The Acorn-designed RiscPC computer celebrated its twentieth anniversary since its launch back in May 1994, with a two-slice RiscPC-shape cake that ended up being many more slices (lietrally!) than that, at the annual Wakefield RISC OS Show. Here's a three-minute video of the event, courtesy of Riscository.
The chap in the red shirt is the estimable Andrew Rawnsley of R-Comp – and for all of you who thought that 'Andrew Rawnsley' is a political journalist at The Observer who has a semi-regular slot on the BBC's This Week programme – I counter that for those of us 'in the know', this is and always has been the real Andrew Rawnsley, and of much greater actual value to the world.
I have three working RiscPCs myself, though two have been starting to struggle during the past few months after working more-or-less flawlessly since I first bought a two-slice in August 1995...
Showing posts with label computers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label computers. Show all posts
Sunday, 11 May 2014
Monday, 20 May 2013
MMD Fifth Anniversary
The free MikuMikuDance (MMD) software that allows for such high quality animation of Vocaloid characters – and any other models made to the same format – is so significant that even it has just celebrated its fifth anniversary.
The program, available in Japanese or English and with single model or multiple model capability versions (the latter including the open source 'bullet physics' ability), is no longer officially supported, and has more recently been supplanted by MikuMikuMove (MMV).
Nevertheless, there are still many appreciative users of MMD even today, and they will no doubt enjoy this 'cast of many' tribute video that celebrates the software's fifth anniversary.
Happy fifth birthday, MMD!
The program, available in Japanese or English and with single model or multiple model capability versions (the latter including the open source 'bullet physics' ability), is no longer officially supported, and has more recently been supplanted by MikuMikuMove (MMV).
Nevertheless, there are still many appreciative users of MMD even today, and they will no doubt enjoy this 'cast of many' tribute video that celebrates the software's fifth anniversary.
Happy fifth birthday, MMD!
Wednesday, 23 January 2013
GEEK 2013
GEEK in this context stands for Games Expo East Kent, and is an event coming to Margate next month. Last year's debut event was apparently so successful that this looks like becoming a regular annual event. I consider that to be a Good Thing!
I, of course, have the connection to Margate that I have mentioned a couple of times before: the little office the then DTI's regional office had there in the Old Town Hall, which I visited typically once or twice a year.
Thus I have a hankering to revisit the old area, which I quite liked – though I am perhaps too old now to battle it out with the young gamers of today. My own gaming is not in their league, and originates in the decades of the 'eighties and 'nineties. The world has moved on somewhat since those times...
Anyway, the event will be based at several locations in Margate, including the Winter Gardens, between 21st and 24th February 2013 (during schools' half-term).
Here is the event's promotional video...
I, of course, have the connection to Margate that I have mentioned a couple of times before: the little office the then DTI's regional office had there in the Old Town Hall, which I visited typically once or twice a year.
Thus I have a hankering to revisit the old area, which I quite liked – though I am perhaps too old now to battle it out with the young gamers of today. My own gaming is not in their league, and originates in the decades of the 'eighties and 'nineties. The world has moved on somewhat since those times...
Anyway, the event will be based at several locations in Margate, including the Winter Gardens, between 21st and 24th February 2013 (during schools' half-term).
Here is the event's promotional video...
Sunday, 23 December 2012
Pi on CNN
Here's a short-ish item about the Raspberry Pi computer that recently appeared on CNN.
It's just the right kind of British good news story that gives us a welcome break from the festive season for a few minutes and should leave us feeling positive afterward...
It's just the right kind of British good news story that gives us a welcome break from the festive season for a few minutes and should leave us feeling positive afterward...
Tuesday, 4 December 2012
RasPi Talk at Hackerspace Charlotte
This is a really interesting talk by the Raspberry Pi Foundation's Eben Upton. If you're at all interested in this area of technology, do reserve forty minutes or so for the talk and slide show (but not the Q&A session, which has been cut out) in order to go all the way through this. While some of the content is, naturally enough, background material, there is also a lot of quite fascinating stuff in here, if you keep with it...
Saturday, 17 November 2012
Favourite Simple Game
Back in the days when a chap ('Bill R') and I ran the DTI Computer Club, Bill brought in a game that was simply a signalling exercise based on a seven-hour shift at Kings Cross railway station in London.
On the BBC Micro this involved a track display screen, switchable to/from a loco yard screen, and operated in four basic colours (Mode 1 on the Beeb) of black, white, yellow and red.
It was very effective, and not all that frenetic – though it does have its moments at certain times during the shift. Being judged Excellent, let alone Outstanding, wasn't exactly easy to achieve, despite the deceptively straightforward nature of the game and its sometimes seemingly leisurely pace.
It was really all about locomotives: getting the right type attached to outgoing trains, getting the locos that brought the trains in subsequently out of the platforms and (in most instances) to the station's loco yard for refuelling. The judgment on one's performance was based around timekeeping – essentially, getting trains out on time, and not keeping them waiting to come in from elsewhere on either of the 'up' lines (Up Fast and Up Slow). Although the slow line arrivals always keep to time, there are random early and late arrivals of various time-shifts on the Up Fast (UF) track.
Come forward several years and Acorn's Archimedes computer and its successors supplanted the old BBC Micros for most purposes (there are still some Beebs running factory machinery and doing other jobs even today). I was delighted when The Data Store in Bromley released an updated version of the KingsX game to run in the newer computers' desktop, fully multi-tasking, and all in one display...
The loco yard now appears at the bottom-right of the display area, rather than in a separate screen as it had to in the old Beeb version. From this we can see a few of the complications.
For example, the West Bay (WB) where the Motorail from time to time asks for a shunting locomotive (Class 31) to take some coaches to the Ferme Park depot near Finsbury Park. The loco Hold point (H) causes a blockage of the Up Slow (US) line every single time a loco moves to or from that point. It takes three minutes (the game advances in half-minute 'jumps' at ten times real life speed, i.e. every three seconds) for a loco to get to the Hold point from a platform or the yard, so it's quite an impediment.
On top of this, the occasional parcels train needs to go into platform 1, so that has to be clear of stock and locos in time for their arrivals – and those trains can (and often do) run early or late, sometimes by quite a few minutes.
The two suburban services – half-hourly to Royston and the hourly semi-fast – have to go on platforms 9 and 10 (and nothing else can go on either of those platforms). Sometimes an incoming train doesn't form an outgoing service, but after a while asks for a (shunting) loco to take it to the depot.
Thus we end up with a surprisingly complex scenario; and at certain times during the simulated work-shift it becomes just about impossible to keep to timetable, even when everything arrives on time thus creating no deviations from a nominal pattern. For example, at just after 9 am, a situation arises whereby there just isn't any platform available for an incoming train until after it has been held up at a red signal outside the station.
There is no way around this; and even solving that with a minimal delay then, of necessity, holds up the outgoing semi-fast suburban service at 0908 hrs, which ends up departing a minute late. There are a couple of other sticky moments in a similar vein; and several periods when, because of other movements, it is very difficult to get all the needed locomotives out of the yard and attached to trains in time for their scheduled departures.
Overall, this relatively simple simulation is actually quite a challenge. A hugely bigger such game, called simply Signal Box, is vast by comparison, and unless one has a display some 4,000 pixels wide will always involve sideways scrolling so one never gets an all-at-once view of what is going on. I can't really do that one, I have found.
Perhaps if someone were to produce something in between that will fit on a modern HD (1,920 pixels wide) display, that might be manageable. In the meantime, I still have an occasional go at KingsX, at which I am now usually rated as Outstanding!
On the BBC Micro this involved a track display screen, switchable to/from a loco yard screen, and operated in four basic colours (Mode 1 on the Beeb) of black, white, yellow and red.
It was very effective, and not all that frenetic – though it does have its moments at certain times during the shift. Being judged Excellent, let alone Outstanding, wasn't exactly easy to achieve, despite the deceptively straightforward nature of the game and its sometimes seemingly leisurely pace.
It was really all about locomotives: getting the right type attached to outgoing trains, getting the locos that brought the trains in subsequently out of the platforms and (in most instances) to the station's loco yard for refuelling. The judgment on one's performance was based around timekeeping – essentially, getting trains out on time, and not keeping them waiting to come in from elsewhere on either of the 'up' lines (Up Fast and Up Slow). Although the slow line arrivals always keep to time, there are random early and late arrivals of various time-shifts on the Up Fast (UF) track.
Come forward several years and Acorn's Archimedes computer and its successors supplanted the old BBC Micros for most purposes (there are still some Beebs running factory machinery and doing other jobs even today). I was delighted when The Data Store in Bromley released an updated version of the KingsX game to run in the newer computers' desktop, fully multi-tasking, and all in one display...
The loco yard now appears at the bottom-right of the display area, rather than in a separate screen as it had to in the old Beeb version. From this we can see a few of the complications.
For example, the West Bay (WB) where the Motorail from time to time asks for a shunting locomotive (Class 31) to take some coaches to the Ferme Park depot near Finsbury Park. The loco Hold point (H) causes a blockage of the Up Slow (US) line every single time a loco moves to or from that point. It takes three minutes (the game advances in half-minute 'jumps' at ten times real life speed, i.e. every three seconds) for a loco to get to the Hold point from a platform or the yard, so it's quite an impediment.
On top of this, the occasional parcels train needs to go into platform 1, so that has to be clear of stock and locos in time for their arrivals – and those trains can (and often do) run early or late, sometimes by quite a few minutes.
The two suburban services – half-hourly to Royston and the hourly semi-fast – have to go on platforms 9 and 10 (and nothing else can go on either of those platforms). Sometimes an incoming train doesn't form an outgoing service, but after a while asks for a (shunting) loco to take it to the depot.
Thus we end up with a surprisingly complex scenario; and at certain times during the simulated work-shift it becomes just about impossible to keep to timetable, even when everything arrives on time thus creating no deviations from a nominal pattern. For example, at just after 9 am, a situation arises whereby there just isn't any platform available for an incoming train until after it has been held up at a red signal outside the station.
There is no way around this; and even solving that with a minimal delay then, of necessity, holds up the outgoing semi-fast suburban service at 0908 hrs, which ends up departing a minute late. There are a couple of other sticky moments in a similar vein; and several periods when, because of other movements, it is very difficult to get all the needed locomotives out of the yard and attached to trains in time for their scheduled departures.
Overall, this relatively simple simulation is actually quite a challenge. A hugely bigger such game, called simply Signal Box, is vast by comparison, and unless one has a display some 4,000 pixels wide will always involve sideways scrolling so one never gets an all-at-once view of what is going on. I can't really do that one, I have found.
Perhaps if someone were to produce something in between that will fit on a modern HD (1,920 pixels wide) display, that might be manageable. In the meantime, I still have an occasional go at KingsX, at which I am now usually rated as Outstanding!
Saturday, 3 November 2012
Tweet of the Day – 3 November 2012
One for the IT geeks, from FactHive, re-formatted for ease of reading...
In fact, this was tweeted a couple of days ago, but I don't follow FactHive (I hadn't even heard of the account before) and picked it up from a re-tweet dated today. I thought it might be of interest to at least a few of my regular readers, so worthy of inclusion in this series.
The point this tweet makes is of course the old one about the costs of any particular technology reducing over time. Once the costs of developing a new technology have been recouped, that can come off the sale price of the end product, aided also by refinement in production techniques gained with experience, mass-production when it goes mainstream in the marketplace, and competition from others in the same line of business.
It happened with pocket calculators (originally sold for well over £100, now often given away with something else) and many other technology-based innovations. I saw a lot of it happen within the hi-fi market during my time working in that sector's retail business, so for me it is old hat: I've known of the phenomenon for more than four decades now.
"Price of 1 gigabyte of storage over time:
- 1981 $300,000
- 1987 $50,000
- 1990 $10,000
- 1994 $1,000
- 1997 $100
- 2000 $10
- 2004 $1
- 2012 $0.10 "
In fact, this was tweeted a couple of days ago, but I don't follow FactHive (I hadn't even heard of the account before) and picked it up from a re-tweet dated today. I thought it might be of interest to at least a few of my regular readers, so worthy of inclusion in this series.
The point this tweet makes is of course the old one about the costs of any particular technology reducing over time. Once the costs of developing a new technology have been recouped, that can come off the sale price of the end product, aided also by refinement in production techniques gained with experience, mass-production when it goes mainstream in the marketplace, and competition from others in the same line of business.
It happened with pocket calculators (originally sold for well over £100, now often given away with something else) and many other technology-based innovations. I saw a lot of it happen within the hi-fi market during my time working in that sector's retail business, so for me it is old hat: I've known of the phenomenon for more than four decades now.
Wednesday, 24 October 2012
Tweet of the Day – 24 October 2012
From one Darren Curtis...
"Working at a global design agency in London, just discovered they have printers on the network called Waybuloo, Upseydaisy and Igglepiggle."This appears to be an updated variation on a theme started many years ago, when my younger brother was at University. There the (line) printers were named Tigger and Pooh....
Monday, 16 April 2012
Pi Day
After a change of designation that then required them to have emissions testing, causing a moderate delay, the first batch of Pi's has now gone out and some customers have reported receiving theirs this morning.
At least one recipient has already tweeted from it, others have simply announced the arrival of theirs, one with a photo, and here's another pic, oh and this one has a video.
In the video, note the mention of Element 14 on the instructions, which is the name for what was, once upon a time, Acorn Computers, inventor of the ARM chip of which breed a recent version is at the heart of the Pi...
The device will be featured on BBC Look East this evening, also viewable nationwide on Sky channel 981 or Freesat channel 953.
Saturday, 31 March 2012
Bridging the Network
Now, four wired ports were never going to be sufficient for my needs as I had things then, so I have the two portables both operating over wireless networking and the wired connection from the one in "Mission Control" (as I call this room) has been removed.
The other one, located in the bedroom, I had already set to wireless networking, so no change was needed.
However, the other bedroom computer (ha ha! Take that, Modesty Blaise!) – a RiscPC – had previously communicated with my eight-port LinkSys router via a pair of Belkin wireless devices, one plugged into the RiscPC and the other into the router.
The router will not work with the Virgin hub (at least not with the limited tinkering I have done so far) so my new idea is to wire the bedroom RiscPC into the portable's network port and use that machine (in RISC OS emulation mode) as a "bridge" between the wired and wireless networks. It will be interesting to see (a) if this works at all and (b) if the bedroom RiscPC is visible only on the connected portable or is transmitted across the whole network. I suspect it might be the latter, but haven't yet reached the point where I can test it.
Why not?
It's because that RiscPC has only a 10Base2 (BNC connector) network interface. I have a gadget to convert the signal to 10BaseT (RJ-45/UTP) which I have wired up, but I can't find the mains power unit for it. There is relatively little still boxed up here, but I have spent a whole afternoon untangling various cables from one packing box and it wasn't among those.
Okay, so I shall carry on looking during the next couple of days, and no doubt report back what transpires. As I backup these "secondary" computers only monthly, on the first day of each month, it would be handy to have this working by some time tomorrow (1 April)!
UPDATE: I've found the power supply for the gadget, and the bedroom RiscPC and the hard-wired portable can now see each other; but that is all. Not a problem: I shall simply 'pipe' anything to or from the RiscPC via the bedroom portable, which is no trouble at all. Indeed, this gives that machine more work to do, which is no bad thing.
Monday, 26 March 2012
What's a GertBoard?
This demonstration should give you an idea...
Yes, it's a hardware interface add-on for the Raspberry Pi. It reminds me so much of the sort of thing my brother and I (mostly him) built ourselves, back in the early 'eighties at the family home in Morden. The row of LEDs and the momentary-contact pushbuttons are so reminiscent of a very basic computer (with 1 kiloByte of memory!) built into a silver-and-green casing that I had, with a Motorola 6800 CPU at its heart.
Ah, those were the days! The memories the GertBoard thus brought back to me were quite powerful, and reminded me of just how much I still had to learn in those times.
Anyway, we are now some thirty years on, and still the spirit of "breadboard innovation" and experimentation lives on. It really is important for the future, to help prevent stagnation in some of the fields in which the technology can continue to flourish and develop.
Yes, it's a hardware interface add-on for the Raspberry Pi. It reminds me so much of the sort of thing my brother and I (mostly him) built ourselves, back in the early 'eighties at the family home in Morden. The row of LEDs and the momentary-contact pushbuttons are so reminiscent of a very basic computer (with 1 kiloByte of memory!) built into a silver-and-green casing that I had, with a Motorola 6800 CPU at its heart.
Ah, those were the days! The memories the GertBoard thus brought back to me were quite powerful, and reminded me of just how much I still had to learn in those times.
Anyway, we are now some thirty years on, and still the spirit of "breadboard innovation" and experimentation lives on. It really is important for the future, to help prevent stagnation in some of the fields in which the technology can continue to flourish and develop.
Saturday, 10 March 2012
BBC Micro 30th Anniversary
It'll be great to have not only the co-founders of Acorn Computers Ltd, Hermann Hauser and Chris Curry, but also Sophie Wilson and Pref Steve "Furby" Furber there, as well as Eben Upton of Raspberry Pi fame.
Thus the thirty year span from the original Acorn Proton to today's ARM-based hardware platform will be covered at this very special event.
I don't expect to be able to go myself, as the tickets are too expensive for me to be able to justify, but wish it well from a distance instead!
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