RetroFun.PLOne of my 27 hobby projects is recreating and re-typesetting my favorite computer manual, 100% vector.
@rmcretro look at this :-)
Afterglow@RetroFunPL @rmcretro
Great project!
"Re-typesetting" sounds like #latex
Are you using LaTeX for that?
Will it be available freely, when finished?
@afterglow @rmcretro it will, but I obviously also aim to get two things:
* get it *printed* and spiral-bound (i'll worry about the cost later)
* incorporate the Polish translation from the era in the same format — something that never existed in this format!
I'm already crying internally thinking how to best approach the diagrams. The originals are so perfect (the whole typography is), but if I just vectorize them, they need a good amount of fine-tuning.
And: went more modern and trying typst
@afterglow @rmcretro Bonus questions: should it be a "fourth edition" and include any Plus-series or other more modern edits?
Now I'm on step one: making it look like the original one. I really think it was beautiful.
@afterglow @rmcretro oh, actually another problem for later may be font licensing 🤔. Seems like the best candiates are official Monotype fonts, more expensive than I thought — I should check, using them in a PDF is definitely covered by the one-time license, but redistributing, if it was to be open-source, may be much worse.
This reminds me of my youth in the eighties.
As I live in Germany, the #CPC464 was manufactured by "Schneider".
What was the common manufacturer in Poland?
A bit later we also had a #CPC6128, which my father used to write invoices with a program I wrote.
Good old times.
@afterglow My dad imported a Schneider too! I love the unbreakable Centronics connectors; I trust them much more than edge connectors. And I still own, and it still works, THAT computer, the same Amstrad I learned my first BASIC commands on! :)
The German manual was challenging to read for a kid who had never had any German classes... :D
When I was around 12, I got a CPC464 (also a Schneider, no color on the keyboard for me back then, sad German gray only;)), only to get the color monitor 🙂
Found a photo from ca. 1986, when I was 12 years old. Got my Schneider #CPC464 for christmas. Gray/black keyboard layout, green screen.
😆
gmc@RetroFunPL @rmcretro I'll take a copy when you're done :)
@gmc all I need now is a lot of determination... and a written approval from AMSTRAD Consumer Electronics plc.
@RetroFunPL The latter one might prove to be difficult I guess, lawyers and all...
@gmc maybe someone could smile to mr Roland Perry for me 😬
Emil Oppeln-Bronikowski@gmc are they active company, or something akin to Commodore and Amiga brands, a manila envelope in some lawyer's office?
@RetroFunPL @emil According to wikipedia it had been defunct since 2011, but "In 2024 Sugar announced he had bought back the rights to the Amstrad name from Sky UK. Amstrad now belongs to a digital marketing firm named Amstrad Digital headed by Sugar's grandson Joe Baron."
@RetroFunPL @gmc I'm not great fan of those types of deals, even if they result in a product that's good.
@RetroFunPL @emil I know, but these modern-day recreations are not something that I'm personally interested in. I prefer the real deal :)
I'm curious though, the brand new "C64", can you open it up and probe at the chips, create mods etc...? Or is it just a big fpga with too many balls that are SMD soldered to a boring PCB that you have no hope of doing anything with yourself?
@gmc @RetroFunPL I never inspected this closely because as you, I have the real thing at home, but the guy who made the board is a very highly regarded hardware hacker. From what I understand it's a FPGA but with all the I/O intact. Normally people cut corners, bring-your-own-keyboard and can't-connect-that, that one is a very good pretender.
I already build my fauxmmodore out of bmc64 (bare metal emulator on RPi3/Zero) and a usb-to-C64-keyboard interface. No I/O (you can make cartridges working if you solder some wires to GPIO)