I'm reading Fire in the Valley, the definitive history of Silicon Valley, and am confused by a passage. It's Popular Electronics editor Les Solomon using one of the first Altairs which MITS produced.
> Between the time the issue was wrapped up and the time it hit the streets, Solomon finally got his hands on an Altair computer. He immediately set it up at his desk, but the noise from the Teletype machine he was using as an I/O device made him instantly unpopular in the Popular Electronics offices. So he took the system home and set it up in his basement.
Later on the book goes on to mention how the only I/O possible with the early Altairs was through the switches and lights on the front panel. Can anyone speculate on how a teletype would have worked on one of these things before it even hit the market? I'm sure altair couldn't be alphanumeric, but there might have been some keymapping of the machine language to program the 8080 chip?
If you're even remotely interested in computers on the low level, and can handle your mind melting from pure nerdy goodness then you absolutely need to check out these videos the Altair 8800. If you're getting into computer science and/or like old computers then these videos, I think, using an Altair (or even just watching) will teach you more about how computers work, on the lowest level, than well.. basically anything. You can grab an Altair 8800 emulator by going from altair32.com.
Anyway, A user named deramp5113 [has a channel] (https://www.youtube.com/user/deramp5113 "Prepare for the good ol' time sink!") that seems to be solely dedicated to Altair videos (using a 100% compatible clone from altairclone.com). To say it's amazing is the understatement of the year. I just spent a few hours into a hole watching his videos. He covers everything from front panel programming, with NO monitor, keyboard, etc. all the way up to these, and more! (Sound by generating high frequency emissions that can be picked up by a radio? Yes please!) I'm going to mostly keep it fun, but you can really learn a lot on deramp's channel if you like these. Number two definitely has the most actual programming here, though.
Here we go!
-
Here is a quick primer of the Altair 8800 from Bill Gates himself. If you tend to think of him as a competitor crushing businessman (or I guess more recently, "crazy generous humanitarian") then it should be great to know that no, he's the real deal.
-
Bill's original prototype Basic 1.0 (which became 4/8k basic) being loaded loaded/used on the combo "disk drive" / .. er, "monitor" that is the TeleType. When that tele type starts going AND when it ends I got the rare mind melt/nostalgia rush combo that is almost too much to handle. If you've never seen one before, prepare to stop complaining about your modern five second compile times. If you ARE really impatient though and want to skip directly to the end of the loading, click HERE. It'd be a shame to skip the two minutes or so in between, imho.
-
To contrast with the previous video, HERE is a demonstration of the sort of setup you could have if you had the money. It's Basic using a high sp
The Altair 8800 is controlled through a serial port on the back, no screen or keyboard plug, so you need a separate terminal. I used a VT100 emulator terminal as the program would not work with teletype.
Image of the device: http://i.imgur.com/LBTmuRq.jpg
Probably common answers to questions
- Yes I put a printer on top of it.
- Yes, the LEDs show the actual CPU state (top left), program counter (bottom row of leds) and memory contents (top right)
- I'd rather not tell if the gold bar on the left is real.
- Yes, that's a magnetic stripe reader/writer to the left.
- No you do not need a terminal, you can program and control it through the switches (I even have a game for it)
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fEh6eIEqJE
Hello, so I am currently in college for my CIS degree, and as a fun summer project while out of school, I happen to pick up an Altair 8800(Yes it's a clone). Now this is some seriously old school tech, and I was wondering, if anyone could recommend to me a good book I could pick up to program in Altair BASIC, either the 4k or 8k version, as this is what I have available.
I know that as basic evolved, it isn't really the same as the original Altair Basic, which was pretty simple at the time. So most of the modern books about modern versions of BASIC, while teaching the concept, are not as easy to make backwards compatible with Altair BASIC.
Also the Altair 8800 can be programmed using the front switches, either in binary, or using octal, but I haven't really found anything that tells me the binary inputs for the Intel 8080 instruction set which is something like 78 different instructions you can use, and various modifications of those.
I have programming experience so the idea of designing a program isn't foreign to me, its just all my experience is with High level languages such as C#, C++ etc.
>!We know Kassandra/Alexios are directly ancestors of Amunet!< but reading the wiki and other reddit posts I can't find if there are any modern descendants? Is this ever revealed anywhere? They are not related to Desmond Miles despite him also being part Isu.
I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.
Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.
Rogue gets shit on how uncharacteristic the assassins act in the game and how evil they are but in ac revelations they had hideouts and big ass street wars. They also used bombs and Ezio indirectly killed a bunch of innocent people stole their money/hired thieves Altair also just murdered a guy at the start of ac1. I don’t think assassins are exactly like serial killers but by definition they basically and both Templars and assasins are dickheads
More info HERE
Crawlers
Those creatures are related to dragons who colonised the cave system. They are descendants of small dragon group that was trapped after earthquake inside small and narrow cave section of the underground system with very spare food source. This environment let to deevolution of brains, due to lack of food to keep energy for its higher functions leading to losing sentience, and wings, due to lack of space for flying, into limbs adapted to catching prey. Crawlers have very good sence of hearing and smell (some subspecies even have a night vision but othervise their sight is almost nonexisting) and abilty to camouflage themselfs with the local types of stone. Unlike dragons, who are omnivores, the crawlers are pury carnivores and preying on all available fauna, including dragons.
***
Dragon tribes
The dragons are, like on rest of the planet, a dominant race on Pisaurida but from all civilisations that ever lived on the continent they are the youngest and shortest existing from all of them.
Like all tribes on the Agamidae, the three tribes of Pisaurida originates from Pyrrhia but they evolved to their current forms after milenia when first dragon setllers migrated from Pantala.
Pisauridan tribes are one of the smallest species of dragons on The Planet. Their small size is caused by relatively small size of the caves and lack of resourses to support larger bodies. Another negative effect caused by troglobite lifestyle is reduction of fly ability - because there are no much opens spaces inside the caves the local tribes are able to fly only for short distances and not very fast (the avarege flight speed is 30 km/h) - this is compensate by hight flight maneuverability.
Dragons were able to settle only the large caves located on north region of Pisaurida's main landmass.
Webwings
Webwings are the most numerous dragon tribe on Pisaurida who live in caves located under large mountains at north-west region of the continent. They are currently ruled by Queen Tarantula.
Webwings have bulky bodies, with eight limbs that have spot covered with hair-like ctructures for vibration detection and have unigue arrangement of four muscular legs and unusual one pair of bat-like wings and pair of slim, long hands - This adaptation was caused by ancestory between Sandwing and Beetlewings when a second pair of wings changed its purpose from flight to graspi
... keep reading on reddit ➡Do your worst!
I'm surprised it hasn't decade.
For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.
I said "hey look, an escaPEA"
No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!
Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies 😂
It really does, I swear!
They’re on standbi
Buenosdillas
"Safety and peace Brother" I absolutely detest the new ac games. I hated Odyssey but still played 100 hrs just get my money's worth. I have however played AC1 countless times since my childhood and never have I got bored once. Yes it's rough around the edges, yes the open world is barebones to say the least but damn if the mood and setting and plot of this game is fantastic.Imo it's the best game in the franchise story wise with a satisfying conclusion.
Setting-I loved the backdrop of the 3rd crusade. We usually don't get much media surrounding that time. The cities though similar in scope had very different feels to them owing to the difference in architecture. The cities of Jerusalem had rounded tops however the city of Acre had flat tops. The city criers speaking to crowds and how the different cities have different color palettes. These subtle touches make me love the game so much. Also I want to emphasize on the atmosphere, it's bleak dreary and gloomy and my edgy teen heart just loved it back then and even still now. There is not even a hint of the jollyness found in the later games a.l.a the ezio trilogy. It has a setting where 2 shadow organizations are at the heart of the conflict and where individuals are just another pawn in the game.
Story-I usually don't care very much about story in games but this game is a one of few exceptions. It is very satisfying from beginning to the end. The progression of Altair from a brat who twisted his order's words to suit his own needs to a man who puts his clan first before himself gave me a warm fuzzy feeling especially the banters with Malik at the end of the game.Altair has to kill 9 men, but each man he slays says a cryptic few words to him before dying making him question about the reasons behind the murder of these men. On the modern day as much it is frustrating to control desmond it's also fucked up in a certain way. He is kidnapped and forced to cooperate at gunpoint. It's gritty and raw. The mystery aspect of the game is baked into the story and it all comes untangling for the historical side in a very satisfying end. The game explores both the good and bad side of the assassin order which is not seen for a long time until ac:rogue.
Gameplay-It suffers a bit owing it's a game from 2007 but it holds up quite well. The hidden blade counter can kill every enemy in 1 counter and it's very satisfying to pull off. Other than that you have your typical stealth assassinations(which is realistic) as comp
... keep reading on reddit ➡
Pilot on me!!
Hey yall, it's me, usuckatlove. I don't know how many of you know me but I do posts where I explain shit that happens on stan twitter like this and this. I was wondering whether I should make this post but I figured, why the fuck not right? I know this subreddit isn't the best place to post but whatever lolol, downvote me, bite me, I don't really care lmao.
On 8th Nov 2021, trainwreckstv, or just train, made this tweet where he claimed he bought a NFT, with the picture of what is arguably the ugliest 6ix9ine fanart I have ever seen. Then on 9th Nov 2021, Chandler said he's dropping a NFT line. So much for #teamseas.
I think everyone has already seen what happened because of this one tweet and the one reply 'oh train' so I'm not going to dive into that, but I wanna explain the concepts behind this thing called NFTs. Before you can fully understand NFTs, you need to understand Blockchain and how it works. I also wanna preface by saying that I'm not a crypto expert, I just happened to studied a little bit of it because university made me do it, and I decided to read up about NFTs.
Blockchain
In very simple terms, "A blockchain is essentially a digital ledger of transactions that is duplicated and distributed across the entire network of computer systems on the blockchain". To make it easier to understand, a bank ledger is a physical record of all the withdrawals, deposits etc. with regards to a single bank account. So blockchain is basically a bank ledger, but it is digital. A good analogy to understand is Google Documents. So let's say when you create a Google Document and send it to people you want to share it with, the document is distributed instead of copied or transferred. This means everyone can access the document at the same time.
Since blockchain is dencentralized, there is no central place for the information to be stored. The information is stored in computers or systems all across the network, called nodes. Those nodes are us, the participants.
Much like it's n
... keep reading on reddit ➡
