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 ti-
me revealed again. I've decided do
not interrupt that review written
by a competent person and to say
few words about the problem we ha-
ve 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 crea-
te new modifications for our plat-
form 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 civiliza-
tion, thinking that everything is
thrusted upon Russia by Western
culture, at the same time he is
the one of those who sold them-
selves. 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 aditio-
nal opportunities with 7MHz? What
is it for? We can't compete with
multinational corporations contro-
ling the 'home computers' produc-
tions. 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 manifista-
tion 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, reali-
zing 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 de-
velopment without learning and ha-
ving esteem for the history leads
into a deadend. I envy Commodore
users - practically, they have
only 2 types of machines PAL and
NTSC, the last one is commonly
spread in USA, where the demoscene
actually doesn't exist. The AmigaO-
ne developers also thought about
preserving the historical baggage
of the platform, which made the
great contribution to demomaking
in Europe - to this technically mo-
dern machine based on G3/G4 pro-
cessor 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 men-
tioning of some technical parame-
ters such as tacts per line and
the speed of a slow memory (which
deffers even on the original
Spectrums) while reading specifica-
tions 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 Penta-
gon 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 Scor-
pion version of Insult.

Emulators are not a panacea for a
dying hardware. This really power-
ful 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 be-
coming more than just a kind of
sport by now. Eventually, we began
to pay our attention to feelings.
And this way is infinite and va-
ried. We have a responsibility on
us for preserving the history and
the ritual for the future genera-
tions.

The modern technoligies are far
from those which were available
10-15 years ago, in the chaotic ti-
mes of russian spectrum clones'
development. However, huge multi-
case monsters sometimes appear
nowadays, I can remind of Ukrai-
nian project, which made a lot of
noise out of nothing and failed
due to the authors' incompetency.
Now there is a possibility of ma-
king a machine, identical to a mo-
dern Pentagon, that wont look like
an alien creature's nest, winded
round with wires. The only problem
is people, who can realize it pro-
fessionally. 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 conver-
sation 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 har-
ware. I hope the situation will
change, time settles everything,
but will there be those who are in-
terested in spectrum now, at that
time when it will happen?