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Some very influential artifacts


erichenneke

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I went to a really interesting video game history exhibit yesterday at the Bob Bullock museum here in Austin. They had some really cool stuff on exhibit, including some arcade cabinets and various console games that could actually be played.

 

They had the original floppy disk that silas warner saved Castle Wolfenstein on...

post-38281-0-63975900-1518449397_thumb.jpg

 

And Richard Garriott's Apple II that he coded Ultima and Akalabeth on...

post-38281-0-16398400-1518449414_thumb.jpg

 

I thought it was funny that the Castle Wolfenstein floppy looks just like all of the other thousands of floppies we all scribbled titles on back in the day.

 

 

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I thought it was funny that the Castle Wolfenstein floppy looks just like all of the other thousands of floppies we all scribbled titles on back in the day.

Heh, the retail Wolfenstein floppies looked much the same. My Wolfenstein disk had a label with text printed on a dot-matrix printer in draft mode. And no it wasn't a pirate copy!

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Heh, the retail Wolfenstein floppies looked much the same. My Wolfenstein disk had a label with text printed on a dot-matrix printer in draft mode. And no it wasn't a pirate copy!

 

My step-brother and I bought this one sometime in the fall of 1984, I think. (I added the handwritten notations for my own teenaged-attempts to organize our floppies. :) )

 

post-30400-0-03683300-1518476703_thumb.jpg

 

And lookie-here ... it still boots up! (Not bad for a disk that was tossed into a cardboard box of stuff from my old bedroom and forgotten in 1989 or so, then moved around house to apartment to house to apartment etc. for the next 25 years, most of that time spent a non-climate controlled garage).

 

post-30400-0-60442400-1518476720_thumb.jpg

 

Very cool to see the original working disk he used. Did the museum display indicate if it was still readable? :)

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Very cool to see the original working disk he used. Did the museum display indicate if it was still readable? :)

No, it didn't say. I wondered that same thing.

 

I also thought it was interesting that the label has a Commodore "C=" on it, but surely the original was coded on an Apple.

 

Of course, we all used anything we could get our hands on to label disks back then, right? I run across some of my original disks from when I was a kid and I see several that have VHS tape labels on them, cassette tape labels, and even some with freezer tape on them! So who knows.

Edited by erichenneke
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Something that big/important and with probably a multi-month development cycle, you'd not want to just use one floppy for the duration.

 

I used to start a new floppy every 4-5 weeks and another guy I worked with had the policy that he'd stick new labels on for each little project. Once the thing got too fat, time to replace it.

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I agree they look cool, but didn't war games feature an Atari XL computer ?

 

Possibly but when he's trying to access the games companies at the start of the film I'm pretty sure it was an Apple, then again it might have been a TRS80, might have to have a little watch again..

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Possibly but when he's trying to access the games companies at the start of the film I'm pretty sure it was an Apple, then again it might have been a TRS80, might have to have a little watch again..

 

It wasn't an Apple...

 

https://www.geek.com/geek-cetera/computer-from-1983-movie-wargames-up-for-sale-1560395/

 

http://www.imsai.net/movies/wargames.htm

Edited by Mr Robot
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My step-brother and I bought this one sometime in the fall of 1984, I think. (I added the handwritten notations for my own teenaged-attempts to organize our floppies. :) )

Actually now that I think about it, I think it was "Beyond Castle Wolfenstein" that had the dot-matrix label, with Apple II version on the flip side.

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I agree they look cool, but didn't war games feature an Atari XL computer ?

 

Not really, but the Atari 800 was used for some noise fx...

 

As a sidebar, off wopr topic, we used an atari 800 in preproduction. It had four oscillators and we actually could create the DTMF tones required to dial every number in an area code/prefix and attempt to communicate with a modem. We took that detail out so that people wouldn't try to do that at home.

Edited by CharlieChaplin
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Wow, just shows how time can really screw your memories...I'm pretty sure The Thing DID have an Apple where he's playing chess..(hides in case yet again I'm wrong) :)

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Look, the Atari was initially in pre, but removed as other options became available. It was used in sound. The Apple drove a display in the WOPR, you don't get to see much if anything but that display. The rest of it was the IMSAI, and CompuPro (GodBout) machines and related peripherals. The ensuing pissing match not withstanding... all involved were important to production. My disk is bigger than your' disk, my buddy backs me up, your buddy backs you up, let's belittle each other is so petty and 'very hollywood'. The other photos and stuff are what you always get as the production always has a photographer taking shots as the production continues. Those photos get used in a number of ways, and serve multiple purposes.

 

That's it in a nutshell for those who care about the hardware. Everything else is a muddled mess of memories and screen politic. Letters written in support of one or the other are laughable at best as each clearly has tailored re-accounting of events. Hard work was done by both, and both should be credited as such.

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Possibly but when he's trying to access the games companies at the start of the film I'm pretty sure it was an Apple, then again it might have been a TRS80, might have to have a little watch again..

The best film IMO for Atari 8bits is Prime Risk. Not actually that bad a film either, the basic plot was years ahead of it's time.

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Not really, but the Atari 800 was used for some noise fx...

 

As a sidebar, off wopr topic, we used an atari 800 in preproduction. It had four oscillators and we actually could create the DTMF tones required to dial every number in an area code/prefix and attempt to communicate with a modem. We took that detail out so that people wouldn't try to do that at home.

They also used an 800 for some audio FX in Tron.

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The best film IMO for Atari 8bits is Prime Risk. Not actually that bad a film either, the basic plot was years ahead of it's time.

YES!, I've posited the question many times on Atari age about this, I've never given the answer. You are the first to post about it. You deserve a official Atari Aficionado Award!

Can a graphist present the award to ilaskey please!

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YES!, I've posited the question many times on Atari age about this, I've never given the answer. You are the first to post about it. You deserve a official Atari Aficionado Award!

Can a graphist present the award to ilaskey please!

Heh heh. I had the film on VHS but copied it to a DVD, still got it. At the time, a pretty girl hacking with an Atari 800 was ticking all the boxes for me ;-)

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The Atari 800 is in the corner of the room in War Games. He's using an IMSAI 8080 for his main hacking, but his 800 is clearly visible behind him for most of the movie. While it got scooted from his desk, it wasn't leaving ;)

 

I think they need help with their list including screen grabs and links.

Edited by _The Doctor__
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Heh heh. I had the film on VHS but copied it to a DVD, still got it. At the time, a pretty girl hacking with an Atari 800 was ticking all the boxes for me ;-)

 

I'd never heard of the film so I went to IMDB, looks ok, gets reasonable scores but its not available on dvd...:(

 

Thanks for the info Ian and Doc..

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