I was one of the guys who helped develop AMX art in the 80s

[molestrangler]

This is a real blast from the past!!!


I was going through some one stuff and remembered the early days.


Who do I email so I can update the AMX art history? And maybe some other stuff!!

[Bryce]

Hi and welcome to the site. you can register on the wiki and update it yourself if you like, the format is very simple to learn. There are also a few threads here in the forum discussing the inner-workings of AMX art which you might like to read and give your opinion on, such as this one: http://cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php/topic,479.0.html
I designed this PS/2 Mouse adapter ( http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/PS2Mouse ) so that the package can still be enjoyed on a CPC with a modern PS/2 or USB mouse, but the thread goes on to discuss the port polling and and other inner workings of the software.

Bryce.

[Devilmarkus]

Greetings to Dubai 

Well, as Bryce already mentioned, you can register on cpcwiki.eu and update the sites itself.
You can also mail to devilmarkus[at]cpcwiki.eu or krakout[at]gmail.com.

Cheers,
Markus

[molestrangler]

Hi,


I'm not sure I can help these days, but will look around later.



Anyway we did not design the hardware, that was Alex.  He would visit us (we were contractors) and deliver bits of hardware.  Garry was the Z80 wizard and he did the mouse interface (I think), my Z80 was good but he was a natural at it.  Actually there was just me and Garry coding from what I remember.  Until he nearly killed himself doing crazy speeds on his motorbike around Peterborough, no speed cameras to worry about.


We coded and designed the GUI as we went along, there was an amazing graphic artist around as well, Mark.  He was working on the Amiga A1000 for Commodore, one of the first to arrive in the UK.  He went on to produce a very slick art app, wish could remember the name.


The reason for remembering is mother sent me my original 'programming the Z80' (Rodnay Zaks), I used to go everywhere with this bloody book, until I move over the 68000.


I saw the photos on your site, I remember the disk labels.

[TFM]

...  Actually there was just me and Garry coding from what I remember.  ...

You guys did a great job, I bought the original (after they renamed it).

The reason for remembering is mother sent me my original 'programming the Z80' (Rodnay Zaks), I used to go everywhere with this bloody book, until I move over the 68000.

68K!?? Brr, no I/O instructions, no undocumented instructions, on illegal instructions ;-) That's a boring CPU! All registers are equal and have way too much bits. And you can't even properly divide them. I stick with the Z80 ;-) But hey, the 68K can have the second place after the Z80, and I don't even exclude the ARM-RISC cpu's ;-)

[molestrangler]

I did some interesting stuff on the ST that never made into the market, on the side.  But I too could not get along with the 6502 either, RISCy designs!!   I loved the Z80, but really wanted the Atari Transputer, what ever it was called, used one one (only once) so very very cool.  I know RISC CPUs but very very cool concept multi CPUs, the kind of future I liked.


Thanks, the software looks so dated these days, but then so does Apple Finder on the original Mac...lol...


Development was not a planned process, Garry & I, and who every was around at the time (which could be any time of the day or night) would comment how something worked, if we liked it it stuck, if we could come up with something better we changed it.  But very little code was actually deleted, I can only remember once (and only once) we trashed a few K of Z80.


Garry was working on the select and move (or something) he forgot something and as you drag the image it left a trail.  Bug he said, feature I said!! A conversation on XOR lasted a few hours, more pizza!! My feature remained, I think!


In the USA they told us they had free games consoles they could play on whenever.  We had nothing, so we would hack around with hardware like the Sharp MZ80A & K, creating multi-player games using I/O ports and parallel ports (just for fun). I blagged a Unix box from Convergent Technologies for something I can't remember.


Like everything you wish something more is still around than my Z80 book (BTW:third edition) , even from my time at Arnor afterward.  Source code more importantly, but back then, no one really understood what we were doing and didn't even think about it.

[ivarf]

About Arnor and sourcecode
http://cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php/topic,1233.msg11964.html#msg11964

[arnoldemu]

This is a real blast from the past!!!


I was going through some one stuff and remembered the early days.


Who do I email so I can update the AMX art history? And maybe some other stuff!!

Welcome!

[AMSDOS]

That's great to hear from you molestrangler!! 

[molestrangler]

I'll try and do something in the coming weeks, the family is back from their summer break this week.  So not much time.

[molestrangler]

The Amstrad PCW was a great concept, i loved all the PCWs I had over the years.



The PCWs were good workhorses and got the job done, the of the time Macs was more pleasant to use but way under powered and you had to pay a fortune for a SCSI hard disk to make it useable

[TFM]

... I loved the Z80, but really wanted the Atari Transputer, what ever it was called, used one one (only once) so very very cool.

Yeah! Atari Transputer, did read a lot of them, but never touched one. Their cpu principle must be superior to all this todays quad cores ;-)

Thanks, the software looks so dated these days, but then so does Apple Finder on the original Mac...lol...

Well, the AMX StopPress f.e. looked really good, it was reliable and quick. It was made for one purpose and it did it. You won't believe it. I still use it every now and then when I have not much time. As I use Protext when I have to write a lette quick.

On the PC side today every program can do everything. The next Nero burning ROM will probable have a SMS2TOAST fuction, which burns your SMS to a piece of toast bread ;-) But I like to have software that works for one purpose, it makes it more easy to use.

Like everything you wish something more is still around than my Z80 book (BTW:third edition) , even from my time at Arnor afterward.  Source code more importantly, but back then, no one really understood what we were doing and didn't even think about it.

Yeah, a couple of years later maybe some guys more understood. Guess today we're back at the beginning. People code in XML, C+++++++++++++++ and use all that OOP stuff. But you have to search long to find somebody who is still able to code in assembler (doesn't matter which CPU). I don't know if it would make sense on PC at all.

Thanks for you inside stories! That's quite amazing :-)

[erikarn]

Yeah! Atari Transputer, did read a lot of them, but never touched one. Their cpu principle must be superior to all this todays quad cores ;-)

Google XMOS. ;-)

[Gryzor]

This is a real blast from the past!!!


I was going through some one stuff and remembered the early days.


Who do I email so I can update the AMX art history? And maybe some other stuff!!

Welcome mate, it's always superb to meet old-sceners here who had contributed to all that dream stuff we used to read about or toy with...

If and when you decide, you can just send me a PM and I'll do it for you