|
De Re Atari
''De Re Atari'' ("All About Atari"), subtitled "A Guide to Effective Programming," is a book written by Atari, Inc. employees in 1981 and published by the Atari Program Exchange in 1982 as an unbound, shrink-wrapped set of three-holed punched pages. Targeted at developers, it documents the advanced features of the Atari 8-bit family of home computers and includes ideas for how to use them in applications. The information in the book was not available in a single, collected source at the time of publication. The information in ''De Re Atari'' was serialized in ''Byte'' beginning in 1981, prior to the book's publication. The release of Atari 8-bit technical details through the magazine and book quickly resulted in other sources being published, such as ''COMPUTE!'s First Book of Atari Graphics'' (1982). Atari released official documentation for the hardware and a source listing of the operating system the same year, 1982, but they were not as easily obtainable as ''De Re Atari ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chris Crawford (game Designer)
Christopher Crawford (born June 1, 1950) is an American video game designer and writer. Hired by Alan Kay to work at Atari, Inc., he wrote the computer wargame ''Eastern Front (1941)'' for the Atari 8-bit family which was sold through the Atari Program Exchange and later Atari's official product line. After leaving Atari, he wrote a string of games beginning with '' Balance of Power'' for Macintosh. Writing about the process of developing games, he became known among other creators in the nascent home computer game industry for his passionate advocacy of game design as an art form. He self-published '' The Journal of Computer Game Design'' and founded the Computer Game Developers Conference (later renamed to the Game Developers Conference). In 1992 Crawford withdrew from commercial game development and began experimenting with ideas for a next generation interactive storytelling system. In 2018, Crawford announced that he had halted his work on interactive storytelling, conclu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Raster Interrupt
A raster interrupt (also called a horizontal blank interrupt) is an interrupt signal in a legacy computer system which is used for display timing. It is usually, though not always, generated by a system's graphics chip as the scan lines of a frame are being readied to send to the monitor for display. The most basic implementation of a raster interrupt is the vertical blank interrupt. Such an interrupt provides a mechanism for graphics registers to be changed mid-frame, so they have different values above and below the interrupt point. This allows a single-color object such as the background or the screen border to have multiple horizontal color bands, for example. Or, for a hardware sprite to be repositioned to give the illusion that there are more sprites than a system supports. The limitation is that changes only affect the portion of the display below the interrupt. They don't allow more colors or more sprites on a single scan line. Modern protected mode operating systems ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1982 Non-fiction Books
__NOTOC__ Year 198 (CXCVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Sergius and Gallus (or, less frequently, year 951 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 198 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place Roman Empire *January 28 ** Publius Septimius Geta, son of Septimius Severus, receives the title of Caesar. **Caracalla, son of Septimius Severus, is given the title of Augustus. China *Winter – Battle of Xiapi: The allied armies led by Cao Cao and Liu Bei defeat Lü Bu; afterward Cao Cao has him executed. By topic Religion * Marcus I succeeds Olympianus as Patriarch of Constantinople (until 211). Births * Lu Kai (or Jingfeng), Chinese official and general (d. 269) * Quan Cong, Chinese general and advisor (d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Addison-Wesley
Addison-Wesley is an American publisher of textbooks and computer literature. It is an imprint of Pearson PLC, a global publishing and education company. In addition to publishing books, Addison-Wesley also distributes its technical titles through the O'Reilly Online Learning e-reference service. Addison-Wesley's majority of sales derive from the United States (55%) and Europe (22%). The Addison-Wesley Professional Imprint produces content including books, eBooks, and video for the professional IT worker including developers, programmers, managers, system administrators. Classic titles include ''The Art of Computer Programming'', ''The C++ Programming Language'', ''The Mythical Man-Month'', and ''Design Patterns''. History Lew Addison Cummings and Melbourne Wesley Cummings founded Addison-Wesley in 1942, with the first book published by Addison-Wesley being Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Francis Weston Sears' ''Mechanics''. Its first computer book was ''Prog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mapping The Atari
''Mapping the Atari'', written by Ian Chadwick and published by COMPUTE! Publications in 1983, is a location-by-location explanation of the memory layout of the Atari 8-bit family of home computers. The introduction is by Optimized Systems Software co-founder Bill Wilkinson. The book covers the 64K address space of the system's 6502 processor from low to high, including addresses used by the operating system or mapped to hardware registers, as well as how to use them. For example, location 756 (2F4) CHBAS contains the starting memory address that tells ANTIC where to find the character set. The author explains how to use this feature to build custom character sets. An updated version covering changes to the operating system and newer machines like the 130XE followed in 1985. ''Antic'' magazine serialized the book in 1989 and 1990. Reception ''The Addison-Wesley Addison-Wesley is an American publisher of textbooks and computer literature. It is an imprint of Pearson PLC, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BYTE
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures. To disambiguate arbitrarily sized bytes from the common 8-bit definition, network protocol documents such as The Internet Protocol () refer to an 8-bit byte as an octet. Those bits in an octet are usually counted with numbering from 0 to 7 or 7 to 0 depending on the bit endianness. The first bit is number 0, making the eighth bit number 7. The size of the byte has historically been hardware-dependent and no definitive standards existed that mandated the size. Sizes from 1 to 48 bits have been used. The six-bit character code was an often-used implementation in early encoding systems, and computers using six-bit and nine-bit bytes were common in the 1960s. These systems often had memory wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MAC/65
MAC/65 is a 6502 assembler written by Stephen D. Lawrow for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers. MAC/65 was first released on disk by Optimized Systems Software in 1982, with the program requiring 16 KB RAM. A bank switched "SuperCartridge" from OSS followed in January 1984 for US$99, occupying only 8 KB. MAC/65 is structured similarly to the Atari Assembler Editor cartridge, combining a line editor, assembler, and debugger into a single package. Its reputation was based on being much faster than either the Assembler Editor or the standalone Atari Macro Assembler. Brian Moriarty of Infocom wrote, "No assembler t the timeon the C64 even comes CLOSE to MAC/65. Take it from someone who looked for one." It was used to write numerous commercial games and applications, and the majority of assembly language listings in '' ANALOG Computing'' were written with MAC/65. According to Lawrow, MAC/65 was used to compile not only itself, but BASIC XL and BASIC XE. Overview Like A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Debugger
A debugger or debugging tool is a computer program used to test and debug other programs (the "target" program). The main use of a debugger is to run the target program under controlled conditions that permit the programmer to track its execution and monitor changes in computer resources that may indicate malfunctioning code. Typical debugging facilities include the ability to run or halt the target program at specific points, display the contents of memory, CPU registers or storage devices (such as disk drives), and modify memory or register contents in order to enter selected test data that might be a cause of faulty program execution. The code to be examined might alternatively be running on an '' instruction set simulator'' (ISS), a technique that allows great power in its ability to halt when specific conditions are encountered, but which will typically be somewhat slower than executing the code directly on the appropriate (or the same) processor. Some debuggers offer two m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MOS Technology 6502
The MOS Technology 6502 (typically pronounced "sixty-five-oh-two" or "six-five-oh-two") William Mensch and the moderator both pronounce the 6502 microprocessor as ''"sixty-five-oh-two"''. is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by a small team led by Chuck Peddle for MOS Technology. The design team had formerly worked at Motorola on the Motorola 6800 project; the 6502 is essentially a simplified, less expensive and faster version of that design. When it was introduced in 1975, the 6502 was the least expensive microprocessor on the market by a considerable margin. It initially sold for less than one-sixth the cost of competing designs from larger companies, such as the 6800 or Intel 8080. Its introduction caused rapid decreases in pricing across the entire processor market. Along with the Zilog Z80, it sparked a series of projects that resulted in the home computer revolution of the early 1980s. Popular video game consoles and home computers of the 1980s and early 1990s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eastern Front (1941)
''Eastern Front (1941)'' is a computer wargame for the Atari 8-bit family created by Chris Crawford and published through the Atari Program Exchange (APX) in 1981. A scenario editor and assembly language source code for the game were also sold by APX. Recreating the Eastern Front during World War II, ''Eastern Front'' covers the historical area of operations during 1941–1942. The player commands German units at the corps level as they invade the Soviet Union in 1941 and fight the computer-controlled Russians. The game simulates terrain, weather, supplies, unit morale, and fatigue. A killer app for Atari computers, ''Eastern Front'' was among APX's best selling games, selling over 60,000 copies. It was widely lauded in the press and was '' Creative Computing''s Game of the Year in 1981. In 1982, it was licensed by Atari for distribution on game cartridge, then rereleased in 1988 in XEGS styled packaging. Gameplay ''Eastern Front'' is a corps-level simulation of the fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wargame (video Games)
A computer wargame is a wargame played on a digital device. Descended from board wargaming, it simulates military conflict at the tactical, operational or strategic level. Computer wargames are both sold commercially for recreational use and, in some cases, used for military purposes. History Computer wargames derived from tabletop wargames, which range from military wargaming to recreational wargaming. Wargames appeared on computers as early as ''Empire'' in 1972. The wargaming community saw the possibilities of computer gaming early and made attempts to break into the market, notably Avalon Hill's Microcomputer Games line, which began in 1980 and covered a variety of topics, including adaptations of some of their wargames. In February 1980 Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) was the first to sell a serious, professionally packaged computer wargame, '' Computer Bismarck'', a turn-based game based on the last battle of the battleship ''Bismarck''. Wargame designer Gary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atari DOS
Atari DOS is the disk operating system used with the Atari 8-bit family of computers. Operating system extensions loaded into memory were required in order for an Atari computer to manage files stored on a disk drive. These extensions to the operating system added the disk handler and other file management features. The most important extension is the disk handler. In Atari DOS 2.0, this was the File Management System (FMS), an implementation of a file system loaded from a floppy disk. This meant at least an additional RAM was needed to run with DOS loaded. Versions There were several versions of Atari DOS available, with the first version released in 1979. Atari was using a [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> Chris Crawford (game Designer)")
