Mark Damon Hughes blogs about tech and everything else
Excellent suggestions from Apple Music. I sometimes wonder if there's anyone still there doing human-curated music, which was the whole selling point of Beats Music, and then run across something like this.
My programming started in 1979 with the TRS-80 Model I, but in late 1981? early 1982?, I got my Atari 800, and later a 1200XL, then Atari ST. Those are what I consider "my computers".
Last few weeks for hobby time, I've taken up playing with an Atari 8-bit emulator, and may soon buy an old machine (130XE? I guess?) and a modern SD-card reader, and HDMI adapter unless I want to set up my old CRT… Yes, this is "pointless", but it's the most emotionally rewarding programming I've done in some time.
Had to do a lot of setup to get to this point, though. Follows are my excessive notes, which will hopefully be useful to others.
The keyboard mapping in AtariMacX is weird, I finally figured out:
| Mac Key | Atari Key |
|---|---|
| ` | Break |
| F2 | Option |
| F3 | Select |
| F4 | Start |
| F5 | Reset |
| Sh-F5 | Cold Boot |
| Opt-F5 | Insert Char (be REAL DAMN CAREFUL not to miss the Opt key!) |
| Sh-Opt-F5 | Insert Line (same, DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER) |
| Home / Opt-F7 | Clear |
| End | Atari/Inverse |
| PgDn / Opt-F10 | Help (XL/XE) |
| Opt-F1 | F1 (1200XL) |
| Opt-F2 | F2 (1200XL) |
| Opt-F3 | F3 (1200XL) |
| Opt-F4 | F4 (1200XL) |
| Capslock | Cycle caps, may take several tries of caps A backspace repeat until you get lowercase, not graphics or uppercase. |
| Sh-Capslock | Uppercase, almost always works |
Typing on a real Atari keyboard is probably the #1 reason to get real hardware instead of emulation.
Immediately it comes rushing back, how much I didn't like the default environment of blue screen, clicky keyboard, inset margins. Easy to fix with a few pokes, but I don't want to do that every time I reboot, so I need a startup program.
DOS25.XFD image in OSRoms, and call that boot.atr, store it in Disks, Load it in D1 Cmd-1 and pick boot.atr.disk2.atr or whatever.
I <return> D2: <return> Y <return>AUTO.LST, convert Unix newlines (char 10) to the ATASCII newline (char 155 õ), and drop it in the HardDrive1 folder.% LANG=C tr '\233' '\n' <AUTO.LST.TXT >AUTO.LSTE."H1:AUTO.LST" <return> RUN <return>, pick Y. (Script AUTORUN.SYS), and enter:
boot.atr.LIST "H1:AUTO.LST". I use LIST/ENTER (text LST format) instead of SAVE/LOAD (tokenized BAS format) so I can read it from the Mac; BAS is slightly smaller and much faster to load/save, but it doesn't matter with emulation or an SD-card.
BASIC set up and tested, and it's a convenient place for little utilities, but now for real programming.
Atari Macro Assembler and Program Text Editor
Atari Macro Assembler and Program Text Editor.atx (ATX is write-protected or encrypted or something; you can't use them directly, and have to disable the SIO speedup hack in emulator) disk in drive 2 of your Atari (Cmd-2), Control -> Disable BASIC (which will reboot to DOS). So you want the program files off that:
C <return> D2:MEDIT,D1:MEDIT <return>C <return> D2:MEDITCM.BAS,D1:MEDITCM.BAS <return>C <return> D2:AMAC,D1:AMAC <return> (skip if you'll never write ASM)C <return> D2:SYSTEXT,D1:SYSTEXT <return> (I think only needed for AMAC?)disk2.atr.LOAD "D1:MEDITCM.BAS" <return> RUN <return> and configure MEDIT however you like.
C <return> D1:*.ECF,D2: <return>L <return> MEDIT <return>, filename D2:HELLO.PAS, and enter:
program hello;
var c: char;
begin
writeln('Hello, Atari!');
read(c);
end.
<option> exit <start> to save & exit. Note return doesn't execute commands in MEDIT, start does. Kids Today™ have some meme about how hard it is to exit vi? Ha ha, they have no idea. RTFM.
Finally ready to program in Action! or Pascal, which is what I mainly did back in the day.
UNSUPPORTED FEATURES
Features in C not supported in DEEP BLUE C are:
1) structures, unions
2) multidimension arrays
3) Floating point numbers
4) Functions returning anything but int
5) Unary operators: sizeof
6) Binary operators: typecasting
DIFFERENCES FROM STANDARD C
THE DEEP BLUE C language has the following nonstandard features:
1. The last clause of a "switch" statement, either "case" or "default", must
be terminated with a "break", a "continue" or a "return" statement.
2. The ancient =<op> construct has been removed. Use <op>= instead.
3. Characters are unsigned. Chars range in value from 0 to 255.
4. Strings can not be continued on the next logical line.
5. C source code lines can be a maximum of 79 characters long.
6. Functions can have a maximum of 126 arguments.
SPECIAL SYNTAX
C uses several ASCII characters not available on the ATARI computer's
keyboard. In particular the braces have been replaced by to two-letter
combinations $( and $), and the tilde has been replaced by $-. The $ character
is not used in C, so your editor's find and replace command can be used to
convert standard c programs into a format acceptable to DEEP BLUE C.
.PCD), so has to start from bootdisk or run Draper's menu then your program, ick. But this was no trouble to get running, so it wins.
drpascal.atr in drive 1, reboot, boots into a menu.\o/ Hit any key to exit the program.boot.atr, Drive 2, drpascal.atr, rebootC <return> D2:AUTORUN.SYS,D1:PASCAL.COM <return>C <return> D2:INIT.PCD,D1:INIT.PCD <return>disk2.atrL <return> PASCAL.COM <return>INIT.PAS source is included. If I ask it to compile, it prompts to insert drpascal.atr, and then I can switch back, which is reasonable.disk2.atr contents to H1, so they can be managed & edited on the Mac, but I just wanted to get things running first.This took quite a lot of my hobby time doing something harder than actual work, to be honest. But I'm in a good place with it now.
Listening to these performances from 1979, when I was a kid, and they sound so much better than anything new.
"A lot of you might not've heard it, because we've only just become fashionable."
—Lemmy, 1979, throwing all the shade at new-fans
It is very weird to me that there's been basically no new music made in the last 20 years. Some '80s-'90s bands keep truckin' along, Reznor, TOOL, and Mustaine still rock. We get some last-gasp geriatrics from Black Sabbath and Van Halen. There's like a half-dozen good new retro bands like Raveonettes, Within Temptation, Zeal & Ardour, BABYMETAL. A very few good new bands like Anamanaguchi; most chiptune is shit, but the 'guch are half rock 'n roll. I liked Slime Girls a few years ago, but that's trashy pop. Rock ain't dead but it's on life support. All the hardcore bands are gone. Rap is in a sad state when Snoop Dogg, bad joke of the '90s, is a top star of the present.
What are the kids listening to? Literally muzak, neutered Madonna imitators like Spears, Swift, and Gaga, and sucker MCs like Drake.
Yeah, yeah, I'm a cliché: Unfrozen caveman John Spartan doesn't like "mini-tunes" the kids listen to, put him back in the fridge. Middle-aged man wears black leather and wants the kids to scream into their speakers and mosh in a pit, and they dress like yuppies and want an early bedtime and quiet background noise.
Odd film, but I love it. Halloween I & II completed the Michael Myers story. Then III was a totally new thing. The intent was to make an anthology series, but no, dumb people just wanted more of Michael; I think all subsequent "Halloween" films are irrelevant and stupid (OK, I do like the Rob Zombie movies). I was a spooky monster kid, but still wasn't allowed to watch the first two at the time of their release, but somehow H3 at 12 was OK. The soundtrack is one of Carpenter's better mood pieces, not as iconic or repetitive as the first two; people sometimes forget Carpenter's as much a musician as a filmmaker.
Plot & characters of the film remind me strongly of The Stuff, Phantasm (especially II-III), and Killer Klowns From Outer Space; losers struggling to expose some terrible danger to Humanity, mostly failing and running. That's what Lovecraft was on about, and how every Call of Cthulhu game should be, not gangsters throwing dynamite at Shoggoths, but truck drivers and kids running for their lives and coming across as crazy people to the useless pigs.
"And don't forget to wear your masks. The clock is ticking, it's almost time! Happy happy Halloween, Silver Shamrock!"
Bonus:
I was as surprised as anyone to hear Pando was still in business, I figured by now Sarah Lacy would've egged Paul Carr on to punch someone and the both of them go to prison. And now they've sold their site to, no shit, "BuySellAds". The "we run on investment and vapor like a tech company", no, "we run a LOT of ads but paywalls are evil!", no, "we run a LOT of ads AND a paywall!" business models never supported them becoming big.
Say what you want about Michael Arrington and Techcrunc, the business model worked. Just as hated, still kind of a shitty site, but they pay their bills and provide consistent mediocre tech industry news coverage.
Examine why everyone hated them. First, they bit the hand that feeds; you can't run FuckedCompany 2.0 and also schmooze with the companies you openly fuck over. Second, their site was awful even before the paywall, and after, you had to search around for someone with a sharing link or find a bugmenot login, complete pain in the ass; I never gave them a penny and read anything I wanted, back when I cared about the "Tech Industry". Third, they thought they were the smartest gal/guy in the room, when generally they were unaware of basic technology and business principles.
Take the site Pandering Dozily continuously compared itself to, despite a vast difference in scale and ambitions: The NY Times, with 100x more staff (?). NYT has shitty tech coverage, too, but nobody feels anything but mild contempt for them, because they don't try to suck up to Silicon Valley; and fundamentally everyone hates New Yorkers including New Yorkers, so it's just urine off a rat's back to them. NYT has a big solid base of not-tech-news to support this dangerous hobby of insulting every tech company they report on, despite half of them having universal surveillance systems, AI killer drones, and whatever else in the labs. Nobody expects New Yorkers to know anything except shitty pizza, Wall Street nonsense, and Broadway, so their tech gaffes are ignorable. Pandilly had no such backup base.
Oh, don't worry about them. Paul can fall back on writing midlist quasi-self-help books, Sarah's trying to teach women how to be mothers because clearly they need her help.
So the playlist:
So I was thinking about Lester Bangs, who basically taught me how to write with his reviews (which explains a lot, you know? I had higher ambitions but some rambling reviews with moments of clarity and profanity are what I can manage), then remembered Bruce Sterling wrote an alt-history biography "Dori Bangs" about him and Dori Seda hooking up, reread it. Fucking fantastic and a little heartbreaking, highly recommend it.
Styx famously sang:
"The problem's plain to see
Too much technology
Machines to save our lives
Machines dehumanize"
But of course that wasn't the problem at all. People were the monsters all along. Machines only suck because people program them to suck.
The solution is clear.