ACNews #60 15 декабря 2015

News - 14th of November - Louisa gave birth to our daughter, named Dasha.

                              News
                        by Alone Coder

This is the first issue of ACNews in English.

Let's continue the news.

1Чth of November -Louisa gave birth to our daughter, named
Dasha.

New head of our film studio (RGRTU-Film),Vladimir Ivanov, who
also teaches 3D modelling and 3D printing at business incubator
of RGRTU, askedLdir to help him there, as 3D school at the
studio stopped.Ldir agreed!

Even more Speccy people are interested with 3D engines.Jerri
took my engine "Wolf 48K" (used in demos Critical Error and
The Board II ) and makes a game with it, asking questions time 
to time.Sayman and Screw/OHG are also concerned. I have an idea
for a new 3D engine. So far I'm writing pieces of assembly code
and model the maths in Pascal. It seems that 3D possibilities of
good old 48K are not fully used, and higher models can do even
more!

Arwald is writing the Чth level of Rusted Souls game (there
might be 5).

I continue to collect information about ZX Spectrum history -
using magazines, schemes, books, and e-mail. Read some stuff in
this issue.

Specially for this issue I also made an automatic detector of ZX
Spectrum model - it runs the corresponding viewer.

One more little hack - after questions fromYerzmyey, John
Silver, andKarbofos, I added digital sound support in 
Pro Tracker 3. Read about this in a separate chapter. 

I read a lot recently. It appeared that I haven't published my
list of books since Info Guide #10 (i.e. since 2007!). I'll fix
this now. Since then, I added mini-reviews on books. I found a
lot of new topics. Of course, I don't list everything I read in
the Internet :)

I found some of the books that I've read before 1998 (i.e.
before the list), even some of the magazines I remember. One
interesting case is children's magazine "Murzilka" #12'1988.
There were drawn some presents a reader could want for the New
Year. It was supposed that the parents will see the outlined
option. I've chosen... a computer. Where could I see a computer
then? Only in magazines, I think!

[By the way, a picture in "Kolobok" #12'1989, p.12 seems to be 
pixel art! How it was drawn? What computer was used and why?] 

Of course I haven't got a computer for the New Year. But I
remember how we went to a store where we saw these BK-0010 and
Partner 01-01 with prices around 600 roubles, then my father 
(following our neighbor from above) made a Radio-8бRK. He made
it the same way as the neighbor - on a half of chess board (this
became a tradition for our future computers). The board was
tuned with a giant oscilloscope also from the neighbor's.
I remember this well.

The computer loaded programs from a reel. Its keyboard was also
handmade, from DIY details produced by father's factory (Ryazan
factory of metal-ceramic devices). The factory produced a lot of
interesting things, including ionistors, joysticks, and even
solar panels. Keyboards of this type were also used in my
Spectrums.

Having a computer, I began to read books like "Basic - that's
simple", B. Walsh about BASIC, Dyakonov, "128 advices for a
beginner programmer", some odd brochures from "Вышэйшая школа",
a big "Algorithms and data structures for personal computers"
etc. This way I became a programmer :)

Radio-8бRK had several upgrades while usage - adding more RAM, 
changing ROM, adding BASIC ROM. There were a lot of games, but
all the reels are lost. My sister and I even played one of the
games ("Road to Oregon") on paper, while we were at country,
without a computer. Another game ("President") I tried to adapt
to Spectrum later, in form of "Governor" but stopped - I found a
complete Spectrum port of it.

I gave away the board and disassembled the keyboard. The keys
are packed together with other radio amateur stuff in a
cupboard. I might once return to this and maybe create a museum
: