Path: utzoo!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!rutgers!sun-barr!newstop!eastapps!juggler!gaudreau
From: gaudreau@juggler.East.Sun.COM (Joe Gaudreau (Spaced for Rent))
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
Subject: Re: test
Message-ID: <4668@eastapps.East.Sun.COM>
Date: 6 Mar 91 15:10:28 GMT
References: <978@creatures.cs.vt.edu> <1991Mar2.032644.2884@jack.sns.com>
Sender: news@East.Sun.COM
Reply-To: gaudreau@east.sun.com (Joe Gaudreau (Spaced for Rent))
Organization: Sun Microsystems Inc. - BDC
Lines: 49
Approved: gaudreau@East

mvp@jack.sns.com writes:
=Added an extra 2102 for lower case
=
=Built a board to replace the character generator with a
=custom-programmed 2716 for *decent* lower case.  Just for
=the fun of it, I sacrificed the "graphics", and put the
=Greek, Russian, and Hebrew alphabets in the upper half
=of the ROM.  Eventually I changed that back; too many games
=wouldn't work.
=
=Added a board from Exatron to put 64K in the keyboard.
=(I never did get an expansion interface.)
=
=Hacked the video circuitry to test vertical retrace from an
=IO port, so I could write a program to test for retrace, and
=avoid snow on the screen.

Wow!  This reminds me of things!  I also added lower case with `true'
decenders... made quite the difference.

Added a switch to reset *reset-proof* programs and such so I could jump
into a monitor program and hack about.

Added some goodies to port 255 to use it as a simple but workable
2-bit (!!) sampler.  Yow.

Wrote a printer driver (tsr) to change outgoing text into the font of
your choice... Even got it published in Micro-80.

Modified all the Big-5 games (and others worthy of such :-) to use an
Atari joystick (which had a socket hack installed).  This alone saved my
keyboard for better things (like cleaning it once a-month and those
blessed edge-cards...).

My favorite things were hacking on disks and such.  Pretty neat.
Something I noticed which was *really* funny for me...  Quite a few
programs that I bought would come on a disk that was altered to make
it self-booting (and sometimes copy protected - no bother though).
These disks, it seems, were generated from a master working copy using a
sector (or bit) copy.  A given disk would sometimes have an okay directory
(which helped!)...  Looking at the dir, one would notice the presense
of other files - like the *commented* source code.  What a find for some-
one who wants to know how the code works...  All one had to was either fix
the dir entry or track the individual sectors down... :-)

Hack on dudes,

Joe
-=-