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paulzolo
What's a life?
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:27 pm Posts: 12251
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Mon Oct 22, 2012 11:00 am |
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cloaked_wolf
What's a life?
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:46 pm Posts: 10022
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When I was a kid, I used to love reading and if I didn't get enough from books/newspapers, I'd read Teletext (just the news and maybe Bamboozle). Then if I was still bored, I'd read Ceefax. Definitely remember it being on at night on TV and it would just go through the pages.
_________________ He fights for the users.
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Mon Oct 22, 2012 11:07 am |
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Amnesia10
Legend
Joined: Fri Apr 24, 2009 2:02 am Posts: 29240 Location: Guantanamo Bay (thanks bobbdobbs)
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Ceefax and Oracle were very useful services. Though Ceefax has really being replaced by the red button service. So not quite dead, just evolution.
_________________Do concentrate, 007... "You are gifted. Mine is bordering on seven seconds." https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTg5MzczNTkhttp://astore.amazon.co.uk/wwwx404couk-21
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Mon Oct 22, 2012 11:15 am |
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james016
Doesn't have much of a life
Joined: Tue May 05, 2009 5:52 pm Posts: 1899
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If I couldn't sleep I would switch on the TV and just watch the Ceefax pages scroll by while listening to the background music
_________________ My Flickr PageNow with added ball and chain.
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Mon Oct 22, 2012 11:47 am |
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pcernie
Legend
Joined: Sun Apr 26, 2009 12:30 pm Posts: 45931 Location: Belfast
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The red button service is Diet Pepsi left in a skip to Ceefax's thirst-quenching Coca-Cola... Oh, and whatever it was Digitiser on Four fell under, you'll always be remembered too 
_________________Plain English advice on everything money, purchase and service related:
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/
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Mon Oct 22, 2012 10:00 pm |
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jonbwfc
What's a life?
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:26 pm Posts: 17040
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Technically that would have been Teletext. Whatever though, it was utterly brilliant at times. All written and mostly drawn by one man...
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Mon Oct 22, 2012 10:13 pm |
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paulzolo
What's a life?
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:27 pm Posts: 12251
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Digitiser was genius in 1K.
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Mon Oct 22, 2012 10:27 pm |
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pcernie
Legend
Joined: Sun Apr 26, 2009 12:30 pm Posts: 45931 Location: Belfast
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Even then they had the measure of Sony - the tramp in the bins turned out to be the CEO IIRC, nobody had noticed he was missing 
_________________Plain English advice on everything money, purchase and service related:
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/
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Mon Oct 22, 2012 10:30 pm |
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l3v1ck
What's a life?
Joined: Fri Apr 24, 2009 10:21 am Posts: 12700 Location: The Right Side of the Pennines (metaphorically & geographically)
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Ceefax was great for getting the TV guides, Football results/tables and weather etc. But that was before the days of the internet.
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Mon Oct 22, 2012 10:32 pm |
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pcernie
Legend
Joined: Sun Apr 26, 2009 12:30 pm Posts: 45931 Location: Belfast
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It would still be a better job than waiting for my systems to boot up or using my phone's tiny screen. Or that slow-ass red button and Freeview shambles IME. And there was just something nice about it, something slightly retro that seemed to have a bit more soul than the uniform blandness of the services above It was a prototype internet for me in that once I was on it I was there for bloody ages 
_________________Plain English advice on everything money, purchase and service related:
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/
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Mon Oct 22, 2012 10:41 pm |
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paulzolo
What's a life?
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:27 pm Posts: 12251
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CEEFAX and Teletext were like magic to me. The beauty of it was that I could make Teletext like pages in the BBC Micros at school (Mode 7 was the teletext mode), so I learned about the control care terms for colours, shapes etc.. Very early grounding for putting tags round text in HTML.
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Mon Oct 22, 2012 11:08 pm |
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Amnesia10
Legend
Joined: Fri Apr 24, 2009 2:02 am Posts: 29240 Location: Guantanamo Bay (thanks bobbdobbs)
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Every program or application from that era could be made with fewer lines of code. Also when you had to be efficient with coding.
_________________Do concentrate, 007... "You are gifted. Mine is bordering on seven seconds." https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTg5MzczNTkhttp://astore.amazon.co.uk/wwwx404couk-21
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Wed Oct 24, 2012 3:53 am |
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paulzolo
What's a life?
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:27 pm Posts: 12251
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It still boggles me how they got Elite in at under 32K, INCLUDING the memory used for the display. I’ll repeat: 32 K
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Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:57 am |
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james016
Doesn't have much of a life
Joined: Tue May 05, 2009 5:52 pm Posts: 1899
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_________________ My Flickr PageNow with added ball and chain.
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Thu Oct 25, 2012 10:14 am |
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paulzolo
What's a life?
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:27 pm Posts: 12251
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They also did some very clever things with the display systems. The top, flying part, of the display was MODE 4 - a two colour mode which had a reasonable resolution, but occupied a less memory. The lower half was MODE 5 - more colours, but a coarser resolution. The BBC let to merge modes so one "slice" of screen was MODE 4, the other MODE 5.
To further reclaim memory from the display system, the display was cropped. Again, this was possible on the machine, with the game "pillar boxed". The blank areas to be left and right of the game screen were reused as part of the executable program. Other games employed this task, but you got random junk displayed (this junk was a visual manifestation of the code in the display memory space). In Elite, this junk was hidden by mapping the colours in those areas to be displayed as black.
Again, all this in 32K.
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Thu Oct 25, 2012 10:49 am |
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