Hey ladies & gents, hope your having an interesting weekend.
Though I would post up a simple little modification for those extremely cheap Snes lookalike usb controllers off Ebay.



As they come they are ok at a pinch, but do suffer from (well at least mine did) horrible at times random movement, like if you pushed hard up or down etc 7/10 times your character would also move left or right, a right pain in the ass!.
So after a quick stripdown I could soon see why.





First of all the plastic for the D-pad had alot of leftover plastic from the molding and also the center post that the D-pad orbits around wasnt long enough allowing the pad to squash the other rubber domes that was causing the erratic function. (Extremely funny if only for the inevitable swearing during a Bomberman match!).



So clean off the extra plastic with a file, this made a bit of a difference but not perfect.
The center post needs to be extended so the whole D-pad cant be pushed in by the center.
I found these small sticky foam rubber 2mm thick pads at world of quid and they are perfect to place in the center of the pcb below the D-pad, they take up the space between the pcd and D-pad perfectly.



A quick clean down with alcohol wipes to remove the flux our friends in china left behind and the pads stick very well.



Have a soldering iron at the ready as the wiring on the board isnt too hot, I re-flowed the solder points while the pads are open.
Assemble plastic body again, 5 Screws to tighten and your back in buisness, job done.



Bomberman anyone?.

Many users use Mame as their emulator, and I thought they may be interested in the origin of Mame and the first emulators that started the craze.

Mac Multipac

Mac Multipac is a pacman emulator. It was originally written for DOS, I ported it to the Macintosh. It can handle the following games:

Pac-Man
Ms. Pac-Man
Puckman
Hangly-Man
Crush-Roller

Source Code is available.


The current version is 8.1.



NOTE: While Multipac was cool in its time, it is now obsolete. Actually, it became "MAME" which has got to be the coolest arcade emulator out there. So Multipac is not of much use any more, unless you want to run at 3x3 pixel size, or unless you are having a bit of a nostalgia kick and want to see where MAME came from.


The about box pict (cause I think its cool):



If you are a PacManFan you all know Clay Cowgill's MultiPac kit. Clay doesn't produce them anymore, because of some legal issues. Now you can play with this 24 in 1 game kit in this emulator. However, you won't find any MultiPacRoms here, but you can download them somewhere on the Net...........


What is now known as The Multi Arcade Machine Emulator started in January 1997, as single emulators for different games, written by Nicola Salmoria. Most of us still remember Nicola's Multipac, Ladybug, and Pengo emulators. It has since evolved into an absolutely incredible emulator, capable of running z80, 6502, 6809, 68000 and 8086 based games. The emulator currently runs well over 340 games, a lot of which have sound, proper colors, high score saving, etc. Another great thing about this emulator, and why it has developed so fast is because of all the great people involved in either writing drivers, providing ROM images, schematics, or other valuable information. The current project coordinator is the extremely talented Mirko Buffoni

Device enables patients to play mind games
Thursday, 10-Jun-2004 2:50PM Story from United Press International
Copyright 2004 by United Press International (via ClariNet)

ST. LOUIS, Miss., June 10 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers have developed an electronic grid that collects motor signals from the brain, enabling patients to play computer games using only their minds.

Researchers at Washington University placed a grid atop subjects' brains and recorded brain surface signals directly instead of taking information through electrodes outside the skull in standard, electroencephalographic techniques.

The study has promising implications for biomedical devices that control artificial limbs, researchers said, allowing patients to move a prosthetic arm or leg just by thinking about it.

Neurologists implanted the grids in the brains of four epilepsy patients and connected them to a computer program that recorded their brain activity as they performed a range of motor and speech tasks.

The patients then played a simple computer game after a brief training session, and could control the cursor with their brains with 74 to 100 percent accuracy, said Daniel Moran, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering.

"The previous EEG-based systems are equivalent to a Wright brothers airplane in regards to speed of learning to achieve control. ... We're flying around in an F-16 jet," he said.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Having read this I have a few questions :

1. Is there any new development on this?

2. If so have they developed to the point of being able to use emulators?

3. Have they advanced beyond the grid system to say a tiny chip device, and if so what is the memory capacity? If so is it large enough for say, the entire collection of theoldcomputer.com roms and systems?

and finally......

4. Is the on/off button controllable by mind as well. Would really hate to be walking around looking for an on/off switch embedded under the skin.

whoops one more......

5. If all the above conditions are beyond the alpha stage, what is the cost, or is it freeware, shareware?

I would really be interested in their product if it were beyond the simple game stage, just think of the money saved on systems, physical games, electric bills for the additional peripherals to run the systems to the max. Hmmm forgot to ask if they had sound....

(As seen through the eyes of Nelson Ford, founder of PsL.) PsL = Public Software Library

Two Guys Invent Freeware

Prior to the introduction of the IBM PC in 1981, user groups and BBSs for other computers (CP/M machines, Radio Shacks, and Apples) passed around user-written software for which the programmers did not expect any payment, mainly because the programs were small, simple programs that could not be considered marketable and for which the authors offered no support. Pre-1980 user groups and BBSs were also notorious passers-around of pirated commercial software.

In 1982, a couple of programmers, Andrew Fluegleman and Jim Knopf (dba: Jim Button), had written a couple of major applications (a communication program and a database program, respectively) on their new IBM PCs. Not wanting to invest the time and money in trying to get these applications into stores, they decided to take advantage of the pirate distribution networks by allowing their programs to be copied, but putting a request in the program's on-disk documentation for the user to send money to the author to finance the ongoing development and support of the programs.

Fluegleman called this Freeware and trademarked that name, meaning that nobody else could market their software as Freeware without his permission. This wasn't very good for the new industry, but the name Freeware wasn't quite appropriate anyway since the software wasn't really intended to be free.

As had been done with the public domain software distributed in the 1970's, Fluegleman also distributed the source code for his program and pretty much lost control over it when dozens of programmers distributed "improved" versions of Fluegleman's PC-Talk.

While Fluegleman did little to continue to develop and promote PC-Talk, Knopf did a lot more with PC-File and eventually built his database program publishing into a multi-million dollar company.

Meanwhile in 1983, another programmer, Bob Wallace, came out with a word processing program, PC-Write, which he also developed and promoted into a very successful business.

While there were numerous smaller programs and utilities, such as Vernon Buerg's wildly popular LIST program, these three major applications were popular with many major businesses and established the credibility of Freeware as a source of high quality, well supported software.

They paved the way for other, even more successful programs (and tens of thousands less successful programs) to be marketed the same way.

Freeware Becomes Shareware

In 1984, I had a column about Freeware and public domain software in a popular computer magazine. While the Freeware name was widely used, it was trademarked and could not be legally used by others. The alternative phrase at that time was User Supported Software, which was too cumbersome.

We had a contest in the magazine to find a new name for Freeware. The most popular choice was shareware, which was a name Bob Wallace had applied to PC-Write.

With shareware being the most popular choice, I asked Wallace if he had any exclusive claims on the term and he said no, that he had picked up the name from a column in an old, pre-IBM-PC computer magazine column.

So the announcement was made that shareware was the winner. Eventually, as PC-Talk was no longer being distributed, the term freeware lost its original meaning and in the following years, it fell into popular usage to mean software for which no shareware fee was asked, although such software was not necessarily public domain.

Although some people refer to freeware (and even shareware) as being public domain, the reality is that none of the shareware and very little of the freeware is truly public domain. Since a copyright automatically accrues to any software which is distributed, for a program to be public domain, the programmer has to specifically label it as such.

Freeware, then, includes some public domain software, but most freeware is software which can be "freely" used without payment to the author, but for which the author retains the copyright to the software.

The Beginning of Shareware Disk Vendors

In 1982-1983, distribution of freeware/shareware programs was free - done by swapping disks at user groups and by downloading from free BBSs.

In early 1982, we started a user group called HAL-PC ("Houston Area League of PC Users"). During 1982 and most of 1983, we tried numerous methods of giving free copies of our shareware library to members.

But as the volume of programs to be reviewed, tested and organized grew and the number of user group members and BBS callers also grew, both software librarians and BBS sysops began charging to defray the costs.

In California, a fellow by the name of Richard Peterson, got a copy of the software library of a local user group and advertised it in PC Magazine for sale for $6 per disk. User group members and BBS denizens thought this was the equivalent of charging for free air, but people without access to local user groups or BBSs welcomed the opportunity to get the software. Peterson called his company PC-SIG. This was the first company to nationally advertise shareware disks for sale.

About the same time, my shareware column in a computer magazine had prompted a lot of people without access to user groups or local BBSs to write and ask for the programs, for which we also asked a disk copy fee. When the magazine folded in late 1984, we continued to get requests for programs and continued to fill them under the column's name of The Public Library, later adding (software) to the middle of the name to avoid confusion with our local book library. We also began publishing the first magazine about shareware, PsL News.

PsL News is a subscription-based publication containing reviews of all the new and updated freeware and shareware program released each month. PsL News was printed monthly from the end of 1984 until March 1996. By that time, shareware diskette sales had been replaced almost entirely by CD-ROM sales and the printed magazine was converted to a magazine on disk using the program reviews from the Monthly PsL CD-ROM.

In the early '80s, we also provided a software library service for HAL-PC. (It eventually grew to over 10,000 members - presently the largest user group in the world - with its own offices and library.)

The idea of anyone charging for "free" software infuriated many of the old pre-PC people, and some authors (including Jim Button) did not allow distribution of their programs by anyone who charged for them (although our group was granted an exception by Jim).

However, enough other programs came along to allow shareware vendors to prosper and eventually, programmers recognized that the vendors were getting the programs out to a lot of people who otherwise would have never seen them, resulting in substantial additional income to the programmers.

In 1985, Public Brand Software was the next major distributor to start up and was the best of the high-volume vendors who saturated the market with catalogs. Other high-volume vendors that followed were Software Labs and Reasonable Solutions. These companies poured hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars a year into advertising shareware.

In order to put out catalogs which could be mailed economically, most high-volume dealers had only a few hundred programs in them.

At PsL, we had always accepted any good working program, no matter how tiny the niche it fit into. We had a huge catalog of thousands of programs. This resulted in a catalog too large to mail out, so PsL reached fewer customers, but we gave exposure to thousands of programs which were not included in the catalogs of the other dealers. In addition, PsL's comprehensive collection made PsL a popular source of shareware for BBSs and other shareware vendors, both of whom extended PsL's reach by redistributing the programs to their users.



So both high-volume/small-catalog dealers and low-volume/large-catalog dealers (pretty much limited to PsL) had their place in the shareware market.

While PsL and the high-volume dealers dominated the shareware distribution market, during the late '80s, hundreds (if not thousands) of small shareware vendors sprang up. With no real computer knowledge or other expertise required, anyone with a few bucks could buy shareware disks from another vendor, print out a "catalog", and sell copies of those disks to others. Most of these "shareware vendors" sold at computer shows and flea markets.

The Association of Shareware Professionals

During 1985, I surveyed shareware programmers regarding the formation of a trade organization. Based on their response, during 1986, I organized a conference for early 1987 in Houston, Texas of virtually all of the top shareware programmers (including Bob Wallace of PC-Write, Tom Smith of Procomm, and Jim Button of PC-File who went on to become the first ASP Chairman of the Board), vendors (PC-SIG and Public Brand), and BBS sysops.

From that meeting was formed the Association of Shareware Professionals, a trade organization of shareware programmers which later expanded to include vendors (distributors) and BBSs.

Thanks to a lot of effort by everyone involved, the ASP became very successful and played an extremely important role in the evolution of shareware.

About the time of the formation of ASP, fast-buck shareware distributors were springing up daily, most of whom advertised "Get Free Software", much to the chagrin of authors who expected users to pay, and to the dismay of the users who only found out about the expected payments after paying the distributor's disk fees to get the software.

At the same time, programmers had problems of their own making. Many programmers crippled their software to the extent that users could barely try it. Some documentation indicated a belief that all users were cheats and thieves out to steal the software. Some used silly and unprofessional tactics such as "putting a hex" on people who used the software without paying. And many programmers lost interest and quit supporting their programs if they got poor initial response, leaving users wary of sending payment to ANY programmers. Finally, users had no where to turn when faced with an unsurmountable dispute with a programmer.

ASP members got their own house in order first, agreeing not to cripple their shareware versions, to treat users with respect, to promise a minimum level of support and a money-back guarantee. In addition, users who saw the ASP logo on a program could be more assured that the author of the program was actively supporting the program and responding to users. Also, users could turn to the ASP Ombudsman if a dispute with an ASP member could not be resolved.

Another thing that ASP did was to protect the shareware industry in a way that individual members could not have done as effectively, if at all. In one case, ASP stopped PC-SIG from getting a trademark on the word shareware. In another case, ASP got a change in the wording of a bill before Congress which would have been detrimental to shareware programmers.

Next, ASP members turned to doing something about vendors who were misleading customers about shareware being "free". ASP created a vendor membership with rules for vendors regarding fair disclosure to customers about shareware and regarding respecting the rights of programmers.

As benefits, ASP vendors could distribute ASP programmers' software and received other benefits such as a CD-ROM with the programs on them.

Additional benefits to programmers included the ability to exchange information about shareware marketing on the ASP's forum on Compuserve, a free link to the member's Web page on the ASP's Web site, a monthly newsletter, and a low-cost way to get members' software to vendors and BBSs.

The Credit Card Revolution

One problem that programmers had was the difficulty in small mail-order companies getting credit card merchant accounts. That meant that programmers could only accept payment through the mail by check or money order. In those pre-ASP days, a lot of users had the experience of mailing checks to register shareware, only to never receive anything or at best, to receive the check back in the mail.

This made users wary of sending payment for shareware. Shareware users in big companies had another hurdle - getting a check request approved to pay for a program you already have is a lot harder to do than to get reimbursed for an expense on your credit card.

Even if all shareware programmers had been able to get credit card merchant accounts, most of them had other, full-time jobs and could not afford the staff to take phone orders all day. In other cases, some very successful shareware programmers preferred to continue working on their programs rather than get involved in day-to-day business operations.

In 1989, PsL began offering a credit card order service with an 800# and other means to take orders (FAX, email, etc.) for a small fixed transaction processing fee.

This service, now used by the authors of over 2000 shareware programs, vastly increased the orders programmers received. Now people could call PsL to order with the security of a credit card instead of blindly sending a check in the mail. Plus, many business people could easily order by credit card when getting a check request approved by their company could be a real roadblock to registering shareware. In addition, the authors of over 1000 shareware programs allow registration of their programs via PsL's Web order service.

Just as anyone could become a "shareware disk vendor" in the '80s, we are seeing that everyone with a credit card merchant account and a Web site is getting into shareware order processing. Many of these have already disappeared, taking the programmers' money with them, but several have prospered, although some offer only Web-based ordering, which can be automated and requires little or no staff or investment, unlike 800# ordering which requires a significant outlay for operators, office space, etc.

The End Of Shareware Disk Vendors

In 1993, at PsL we saw a rapid decline in shareware diskette sales and responded by producing a monthly shareware CD-ROM. We started this enterprise with great trepidation because other vendors and BBSs had been spending as much as $1000 per month (or more) to get all the new programs from us each month on floppies, and we were offering the same thing on a subscription basis for under $20.

To our relief, the CD turned out to be a big hit even though this was before everybody had CD-ROM drives as most people do now. In comparison, PC-SIG had been selling a CD-ROM (not a monthly and not subscription-based) for hundreds of dollars and it still managed to be one of the top-selling CD-ROMs on the market.

Our timing was good as floppy sales continued to drop drastically for all vendors and other vendors were closing down or going bankrupt. PC-SIG shut down abruptly and without explanation, leaving their magazine subscribers in the lurch. Public Brand sold out to Ziff-Davis who put out a few more catalogs before giving up on diskette distribution of shareware.

Between the spread of CD-ROM drives among users and the availability of countless low-cost shareware CD-ROMs plus the increasing impact of the Internet, companies distributing shareware on diskettes have disappeared, although at PsL, we continue to distribute on diskette to the few individuals who do not have CD-ROM drives.

Changes In Shareware

In the early to mid 1980's, experience indicated that to make money writing shareware, you had to create a major application for businesses, such as a word processor (PC-Write), communication software (PC-Talk), or a database program (PC-File).

Obviously, being the first to name your program something starting with PC- was considered a status symbol. But other programmers followed with similar programs with very good success, most notably the communications program Procomm, whose publishers later took the program out of shareware and made a fortune. Meanwhile, authors of games and utilities met with relatively little success throughout most of the 1980's.

In the early 1990's, competition in the retail software market was forcing down the prices of major business applications while the prices of similar shareware programs had been increasing over the years.

With the growing popularity of Windows and with major companies like Microsoft offering suites of applications (integrated word processing, graphics, spreadsheet, database) at relatively low prices, the shareware publishers of business applications watched as their sales shrunk.

PC-Write, PC-File, and other major DOS-based business apps virtually disappeared from shareware while the publishers of games and utilities became the new leaders in the shareware industry.

Scott Miller of Apogee Software popularized a method of marketing games as shareware that made games the leading money-makers, not just in shareware, but in all the software market.

The method involved releasing an action-adventure game as shareware with only the first few levels of play. Additional levels of play could only be purchased from the software publisher, not acquired through shareware channels.

Unlike some programmers' attempts to cripple their software to force payment, leaving users frustrated and angry about supposed shareware which could not be completely used and evaluated, the shareware versions of Apogee's games were complete and playable so that users got hooked on the games and wanted more.

Doom, Duke Nukem, and Quake are the most successful of the games marketed this way.

Meanwhile, members of the Association of Shareware Professionals, whose members had agreed not to cripple their programs, modified their stance to allow time-limiting and other limitations which would allow users to fully try their programs, while not allowing them to use the programs indefinitely without paying.

Not all programmers felt the need to limit their programs, however. Some of the most successful programs, such as WinZip, prospered with nothing more in the way of prodding users than a shareware startup screen in which the shareware concept is explained and ordering information given.

Internet's Impact On Shareware

Online services like Compuserve and America On Line never seemed to have any impact on shareware distributors and BBSs. Given the slow modems and higher online costs of the 1980's, it was cheaper and easier to get shareware on diskettes or from a local (preferably free) BBS, if you were lucky enough to have one of any quality in your town.

But the combination of cheap high-speed modems and even cheaper Internet access has caused a significant impact on shareware. (Although the ever-increasing size of files has offset a lot of that impact. It is not uncommon to see 5MB-10MB or even larger files on the Web.)

Internet users are getting the same kind of free ride as did owners of those large satellite dishes before broadcasters began encrypting everything and charging them for it.

While not totally free, $10 or less per month for unlimited access is the next best thing, and is possible only because the whole Internet system is built on computer systems and public phone systems for which Internet users do not have to pay the true, proportionate cost of their use.

While some former disk-based shareware distributors and pay-BBSs have tried setting up shop on the Web and charging for access, they are competing with popular sites who distribute the same programs and charge nothing for access. (Which would *you* use to get the same program - one you have to pay to join or one you can get onto for free?)

The free sites hope to make money from advertising on their sites, the income from which is based on the number of visitors to the site. A recent issue of Net magazine says that such sites have found advertising revenues to be less than stellar. For example, just recently a site called Best Zips, which had hoped to generate enough ad revenues to support a shareware download site, had to give up and shut down.

Still, consumer demand appears to be growing for online ordering with the ability to immediately get an unlock key or a registered version online without having to wait a week for the mail. And once a user has tasted that instant gratification, how are they ever going to be satisfied again waiting weeks for software to come in the mail?

Source :

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http://web.archive.org/web/20010113030300/http://pslweb.com/index.html

NIMROD was a computer built for the Festival of Britain in 1951, and it had only one purpose: To play Nim. Later in the same year it was an exhibit at the Berliner Industrieausstellung, the German minister of economy Ludwig Erhard played against it and lost every time. A replica of NIMROD has now been built for the new Berlin museum of computer games.

NIMROD is older than A. L. Samuel’s Checkers program, and it was a far bigger project (a dedicated computer vs. a program running on an IBM 701), but it seems to be less known. Guess the role of the UK in the history of computer games, and computing in general, is still underestimated quite a bit.


It's 1951...
and the Festival of Britain opens its doors.

One of the many venues of the Festival — which extends across much of Britain — is the Exhibition of Science in South Kensington.

Here, amongst other wonders, you will see the Ferranti NIMROD.
This is the first digital computer designed specifically to play a game — truly the very first "Computer Game"... In the process, it illuminates principles of binary arithmetic and digital logic.

So, leave Lara Croft and her friends behind for a while, and journey back to the years BT (Before Transistors), where just to see a computer is an adventure, and to actually control it is the ultimate thrill!

Welcome to... NIMROD!

For the adventurous souls out there you can challenge Nimrod here:

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http://www.goodeveca.net/nimrod/GAME/index.html

And for a plethora of information :

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 http://www.goodeveca.net/nimrod/

The etymology of Doom cheat codes

Find out what iddqd and other cheat codes really mean



Why Doom has an inside joke to Usenet, or
How I helped create a cheat key code.

By Seth Cohn

Doom came out Dec 10th, and first I did was go looking for cheat keys for it.Didn't find any, but I came close. My brother Dale and I had a funny feeling (call it a hunch) that somewhere in the game SPISPOPD was embedded. We didn't find it in the code, but turns it it was there after all.

What is SPISPOPD? Well, to make a long story short, due to all the Doom hype on the comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action Usenet newsgroup, someone posted a suggestion to id that the next game be named something less likely to be used as a subject header (ala When is DOOM coming out? The DOOM beta is so cool, and the ever popular DOOM FAQ) They suggested the unlikely name of Smashing Pumpkins into Small Piles of Putrid Debris. Of course, someone else immediately posted that they wanted the beta of SPISPOPD and where was it? I joined in the fun, along with a long list of others and started to DESCRIBE this fictional game. We all got into the fun, and it was in part a healthy humorous response to the pressures of such a long wait for Doom.

I probably posted more SPISPOPD stuff then anyone else at first, and when someone else posted a signature spoofing DOOM FAQ author Hank Leukhart's saying "SPISPOPD FAQ 1.0 coming soon" I flamed them and stole the idea. I claimed to be the REAL FAQ author and asked for submissions. I got a number of good ones, and
taking these and all of the posts up to the first mention of SPISPOPD (I saved them all, think it was a great thread) I created a really funny spoof of the DOOM FAQ. In the process, id became ego for one reason: I was afraid of getting sued. I mailed Jay Wilbur and asked what he'd prefer out the range of options (id was doing SPISPOD, wasn't, etc..) and the only answer I got from him was... well... I used it as his quote in the FAQ. <Big grin>

I got LOTS of mail including congrats, flames (such as GET A LIFE!), more submissions, and my favorite, people asking where they could get a copy of the game.

The best for me was getting a note from David Taylor at id, one of the Doom coders, saying how much he enjoyed the FAQ. Little did I know...

To make the matter more confusing, a bunch of guys at Cal-poly decided they liked the idea, and ignoring whatever features they didn't want to write into it (and I don't blame them... some of the FAQ was truly outlandish), they wrote a game called SPISPOPD. This game is cute, and using VGA and SB, is actually
playable and well worth downloading. I am amazed they wrote it in 48 hours...

So, I logged on Dec 15th having beaten the game a few times, and lo and behold, someone has posted the cheat keys, and idspispopd is one of them. Someone (Patch) suggested I write a little explanation of just how and what SPISPOPD is, to help all those folks who don't know the inside scoop.

And as Paul Harvey would say, That's the REST of the story....

(I'm also including a copy of the FAQ, posted separately. This is MUCH funnier if you have a copy of DOOM FAQ 2.X around...)

SSSS PPPP IIII SSSS PPPP OOOO PPPP DDD | Official SPISPOPD FAQ Author
S P P II S P P O O P P D D | Seth Cohn
SSSS PPPP II SSSS PPPP O O PPPP D D |
S P II S P O O P D D | FAQ 1.1 coming soon! SPISPOPD Feb 29!
SSSS P IIII SSSS P OOOO P DDD | Easter Ernie May 94! WAY Cool!

[Please feel free to include this article in any media, so long as it's not altered in any way]

--
Seth Cohn - Warning - I use CAPS to emphasize, not to yell |If you read
email preferred - I consider spelling errors and grammar |RUOW, Honk!
Net Junkie since 89 to be secondary to the meaning itself |Orange Rainbow
[Space for rent] - I take unpopular positions & get flamed|Spirits R #1!

Official SPISPOPD FAQ ;

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http://web.archive.org/web/20081110071615/http://www.johnromero.com/lee_killough/history/spispopd.faq

Stardock’s OS/2 History

February 1, 2001



By Brad Wardell, Founder, Stardock Corporation.



Well yesterday was the last day that Stardock can effectively be called an OS/2 ISV. While we will be releasing Stellar Frontier still for OS/2 and providing updates to it, the selling of OS/2 software on our website is going to be going away within the next 24 hours.



It's really pretty sad. The whole reason why I personally got into software development was for OS/2. That's why I learned how to program. It was the promise and coolness of OS/2 that steered me away from a career in hardware (I wanted to design CPUs) into the software arena.



I remember in 1997 when we were looking at the OS/2 revenue sales and realizing that NT 4.0 had killed OS/2. When Windows NT 4.0 came out, that pretty much did in OS/2, people migrated from OS/2 to NT incredibly fast. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that about half of the active individual OS/2 user base switched from OS/2 to Windows NT 4.0 within 6 months of its introduction. And IBM, unbeknownst to any of us, had decided to kill OS/2 before OS/2 Warp 4. Warp 4 was in the pipeline already. Gerstner, feeling betrayed by PSP (Personal System Products, a division of IBM) for the PowerPC debacle had ordered PSP eliminated and its assets split up amongst the other divisions, none of which particularly cared about OS/2.



That left us in the situation of trying to decide what to do.



We could:



A) Stick with OS/2 and go down with the ship, eventually becoming a small group of consultants. (This is what several OS/2 ISVs have done).



B) Move to develop Linux software. An OS in which software is expected to be free. Having to deal with the fact that anything we developed would be expected to be open source and free to users thus depriving ourselves of any revenue.



C) Develop for Windows where our limit to growth would always be Microsoft coming in and competing with anything worthwhile we might create.



If you're a commercial software developer, the choices were pretty grim. So we chose the least of the 3 evils -- C. We designed our primary product to be delivered as a subscription in which new features could be introduced into it immediately rather than having to wait for the next major version. Thus, if Microsoft or Symantec or Mijenix (now Ontrack) or some other large utility vendor decided to compete with us, we could stay ahead of them. So we adopted the slogan "Innovation on demand" and went forward. That is why Object Desktop has constant updates being made to it.



Those who stayed with OS/2 and saw these events could be divided into 4 groups:



Group 1 were Stardock OS/2 customers who understood why we had to do what we did. They would stay on OS/2 but think fondly of us.
Group 2 were Stardock OS/2 customers who felt like we owed them and that we took their hard earned money and used it to betray them by writing for the “enemy”.
Group 3 and 4 were people who hadn't bought our software and divided by whether we were a bunch of money grubbing traitors that should have stayed on OS/2 because it was a good market (they didn't have any idea what they were talking about) and hoped we'd soon go out of business and on the other side the people who didn't buy our software but were conscious of the market realities faced by all companies.



While some Windows and Linux users may gloat over OS/2's downfall, what they don't realize is that all people lose out. OS/2 had some wonderful innovations in it and it was when it was competitive with Windows that Windows was most rapidly moving forward. As we've discussed in another discussion, Microsoft, bereft of OSes to compete with is now left with having to copy off of shareware and freeware utilities to "innovate". Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 saw some incredible (for Microsoft) innovation. OS/2 became largely a non-factor before Windows 98. And so between Windows 95 and today there was Windows 98 (1998), Windows 98SE(1999), and Windows ME(2000). Regardless of how you feel about those OSes, the change from Windows 3.1 (1992) to Windows 95 (1995) was pretty immense and the 5 years after that has seen mainly very incremental improvements.



Before I am accused of holding Microsoft to too high a standard, one only has to look at Linux's progress in the same time frame. While Linux gets a lot of hype, it is always hype that has a score of qualifications (It's really good for being an open source project...). Still no DDE type functionality across all apps. Still nothing like OLE across apps. Heck, still unreliable clipboard support in many apps. Little drag and drop support. KDE is left basically trying to rip off the Windows 95 shell which in itself (other than the Start bar) was borrowed from OS/2 and MacOS.



My point isn't to slam these OSes btw, it is just that with OS/2's passing, all people should be aware of what is lost. What sorts of very cool stuff we might have today if not for the loss of OS/2 as a competitor.



And finally, my last point is that from a software developer standpoint, if you want to stay in the desktop market, Windows really and truly is the only market still. I get email regularly from OS/2 and Linux users urging us to get off of Windows. Whenever there is a story about Microsoft lifting one of our features and putting it into the next version fo Windows (no matter how minor) the email flows in telling us we need to get onto Linux (or come back to OS/2). The reality is, there just isn't enough of a market. From an ISV standpoint, the only real options are either Windows, PocketPC, or Palm and Palm isn't exactly innovating right now. We write for Windows because there's not that much choice and because there are great market opportunities for developers who create things to "decrease the suckitude of the OS".



Anyway, to those still using OS/2, thanks for all your support over the years. We will be keeping up our OS/2 software support news groups and discussion groups. Email support will continue for another 90 days free. Stellar Frontier will be released to those who pre-ordered it but it will not be sold on OS/2 anymore.



Good luck and have a great day!



Brad Wardell

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http://www.stardock.com/stardock/articles/endofos2.html

Interesting articles about OS/2:

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http://techland.time.com/2012/04/02/25-years-of-ibms-os2-the-birth-death-and-afterlife-of-a-legendary-operating-system/

Title : 25 Years of IBM’s OS/2: The Strange Days and Surprising Afterlife of a Legendary Operating System

Big Blue's next-generation operating system was supposed to change everything. It didn't. But it's also never quite gone away

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http://gizmodo.com/5898623/ibms-failed-os2-is-25-years-oldbut-it-still-powers-atms-and-checkouts

Title : IBM's Failed Operating System OS/2 Is 25 Years Old—But It Still Powers ATMs and Checkouts


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nLGwpH86zNw[/youtube][youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PY8WbTe1G0Q[/youtube]

Sad ending for a company that had ethics.

Almost 20 years ago, a machine arguably as significant as both the Nintendo Wii for its innovative and revolutionary controls and peripherals and as powerful as a Sony PS3 or Microsoft Xbox 360 for both sound and graphics capabilities was being produced by a small Joystick manufacturer in Wales in Great Britain.

This website details the epic struggle of this manufacturer led by its charismatic and visionary boss Wyn Holloway to secure funding to take his concept of revolutionary controls paired with the amazing power of Flare Technologies 'Flare One' computer concept and their attempt to take on the might of Sega and Nintendo to try to launch what could have been the best Games machine in the world.

If they had succeeded, the face of video games could have changed forever.

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http://www.konixmultisystem.co.uk/index.php?id=power_chair_discovery

More here :

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 http://www.konixmultisystem.co.uk/index.php?id=introduction

Should have been fitted, commodore cheaped out, well they where fitted to some of the Vic II chips that had a metal cage around them, anyhoo...

Picked up another Breadbin machine with a 1984 board, so I thought I'd get the coolers on like the others I have, simple job and prolongs the life of the hotter chips that fail more often (PLA, Sid Chip & Vic II).

Really is a good idea to do this, especially if your running the micro for extended periods, one of mines on now annoying the wife with fuzzy warbles of the Sid chippery kind.

I make mine out of cheap and cheerful U shaped Aluminium lengths, yeah you can buy them and the are prettier, but then I dont get to play with a Dremel

I've seen other ways of attaching the coolers, but a few mm of ultra thin double sided tape at the ends and a smear of Arctic silver in the middle and none have fell off yet

All done and lot cooler, next job build a better power supply, the next worst killer!.

July, 1975 Dick Heiser opens Arrowhead Computer Company "The Computer Store" in Los Angeles selling assembled Altairs!
Nov. 1975 John French opened Computer Mart, selling the IMSAI!
The BYTE SHOP ->

Paul Terrell started his Byte Shop in December 1975. By January he was being approached by people who wanted to open their own stores. He signed dealership agreements with them, whereby he would take a percentage of their profits, and soon there were Byte Shops in Santa Clara, San Jose, Palo Alto, and Portland, Oregon.

In March 1976, Terrell incorporated as Byte, Inc.

By March 1976, one could identified 4 big retailers; Terrell, Heisers, Peachtree in Atlanta, and Dick Brown. Brown opened his outlet "The Computer Store" like Heiser's in 1975 along Route 128 in Burlington, Massachusetts.

Paul Terrell in his BYTE SHOP

He also was interested in selling Apple I's. Without Paul Terrell and the Byte shop Apple may have never gotten anywhere.

Book excerpt

In 1974, when Paul Terrell was running a sales representation company in Northern California, he got a call from friends who said they had seen a microcomputer in Popular Electronics for only $439. Terrell knew that no one could even get an 8080 chip on a PC board for that price, much less a power supply and a chassis and the rest. "My comment was that it was a paper tiger and forget about it," he said. "And a couple of months later, they called me back and told me to come on over and help them unwrap their paper tiger."


The Altair impressed Terrell. He contacted MITS in Albuquerque to see if it needed a sales representative in Northern California. MITS said it was primarily a mail-order company, but if he cared to meet MITS representatives at the National Computer Conference in Anaheim, California, that June, they'd be happy to talk. Terrell cared.


MITS showed up at the NCC with the MITSmobile. "You walked in and it had a refrigerator and a stove and a couple of computers set up," Terrell recalled. He talked with Ed Roberts and MITS's marketing manager. They got along well. Terrell felt Roberts did not really understand the sales representation business, but Roberts listened. In the end, they signed an exclusive sales representation contract whereby Terrell would promote the Altair and in turn receive a 5 percent commission on every MITS product shipped into Northern California, whether he had sold it or not.


After NCC, the MITSmobile toured the clubs in the Los Angeles area, meeting various people who had written in. Then it went north to the San Francisco Bay Area, where Terrell booked space in the Edwards Room at Rickey's Hyatt House in Palo Alto. The room held about 80 people. Between 200 and 300 showed up.
The following month, in July of 1975, Roberts called a sales representatives meeting in Albuquerque. Terrell and his partner, Boyd Wilson, along with the ten or so other Altair representatives in the country, flew to New Mexico, where Roberts showed them his shopping center factory, explained something of the history of MITS, and indicated the direction he wanted them to take.


Roberts also mentioned something else. "One of the principal things that came out of the meeting was that Ed had identified a crazy man in L.A.~Dick Heiser-who had approached him to try to retail computers across the countertop," Terrell said. Roberts wanted the sales representatives to find similar


crazy men in their own territories. The retail idea was worth pursuing, he thought. Terrell asked what kind of deal retailers would get. Roberts said he would give them a 25 percent discount, no matter how much they sold. When they got back on the plane, Terrell and Wilson discussed this arrangement. "It was an easy task to figure that 25 percent plus 5 percent was 30 percent-a helluva lot more money than we were making as representatives," he said. They decided to open their own outlet.


Terrell and Wilson commenced the process in August. Soon after, Byte magazine appeared. "I told Boyd that this magazine is real significant," Terrell said. "There's a real following here. So let's be the Byte Shop, and we'll sell a helluva lot of Byte magazines in addition."
Friends told him retailing computers wouldn't work. And some people, Terrell later mused, said it never snowed in Silicon Valley. Terrell recalled his friends' warnings as he watched the snow falling on December 8, 1975-the day he opened his Mountain View store in the heart of Silicon Valley.


Like most Altair dealers, Terrell quickly ran headlong into the MITS exclusivity policy. Terrell ignored it. He was selling all the Altairs he could get, about 10 to 50 per month, plus everything he could obtain from IMSAI and Proc Tech. The MITS edict, he concluded, was not only pointless, but, if he followed it, financially harmful as well. One day David Bunnell, then the MITS vice-president of marketing, called to cancel him as a dealer. Terrell argued that MITS should see the Byte Shop as rather like a stereo store, which carried many different brands and could turn a profit for them all. Bunnell waffled. It was Roberts's decision, he said. At the World Altair Computer Conference in March of 1976, Terrell approached Roberts directly. Roberts remained firm. Terrell was out.


At the time, Terrell was selling twice as many IMSAIs as Altairs, and he realized the MITS strategy of excommunication would ultimately hurt Roberts more than himself. He was still selling whatever he could get. He saw himself and John French, Heiser's Computer Mart competitor in Orange County, as conducting most of IMSAI's early business. They used to do battle for the product. Terrell would rent a van and drive it over to the back dock of IMSAI's manufacturing site in Hayward to collect his own and French's orders. Check in hand, he would ask, "You want cash on the barrelhead, boys?" It was hard-ware war.


Terrell had started his Byte Shop in December 1975. By January he was being approached by people who wanted to open their own stores. He signed dealership agreements with them, whereby he would take a percentage of their profits, and soon there were Byte Shops in Santa Clara, San Jose, Palo Alto, and Portland, Oregon. In March 1976, Terrell incorporated as Byte, Inc.


This was a hobbyist industry, and Terrell found the clubs critical to his business. They provided his customer base. Many of the hobbyists who attended meetings had not bought their machines yet, and those who had often wanted accessories. Club members proved particularly receptive to Terrell's message.

From the book Fire in the Valley. By Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine.

Source :

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http://web.archive.org/web/20031125063830/http://members.fortunecity.com/pcmuseum/