Oh Wait, Shouldn't We Have A Print Newsletter?

[Meadhbh Hamrick]

So... Every decent computer users' group I knew in the 80s had a
newsletter. Usually nothing more than BASIC programs and reviews of
equipment and software print out on an Epson MX-80 and photocopied. Of
course, a github repo for code, an email list and discord channel to
chat and maybe google docs to share docs / track changes are how any
SANE human would operate these days.

But do you want to go through life being sane?

So... if you happen to have some BASIC programs (or heck, Lisp,
Smalltalk, Pascal, LOGO, FORTH or 6502 Assembly) that you wanted to
share... or the review of that Rana 1000 disk drive you meant to write
40 years go... I sort of want to collate them into a document, see if my
dot matrix printer works and see if Kinkos still has copying machines.

Feel free to hit me up with text files. Keep the copyright, but
submitting a submission gives me the right to reproduce it in print.

I was thinking about writing a new Quick BASIC version of the text based
Star Trek game for no other reason than 35 years later and I just
noticed Quick BASIC was ubiquitous on PCs and not completely horrible.
Also, I was thinking of adding this:

https://meadhbh.hamrick.rocks/v2/retro_computing/sundog_dot_bas.html

Though I should probably convert it to BASIC for the Apple II, TRS-80 or
VIC-20 / Commodore 64.

But mostly... I'm nostalgic for photocopied newsletters print off a dot
matrix printer.

-Cheers
-M

--
メイイブ ハムリック
CTRL is to the left of the 'A' key.
mea...@hamrick.rocks * https://meadhbh.hamrick.rocks/

[Brad Ackerman]

Photocopy? Go mimeograph or go home. (Gestetner if you want to be fancy.)

> On Oct 15, 2023, at 06:01, 'Meadhbh Hamrick' via Seattle Retro-Computing Society <seattle-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> So... Every decent computer users' group I knew in the 80s had a

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Seattle Retro-Computing Society" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to seattle-retroc...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/seattle-retrocomp/0101018b336d2283-3aaebdb2-c88f-49ed-8020-fb0d0a3c423d-000000%40us-west-2.amazonses.com.

[Michael Brutman]

I fondly remember the old newsletters ...

For VCF PNW in 2018 I kind of got silly about the printed program and I relearned how to use Ventura Publisher 2.0 for DOS.  I typeset the program, printed it on a genuine ProPrinter, and scanned the output, and used that as the program.  I'm still proud of the results.  (See the attached PDF.)

-Mike

[Clay Erickson]

Cool!  I still have my copy…. 🙂

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Seattle Retro-Computing Society" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to seattle-retroc...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/seattle-retrocomp/CA%2BbZ4SBF20-BcWc4BFvzZa8XJ3MYZXDF7kpecp%2BJ6m6Bv7ekJA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Kent Sullivan]

Interesting idea!

I don't have anything to contribute, but after following the link you provided to SUNDOG.BAS, I was strongly reminded of the wonderful Eamon system for the Apple II, and the as-wonderful newsletters that were published for many years:

http://www.eamonag.org/museum.htm

Especially the Dungeon Design articles:

http://www.eamonag.org/columns/DD-columns.htm

--Kent

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Seattle Retro-Computing Society" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to seattle-retroc...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/seattle-retrocomp/0101018b336d2283-3aaebdb2-c88f-49ed-8020-fb0d0a3c423d-000000%40us-west-2.amazonses.com.

[Dave LeCompte]

Man, Eamon!

I think it was in one of the dungeon design articles that I read about the idea that it's a good idea to show the player the lock before you show them the key, which at the time felt like a mind blowing idea, and even the idea that you'd think about crafting the adventure to think about how the player experienced it was a big thing. (Ok, I was young at the time.)

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/seattle-retrocomp/42cf01da0151%2478e715c0%246ab54140%24%40sosufamily.net.

[Kent Sullivan]

Same, Dave!

[Michael G]

I love this! I have many fond memories reading through those old newsletters. I know I remember picking up SPACE from time to time when in a local computer store and maybe Butler Computer's (Federal Way) had one (Hey, it's been a long time and the memory gets fuzzy). 

I don't have any BASIC games of my own and the Assembly Language programs I am working on will probably forever be a work in progress but I did do a slight modification to a Compute! magazine (July 1983) game for the Atari. Before I took to the high seas (ARRRRG!), I'd spend hours typing in these programs and I loved this game but there was a bug in it where they would place more than one "goblin" in a location that you couldn't collect without dying. Since you only had one life this would mean that at some point your would die at no fault of your own. About 2 years ago I decided to fix that bug as well as "improve" on the character graphics a bit (attached).

Additionally, I've been doing a game review podcast (https://xegs8bit.com/) that you could feel free to drop a link to. I know Ian has said he wouldn't listen to it ;-) but maybe others might be interested. We're actually at the end of the released games for the Atari XE Gaming System (AKA: The Atari 8-bit computer) and due to how challenging it has become to get my co-host's time, we'll be mostly retiring the effort. I might submit a few reviews of unreleased games but it's time to put this 8 year effort aside and do something else. 

I'm also one of the several co-host on the Atari 5200 podcast (https://theatari5200superpodcast.libsyn.com/) which will continue on until they finish those games. They, too, are on the "When we get everyone together" schedule so...yeah, that's going to be going on way into the future I expect.

Thanks,

Michael