Notices by vga256 (vga256@dialup.cafe), page 2

@captainarcee haha am writing code for #exigy right this second. i really should write an update for the blog soon.

peter mcconnell's AfterLife soundtrack is the most underrated LucasArts/LFG game music there is, mostly because no one played the game.

the music is also brutally underproduced. instead of redbook audio tracks, the team decided to (criminally) crunch the music down to 8-bit, mono, 22050hz. it sounds like it's coming out of a telephone handset.

today i did some audacity work and extracted one of the tracks directly from the game files, and did a light remaster. only so much can be done to make potato audio sound good, but this is a step in the right direction. it's now stereo. enjoy.

fwiw, this is peter himself playing the electric violin on this track. i had no idea he is a violinist.

#gameMusic #soundtracks #lucasArts #dosgaming

@captainarcee agreed. i played jezzball and rodent's revenge a ton too, but this had more depth

it took me 35 years to realize that Pipe Dream for the microsoft entertainment pack - something I played *a lot* as a kid - is Lucasfilm Games' Pipe Dream.

(fwiw, the entire screenshot is a palette of 10 colours. incredible expressiveness with the 3-colour handpainted logo)

#retroGaming #win31 #lucasArts

@toxi thanks for this. i would have totally missed it otherwise. i was surprised and glad his kids chose to acknowledge his alcoholism. it’s not a pleasant subject, but was a major part of his life leading to his death.

@toxi i only knew about it because his friend and co-host stewart cheiffet mentioned it briefly in an interview on the retrobits podcast. he really struggled emotionally with the fallout from the MS deals.

how did i manage to live on the internet for over 30 years and never see this mac clone music video until now 🤣

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLpj9mhtHbg

thank you @65scribe

#vintageApple #macintosh

i'm not sure if anyone noticed this since it didn't make the news, but a month after McBarge sank, its former owner Howard Meakin passed away.

if you're unfamiliar with McBarge, it was a fascinating relic of canadian history: a floating mcdonald's from Expo '86 (vancouver).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McBarge

the mcbarge sank in march of this year, and no one was able to get ahold of the last known owner. it's likely because he was in the hospital.

howard's obit:
https://www.legacy.com/ca/obituaries/nsnews/name/howard-meakin-obituary?id=58340159

if you were a kid in the 90s or early 2000s, you very likely goofed around with some of this educational software at school, or if your parents hated you sufficiently, at home.

a few months ago someone generously sent me an educational software catalog that their father - who was a teacher - had kept from the 90s. i finally got around to scanning it in, and now you too can goggle at the insane prices schools had to pay for multi-seat game licenses.

this is the catalog your teachers browsed in the summer, before unsuccessfully trying to convince the principal to lay down $495 for an Incredible Machine 3 lab pack.

(fwiw, does anyone really trust an edutainment company that can't spell brussels sprouts?)

pdf and original (400 dpi) scans here:

https://archive.org/details/software-plus-1996

#softwarePreservation #digiPres #retroComputing #retroGaming #edutainment

@captainarcee VB is absolutely exceptional to this day. I believe 4.x might have been the last Win3.1 compatible verson

while i despise scroll-based article formats, this html5 article on the history of VB is 👍👍

https://retool.com/visual-basic

#visualbasic #programming #softwarePreservation #history

@captainarcee yeah, CC/BB/Staples were all good sources of software in the early days - but it started disappearing from their shelves by the mid-00's. it was in a sad state by 2010... just a bunch of crap like Adobe Photoshop LE smallboxes

over the years i've become more interested in game/software ephemera than the software itself.

for example, few people under 20 have grown up with a local computer store or brick & mortar store that sells boxed games. biking over to the computer store to line up, pay cash, and buy a game you've been saving for months has become an alien experience.

a few days ago i bought some old PC boxed games from a guy that had them in storage for decades. of all of them, i was the least excited about Millionaire. it looked like the kind of lazy portware that probably started its life as a text simulation on the Apple II and made its way to every godforsaken architecture.

tucked away on the last page of the manual was an absolute treasure: the original VISA transaction record for the day the game was bought, for $52.88, on July 20, 1985 at the Real Canadian Superstore in Edmonton, AB, Canada. This is before Canada had the goods and services tax (GST), and when Alberta was abbreviated to Alta.

the owner stapled it on to the warranty registration card, just in case he had to return it or RMA it some day.

Superstore #1572 is still there, in the north end. while i knew they had always sold video games, i had no idea that they sold IBM XT software way back in 1985.

(for anyone not in Canada, Superstore is a national discount grocery chain.)

even better, no one under the age of 30 will have seen these credit card transaction records. they were made using a "credit card imprinter" - a sliding mechanism that pressed the card number through several layers of invoice and carbon copy paper. The invoice papers were usually two or three layered - a white and pink copy for the business, and a yellow copy went to the customer.

#vintageComputing #softwarePreservation #digiPres #canada

has anyone ever come across a video documentary about CorelDraw! and the Corel corporation? it's eluding me on web/yt searches, and *someone* must have done a deep dive on this by now?

#retroComputing #vintageComputing

I can't believe I have to say this mastodon. This isn't 1996, and you're not learning how to use Eudora:

When you're replying to a boosted post: Do. Not. CC. Everyone.

Reply directly to the person you're trying to speak to. Remove the @'s to everyone else not directly involved in the conversation.

yes, I know the clients automatically chain on the usernames of everyone involved in the post, but this is 1990s era basic netiquette and not magic.

#feditips

for sale locally

death by 1993 kd is on my top 3 list of tiktok going away videos

#retroGaming

logitech MouseMan Sensa (1994)
🥵

#retroComputing

sigh. fucking ebay.

it automatically opted users in to "using" (selling) their data for LLM training. go to Account Settings -> AI Training Preferences to disable it.

30 year old bottles of Orbitz for sale locally. you can have any colour of globule you want, as long as it's faded yellow

if you want to livestream death by diarrhea on tiktok, here's your big chance.

#canada #yeg

@captainarcee yup that was a selling point for me too. i paid $60 CAD for a refurb from the official store, and it arrived brand new.