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https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=276
Where people met, talked about computers, learnt about computers. Played games, designed games.
Yes also pirate software and games was part of this world. 
Computerclubs
2022-06-30 09:42:21
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=99
Computerclubs were a very important institution. 
0. Is a place and a community in the same and also a public in the same
1. Networking people in a non internet time.
2. Bringing KnowhHow to people (Courses)
3. Showing, Selling Hardware (Internally)
4. Own public magazines
5. Part of Creating Groups/interested people
6. Only available in bigger towns 
MediaMemories
2022-09-08 18:34:41
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=5392
Media are infact also memory libraries and of course public libraries. Of course the are also the opposite of oral history in the most of the caeses. 
All around the memory
2022-08-02 13:38:15
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=5046
Memory is changing all the time. We tend to create memory as a system (perhaps because we can than save space and energy).
Market WAR
2023-03-20 16:48:40
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=7642
The Tandy Color Computer was the runner up. The Apple II was the winner in the category of home computer over $500, which was the category the Commodore 64 was in when it was first released at the price of $595.
n the United States, the greatest competitors were the Atari 8-bit 400, the Atari 800, and the Apple II. The Atari 400 and 800 had been designed to accommodate previously stringent FCC emissions requirements and so were expensive to manufacture. Though similar in specifications, the C64 and Apple II represented differing design philosophies; as an open architecture system, upgrade capability for the Apple II was granted by internal expansion slots, whereas the C64's comparatively closed architecture had only a single external ROM cartridge port for bus expansion.
Aggressive pricing of the C64 is considered to have been a major catalyst in the video game crash of 1983.
The price war with Texas Instruments was seen as a personal battle for Commodore president Jack Tramiel.[25] Commodore dropped the C64's list price by $200 within two months of its release.[6] I
Meanwhile, TI lost money by selling the TI-99/4A for $99.[26] TI's subsequent demise in the home computer industry in October 1983 was seen as revenge for TI's tactics in the electronic calculator market in the mid-1970s, when Commodore was almost bankrupted by TI.[27]
Although many early C64 games were inferior Atari 8-bit ports, by late 1983, the growing installed base caused developers to create new software with better graphics and sound.[34]
 
Ludlow Cottage
2022-07-04 15:54:12
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=1615
Computer animation for the TI-99 4a home computer, written in Texas Instruments Extended Basic with own and found code.
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=566
Vintage, Retro. It is a quite complex situation.
  • We have people, who worked (appropriation) in those days >1960 with Computers 
  • We have people, who are working today with old hard-, software and games (Shared memories). 
  • We have people, who work today with old hard-, software and games from scratch (emulation included).
  • We have people, who create today with old hardware new software and games
  • We have people, who create today hard-, software, pictures, films and games in the style of yesterday.
  • We have people, who are working with fantasy computers & consoles today
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=3846
people can upload memories. they get an id and can than upload …
fotos, text, zips, waves.
Port
2022-08-02 13:41:25
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=4943
A port is game that was ‘ported’ to another system. A lot of arcades were ported for example to less powerfull hardware. 
Therefore the question is: Are not all of games Demakes?
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=5522
  • don't write specs. Users should consider themselves lucky to get any programs at all and take what they get.
  • don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to read.
  • don't write application programs, they pro- gram right down on the bare metal. Application programming is for feebs who can't do systems programming.
  • don't eat quiche. Real programmers don't even know how to spell quiche. They eat Twinkies, Coke and palate-scorching Szechwan food.
  • don't draw flowcharts. Flowcharts are, after all, the illiterate's form of documentation. Cavemen drew flowcharts; look how much it did for them.
  • don't read manuals. Reliance on a reference is a hallmark of the novice and the coward.
  • programs never work right the first time. But if you throw them on the machine they can be patched into working in only a few 30-hours debugging sessions.
  • don't use Fortran. Fortran is for wimpy engineers who wear white socks, pipe stress freaks, and crystallography weenies. They get excited over finite state analysis and nuclear reactor simulation.
  • don't use COBOL. COBOL is for wimpy application programmers.
  • never work 9 to 5. If any real programmers are around at 9 am, it's because they were up all night.
  • don't write in BASIC. Actually, no programmers write in BASIC, after the age of 12.
  • don't document. Documentation is for simps who can't read the listings or the object deck.
  • don't write in Pascal, or Bliss, or Ada, or any of those pinko computer science languages. Strong typing is for people with weak memories.
  • know better than the users what they need.
  • think structured programming is a communist plot.
  • don't use schedules. Schedules are for manager's toadies. Real programmers like to keep their manager in suspense.
  • think better when playing adventure.
  • don't use PL/I. PL/I is for insecure momma's boys who can't choose between COBOL and Fortran.
  • don't use APL, unless the whole program can be written on one line.
  • don't use LISP. Only effeminate programmers use more parentheses than actual code.
  • disdain structured programming. Structured programming is for compulsive, prematurely toilet-trained neurotics who wear neckties and carefully line up sharpened pencils on an otherwise uncluttered desk.
  • don't like the team programming concept. Unless, of course, they are the Chief Programmer.
  • have no use for managers. Managers are a necessary evil. Managers are for dealing with personnel bozos, bean counters, senior planners and other mental defectives.
  • scorn floating point arithmetic. The decimal point was invented for pansy bedwetters who are unable to 'think big.'
  • don't drive clapped-out Mavericks. They prefer BMWs, Lincolns or pick-up trucks with floor shifts. Fast motorcycles are highly regarded.
  • don't believe in schedules. Planners make up schedules. Managers 'firm up' schedules. Frightened coders strive to meet schedules. Real programmers ignore schedules.
  • like vending machine popcorn. Coders pop it in the microwave oven. Real programmers use the heat given off by the cpu. They can tell what job is running just by listening to the rate of popping.
  • know every nuance of every instruction and use them all in every real program. Puppy architects won't allow execute instructions to address another execute as the target instruction. Real programmers despise such petty restrictions.
  • don't bring brown bag lunches to work. If the vending machine sells it, they eat it. If the vending machine doesn't sell it, they don't eat it. Vending machines don't sell quiche.
Alexander Hahn
2022-07-08 11:09:19
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=1609
electronic media artist
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=5864
Alcatraz Pentcost Party 1990 was held at the Centre Culturel du Chene in Aubonne, Switzerland. Alcatraz was originally to have arranged this party (together with Brainstorm) in april, but the original plans fell through. There was a dj with a huge light and laser show, a large screen, around the clock movies and a snack bar, so there was plenty of activities to get into. Separate sleeping quarters were available in a nearby hall. This may very well have been the first instance of females getting free entrance to a demo party. As we know, this became the norm in the years to follow. The winner of the demo competition won an A1000, the second place took home an Action Replay cartridge and some empty disks.
Cracker Journal 19 (march 1990) reported, "Alcatraz' "Pencost Mega Party" on 2nd to 4th of june 1990. Acitivites: Mega Demo Competition, DJ - light and laser show, three little conference rooms, two mega screens, TV and video corner, snack bar, special modem phone line, sport places, about 70 beds..."
Results and information based on Pentcost Party Invitation and party report in Hack-Mag 1 (august 1990).
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=6291
  • 2nd - 4th June 1990
  • Aubonne, District de Morges, Vaud, Switzerland
Alcatraz Pentcost Party 1990 was held at the Centre Culturel du Chene in Aubonne, Switzerland. Alcatraz was originally to have arranged this party (together with Brainstorm) in april, but the original plans fell through. There was a dj with a huge light and laser show, a large screen, around the clock movies and a snack bar, so there was plenty of activities to get into. Separate sleeping quarters were available in a nearby hall. This may very well have been the first instance of females getting free entrance to a demo party. As we know, this became the norm in the years to follow. The winner of the demo competition won an A1000, the second place took home an Action Replay cartridge and some empty disks.
Cracker Journal 19 (march 1990) reported, 'Alcatraz' 'Pencost Mega Party' on 2nd to 4th of june 1990. Acitivites: Mega Demo Competition, DJ - light and laser show, three little conference rooms, two mega screens, TV and video corner, snack bar, special modem phone line, sport places, about 70 beds...'
Results and information based on Pentcost Party Invitation and party report in Hack-Mag 1 (august 1990).
(Entry is a copy of the Demozoo entry! > https://demozoo.org/parties/7/)
.
2023-04-10 17:35:04
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=8080
Instead, he decided, the chips would go into a 64-kilobyte home computer to be introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas the second week of January 1982. The computer had yet to be designed, but that was easily remedied.
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=8188

 

It is a sad fact that the 6502 used in the Commodore64 and other home computers of the 80s is widely believed to have a poor code density when it comes to compiled or wider than eight bit code. The C standard requires computations to be made with ints which work best if they have the same size as a pointer.
The 6502 also has a very small stack of 256 bytes which cannot be easily addressed and thus cannot be used for local variables. Therefore a second stack for variables has to be maintained, resulting in costly indexing operations. The 6502 is also pretty poor when it comes to indexed operations, it has no index with constant offset addressing mode, and requires the y register to be used for indexing.
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=8893
digitalization was after the end of the idea of the replica of man as a robot and thinking being. something that the analog first read largely unchallenged. it was a colonization of a new space, a space that created itself - cyberspace. with this, this space did not come into conflict in a first moment - in the sense of earlier struggles over existing mostly analog territory. this is probably also one of the reasons why digitalization proceeded creepingly and was not perceived or actively fought by parts of the broad population (the nerds etc.). and many waves of digitalization then also emerged in the field of music (synthies) or games, for example, and took hold in everyday life at home. the normal things, however, continued to run until they then also arrived in the working environment.
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=9257
OLIVER Being a pixel guy – the tools were remarkable. We did not have devkit like the Katakis tools or something specified for creating game graphics. I used the editor that came with the Shoot ‘Em Up Construction Kit for sprites, which turned out extremely practical. The Ronny-sprite was created with an C64 editor called Mob-Profi, which provided overlayed hires and multicolour-sprites. The pictures in the intro and end sequence were pixeled in Koala Painter with a joystick, but everything else was more like hacking. I edited the charset with a font editor. The level backgrounds were tile-based maps, so a friend of mine coded one tool for combining 2×2 chars to tiles including the colour – and a second tool for assembling the levelmap like a puzzle game. As setup I had a C128 and Amiga 500 side by side. By the way – there was a TV and a monitor connected to the C128 at the same time, because of the the different video quality and I wanted to be sure that the graphics  looked right on both display types. With our modern mouse or stylus driven tools and those workflow-trimmed programs it is hard to believe that we got things done at all back in the day when we were even lacking fundamentals such as UNDO functionality. However, I have to say that you had full control over the technical specs of the graphics and as a graphic designer you started to think like a coder.
Otherwise, I hardly remember details of the project. At least for the first month, Mario and I were working alongside each other. The intro and the end sequence were finished first. Then it was very intense and determined by crunchtime, the process was sort of first-in-first-out. The progress in code was tied to incoming graphics. Markus composed the new tunes at home far away and we had some issues with the delivery. Nevertheless the whole soundtrack reached us in time and its implementation went smoothly. Still there was no free time at all. In the final weeks weeks it became a kind of competition – like, who needs the least sleep! I also remember that the editing of the levels was pretty chaotic. Three of us worked in shifts and it took much longer than planned.
Oh I almost forgot about the  communication with Virgin. That was the horror for me because I hardly spoke any English back then. David Bishop and I talked English and German mixed, which worked surprisingly well.
Historical Culture
2022-04-10 20:58:18
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=297
Culture towards technology changed massively in the last 50 years. 
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=997
Games made with old technologies but not old working hardware. 
Impressions
2022-07-09 20:36:47
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=1134
Some insights into vintagecomputing and research.
.
2022-05-21 10:38:55
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=2966
- Money for archive the past (the objects, the hardware, the software, the memories)
- Make the past searchable
- Archiving the swiss net (.ch) once a year 

add more things
Capitals (Bourdieu)
2023-05-06 14:00:42
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=8741
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.
Swiss Game Design
2022-06-25 19:17:32
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=85
The swiss gamedesign was influenced and even founded by the cracker scene coming from the C64 to Amiga and the other tree was the Atari ST. Around 25 own Games and Ports were created and published from 1985-1997. There was even an own publisher Linel. 
The story behind
2022-04-14 14:55:17
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=1481
r and c discussed if a bootsector virus is possible (in 512 bytes). than c went home and coded in2 days one, gave a infected disc to r with software. legend: from this disc all sca viruses shall come from.
story was told in a discussion around 2013 by c.
the exceptions - Tex
2022-07-07 13:29:31
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=3380
not suisse, but people worked with their muscian jochen hippel. 
https://vintagecomputing.ch/?browseid=4200
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 …