[plug] OT: Acorn Archimedes

[Nick Bannon]

On Sun, Dec 21, 2003 at 10:48:38PM +0800, Craig Foster wrote:
> Simon Scott <sscott at iinet.net.au> wrote:
> > I have a lot of this junk if anyone wants to play with it. I 
> > dont have a BBC, but Ive got an acorn achimedes, <edit - blah, blah, blah
> /edit> etc etc etc... 
> > probably a bunch more old console stuff Ive forgotten about.
>  
> Well, once I heard Archimedes all the rest paled :P

Yes indeed. I'm a fan of those, I've collected a few, though they
haven't been getting as much attention in recent years...

The operating system is still on life support, you can buy brand new
machines running it on a 600MHz XScale, or emulated on an Intel laptop.
The hardware will run Linux, though on the old machines the memory is
tight.

It's about time for a old-games-night. Nothing under 10 years old! ::-)

[BDC] - are you still out there? I did see you post to PLUG in 2001!

> Those things were "da bomb". The quasi-3D rendering rocked. I soooo remember
> the RollerCoaster Demo, and Virus (or what was 'Virus' before it got to PC)

Quasi-3D? Hmmph! Perfectly good 3D - done with solid triangles or
Gouraud shading by the CPU. None of this new fangled brute-force
texture mapping. Zarch was the game ("Virus" on the Amiga), and the
demo, called "Lander", came with the machines. Someone rewrote Zarch
for Linux, but I'm not sure the legal dots and crosses were
addressed... ::-/

The 8-bit BBC's Chris mentioned had one of the most impressive early 3D
(wireframe) games - Elite. (closest to "Frontier" on the Amiga) One of
the same authors (David Braben) worked on both.

> No-one besides me knew what to do with it, and it sat in the corner doing
> demos only when Parents days came around.
> 
> The only problem was that Gosnells SHS passed it on without telling me.  A
> dark day indeed...

Yes... I've often wondered where they all went...

> Kinda the same feeling when one of the Mac guys told me he picked up the old
> UCC NeXT machine :(
> 
> Craig F.

Picked up? Should still be in mostly working condition...

Nick.

-- 
   Nick Bannon   | "I made this letter longer than usual because
nick-sig at rcpt.to | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal