Tech Relics: Now integrating PIII processors for the wank factor.

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Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

# ? Mar 20, 2019 00:55

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# ? May 14, 2024 18:25

stuffed crust punk: Oct 8, 2004; by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

klafbang posted:

tl;dr: no you don't.

I used to work on a research project starting in 2001. We were developing an application as part of a research collaboration between a programming language group (developing the Beta programming language, people from there would go on to make major contributions to Java), a formal methods group, and the HCI group. Corporate partners included Microsoft and HP.

As part of the work, we were developing basically a graphical graph editor. We used all kinds of new things, like marking menus and mode-less user interfaces. As part of that, we experimented with multiple pointing devices. Windows didn't support that at the time, so I made a device driver that would allow us to filter out the mouse events before they were passed on to Windows.

At first, we supported two pointing devices (typically a mouse and a trackball). One thing you could do was use tool palettes in "tool glass" mode, where you would pick up the tool palette with (typically) the trackball, and click thru it onto the background to select what to do and where to do it simultaneously (e.g., click on a rectangle tool to draw a rectangle on the background). You can kind-of vaguely see that in circle 1 � there's two mouse cursers in there and you can see thru it, unlike the regular tool palette in circle 3:

You could also do simple two-pointer gestures, such as the pinch to zoom made popular by the iPhone. I'm fairly certain they at least partially ripped that feature off from us (we didn't invent it but we had the first implementation that was not just a single-use prototype). You could use a similar interaction to move and resize your windows simultaneously.

All of this was immensely useless. Due to two pointing devices not being supported natively, we had to handle events and draw the cursors ourselves, meaning one would always lag. It also turns out that saving milliseconds by selecting what to do and where to do it simultaneously isn't really that important, and zooming things is far less ubiquitous that you'd think, so having a nice way to do it was a bit of a waste.

After a couple of years, we generalized things a bit; now each pointing device was able to do the same things (initially the exactly two pointing devices each had separate things they could do), and we removed limits on how many you could use simultaneously. During development, I had something like 4 mice and 3 trackballs hooked up to my computer.

Having multiple pointing devices that could do the same, meant that people could collaborate on a single computer. We did experiments with teachers and students collaborating to use the tool. It worked ok, I guess. It turns out that except for very specialized repetitive tasks, the ability for more people to click the mouse isn't really that important. Somebody did run with the idea, though, and inspired by my driver for pointing devices set out to do the same for keyboards to build cheap computers for Africa (so more than one person could use a single computer, each with their own mouse and keyboard).

An alternative suggested by some people at a conference I demoed the application at suggested using multiple tools for multiple things. So you'd have one mouse for drawing red and another for drawing yellow, conceptually. That way you would physically switch between them giving all kinds of immediacy and other buzzwords UXers love. We did have a go with our application on a smart display, but the hardware wouldn't allow us to use multiple pens simultaneously. I bet they still don't except for simple drawing at best.

I was also in contact with various developers of game libraries, that wanted to integrate my work. Around the time, DirectDraw and DirectX would begin to have a semblance of support for multiple pointing devices.

I also made a proof-of-concept application that would allow you to use multiple pointing devices in regular Windows applications. It would simply draw it's own mouse cursors on top of everything else and hide the regular Windows mouse cursor. It would warp the hidden Windows cursor to the location of the last moved mouse cursor, giving a cheap illusion of multiple pointers.

A big problem with this is that Windows programs are inherently modal. For example, where does the little squigglies go when you type on your keyboard? to the active window, of course. But what if you have two mouse cursors, and they each click in a window? Which one is "the active one"? Shouldn't they both be? What if one mouse is in the process of dragging and dropping, and the other clicks on save, so Windows pops up a dialog? We found dozens of such issues making supporting multiple mice near-impossible. That's likely why Windows (and OS X) to this day only supports one cursor and multi-touch is only used for gestures.

This whole shebang did buy mew a lot of trips around the world to various conferences, including an all expenses paid trip to visit Microsoft Research in Cambridge, which was excellent because at one of the college bars, the bartender very quickly picked up on Microsoft footing the bill and me being very fond of pints of his strong ale to the point that on the second evening there, he would wave me past the line to the bar to hand me a pint of my poison. Also, I got to see prototypes of generics in .net and F# back when it was still called sml.net.

So all in all, there's a reason we don't have multiple mouse cursors. It's an interesting idea and fun to play with, but not really useful. Apple's "dumbing down" of the concept to gestures is probably the best way to go about it in retrospect.

Just curious, what was the bar? Meadhall?

# ? Mar 20, 2019 01:27

Buttcoin purse: Apr 24, 2014

Dr. Quarex posted:

No I do actually find it pleasant to use now also honestly. I barely even remember why I... Oh wait yes I do. 100% because QEdit could be made with white text on black and that was exactly what I wanted in a text editor in 1992

Okay some UI elements aren't white on black :shrug:

Oh yeah I remember when the choice was between EDLIN and COPY CON because EDIT didn't exist yet and I might not have had QEdit available on the particular floppies I was using. I would choose COPY CON even if it meant retyping some of a file (short-ish files only, obviously), because if I had to use EDLIN, I'd have to go find the manual. I probably only picked EDLIN once!

# ? Mar 20, 2019 03:42

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Enjoy every sandwich.; Smellrose

EDLIN scared me.

# ? Mar 20, 2019 03:50

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Reading step-by-step instructions for how to use EDLIN from a spiral-bound book

# ? Mar 20, 2019 03:52

The Kins: Oct 2, 2004

On the topic of multi-mouse support: I believe Lemmings on the Amiga actually supported multiple mice for two-player splitscreen mode.

It's like the only time I've ever seen multiple mice hooked up to one machine, though, so it was pretty clearly an outlier in that regard.

# ? Mar 20, 2019 04:15

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Oh man, I remember EDLIN; I feel like for some reason that was the editor of choice for ... some sort of game cheats? Does that make any sense? Because it does not make any sense to me now that I am typing it, but I think that was the only time I ever used it?

Buttcoin purse posted:

Okay some UI elements aren't white on black

Hmm. Well, I am going to chalk this one up to "I was like 10." Does seem a bit strange I would not have found the display options, so I wonder if I was just so obstinate that even one line of not-black was just too much for me?

Gonna go back in time to get to the bottom of this, brb

# ? Mar 20, 2019 04:29

Vanagoon: Jan 20, 2008; Best Dead Gay Forums
on the whole Internet!

Someone is way too into DOS and it's many variations:

http://16bitos.com/start.htm

# ? Mar 20, 2019 04:30

A FUCKIN CANARY!!: Nov 9, 2005

MAME can distinguish between multiple mice and I've used it for multiplayer Rampart.

# ? Mar 20, 2019 04:46

Buttcoin purse: Apr 24, 2014

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

EDLIN scared me.

At least its error messages had words:

quote:

Current date is Tue 1-01-1980
Enter new date:
Current time is 15:52:59.36
Enter new time:

The IBM Personal Computer DOS
Version 2.10 (C)Copyright IBM Corp 1981, 1982, 1983

A>edlin hello.txt
New file
*h
Entry error
*help
Entry error
*?
*

Slightly more friendly than ed is even today (because it's basically the same as it was 40 years ago):

quote:

$ ed --version
GNU Ed 1.9
Copyright (C) 1994 Andrew L. Moore.
Copyright (C) 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
$ ed
h
h
help
?
?
?

I guess I kind of know how to use it from having a vague knowledge of vi?

quote:

i
I <3 dumb terminals

.
oh drat how do I get back to command mode?
?

Oh, so I am back in command mode, because I got a "?", but I don't really know which one of those things put me back in command mode, blank line or ".". Lucky I'll never have to fix a computer old enough that I actually need to use this in an emergency.

quote:

q
?
q
$

Oh drat, was that first "?" the "are you sure you want to quit without saving? enter q again to quit" prompt? That really sucks.

Dr. Quarex posted:

Oh man, I remember EDLIN; I feel like for some reason that was the editor of choice for ... some sort of game cheats? Does that make any sense? Because it does not make any sense to me now that I am typing it, but I think that was the only time I ever used it?

Are you thinking of DEBUG, the tool with a similar UI that you would use to replace a few bytes in a binary file?

I remember computer magazines that would have low-level assembly code you could enter into DEBUG (along with the starting and saving commands, because normal people wouldn't know how to do those either) to make little .COM programs for things like changing the screen colors.

quote:

Hmm. Well, I am going to chalk this one up to "I was like 10." Does seem a bit strange I would not have found the display options, so I wonder if I was just so obstinate that even one line of not-black was just too much for me?

Were you an emo? :v:

Vanagoon posted:

Someone is way too into DOS and it's many variations:

# ? Mar 20, 2019 06:33

CaptainSarcastic: Jul 6, 2013

Grand Prize Winner posted:

related: does anyone remember some windows me-era feature or browser that would let you do "multiplayer" web browsing? like, you or the user you were connected to could click and scroll around on a webpage and you'd see the other user's cursor but it was a different color or transparent or something? was that just a fever dream?

I think Yahoo Messenger had this functionality but it was more an XP era thing. Opera might have also have had something like that, but I couldn't swear to it. It's a relatively vague memory for me. Aside from remembering it was possible and trying it out just to satisfy my curiousity it never seemed to gain much traction - it was neat but not all that useful..

edit: Just did some searching and I think it was probably Windows Messenger, not Yahoo.

CaptainSarcastic has a new favorite as of 06:59 on Mar 20, 2019

# ? Mar 20, 2019 06:51

Beve Stuscemi: Jun 6, 2001

Mak0rz posted:

My MS Office gripe right now is that it produces a mouse input polling bug when you try to drag its windows around, causing sluggish movement

Ugh I get this too and its super obnoxious. Seems to be new for Office 365

# ? Mar 20, 2019 19:05

Beve Stuscemi: Jun 6, 2001

Vanagoon posted:

Someone is way too into DOS and it's many variations:

http://16bitos.com/start.htm

I imaged my OG DOS 6.22 disks because I figured they'd be hard to come by someday. Still have those images somewhere.

DOS is cool and good and deserves to be archived properly, IMO

# ? Mar 20, 2019 19:13

Guy Axlerod: Dec 29, 2008

The Wii web browser let you have multiple pointers on screen, but only player 1 could do anything more than point at stuff.

# ? Mar 20, 2019 20:14

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Buttcoin purse posted:

Are you thinking of DEBUG, the tool with a similar UI that you would use to replace a few bytes in a binary file?

I remember computer magazines that would have low-level assembly code you could enter into DEBUG (along with the starting and saving commands, because normal people wouldn't know how to do those either) to make little .COM programs for things like changing the screen colors.

Were you an emo?

Oh DEBUG! Yeah that is totally what it was, and I think you are right on the money that I like found instructions on some BBS as to how to use DEBUG to whip Sim City into shape or something.

And I remember telling my friends who was an actual coder about this and he was like "are you sure you were using debug, that does not make any sense, you can't even use QuickBASIC"

Also if anything I was leaning goth/industrial in my pre-teens but like all subcultures when I tried to seriously get into it I instantly decided the gatekeeping was so boring that I could not be bothered.

# ? Mar 21, 2019 02:49

Gonz: Dec 22, 2009; "Jesus, did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLGVBBp_VfY

# ? Mar 22, 2019 20:32

Gonz: Dec 22, 2009; "Jesus, did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me?"

https://twitter.com/CoolBoxArt/status/1109215562368987137

# ? Mar 22, 2019 23:15

3D Megadoodoo: Nov 25, 2010; Can't post for 6 hours!

Gonz posted:

https://twitter.com/CoolBoxArt/status/1109215562368987137

Still a superb mutli-player game. Also I really like the music.

# ? Mar 23, 2019 01:57

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

I have never played M.U.L.E., despite owning two Atari 8-bit computers, but the game's tagline is so evocative that I have always had a soft spot for it anyway. I would love to watch the feature film adaptation that will surely be in the pipeline now that someone has said it out loud

# ? Mar 23, 2019 02:02

3D Megadoodoo: Nov 25, 2010; Can't post for 6 hours!

Dr. Quarex posted:

I have never played M.U.L.E., despite owning two Atari 8-bit computers, but the game's tagline is so evocative that I have always had a soft spot for it anyway. I would love to watch the feature film adaptation that will surely be in the pipeline now that someone has said it out loud

Oh dang start doing heroin just so you can play it with your heroin mates!

(I'm assuming you, as a goon, can't make regular mates :mrwhite:

)

E: oh wait my monitor was turned off haha

3D Megadoodoo has a new favorite as of 02:10 on Mar 23, 2019

# ? Mar 23, 2019 02:05

Casimir Radon: Aug 2, 2008

Edit: Wrong thread

# ? Mar 23, 2019 02:05

Mak0rz: Aug 2, 2008; 😎🐗🚬

Gonz posted:

https://twitter.com/CoolBoxArt/status/1109215562368987137

Jerry Cotton posted:

Still a superb mutli-player game. Also I really like the music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6ByRXZCg9k

# ? Mar 23, 2019 02:22

Lazlo Nibble: Jan 9, 2004; It was Weasleby, by God! At last I had the miserable blighter precisely where I wanted him!

Back when EA was the Rebellion rather than the Empire.

# ? Mar 23, 2019 04:04

BgRdMchne: Oct 31, 2011

Can a Computer Make You Cry?

Right now, no one knows. This is partly because many would consider the very idea frivolous. But it's also because whoever successfully answers this question must first have answered several others.

Why do we cry? Why do we laugh, or love, or smile? What are the touchstones of our emotions?

Until now, the people who asked such questions tended not to be the same people who ran software companies. Instead, they were writers, filmmakers, painters, musicians. They were, in the traditional sense, artists.

We're about to change that tradition. The name of our company is Electronic Arts.

Software worthy of the minds that use it.

We are a new association of electronic artists united by a common goal�to fulfill the enormous potential of the personal computer.

In the short term, this means transcending its present use as a facilitator of unimaginative tasks and a medium for blasting aliens. In the long term, however, we can expect a great deal more.

These are wondrous machines we have created, and in them can be seen a bit of their makers. It is as if we had invested them with the image of our minds. And through them, we are learning more and more about ourselves.

We learn, for instance, that we are more entertained by the involvement of our imaginations than by passive viewing and listening. We learn that we are better taught by experiences than by memorization. And we learn that the traditional distinctions�the ones that are made between art and entertainment and education�don't always apply.

Towards a language of dreams.

In short, we are finding that the computer can be more than just a processor of data.

It is a communications medium: an interactive tool that can bring people's thoughts and feelings closer together, perhaps closer than ever before. And while fifty years from now, its creation may seem no more important than the advent of motion pictures or television, there is a chance it will mean something more.[6]

Something along the lines of a universal language of ideas and emotions. Something like a smile.

The first publications of Electronic Arts are now available.[7] We suspect you'll be hearing a lot about them. Some of them are games like you've never seen before, that get more out of your computer than other games ever have. Others are harder to categorize�and we like that.

Watch us.

We're providing a special environment for talented, independent software artists. It's a supportive environment, in which big ideas are given room to grow. And some of America's most respected software artists are beginning to take notice.

We think our current work reflects this very special commitment. And though we are few in number today and apart from the mainstream of the mass software marketplace, we are confident that both time and vision are on our side.

Join us. We see farther.

The following is a transcription of the image caption in the lower right.
Software artists?

"I'm not so sure there are any software artists yet," says Bill Budge. "We've got to earn that title." Pictured here are a few people who have come as close to earning it as anyone we know.

That's Mr. Budge himself, creator of Pinball Construction Set, at the upper right. To his left are Anne Westfall and Jon Freeman who, along with their colleagues at Free Fall Associates, created Archon and Murder on the Zinderneuf.

Left of them is Dan Bunten of Ozark Softscape, the firm that wrote M.U.L.E. To Dan's left are Mike Abbot (top) and Matt Alexander (bottom), authors of Hard Hat Mack. In the center is John Field, creator of Axis Assassin and The Last Gladiator. David Maynard, lower right, is the man responsible for Worms?

When you see what they've accomplished, we think you'll agree with us that they can call themselves whatever they want.

# ? Mar 23, 2019 06:03

Beve Stuscemi: Jun 6, 2001

Please do not crosspost from your livejournal

# ? Mar 23, 2019 15:36

Goober Peas: Jun 30, 2007; Check out my 'Vette, bro

Seriously, wtf?

This is the dumbest poo poo in the thread.

# ? Mar 23, 2019 15:49

Grand Prize Winner: Feb 19, 2007

I'm guessing Wired, ca. 1993.

# ? Mar 23, 2019 19:31

Lazlo Nibble: Jan 9, 2004; It was Weasleby, by God! At last I had the miserable blighter precisely where I wanted him!

Launch ad for Electronic Arts, 1983. Here�s another one from the same campaign (tear-out promo poster, I think from Creative Computing magazine):

Their marketing was a little up their own rear end for sure, in a way that Apple definitely took some cues from later on. But at the time putting the names of the creators front-and-center was something you usually saw only on homebrew-grade games sold in baggies off a pegboard, and M.U.LE./Archon/Hard Hat Mack/Pinball Construction Set in particular were best-in-class titles.

# ? Mar 23, 2019 20:22

CaptainSarcastic: Jul 6, 2013

Lazlo Nibble posted:

Launch ad for Electronic Arts, 1983. Here�s another one from the same campaign (tear-out promo poster, I think from Creative Computing magazine):

Their marketing was a little up their own rear end for sure, in a way that Apple definitely took some cues from later on. But at the time putting the names of the creators front-and-center was something you usually saw only on homebrew-grade games sold in baggies off a pegboard, and M.U.LE./Archon/Hard Hat Mack/Pinball Construction Set in particular were best-in-class titles.

Wow, I remember playing the poo poo out of Archon and also had Murder On The Zinderneuf, although my memories of that are a bit vaguer.

# ? Mar 23, 2019 21:14

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Yeah it makes me vaguely sad that anyone in this thread does not instantly recognize "Can a computer make you cry?" as mainlining Electronic Arts nostalgia, but I understand it takes all kinds to make the tech relics thread go 'round.

I 100% would have gotten the "EOA" cube/sphere/pyramid logo as a tattoo like a decade ago if modern-day EA bore any resemblance whatsoever to that mission statement.

# ? Mar 23, 2019 23:49

Powered Descent: Jul 13, 2008; We haven't had that spirit here since 1969.

Lazlo Nibble posted:

But at the time putting the names of the creators front-and-center was something you usually saw only on homebrew-grade games sold in baggies off a pegboard

Activision did it too. Giving credit to the programmers is how Activision managed to recruit most of the good Atari 2600 game programmers away from Atari itself.

Every Activision game had an author, prominently credited, and that author got to write a little blurb in the back of the manual. Silly as they are, those little blurbs by people like David Crane and Carol Shaw are what got me started on the road to being a programmer. They turned a video game -- which was otherwise just kind of a magical artifact from the gods -- into something that an actual PERSON had made. If you're having fun with Kaboom!, take a look in the manual. A guy named Larry Kaplan made it. Maybe someday when I grow up, I figured, I could make something like it too. And I did.

# ? Mar 24, 2019 02:38

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Powered Descent posted:

Every Activision game had an author, prominently credited, and that author got to write a little blurb in the back of the manual.

Same with Infocom.

They'd also mention the author in game announcements, e.g. when talking about upcoming releases in their newsletter (originally called The New Zork Times and later, after legal threats, The Status Line). I don't know how common this was, but I definitely sought out Infocom games based on knowing they were designed by e.g. Steve Meretzky.

# ? Mar 26, 2019 10:01

Fil5000: Jun 23, 2003; HOLD ON GUYS I'M POSTING ABOUT INTERNET ROBOTS

Dr. Quarex posted:

And I believe that was when I was happily running Windows ME for a few years. How did I make it this far in life when I rolled so hard with all these tech relics

I swear, I ran windows 2000 all the way up until about 2008. I had to find fan patches to get some games to even let me install them.

# ? Mar 26, 2019 11:48

Buttcoin purse: Apr 24, 2014

Fil5000 posted:

I swear, I ran windows 2000 all the way up until about 2008. I had to find fan patches to get some games to even let me install them.

I last ran Windows 2000 2 weeks ago :colbert:

Admittedly I'm just using it for stuff it can do easily like running old documentation viewers, and not fighting with it to make it run stuff it doesn't really support. Now I see people online take your kind of struggle to the extreme for entertainment purposes, e.g. getting Windows 10 to run software designed for Windows NT. I for one don't look back fondly on downloading software but finding Windows 95 wouldn't run it because it required 98 or higher :saddowns:

# ? Mar 26, 2019 13:24

Fil5000: Jun 23, 2003; HOLD ON GUYS I'M POSTING ABOUT INTERNET ROBOTS

Buttcoin purse posted:

I last ran Windows 2000 2 weeks ago Admittedly I'm just using it for stuff it can do easily like running old documentation viewers, and not fighting with it to make it run stuff it doesn't really support. Now I see people online take your kind of struggle to the extreme for entertainment purposes, e.g. getting Windows 10 to run software designed for Windows NT. I for one don't look back fondly on downloading software but finding Windows 95 wouldn't run it because it required 98 or higher

To this day I still don't know why I persisted throughout the entirety of the period where Windows XP was sold without upgrading to it. Sheer bloody mindedness.

# ? Mar 27, 2019 12:10

A FUCKIN CANARY!!: Nov 9, 2005

I didn't upgrade my main PC from 98SE to XP until after Vista was out. I tried XP for around 10 minutes and thought "wow this interface sucks poo poo" so I just never even thought about it again until there was simply no way I could keep 98 limping along.

Looking back at how quickly things were changing back then, it's kind of amazing that a 6600GT worked on 98SE at all.

A FUCKIN CANARY!! has a new favorite as of 12:25 on Mar 27, 2019

# ? Mar 27, 2019 12:22

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Holy crap XP was garish when it came out. Remember what the status quo was? Gray, light gray, white. Here comes this thing that�s all ORANGE AND BLUE AND BIG THICK TITLE BARS WITH BAD LIGHTING EFFECTS

I wasn�t a Windows person but I felt like I wouldn�t have wanted to upgrade to it on aesthetic principle alone

# ? Mar 27, 2019 12:30