1.
Floppy disk
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Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive. Floppy disks, initially as 8-inch media and later in 5¼-inch and 3½-inch sizes, were a form of data storage and exchange from the mid-1970s into the mid-2000s. These formats are usually handled by older equipment and these disks and associated drives were produced and improved upon by IBM and other companies such as Memorex, Shugart Associates, and Burroughs Corporation. The term floppy disk appeared in print as early as 1970, in 1976, Shugart Associates introduced the first 5¼-inch FDD. By 1978 there were more than 10 manufacturers producing such FDDs, there were competing floppy disk formats, with hard- and soft-sector versions and encoding schemes such as FM, MFM and GCR. The 5¼-inch format displaced the 8-inch one for most applications, the most common capacity of the 5¼-inch format in DOS-based PCs was 360 kB and in 1984 IBM introduced the 1.2 MB dual-sided floppy disk along with its PC-AT model. IBM started using the 720 kB double-density 3½-inch microfloppy disk on its Convertible laptop computer in 1986 and these disk drives could be added to older PC models. In 1988 IBM introduced a drive for 2.88 MB DSED diskettes in its top-of-the-line PS/2 models, throughout the early 1980s, limitations of the 5¼-inch format became clear. Originally designed to be practical than the 8-inch format, it was itself too large, as the quality of recording media grew. A number of solutions were developed, with drives at 2-, 2½-, 3-, 3½-, the large market share of the 5¼-inch format made it difficult for these new formats to gain significant market share. A variant on the Sony design, introduced in 1982 by a number of manufacturers, was then rapidly adopted. By the end of the 1980s, 5¼-inch disks had been superseded by 3½-inch disks, by the mid-1990s, 5¼-inch drives had virtually disappeared, as the 3½-inch disk became the predominant floppy disk. Floppy disks became ubiquitous during the 1980s and 1990s in their use with computers to distribute software, transfer data. Before hard disks became affordable to the population, floppy disks were often used to store a computers operating system. Most home computers from that period have a primary OS and BASIC stored as ROM, by the early 1990s, the increasing software size meant large packages like Windows or Adobe Photoshop required a dozen disks or more. In 1996, there were a five billion standard floppy disks in use. Then, distribution of packages was gradually replaced by CD-ROMs, DVDs. External USB-based floppy disk drives are available, many modern systems provide firmware support for booting from such drives
2.
ROM cartridge
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ROM cartridges can be used to load software such as video games or other application programs. The cartridge slot could also be used for additions, for example speech synthesis. Some cartridges had battery-backed static random-access memory, allowing a user to save data such as game progress or scores between uses, an advantage for the manufacturer was the relative security of the software in cartridge form, which was difficult for end users to replicate. However, cartridges were expensive to manufacture compared to making a floppy disk or CD-ROM, as disk drives became more common and software expanded beyond the practical limits of ROM size, cartridge slots disappeared from later game consoles and personal computers. Cartridges are still used today with handheld gaming consoles such as the Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, due to its widespread usage for video gaming, ROM cartridges were often colloquially referred to as a game cartridge. ROM cartridges were popularized by early home computers which featured a special bus port for the insertion of cartridges containing software in ROM. Notable computers using cartridges in addition to magnetic media were the Commodore VIC-20 and 64, MSX standard, the Atari 8-bit family, the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A, some arcade system boards, such as Capcoms CP System and SNKs Neo Geo, also used ROM cartridges. The modern take on game cartridges was invented by Jerry Lawson as part of the Fairchild Channel F home console in 1976, the cartridge approach gained more popularity with the Atari 2600 released the following year. From the late 1970s to mid-1990s, the majority of video game systems were cartridge-based. As compact disc technology came to be used widely for data storage, Nintendo remained the lone hold-out, using cartridges for their Nintendo 64 system, the company did not transition to optical media until 2001s GameCube. SNK still released games on the cartridge based Neo Geo until 2004, ROM cartridges can not only carry software, but additional hardware expansion as well. Examples include the Super FX coprocessor chip in some Super NES game paks, micro Machines 2 on the Genesis/Mega Drive used a custom J-Cart cartridge design by Codemasters which incorporated two additional gamepad ports. This allowed players to have up to four gamepads connected to the console without the need for an additional multi-controller adapter, the ROM cartridge slot principle continues in various mobile devices, thanks to the development of high density low-cost flash memory. For example, a GPS navigation device might allow user updates of maps by inserting a memory chip into an expansion slot. An E-book reader can store the text of several books on a flash chip. Personal computers may allow the user to boot and install a system off a USB flash drive instead of CD ROM or floppy disks. Digital cameras with flash drive slots allow users to exchange cards when full. Storing software on ROM cartridges has a number of advantages over other methods of storage like floppy disks, software run directly from ROM typically uses less RAM, leaving memory free for other processes
3.
Emulator
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In computing, an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system to behave like another computer system. An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use peripheral devices designed for the guest system, emulation refers to the ability of a computer program in an electronic device to emulate another program or device. Many printers, for example, are designed to emulate Hewlett-Packard LaserJet printers because so much software is written for HP printers. If a non-HP printer emulates an HP printer, any software written for a real HP printer will also run in the non-HP printer emulation and produce equivalent printing. Since at least the 1990s until today, some video game enthusiasts use emulators to play 1980s arcade games using the original 1980s programming code, a hardware emulator is an emulator which takes the form of a hardware device. In a theoretical sense, the Church-Turing thesis implies that any operating environment can be emulated within any other environment. However, in practice, it can be difficult, particularly when the exact behavior of the system to be emulated is not documented and has to be deduced through reverse engineering. Emulation is a strategy in digital preservation to combat obsolescence, emulation addresses the original hardware and software environment of the digital object, and recreates it on a current machine. The emulator allows the user to have access to any kind of application or operating system on a current platform and he further states that this should not only apply to out of date systems, but also be upwardly mobile to future unknown systems. Potentially better graphics quality than original hardware, potentially additional features original hardware didnt have. Emulators maintain the look, feel, and behavior of the digital object. Despite the original cost of developing an emulator, it may prove to be the more cost efficient solution over time, many emulators have already been developed and released under GNU General Public License through the open source environment, allowing for wide scale collaboration. Emulators allow software exclusive to one system to be used on another, for example, a PlayStation 2 exclusive video game could be played on a PC using an emulator. This is especially useful when the system is difficult to obtain. Copyright laws are not yet in effect to address saving the documentation and these protections make it more difficult to design emulators, since they must be accurate enough to avoid triggering the protections, whose effects may not be obvious. Emulators require better hardware than the system has. Because of its use of digital formats, new media art relies heavily on emulation as a preservation strategy. The paradox is that the emulation and the emulator have to be made to work on future computers, emulation techniques are commonly used during the design and development of new systems
4.
Field-programmable gate array
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A field-programmable gate array is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturing – hence field-programmable. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a description language. Logic blocks can be configured to perform complex functions, or merely simple logic gates like AND. In most FPGAs, logic blocks also include elements, which may be simple flip-flops or more complete blocks of memory. Contemporary field-programmable gate arrays have large resources of logic gates and RAM blocks to implement complex digital computations, as FPGA designs employ very fast I/Os and bidirectional data buses, it becomes a challenge to verify correct timing of valid data within setup time and hold time. Floor planning enables resources allocation within FPGAs to meet time constraints. FPGAs can be used to implement any logical function that an ASIC could perform, some FPGAs have analog features in addition to digital functions. Fairly common are differential comparators on input pins designed to be connected to differential signaling channels, the FPGA industry sprouted from programmable read-only memory and programmable logic devices. PROMs and PLDs both had the option of being programmed in batches in a factory or in the field, however, programmable logic was hard-wired between logic gates. In the late 1980s, the Naval Surface Warfare Center funded an experiment proposed by Steve Casselman to develop a computer that would implement 600,000 reprogrammable gates, Casselman was successful and a patent related to the system was issued in 1992. Some of the foundational concepts and technologies for programmable logic arrays, gates. Xilinx co-founders Ross Freeman and Bernard Vonderschmitt invented the first commercially viable field-programmable gate array in 1985 – the XC2064, the XC2064 had programmable gates and programmable interconnects between gates, the beginnings of a new technology and market. The XC2064 had 64 configurable logic blocks, with two three-input lookup tables, more than 20 years later, Freeman was entered into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his invention. Altera and Xilinx continued unchallenged and quickly grew from 1985 to the mid-1990s, by 1993, Actel was serving about 18 percent of the market. By 2010, Altera, Actel and Xilinx together represented approximately 77 percent of the FPGA market, the 1990s were an explosive period of time for FPGAs, both in sophistication and the volume of production. In the early 1990s, FPGAs were primarily used in telecommunications, by the end of the decade, FPGAs found their way into consumer, automotive, and industrial applications. This work mirrors the architecture by Ron Perlof and Hana Potash of Burroughs Advanced Systems Group which combined a reconfigurable CPU architecture on a chip called the SB24. That work was done in 1982, the Atmel FPSLIC is another such device, which uses an AVR processor in combination with Atmels programmable logic architecture
5.
Xilinx
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Xilinx, Inc. is an American technology company, primarily a supplier of programmable logic devices. It is known for inventing the field-programmable gate array and as the first semiconductor company with a fabless manufacturing model, major FPGA product families include Virtex, Kintex and Artix, and the retired Spartan series. Major computer software includes Xilinx ISE and Vivado Design Suite, Ross Freeman, Bernard Vonderschmitt, and James V Barnett II, who all had worked for integrated circuit and solid-state device manufacturer Zilog Corp, founded Xilinx in 1984. While working for Zilog, Freeman wanted to create chips that acted like a blank tape, at the time, the concept was paradigm changing. Big semiconductor manufacturers were enjoying strong profits by producing massive volumes of generic circuits, designing and manufacturing dozens of different circuits for specific markets offered lower profit margins and required greater manufacturing complexity. What became known as the FPGA would allow circuits produced in quantity to be tailored by individual market segments, Freeman failed to convince Zilog to invest in creating the FPGA to chase what was only a $100 million market at the time. Freeman and Barnett left Zilog and teamed up with their 60-year-old ex-colleague Bernard Vonderschmitt to raise $4.5 million in funding to design the first commercially viable FPGA. They incorporated the company in 1984 and began selling its first product by 1985, by late 1987 the company had raised more than $18 million in venture capital and generated revenues at an annualized rate of nearly $14 million. As demand for programmable logic continued to grow, so did Xilinxs revenues, from 1988 to 1990, the companys revenue grew each year from $30 million to $50 million to $100 million. During this time period, the company which had been providing funding to Xilinx, as a result, Xilinx dissolved the deal with MMI and went public on the NASDAQ in 1989. The company also moved to a 144, 000-square-foot plant in San Jose, California in order to pace with demand from companies like HP. IBM and Sun Microsystems who were buying large quantities from Xilinx, Xilinx competitors emerged in the FPGA market in the mid-1990s. Despite the competition, Xilinxs sales grew to $135 million in 1991, $178 million in 1992, the company reached $550 million in revenue in 1995, one decade after having sold its first product. According to market research firm iSuppli, Xilinx has held the lead in programmable logic device market share since the late 1990s, over the years, Xilinx expanded operations to India, Asia and Europe. Xilinxs sales rose from $560 million in 1996 to $2.2 billion by the end of its fiscal year 2013 and these targeted design platforms are an alternative to costly application-specific integrated circuits and application-specific standard products. The company has expanded its product portfolio since its founding, Xilinx sells a broad range of FPGAs, complex programmable logic devices, design tools, intellectual property and reference designs. Xilinx also has a services and training program. The companys products have been recognized by EE Times, EDN and others for innovation, in addition to Zynq-7000, Xilinx product lines include the Virtex, Kintex and Artix series, each including configurations and models optimized for different applications
6.
Commodore 64
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The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, C-64, C=64, or occasionally CBM64 or VIC-64 in Sweden, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International. It is listed in the Guinness World Records as the single computer model of all time. Volume production started in early 1982, marketing in August for US$595, preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore PET, the C64 took its name from its 64 kilobytes of RAM. It had superior sound and graphical specifications compared to earlier systems such as the Apple II and Atari 800, with multi-color sprites. The C64 dominated the low-end computer market for most of the 1980s. Sam Tramiel, a later Atari president and the son of Commodores founder, said in a 1989 interview, When I was at Commodore we were building 400,000 C64s a month for a couple of years. In the UK market, the C64 faced competition from the BBC Micro and the ZX Spectrum, part of the Commodore 64s success was its sale in regular retail stores instead of only electronics and/or computer hobbyist specialty stores. Commodore produced many of its parts in-house to control costs, including custom integrated circuit chips from MOS Technology and it has been compared to the Ford Model T automobile for its role in bringing a new technology to middle-class households via creative and affordable mass-production. Approximately 10,000 commercial software titles have made for the Commodore 64 including development tools, office productivity applications. C64 emulators allow anyone with a computer, or a compatible video game console. The C64 is also credited with popularizing the computer demoscene and is used today by some computer hobbyists. In 2008,17 years after it was taken off the market, in January 1981, MOS Technology, Inc. Commodores integrated circuit design subsidiary, initiated a project to design the graphic, Design work for the chips, named MOS Technology VIC-II and MOS Technology SID, was completed in November 1981. Commodore then began a game console project that would use the new chips—called the Ultimax or the Commodore MAX Machine and this project was eventually cancelled after just a few machines were manufactured for the Japanese market. At the same time, Robert Bob Russell and Robert Bob Yannes were critical of the current product line-up at Commodore, with the support of Al Charpentier and Charles Winterble, they proposed to Commodore CEO Jack Tramiel a true low-cost sequel to the VIC-20. Tramiel dictated that the machine should have 64 KB of random-access memory, although 64-Kbit dynamic random-access memory chips cost over US$100 at the time, he knew that DRAM prices were falling, and would drop to an acceptable level before full production was reached. The product was named the VIC-40 as the successor to the popular VIC-20. The team that constructed it consisted of Yash Terakura, Bob Russell, Bob Yannes, the design, prototypes and some sample software were finished in time for the show, after the team had worked tirelessly over both Thanksgiving and Christmas weekends
7.
Home computer
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Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, however, a home computer often had better graphics and sound than contemporaneous business computers. Their most common uses were playing games, but they were also regularly used for word processing, doing homework. Home computers were usually not electronic kits, home computers were already manufactured in stylish metal or plastic enclosures. There were, however, commercial kits like the Sinclair ZX80 which were home and home-built computers since the purchaser could assemble the unit from a kit. For example, using a typical 1980s home computer as a home automation appliance would require the computer to be powered on at all times. Personal finance and database use required tedious data entry, by contrast, advertisements in the specialty computer press often simply listed specifications. Since most systems shipped with the BASIC programming language included on the system ROM, many users found programming to be a fun and rewarding experience, and an excellent introduction to the world of digital technology. Often the only difference may be the outlet through which they are purchased. Another change from the computer era is that the once-common endeavour of writing ones own software programs has almost vanished from home computer use. As early as 1965, some projects such as Jim Sutherlands ECHO IV explored the possible utility of a computer in the home. In 1969, the Honeywell Kitchen Computer was marketed as a gift item, and would have inaugurated the era of home computing. Computers became affordable for the public in the 1970s due to the mass production of the microprocessor starting in 1971. Early microcomputers such as the Altair 8800 had front-mounted switches and diagnostic lights to control and indicate internal system status, while two early home computers could be bought either in kit form or assembled, most home computers were only sold pre-assembled. The keyboard - a feature lacking on the Altair - was usually built into the case as the motherboard. Ports for plug-in peripheral devices such as a display, cassette tape recorders, joysticks. Usually the manufacturer would sell peripheral devices designed to be compatible with their computers as extra cost accessories, peripherals were not often interchangeable between different brands of home computer, or even between successive models of the same brand. To save the cost of a monitor, the home computer would often connect through an RF modulator to the family TV set
8.
Commodore REU
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Commodores RAM Expansion Unit range of external RAM add-ons for their Commodore 64/128 home computers was announced at the same time as the C128. The REUs came in three models, initially the 1700 and 1750, and later the 1764. By the time of the 1985 CES show in Chicago, the engineers were able to display a spinning globe of the earth as a demonstration of Direct Memory Access by the new REU units. The REU hardware was designed by Frank Palia and the dedicated Integrated Circuit was designed by Victor Andrade. Fred Bowen and Terry Ryan adapted the kernel and Basic to accommodate the REU natively, additionally, the C128s built-in BASIC7.0 had three statements, STASH, FETCH, and SWAP, for storing and retrieving data from the REU. Officially, only the 1700 and 1750 were supported on the C128, the 256 kB model, the 1764, was released for the C64 at the same time. There were only minor differences between the three models, the 1700 utilizes sixteen 4164 64kx1 DRAMs, the 1764 has eight 41256 256kx1 DRAMs, and the 1750 has sixteen 41256 DRAMs. Some dealers unbundled the 1764 and the supply in order to sell the power supply to C64 users. During the late 1980s, there was a shortage of DRAM caused by the Reagan Administration enacting anti-dumping restrictions on Japanese manufacturers, thus 1750s were rare, however it was comparatively easy to upgrade a 1700 or 1764 to 512 kB. Several firms did this commercially, either selling upgraded units or upgrading customer-supplied units, in the early 1990s, DIY modification schemes to increase the capacity of an REU to one megabyte or higher appeared on various online services. The 1700s circuit board was identical to that of the 1750, on the 1750 and 1764, this trace was cut. The 1700 and 1750 had a resistor at position R4 that, according to Commodore engineer Fred Bowen, compensated for subtle differences in the port on the C64. Bowen and other CBM engineers recommended against using a 1764 with a C128 unless the resistor was added, or a 1700/1750 with a C64 unless the resistor was removed. It was possible to check for the presence of a 1750 by reading memory address $DF00s bit 4, which was 1 on a 1750, and 0 on a 1700 or 1764. However, since this procedure would not distinguish between a 1700 and a 1764, many programmers wrote to the RAM itself to find out the amount of memory installed, very little software made use of the REUs. Additionally, many commercial programs simply overwrote the memory space occupied by the RAM disk software. GEOS as well as other programs even used the REU for quick memory transfers within the host machines main memory by storing a memory block into the REU and then fetching it back to another location. Due to its speed relative to Commodores floppy drives or even the commercially available hard drives
9.
Action Replay
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Action Replay is the brand name of a cheating device created by Datel. The Action Replay is available for many gaming systems including the Nintendo DS, Nintendo DSi, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 2, GameCube, Game Boy Advance, and the Xbox. Typical cheating options include power-ups, level warping, and display of game data. Some other typical features include, Infinite lives, invulnerability, permanent power-ups, no collision detection, walk through walls, one-hit kills, super-high jumps, infinite money, the ability to download, upload, import and export saved games to the Internet or a storage device. Allowing the player to save the state to disk, so that the game can be restarted from that point even if it does not support saving. Loading of third-party applications/games, not backup copies of retail games, power-Saves by Action Replay are a related series of video-game cheat devices. Power-Saves are available for systems such as the Wii on an SD card. The card has a grabber, a trainer, and a slowdown feature and it can also interrupt the current game or save it to disk. Models running firmware 4.0 and beyond use EEP-ROM instead of ROM, in December 1998, Datel released a version for Windows 95/98. Action Replay DS 3DS/DSi/DS/Lite Compatible Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo 3DS XL Action Replay Power Saves for 3DS, the Action Replay Power Saves for 3DS can alter saves of 3DS games and has some codes for 3DS games
10.
The Final Cartridge III
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The Final Cartridge III was a popular extension cartridge which was created for the Commodore 64 and Commodore 128, produced by the Dutch company Riska B. V. It offered a fast loader, increasing the speeds of the drive. The cartridge featured a button and a freeze button, as well as a LED that indicated whether or not the module was active. The cartridge featured a Final Kill option which disabled the cartridges functionality and this was needed as some software, particularly games, were incompatible with fast-loaders, disabling the cartridge meant it never needed to be removed. One of the features of the cartridge was its GUI. Unless RUN/STOP key was held down during power-on or reset, the cartridge presented a graphical WIMP desktop, the graphical look of the desktop was borrowed from AmigaOS1. x. It was possible to load new GUI-based utilities from disk or tape, of the tools in the cartridge ROM, the most useful were a text editor, a disk file management utility, a calculator, and an alarm clock. A big selling point was the disk and tape turbo feature, which was available for most commands, the BASIC commands also allowed to return to the GUI desktop mode, or start the machine-language monitor. The freezer feature allowed to save the contents to disk to be resumed at later point. It also allowed the use of some rudimentary game cheating functionality, the freezer also allowed access to the machine-language monitor. The FC3 can be combined well with a SD2IEC-Floppy, because his Fastloader stays alive in File-Browsers like CBM or SD2BRWSE. Also, user have the very good FC3 F-key commands for changing directories on the SD-Card or loading files without the need of typing anything, therefore, the combination FC3 and SD2IEC complement each other very well. ISEPIC Trilogic Expert Cartridge Project64 etext of The Final Cartridge III manual Photos and Information about the Final Cartridge III
