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Self-contained devices that boot up within a second out of the box, and let you program right away. In this age of course we’ll need a basic GUI, and an app store as well.
I still think there’s a place and need for such “computer-consoles” even today: Self-contained devices that boot up within a second out of the box, and let you program right away. In this age of course we’ll need a basic GUI, and an app store as well.
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Only for people, who have not seen dying giants of Soviet industry, which where like large ships - when sink, pull to bottom everybody and everything near them. Other known problem - "too large to fall" - government try to save such large enterprises so hard, that lead to default.
Same thing happened to the auto manufacturers in Detroit. Used to be one of the richest cities in the world, now one of the poorest and most violent in America.
Usually investors are much more cautious, but in Detroit, used standard scheme of distributed responsibility, where not exists one person, who responsible for bad decision, but these decisions made by committee or by some collegial scheme.
This is also known as one of the biggest problem of democracy - some subject could manipulate others.
In craziest form, one subject could ask other parties with vote power, to jail any other party, and than divide its property between others (who stay free), and repeat this until all others will be in jail, and all property will belong to this creative subject.
In real life, very typical thing, to make mega-projects (which where really created in Detroit), to plunder taxes. BTW this is easy to see, by looking on projects distribution. For example, normal community build lot of cheap projects, but little number of mega projects, and community which is not well enough mature, will attract to mega projects, because they fear to got response of making little things.
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You mean like Boeing
Definitely, NO! Boeing exists on concurrent market. And its large size not because it could just have some moderate benefits from size, but because it is impossible to build so large objects within small business. Just imagine, 747 estimated to 500-700 man-years, nobody will wait even 1/10 of so long. C64 totally different case.
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A solid argument for vertical integration if ever there was one
In this case it resulted in a toxic site contaminating the ground water: https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0...
> And outside suppliers were not always reliable. “One provided a power supply for engineering approval,” Ziembicki recalled. “It got approved, and then the supplier changed the design and didn’t tell anybody.” I wonder if this is why C64 power supplies have a tendency to fail, taking the computer with them? https://retrogamestart.com/answers/replace-c64-power-supply-...
Turned on the c64, there was a bang, and a small thick cloud of smoke rose from the back of the machine.
But! It worked and I could play Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge again until the new power supply arrived.
Never did figure out what the smoke came from. I guess a blown capacitor.
> the equations describing how it worked were just plain wrong, Yannes recalls. “They didn’t hang together. No one gave me a chance to correct them.” > As a result, programs made sound effects you couldn’t hear. Makes me curious if anyone has tried creating a to-spec version of the SID to see how those games would sound.
Wonder if this explains the "crying baby doll" example in the Commodore 64 manual. No one I knew who typed it in ever got it to work but maybe it worked on the SID chip the person who wrote the example for the manual was using but didn't end up working on production implementations.
This never gets old… only us c64 kids are… ;)
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While the Lazy Jones soundtrack is a pretty good demonstration of how early SID music sounded like, it does not even come close to what more recent music players are able to produce - on the same hardware. If you want to be blown away by the sounds the SID chip can produce, I would recommend some of LMan's work. This is one impressive tune: https://youtu.be/h0qMNfpiLmE And this is done with the hardware that Bob Yann…
Wow, that's impressive. The tones are remarkably clear, I wouldn't have guessed it was a Sid (apart from the 3 voices) Edit: on second listen, it sounds like it has a bit of reverb applied? I wonder if it was recorded from real hardware.
one thing im noticing in this is skipped ticks in the player... mysterious brief random pauses in the sequencer, ouch, heh.
> And outside suppliers were not always reliable. “One provided a power supply for engineering approval,” Ziembicki recalled. “It got approved, and then the supplier changed the design and didn’t tell anybody.” I wonder if this is why C64 power supplies have a tendency to fail, taking the computer with them? https://retrogamestart.com/answers/replace-c64-power-supply-...
My first computer was a c64. As a teenager in rural Ireland when my power supply failed it was going to take months to get a new one. I opened up the case and saw the whole insides encased in resin. So with a hammer and screwdriver I started to chip away at the resin until I exposed low voltage dc pins and tested which delivered which voltage etc. I next stole the ac transformer for our doorbell which I remembered ha…