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Geoff Wearmouth

@warmtoffee.bsky.social

Press plastic for a living but love the touch of rubber. Assembler of Gosh Wonderful and Looking Glass Spectrum ROMs and my Binary Logic ZX81 ROM bl81.rom Old ZX Spectrum Site - https://web.archive.org/web/20150602175320/http://www.wearmouth.demon.co.uk/

174 Posts96 Follower30 Folgt
Theo Sanderson@theo.io · last wk.

Londoners! I've made a website that discovers everything going on in the physical world of London (talks, exhibitions, gigs, plays, etc.) and finds stuff it thinks you'll like. You teach it your interests by swiping events left or right. Decent recs after ~100 swipes. Check out realworld.events!

realworld.events: what’s on in London, picked for you

Swipe through London’s upcoming events: right if it’s your kind of thing, left if not, and the deck learns your taste. Filter by date, evening, area and type.

realworld.events

VGC@videogameschronicle.com · 4w ago

The clamshell C64 and ZX Spectrum handhelds, which were set for release in two weeks, have been delayed by six months. Manufacturer Blaze says the "product construction was not meeting our high standards". www.videogameschronicle.com/news/the-cla...

The clamshell C64 and ZX Spectrum handhelds have been delayed by six months because of production quality | VGC

Blaze Entertainment says the handhelds were “not meeting our high standards”…

videogameschronicle.com

Geoff Wearmouth@warmtoffee.bsky.social · last mo.

An interesting letter reveals that on a ZX Spectrum playing Scrabble the program may use “FART” to impress its family audience. There was already a euphemism for the word in the manual. The system Variable RASP is short for RASPBERRY which is cockney for RASPBERRY TART. See the Spectrum source code

Among its eleven thousand word vocabulary the Scrabble game has the word FART. 💨In the ZX Spectrum source code, courtesy of Timex, the System Variable 23608 is FART and Steven reveals the Spectrum blows a raspberry when things go wrong. e.g. hold the key T for RANDOMIZE which causes the screen to fill with text until, lacking room, the computer emits a warning buzz. This is a private joke for his parents and James Hardy Wilkinson who were head hunted to work for Alan Turing in 1946. During a demo for the Daily Mirror the reporter Ruggles asked what happens when a mistake occurs. Jim replied that it makes a noise like a raspberry. “After all it is almost human”.
Ken Shirriff@righto.com · last mo.

In 1980, Intel introduced the 8087 floating-point coprocessor chip. Plugging this chip into your IBM PC made math 100 times faster, good for CAD and spreadsheets. I opened up the chip to reverse-engineer exactly how it does complicated calculations. Let's take a look inside...

The integrated circuit is a black ceramic rectangle with 40 metal pins sticking out, in two rows. (This is known as a DIP, a Dual Inline Package.) It has three rows of text: "D8087-1", a cryptic version label, and then the copyright line with a big lower-case I, INTEL m c 1980 1984. The m and c are in circles for the mask-work symbol and the copyright symbol. The chip has a small semicircular notch on the left side, indicating its orientation. The package consists of two thin ceramic layers, bonded together with a gray substance; the metal pins stick out from this gray substance. The ceramic package is important to me because tapping the gray layer with a chisel will cause the two layers to separate, revealing the silicon die inside. In contrast, most chips are in epoxy packages, which are very difficult to open, usually requiring strong acids.
L Break Into Program@breakintoprogram.co.uk · 2mo ago

The ZX81's native resolution of 64x48 suits big bold graphics, like 3D Monster Maze and Mazogs. This is another good example where the developers have leaned into the limitations. Surprised I've not come across this before. As ever, great video review by @villordsutch.bsky.social

Villordsutch@villordsutch.bsky.social · 3mo ago

After meeting an old man in the desert, I've decided to start listening to the voices in my head, and I want to vaporise two million people. Thanks to the power of the #ZX81, I can now do that, with 3D Star Raid, which is definitely not #StarWars. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii1A...