there are two aspects came together in the universal computer. 
1. computing (sorting)
2. control (cases, if then, input)
before this were seperated functions in analoge maschines.

Pinballs are really computing hells. 

Of course in games and amusement arcades there is a lot of computing (calculating points, statemachines and co). All started with organs (punch strips) and electromechanical ‘games’ like pinballs. 

The topics vintage computing and vintage gaming are of course intertwined. 

First gaming is a part of the whole digitalisation. But before computer were in every household the consoles were there. The first funny digitalisation and alternative to the non existing tv-program (share the screen). And then the homecomputer in the private areas came ‘home’.  So games became again software in the area of computing. 

And so on … 

Vintage, Retro. It is a quite complex situation.

Let's bring together the memories and artefacts from those times. 

of course mainframe computing was only possible for universities, students or big companies. creating workstation like lilith or next were a middle thing between mainframe and personal computers. 

wheel plants and co. 

Tennis For Two was the first Videogame ever! It was developed in 1958. The gameplay features were more complex and more fun than in the later very popular Pong or Breakout. GameLab ZHdK has made a new version to bring the amazing game mechanics to attention. You hit the ball with the A-button of your controller while you use the left analogue stick to indicate the direction (or angle) of the tennis ball. And since it is tennis, you can hit the ball anywhere in your own half of the court! It is surprisingly fun to play the "TennisForTwo Fantasy 1958" version. Made in 2015 by GameLab ZHdK.

The arcade was a place to play games, meeting point. In the german part of switzerland there were almost only males (you could also gambel). They were dark in the most of cases.

In the ‘westschweiz’ there were a lot more women in also in the arcades and younger people (for example in Lausanne). 

In the arcades there were always different types of arcades (older and the latest), than ‘table football’, flippers and so on. 

This is a start to collect data from vintage computing in Switzerland. It is a bottom up approach to collect and organize data. It is also a research for how to collect and store data. 

The data/information can be stored as nodes. The nodes can be as a tree (hierachy) and/or rhizome. 

This data is open for everyone who wants to also add his/her/its own data. Just create content. We will than try to bring it in an order. 

 

Collections can be public or private. So it is often good to contact them directly. 

The demoscene was first a spin-off the crackers and became an own culture with festivals, ‘jams’ and contests. Often there are old computers embeded. 

Where people met, talked about computers, learnt about computers. Played games, designed games.

Yes also pirate software and games was part of this world. 

Culture towards technology changed massively in the last 50 years. 

vintagecomputing is an open platform for people, who are interesting in the different aspects of vintagecomputing and gaming in switzerland. You can just create an account and enter data, make propositions and enter data. 

Fantasy computers are computer that are ‘inspired’ by real computers. Means their name sound like ZX81 > Tic80 but of course they are fast, programmable with lua and in the most of the cases have all integrated: spriteeditor, tile/background-editor, soundeffects editor and music editor. So they are really the dream of an 8bit-coder* with assembler, low memory, low graphics, no tools. 

The listing culture is a hybrid between gutenberg galaxis and software. Software was often distributed in the mainframe time as source code ( c ). each system had a different set of hardware, processor. c and co were the platform. You could compile it for your system. 

The listing culture brought source code to the magazines and could be published. first with basic and co for homecomputers, later with checksums, than basic with assembler inlines, than only shortcodes. 

of course by typing in you could learn how to code and solve problems.

Games made with old technologies but not old working hardware. 

Some insights into vintagecomputing and research.

The long history of computing (technically) show the problems. First they tried to solve complex (math.) problems as special automates. 

Idea: 

Aspects like:

Example:

 

How people connect each other. Which places were important and why? Which media was important and why? Most of this places (Clubs, Supermarkets,  Arcades/Spielsalon, Computershops).
What happened with people from the country side? 

communities (as systems) have their own language, their own values (and thus also their own capitals), their own operations, their own exensions, their own decision extensions.

Hollorith and co