test please delete

[BrilloPad]

BrilloPad 19,098
zeitghost 15,202
cailin maith 11,434
Diver 11,044
DS23 10,001
TheFaQQer 9,041
BrowneIssue 8,564
NickFitz 8,560
FiveTimes 6,878
voodooflux 6,003
Bear 5,617
El_Diablo 4,256
Jog On 2,282
DiscoStu 2,244
Fortune Green 2,215
HeliCraig 1,546

[zeitghost]

I recently binned a very large box of 3.5" floppies, but kept a few for sentimental reasons

I've put them with my 5.25" floppies and 100MB Zip disks

You threw stuff away...

I've got an 80 column punch card and a 8 inch floppy on the top of my pc...

The 8" drives are in my garage.

[HeliCraig]

The 8" drives are in my garage.

They must some small cars to fit on an 8" drive in your garage?

Surely too small for a monster?

IGMC.

[zeitghost]

Baby now having a kip : I am going for one as well.

Then it is time to dye my hair ready for interview Monday!

Grecian 2000?

[voodooflux]

IGMC.

Please do. And if you're popping out grab us some chocolate will you.

[zeitghost]

Back again

I nipped down to M&S to grab a birthday present for my mum, then over to Sainsbury's for some bits and bobs.

The car was frozen, so I had to sit in it for ten minutes running the engine before I could set off.

Everything was fine until I got back into it at Sainsbury's - starter motor turned over, but the engine resolutely refused to fire

Tried about five or six times, but no joy. I gave it ten seconds rest whilst contemplating digging the RAC's number out of the glove compartment.

Luckily, the next time I tried, it managed to fire up after turning over five or six times

I think it might have been a bit of condensation getting into the electrics when it cooled down. Not that I have any idea about these things

It's a Ford.

It's what they do...

[HeliCraig]

Please do. And if you're popping out grab us some chocolate will you.

I will not be leaving the office. Too cold & wet.
Think of it as a diet.

[HeliCraig]

It's a Ford.

It's what they do...

Ford:

Fix Or Repair Daily.
Found On Road, Dead.

[voodooflux]

I will not be leaving the office. Too cold & wet.
Think of it as a diet.

Good job you've got those biscuits within easy reach then.

I think a slice of Christmas cake may have found its way into my lunch today.

[zeitghost]

The Amstrad PC1512 (and PC1640) preserved registers across BIOS calls. This fact was clearly documented in the Amstrad Technical Reference Manual.

What wasn't clearly documented was that, in doing this, it differed from every other IBM PC (and compatible) BIOS except Compaq's.

As a result, when I was first writing games, we shipped a game to the publisher which, as part of initialising the display when the game started, would make a BIOS call with registers that had been modified by the previous BIOS call, with the result that it switched the CGA card from graphics to text mode, thereby totally buggering things up

I could only debug it by walking up to the Tandy shop and asking the salesman to let me check it on one of their display models. Furthermore, I had to make sure that the fix occupied the same number of bytes as the original code, for easy patching of the disks that had already been duplicated

It didn't take long to sort it out - I just replaced the BIOS-calling code with code that hit the hardware directly, went back to Tandy to check it, and shipped the patch.

On the bright side, the offending code had been written by another chap before I started at the company - I'd taken the project over when I was hired

The 1512 had a really hideous implementation of CGA... my eyes have never been the same since.