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| Announcing RetroChallenge 2024/10! | |
| Hi everyone, We are happy to announce RetroChallenge for the month of October 2024! About RetroChallengeIn a nutshell, the RetroChallenge is a loosely disorganised gathering of RetroComputing enthusiasts who collectively do stuff with old computers for a month. It was founded by members of 68kmla around 2007.The point of this, if indeed there is one, is to challenge you to do something new with your retro-computer, to learn something new or just play for a month. It is sort of like a show-and-tell. Do something fun or interesting and let the world know. The event is very much open to interpretation… individuals set their own challenges, which can range from programming to multimedia work, hardware restoration to exploring legacy networking, or just plain fooling around. It really doesn’t matter what you do, just so long as you do it. RetroChallenge 2024/10 Theme CategoriesRC2014Spend some quality time with your RC2014 kit computer.In collaboration with semachthemonkey, we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the RC2014 kit computer (invented during RetroChallenge 2014) with a category just for RC2014 owners! Solder up the unassembled kit sitting on your shelf, write a fun Z80 program, or prototype some new hardware for it. If you don't have a kit yet, check out the selection on Tindie or Z80KITS and join the most active homebuilt 8-bit computer community! Halloween HacksGet ready for Halloween with the help of your retro-computer!With the RetroChallenge ending on Halloween most years, this is an obvious match. Write or port a horror-themed text adventure, modify some vintage e-waste with a halloween theme, or synchronize your haunted house animatronics with programmable logic controller from the 80's. If you don't mind your house getting egged, you could even write your own BASIC game and hand out printed copies of the type-in program to those rascally trick-or-treaters. Anything you want… with touch of the macabre. PrizesWe will have some RC 2024/10 themed gear for the "winners" and we are working out details for some awesome RC2014 goodies too!How to EnterFill out the Entry Form for Contestants. Sign Up Now!Posted by: epooch on 2024-08-14 17:37:40 | |
Of course, you can always enter the General category and just do your own retro thing too. Posted by: epooch on 2024-08-15 00:04:38 | |
| I hope I have time to spend with my RC2014, as the last project I left on was a soft synth controlled by an arcade stick using the YM2149 card. I need a lot more practice coding the registers for the sound chip, and probably a frequency table too. Right now notes are not confined to semitones. Posted by: Skate323k137 on 2024-08-15 17:18:48 | |
I hope I have time to spend with my RC2014, as the last project I left on was a soft synth controlled by an arcade stick using the YM2149 card. I need a lot more practice coding the registers for the sound chip, and probably a frequency table too. Right now notes are not confined to semitones.Perfect project! Hope to see you during the challenge. Posted by: epooch on 2024-08-16 00:15:29 | |
| We added a 68kMLA affiliation to the sign-up, so you can show your allegiance to the forum. It's a little over 2 weeks out and I would love to see some 68K Macs joining the fun! Posted by: epooch on 2024-09-13 10:48:43 | |
Two weeks 'till RetroChallenge!We have 10 great entries so far and we are still hoping to hit 20 entries before the start. I know that a few of you have been talking about it... come get your entry in now! 20th AnniversaryRetroChallenge started right here on 68kMLA 20 years ago in 2004 (before the crash). We are vintage! The RetroChallenge is retro!PrizesWe have prizes! Come by and check them out.ProjectsAs the years have progressed the RetroChallenge projects have trended more and more technical, but I want to assure you all that you don't need to be an engineer to participate. Just use your retrocomputer for a month, whether it is for journaling, composing chiptunes, playing games, or using MacPaint to make some funny drawings. We are here for all of it!Posted by: epooch on 2024-09-17 11:13:11 | |
| Welcome to the challenge, @Ortho'sDeli ! See you for the start in October... Posted by: epooch on 2024-09-20 17:02:53 | |
Update on this year's prizes: 
Day 1... for the Rest of the WorldWhile half the world had an early jump on things, the rest of us are just dusting off our projects. Perfect time to give an update on the p...
Posted by: epooch on 2024-10-01 11:48:03 | |
| Got hosting through Verpex last night. Supposedly they don't require HTTPS or SSL for their sites. Posted by: Ortho'sDeli on 2024-10-02 09:46:17 | |
Got hosting through Verpex last night. Supposedly they don't require HTTPS or SSL for their sites.Nice! I've been on a bit of a gopher kick lately. Too bad most hosting services don't offer it. Posted by: epooch on 2024-10-05 09:37:48 | |
| It's not fully Mac-related, but slightly Mac-ancestral maybe: here's my RetroChallenge 2024 writeup on Mastodon or BlueSky, concerning efforts to revive an early graphical workstation. Hope others got a chance to do some fun projects! Posted by: stepleton on 2024-10-31 18:32:45 | |
| It's a Halloween miracle! Got everything migrated and online just in time! ABQ Retro Computers has a new site! (Still a WIP.) Posted by: Ortho'sDeli on 2024-10-31 22:02:28 | |
It's not fully Mac-related, but slightly Mac-ancestral maybe: here's my RetroChallenge 2024 writeup on Mastodon or BlueSky, concerning efforts to revive an early graphical workstation. Hope others got a chance to do some fun projects!PERQ is totally underrated! Is there even a suitable emulator? I know it was Pascal-based and that the British company ICL really helped it get off the ground. It had a p-code interpreter in microcode didn't it? Posted by: Snial on 2024-11-01 02:14:31 | |
PERQ is totally underrated! Is there even a suitable emulator? I know it was Pascal-based and that the British company ICL really helped it get off the ground. It had a p-code interpreter in microcode didn't it?There's PERQemu! https://github.com/skeezicsb/PERQemu ICL was indeed very involved. More here: https://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/acd/sus/perq_history/overview.htm (mouse over "Further reading" at top left to see all of the chapters) PERQ had programmable microcode, but the more Pascal-ly bits made use of a programmed architecture called QCode, which is described here: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/perq/pos_G5/PERQ_Qcode_Mar84.pdf . I don't know enough about p-code to say how similar or different it is. Posted by: stepleton on 2024-11-01 10:59:42 | |
There's PERQemu! https://github.com/skeezicsb/PERQemuOh, MS Windows only. ICL was indeed very involved. More here: https://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/acd/sus/perq_history/overview.htmThanks. PERQ had programmable microcode, but the more Pascal-ly bits made use of a programmed architecture called QCode, which is described here: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/perq/pos_G5/PERQ_Qcode_Mar84.pdf . I don't know enough about p-code to say how similar or different it is.Thanks! Just been skimming through it. So, PERQ has a 32-bit VA & 20-bit PA. VA is segmented on 256b boundaries, and the MMU supports Units (Modules) directly. Q-code is a byte-code a lot like p-code, but it's actually more like the Modula-2 based, ETH Lilith's m-code (which makes sense, because Modula-2 is a lot like PERQ Pascal). -cheers from Julz Posted by: Snial on 2024-11-01 15:44:42 | |
Oh, MS Windows only.I've never tried it myself, but the docs say it works with Mono on Linux etc. Unix/Linux/Mac: invoke "mono PERQemu.exe" from the command-line in a Q-code is a byte-code a lot like p-code, but it's actually more like the Modula-2 based, ETH Lilith's m-code (which makes sense, because Modula-2 is a lot like PERQ Pascal).Very interesting --- I hope to learn more about this stuff once I get the thing working! It would also be interesting to compare PERQ Pascal to the Pascal dialect used for the Lisa (even without the Clascal parts). My impression from scanning the code briefly is that PERQ Pascal is a little bit more wieldy for systems programming. Posted by: stepleton on 2024-11-02 01:51:41 |