Vintage
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What is that Acorn? I don't remember the BBC having an "Acorn Bus Extension", and it looks too narrow to be a Master...
(nm, I found it online: Acorn Atom. I've never seen one in real life.)
Yes, it was a nice little machine, the first computer I used at home. I shared it with some friends because our parents couldn't afford it unless we pooled our money. Each of us would have it for a week then take it to the next kid's house. In those days you had the option of buying it prebuilt or (cheaper) as a kit, and I still remember how excited I was when my dad and I came out of the electronics shop with a bag full of circuit boards, chips and keys that would magically become a computer when soldered together.
The Acorn story is really amazing: a tiny hobbyist company that got a break when the BBC commissioned the BBC micro from them, that went on to invent the ARM chips that are in billions of phones and other devices now.
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Those are just a combined port. You can use it for one or the other or use a splitter for both. The dual port was very popular on 90s laptops.
was very popular on 90s
This feels like you just called my PC old...
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Please,
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I remember manually programming the cylinders and heads on a hdd into the bios. Kids these days got it easy
And when the bits feel off the end and you had to wind them back on with a pencil.
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I'm fine., thanks.
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I tried to explain these ports to a salesperson at micro center, and they have me the dull cow stare.
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An elegant port for a more civilized time
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Remember when Star Wars Shadows of the Empire came out on PC and apparently, it's been awhile so maybe I'm not remembering correctly, but you needed a special card for your keyboard to play it?
no search results relevant to this.
do you mean a card as in a pc hardware ISA / PCI device, or like a paper overlay card with reminders for button actions?
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Except that wasn't a serial port, it was midi, and the reason it was on the sound card was because the input was analog.
Your joystick was just two fancy potentiometers, and your soundcard decoded the voltage on the middle legs into a position.
Soundcards handled joysticks because they had the fastest ADCs.
huh, i thought it was just because "owning a sound card" and "likely to play games" was the biggest overlap of the Venn circles.
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That's a midi port
It's supposed to be, but it's really just a joystick port.
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It's supposed to be, but it's really just a joystick port.
That's how most people used it, yeah. But it's meant to be a midi port which is why it's on sound cards.
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An elegant port for a more civilized time
Nothing civilized about no hot plugging. Had to restart the whole damn computer, if the cable was loose or out at startup.
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Nothing civilized about no hot plugging. Had to restart the whole damn computer, if the cable was loose or out at startup.
skill issue
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This reminds me when a mouse was an option not a requirement
still is
/i3gang
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That's how most people used it, yeah. But it's meant to be a midi port which is why it's on sound cards.
It often worked poorly as such though. While it worked great as a joystick port. I drew my own conclusions.
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Nothing civilized about no hot plugging. Had to restart the whole damn computer, if the cable was loose or out at startup.
I loved the PCs that had Ctrl + up as a shortcut to flip the monitor orientation. I think it was a Dell thing?
My favourite prank was to flip the screen upside down then unplug the keyboard. Good luck saving your work fuck face
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It often worked poorly as such though. While it worked great as a joystick port. I drew my own conclusions.
Tbf most things worked poorly back then. I constantly had to pop my 386 open and jiggle the ram to get it to boot
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Tbf most things worked poorly back then. I constantly had to pop my 386 open and jiggle the ram to get it to boot
That's... not typical though.
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I'm this old
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I loved the PCs that had Ctrl + up as a shortcut to flip the monitor orientation. I think it was a Dell thing?
My favourite prank was to flip the screen upside down then unplug the keyboard. Good luck saving your work fuck face
Ok Satan
