Sometimes it’s just worth taking a day off and getting out.
While out, I found this kite lying by the garbage in a bag. Fully assembled, and with a fresh spool. It seemed like a sad loss of a kite. It was a cloudy day, but nice high winds. So I took it out to fly.
This picture is where it just got to the point where it was high enough to get enough lift to fly on it’s own. The winds were so good, that I was able to unspool the kite, and get it high enough that you barely could see it.
Much like retro-computing there can always be senseless fun in other people’s garbage.
It’s from Italy, and apparently was originally boxed for the Amiga, and then re-purposed for the Commodore 64. Compared to American ‘big box’ releases of the era, it’s a tiny box. A few of my SIM games are behind, it along with some DVD cases I picked up in China.
29,900 Lira?
I guess the price makes sense if the final exchange rate of the Lira was 1,276:1 USD back in the winter of 1988, making this copy $23 USD. Although I’m pretty sure when I bought mine I had to pay some $40 CAD. Yay.
I don’t think Captain blood really made it to tape, so it’s really not all that surprising then that this disk version has sat in it’s box for so long. Every time I’d seen anything Commodore in Italy or even the EU it was always tape. Such a shame too, as that means no Infocom.
Normally I wouldn’t even bother with something like this, as I have images for every release there was, but this is a sealed copy. Apparently there is a poster inside of many of the European releases. Although I’m unsure if this one does. It’s been sealed for some 31 years so far. Although it’d make a great poster to frame.
I’ve been trying to clean up the Mega ST I have, but it appears to be dead. Nothing seems to be on the video out, and it’s not lighting up or spinning the disk. I guess this means I’ll need some kind of logic probe. Well after I find my volt meter to see if I’m getting the correct voltage. The Atari doesn’t seem so complicated so I guess an ATX power supply can be rigged to output the 5/12v.
After tracking down the library source, I’ve focused my GCC stuff on version 1.30 as it’s the same base version that was used in the x68000 port, and didn’t suffer from any struct packing that I remember. And of course the never ending stress of day jobs.
On the i386 a texture info lump loads up just fine. However on a big endian G5…
OS X 10.2.8 on the G5 on the same AASTINKY
…It clearly has problems. Although notice that the positions and sizes are the same, as they ought to be.
Notice how originx is 24, which should be the width. This code was running with GCC 1.30/1.40 hammered x68000 GCC. Although I have been unable to get the much vaulted gcc-1.30.atari.tar.bz2 to do anything useful, well until tonight, when I found this file: GNU_HEAD.ARC.
That’s right, it’s the gcc-1.23 release headers for GCC on the Atari ST. Now I know other places people have been saying I should use MINT or some GCC8 port. And I wanted something to run on bare TOS, and I cross compiled the simple Infocom interpreter but it just crashes out after a few commands. It’s hardly stable.
3 bombs and an exit under GCC 8.0
Which is just a damned shame, as it was easier to just download someone else’s work.
Anyways, I now can build the old gcc-1.30 libc however… the linker that I’m using that works for GCC 2 links away and it looks like a working program but it doesn’t do anything. I have a feeling the linker drifted in those years between GCC-1.30 and GCC-2.something when it was adapted. Certainly by the time of 2.5.8. So yet more endian ghosts to chase down if I try to adapt that linker.
After going through some Endian hell, it started to load!
And promptly crash.
So far it’s just as painful as the x68000.
Time to investigate GDB.
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