Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Egy kis önreklám...
Elindítottam egy blogot a Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 címmel. Változatos témákat tervezek feldolgozni ebben a vonatkozásban, fogyasszátok egészséggel:
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Közben @Rachy megírta a következő fejezetet! A nagy titkok még ebben sincsenek leleplezve, előbb-utóbb eljut majd oda is!
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Meanwhile @Rachy wrote the next chapter. The great mysteries are still uncovered but sooner or later he will get there.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Koszi, koszi! A kovetkezo poszt egy elegge mas tema kore epul majd, de remelem az is erdekes lesz. Azert a levegot ne tartsatok vissza amig vartok ra.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog TY, TY! The next post will be on a different topic, but I hope it will be interesting. Don't hold your breath while you are waiting for it.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Köszi, remek olvasmány volt! Annak idején szakközepes koromban Pigmy-vel leveleztem egy keveset, és elég részletesen leírta nekem, miképp csinál meg egy konverziót, hogyan csinálta meg a Tass Times-ban raszterből az egeret, miképp működik a FRQ konvertere és hasonlók. Bár a gépi kód valamilyen szintű ismeretét már elsajátítottam, elég gyorsan lejött, hogy ez egy teljesen másik szint, amiről olvasok Pigmy nagyon rendes volt velem, és elárasztott a friss konvertjeivel, amiért a mai napig nagyon hálás vagyok, pláne mivel cserébe nem sokat tudtam nyújtani, csak újabb kérdéseket, csereprogramok vagy C64 game-k nem nagyon érdekelték, ki tudja miért Sajnos a sok költözés alatt ezek a levelek elvesztek, pedig sokáig kincsként őriztem ezeket és sokszor vissza is olvastam ezeket. (manapság már kifejezetten érdekes lenne ezeket a leveleket elolvasni, igaz akkor is csak a szerző határozott engedélye után lenne lehetséges). Ki gondolta volna, hogy ezek a gépek és ezek a levelek bármilyen érdeklődést is kiválthatnak 30 évvel később.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog It was a pretty good read, a lot of nice memories came back. When I was a kid in the secondary school, I wrote to Pigmy a letter (based on a text in his util prg), and for a short time he became my pen-friend. He game me a thourough explanation, how he does a conversion, how he made from raster the software mouse in Tass Times, or how the FRQ SID music converter worked. Although at that time I already did a little machine code programming, I quickly realized he is on a really different level He was really kind with me, send his latest his latest conversions, though I could not offer anything in exchange. Due to some reasons he was not interested in game swapping or C64 games for a long time I kept these letters from Pigmy as treasures ("my precious!"), but after several relocations they were lost. It could be a very interesting read nowadays (certainly only after the witer of the letters may agree with that). Who could imagine these letters could have any relevance after 30 years
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog For me who had never heard of Hungarian oldschool scene from good old days until recently (until I decide to make some games for the Plussy) , those articles are gold mine and so interesting... I'm more interested in the game converting thing as this is what I like to do (converting game from one platform to another...). Thank you Rachy !
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog I clearly remember that I've loaded Syndrome every single day for one entire year at least! The reason? Unreal's art! Those bitmaps made my Plus/4 jump ahead in a new class of graphics!
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog @Majikeyric Sorry to disappoint. This blog is not about technical details, as I wrote in the introduction. I am sure you can ask ppl here about converting.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Niiiiice! Thank you!
The FRQ converted C64 musics played on Plus/4 had major impact on my younger years to feel my life OK(ish).
I may add (three) four points, as future possibilities next to SID card: -The recently appeared AY external sound card (also added to YAPE as a feature) - there were not so much updates recently, but there are a huge music database and fanbase for AY sound (>Zx Spectrum 128K, Amstrad CPC, ATARI ST just to name few) Certainly the sound it not up to C64 SID, but could be rather decent. The best version of Robocop game music theme is made for ZX Spectrum on AY chip. (AFAIS the SID version is a little "overdone")
-Hopefully the Covox will reach our platform on the User Port (+4 only, unfortunately, but C16 Userport cartridge is also in progress). This could make the same magic as Pigmy's three channel player, just with a cleaner sound, faster way (no conversion table). Still, due to the huge CPU load on mixing, theoretically only possible with switched off screen
-Soundmax hardware from C64 theoretically fully useable on Plus/4 User Port, though some of the control pins are not at the sample place. It could provide almost Amiga quality sound hardware, 4 independent 8bit digi channels, you can address independently. There is no mixing or conversion CPU load, just to send out the 8 bit digi data. If it is a very small MOD, it could even fit into the 64K memory together with the player. (some chiptune MODs have only 20-30KB size). Theoretically it is possible with screen On.
-the highest 16 bit quality: just few weeks ago a MIDI Out hardware emerged. After some conversion most of the MIDI files are possible to be played on an external MIDi device with MIDI in connector.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Lavina this photo is fantastic! We've always said in several interviews the story of the massive purchasing of Plus/4s to be used in the Hunagrian schools still under Iron Curtain, but this makes it now a tangible fact. Precious.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Yeah, we had the same in primary school, and we also used Plus/4 to learn BASIC in class 7 or 8. At that time I was already a proud owner of a 64K C16
Imagine the C64 guys who had to TOUCH this machine (then the challenge: draw a HIRES line on the C64 screen in BASIC - LOL)
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Ati: WoW, again!
I like these old-school photos because they remind me of when I was a little boy.
...and I was a bit unsteady about my find list above because I managed to find her age and I did not know when the photo was taken...
I tried to find more details about the webpage: In turn, the domain check failed as you can see.
Then I tried to get more information from EXIF of the jpg: https://jimpl.com/results/j8PkwsSipk22RQcKJM88EZ5Q?target=exif But no any important details about the location either, so the picture was recreated (eg. scanned). (...and I do not think EXIF exists then... :-) )
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog A képre: Burzsuj egy suli lehetett. Plus/4-esek ITT TV-kkel! Máshová meg csak 16-osok jutottak kis Videotonokkal vagy Junosztyokkal.
So the upper photo's description is: "Békéscsaba, 1990. november 8. Zsótér Ferenc órát tart a békéscsabai belvárosi iskola III/A osztályának a számítógépes oktatóteremben. Az új intézmény Békés megye legkorszerűbb általános iskolája."
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog irigy: Yes, you are right... We were sitting in front of Junoszty with C16, VIC20 and Plus4, sometimes somebody brought a C64. The year was about 1984-85-86, so a little earlier.
Lavina: Wow, Wow, Wow... You are more expert than me... With the help of the last information you gave, I am successful in searching more details about this event: for example who is sitting next to Bako Eszter is Molnár Tímea!
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Every time a new post arrives I literally devour it, and just like everyhime happens my heart got fed with parallel memories, and the day drastically changes. Thank you for this, Rachy.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Haha, yea, I know that feeling. Probably that was the reason why I started this blog. I am glad you enjoy the blog, I try to keep it entertaining as much as I can.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Rachy: I also read your last post. You were a very lucky guy because your dad was holding the ladder while you were climbed up to the high. It was a very interesting and charming story about your young thoughts.
We are waiting for the exciting sequence of your path to Auckland...
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog @Charlemagne: I am glad you enjoyed. After working on Plus/4 I moved on to Amiga and other platforms, but I find those years much less interesting, so I am not going to write about that.
I established Appmindful some time ago and with my friends we created games among other things. Just managed to subdue the urge to advertise the games here... Google it!
PS.: I don't mind, but some ppl doesn't appreciate doxxing on forums. Just sayin'.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Rachy: It would be so good that you try to recall your old memory about one of your lost boulder-dash-like game with hammers and recreate it for Plus4World community. They would be so happy to play with it, I am sure.
...and sorry for doxin', but I am glad you don't turn rusty... Be proud of what you achieved and don't worry about envious ppl!
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog @Rachy: Nice work. However, I find the description of colour restrictions in graphics modes ambiguous. May I ask some clarification? What is written there as of now resembles the VIC-II system configuration. At least for me.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog @gerliczer: I am not sure what you mean, any particulars maybe? TED video rendering capabilities and features are very similar to VIC-II, as I mentioned that in the post.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Very good read, thanks Rachy! One minor extra info: ECM mode was indeed used at least once for demo effect, in Waiting For Promised Land, Murphy coded an ECM (FLI) Plasma. Maybe it's worth mentioning in the article as it's really a rare use.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Past-Help from '93 features the first ECM plasma I can think of, that predates your demo by a few decades But even if you want to somehow ignore that as a conversion, Murphy's Genetic Faulty from '95 also has an ECM plasma, and that's - AFAIK - coded for Plus/4. The effect section is definitely not complete, but it does have some of this info for you to check.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog ok, so 3 instances in 3 decades. Still rare. I did now know about the mentioned 2 demos that they are ECM, I did not even know about the first one that it exists Thanks for the info.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog @Lavina Added a correction note to the post, thank you for letting me know. In the next post I will be writing about the actual prods, so this is something I am going to add.
@gerliczer explaied to me what he meant, I also fixed that part which explains the number of colours that can be used in each mode.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog @Rachy: Thank you, it was a good read!
@Lavina What about Luca's Tropical ECMotion? Then already 4 instances in a few decades! Seems it is less and less rare
BTW ECM mode has such a huge potential. You can create really colorful pictures looks like HIRES, but takes much less space in memory. In fact I enjoy the creation of an ECM more, than a Hires or Multi picture. Somehow more satisfying and I feel it is more efficient https://csdb.dk/release/?id=211496
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog On an ECM side-note, I converted the full screen ECM plasma from Extremes/Byterapers (https://csdb.dk/release/?id=11660) ages ago just for my own fun. So no actual relevance here.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog I just said those were the first ones I could think of, and suggested that you take a look at the Effects page... I guess you didn't I'm counting 9 (of the 81 listed), but for most of the entries, no-one has bothered to enter the color mode yet. "Rare" is a fuzzy term, but in this case, one could argue that calling this effect rare is a stretch.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog I would say using ECM for any purpose is still rare compared to any other features, like rasterbars or even FLI.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Again, fantastic reading!
About ECM's usage frequency, my HUE rotating plasma shown in Crackers' Demo 5 is boldly an ECM extravaganza . Also, the crack intro I recently did in Sulphur Eye has ECM upper/lower logos. I say that ECM has been used quite constantly along the years, much more than we could know...
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Thanks, Rachy, this blog is awesome, I read almost all post now in one round. The 121 színű zsírkréta is the best, please continue that as soon as possible!
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Fact: I've assigned my maximum vote to Hot Sixteen during the voting session at 4Ever03. In the same compo btw, I sent in Lameness – nomen omen – a horrible raster crap forcing the rules which didn't consider if your 16kB demo would use or not a SIDcard, something I could afford with my little knowledge of the machine. Nonetheless I got 2 points, getting unfairly upper than the one-point Expectation by Skoro ( <3 ), probably just because I was there while he was at his own home...
About how the FLI has been understood on the TED, I suggest to take a look to some initial attempts, probably dated in a time when the concept itself of "double scanline for a DFLI" was far to come, mostly performed by Larry and TLC: Virtual FLI Show, Hires FLI, New FLI, the TLC FLI Collection saved by me from the ashes of time, M-FLI 1, M-FLI Laced 1 (NSFW!), M-FLI Laced 1 (NSFW!).
Did I already write how much I love this blog?
Oh btw: 4Ever23 here and now, make Szeged great again!
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Thanks for the new blog post! While reading it I was looking at the linked demos. It took me a few hours to finish reading.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Great post as usual! Since the topic of "first Hungarian adventure" came up, I asked Brazil about this, his responses have been added to games (Kisértetkastély, Fogd A Pénzt, A Hős Lovag), IMHO those are worth a read as well.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog I got nine right. Didn't know the answer to question 2 and 9. Picked random choices there and well deservedly missed them.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog I have some marvellous memories of the 4Ever03! That's why I dedicated the whole Lone News 15 issue to those great days...showing the logo I didn't manage to finish there for the compo!
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Somehow I missed the fact that this part was published.
I have such a collection of tickets myself, just to remember that I was there. But these name tags came into fashion later; how can you remember older events? I remembered some details while reading, thanks!
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog I was starting to miss it, and now I realize that there have been a lot of releases, which I have yet to discover.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Eeeeh! This is *that* kind of blog's post which plays several strings of my resonating heart. Even that entry sentence is written by me!
As you can see from the statistics by date, the 2004 could be truly considered a Renaissance's year, after years of darkness during which I can say that I was literally the standard-bearer in a scenario of solitude. 4Ever03 has been one of the funniest times in my life: I was in love, and in the Csongrád's county, I met fantastic guys and in the end even my myth, TCFS, appeared from the mists, I had giant kürtőskalács at morning and halászlé at night. And if you ask to me, it's time to do it again! *wink-wink*
Crackers' Demo 4 has been a pretty funny project, basically driven by DCD (which still visits this forum silently... WE'RE WATCHING YOU VIKTOR, please leave some words at least! ), in which I drew a lot of graphics, composed the SID music and injected so many weird ideas. And there's a part by me too, which can boast a veeeery big help by Csabo! You know, I'm not a skilled coder... No wait: actually I'm not a coder at all! So, Csabo has taught me how to enrich that dull logos box part with some funny bobs. What can I add about 8 Shades Of Black? That project has sealed the friendship between me and Degauss forever, and sooo many cool and skilled sceners have contributed to make it a little marvel. Do you know that the official homepage of the project is still on?
As you know, I created and maintained limiTED '07 and limiTED '09 exactly in order to gather sceners and fermentate the juice of what appeared to see a new thrust for a new scene. And now, given that parties and online compos like Lovebyte and BASIC 10Liner currently exist, the question is: would you be ready and join a 3rd edition of the limiTED online compo? Answer me ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶m̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶b̶i̶o̶ oh come one write it here.
I'm very proud of Adventures In Time, I collaborated with KiCHY on it, thanking him once again for the chance he'd given to me, in one of the darkest slices of my life. That work helped me a lot, and most of all I consider that game the real ignition of a completely new era for the high-soaring flamingo's** scene. Róbert is moved by a very unique passion for the machine, behind what you've seen by him, there 's a ton of explored new projects still locked in the drawer. Loved to compose that music with the brilliant TLCPlay, and to contribute with some ideas to it. Unfortunately, the excessive desire to contribute to what was in any case the project of KiCHY, at the time showed all my lack of diplomacy and guidelines to be kept during a cooperation project, ending up overflowing with my insistent presence the sphere of the natural creator of the game itself (sorry again, Róbert!), who then preferred not to collaborate more closely with me. But this taught me the lesson, which was extremely useful when I was then able to at least partially coordinate the work done on Pets Rescue, conducted with much more diplomacy and respect for the needs of the collaborators involved.
You're on spot Rachy, Whack is a terribly addicting rougelike game, dynamic and strategic at the same time in 1kB! Guys, play it once and hours will be wasted unexpectedly! Granted!
What to say more about who has left the scene in the worst way he could? Miss his pure genuine love for the scene, the same thrust that moved (and moves!) KiCHY, and Csabo and Chronos, and many other sceners I'm not citing here. How lucky we were to have Skoro with us for so many years, we were so lucky that sometimes we forget to think about it and tell ourselves in the mirror.
**: are you really wondering what that means? Really? Get out of here now!
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog @Luca wrote: would you be ready and join a 3rd edition of the limiTED online compo?
Cool. Right after limiTED2 I was hoping for a repeat in 2011. I had a 1k entry mostly ready but, as it turned out, in vain. limiTED3 in 2025 FTW. Please, Luca, pretty please.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog btw one minor detail about 4ever03. Maybe some of you remember that it had originally been my idea to hold a compo for 16k demos and organize a party around it. But of course I was lazy that time so MC saved the day and did the latter.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog @Lavina I also remember that you were probably a bit in anger a bit to me and my gf because we were somewhat late at the pub's meeting, but we realised this something like weeks before! Then, Francesca went around to visit Szeged with your gf, leaving us free to chill into the party. Did I dream about these both, or that's the real story?
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog @Rachy: Jó lett. De egy kérdés: "A Blob Fox, című alkotásuk már kevésbé pihent, mint előző próbálkozásuk" Melyik előző és hogy érted, hogy kevésbé pihent? (Szerintem az LTIB-re gondolsz, pedig az előző a Gigantic Monsters-t jelentené.)
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog @Rachy: Well done. But one question: "Their game Blob Fox is less silly (lit. "relaxed") than their previous attempt." Which previous one did you mean and what do you mean by that? (I think you meant LTIB, although the previous one would have been Gigantic Monsters.)
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog @Verona Az elozore gondoltam, amit a posztban megemlitettem es igen, az a Legyel Te Is Burzsuj! volt. Ezek szerint nem volt vilagos, kijavitom a szoveget.
(no topic) @Verona I was referring to the previous release that was mentioned in the post, and yes, that was Legyel Te Is Burzsuj! Apparently this was not obvious, I am going to fix the text.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Great article! The programmers in Hungaria are very capable, because you didn't have the luxuries of the varieties of systems here. So you apreciated what you had and made the most of it. This is how excellece is made.
@Gaia: Its a blessing, that you are not a professional programmer. Its true, that after work you don't have the energy to finish the projects. It was during the pandemic lockdown, where i had the energy to do my own dreamproject, which is really nothing compared to the masterpieces produced here.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Fantastic interview, this opens several paths of discussion in so many directions. But most of all, this brings me back memories of that particular episode cited by Gaia involving the both of us: what a flash thru the brain! I've completely removed it till now! Anyway, I can confirm that kind of approach by me: standing basically away from the Hungarian history of the scene, once discovered this whole world beyond the curtain, I was used to mythologizing the persons behind that social environment. Ati (yes, the real one) has been the bulwark in a dying scene, with many new productions concentrated around the years 1993-1994, culminating in the Lynx megademo in 1997, released in a moment when having a megademo was really something. He has always demonstrated his own very personal style, both in design and graphics, and this makes him very appreciable.
I've come back to the forum on Index.HU, and have to say that the work about posting brief monthly summary news at a constant rate is something noble.
After the citations, I had a rewatch of Picture Show 2 (PPCS) which seems not to run that flawlessly. The boot file tries to load a file titled "MAIN", and not the BASIC loader present in the disk as "PS2". Even after renaming PS2 to MAIN, the Kernal loader got stuck, forcing the watcher to put it on work by loading and running the PS2 file directly. Do we have a manipulated copy, or did it arise unlucky as is?
Congrats again for the unmissable interview, and let me add a particular: did you know that Gaia is able to speak write and read a barely perfect, clean, Italian language?
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Hey, thanks all the kind words It was a blast, really, to recollect the memories. @Luca: I realized that the version of Picture Show 2 uploaded here may not be the one I fixed while recovering my leftover disks... I even remember a version with turbo load (and more pics). I'll have a go at it again.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog WoW, this is a very-very good idea from Rachy: making interviews with prodigy children. BTW, I thought that the name of Gaia was coming simply from the Greek Mythology: "goddess" of Earth...
I examined source codes of emulators such like any other Plus4 fanatic, so I discovered what this interview said about YapeSDL was not only a Plus4 emulator but VIC20 and C64, too. What's more I read "Readme.htm" in Yape directory where Gaia wrote all these and he likes to emulate everything else, too... And I like how Gaia is programming. In turn IstvanV likes using exraordinary solutions in Plus4Emu, for example how to compile the source under Linux...
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Yeah, I have zero knowledge about hardware stuff, but the way that question was phrased, I assumed it will be either a lot or very little. Guessed wrong
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Ten out of eleven for me, too. VolBass tripped me up. It is lucky for everyone of us that I didn't invent it. I would have screwed up even its base idea.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Nice nostalgia trip! Of those listed, the two pocket books and the adventurous one are unknown, the rest are somewhere around there. (Oh, I don't have the BASIC exercise book either.)
For me, the plus/4 internals is the basic one, if there is a question about ROM or hardware operation, I open it.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Oooh finally a new post!
Stealed Sounds is possibly the demo that I was used to keep loaded on my Plus/4 as a pinned carillon, the one which occupied the largest slice of running time on my RH for sure!
An info that can't be bypassed about Delta System: Charles – nowadays @Phoenix – had established the very first online software archive for C16/Plus4 ever, by occupying a Plus/4 folder on the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME)'s FTP, in an era when (reporting from his own page) he had to write: "Notes on execution: Since there's no 'Plus/4 emulator' on PC, you have to copy these proggys to diskettes and run them on a real Plus/4."
We saved the debris of that glorious page on the Wayback machine here.
I met the DS archive in the late 1993, at that time, the Chemistry Department of the University of Firenze allowed the students to use an old VM machine in order to feed the informatics lab with a free internet linking. So, everything was initially via FTP on several 8088s, which were dismissed to use 486s and Pentium after a little time.
When I saw that, I was shocked: due to the digital formats in .prg and D64 files, the snailmail times had been end forever. Moreover, despite of the corruptibility of the tangible disks, the volatile stuff running on any obsolete system, would now have been saved forever from the dusts of time. Incredible.
I've built up my first X1541 cable, and it incredibly worked, it worked the legendary way described by the sparse help text said! And by starting to dump all my disks to be uploaded to that folder, I created the early archive which has subsequently moved to Rulez.org. Now, everybody must know about this chance, so let's write a quick text for all, I thought, while writing On The Net.
I updated the Rulez.org archive until Lion wrote me that any further update wouldn't be performed on Rulez.org, dunno about the reasons behind. So I waited for Lion to go back on that archive, but when he did, he's chosen to not contact me, as main contributor to that for years, again dunno why.
To sum up, Delta System boasts this great primacy, long life to DS!
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Thanks for the good summary, but I remember MB being part of the first generation - e.g. our first released game was in the summer of 88 - except that unlike most first generation players, MB stayed around for a few more wonderful years. That's why I think the plus4 golden age was 89, 90 and 91 (with the Mikrovilag Christmases) and not the period after that, so for me the breakdown wouldn't be what I read either. Anyway, thanks again for the article!
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog @Luca I left out that part from DS history, let me add it retrospectively. I think they deserve that much at least.
@Jeva As I wrote in the post, these eras are arbitrarily selected by me depending on when each group was most active. While there were MB releases in 1988, the group was most active and fundamental cornerstone of the scene between 1989 and 1991. First generation was really about finding their way with the machine and the hesitant beginnings of the scene. Please don't take this as dismissing the achievements of MB, the significance of MB is indisputable. You might see your years as the golden era most likely because you did not experience the coming years. Your team left the Plus/4 scene while it was still roaring. The number of active groups and released programs are significant between 1991 and 1993, not to mention how much the quality of the programs improved. Also almost everybody was much more involved in the scene in general. So yea, matter of perspective probably, I still consider 91-92 as the golden era.
But yes, it's mostly subjective to one's memories to consider which 1-2 years were THE golden era in scene life. Except for... Gods Rule 4ever! ; - )))
Anyway, the upper statistics is a very dull tool for this purpose, of course. It's just to show that there can be many arguments and all are correct.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Since we are talking about the Hungarian scene (or at least I am), the number of files cannot be filtered by the origin of the programs in that stats page. So, I wouldn't read too much into it. If you are *really* curious about the actual numbers then maybe @Csabo could help.
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog At this point, I would suggest to all of you, to make your respective definitions of "golden era" match altogether.
Does "the golden era" definition refers to the initial steps into a scene? Or the peak of the scene itself? Or does it hang to your very first longest day at a Csokonai? Or the time when you all met in Etele pláza at the Számalk hotel with Prof. József "Manó" Gál to learn the secrets of TED?
Is a golden era the exponential rising of the scene, or the highest peak of it?
At this point, I would suggest to all of you, to make your respective definitions of "golden era" match altogether.
Hah, that's funny There's no way everyone is going to agree on one definition, and neither should they: these are inherently personal perceptions. The golden era of the Plus/4 scene is right now
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Well, I think we have 3 Golden era already: -The mid 80s when a lot of great official SWs were releaased, though almost no hardware release (except some 64K RAM upgrades)
-At the begining/mid of the 90s, when the mass conversion of C64 games started, not to mention the SID players, Also the first SID cards, 256KB RAM upgrades and the other HWs from Solder, Hannes, Csory showed that we are NOT fully dependent on big companies.
-We are in the third, longest and greatest Golden era. During the last 8-10 years fantastic piece of SWs were released. TCFS releases are just pure gold, Promised Land and similar demos are finally showing +4 real capabilities. We could be a proud member of the 8 bit scene with very strong contribution from our small, but really talented scene members. I am happy to see more and more legendary names rejoin us. (TCFS, JEVA, Proky, etc) and that our scene is a friendly, cosy environment. Recently NOT only great SWs and conversions, but fantastic hardwares were released and can be ordered by anyone. Soundcards and other cartridges (solder free RAM upgrades, CPU upgrades, RS232, and Joy adapters and other magical devices we could not imagine beforehand (Sukkopera is our champion here), but YTM's TCBM2SDm, or the SideKick264 are also great piece of HW, and just recently won a Joco's Card (also blazing fast device). BSZGGG is working on the affordable USB mouse adapter solution, and I suppose the time of mouse also arrives on Plus/4 too :-) I think we waited too long for that. Too bad I cannot buy them all, it is all year Christmans now
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog Super-duper terrific interview, love it! I had the chance to interview Proky too in the year 2000 – interview released in Lone News 13 – but of course many juicy particulars and facts can't be told, first due of the memory limitations, and second because there are facts and stories with precise historical references, which only Hungarians can easily communicate each other.
This is probably the most dense post of Rachy's fantastic blog, there's so much meat over fire there to bite on, globally resulting in a deep time-machine effect, which probably has a strong influence on me-in-my-fifties. Every time we touch the argument of the IT teen parties in Hungary, I'm even more surprised to understand how big has been the impact on the lives of you all, this reflecting a different light on the meaning of what we do here nowadays day by day, about Plus/4 World (Csabo) or with a Plus/4 – real or emulated (TCFS, Chronos, SJP on C64, and dozens others), doesn't make any difference. The Western guys had their own stories too, but It would not seem like an exaggeration to say that the Hungarian computer scene played (and plays) a significant role in political, social and commercial evolution, and in historical narrative nowadays, of modern era's Hungary.
No-brain no-ordered one-string notes:
- the C64-Plus/4 War, a story worth to be written, including the complete historical course of the Soaring Flamingo's rising up.
- I'm now aware of the fact that if you played an empty role in a rock band, there's a big chance to become a fascist with rifles and grenades under your bed; in Italy, the archetype of the same character is without a shadow of a doubt Mauro Repetto, formerly part of the pop band duo 883 with a long fictionalized story between alleged films to be shot in Hollywood, epochal betrayals and social miseries, which in the 2000s became a long meme on the Italian side of the internet; could Mauro follow the same path as his Hungarian counterpart? For me he is ready!
- the demo by TCFS with the WOT logo is of course, The Megatracks; those damn nerdy computer shows have managed to get so deep into our minds that it is impossible not to know!
- the story of the trip to Malente is no less than legendary. And Nukeman! He has always been able to boast a naive personality (in an extremely positive sense, I mean) of a free spirit. I remember that between 1989 and 1990 I tried to contact him, and to introduce myself well, having got the hack of the Multi Botticelli, which opened a world to me, I thought of doing something nice by dedicating to him "a bitmap that he could use as a logo in his next releases", without knowing anything about the obvious technical needs for any work to become something actually usable. Oh wait, I still have it, let me drop it here!
I finally met him at 4Ever 2003 and he turned out to be super funny and super friendly. I met him there, and he turned out to be super fun and super friendly. I only met him that one time, but I have to say that was enough for me to miss him now.
- Sleepwalkers in the end has played an important role: months ago, we got in contact with Csory and he expressed the will to save in .D64 format the collection of his disks that he had found in the attic, later with the help of Pigmy (this image of these two helping each other contrasts with my adolescent fantasy of wanting to see them as antagonists, so I don't show it but I'm surprised like when we "steal the nose" of children!). At the moment, nothing has arisen from this effort, and some notable pieces of releases are in our archives since years exclusively thank to the cracking attitude of the Sleepwalkers group: Deja Vu, 3D Construction Kit, the cracked version of The Power exclusively released in the Obscure Collection, Cloud Kingdoms by TCFS (@TCFS if you saved the original disks somewhere, remember of us!).
- Proky has shown some pretty nice screenshots of his forthcoming release, which could be described like "the universal Plus/4 graphic utility"; @Proky, show'em here too, make us dream about it too!
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog @Luca thanks for your nice words At the moment i'm on way to Hamburg (maybe to Malente, too ), so i can't post any screenshots about that tool. And i'm not sure i will finish it soon. That's only an excercise to jump back in time, and revive all my basic skills.
But i have here a screenshot of a game, maybe that can be also interesting the only problem is i can't post an image from mobile, due the lack of drag'n drop funcionality.
EDIT: Luckily i have my laptop here, so here's a little preview:
EDIT2: How interesting, the Wi-FI speed on any Deutsche Bahn train is exactly the same as in 1991 :)
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog @Proky you can use ye good oldeSite Uploader, from which you can either upload pictures, or send us a quick .zip pack with everything you need, and I'll handle them.
...and that our scene is a friendly, cosy environment...
..have to say, with a small tendency to consider and favor exclusively and in a separatist way the elements of one's own circle, also in the interest of things of the scene, a factor easily verifiable for example with the votes of the productions here on Plus/4 World...
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog [OFFTOPIC] @Mad today i'm livimg in the DDR (im Erzgebirge), and we still have not so many computers. No online solution for guest tax filing (Gästetaxeanmeldung), just paper and pen. Maybe that is not neccesarry in a frequent touristic area [/OFFTOPIC]
Re: Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog The train station in East Berlin was really something, like an experience out of a movie, and the city was a ghost town on a Saturday, really nobody was on the streets. This was in the summer of '89, couple of months before the fall. Crossed through it on the way to Munster.
Magyarok és a Commodore Plus/4 blog
I did now know about the mentioned 2 demos that they are ECM, I did not even know about the first one that it exists 
I've completely removed it till now! Anyway, I can confirm that kind of approach by me: standing basically away from the Hungarian history of the scene, once discovered this whole world beyond the curtain, I was used to mythologizing the persons behind that social environment. 
