted!

no, this wasn't a case of super young hip grandma into Quake 2

@smallsco's guess that this machine was "grandma got taken by a salesman" turned out to be right on the money

the users were primarily kids in their late teens into weed, hunting, dirty jokes and late 90s alternarock. almost certainly a family with 15 year olds, parents in their mid-30s, and a grandma/grandpa in their 50s

not a single 3D game found to take advantage of that Voodoo 3, except Deer Hunter which used a software renderer 😭

aside from photo folders of the family's back 40 acres of broken down cars in the bush (of which there were dozens), LimeWire, and every anti-spyware software you can think of, the only games i found were a folder of great shareware classics like Xargon, Jill of the Jungle, and Castle of the Winds 👏

the most fascinating part was launching MSIE and seeing it bring up a local ISP's dialup number using the win98 DUN interface, pre-populated with their login info.

#retroComputing

today's pickup is really fun. i only had a single photo to go ...

2025-08-20T21:31:17Z

today's pickup is really fun. i only had a single photo to go by in the classified ad, and i instantly knew i wanted to pick it up based on the video card alone.

the teenager that sold it to me said that it was his grandma's computer, and i can confirm that is absolutely smells like grandma's house - potpourri and all.

just for fun - can you identify the cpu/board/video card in the first pic? (answers are in the image description)

compare the second and third pic - i removed the sticker. beneath is the original colour of the plastics D:

i was genuinely surprised that it turned out to be such a fascinating video card. i missed this entire generation, as I went with Riva TNT.* cards in those days.

the sound card is fascinating - I've never used Yamaha XG based chips before, and can't wait to hear what they sound like.

#retroComputing

😆

2025-08-20T00:41:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…ewju
_________________________

😆

a few years ago i found out that later versions of bryce ...

2025-08-18T16:29:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…rk9p
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a few years ago i found out that later versions of bryce supported parallel rendering over the network. i'd love to try it tunnelled over the internet some day.

is it lambing season there right now?

2025-08-18T03:03:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…ef0e
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is it lambing season there right now?

i'm glad to see scott murphy left his mark on EcoQuest ...

2025-08-15T21:33:42Z

i'm glad to see scott murphy left his mark on EcoQuest

#sierra #adventureGames

freaky seeing lua beginning to be used in mainstream software ...

2025-08-13T23:03:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…yxcv
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freaky seeing lua beginning to be used in mainstream software (outside of games). i've grown to love it over the past 20 years.

a fun find: live viruses from the dos/mac os era best part is ...

2025-08-13T21:41:07Z

a fun find: live viruses from the dos/mac os era

best part is that many include ASM source, so you can get a great idea of how they all worked.

personal favourites were finding copies of monkey, michelangelo, and stoned variants - which all were absolutely real problems when i was a kid

https://discmaster.textfiles.com/browse/7515/thegreatunsorted.tar/thegreatunsorted/live_viruses

#bbs #retroComputing #hpav

does anyone else want to help rebuild the wuarchive.wustl.edu ...

2025-08-13T03:50:22Z

does anyone else want to help rebuild the wuarchive.wustl.edu anonymous ftp 😢

my first ftp site. i will always remember you for your /pub/.warez/win95beta/ my dear friend.

#worldWideWeb #retroComputing #oldInternet

oh that's awesome to hear! can't wait to see what you ...

2025-08-12T19:00:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…fez5
_________________________

oh that's awesome to hear! can't wait to see what you come up with for your kiki instance :D

look, i don’t have all the answers but i do have all the ...

2025-08-12T17:31:40Z

look, i don’t have all the answers

but i do have all the modems.

this US Robotics Total Control modem bank just arrived. this is what some ISPs used in the mid-90s for incoming dialup lines. your 33.6Kbaud modem would dial into this machine, which would forward all of the incoming/outgoing data to the terminal server for SLIP/PPP

waited 3 long years for one to show up on ebay at a reasonable price.

now i can finally start offering the 16 line dialup service the world needs more than ever.

#bbs #dialup #retroComputing

before you continue, i'd like to preface this with the fact ...

2025-08-12T04:05:26Z

before you continue, i'd like to preface this with the fact that i'm the original garf hater

but even i want these.

just look at those print registration offsets 😻

#garfield

imagine wikipedia with a microsoft win9x interface choose your ...

2025-08-12T02:41:37Z

imagine wikipedia with a microsoft win9x interface

choose your lord

lol. i can't believe you've actually used one. ours came ...

2025-08-11T01:57:12Z

In reply to nevent1q…c0jx
_________________________

lol. i can't believe you've actually used one. ours came with the belt, but we didn't have any attachments to turn with it. there was a lever on the right side, *right beside* the brake, and if you tripped it, it would start spinning the pulley about 6 inches from your ankle cuff 😰

all things considered, it is amazing you and i have all appendages still intact

haha ours hand to be crank-started and the engine had so much ...

2025-08-11T01:16:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…2e6d
_________________________

haha ours hand to be crank-started and the engine had so much compression that if you didn’t immediately jump back after getting the crank down, it would spin around and try to break your face in half

edit: oops used the wrong term. ours had a flat belt pto pulley.

my dad’s 1935 massey-harris tractor was the shame of the ...

2025-08-10T23:59:56Z

In reply to nevent1q…ev83
_________________________

my dad’s 1935 massey-harris tractor was the shame of the community. it had a PTO wheel near your ankle, which would easily rip a leg off if your jeans got caught in it.

an 80s Versatile would have been a dream machine for him 😅

#silentSunday #bloomscrolling ...

2025-08-10T21:02:40Z

#silentSunday #bloomscrolling

yep. i consider mine a plex client and occasional light gaming ...

2025-08-10T07:05:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…p3wc
_________________________

yep. i consider mine a plex client and occasional light gaming machine :\

wow! i hadn't realized we had a helpdesk too. was it in a ...

2025-08-09T22:17:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…uh8n
_________________________

wow! i hadn't realized we had a helpdesk too. was it in a physical office somewhere?

wow! TIL lorawan is in the 900 mhz range. i had no idea.

2025-08-09T21:50:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…fawm
_________________________

wow! TIL lorawan is in the 900 mhz range. i had no idea.

@npub1040…r57u i very much appreciate that you're right in ...

2025-08-09T21:44:14Z

Scott VE3QBZ (npub1040…r57u) i very much appreciate that you're right in the middle of thrashing yourself with debian installs - but if your brain desires something to chew on...

do you have any interest in unlicensed frequency use in canada?

back in the late 90s the company i worked for did a bunch of experiments on 900mhz for broadband internet delivery.

i always thought it was a novel experiment. it was kludgy, and super sensitive to noise, but it worked.

what i liked the most about it was that it was a technology *anyone* could use precisely because it didn't require a license.

and then it all kinda died. i think we talked about that a couple of years ago - there were even academic papers written on the subject.

has there been any real movement or development in tech for unlicensed frequencies for long-distance communication in the past 5 years?

unbelievably, the company that bought it is still around, and the ...

2025-08-09T19:49:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…msu0
_________________________

unbelievably, the company that bought it is still around, and the domain is still alive - https://freenet.edmonton.ab.ca

unfortunately they no longer offer freenet services

amazing to hear Ottawa still has theirs running.

back in the early 90s, it was very difficult to find a means for ...

2025-08-09T18:11:19Z

back in the early 90s, it was very difficult to find a means for connecting to the internet.

for the very few who did have (pre-www) internet access, it was via their university or (much less likely) through a large corporation.

and then, in october of 1994, a local nonprofit started Edmonton FreeNet: for $25 per year, you got an e-mail address, usenet access, shell access to lynx and pine, and 1mb of file storage

i hung on to my account so i'd always have access to a shell no matter where I was in the world. my friends used it as a cheap ISP for years; they would eventually add SLIP/PPP.

i always wondered how the freenet initiative got started - and learned recently that it was all thanks to the NPTN Blue Book: a National Public Telecomputing Network that distributed a software package called FreePort, containing all of the sub-modules necessary to delivery dial-up access to a small community.

the whole NTPN concept itself was way ahead of its time, and i'd love to read a book on it some day.

for the time being, i'm overjoyed to see that there have been many articles written on freenets, and Ernie Smith (npub1v23…6xmy)'s is one of the best:
https://tedium.co/2022/04/13/internet-free-net-history/

#retroComputing #internet #otherNetworks #yeg

i'm trying out a recommendation from @npub1h7a…m2up - stop ...

2025-08-08T20:17:46Z

i'm trying out a recommendation from tom jennings (npub1h7a…m2up) - stop coding when you've added a new feature and just feel good about what you made.

no pushing to the meaningless 8h workday just for the sake of meeting an arbitrary deadline.

thanks for your patience @npub18sv…ersh - it took a while to ...

2025-08-08T20:13:22Z

thanks for your patience anne (npub18sv…ersh) - it took a while to get the formatting right, but your requested page output change has been integrated back into #kiki. latest version available on itch :)

https://tomo-dashi.itch.io/kiki

i just spent 10 minutes learning about 32v systems! they were a ...

2025-08-08T02:30:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…umgr
_________________________

i just spent 10 minutes learning about 32v systems! they were a standard of the great depression era, first used on the railroads and then in rural farms for lighting! wind generation systems were built to charge them specifically. i bet this lines up pretty well with your grandma’s timeline

lol! 32 volts - what in the hell are you going to power with that ...

2025-08-08T00:39:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…fmmy
_________________________

lol! 32 volts - what in the hell are you going to power with that

the funny thing about these AC clocks is that they're running on 120v, so they make a ton of whirring noise while they're running. you can hear the motor in a quiet kitchen

oh geez! so your houses in WA didn't have wall clock plugins ...

2025-08-08T00:27:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…day3
_________________________

oh geez! so your houses in WA didn't have wall clock plugins in the kitchen near the top of one wall? that is SUCH a typical thing out here - any house built around 1950 has a little recessed cubby-hole on the wall - about 20x20cm with an electrical outlet. it was made so the clock would fit flush against the wall, plug in, and be able to coil up the cord inside behind it.

incredible modernist typeface and design on this 1950s general ...

2025-08-07T23:09:25Z

incredible modernist typeface and design on this 1950s general electric Epicure clock.

(bonus points to anyone who identifies the typeface!)

#design #typefaces

@npub17m7…t3t6 I always wanted to ask - what forum software ...

2025-08-07T22:19:33Z

Martijn Frazer (npub17m7…t3t6) I always wanted to ask - what forum software does dgc run for the website? The theme is fantastic, and it's perfectly integrated with the forum design.

saw this posted a few days ago. you did the right thing by ...

2025-08-07T15:36:18Z

In reply to nevent1q…u3je
_________________________

saw this posted a few days ago. you did the right thing by backing away slowly without making threatening movements

https://sfba.social/@jeridansky/114966397703155796

yikes. i realize this is 12h later, but we’re getting DSL ...

2025-08-07T01:33:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…75rz
_________________________

yikes. i realize this is 12h later, but we’re getting DSL speeds in the northeast now 😅

i mean, it’s 1000x better than 2400 baud and at least 10x as good as dual isdn.

isn’t it incredible? i wish i could have shown the scale. it ...

2025-08-07T01:02:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…wrwn
_________________________

isn’t it incredible? i wish i could have shown the scale. it was so huge that my camera lens wasn’t wide enough

i know this will seem quite silly to many of you, but i waited a ...

2025-08-07T00:54:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…ckys
_________________________

i know this will seem quite silly to many of you, but i waited a year and drove 600 km roundtrip just so i could go to the royal tyrrell gift shop and get these shopping bags with the *original* tyrrell logo on them.

they’ve been phasing out the original logo in favour of a new arched-neck death repose design that isn’t quite as eyecatching. i just love that the original logo is totally 1950s modernism. if it wasn’t used for a museum it might have been for a gas station chain

#design #alberta #canada #dinosaurs

awesome! tell you what - i grabbed a few souvenirs and a tourist ...

2025-08-06T19:22:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…40xt
_________________________

awesome! tell you what - i grabbed a few souvenirs and a tourist guide from the museum on my way out. if you’d like me to mail you one for your kiddo, let me know :)

a massive 25 ft xiphactinus who had eaten a gillicus (look inside ...

2025-08-06T18:16:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…ckys
_________________________

a massive 25 ft xiphactinus who had eaten a gillicus (look inside the stomach!)

#dinosaurs

an indoor cretaceous garden biome #dinosaurs #bloomscrolling ...

2025-08-06T18:05:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…ckys
_________________________

an indoor cretaceous garden biome

#dinosaurs #bloomscrolling

for the next couple hours will be sending live toots from the ...

2025-08-06T17:24:52Z

for the next couple hours will be sending live toots from the Royal Tyrrell dinosaur museum. if you’re here right now, come say hi!

#dinosaurs #alberta #canada