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The 'book of Arnold' Poll

Started by ukmarkh, 17:12, 18 January 10

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Who will buy the Book of Arnold?

8x10 Full Colour 250 pages £20-25
89 (76.7%)
250 Page PDF £4-7
21 (18.1%)
8x10 Black and White 250 Pages £5-10
6 (5.2%)

Total Members Voted: 109

redbox

Quote from: ukmarkh on 00:52, 28 January 10
Good news! Richard Clayton, the chap behind Locomotive has agreed to do an interview for the upcoming book. He has also agreed to do the preface at the begining of the book. I felt it was important for either Roland Perry or Richard to do this, and lets face it without the locomotive basic, the CPC just wouldn't have been the same machine, or worse; never existed.

Rest assured, a Roland Perry interview will hopefully feature, but towards the end i.e. in closing.

That's great news and I will definitely buy a copy of the book for my coffee table.

Sorry for my ignorance, but surely the ANT just became the Plus in the end?  Or was the ANT planned after the Plus (that would seem a weird waste of time considering the Plus's commercial failure)...?

Trebmint

Quote from: ukmarkh on 11:13, 28 January 10
Probably... but I'd prefer a pod cast if I were to do it. Don't like the idea of my ugly mug being seen across the internet.
No just record him, sitting infront of a bookcase and a computer is usual :P

Do you have a beautiful wife or girlfriend who could be the interviewer. sex it up a bit woo hooo ... haha

Ygdrazil

This could be the start of the CPCWIKI-TV channel  :o

/Ygdrazil

Quote from: Trebmint on 12:23, 28 January 10
No just record him, sitting infront of a bookcase and a computer is usual :P

Do you have a beautiful wife or girlfriend who could be the interviewer. sex it up a bit woo hooo ... haha

Trebmint

Woo now CPC TV would be good.

ukmarkh

It'll just be a book interview and preface i'm afraid, if someone here wants me to ask him about a video interview, I'll pass on the message?

arnoldemu

Quote from: redbox on 11:26, 28 January 10
That's great news and I will definitely buy a copy of the book for my coffee table.

Sorry for my ignorance, but surely the ANT just became the Plus in the end?  Or was the ANT planned after the Plus (that would seem a weird waste of time considering the Plus's commercial failure)...?
ANT was planned before Plus I believe. It is mentioned in the PCW specification, so it seems it is a mix of CPC and PCW.
Same kind of video hardware possibly but in colour.
Maybe ANT 2 became the PCW16? This has roller ram like the PCW but with colours?
So please ask if ANT 2 became PCW16 in some way.
My games. My Games
My website with coding examples: Unofficial Amstrad WWW Resource

Trebmint

Quote from: arnoldemu on 15:29, 28 January 10
ANT was planned before Plus I believe. It is mentioned in the PCW specification, so it seems it is a mix of CPC and PCW.
Same kind of video hardware possibly but in colour.
Maybe ANT 2 became the PCW16? This has roller ram like the PCW but with colours?
So please ask if ANT 2 became PCW16 in some way.
Having developed for the pcw16 I can say that the 16 doesn't have roller ram, was just a straight bitmap over 38k's worth. Strangely it did have colour though the monitor was decidedly monchrome. There was a 320x480 mode which was 4 colour, though those colours were white, gray, gray and black. The two grays being the same, which is weird, guess its the gate array.

Given the added speed of the z80 compatable in the 16, if only they had allowed a 320x240 - 16 colour mode. With 1mb ram and the added processor we could have done some pretty stuff. Oh well atleast the OS sucked bigtime

If only symbos had existed they could of had a real nice machine.

arnoldemu

Quote from: Trebmint on 16:30, 28 January 10
Having developed for the pcw16 I can say that the 16 doesn't have roller ram, was just a straight bitmap over 38k's worth. Strangely it did have colour though the monitor was decidedly monchrome. There was a 320x480 mode which was 4 colour, though those colours were white, gray, gray and black. The two grays being the same, which is weird, guess its the gate array.

Given the added speed of the z80 compatable in the 16, if only they had allowed a 320x240 - 16 colour mode. With 1mb ram and the added processor we could have done some pretty stuff. Oh well atleast the OS sucked bigtime

If only symbos had existed they could of had a real nice machine.
I don't agree - it does have a form of roller ram and the asic "anne" specification mentions this.
The document was given to me by Cliff Lawson a few years back.

In the ram there is a list of memory addresses defining the start of each line of the screen.

In addition the top two bits of the address was the display mode to use.

The modes were the same as the cpc (160 with 16 colours, 320 with 4 colours, 640 with 1 colour) however the encoding of the pixels was different:

aaaabbbb for 16 colour mode
aabbccdd for 4 colour mode

So you could easily mix modes as you want and you could scroll the screen by changing the addresses in the table. I think it also had the same kind of control features as the pcw asic where you wrote a control code to one of the ports.

I think it always displayed in colour, but the monitor was greyscale so ended up producing a poor picture as a result.

I agree about the speed, and it could have had an improved 320 mode that would be nice.

The OS, well I don't know because I never used it.

My games. My Games
My website with coding examples: Unofficial Amstrad WWW Resource

Trebmint

I don't recall any roller ram, it was as I remember very much in the cpc mould of arithmetic fixed addressing, unlike the Pcw range which you could define an address each pixel line. There was a special 512 byte table to hold each pixel line address, unless I'm mistaken that's not the case on the pcw16.

I do remember having a discussion with the guy that wrote the underlying screen routines for the OS and he explained they were so slow because on the bank gap that happened twice a screen, which I do recall thosuhg what it was exactly I can't. If they had a definable table for each line this wouldn't be the case surely. But then again it was 16 odd years ago and my memory sucks. Not read the Roseanne docs for years upon years

Ynot.zer0

have you thought about using a website like http://www.blurb.com to upload your finished Arnold book to?

ivarf

Have you thought about publishing your unfinished book in the CPCwiki for other to finish?

Gryzor

So is it abandoned? 

If others are interested in writing -NOT an easy task, mind you- we could perhaps organise it and even crowsdource its publishing...?

ivarf

I am just assuming, I think I read so years ago over at Retro Gamer

Gryzor

This would be a great shame :(

TCMSLP

#39



I've only just seen this.  I'd like a copy.  I'm sure if you got a buch of pre-orders a publisher may take you more seriously.   Alternatively, perhaps a kickstarter would work?   Finally, perhaps approach the publishers of the recent commodore / amiga / atari history style books?


It would be a massive shame if this was abandoned.



Gryzor

Yeah, I'd love to see one so much, too...

I started reading Speccy Nation yesterday. It's very basic (only B&W, only one screen/game and it's only a printout of a Word document unfortunately), but very nice to read and hey, it was only €4.5...

zeropolis79

To anyone intrested, I'm in the progress of writing a CPC 30th Anniversary book which I'd be publishing (hopefully) through Lulu..

ivarf

Quote from: Trebmint on 16:30, 28 January 10
If only symbos had existed they could of had a real nice machine.


Maybe we will see a PCW16 version soon? I had a look at the screenshots of the standard PCW-version. Looks really nice for a Z80 computer

TFM

Quote from: Trebmint on 16:30, 28 January 10
Oh well atleast the OS sucked bigtime


What's bad about Roseanne? (I got a 16 too).
TFM of FutureSoft
Also visit the CPC and Plus users favorite OS: FutureOS - The Revolution on CPC6128 and 6128Plus

kastrioth

Just finish it we need reminder of our youth to be in physical form.
K.H

reidrac

I'm a bit late to this, but I would say: please add £££ to the price but get a good editor so the text and the layout are as professional as possible.

There are too many publications recently that let me down because I can't ignore how amateur they look and feel, and it is a shame. The CPC deserves better!
Released The Return of Traxtor, Golden Tail, Magica, The Dawn of Kernel, Kitsune`s Curse, Brick Rick, Hyperdrive and The Heart of Salamanderland for the CPC.

If you like my games and want to show some appreciation, you can always buy me a coffee.

Gryzor

Quote from: reidrac on 11:16, 06 May 19
I'm a bit late to this, but I would say: please add £££ to the price but get a good editor so the text and the layout are as professional as possible.

There are too many publications recently that let me down because I can't ignore how amateur they look and feel, and it is a shame. The CPC deserves better!


Somebody give the man a medal :)

Vince

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Vince

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Vince

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