ADAMCON 15 20 Years of Fun and Frustration

ADAMCON 15 20 Years of Fun and Frustration in the Computer World By: Jeff Mitchell August 8, 2003

Overview Early rumblings Colecovision…Christmas 1983 Expansion Module #2 - 1984 The ADAM Years (1984 – 1990) No Man’s Land (1990 – 1993) Wintel Era (1993 – Present) Enter the ADAM Emulator Looking Back Questions to Ponder

Early Rumblings Technology & Computing in the ’ 80 s n n n A couple of close friends had Commodore or Atari systems (i. e. . VIC 20, Commodore 64, Atari 2600) Commodore games attracted my attention right away, most were challenging and fun to play Commodore software was loaded either by 5 ¼” floppy disk or by tape drive, don’t remember any of my friends having hard drives for their C 64 s No one I knew had an IBM PC (or early clone) as nearly as I can remember Atari 2600 was another popular console game system

Early Rumblings…Cont. Computer games were my main interest in this period…and will remain a common thread Programming, word processing, or other such tasks hadn’t really entered my radar Took advantage of my friends to play their games Don’t recall pestering my parents, “Can I please have a C 64 of my own? ”

1983 – A Magical Christmas Colecovision entered our home on December 25, 1983 Looking back, was a well designed system with simple controls and game titles that were addictive but straightforward to play Fond memories of blisters on my thumb from “Zaxxon”, “Donkey Kong”, and “Cosmic Avenger” Offered the lure of expansion

Expansion Module #2 - 1984 Coleco offered innovative product in the form of Expansion Module #2 Allowed Colecovision owner’s to play any Atari 2600 game Added to our system shortly after Christmas (after patient and logical arguments were made to my Dad) “Missile Command” and “Yar’s Revenge” were added to our library

The ADAM Years (’ 84 – ’ 90) Christmas in 1984 was another fun time in the Mitchell household The ADAM officially arrived in the form of Expansion Module #3 For some reason, I knew about and was involved in the purchase, so it wasn’t a complete surprise like the year before Still was lots of excitement when the time came to set up the system

Parallel Universe – IBM PC To illustrate where the IBM world was in 1983, here is a typical PC you could get: IBM PC XT n n n n 8088 CPU running at 4. 77 MHz 128 K – 640 K of memory 360 K 5 ¼” floppy disk 10 or 20 MB hard drive (optional) No printer (available as add on) Productivity software and games extra Cost was in the thousands of dollars

IBM PC vs. Coleco ADAM had the following specs, by way of comparison: n n n Zilog Z-80 CPU (4 MHz clock speed) 64 K RAM, 32 K ROM, 16 K video RAM Cassette tape drive for storage Expansion slots for add-in cards 80 -column daisy wheel printer included Bundled with software to get you moving right away

IBM PC vs. Coleco ADAM Compared to the early PCs, the ADAM offered tremendous value Pre-packaged with all essential hardware and software n n n Built-in word processor Printer Convenient storage (tape data packs) Ability to play games Expandable for the future

The Adam Years (’ 84 – ’ 90) Base ADAM package gave lots to play with First “Super Game” – Buck Rogers (another well designed title) Smart. BASIC Word processing From my point of view, still a gaming system, although I remember dabbling into Smart. BASIC

The ADAM Years (’ 84 – ’ 90) CP/M 2. 2 and ADAMCalc were added to our library within months of ADAM’s arrival Never really used ADAMCalc for much and CP/M was a bit arcane, although I dived in and learned my way around Video games were my main use of the system in the early months, don’t remember using it for school yet

The ADAM Years (’ 84 – ’ 90) Somewhere in 1985 a fateful meeting occurred in the Ottawa Public Library My dad met up with a gentleman by the name of Doug Patterson Through Doug, my dad became aware of the local ADAM User Friendly Group Meeting Doug opened a whole new channel to software and hardware

The ADAM Years (’ 84 – ’ 90) I entered high school in September of 1985 Over the 5 years I spent in Gloucester High School in Ottawa, I started using the ADAM frequently for my writing assignments Initially I used Smartwriter, but switched to Speedywrite as it became available Continued my dabblings in Smart. BASIC, which helped me gain an appreciation for programming concepts

The ADAM Years (’ 84 – ’ 90) Our base ADAM expanded radically through contact with the ADAM community Modem and ADAMLink software 5 ¼”disk drive Hard drive upgrade in 1987 Loads of useful software, including Powerpaint, TDOS, and many game titles Still into playing computer games as the year 1990 drew near

The ADAM Years (’ 84 – ’ 90) One of my favourite cartridge titles was “Gateway to Apshai” A terrific example of 3 rd party ADAM games Had all the bread and butter concepts of a dungeon crawl game…fighting, gathering treasure, and exploration Contained many concepts that are fundamental to modern computer role-playing titles Very challenging, had that “just a little further” addictive quality

The ADAM Years (’ 84 – ’ 90) Learned how to use ADAMLink and went online Quickly discovered the Ottawa area BBS scene File downloads mostly available for CP/M Was introduced to precursor of Usenet News (BBS message boards)

1990 – ADAM Says Goodbye In June of 1990, I graduated from high school and embarked on a new era Started the mechanical engineering program at the University of Victoria This move would see me computer less for the next 3 years By the time I left the ADAM, I was familiar with: n n Programming concepts Word processing Modems and communications software Even had some passing knowledge of what machine language was

No Man’s Land (1990 – 1993) First few years of life at UVic shoved me into the arcane world of UNIX (I still shudder when I see references to the VI Editor) Learned how to program in Pascal (for graphics and numerical analysis) Drew on my experience with Smart. BASIC such that Pascal was a breeze to pickup, struggled with “purpose” of program rather than language structure and programming concepts

No Man’s Land (1990 – 1993) Used UVic’s Mac Lab if I had to write reports or other non-programming tasks In 1992 I began my “assimilation” into the IBM world with a work term at IBM’s office in Calgary, Alberta Gained experience with OS/2 Worked with early versions of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Project Participated in 2 computer trade shows

No Man’s Land (1990 – 1993) Gained an appreciation for IBM PC hardware and terminology, expanded my comfort level in computing Returned to UVic in 1993 and continued to use the Mac Lab In summer of 1993, my first IBM compatible arrived, an AST 386 SX/25 with 4 MB of RAM and a 120 MB hard drive Also bought myself what would prove to be a legendary computer game…the “X-Wing Space Combat Simulator”

The Wintel Era (1993 – Present) An excellent first computer that helped me finish UVic by allowing me to work on many projects at home Saved time, as I no longer had to run back and forth between home and UVic’s computer facilities Allowed me to continue my hobby and was also an escape from the difficulty of my UVic course work (working my way through the Tours of Duty in X-Wing)

The Wintel Era (1993 – Present) Discovered Compuserve with my 2400 baud modem Compuserve was a valuable tool in doing research for technical papers With my modem, connected to UVic’s servers to run FLUENT (a computational fluid dynamics program) through a simple text interface

The Wintel Era (1993 – Present) Graduated from UVic and moved out on my own to Vancouver in 1996 The old 386 workhorse was replaced in 1996 with a 486 DX 4/100 The 486 stayed with me until 1997 when I moved up to a Pentium 166 based machine Did a CPU upgrade in 1998 to a Pentium 200 MHz MMX Hardware upgrades driven somewhat by desire to play certain computer game titles (X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter in particular)

The Wintel Era (1993 – Present) Spring of 2000 saw me take a big leap, to a Pentium III 550 MHz based system This kept me going until about 2 weeks ago when I moved up to a Pentium IV 2. 4 GHz based system Also added a laptop to my repertoire of equipment, as I felt the desire to have some mobility in my computing ability Computer games still provide lots of enjoyment, with “Homeworld” and “Neverwinter Nights” being two titles I’ve been fond of

Wintel Era (1993 – Present) An example of frustration in the Wintel world n n Bought a Creative Labs Annihilator 2 video card Card not happy running at AGP 4 x with my Asus PIII motherboard Lengthy search on the ‘net led me to a small utility which allowed me to edit (in hexadecimal) some of my motherboard settings Probably couldn’t have done that had I not seen the concepts in the past

The Wintel Era (1993 – Present) Intel Pentium 4 processor n n 2. 4 to 3. 2 GHz 800 MHz front side bus 55 million transistors 512 K onboard cache memory

Enter the ADAM Emulator In the months leading up to ADAMCON 11 in Seattle, I discovered the ADAM Emulator Many fond memories came flooding back to me I could literally go back in time and turn my fancy Pentium class computer into an ADAM Played some of my old favourite cartridge games, and found that they stood up well to the test of time

Looking Back Would I have embraced the computer world if the ADAM had not entered my life? n Maybe, maybe not, might not have seen the need for one until entering UVic Without ADAM, would not have developed any programming skills or comfort with computer concepts until much later in life A lot of my course work at UVic would have been much more difficult without the foundation that the ADAM gave me Computers are “second nature” to me now and I thank my ADAM years for that

Questions to Ponder… If Coleco had not callously abandoned the ADAM, would history have been different? If the user community had not come forward to continue support and development for the ADAM, would we still be here today?