David's Computer Blog

This type of retro-computing is going pretty far back in time. Back to 1983, in fact. The game " Werewolves and Wanderer " is based upon a game of the same title as written by Tim Hartnell. It is from his book, " Creating Adventure Games on Your Computer ," written in 1983. The text adventure game was originally programmed in BASIC, and the book is available online at atariarchives.org/adventure . I discovered this book in the library at my Junior High School during the mid to late 80s. I read through the book and eventually created the game in C64 BASIC. That creation, unfortunately, is long gone now. But this book helped fuel my desire to create casual computer games ever since. Bringing the game into the modern era was a fun project using BlitzMax. Although this game is based upon Tim Hartnell's book, alterations to the game, including a new Graphic User Interface, have been made along with some minor alterations . I originally used BlitzMax on Microsoft Wind...

Reviving the Classics: An Introduction to Commodore OS Vision 2 and the C64x I have already written a few articles about Commodore OS Vision v2, but thought I'd give it a more formal introduction here. In the ever-evolving world of technology, few names evoke as much nostalgia and admiration as Commodore. The iconic Commodore 64, with its distinctive design and groundbreaking capabilities, holds a special place in the hearts of many who experienced the dawn of personal computing. Today, the legacy of Commodore is being revived with the introduction of  Commodore OS Vision 2  and the  C64x , a modern homage to the classic C64. A Journey Through Time The original Commodore 64, launched in 1982, revolutionized the home computer market. It offered an affordable yet powerful computing experience, making it accessible to a wide audience. With its robust hardware, versatile software library, and vibrant community, the C64 became a cultural phenomenon, selling millions of units ...

So back in 2014 I started coding in BlitzResearch's Monkey-X programming language. It was, to me, the next iteration of BlitzMax that allowed more web development and commands into the Blitzbasic programming language. Monkey-X did not have the GUI elements that BlitzMax had, but it did have more web-friendly commands.  Around 2014 I ported an older version of my game " Astrocrunch " from AmigaOS into the Monkey-X language. Technically it was more than a mere port and more of a complete rewrite as Monkey-X was Object Oriented while Blitzbasic on AmigaOS was Procedural. It took me a few months to get it working, but in time, the game, renamed to " GermBlaster, " was completed. Monkey-X allowed for a game to be published as a Windows Desktop app or as an HTML5 web-app that could be run on a website. You can still play the older version (1.0) of GermBlaster online here .  GermBlaster is a casual game and not meant or designed to be anything spectacular.  You can dow...

BlitzMax is a strongly-typed, garbage-collected, open-source programming language with built-in support for advanced 2D graphics, sound, unicode and is ideally suited to making all kinds of apps and games. BlitzMax was discontinued several years ago by Blitz Research , but it was open sourced and is now freely available . BlitzMax primarily targets the main three desktop platforms - Windows, Linux and macOS - but also supports building native binaries for Android, iOS, Raspberry Pi and NX (Switch homebrew). Back in the day, the Commodore Amiga was the initial platform for the BlitzBasic programming language. BlitzMax is a newer version and has continued its development since those early days of BlitzBasic on the Commodore Amiga.  Creating a Command Line or Terminal app is as simple as:   Print "Hello, World" And creating a Graphics app is almost as simple with the following code: SuperStrict Graphics 640,480 Repeat     DrawText "Hello, Commodore OS Vision Worl...

I did a compile test of simple SDL code, which is listed at the end of this blog entry, to see what would happen. I had already discovered that gcc was installed by default.  For this SDL code compiling test, I was compiling with libsdl version 1.2, which is older, I know. The initial compile failed as it couldn't find the SDL.h header file. So SDL is not installed by default in Commodore OS Vision 2. It's not a big deal, but it is good to know.  I queried the apt-get cache and discovered sdl1.2-dev, sdlnet1.2-dev, and sdlimage1.2 were available. However, I could not find sdl_ttf1.2-dev, so that's still an outstanding issue. Since sdl_ttf 1.2 is not available for some reason, I had to comment out the include file for it and remove the "-lsdlttf" option from the compile command.  After this, the program did compile and run successfully.  Nothing fancy about this program as all it is meant to do is test for include and runtime files, start a loop, then end when the ...

Commodore OS Vision 2 in Hyper-V Apparently, I somehow missed the release of the new version of Commodore OS Vision! Version 2 was released back in December 2023, but I apparently missed it. I've been hoping someone would take up the project again from when it ended back when CommodoreUSA closed business. Luckily for fans of the OS, it's back. Here is a screenshot of my Hyper-V settings used to successfully run the ISO and install Commodore OS Vision 2: Of note is in Security disable Secure boot and number of processors changed from default to 2. I also disabled Checkpoints as a personal preference.  Installing Commodore OS Vision 2 was pretty straight-forward. Download the ISO file from here . Create a blank HDD (mine was 25GB). Mount the ISO file in the VM, then boot the VM. It boots from the ISO, then start and run the Installer in Commodore OS Vision.  More Screenshots: Happy computing!

I decided to try installing the current version of Linux Mint (v. 20.3) onto a Dell Latitude E5570 laptop . I was curious to see how well Linux would function and perform on a somewhat recent laptop. The laptop has an Intel i7 processor and 32GB of RAM and was running Windows 10. During the Linux install, I simply had the installer wipe the SSD and use the entire drive. Goodbye, Windows! I created a bootable 32GB USB jumpdrive with the Linux Mint 20.3 installer. To create this, I used the balenaEtcher utility on Windows 10 to create the bootable jumpdrive. Once created, I inserted the 32GB USB memory stick into the laptop, rebooted the computer, then, using F12 after reboot, selected the USB device as the boot option. The laptop booted flawlessly into the Linux Mint 20.3 installer. Following the reboot after installation, Linux Mint booted with no problems to the login screen. I logged into Linux, then was greeted by the Linux Mint Cinnamon desktop as well as the login sound. So the ...