Toni Westbrook

@Megaboz@oldbytes.space
27 Followers
48 Following
180 Posts

I'm a computer scientist who absolutely loves #retrocomputing and #retrogaming!

Some of my software & hardware creations: Shredz64 (#C64 Guitar Hero), ZISA-X (ISA compatible #Z80 computer), Whirlwind (NES FPGA).

I'm currently working on a #BBS themed adventure RPG, Cloudburst Connection.

Recent repairs & mods: IMSAI 8080, TRS-80 Model III, C128DCR.

Research interests: Bioinformatics, genomics, file systems, HPC, and scientific reproducibility. Check out my ORCID page for my publications!

Day JobDep Director Research Computing & AI @ UNH
Githubhttps://github.com/ToniWestbrook
Research Publicationshttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-5398-6916
Websitehttps://www.toniwestbrook.com
An interesting article about how blind people can play classic text-rendered #roguelike games #retrodev #retrogaming #retrocomputing #gamedev

Playing roguelikes when you ca...
Playing roguelikes when you can’t see

For most of us, traditional roguelikes are intrinsically inaccessible. They’re notoriously difficult, their design is c…

Rock Paper Shotgun

Been loving necroware's board for converting MDA/CGA/EGA to VGA! Quick to solder, compact, and has worked like a champ on everything I've tried: Tandy 1000, Laser 128, C128DCR, etc.

#retrocomputing #tandy #commodore #VGA #CGA #necroware

Two of my favorite mobile devices, the DevTerm and Flipper Zero, having a nice "chat" with each other. I would love to use my DevTerm more, I need suggestions of things I can print on the thermal printer!

#devterm #FlipperZero #cyberdecks

New video: Let's Code MS DOS 0x30: VGA 3D Textmode

The EGA and VGA card can do a lot of magic tricks in textmode. This time we will investigate how you can draw a rotating 3D cube overlayed on normal text by utilising the EGA/VGA feature of a second character set.

https://youtu.be/4hrVpFY43bY
https://makertube.net/w/vyeR1JSA7p4TmfSbBkyFWG

#letscode #msdos #retrocomputing #demoscene

over the years i've become more interested in game/software ephemera than the software itself.

for example, few people under 20 have grown up with a local computer store or brick & mortar store that sells boxed games. biking over to the computer store to line up, pay cash, and buy a game you've been saving for months has become an alien experience.

a few days ago i bought some old PC boxed games from a guy that had them in storage for decades. of all of them, i was the least excited about Millionaire. it looked like the kind of lazy portware that probably started its life as a text simulation on the Apple II and made its way to every godforsaken architecture.

tucked away on the last page of the manual was an absolute treasure: the original VISA transaction record for the day the game was bought, for $52.88, on July 20, 1985 at the Real Canadian Superstore in Edmonton, AB, Canada. This is before Canada had the goods and services tax (GST), and when Alberta was abbreviated to Alta.

the owner stapled it on to the warranty registration card, just in case he had to return it or RMA it some day.

Superstore #1572 is still there, in the north end. while i knew they had always sold video games, i had no idea that they sold IBM XT software way back in 1985.

(for anyone not in Canada, Superstore is a national discount grocery chain.)

even better, no one under the age of 30 will have seen these credit card transaction records. they were made using a "credit card imprinter" - a sliding mechanism that pressed the card number through several layers of invoice and carbon copy paper. The invoice papers were usually two or three layered - a white and pink copy for the business, and a yellow copy went to the customer.

#vintageComputing #softwarePreservation #digiPres #canada

From a recent C128 mod - drilled and added two switches to case for turning on/off JiffyDOS and changing internal floppy from device 8 to 9. First switch is wired up to highest address line of a ROM that contains both JiffyDOS and stock image. For second switch, I cut the trace that keeps the device selection at gnd for ID 8 and instead wired it into the switch.

#retrocomputing #commodore #c128 #electronics

I'm liking #regicide the awesome RPG style battle card game that you can use a normal 52 card deck (with jokers) and play solo or up to several players. You're battling progressively big baddies and have combos and abilities and other stuff, pretty cool... and free!

https://www.regicidegame.com/site_files/33132/upload_files/RegicideRulesA4.pdf?dl=1

#cardgame

Got my 3D printer camera mounted in the enclosure! Now I have a top down view of my prints that I can monitor without having to walk over to the printer. Next up is an air filter!

#3dprinting #prusa

has anyone ever come across a video documentary about CorelDraw! and the Corel corporation? it's eluding me on web/yt searches, and *someone* must have done a deep dive on this by now?

#retroComputing #vintageComputing

Wowww, noticed incredible attention to detail in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle last night! According to the game, this is supposed to read "The _guardians_ vowed to protect the gift of the _gods_ and the legacy of _king Khufu_". I used to be into the Egyptian Book of the Dead and learning hieroglyphs when I was younger, and though I've forgotten almost all of it, I remember: 3 flags is gods (neteru), a seated man with a stick is guard (mnjw), and the big circle things are of course cartouches. I looked up the cartouche and it's indeed the one for the pharaoh Khufu. Not sure about the rest but it seems like they did an accurate job with the hieroglyphs - so cool!

#indianajones #hieroglyphics #egyptology #videogames

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New video: Let's Code MS DOS 0x30: VGA 3D Textmode

The EGA and VGA card can do a lot of magic tricks in textmode. This time we will investigate how you can draw a rotating 3D cube overlayed on normal text by utilising the EGA/VGA feature of a second character set.

https://youtu.be/4hrVpFY43bY
https://makertube.net/w/vyeR1JSA7p4TmfSbBkyFWG

#letscode #msdos #retrocomputing #demoscene

@root42 Love this use of custom character sets, I remember searching a while back for others using text mode character sets to emulate 3D graphics but coming up short, very cool to see it in action! In general I wish this feature of EGA/VGA was used more, I know MegaZeux used it a ton but I don't remember much else taking as much advantage of it. What I reaallly wish they had done back in the day is had an ANSI.SYS supported escape character sequence that allowed you to program custom characters (assuming a card was installed that supported it), so a BBS could get really creative with their menus/ANSI art without needing something like RIPscrip. Anyway, great tutorial!
@Megaboz Thanks! PC Tools and some other software redefined the character sets for drawing their UI and they used the trick with the mouse cursor, where they would reserve four characters, which would draw a combination of the original characters overlayed with a graphical mouse pointer.

@root42 software defined character set, cool! Looking forward to check this video out!

(tons of 8bit and 16bit consoles and home computers that didn't have pixel-adressable framebuffers relied on similar techniques for drawing arbitrary graphics on the text-only or tile display)
(the accelerators coprocessors used by SEGA and Nintendo -- Virtua Racing's SVP, MegaCD's asic, and if not mistaken the SuperFX? -- had to handle similar "3d graphics to tiles")

@dryak @root42 Interesting about those other machines. I was also thinking a while back it would be cool for retro machines with fixed/ROM only character sets to use a fpga/mcu defined ROM in its place to do these kind of graphics via text. At that time I couldn't find an existing project, but maybe at this point there is, especially with the recent work with software defined ROMs.
@Megaboz @root42 on NES it's specially easy to do as its PPU directly access its own separate ROM on the cartridge.
Back in the day this allowed game devs to animate background by bank switching (lots of catridge mapper chips) or using RAM (eg the floppy drive).
Was also Argonaut's initial thinkering before making the SuperFX for SNES.
More recently some crazy people put a freaking Raspberry Pi 3 instead (directly GPIO pins, compensating timing in software, no RP2040 / RPi5 pio statemachine)
@dryak @root42 Yup, love all the interesting ways people would take advantage of the PPU! I implemented the full NES in an FPGA a couple years back (except the 6502, I used an existing core for that) and got a real appreciation for the architecture, especially that they put so much into the cartridge, allowing things that started as hard wired to be later programmatically controlled by registers as more advanced MMCs were developed (eg mirroring/scrolling direction, bank selection, etc). So cool.

@Megaboz @root42 on the PC, that should be doable with a RP2040 (or Raspberry 5) and have its pio statemachine talk in lieu of the CGA/MDA's font ROM chip.
The host PC and the accelerator could talk over the serial port for simple things. Or one could throw a second RP2040 to talk over the ISA bus (a la PicoGUS / PicoDrive) to talk faster.

Simlar setups should be doable with other machines, as long as the font rom is socketed, and they have some serial or catridge port to talk.

@root42 Looks intersting. Will hopefully watch later