Adventurer #14 30 июня 2003

Железо

Review - Hardware Retrofetishism.

Hardware Retrofetishism
elph / CPU

Helping Clear with searching and
translating of some material for
previous article, some thoughts
disturbing my mind from time to time revealed again. I've 
decided do not interrupt that review written

by a competent person and to say
few words about the problem we have with our Spekka and my 
point of view on its solution here.


In the beginning i'd like to say,
that for me creativity is the
higher grade of human existence
and so i'm interested in art as
its realization. I do have respect
for those people, who try to create new modifications for our 
platform until their desire becomes a fetishism.


I'm somehow distressed with
Nemo's 'Open Letters' (i couldn't
avoid of paying attention to it,
especially because he is nearly
the last Spectrum compatible
machines' manufacturer in Russia).
This man, who denies almost every
achievement of modern civilization, thinking that everything is
thrusted upon Russia by Western
culture, at the same time he is
the one of those who sold themselves. What does the 'money
mantra 'repetition mean? Denying
internet just because stupidity
and unusefulness prevails over the
needful information is ridiculous.
It's quite evident that internet
is the reflection of a real world,
and if 90% of people like to spend
their time discussing that shit
spread by the mass media, internet
will contain the same. But we can
learn to reach out in finding what
we are looking for. And it is
exactly what the mankind is having
some problems with. What Nemo
make his machine for? To use it as
a text processor? Gaining aditional opportunities with 7MHz? 
What is it for? We can't compete with

multinational corporations controling the 'home computers' 
productions. Parhaps, it's better for us to turn our efforts in 
the other direction.


We can realize ourselves in art,
taking part in the making of such
young and significant manifistation of modern life as 
demomaking. You can tell everybody about your

feelings, emotions and your life
attitude here. There are a plenty
of means to do it, besides MHzs
and megabytes, people could manage
without that stuff for ages, realizing themselves in music, art 
and literature. Of course, you can use

this 'magnificant' Kay for this,
at the same time casting away all
that accumulated experience of our
platform because the majority of
demos of the past few years
doesn't work properly. But any development without learning and 
having esteem for the history leads into a deadend. I envy 
Commodore users - practically, they have

only two types of machines PAL and
NTSC, the last one is commonly
spread in USA, where the demoscene
actually doesn't exist. The AmigaOne developers also thought 
about preserving the historical baggage

of the platform, which made the
great contribution to demomaking
in Europe - to this technically modern machine based on G3/G4 
processor a usual Amiga 1200 can be attached, so user gets 
double processor system with the optional

possibility to run applications on
a 'native' hardware.

However, I've only seen vague mentioning of some technical 
parameters such as tacts per line and the speed of a slow 
memory (which deffers even on the original

Spectrums) while reading specifications of Sparky, SpeccyBob,
Spectrum3E, SpectrumSE. I have a
strong feeling that its developers
don't understand the purpose of
their work ...

Well, I need a Pentagon. A Pentagon with its well-known and time
approved parameters. A Pentagon
that allow me to watch Tryptomine
Dream, Shit4Brains, Power UP
and many other works in a proper
author's way. A Pentagon, that I
can take at Altparty or Forever to
show the deepness of my inner
world to our western friends,
without crushing it.

And I remember Lyra, Shock, Dies
Irae, Higher State and others - it
is quite clear that it's easier to
fix these works for Pentagon than
the reverse operation. The first
example, that I remind, is a
TR-DOS version of Losing Victoria,
made by Triebkraft. On the other
hand - the lame pared-down Scorpion version of Insult.

Emulators are not a panacea for a
dying hardware. This really powerful instrument forever will be
just a program, working in an
alien operating system. And it's
not about sound or video modes
it's about Magic. Magic of a man
and computer joining together for
the sake of creation on a deepest
level, which is possible only on a
few platforms nowadays. And we can
be proud of this, but we have to
reach for more. Demomaking is becoming more than just a kind of
sport by now. Eventually, we began
to pay our attention to feelings.
And this way is infinite and varied. We have a responsibility on
us for preserving the history and
the ritual for the future generations.

The modern technoligies are far
from those which were available
10-15 years ago, in the chaotic times of russian spectrum 
clones' development. However, huge multicase monsters sometimes 
appear nowadays, I can remind of Ukrainian project, which made 
a lot of noise out of nothing and failed

due to the authors' incompetency.
Now there is a possibility of making a machine, identical to a 
modern Pentagon, that wont look like an alien creature's nest, 
winded round with wires. The only problem

is people, who can realize it professionally. I think it's not 
even the matter of money, cos those who

are interested in our platform's
destiny in a new millenium can
help with solving this problem.

Everything here is no more than my
thoughts bothering me since conversation with Unbeliever in 
1999. And i'm disappointed with the fact

that I see no information in the
press from people who can realize
these realistic ideas into harware. I hope the situation will
change, time settles everything,
but will there be those who are interested in spectrum now, at 
that time when it will happen?