wickensonline.co.uk Retrochallenge 2010 Winter Warmup Entry Index

                           Retrochallenge 2010 Winter Warmup Entry

      This page contains information about my entry to the Retrochallenge 2010 Winter
      Warmup. The retrochallenge competition is held bi-annually and requires entrants
      to spend a month on a project involving retro hardware and/or retro software.
      The term retro describes software or hardware that are more than ten years old.

      The competition main page can be found here[1].

      This time round it's probably going to be a mixed bag of things as I'm going to
      be away at least twice during the month so anything involving specialist
      hardware is going to be out of the question during those times.

      Entrants to the competition are required to keep a diary. The posts below
      contain entries to my diary. If you are interested in my project, please check
      back during the month of January 2010 as I will be making regular updates.

      As always, these pages have been created using ALLIN1 version 3.2 using a VT320
      and an LK201 keyboard part number 70-23983-PE, C01 - the word processing variant
      with the Gold key. The pages are then printed using VT control codes which are
      processed using OpenVMS TPU and DCL to convert VT codes to HTML and some HTML
      scaffolding to create the final pages.

      POSTS

          31-Jan-2010 Final Entry
                      A review of the book 'The Soul of a New Machine' by Tracy Kidder
                      describing the development of a Data General computer to rival
                      the VAX in the late 70's.

          22-Jan-2010 Progress
                      Well, I've not really made any, so I thought I'd turn my
                      attention to the best of the rest. That's my Top Gun quote used
                      for this challenge!

          20-Jan-2010 Other Books
                      Other books of interest including some 68000 programming books
                      and some interesting wildcards to the pack.

          19-Jan-2010 VAX Book Library
                      The collection of VAX related books I've brought together,
                      including front covers, example pages and a few notes.

          17-Jan-2010 Update
                      Not done much but thought it was time for an update.

          10-Jan-2010 MECB and Babcock VFD
                      Driving a Babcock 40x6 character Vacuum Flourescent Display from
                      the 68K SBC and producing a Retrochallenge Roll Call video on
                      YouTube (in HD no less!)

          8-Jan-2010  M68K MECB Single Board Computer
                      First installment in my exploration of the Motorola Educational
                      Board Computer - C and assembler programming FTW!

          7-Jan-2010  Amiga Nostalgia
                      My personal Amiga history, plus some good Amiga game screen
                      shots from the excellent Universal Amiga Emulator.

          5-Jan-2010  Spectrum Brochure
                      A scan of an original ZX Spectrum brochure and some random
                      thoughts from the land of snow.

          4-Jan-2010  Comptronics Magazine
                      The cutting edge in magazine content delivered to you today as
                      fresh as it was in April, 1982. I won't even charge you the 50p
                      cover price!

          3-Jan-2010  DEC LA75 Plus Printer
                      Happy Christmas to me, happy Christmas to me... my retro chrimbo
                      pressy brand spanking new and lovely to boot.

          2-Jan-2010  DECtalk
                      A hastily penned retrochallenge-oriented festive ditty brought
                      to life by the alpha-powered voice that is DECtalk.

          2-Jan-2010  VAX Games
                      Reviving a couple of VAX Games that haven't seen the light of
                      day since 1988.
          
      
      Oh, and ALL HAIL WGOODF!
      
      

        
      ENDNOTES

      1. Retrochallenge Home Page