Cool Stuff, Electronics, on the move, Vintage Computing

I’ll never complain about 40 columns again

Posted on by mrdoornbos

I’ve been eyeing an Altair remake. I don’t know why, I just love being close to the metal on machines. I’m a little too young to remember the Altair and I don’t recall ever seeing one in person.

I do however understand how it works and am fascinated by what it must have felt like to run programs you came up with and saved on paper tape on it.

My Uncle ran his business on a Commodore VIC-20 for many years and I still have the Commodore 64 that I used until I graduated High School in 1993. I don’t recall when it went from being my Dad’s computer to mine, but I don’t think he minded me stealing it terribly much.

In my side project of learning 6502 Assembly language, I got sidetracked in comparing the Commodore 64 to the VIC 20. Seriously, how did anyone program on a VIC-20 with only 22 columns?

Commodore VIC-20 at 22 columns on the top and Commodore 64 on the bottom. Same program.

This BASIC program doesn’t actually run properly on the C64, because I’m using VIC-20 memory addresses. I just listed it on the 64 to compare the identical program on 22 columns vs 40 columns.

I always found 40 columns to be so limiting, but after trying out 22 columns, I think I’ll shut up about it. 🙂

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on the move

Choosing wisely at 4am

Posted on by mrdoornbos

Last night I awoke at around 4am, a simple bathroom urge needed to be attended to.

Upon returning to bed, I found I couldn’t fall back asleep. So I picked up my phone to get a hit of dopamine from whatever completely meaningless thing is on the internet at any given moment. A half an hour later, the person least surprised by the fact that this had not helped me fall asleep was me.

I found the strength to put my phone down and meditate. (Look at me acting like putting my phone down is heroic or something). I’ve been doing a simple breathing meditation using Oak for about three years now and it’s helped me in all kinds of situations. I was asleep 10 minutes later and didn’t wake up until dawn. Two more hours of sleep thanks to a simple choice at 4:30 in the morning.

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