This month’s RetroGamer* magazine (issue #71) features my six page article on the history of DOS (PC) gaming, my second article for that magazine. Hopefully this is the beginning of a productive relationship between the mag and myself.

I don’t have  a copy of the article myself as I don’t yet have a subscription to RetroGamer. Subscribers should have it by the weekend and it should be on the high street by the middle of next week. However, for an early look at the issue, check out Darren Jones’ Youtube video in which he flicks through it while giving some background info. My article appears at about 3:00. The feedback thread for the issue is here.  Hopefully, by tomorrow night, there should be some feedback on my article. Why do I get the feeling that I’m going to get savaged over my choice of eight important DOS games?

In my research I found loads of interesting early games such as Atarisoft conversions of Defender and Digdug that they did back in 1983. I also managed to get a few words with the founders of SSI and Apogee in order to beef up the article. You never know what editors are going to cut out but it looks like they’ve inlcuded:

• Main essay: history of DOS gaming 1981 to around 1997
• Soundcards
• graphics standards (CGA, EGA, VGA)
• 8 important DOS games side feature

Even if I didn’t have an article in this issue, I’d have to say it looks like a good one. I’m particularly interested in looking at the SID (Commodore 64 music) article and the Peter Molyneux and Jeff Minter interviews. Personally, I would have made the Playstation feature the cover feature as I’m not much of a fan of Afterburner.

If you do see the mag, note the photos of my boxed copy of Elite+ and my Soundblaster Pro 2 and Gravis Ultrasound sound cards. The cards were in the bottom of a drawer in anti-static bags as I don’t currently have a vintage PC to put them in.

Also, if you’re in the US and baulk at the high cost of the mag, search around the RetroGamer site for a deal on subscriptions that they’re running at the moment.

More updates when I have a copy myself…

*for fellow language nerds, check out Thom Holwerda’s article on camel case in technology proper nouns on OS News.

This week’s Micro Mart (issue #1079) features my latest op-ed article that asks if the UK needs its own official Linux distribution. It’s another six pager and fairly off the wall, but hopefully it will get people thinking.

The core idea behind having a national Linux distribution is that it would form part of a simultaneous push towards open source software in education, government offices and businesses. In my opinion, open source initiatives are bound to struggle unless they are carried out on every level of education and industry at the same time, and “UK Linux” would be a way of doing this. I also take a look at other national Linux distributions such as the Russian and Chinese ones. Available for the rest of the week.

[update: there's a bit of chat about the article on the forum]

This week’s Micro Mart (Issue #1075, two pounds as usual) features my 6 page overview of Ubuntu Studio. Hats off to the layout guy as it’s another great looking article. Along with my assessment of the distribution itself and the included software, I get into some details about MIDI and Audio in general. Just in case you’ve not come across it before, Ubuntu Studio is a Linux distribution optimised for audio work. Can a simple free download, when burnt to a blank disk, turn your computer into a fully fledged home studio? Find out by reading the article.

The next article to appear in MM will feature one of Mike’s Brilliant Ideas!, much like the stuff that I got started with, back in the OS News days. It’s another six pager and full of radical and strange thoughts about a scheme that might just save the world.

Stay tuned for details.

This week’s Micro Mart (issue 1074) features my review of the Canon PIXMA iP2600 printer. It’s just a quicky, but I’ll have some more writing orientated announcements in the next couple of weeks.

In other news, I was sad to see the end of Drobe as a news source. I submitted the news to OS News. Thanks are due to Chris for all of his hard work over the years. In its day, Drobe was one of the best niche platform news sites around. Chris was also one of the first editors to link to one of my web articles on OS News, which really boosted by confidence when I first started. However, it must have been a huge amount of work, and like most people, I fully understand why he had to give it up now that the scene has started to slow down. I just hope that we can keep the old community together to some extent.

I was sorry not to be able to go to the Retro Reunited show. Unfortunately, time and money issues got in the way. Next time, I’ll try to move hell and high water to get there as it looked absolutely excellent.

Take care all.

This month’s RetroGamer (issue #65, with the shiny red cover) features my six page feature on the Acorn Archimedes, a computer system that I used to run when I was teenager. The article is split between the main feature and a “Perfect 10” summary of some of the classic games. I have the magazine now and the layout looks great.

Note that this content won’t be included in my future article compilation books as the Imagine Publishing contract does not allow it. The Arc A310 in the photograph is my very own well loved machine, and hopefully it’ll be back with me in the next few days. Oops, it seems that I forgot to put the drive eject button back in when I put the machine back together! The issue is being discussed on the RetroGamer forum here, and the comments about my article seem quite positive. Hopefully, I’ll do something else for the mag in the future.

Read on for some more about the article including some content that had to be cut for length.

As you can imagine, as the article was for RetroGamer, I have focused on the Arc as a classic gaming platform, although I did manage to include some details about the hardware and the operating system. You might remember that I did a feature on the machine for Micro Mart in February, but that article didn’t dwell on the games as much as the history of the machine itself. Although Arcs weren’t that common, I was very lucky as I was able to attend a local Acorn computer club. I enjoy drawing attention to the legacy of the platform as I feel it is often overlooked. Hopefully, I’ve done my job and a few new people will be interested in the Arc. By the way, ArcEm, Arculator and RPCEmu are all good emulators and there are a few others.

When choosing the games, I tried to make a representative selection that balanced original games with conversions. Conversions had a special part to play on the Arc but I didn’t want to give the impression (or reinforce the myth) that we didn’t have many decent original games.

When covering the history of the machine, I fired off a few questions to Sophie Wilson, one of the designers of the Arc and the BBC Micro. She was very helpful but I had to cut some of her answers for space. Here is some of the cut content, for fellow Acorn obsessives:

Is it true that you first simulated the ARM chip in BBC BASIC?

Yes, the first simulator was written by Steve [Furber] in BBC BASIC – he implemented an event based simulator which modelled all the ARM’s datapaths.

I wrote an instruction set emulator of the ARM – once for the 6502, and again for the NS32016. We ran a lot of software on these until we had real ARM chips.

An anecdote about the power requirements that I hadn’t heard before…

[...]the biggest surprise on ARM1 was when we tried to measure the power it took and discovered it wasn’t taking any at all… (the PCB didn’t connect the power pins, it was running entirely through the power coming in from its I/O pins via the protection diodes)

A few tidbits about ARX…

Of course we wished we had different things – the operating system project to produce ARX hadn’t given us anything saleable, so causing us to rush out an interim OS (since the hardware was certainly ready). The system really only became what we had desired with the release of RISC OS 2 (arguably with the release of RISC OS 3 when the applications support was much better). And it took until the RiscPC with VIDC20 before the basic display capability was what I’d wanted…

Thanks also go to Chris of Drobe for answering some of my questions. Hope you enjoy the article. If you have any questions feel free to contact me or post to the RetroGamer forums.

This week, Micro Mart is carrying my feature about four brands that lived on beyond the demise of the companies that established them. The article is entitled “And the Brand Played On: Four brands that died… and then lived again.” I delve into the history and subsequent resurection of the Acorn Computers, Apricot, Atari and Commodore brands. Naturally, due to the subject matter it’s an article with a bit of a retro flavour. It’s in issue 1050, and I hope you enjoy it if you read it.

Checkout this week’s Micro Mart (issue 1048, bought today) for my review of the Iomega Prestige external Hard Drive. This is a drive that I actually bought for myself when I spotted it in Tesco!

MM have some more of my stuff in the pipeline and I’ll announce it here when I can.

I’m a bit late with the announcement, but this week’s Micro Mart contains my six page feature on the Arc. It’s in issue 1043. If you want a copy, you’ll have to hurry as it will be replaced by the latest issue on Thursday the 26th of Feb.

The article details the history of the machine with a buyers’ guide, a guide to emulators, and some other details about the platform. In addition, it’s accompanied by some near pornographic pictures of my beloved old Archimedes A310, inside and out. The focus of the article on the Arc as a retro platform rather than the current RISC OS scene.

Getting the old machine out of storage to photograph it evoked waves of nostalgia. After a quick hoover, the machine powered up. I don’t have a monitor for it these days, but it made the familiar beeping sound. The fan was very noisy, but for most of its life, I ran it with the fan disconnected anyway. In addition, it made the characteristic “Acorn squeal” through the built in speaker. I wonder how many hours I sat at that machine as a geeky teenager, mucking about with PD disks, games and ARM programming?

For the screen shots, I used Arculator. For the GUI shots, I pushed it up to Mode 21, to increase the quality. Freelance writing is hard, thankless work and I had to play Twin World through to completion (for the first time in more than a decade and a half) just to fully immerse myself. In fact, I don’t think that I was completely successful, so a play through of Mad Professor Mariarty may now be necessary.

I feel that the platform, and its importance, is sometimes overlooked in retrospective computer features. It’s particularly annoying when it receives only scant mention in computer history features on British outlets such as the BBC. I’m keeping an eye out for further opportunities to write about the platform.

It’s in issue 1043, and unfortunately, Micro Mart doesn’t mirror its content on the web. If you want a copy, you’ll have to hurry as it will be replaced by the latest issue on Thursday the 26th of Feb.

British weekly print magazine Micro Mart has accepted one of my operating system themed articles. The article is entitled “2009, Year of the independent OS?” and it should appear in the Thursday 15th of January issue. As the title suggests, the premise is that some of the less-known freely available OSes might achieve sufficient maturity to enter into relatively widespread use over the course of 2009. The operating systems that I evaluate are AROS, Syllable, Haiku, and ReactOS. It’s a three thousand word article, so I’ve been able to go into a quite a bit of detail on the relative approach and progress of each OS project.

If it sounds like your kind of thing, look out for it in the newsagents on Thursday 15th.

Update: I now have a copy. It’s a shame that MM don’t mirror their content online.