IBM
We restore the HP 9895 dual 8″ diskette to play a
We restore the HP 9895 dual 8″ diskette to play a Colossal game! (ft. Usagi Electric)
#restore #dual #diskette #play
“CuriousMarc”
We restore a vintage HP 9895A dual 8″ diskette HP-IB drive, and put it to good use by playing the Colossal Cave Adventure on the HP 9825 calculator.
8″ Floppy Playlist:
HP 9825 Playlist:…
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Greetings from Kentucky. I'm a fellow retrocomputing and house rabbit enthusiast. I also have been in the real Colossal Cave (now part of the Mammoth Cave System) in my work with the Cave Research Foundation. Will and Pat Crowther (Will wrote Colossal Cave, aka ADVENT) were the first humans to use computers to reduce the survey data we record in the cave from polar coordinates (tape measured distance, azimuth, and inclination) to more-easily managed Cartesian coordinates.
The real Colossal Cave had two entrances, the "Bedquilt" entrance, so called because a native American blanket was alleged to have been found there (doubtful, though these caves are stuffed with artifacts from the Late Archaic and Early Woodland native American cultures), and the Hazen Entrance, named for a famously unscrupulous manager of the Colossal Cave property for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, which built a spur line to the cave in return for hotel receipts).
Walking to the cave (and yes, I knew it was THAT Colossal Cave the first time I was taken there) is very reminiscent of the scenario depicted in the surface parts of Colossal Cave Adventure.
Pat Crowther, Will's wife in 1972, pioneered the famous "Tight Spot" that led to the connection of Flint Ridge (already including Colossal Cave) Cave System with Mammoth Cave. She was looking for a place to pee when she found it, was one of only six Mammoth Cavers who were small enough to fit through the Tight Spot (deep narrow canyon only passable at the top), and she and future husband John Wilcox were on the connection team a few weeks later, on September 9, 1972 (I know, because I played John Wilcox on TV! 🙂 )
My dad brought me a bad Xerox of the FORTRAN source for ADVENT when I was a kid, maybe in 1979. I think now it was published in Dr Dobbs Journal. So I played it in my head just by reading all the descriptions, and puzzling over the FORTRAN (all of this was very badly Xeroxed). I later got addicted to Zork…. then, in college, got recruited one frozen night in Louisville by a beautiful stranger who thought I just might be interested in exploring the longest cave in the world.
So, like The Last Starfighter, one way or another, Colossal Cave Adventure recruited me into, for real, exploring and surveying the longest cave in the world, including Colossal Cave itself. Do I count myself lucky? Every day.
This brings back so many memories on so many different levels. I worked for EMI Medical from 1977 on the then ground breaking CAT Scanner. Our scanner had a Nova 850 (with a whole 32K of memory (on 4 19" square 8k core memory boards) a CDC (I think 5mb) disc drive and the main image display used 8" floppy drives. They weren't HP, but how many different ways can you build an 8" floppy disc drive?
Over the years our kit more or less tracked the development of computers and equipment that is on display in the London Science Museum – as is the first CAT Scanner in the world, which I am absurdly proud to say I regularly looked after. I have been following your channel from the time you first started working on the AGC and, while many of your followers are from that era and training, we are able because of it, to fully appreciate just how talented and knowledgeable you and your team are.
I can only claim to have been a "Field Engineer" and thus, basically 'systems engineer, because we did the electronics, often down to component level of course, the X-Ray side (140Kv stuff,) the computers (mostly DG Eclipse and later, the horrifically complicated displays for displaying and windowing 512×512 grey scale images and, over everything, the mechanical stuff. This included hydraulics, gearboxes, cantilevered patient tables and the rotating frame. We installed, maintained and repaired them and I later moved on to MRI's so, all the previous, plus intense magnetic fields and cryogens! Keep doing what you do, bringing back those memories.
You are standing on a mountain plateau. To the north there is a steep cliff.
Obvious exits are down, south and west.
What now?
Bob Stern's fashion statement has now firmly secured its place in history
I have played the Colossal Cave remake by Roberta Williams, and while it is good (nice eyecandy btw) it does not, and cannot beat this oldstyle text adventure gaming.
Maaaaaaaaaaan, that ain't no bloody April Fools! Seeing you two together again is so awesome.
It's "Don't be vague, ditch that Sprague!", at least for me. Interesting ad though. It certainly has some audiophile vibes to it, just transferred to video.
It's a nice surprise to see the printer print on the backwards motion in addition to the normal forwards. Saves time and energy, and is pretty fascinating.
Reminds me of the 2000s when I played a Polish "single user dungeon" game named Otchłań (Abyss). These text-based games indeed have their charm.
More volts on that RIFA please, discombobulate it into delightfully odorous destruction!
"Do you want to start a new game?"
-"Sure, why not. Let's play Global Thermonuclear War."
perhaps one day engineers will discover MMMFM.
That is one machine gun printer noise. I love it.
That Dolch machine is sweet
I love my Juki 6100. Still used all these years later.
AmazingAmazing! That printer!!❤❤❤
The text output of the game feeding into a generative AI? That opens up new possibilities for vintage games!
https://youtu.be/SjLRsJzS57Q?t=663 @CuriousMarc is that your selfie in ASCII-art ? 😂
I’ve never seen a printer print backwards like that!
OMG Full fancy-pants power and Usagi Electric Cooperation!!! This is a dream episode!
🤯
What are you doing Grandpa? I'm gaming dammit! Get off my lawn!
Thank you for attempting to explode the cap. It would be funny to have a text based game where you have to explore and battle in that creepy Xanadu bubble house of the future that used to exist in Florida.
As I watch this I am compiling a rather large build for an embedded system that runs on an Intel Agilex SoC. I'd much rather be playing Colossal Caverns on a 50 year old computer that's for sure.
isn t there a xyzzy shortcut from the house to a canyon?
I loved that game. Forty years later I still use "xyzzy," "plover," and "plugh" as throwaway passwords.
I think the RIFA Safety Grenade is more of a problem in 240V land.
Could a greaseweazle write MMFM disk images?
Is it just me, or is the HP9895 dual 8" case every bit as big/heavy as the old PARC Alto 2.5Mbyte Diablo removable drive unit?! man, sakes alive. 4:40 and good ol' Sprague, who I recall were absolute key partners with Mostek, getting their ion implantation process perfected for the 4k and 16k RAM manufacturing. 👍 24:17 And the beauty of using a print terminal versus a video terminal is amazing. This is how to do compute, or games like Colossal Cave Adventure.
So it's a dual drive unit with its own processor and DOS, connected through an IEEE488 interface? I can see where Commodore got the idea for the CBM2040 and subsequent models.
Seing Davids beardy face on the thumbnail and hearing Marcs intro just broke my brain. But what a legendary combo they are! Double Density it is! Mr Fancypants approve!
I used to work with CDC equipment all the time. We'd start disk formats before lunch :). Youngers can't appreciate the patience us old-timers had to develop as we waited for computers to do something…
Plugh!
From using these drives in the late 1970s I remember we were taught to close the drive doors slowly to avoid crimping the centre holes on the diskettes.
I recently had to read some of these discs, using low level image tools and some converters. The format is indeed something quite special! In my cause the disks are also not in the greatest condition, which complicates the process a bit.
On a different note, in the late 70s there were some students at the NTH college in Norway (now NTNU) that managed to get someone to send the original PDP Fortran source for ADVENT to them.. on nothing less than punched cards. Of course the package was stopped in the customs. With the students failing to explain the context of what a computer program was to the customs officer, he decided to inspect himself in order to decide what tariff to use. Legend has it that when he saw the cards, he exclaimed "But these are used!". End result was that the students got it imported free of charge, declared as "paper maculate".
It did not take them long to adapt the source to the NORD-10 at the college, including translating the entire game into Norwegian. Some stories also has it that the map was even extended a little here and there.
I love the way the built-in printer has all the dignity of a supermarket checkout!
Wow, that daisy wheel clattering away. I think the last time I heard that was in 1983!
This this was a great way to start start my day. I miss those sounds… and the giant clunk when ejecting a floopy disk.
The Acorn BBC Micro has those RIFAs in the power supply (a switch mode supply which was somewhat uncommon on 8 bit systems at the time). Usually there is a pop then a cloud of white smoke billows out of the keyboard (under the hands of the surprised user) but the machine of course just keeps working. One of mine popped at a retro computing show, it was amazing to see how attuned to the magic smoke the arcade cabinet and pinball guys are, within milliseconds there was a dozen of them scurring around trying to identify which machine had just let out the magic smoke!
It would be nice if you ran your audio through a high pass filter to remove the subsonic component. Many of your videos try to shake the house apart. Great content as usual though, thanks for the video!
A Juki 6100 daisey wheel…they used Triumph/Adler wheels. I had one hooked up to a 64 for printing. Everytime someone wanted to do a resume or professional letter they would borrow it. Wish I had held on to it!