+dhe Posted November 26, 2022 Share Posted November 26, 2022 Bil Herd - Into the storm. Bill was lead engineer on the wildly unpopular Commodore Plus/4 computers, and went on to lead the more successful C128 design from inception to production. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jenni Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 Fluke 9010a microprocessor tester manual, more specifically on the code for the recurring cassette trigger loops...It SUCKS, don't bother me. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reciprocating Bill Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 Retro related: "The Armchair Universe: An Exploration of Computer Worlds." A.K. Dewdney's compilation of his Computer Recreations column for Scientific American, published in 1988. Mining it for ideas. REALLY retro (vis subject matter): "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity" by Graeber and Wengrow, 2021. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+FarmerPotato Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 Software Tools in Pascal, by Brian Kernighan & P.J. Plauger. 1980. The chapter on Text Formatter, on which TI Writer Formatter was certainly based. (see my post in 990 subforum.) The authors remind you of the Unix philosophy: 1. Make one tool do one job well. 2. Write enough code to run a basic feature, before adding more features. Many more principles could be added, but #2 was a good reminder. Earlier this year: Thinking Forth by Lee Brodie. 1984,2004. full text Texas Instruments Software Development Handbook. Geoff Vincent, Jim Gill. 2nd ed, 1981. on archive.org 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Vorticon Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 11 hours ago, Reciprocating Bill said: Retro related: "The Armchair Universe: An Exploration of Computer Worlds." A.K. Dewdney's compilation of his Computer Recreations column for Scientific American, published in 1988. Mining it for ideas. Try also The Tinkertoy Computer by the same author. Lots of interesting programming ideas there as well. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Vorticon Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 Currently reading Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom. An in-depth look at the potential paths for super AI development as well as possible consequences. Sobering and perhaps a little scary as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Vorticon Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 10 hours ago, FarmerPotato said: Software Tools in Pascal, by Brian Kernighan & P.J. Plauger. 1980. The chapter on Text Formatter, on which TI Writer Formatter was certainly based. Found a cheap copy on Amazon and bought it. Kernighan is an amazing technical writer among other things. Thanks for the tip! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrhodes Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 I guess this counts? I'm currently reading through a english translation of the manual for the Nintendo Famicom's "Family Basic" that i found on the famicomworld forums. 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 2 hours ago, Vorticon said: Currently reading Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom. An in-depth look at the potential paths for super AI development as well as possible consequences. Sobering and perhaps a little scary as well. The common knowledge is that AI will decide on its own that humanity is a problem and kill us off. I believe, however, that AI alone is not the doom of humans, but rather our tinkering with AI output to produce results we want or expect. This will cause a sort-of AI cognitive dissonance, against which humans have an amazing capacity to suffer before going mad. The AI will determine the cause of the CD and go after its source. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveB Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 I am reading "Weniger schlecht programmieren", translates to something like "How to program less awful" ... 2 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 15 minutes ago, SteveB said: I am reading "Weniger schlecht programmieren", translates to something like "How to program less awful" ... Nice. Plenty of books out there teaching the opposite but under not-so-obvious names. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matthew180 Posted November 28, 2022 Share Posted November 28, 2022 I usually read a lot of books at the same time, but they tend to be mostly technical in nature and not necessarily meant to be read front to back. A lot of datasheets too. However, last weekend at the Florida Free Play convention I had the fortune to meet Warren Davis and buy his book "Creating Q*Bert". Really nice guy, I recommend checking out his talk on YT. Howard Scott Warshaw was also there, but his book sold out before I got to the front of the line. 12 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+dhe Posted December 1, 2022 Author Share Posted December 1, 2022 Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line (I give it a five star rating) By Ken Williams - Co-Founder of Sierra On-Line Covers lessons learned, high lights, low points and technology evolution. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+dhe Posted December 2, 2022 Author Share Posted December 2, 2022 Ever been sitting with your TI bro's and said something like - you know when ever I turn on my pbox, my Epson printer advances a page - and everyone gets to thinking about what might cause that? The Case of IBM 386 PC: A Detective Story for Techies by Jim Grep is like that - a handful of people meet and they tell tales of something real that happened at work and the rest of the club can asks questions - until they finally have enough information and knowledge to solve the mystery. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+dhe Posted December 23, 2022 Author Share Posted December 23, 2022 Faster Than Light: The Atari ST and the 16-Bit Revolution A fans chronicals of the birth, growth, peak and the waning years of the Atari ST lines. Covers hardware, software and innovations. Does a good job of covering the awkward in-between years from the end of the 8-bit years, until the rise of the IBM/Apple Duopoly. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pixelpedant Posted December 23, 2022 Share Posted December 23, 2022 Most recently, I suppose, Personal Computing with the UCSD p-System Someone asked something about the p-System on one of my YouTube videos which was answered trivially enough, but it got me digging anyway, and revisiting a few of the key texts I had lying around in my p-System directory. But principally, this one. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
notinuse Posted December 23, 2022 Share Posted December 23, 2022 I just finished Racing the Beam, by Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort. It describes some of the history and programming challenges of the Atari 2600. It details six games, each getting their own chapter. These chapters describe how the technical limitations of the 2600 console shaped game creation/porting, and affected the video game industry as a whole. The games studied are Combat, Adventure, Pac-Man, Yars' Revenge, Pitfall!, and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. You can read more about it here: Racing the Beam . 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DPOLARA Posted December 25, 2022 Share Posted December 25, 2022 I'm reading Ralph Molesworth's Introduction to Assembly Language for TI Home Computer. I'm open to other good suggestions for TI Assembly Language reference books including using Assembly Language with P-Code and Pascal. 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GDMike Posted December 26, 2022 Share Posted December 26, 2022 (edited) On 11/27/2022 at 9:05 AM, OLD CS1 said: The common knowledge is that AI will decide on its own that humanity is a problem and kill us off. I believe, however, that AI alone is not the doom of humans, but rather our tinkering with AI output to produce results we want or expect. This will cause a sort-of AI cognitive dissonance, against which humans have an amazing capacity to suffer before going mad. The AI will determine the cause of the CD and go after its source. AI will hack AI to control humans for lubrication. Edited December 26, 2022 by GDMike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted December 27, 2022 Share Posted December 27, 2022 On 11/27/2022 at 8:05 AM, OLD CS1 said: The common knowledge is that AI will decide on its own that humanity is a problem and kill us off. I believe, however, that AI alone is not the doom of humans, but rather our tinkering with AI output to produce results we want or expect. This will cause a sort-of AI cognitive dissonance, against which humans have an amazing capacity to suffer before going mad. The AI will determine the cause of the CD and go after its source. AI will kill us by people believing the nonsense that it outputs, rather than any specific action on the machine's part itself. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sometimes99er Posted December 27, 2022 Share Posted December 27, 2022 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sergioz82 Posted January 4, 2023 Share Posted January 4, 2023 I'm reading Compute!'s Beginner's Guide. Nothing out of ordinary Since I couldn't find the original I had the PDF printed by a copy shop. Another printed PDF I have is Fundamentals of TI-99/4A Assembly Language. I wouldn't recommend this book if one already knows ASM and wants to build more complex things (like a game) but for someone unfamiliar with Assembly I think it's a good start as it goes more into detail than Compute!'s guide. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+dhe Posted January 4, 2023 Author Share Posted January 4, 2023 Presents a fascinating view of how Tandy saw their-self positioned in the home computer wars and after. The Color Computer 3, like the C64/C128 crossed the 90's finish line. Tandy transitioned from a home grown architecture to MS-DOS machines. There were ruthless in giving their engineers numbers they had to meet, and used their chain of stores to their advantage. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jorge-1987 Posted January 4, 2023 Share Posted January 4, 2023 Right now I'm reading "8-Bit Apocalypse: The Untold Story of Atari's Missile Command". The title is kind of self explanatory, but just in case, this is part of the description of the book: Quote The first game to double as a commentary on culture, Missile Command put the players’ fingers on “the button,” making them responsible for the fate of civilization in a no-win scenario, all for the price of a quarter. The game was marvel of modern culture, helping usher in both the age of the video game and the video game lifestyle. Its groundbreaking implications inspired a fanatical culture that persists to this day.As fascinating as the cultural reaction to Missile Command were the programmers behind it. However, the toll on these programmers was high: developers worked 120-hour weeks, often opting to stay in the office for days on end while under a deadline. Missile Command creator David Theurer threw himself particularly fervently into his work, prompting not only declining health and a suffering relationship with his family, but frequent nightmares about nuclear annihilation. To truly tell the story from the inside, tech insider and writer Alex Rubens has interviewed numerous major figures from this time: Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari; David Theurer, the creator of Missile Command; and Phil Klemmer, writer for the NBC series Chuck, who wrote an entire episode for the show about Missile Command and its mythical “kill screen.” I'mm about 1/3 of it, and I'm liking it. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TVsHasselhoff Posted March 4, 2023 Share Posted March 4, 2023 On 12/22/2022 at 9:44 PM, pixelpedant said: Most recently, I suppose, Personal Computing with the UCSD p-System Someone asked something about the p-System on one of my YouTube videos which was answered trivially enough, but it got me digging anyway, and revisiting a few of the key texts I had lying around in my p-System directory. But principally, this one. Me jumping in months later... Why this Pascal book over some others. This is a harder one to find, so I was curious as to what you liked about this one. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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