Author Topic: Countdown Clock for Windows? (Read 14088 times)

mmb5 · « **Reply #15 on:** January 14, 2005, 08:37:48 AM »

[quote name=\'trainman\' date=\'Jan 13 2005, 11:55 PM\'][quote name=\'TLEberle\' date=\'Jan 13 2005, 08:17 PM\']As a note of comparison my first computer, a C64, had 1/250,000th of the hard drive that my current computer does.

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Shouldn't that be zero percent of the hard drive of your current computer? C64's didn't have built-in hard drives. (I know third-party manufacturers came out with external hard drives for the Atari 8-bit computers relatively late in their product lifetimes, so I assume the same is true for the C64, although they would of course have been ridiculously expensive at the time -- even more expensive and smaller than the $300 700MB drive Chris mentioned above.)

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And here's the proof...
http://members.optusnet.com.au/vortex69/HD...HD-HISTORY.html

The C64 had a much richer history outside of the U.S., so a lot of the third-party stuff never made it here.

--Mike

sshuffield70 · « **Reply #16 on:** January 14, 2005, 09:54:22 AM »

[quote name=\'Fedya\' date=\'Jan 13 2005, 11:07 PM\'][quote name=\'clemon79\' date=\'Jan 10 2005, 12:03 PM\']Do I even HAVE this modem anymore? Stacker 3.0? Yeesh, why the hell did I ever use that to start with? (Answer, for the whippersnappers: my first drive in my first PC (I was an Apple II user up until '91) was 80 megabytes. That's mega, with an M, not giga.)
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I've got you beat: my first computer didn't have a hard drive. It was a TI-99/4A, with programs being saved to cassette tape. Do the young farts here even know what cassettes are? :-p

Of course, I'm sure Matt, the other Chris, and the rest of the senior set will regale us of their stories when the only computer and broadcasting equipment available had vacuum tubes and stored data on punch cards....

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Yep, I remember those days. I think I've got y'all (well, the older folks) beat. My first PC was the VIC 20 (which was advertised as competing with the Atari and Intellivision game systems). It didn't have a hard drive, but had a 5K RAM. You could run some decent programs on it like a "Space Invaders" or a "Pac-Man" cover. One of my game show ideas started there, then migrated to my next PC (IBM clone with a 40MB HD).

Now, I've had this for 2 1/2 years (80GB HD). The only thing I've had done to it so far is replace my expensive LCD monitor for a standard (and used the extra money to buy "Roller Coaster Tycoon 3".)

Mike Tennant · « **Reply #17 on:** January 14, 2005, 11:04:32 AM »

Chalk up another VIC 20 owner here. I got mine for $85 at a local discount store. I was probably in 6th or 7th grade at the time, and my dad made me pay part of the cost because he was sure I'd never use it and wanted me to have a stake in it. It did have 5K of memory but only 3,583 bytes free for use after booting. I had a cheap off-brand cassette deck for it. Then I got a 3K expander and later, a whopping 16K. I'm pretty sure I wrote some game show software for it in BASIC (though I may have used some Assembly language for graphics speed).

Anyway, Dad made no further noises when I moved up to a C-64, then an Amiga, and finally a good old standard-issue IBM compatible.

zachhoran · « **Reply #18 on:** January 14, 2005, 11:10:21 AM »

[quote name=\'Mike Tennant\' date=\'Jan 14 2005, 11:04 AM\']Chalk up another VIC 20 owner here. I got mine for $85 at a local discount store. I was probably in 6th or 7th grade at the time, and my dad made me pay part of the cost because he was sure I'd never use it and wanted me to have a stake in it. It did have 5K of memory but only 3,583 bytes free for use after booting. I had a cheap off-brand cassette deck for it. Then I got a 3K expander and later, a whopping 16K.

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I had a Commodore 128 for about six years, and only the Commodore 64 feature of it was ever used.

One of the computer magazines at the time, the now defunct Computer's Gazette IIRC, said there was a way to expand the Vic20 to 64K. Anyone ever try to do it? The most I expanded my Vic 20 to was 16K.

clemon79 · « **Reply #19 on:** January 14, 2005, 11:55:18 AM »

[quote name=\'sshuffield70\' date=\'Jan 14 2005, 07:54 AM\']The only thing I've had done to it so far is replace my expensive LCD monitor for a standard (and used the extra money to buy "Roller Coaster Tycoon 3".)

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...and we thank you for your purchase!

Didn't like your flatscreen, tho, hmm? I LOVE mine.

aaron sica · « **Reply #20 on:** January 14, 2005, 11:58:43 AM »

[quote name=\'zachhoran\' date=\'Jan 14 2005, 11:10 AM\']I had a Commodore 128 for about six years, and only the Commodore 64 feature of it was ever used.

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As all the Commodore 64 users start to "come out".....

Add my name to the list, too.
Your comment, though, Zach, makes me wonder - was the Commdore 128 side ever used for ANYTHING?? Pretty much every piece of software I ever came across said it worked on a Commodore 128 in C64 mode..

ObGameShows: "Wheel of Fortune" was the first game show game I had for my C64.

GS Warehouse · « **Reply #21 on:** January 14, 2005, 01:10:55 PM »

Forgive the delayed reaction...[quote name=\'chris319\' date=\'Jan 10 2005, 09:00 AM\']This sounds like about 10 minutes of programming in Visual BASIC.

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It depends on the bells and whistles, but for your basic 160x100 pixel, 18-pt. font, 60-second countdown with "Time's Up" pop-up, 10 minutes sounds about right.

This is my query: I use VB6. When it comes to making game show recreations, is it advantageous to upgrade to VB.NET or is 6.0 sufficient?

clemon79 · « **Reply #22 on:** January 14, 2005, 01:19:06 PM »

[quote name=\'GS Warehouse\' date=\'Jan 14 2005, 11:10 AM\']This is my query: I use VB6. When it comes to making game show recreations, is it advantageous to upgrade to VB.NET or is 6.0 sufficient?

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I have .NET, but I'm sure 6.0 is more than fine.

chris319 · « **Reply #23 on:** January 14, 2005, 03:15:25 PM »

In the recent past they have used VB6 at CBS Electronics where, among other things, they wrote an interface for the Family Feud board currently in use.

rigsby · « **Reply #24 on:** January 14, 2005, 05:15:34 PM »

Not only did I have a VIC-20 (never got any expanded memory for it, either) with the Datasette, I still, if I can find it, have a cassette on which I, once upon a time, recorded a really cheap version of PYL I wrote using a random number generator...

zachhoran · « **Reply #25 on:** January 14, 2005, 07:30:25 PM »

[quote name=\'rigsby\' date=\'Jan 14 2005, 05:15 PM\']Not only did I have a VIC-20 (never got any expanded memory for it, either) with the Datasette, I still, if I can find it, have a cassette on which I, once upon a time, recorded a really cheap version of PYL I wrote using a random number generator...

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I do remember the random number generator function for the VIC-20 22 years after the fact

TunaHead · « **Reply #26 on:** January 14, 2005, 07:45:49 PM »

I think I've got most of ya beat... The good ole Kaypro... Memory? HA!! 64k of memory, no hard drive... And not nearly as fun as Ghostbusters and Summer Games, and best of all, Oh, what was that Donald Duck's Playland, or something like that?? Those were the bomb on the C64, but ya gotta admit, if anyone's had a Kaypro... They were the bomb as well!

Not to mention that WHOPPING 300 baud modem! RIP ROARIN NOW!

http://obsoletecomputermuseum.org/kaypro4/

zachhoran · « **Reply #27 on:** January 14, 2005, 07:59:16 PM »

[quote name=\'TunaHead\' date=\'Jan 14 2005, 07:45 PM\']I think I've got most of ya beat... The good ole Kaypro... Memory? HA!! 64k of memory, no hard drive... And not nearly as fun as Ghostbusters and Summer Games, and best of all, Oh, what was that Donald Duck's Playland, or something like that?? Those were the bomb on the C64, but ya gotta admit, if anyone's had a Kaypro... They were the bomb as well!

Not to mention that WHOPPING 300 baud modem! RIP ROARIN NOW!

http://obsoletecomputermuseum.org/kaypro4/

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Was this the same Kaypro computer given away a few times on LMAD84?

aaron sica · « **Reply #28 on:** January 14, 2005, 08:13:49 PM »

[quote name=\'TunaHead\' date=\'Jan 14 2005, 07:45 PM\']Not to mention that WHOPPING 300 baud modem! RIP ROARIN NOW!

http://obsoletecomputermuseum.org/kaypro4/

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The 300 baud modem was what I first jumped online with back in the fall of 1990; one of the local BBS's had a game called "Bit Spin" which was exactly like Wheel. Well, needless to say, it didn't take me long to get the high score.......

Funny to think when upgrading to 2400 the next summer, it seemed lightning fast, and now I'm in speeds of excess of 250,000 bps.....lol

Kevin Prather · « **Reply #29 on:** January 14, 2005, 08:23:54 PM »

[quote name=\'clemon79\' date=\'Jan 13 2005, 08:36 PM\'][quote name=\'TLEberle\' date=\'Jan 13 2005, 09:17 PM\']As a note of comparison my first computer, a C64, had 1/250,000th of the hard drive that my current computer does.
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I was lookin' at yesterday's Fry's ad (the P-I is good enough to scan their advertisements for the Web site), and I noticed they have a 250 GB drive on sale for $125.

That's 50 cents per 500 MB of space, or .1 cents per megabyte.

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*does math*

But Chris, wouldn't it be 50 cents for 1 GB rather than 500 MB?