#commodorez

[commodorez]

Man, I'd love to find a way to actually insert artwork of myself as the installation wizard into Windows 95's wizard system. That'd be cool, but for now this mock-up artwork will suffice.

[vizreef]

Commodore CBM 3032 (US, 1979)

European market only

[heavenpierceher]

Yo, were you at VCF Midwest? I think we spotted you by our exhibit

i was yeah!! it was my first one and i had a fantastic time, everyone was super nice :D and i loved your table (if i’m remembering correctly it was the windows 95 showcase?)

[lonestarflight]

Did you hear about the Dawn Mk-II Aurora moving to a production stage, with a customer in Oklahoma? I hope it pans out, I want to watch that thing in action. It's like a little shuttle mixed with the F-106, and I love it.

Interesting! I was completely unaware of the Aurora and Dawn Aerospace. They are aiming for a same day full reusable unmanned suborbital spaceplane. Looks like they've made alot of progress with several tests at supersonic and subsonic speeds.

According to the wiki, they are certified for payload flights and are ready for commercial flights. Also they are based in New Zealand and make this a kiwi product, which is also awesome!

Thanks for bringing this to my attention and the ask

[techav]

On 68030 Development

In April of 2020, user [CaptainTivo] commented on [Ken Sherrif]'s look inside the Am2901 bit-slice processor:

The Apollo workstation ... actually emulated the 68000. I was in the Motorola 68000 design group from 1985 to 1996. The first project I worked on was the 68030, which was essentially the 68020 with an integrated MMU and virtual memory capability. We did have a full hardware breadboard of the 68020. The 68030 breadboard was 18 24"x24" wirewrap breadboards, each with a 23x14 array of 20 pin DIP sockets! The chips were mostly PALs and RAM/ROM, no bitslice. This was before software logic simulation was a real thing.

Normally I would not have been allowed to take pictures of this, or even bring a camera into the building, but I gave a talk on the 68030 at Stanford in 1986 and I got permission …

I did not work on the emulator (that was the Tiejen brothers), I did design on the TLBs.

The cards were about 24" on a side, with 20 pin wirewrap DIP sockets. Mostly PALs, RAMs and ROMs. Although the 68020 and 68030 have relatively complex instruction set, a lot it was implemented in microcode, so the actual logic is quite as hairy as you might think.

It's a fascinating look at what it took to develop a new CPU well into the late 1980s. Imagine what it would take to build out a hardware simulator for a modern CPU in this manner.

Thanks @commodorez for bringing this to my attention!

[cpm-86]

Do you have a favorite vintage computer?

i'm a huge lover of any computer that stacks its monitor on top of the case, it feels so compact and looks neat. especially models like ibm 5170, apple iie, and amiga 2000 :] i don't know if i could pick one favorite but these are certainly my top favs <3

[jerkfacepink]

Your story is awesome! Photoshop 4.0 was what I started on too.

I know it's 25+ years ago, but do you recall which capture card you used? My guesses are a Snappy or maybe an iomega buz.

Thank you! It’s hard to even realize how far software (and everything) has come since then.

Ahaha, my boyfriend and I were broke high school kids back then and didn’t have the cash for one of these! Part of the reason why it was so physically hard to get that card into my motherboard, and because it didn’t work perfectly was because this was some cobbled together thing from someone who owned a soldering iron and sold this thing from the bottom of a crate of misc. hardware at a computer show. I don’t know where someone would find something like that anymore in this day and age, maybe Etsy? A flea market?

[homestarrunner]

What's your favorite era of sbemails, as delineated by the computer he used? e.g. Tandy era (1-41)

Compy cuz thats when I would take the bus from school to Kyle’s house and we would watch the newest sbemail 7 times and then play his PS2 in the basement