1.
Video game
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A video game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device such as a TV screen or computer monitor. The word video in video game referred to a raster display device. Some theorists categorize video games as an art form, but this designation is controversial, the electronic systems used to play video games are known as platforms, examples of these are personal computers and video game consoles. These platforms range from large mainframe computers to small handheld computing devices, the input device used for games, the game controller, varies across platforms. Common controllers include gamepads, joysticks, mouse devices, keyboards, the touchscreens of mobile devices, and buttons, or even, with the Kinect sensor, a persons hands and body. Players typically view the game on a screen or television or computer monitor, or sometimes on virtual reality head-mounted display goggles. There are often game sound effects, music and, in the 2010s, some games in the 2000s include haptic, vibration-creating effects, force feedback peripherals and virtual reality headsets. In the 2010s, the game industry is of increasing commercial importance, with growth driven particularly by the emerging Asian markets and mobile games. As of 2015, video games generated sales of USD74 billion annually worldwide, early games used interactive electronic devices with various display formats. The earliest example is from 1947—a Cathode ray tube Amusement Device was filed for a patent on 25 January 1947, by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann, and issued on 14 December 1948, as U. S. Written by MIT students Martin Graetz, Steve Russell, and Wayne Wiitanens on a DEC PDP-1 computer in 1961, and the hit ping pong-style Pong, used the DEC PDP-1s vector display to have two spaceships battle each other. In 1971, Computer Space, created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, was the first commercially sold and it used a black-and-white television for its display, and the computer system was made of 74 series TTL chips. The game was featured in the 1973 science fiction film Soylent Green, Computer Space was followed in 1972 by the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home console. Modeled after a late 1960s prototype console developed by Ralph H. Baer called the Brown Box and these were followed by two versions of Ataris Pong, an arcade version in 1972 and a home version in 1975 that dramatically increased video game popularity. The commercial success of Pong led numerous other companies to develop Pong clones and their own systems, the game inspired arcade machines to become prevalent in mainstream locations such as shopping malls, traditional storefronts, restaurants, and convenience stores. The game also became the subject of articles and stories on television and in newspapers and magazines. Space Invaders was soon licensed for the Atari VCS, becoming the first killer app, the term platform refers to the specific combination of electronic components or computer hardware which, in conjunction with software, allows a video game to operate. The term system is commonly used
2.
Cooperative gameplay
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Cooperative gameplay is a feature in video games that allows players to work together as teammates, usually against one or more AI opponents. It is distinct from other modes, such as competitive multiplayer modes like player versus player or deathmatch. In its most simple form, cooperative gameplay modifies the single mode of a game, allowing additional players. More complex examples exist, however, with modifications to the story. Some co-op games include a new ending when completed in co-op mode and this new ending is unlocked only when players work as a team to complete the game. Due to the complexity of video coding, co-op games rarely allow network players. Exceptions do exist, however, such as Mario Kart Wii or Call of Duty Black Ops, co-op gameplay has been gaining popularity in video games in recent years, as controller and networking technology has developed. Co-op gaming can also exist in single format, where the player works alongside his or her previous plays in order to complete an objective. Atari, Inc. s 1978 coin-op Fire Truck is widely believed to be the first arcade coin-op to feature co-op play, several early 80s arcade coin-op games allowed for co-op play, but typically as an option. Wizard of Wor offered solo, competitive two-player, or cooperative two-player gaming, two-player games of Nintendos Mario Bros. could be played as competitively or cooperatively depending on the players whims. Early-generation home consoles typically did not offer co-op options, due to technical limitations which hindered the increased graphics required for simultaneous co-op play, during this early era, many video games which featured co-op play were ported to less advanced home systems. Alternating play replaced the arcades co-op play in the NES version, most other titles featuring 2-player were head-to-head sports titles. Though most of the beat em ups were arcade ports, original franchises such as Streets of Rage. The run and gun genre was popular for co-op games. Contra, for instance, was far more successful in its NES incarnation than it was in the arcade, gunstar Heroes for the Sega Genesis and the Metal Slug series for the Neo Geo were also well-received titles. Gauntlet and Quartet introduced co-op 4-player gaming to the arcades, the games had broader consoles to allow for four sets of controls. Electronic Arts has produced key co-op sports games, including the original NHL Hockey and these games allowed two players or more to play against the CPU. These franchises are arguably the most successful sports games
3.
Mobile network
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A cellular network or mobile network is a communication network where the last link is wireless. The network is distributed over land areas called cells, each served by at least one fixed-location transceiver and this base station provides the cell with the network coverage which can be used for transmission of voice, data and others. A cell might use a different set of frequencies from neighboring cells, to avoid interference, when joined together these cells provide radio coverage over a wide geographic area. This allows mobile phones and mobile computing devices to be connected to the switched telephone network. Private cellular networks can be used for research or for large organizations and fleets, each of these cells is assigned with multiple frequencies which have corresponding radio base stations. The group of frequencies can be reused in other cells, provided that the frequencies are not reused in adjacent neighboring cells as that would cause co-channel interference. If there is a single transmitter, only one transmission can be used on any given frequency. Unfortunately, there is some level of interference from the signal from the other cells which use the same frequency. This means that, in a standard FDMA system, there must be at least a one cell gap between cells which reuse the same frequency, in the simple case of the taxi company, each radio had a manually operated channel selector knob to tune to different frequencies. As the drivers moved around, they would change from channel to channel, the drivers knew which frequency covered approximately what area. When they did not receive a signal from the transmitter, they would try other channels until they found one that worked, the taxi drivers would only speak one at a time, when invited by the base station operator. With TDMA, the transmitting and receiving time slots used by different users in each cell are different from each other, with FDMA, the transmitting and receiving frequencies used by different users in each cell are different from each other. In a simple system, the taxi driver manually tuned to a frequency of a chosen cell to obtain a strong signal. The principle of CDMA is more complex, but achieves the same result, time division multiple access is used in combination with either FDMA or CDMA in a number of systems to give multiple channels within the coverage area of a single cell. The key characteristic of a network is the ability to re-use frequencies to increase both coverage and capacity. The elements that determine frequency reuse are the distance and the reuse factor. The reuse distance, D is calculated as D = R3 N, cells may vary in radius from 1 to 30 kilometres. The boundaries of the cells can also overlap between adjacent cells and large cells can be divided into smaller cells, the frequency reuse factor is the rate at which the same frequency can be used in the network
4.
Sports game
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A sports game is a video game that simulates the practice of sports. Most sports have been recreated with a game, including sports, track and field, extreme sports. Some games emphasize playing the sport, whilst others emphasize strategy. Some, such as Need for Speed, Arch Rivals and Punch-Out, satirize the sport for comic effect. This genre has been throughout the history of video games and is competitive. A number of game series feature the names and characteristics of real teams and players, Sports games involve physical and tactical challenges, and test the players precision and accuracy. Most sports games attempt to model the athletic characteristics required by that sport, including speed, strength, acceleration, accuracy, as with their respective sports, these games take place in a stadium or arena with clear boundaries. Sports games often provide play-by-play and color commentary through the use of recorded audio, Sports games sometimes make use of different modes for different parts of the game. This is especially true in games about American football such as the Madden NFL series, sometimes, other sports games offer a menu where players may select a strategy while play is temporarily suspended. Some sports games also require players to shift roles between the athletes and the coach or manager and these mode switches are more intuitive than other game genres because they reflect actual sports. Older 2D sports games sometimes used a graphical scale, where athletes appeared to be quite large in order to be visible to the player. As sports games have evolved, players have come to expect a realistic graphical scale with a degree of verisimilitude. Sports games often simplify the game physics for ease of play, Games typically take place with a highly accurate time-scale, although they usually allow players to play quick sessions with shorter game quarters or periods. Sports games sometimes treat button-pushes as continuous signals rather than discrete moves, in order to initiate, for example, football games may distinguish between short and the long passes based on how long the player holds a button. Golf games often initiate the backswing with one button-push, and the swing itself is initiated by a subsequent push. ″also can customize person and can make own team″ In 1958, William Higinbotham created a game called Tennis for Two, the players would select the angle at which to put their racket, and pressed a button to return it. Although this game was simple, it demonstrated how an action game could be played on a computer. Video games prior to the late 1970s were primarily played on university mainframe computers under timesharing systems that supported multiple computer terminals on school campuses, the two dominant systems in this era were Digital Equipment Corporations PDP-10 and Control Data Corporations PLATO
5.
Tennis for Two
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Tennis for Two is a sports video game developed in 1958, which simulates a game of tennis, and was one of the first games developed in the early history of video games. He designed the game, displayed on an oscilloscope and played with two custom aluminum controllers, in a few hours, after which he and technician Robert V. Dvorak built it over three weeks. The game was popular during the three-day exhibition, with players lining up to see the game. It was shown again the year with a larger oscilloscope screen. It was then dismantled and largely forgotten until the late 1970s, since then, it has been celebrated as one of the earliest video games, and Brookhaven has made recreations of the original device. In 1958, American physicist William Higinbotham worked in the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, Higinbotham had a bachelors degree in physics from Williams College, and had previously worked as technician in the physics department at Cornell University while unsuccessfully pursuing a PhD there. He served as the head of the division of the Manhattan Project from 1943 to 1945, and began working at Brookhaven in 1947. Once a year, the government research facility held an exhibition for the public, with one day each for high school students, college students, and the general public. Higinbotham designed a game used an oscilloscope to display the path of a simulated ball on a tennis court viewed from the side. The attached computer calculated the path of the ball and reversed its path when it hit the ground, the game also simulated the ball hitting the net if it did not achieve a high enough arc as well as changes in velocity due to drag from air resistance. Two aluminum controllers were attached to the computer, each consisting of a button, pressing the button hit the ball, and turning a knob controlled the angle of the shot. Originally, Higinbotham considered having a knob to control the velocity of the shot. The device was designed in a few hours with the help of colleague Dave Potter and was assembled over three weeks with the help of technician Robert V. Dvorak, excluding the oscilloscope and controller, the games circuitry approximately took up the space of a microwave oven. Tennis for Two was first shown on October 18,1958, the game was rendered as a horizontal line, representing the tennis court, and a short vertical line in the center, representing the tennis net. The first player would press the button on their controller to send the ball, a point of light, over the net, and it would either hit the net, reach the other side of the court, or fly out of bounds. The second player could then hit the back with their controller while it was on their side. Hundreds of visitors lined up to play the new game during its debut, Higinbotham claimed later that the high schoolers liked it best, you couldnt pull them away from it. Due to the popularity, an upgraded version was shown the following year, with enhancements including a larger screen
6.
Pong
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Pong is one of the earliest arcade video games and the first sports arcade video game. It is a tennis sports game featuring simple two-dimensional graphics. While other arcade games such as Computer Space came before it. The game was manufactured by Atari, which released it in 1972. Allan Alcorn created Pong as a training exercise assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, Bushnell based the idea on an electronic ping-pong game included in the Magnavox Odyssey, which later resulted in a lawsuit against Atari. Surprised by the quality of Alcorns work, Bushnell and Atari co-founder Ted Dabney decided to manufacture the game, soon after its release, several companies began producing games that copied Pongs gameplay, and eventually released new types of games. As a result, Atari encouraged its staff to more innovative games. The company released several sequels that built upon the gameplay by adding new features. During the 1975 Christmas season, Atari released a version of Pong exclusively through Sears retail stores. It was also a success and led to numerous copies. The game has been remade on numerous home and portable platforms following its release, Pong has been referenced and parodied in multiple television shows and video games, and has been a part of several video game and cultural exhibitions. Pong is a sports game that simulates table tennis. Players use the paddles to hit a back and forth. The aim is for player to reach eleven points before the opponent. Pong was the first game developed by Atari, after producing Computer Space, Bushnell decided to form a company to produce more games by licensing ideas to other companies. The first contract was with Bally Manufacturing Corporation for a driving game, soon after the founding, Bushnell hired Allan Alcorn because of his experience with electrical engineering and computer science, Bushnell and Dabney also had previously worked with him at Ampex. Prior to working at Atari, Alcorn had no experience with video games, to acclimate Alcorn to creating games, Bushnell gave him a project secretly meant to be a warm-up exercise. Bushnell told Alcorn that he had a contract with General Electric for a product, in 2011, Bushnell stated that the game was inspired by previous versions of electronic tennis he had played before, Bushnell played a version on a PDP-1 computer in 1964 while attending college
7.
Shooter game
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Shooter games are a subgenre of action game, which often test the players speed and reaction time. It includes many subgenres that have the commonality of focusing on the actions of the avatar using some sort of weapon, usually this weapon is a gun, or some other long-range weapon. A common resource found in many games is ammunition. Most commonly, the purpose of a game is to shoot opponents. There are many criteria to determine the type of shooter, listed below are some of the major divisions, using the following, it is possible to categorize almost all shooters developed. It is also possible for a game to have a camera, especially shooting gallery games. Tactical shooters are games that attempt to emulate lifelike ballistics and character damage, other shooter games range further away from realism and towards fantasy, like the Sci-Fi action shooting series titled Lost Planet. Games which feature non-player characters fighting alongside the player, but which are not directly controllable are not considered squad-based games, if a shooter game is playable online, there are several other sharp divisions it can take. Many games will offer differing modes which allow players to choose from various types. In team modes, players are assigned to one of two factions which are competing for some goal, co-op modes have several players on the same faction playing through either single-player or custom missions against computer-controlled enemies. Individual has all players competing with each other and this is often an optional way to categorize a shooter, but in some cases its needed to help distinguish it. A game may quite often heavily rely on stealth as opposed to direct action, others might have large horror elements to them. However, the one thing in common with all shooters is that combat with a gun or similar long range/projectile weapon is the focus of gameplay itself. Shoot em ups are a subgenre of shooters wherein the player may move up and down and left and right around the screen. Shoot em ups share common gameplay, but are categorized by viewpoint. This genre also includes run and gun games which emphasize greater maneuvering or even jumping, such as Thexder, Contra and Metal Slug. Shooting gallery games include light gun games, although many can also be played using a regular joypad, when these debuted, they were typically played from a first-person perspective, with enemy fire that occurred anywhere on the screen damaging or killing the player. One of the earliest examples is the 1985 arcade game Shootout produced by Data East, other games in this subgenre include Blood Bros
8.
Spacewar!
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It was written for the newly installed DEC PDP-1 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After its initial creation, Spacewar was expanded further by students and employees of universities in the area, including Dan Edwards. It was also spread to many of the few dozen, primarily academic, installations of the PDP-1 computer, the game features two spaceships, the needle and the wedge, engaged in a dogfight while maneuvering in the gravity well of a star. Both ships are controlled by human players, each ship has limited fuel for maneuvering and a limited number of torpedoes, and the ships follow Newtonian physics, remaining in motion even when the player is not accelerating. Flying near the star to provide a gravity assist was a common tactic, ships are destroyed when hit with a torpedo or colliding with the star. At any time, the player can engage a hyperspace feature to move to a new, random location on the screen, though each use has an increasing chance of destroying the ship instead. The game was controlled with switches on the PDP-1, though Alan Kotok and Bob Saunders built an early gamepad to reduce the difficulty. Spacewar is one of the most important and influential games in the history of video games. It was extremely popular in the programming community in the 1960s and was widely ported to other computer systems at the time. It has also been recreated in more programming languages for PDP-1 emulators. It directly inspired many other games, such as the first commercial arcade games, Galaxy Game and Computer Space. In 2007, Spacewar was named to a list of the ten most important video games of all time and we had this brand new PDP-1, Steve Russell told Rolling Stone in a 1972 interview. Somebody had built some little pattern-generating programs which made interesting patterns like a kaleidoscope, here was this display that could do all sorts of good things. So we started talking about it, figuring what would be interesting displays and we decided that probably you could make a two-dimensional maneuvering sort of thing, and decided that naturally the obvious thing to do was spaceships. The ships fire torpedoes, which are not affected by the pull of the star. The ships have a number of torpedoes and a limited supply of fuel. Torpedoes are fired one at a time by flipping a switch on the computer or pressing a button on the control pad. The ships follow Newtonian physics, remaining in motion even when the player is not accelerating, each player controls one of the ships and must attempt to shoot down the other ship while avoiding a collision with the star
9.
Racing video game
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They may be based on anything from real-world racing leagues to entirely fantastical settings. In general, they can be distributed along a spectrum anywhere between hardcore simulations, and simpler arcade racing games, Racing games may also fall under the category of sports games. In 1973, Ataris Space Race was an arcade video game where players controlled spaceships that race against opposing ships, while avoiding comets. It was a competitive two-player game controlled using a two-way joystick, the same year, Taito released a similar space-themed racing video game Astro Race, which used an early four-way joystick. The following year, Taito released Speed Race, an early driving racing game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado and it also featured an early racing wheel controller interface with an accelerator, gear shift, speedometer and tachometer. It could be played in either single-player or alternating two-player, where each player attempts to beat the others score, the game was re-branded as Wheels by Midway Games for release in the United States and was influential on later racing games. That same year, Sega released Moto-Cross, an early motorbike racing game, based on the motocross competition. Also known as Man T. T. Sega re-branded the game as Fonz, the game also introduced the use of haptic feedback, which caused the motorcycle handlebars to vibrate during a collision with another vehicle. Road Champion, released by Taito in 1978, was an overhead-view timed car racing game where players try to race ahead of the opposing cars and cross the finish line first to become the winner. In 1979, Segas Head On was a game that played like a maze chase game and is thus considered a precursor to the 1980 hit Pac-Man. Monaco GP, released by Sega in 1979, improved upon previous overhead-view racing games with a scrolling view. It also featured an early example of a radar, to show the cars location on the map. Turbo, released by Sega in 1981, was the first racing game to feature a third-person perspective and it was also the first racing game to use sprite scaling with full-color graphics. The most influential racing game was released in 1982, Pole Position, developed by Namco and published by Atari in North America. It was the first game to be based on a racing circuit, and the first to feature a qualifying lap. While not the first third-person racing game, Pole Position established the conventions of the genre, tX-1, developed by Tatsumi in 1983, was licensed to Namco, who in turn licensed it to Atari in America, thus the game is considered a successor to Pole Position II. It also introduced nonlinear gameplay by allowing players to choose which path to drive through after each checkpoint, if the fuel runs out, the game would end. An early attempt at creating a driving simulator was Tomys Turnin Turbo Dashboard
10.
PLATO (computer system)
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PLATO was the first generalized computer-assisted instruction system. Starting in 1960, it ran on the University of Illinois ILLIAC I computer, by the late 1970s, it supported several thousand graphics terminals distributed worldwide, running on nearly a dozen different networked mainframe computers. PLATO was designed and built by the University of Illinois and functioned for four decades, offering coursework to UIUC students, local schools, courses were taught in a range of subjects, including Latin, chemistry, education and primary mathematics. Rights to market PLATO as a product were licensed by Control Data Corporation. CDC President William Norris planned to make PLATO a force in the computer world, PLATO nevertheless built a strong following in certain markets, and the last production PLATO system did not shut down until 2006, coincidentally just a month after Norris died. Bill that provided free education to World War II veterans, higher education was limited to a minority of the US population. The trend towards greater enrollment was notable by the early 1950s, to wit, if computerized automation increased factory production, it could do the same for academic instruction. The USSRs 1957 launching of the Sputnik I artificial satellite energized the United States government into spending more on science, after weeks of meetings they were unable to agree on a single design. Before conceding failure, Alpert mentioned the matter to laboratory assistant Donald Bitzer, Bitzer, regarded as the Father of PLATO, recognized that in order to provide quality computer-based education, good graphics were critical. This at a time when 10-character-per-second teleprinters were the norm, in 1960, the first system, PLATO I, operated on the local ILLIAC I computer. It included a set for display and a special keyboard for navigating the systems function menus, PLATO II, in 1961. The only remote PLATO III terminal was located near the capitol in Springfield. It was connected to the PLATO III system by a video connection, accordingly, in 1967 the National Science Foundation granted the team steady funding, allowing Alpert to set up the Computer-based Education Research Laboratory at the university. In 1972 a new system named PLATO IV was ready for operation, the PLATO IV terminal was a major innovation. It included Bitzers orange plasma display invention which incorporated both memory and bitmapped graphics into one display and this plasma display included fast vector line drawing capability and ran at 1260 baud, rendering 60 lines or 180 characters per second. The display was a 512×512 bitmap, with character and vector plotting done by hardwired logic. Users could provide their own characters to support rudimentary bitmap graphics, compressed air powered a piston-driven microfiche image selector that permitted colored images to be projected on the back of the screen under program control. The PLATO IV display also included a 16×16 grid infrared touch panel allowing students to answer questions by touching anywhere on the screen and it was also possible to connect the terminal to peripheral devices
11.
Empire (PLATO)
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Empire is the name of a computer game written for the PLATO system in 1973. It is significant for being probably the first networked multiplayer arena shooter-style game. It may also be the first networked multiplayer action game, the first version, Empire I, was written by John Daleske as project coursework for an education class in the Spring of 1973. Silas Warner helped out by providing Daleske with disk space, the first version of the game was a strategic turn-based game for eight players. Each had ships, industry, and budgets, players had to keep the budget up to build more ships, maintain industry to help pay for it, provide raw materials to turn into goods, and trade. This was likely the earliest example of an online, multi-player, games prior to this were two player or one player against a computer. Empire II, written in the Fall of 1973, was substantially different, players each captained a starship and could fire torpedoes at each other. Silas Warner liked the version, and with Daleskes permission resurrected it under the name Conquest. The initial versions were written in longhand, with no printouts available as Daleske was at a remote computing center, in late 1973, Daleske rewrote the game again, creating Empire III in a 36-hour programming blitz, completing the effort in early 1974. This version of the game, with a few modifications may still be played on the Cyber1 PLATO system. In this version of the game, the physics are greatly improved. Up to seven teams and fifty players could participate, players could opt to be in an eighth rogue or non-affiliated team. In 1981, Steve Peltz wrote a tournament version of the game and these were most often won by the Orion team. Empire was a popular game. Usage logs from the PLATO system at the Computer-based Education Research Laboratory at UIUC indicate that between 1978 and 1985, users spent about 300,000 hours playing Empire, Empire is still played on the system at www. cyber1. org. Empire inspired many derivative games, including Trek82, Trek83, ROBOTREK, Xtrek, Empire was adapted without permission for the Apple II computer by Robert Woodhead of Wizardry fame as a game called Galactic Attack. PLATO Conquest can still be found on the NovaNET PLATO systems, in 1982 Jef Poskanzer wrote a version of the space-battle Empire game called Conquest for VAX/VMS computers. Although PLATO terminals had touch panels, they did not have mice, commands involving directions to change course and fire weapons are entered as degree headings, with 0 being to the right,90 up,180 left, and 270 down
12.
First-person shooter
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The first-person shooter shares common traits with other shooter games, which in turn fall under the heading action game. From the genres inception, advanced 3D or pseudo-3D graphics have challenged hardware development, the first-person shooter has since been traced as far back as Maze War, development of which began in 1973, and 1974s Spasim. 1998s Half-Life—along with its 2004 sequel Half-Life 2—enhanced the narrative and puzzle elements, in 1999, Half-Lifes mod Counter-Strike was released and, together with Doom, is perhaps one of the most influential first-person shooters. GoldenEye 007 was a landmark first-person shooter for home consoles, while the Halo series heightened the consoles commercial and critical appeal as a platform for first-person shooter titles. In the 21st century, the shooter is the most commercially viable video game genre. Several first-person shooters have been popular games for eSports and competitive gaming competitions as well, first-person shooters are a type of three-dimensional shooter game, featuring a first-person point of view with which the player sees the action through the eyes of the player character. They are unlike third-person shooters, in which the player can see the character they are controlling, the primary design element is combat, mainly involving firearms. A more important key difference is that first-person light-gun shooters like Virtua Cop often feature on-rails movement, the first-person shooter may be considered a distinct genre in itself, or a type of shooter game, in turn a subgenre of the wider action game genre. Following the release of Doom in 1993, games in this style were commonly termed Doom clones, in time this term has largely been replaced by first-person shooter. Wolfenstein 3D, released in 1992, the year before Doom, has credited with inventing the genre. There are occasional disagreements regarding the design elements which constitute a first-person shooter. For example, Deus Ex or BioShock may be considered as first-person shooters, some commentators extend the definition to include combat flight simulators where the cockpit or vehicle takes place of the hands and weapons. Like most shooter games, first-person shooters involve an avatar, one or more ranged weapons, and a varying number of enemies. Because they take place in a 3D environment, these tend to be somewhat more realistic than 2D shooter games. First-person shooters played on computers are most often controlled with a combination of a keyboard. This system has claimed as superior to that found in console games. It is common to display the characters hands and weaponry in the view, with a head-up display showing health. Often, it is possible to overlay a map of the surrounding area, first-person shooters often focus on action gameplay, with fast-paced and bloody firefights, though some place a greater emphasis on narrative, problem-solving and logic puzzles
13.
Arcade cabinet
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A video game arcade cabinet, also known as a video arcade machine or video coin-op, is the housing within which a video arcade games hardware resides. Most cabinets designed since the mid-1980s conform to the JAMMA wiring standard, some include additional connectors for features not included in the standard. Note, Because arcade cabinets vary according to the games they were built for or contain, they may not possess all of the parts listed below, A monitor. They may display either raster or vector graphics, raster being most common, standard resolution is between 262.5 and 315 vertical lines, depending on the refresh rate. Slower refresh rates allow for better vertical resolution, monitors may be oriented horizontally or vertically, depending on the game. Some games use more than one monitor, some newer cabinets have monitors that can display high-definition video. Printed circuit boards or arcade system boards, the actual hardware upon which the game runs, some systems, such as the SNK Neo-Geo MVS, use a main board with game carts. Some main boards may hold multiple game carts as well, a power supply to provide DC power to the arcade system boards and low voltage lighting for the coin slots and lighted buttons. A marquee, a sign above the monitor displaying the games title and they are often brightly colored and backlit. A bezel, which is the border around the monitor and it may contain instructions or artwork. A control panel, a surface near the monitor, upon which the games controls are arranged. Control panels sometimes have playing instructions, players often pile their coins or tokens on the control panels of upright and cocktail cabinets. Coin slots, coin returns and the box, which allow for the exchange of money or tokens. They are usually below the control panel, very often, translucent red plastic buttons are placed in between the coin return and the coin slot. When they are pressed, a coin or token that has become jammed in the mechanism is returned to the player. Early coin slots could be defeated using a gas fire or gas oven igniter held against the steel bodywork of the cabinet. In some arcades, the slot is replaced with a card reader that reads data from a game card bought from the arcade operator. The sides of the cabinet are usually decorated with brightly coloured stickers or paint
14.
Life (gaming)
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In video gaming, a life is a play-turn that a player-character has, defined as the period between start and end of play. It is sometimes called a chance, particularly in all-ages games, generally, if the player loses all their health points, they lose a life. Losing all lives usually grants the player-character game over, forcing them to restart or stop playing. The number of lives a player is granted varies per game type, lives give novice players more chances to learn the mechanics of a video game, while allowing more advanced players to take more risks. Lives may have originated from the mechanic of having a limited amount of balls. A finite number of lives became a feature in arcade games. Much like in games, the players goal was usually to score as many points as possible with their limited number of lives. Later, checkpoints and saving allowed players that lost a life to continue the game at a specific point and it is common in action games for the player to have multiple lives and chances to earn more in-game. This way, a player can recover from making a disastrous mistake, role-playing games and adventure games usually grant only one, but allow player-characters to reload a saved game. Lives set up the situation where dying is not necessarily the end of the game, multiple lives also allow novice players a chance to learn a games mechanics before the game is over. Another reason to implement lives is that the ability to earn extra lives provide an additional incentive for the player. The problem that may arise when a player loses their lives frequently is that it discourages the player from continuing the game fairly. If losing a life causes a loss of equipment, skills or points, a player may feel inclined to reset a game to its previous save point whenever they are losing a life
15.
Gauntlet (1985 video game)
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Gauntlet is a fantasy-themed hack and slash 1985 arcade game by Atari Games. Released in October 1985, Atari ultimately sold a total of 7,848 Gauntlet video game arcade cabinets and it is noted as being one of the first multi-player dungeon crawl arcade games. The players, up to four at once in the version, select among four playable fantasy-based characters, The Warrior, Wizard, Valkyrie. Each character has his or her own strength and weaknesses. For example, the Warrior is strongest in hand-to-hand combat, the Wizard has the most powerful magic, the Valkyrie has the best armor and the Elf is the fastest in movement. Upon selecting a character, the gameplay is set within a series of top-down, third-person perspective mazes where the object is to find. An assortment of items can be located in each level that increase players characters health, unlock doors, gain more points. The enemies are an assortment of fantasy-based monsters, including ghosts, grunts, demons, lobbers, sorcerers, each enters the level through specific generators, which can be destroyed. While there are no bosses in the game, the most dangerous enemy is Death, who can not only drain a characters health, while contact with enemies reduces the players health, health also slowly drains on its own, thus creating a time limit. When a characters health reaches zero, that character dies, the character can be revived in place with full health by spending a game credit within a certain short time window after it died. This allows even the least proficient players to keep playing indefinitely, aside from the ability to have up to four players at once, the game is also noted for the narrators voice, which was produced by a Texas Instruments TMS5220C speech chip. The TMS5220C speech was encoded by Earl Vickers, the narrator frequently makes statements repeating the games rules, including, Shots do not hurt other players – yet, Remember, dont shoot food. And Warrior needs food – badly, occasionally, the narrator will comment on the battle by saying, Ive not seen such bravery. or Lets see you get out of here. When a players life force points fell below 200, the states, Your life force is running out, Elf needs food. To accommodate up to four players, the panel is wider than other standard uprights. Each player has a joystick and two buttons, one for Fire and one for Magic, the Magic button also starts the game. After Gauntlets release, other games started using this design, so it was a conversion target for newer games after it had its run. It is possible to play the version of the game with a hypothetically unlimited amount of time on one credit, especially with the Warrior
16.
Quartet (video game)
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Quartet is a 1986 arcade game by Sega. Quartet allows one to four players to guide a set of characters through a base taken over by an army of robots, players control either Joe, Mary, Lee or Edgar across a number of sideways-scrolling levels. Players can find various power-ups during play, such as a jet pack that allowed characters to stay airborne, springs to jump higher, speed boots, and point bonuses. Each character has a characteristic weapon type, which can be upgraded by picking up a coloured bouncing orb that bounced across the screen occasionally. Picking up the orb when it is a players colour gives a power up. Available in arcades in the same timeframe as Gauntlet, Quartet provided another option for more than two players, the game was ported to the Sega Master System. However, only Mary and Edgar were playable, with the title referring to a four-person band that doesnt exist in the game. Because of this, in Japan the game was retitled Double Target, marys character design was also altered between regional versions. In the Japanese version Mary had more Asian-like features, whereas in the versions she has Caucasian features instead. The game was ported to home computers Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC. The tunes Oki Rap and FM Funk were later recycled for 1991s Spider-Man, Quartet was mentioned in episode 62 of The Biggest Problem in the Universe, in the part where Maddox described his first cartoon crush which was Mary from the game. Quartet 2 is a version of Quartet, which was only released as a conversion kit. While both games were released in the year, the differences are a two-player mode instead of four. In addition, new designs were loaded into Quartet 2, giving the game 32 distinct levels. Quartet at the Killer List of Videogames Quartet at SpectrumComputing. co. uk Quartet description at arcade-history. com
17.
Star Trek: The Original Series
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Star Trek is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry that follows the adventures of the starship USS Enterprise and its crew. It later acquired the retronym of Star Trek, The Original Series to distinguish the show within the franchise that it began. The show is set in the Milky Way galaxy, roughly during the 2260s, the ship and crew are led by Captain James T. Kirk, first officer and science officer Spock, and chief medical officer Leonard McCoy. Shatners voice-over introduction during each episodes opening credits stated the purpose, Space. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise and its five-year mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. The series was produced from September 1966 to December 1967 by Norway Productions and Desilu Productions, Star Trek aired on NBC from September 8,1966 to June 3,1969 and was actually seen first on September 6,1966, on Canadas CTV network. Star Treks Nielsen ratings while on NBC were low, and the network cancelled it after three seasons and 79 episodes. Several years later, the became a bona fide hit in broadcast syndication, remaining so throughout the 1970s, achieving cult classic status. The series contains significant elements of Space Western, as described by Gene Roddenberry, on March 11,1964, Gene Roddenberry, a long-time fan of science fiction, drafted a short treatment for a science-fiction television series that he called Star Trek. This was to be set on board a large interstellar spaceship S. S. Yorktown in the 23rd century, whose crew was dedicated to exploring a small portion of our galaxy. Some of the influences on his idea that Roddenberry noted included A. E. van Vogts tales of the spaceship Space Beagle, Eric Frank Russells Marathon series of stories, and the film Forbidden Planet. Roddenberry also drew heavily from C. S. Foresters Horatio Hornblower novels that depict a sea captain who exercises broad discretionary authority on distant sea missions of noble purpose. Roddenberry often humorously referred to Captain Kirk as Horatio Hornblower in Space, Roddenberry had extensive experience in writing for series about the Old West that had been popular television fare earlier in the 1960s and the 1950s. Armed with this background, the first draft deliberately characterizes the new show as Wagon Train to the stars. Like the familiar Wagon Train, each episode was to be an adventure story, set within the overarching structure of a continuing journey. With the notable exception of Star Trek, Deep Space Nine, all future television, in Roddenberrys original concept, the protagonist was Captain Robert April of the starship S. S. Yorktown. This character was developed into Captain Christopher Pike, first portrayed by Jeffrey Hunter, in April 1964, Roddenberry presented the Star Trek draft to Desilu Productions, a leading independent television production company. He met with Herb Solow, Desilus Director of Production, Solow saw promise in the idea and signed a three-year program-development contract with Roddenberry
18.
Dungeons & Dragons
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Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997 and it was derived from miniature wargames with a variation of the Chainmail game serving as the initial rule system. D&Ds publication is commonly recognized as the beginning of modern role-playing games, D&D departs from traditional wargaming and assigns each player a specific character to play instead of a military formation. These characters embark upon imaginary adventures within a fantasy setting, a Dungeon Master serves as the games referee and storyteller, while maintaining the setting in which the adventures occur and playing the role of the inhabitants. The characters form a party that interacts with the settings inhabitants, together they solve dilemmas, engage in battles and gather treasure and knowledge. In the process the characters experience points to become increasingly powerful over a series of sessions. The early success of Dungeons & Dragons led to a proliferation of game systems. Despite this competition, D&D remains the leader in the role-playing game industry. In 1977, the game was split into two branches, the relatively rules-light game system of Dungeons & Dragons and the more structured, AD&D 2nd Edition was published in 1989. In 2000, the line of the game was discontinued. These rules formed the basis of the d20 System which is available under the Open Game License for use by other publishers, Dungeons & Dragons version 3.5 was released in June 2003, with a 4th edition in June 2008. A 5th edition was released during the half of 2014. The game has been supplemented by many adventures as well as commercial campaign settings suitable for use by regular gaming groups. The game has won awards and has been translated into many languages beyond the original English. Dungeons & Dragons is a structured yet open-ended role-playing game and it is normally played indoors with the participants seated around a tabletop. Typically, each player only a single character, which represents an individual in a fictional setting. During the course of play, each player directs the actions of their character, a game often continues over a series of meetings to complete a single adventure, and longer into a series of related gaming adventures, called a campaign. The results of the choices and the overall storyline for the game are determined by the Dungeon Master according to the rules of the game
19.
University of New Hampshire
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The University of New Hampshire is a public research university in the University System of New Hampshire, in the United States. The universitys Durham campus, comprising six colleges, is located in the Seacoast region of the state, a seventh college, the University of New Hampshire at Manchester, occupies the universitys campus in Manchester, the states largest city. The University of New Hampshire School of Law, known as the Franklin Pierce Law Center until 2010, is located in Concord, the University of New Hampshire was founded and incorporated in 1866, as a land grant college in Hanover in connection with Dartmouth College. In 1893, UNH moved to Durham, with over 15,000 students between its Durham, Manchester, and Concord campuses, UNH is the largest university in the state. The university is one of only nine land, sea and space grant institutions in the nation, since July 1,2007, Mark W. Huddleston has served as the universitys 19th president. The Morrill Act of 1862 granted federal lands to New Hampshire for the establishment of an agricultural-mechanical college, in 1866, the university was first incorporated as the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts in Hanover, New Hampshire, in association with Dartmouth College. The institution was officially associated with Dartmouth College and was directed by Dartmouths president, Durham resident Benjamin Thompson left his farm and assets to the state for the establishment of an agricultural college. On January 30,1890, Benjamin Thompson died and his will became public, on March 5,1891 Gov. Hiram Americus Tuttle signed an act accepting the conditions of Thompsons will. On April 10,1891, Gov. Tuttle signed a bill authorizing the colleges move to Durham, New Hampshire. In 1892, the Board of Trustees hired Charles Eliot to draw a plan for the first five campus buildings, Thompson, Conant, Nesmith, and Hewitt Shops. Eliot visited Durham and worked for three months to create a plan prior to the move to Durham, the Class of 1892, excited about the pending move to Durham, held commencement exercises in an unfinished barn on the Durham campus. On April 18,1892, the Board of Trustees voted to authorize the faculty to all the arrangements for the packing. In fall 1893, classes began in Durham with 51 freshmen and 13 upperclassmen. Graduate study was established in fall 1893 for the first time. The number of students and the lack of funds for dormitories caused a housing crunch. The lack of housing caused difficulty for attracting women to the university, in 1908, construction on Smith Hall, the first womens dorm, was completed using private and state funds. Prior to the construction of Fairchild Hall in 1915 for male students,50 freshmen lived in the basement of DeMerritt Hall, with the continuing housing shortage for men, the administration encouraged the growth of the UNH Greek system. From the late 1910s through the 1930s, the fraternity system expanded and provided room, in 1923, Gov. Fred Herbert Brown signed a bill changing the name of the college to University of New Hampshire
20.
PDP-11
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The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a succession of products in the PDP series. The PDP-11 had several innovative features, and was easier to program than its predecessors through the additional general-purpose registers. The PDP-11 replaced the PDP-8 in many applications, although both product lines lived in parallel for more than 10 years. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sold and its successor in the mid-range minicomputer niche was the 32-bit VAX-11, named as a nod to the PDP-11s popularity. The PDP-11 is considered by experts to be the most popular minicomputer ever. Design features of the PDP-11 influenced the design of most late-1970s computer systems including the Intel x86, design features of PDP-11 operating systems, as well as other operating systems from Digital Equipment, influenced the design of other operating systems such as CP/M and hence also MS-DOS. For a decade, the PDP-11 was the smallest system that could run Unix and it is commonly stated that the C programming language took advantage of several low-level PDP-11–dependent programming features, albeit not originally by design. In 1967–68, DEC engineers designed a 16-bit, word-addressed machine, management cancelled the project and some of the engineers later left DEC and produced it as the Data General Nova. A subsequent effort, code-named Desk Calculator, looked at a variety of options before choosing what became the 16-bit PDP-11, DECs previous PDP-8 and PDP-9 had 12- and 18-bit words, the PDP-11 family was announced in January 1970 and shipments began early that year. DEC sold over 170,000 PDP-11s in the 1970s, initially manufactured of small-scale transistor–transistor logic, a single-board large scale integration version of the processor was developed in 1975. A two-or-three-chip processor, the J-11 was developed in 1979, the last models of the PDP-11 line were the PDP-11/94 and -11/93 introduced in 1990. The PDP-11 processor architecture has an orthogonal instruction set. For example, instead of such as load and store. More complex instructions such as add likewise can have memory, register, input, most operands can apply any of eight addressing modes to eight registers. The addressing modes provide register, immediate, absolute, relative, deferred, and indexed addressing, use of relative addressing lets a machine-language program be position-independent. Early models of the PDP-11 had no dedicated bus for input/output, an input/output device determined the memory addresses to which it would respond, and specified its own interrupt vector and interrupt priority. DEC openly published the basic Unibus specifications, even offering prototyping bus interface circuit boards, the Unibus made the PDP-11 suitable for custom peripherals. Higher-performance members of the PDP-11 family, starting with the PDP-11/45 Unibus and 11/83 Q-bus systems, instead, memory was interfaced by dedicated circuitry and space in the CPU cabinet, while the Unibus continued to be used for I/O only
21.
Shared memory
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In computer science, shared memory is memory that may be simultaneously accessed by multiple programs with an intent to provide communication among them or avoid redundant copies. Shared memory is an efficient means of passing data between programs, depending on context, programs may run on a single processor or on multiple separate processors. Using memory for communication inside a program, e. g. among its multiple threads, is also referred to as shared memory. In computer hardware, shared memory refers to a block of random access memory that can be accessed by several different central processing units in a computer system. A shared memory system is easy to program since all processors share a single view of data. Shared memory computers cannot scale very well, such cache coherence protocols can, when they work well, provide extremely high-performance access to shared information between multiple processors. On the other hand, they can become overloaded and become a bottleneck to performance. Technologies like crossbar switches, Omega networks, HyperTransport or front-side bus can be used to dampen the bottleneck-effects, the alternatives to shared memory are distributed memory and distributed shared memory, each having a similar set of issues. In computer software, shared memory is either a method of inter-process communication and this is most often used for shared libraries and for XIP. Since both processes can access the memory area like regular working memory, this is a very fast way of communication. POSIX provides a standardized API for using shared memory, POSIX Shared Memory and this uses the function shm_open from sys/mman. h. POSIX interprocess communication includes the shared-memory functions shmat, shmctl, shmdt, unix System V provides an API for shared memory as well. BSD systems provide anonymous mapped memory which can be used by several processes, the shared memory created by shm_open is persistent. It stays in the system until explicitly removed by a process and this has a drawback that if the process crashes and fails to clean up shared memory it will stay until system shutdown. POSIX also provides the mmap API for mapping files into memory, linux distributions based on the 2.6 kernel and later offer /dev/shm as shared memory in the form of a RAM disk, more specifically as a world-writable directory that is stored in memory. Both the RedHat and Debian based distributions include it by default, support for this type of RAM disk is completely optional within the kernel configuration file. On Windows the function CreateSharedMemory can be used to create a shared memory, alternatively one can use CreateFileMapping and MapViewOfFile functions to map a region of a file into memory in multiple processes. Some C++ libraries provide a portable and object-oriented access to shared memory functionality, for example, Boost contains Boost. Interprocess C++ Library
22.
BASIC
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BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use. In 1964, John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz designed the original BASIC language at Dartmouth College in the U. S. state of New Hampshire and they wanted to enable students in fields other than science and mathematics to use computers. At the time, nearly all use of computers required writing custom software, versions of BASIC became widespread on microcomputers in the mid-1970s and 1980s. Microcomputers usually shipped with BASIC, often in the machines firmware, having an easy-to-learn language on these early personal computers allowed small business owners, professionals, hobbyists, and consultants to develop custom software on computers they could afford. In the 2010s, BASIC remains popular in many computing dialects and in new languages influenced by BASIC, before the mid-1960s, the only computers were huge mainframe computers. Users submitted jobs on punched cards or similar media to specialist computer operators, the computer stored these, then used a batch processing system to run this queue of jobs one after another, allowing very high levels of utilization of these expensive machines. As the performance of computing hardware rose through the 1960s, multi-processing was developed and this allowed a mix of batch jobs to be run together, but the real revolution was the development of time-sharing. The original BASIC language was released on May 1,1964 by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz, the acronym BASIC comes from the name of an unpublished paper by Thomas Kurtz. BASIC was designed to allow students to write computer programs for the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System. It was intended specifically for technical users who did not have or want the mathematical background previously expected. Being able to use a computer to support teaching and research was quite novel at the time, the language was based on FORTRAN II, with some influences from ALGOL60 and with additions to make it suitable for timesharing. Wanting use of the language to become widespread, its designers made the available free of charge. They also made it available to schools in the Hanover area. In the following years, as dialects of BASIC appeared, Kemeny. A version was a part of the Pick operating system from 1973 onward. During this period a number of computer games were written in BASIC. A number of these were collected by DEC employee David H. Ahl and he later collected a number of these into book form,101 BASIC Computer Games, published in 1973. During the same period, Ahl was involved in the creation of a computer for education use
23.
Tim Stryker
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Timothy J. Stryker, better known as Tim Stryker or Stryker was a computer programmer, best known as the creator of MajorBBS, a computer bulletin board software package. Stryker graduated from Northfield Mount Hermon School in 1972, and received his bachelors degree in physics from Brown University in 1977. Stryker and Ken Wasserman wrote the game Flash Attack for the Commodore PET computer, one of the earliest real-time strategy computer games, it was later rewritten for MS-DOS machines, and allowed up to four players in realtime, interconnected modems dialed into MajorBBS. Stryker authored the Centuri arcade vector game Aztarac in 1983, although not a commercial success, this arcade game is highly prized by collectors not only for its rarity, but for its graphics. During the attract mode of the game, quickly spinning the spinner control reveals a message in the starfield. Stryker founded Galacticomm in 1985, and created MajorBBS which supported real-time teleconference, gaming, discussion forums, user profiles, and file transfer sections. Later in Galacticomms development, Stryker hired Scott Brinker, originally of Moonshae Isles BBS, the two of them were the heart of Galacticomm. Tim Stryker was an advocate of electronic democracy, and began a movement called Superdemocracy to computerize voting. He dreamed of creating the perfect society based on compassion and love, Stryker suffered from severe depression, and was found dead of a self-inflicted shotgun wound in the mountains of Colorado on 6 August 1996 at the age of 41. Think a little, Evolutionary Perspectives On The Future Of Civilization, boca Raton, FL, USA, Cool Hand Communications. The Major BBS Restoration Project Historical information about Galacticomm, The Major BBS, notes on Tim Stryker, Flash Attack, RPL etc. Archived from the original on 2017-03-13, rpl - A Compiled Language for the PET/CBM Series of Computers. Archived from the original on 2017-03-13
24.
Byte (magazine)
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Byte magazine was an American microcomputer magazine, influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage. Coverage was in-depth with much detail, rather than user-oriented. Print publication ceased in 1998 and online publication in 2013, Byte started in 1975, shortly after the first personal computers appeared as kits advertised in the back of electronics magazines. Byte was published monthly, with a yearly subscription price of $10. In 1975 Wayne Green was the editor and publisher of 73 and his ex-wife, on May 25th we made a deal with the publisher of a small computer hobby magazine to take over as editor of a new publication which would start in August. Carl Helmers published a series of six articles in 1974 that detailed the design and construction of his Experimenters Computer System, in January 1975 this became the monthly ECS magazine with 400 subscribers. The last issue was published on May 12,1975 and in June the subscribers were mailed a notice announcing Byte magazine, carl wrote to another hobbyist newsletter, Micro-8 Computer User Group Newsletter, and described his new job as editor of Byte magazine. I got a note in the mail about two weeks ago from Wayne Green, publisher of 73 Magazine essentially saying hello and why dont you come up, the net result of a follow up is the decision to create BYTE magazine using the facilities of Green Publishing Inc. I will end up with the focus for the magazine. Virginia Londner Green had returned to 73 in the December 1974 issue, the first five issues of Byte were published by Green Publishing and the name was changed to Byte Publications starting with the February 1976 issue. Carl Helmers was a co-owner of Byte Publications, the first four issues were produced in the offices of 73 and Wayne Green was listed as the publisher. One day in November 1975 Wayne came to work and found that the Byte magazine staff had moved out, the February 1976 issue of Byte has a short story about the move. After a start which reads like a light opera with an episode or two reminiscent of the Keystone Cops, Byte magazine finally has moved into separate offices of its own. Wayne Green was not happy about losing Byte magazine so he was going to start a new one called Kilobyte, Byte quickly trademarked KILOBYTE as a cartoon series in Byte magazine. The new magazine was called Kilobaud, there was competition and animosity between Byte Publications and 73 Inc. but both remained in the small town of Peterborough, New Hampshire. Byte was able to attract advertising and articles from many well-knowns, soon-to-be-well-knowns, articles in the first issue included Which Microprocessor For You. by Hal Chamberlin, Write Your Own Assembler by Dan Fylstra and Serial Interface by Don Lancaster. Advertisements from Godbout, MITS, Processor Technology, SCELBI, and Sphere appear, early articles in Byte were do-it-yourself electronic or software projects to improve small computers. A continuing feature was Ciarcias Circuit Cellar, a column in which electronic engineer Steve Ciarcia described small projects to modify or attach to a computer, Byte ran Microsofts first advertisement, as Micro-Soft, to sell a BASIC interpreter for 8080-based computers
25.
Commodore PET
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The Commodore PET is a line of home/personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. The first model, which was named the PET2001, was the personal computer ever made available to retail consumers, after the Apple II. In the 1970s Commodore was one of many companies selling calculators designed around Dallas-based Texas Instruments chips. Commodore responded to this by searching for a set they could purchase outright. At Commodore, Peddle convinced Jack Tramiel that calculators were a dead-end, in September 1976 Peddle got a demonstration of Jobs and Wozniaks Apple II prototype, when Jobs was offering to sell it to Commodore, but Commodore considered Jobs offer too expensive. Tramiel demanded that Peddle, Bill Seiler, and John Feagans create a computer in time for the June 1977 Consumer Electronics Show, tramiels son, Leonard, helped design the PETSCII graphic characters and acted as quality control. The result was the first all-in-one home computer, the PET and its 6502 processor controlled the screen, keyboard, cassette tape recorders and any peripherals connected to one of the computers several expansion ports. The machine also included a built-in Datasette for data storage located on the front of the case, the data transfer rate to cassette tape was 1500 baud, but the data was recorded to tape twice for safety, giving an effective rate of 750 baud. The PET2001 was announced at the Winter CES in January 1977, however, the PET was back-ordered for months and to ease deliveries, early in 1978 Commodore decided to cancel the 4 kB version. However, this took six months to finally happen, during which time Microsoft lost money. At the end of the year, the company was saved by Apples decision to license Microsoft BASIC for the Apple II line. The key tops also tended to rub off easily, reliability was fairly poor, although that was not atypical of many early microcomputers. Because of the keyboard on the PET, external replacement ones quickly appeared. On the other hand, Commodore was a year behind Apple, in 1979, Commodore replaced the original PET2001 with an improved model known as the 2001-N. The new machine used a standard green-phosphor monitor in place of the blue in the original 2001. It now had a conventional, full-sized keyboard and no longer sported the built-in cassette recorder, the kernel ROM was upgraded to add support for Commodores newly introduced disk drive line. It was offered in 8kB, 16kB, or 32kB models as the 2001-N8, 2001-N16, the 2001-N switched to using conventional DRAM instead of the 6550 SRAM in the original model. PET 2001-8Ns had eight 2108 DRAMs and 2001-16Ns used sixteen 2108s, the PET4016 used eight 4116 chips
26.
Type-in program
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Type-ins were often seen as useful for learning programming, allowing users to begin their programming efforts by porting a program written for one system for use on another. Here is an example of a type-in, Listing 1. 20 GOTO10 To use this type-in, a reader would take a copy of the program listing, such as from a magazine or book, sit down at a computer. Computers of this era automatically booted into a programming environment – even the commands to load, after typing the program in, the user would be able to run it and also to save it to disk or cassette for future use. Users were often cautioned to save the program before running it, as errors could result in a crash requiring a reboot, the simple program displayed above is a trivial example - many type-ins were fully functional games or application software, sometimes rivaling commercial packages. Type-ins were usually written in BASIC or a combination of a BASIC loader, in some cases, a special program for entering machine language numerically was provided. Programs with a language component sometimes included assembly language listings for users who had assemblers. The downside of type-ins was labor, the work required to enter a medium-sized type-in was on the order of hours. If the resulting program turned out not to be to the users taste, additionally, type-ins were error-prone, both for users and for the magazines. This was especially true of the language parts of BASIC programs. While a BASIC program would stop with an error at an incorrect statement. This made the entry of programs difficult. To counter the difficulty of keying a type-in, the MIKBUG machine code monitor for the Motorola 6800 of the late 1970s incorporated a checksum into its program listings. Later, some magazines developed checksum programs of their own, there were many different styles of checksum program, usually depending on the type of program being entered and on the complexity of the checksummer. Checksummers were proprietary and were printed in every issue of the magazine. The most basic distinction was whether the checksummer was run only once, the former type either read the typed-in computer code off a disk, or read it directly from memory. The checksum program would print a checksum for each line of code, the magazine would print the correct checksums adjacent to the listing, and the user would compare the two to catch errors. More advanced checksum programs were used interactively and they would take a line of code as it was entered and immediately produce a checksum which could be compared to the printed listing
27.
Hangman (game)
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Hangman is a paper and pencil guessing game for two or more players. One player thinks of a word, phrase or sentence and the other tries to guess it by suggesting letters or numbers, the word to guess is represented by a row of dashes, representing each letter of the word. In most variants, proper nouns, such as names, places, if the guessing player suggests a letter which occurs in the word, the other player writes it in all its correct positions. If the suggested letter or number does not occur in the word, the player guessing the word may, at any time, attempt to guess the whole word. If the word is correct, the game is over and the guesser wins, otherwise, the other player may choose to penalize the guesser by adding an element to the diagram. On the other hand, if the player makes enough incorrect guesses to allow his opponent to complete the diagram, the game is also over. However, the guesser can also win by guessing all the letters or numbers that appears in the word, thereby completing the word, as the name of the game suggests, the diagram is designed to look like a hanging man. Although debates have arisen about the taste of this picture. A common alternative for teachers is to draw a tree with ten apples. The exact nature of the diagram differs, some players draw the gallows before play, some players begin with no diagram at all, and drawing the individual elements of the gallows as part of the game, effectively giving the guessing players more chances. The amount of detail on the man can also vary, affecting the number of chances, some players include a face on the head, either all at once or one feature at a time. Some modifications to play to increase the difficulty level are sometimes implemented, such as limiting guesses on high-frequency consonants. Another alternative is to give the definition of the word, this can be used to facilitate the learning of a foreign language. The origins of Hangman are obscure meaning not discovered, but it seems to have arisen in Victorian times, says Tony Augarde, the game is mentioned in Alice Bertha Gommes Traditional Games in 1894 under the name Birds, Beasts and Fishes. The rules are simple, a player writes down the first and last letters of a word, in other sources, the game is called Gallows, The Game of Hangin, or Hanger. On the other hand, the same lists can be used by the setter to stump their opponent by choosing a word which deliberately avoids common letters or one that contains rare letters. Another common strategy is to guess vowels first, as English only has five vowels, according to a 2010 study conducted by Jon McLoone for Wolfram Research, the most difficult words to guess include jazz, buzz, hajj, faff, fizz, fuzz and variations of these. The game show Wheel of Fortune is based on Hangman, but with the addition of a roulette-styled wheel, brazil also had a show in the 1960s and again from 2012–2013, entitled Lets Play Hangman, hosted by the legendary Silvio Santos
28.
Digital Equipment Corporation
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Digital Equipment Corporation, also known as DEC and using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1950s to the 1990s. DEC was a vendor of computer systems, including computers, software. Their PDP and successor VAX products were the most successful of all minicomputers in terms of sales, DEC was acquired in June 1998 by Compaq, in what was at that time the largest merger in the history of the computer industry. At the time, Compaq was focused on the market and had recently purchased several other large vendors. DEC was a major player overseas where Compaq had less presence, however, Compaq had little idea what to do with its acquisitions, and soon found itself in financial difficulty of its own. The company subsequently merged with Hewlett-Packard in May 2002, as of 2007 some of DECs product lines were still produced under the HP name. From 1957 until 1992, DECs headquarters were located in a wool mill in Maynard. DEC was acquired in June 1998 by Compaq, which merged with Hewlett-Packard in May 2002. Some parts of DEC, notably the business and the Hudson. Initially focusing on the end of the computer market allowed DEC to grow without its potential competitors making serious efforts to compete with them. Their PDP series of machines became popular in the 1960s, especially the PDP-8, looking to simplify and update their line, DEC replaced most of their smaller machines with the PDP-11 in 1970, eventually selling over 600,000 units and cementing DECs position in the industry. Originally designed as a follow-on to the PDP-11, DECs VAX-11 series was the first widely used 32-bit minicomputer and these systems were able to compete in many roles with larger mainframe computers, such as the IBM System/370. The VAX was a best-seller, with over 400,000 sold, at its peak, DEC was the second largest employer in Massachusetts, second only to the Massachusetts State Government. The rapid rise of the business microcomputer in the late 1980s, DECs last major attempt to find a space in the rapidly changing market was the DEC Alpha 64-bit RISC instruction set architecture. DEC initially started work on Alpha as a way to re-implement their VAX series, DEC was acquired in June 1998 by Compaq, in what was at that time the largest merger in the history of the computer industry. At the time, Compaq was focused on the market and had recently purchased several other large vendors. DEC was a major player overseas where Compaq had less presence, however, Compaq had little idea what to do with its acquisitions, and soon found itself in financial difficulty of its own. The company subsequently merged with Hewlett-Packard in May 2002, as of 2007 some of DECs product lines were still produced under the HP name
29.
DECSYSTEM-20
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The DECSYSTEM-20 was a 36-bit Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-10 mainframe computer running the TOPS-20 operating system. PDP-10 computers running the TOPS-10 operating system were labeled DECsystem-10 as a way of differentiating them from the PDP-11, later on, those systems running TOPS-20 were labeled DECSYSTEM-20. The DECSYSTEM-20 was sometimes called PDP-20, although this designation was never used by DEC, most machines sold to run TOPS-10 were painted Blasi Blue, whereas most TOPS-20 machines were painted Terracotta. Model As used the original PDP-10 memory bus, with external memory modules, the later Model B processors used in the DECSYSTEM-20 used internal memory, mounted in the same cabinet as the CPU. The Model As also had different packaging, they came in the original tall PDP-10 cabinets, the last released implementation of DECs 36-bit architecture was the single cabinet DECSYSTEM-2020, using a KS10 processor. The DECSYSTEM-20 was primarily designed and used as a small mainframe for timesharing and that is, multiple users would concurrently log on to individual user accounts and share use of the main processor to compile and run applications. Separate disk allocations were maintained for all users by the system, and various levels of protection could be maintained by for System, Owner, Group. A model 2060, for example, could typically host up to 40 to 60 simultaneous users before exhibiting noticeably reduced response time, the Living Computer Museum of Seattle, Washington maintains a 2065 running TOPS-10, which is available to interested parties via telnet upon registration at their website. This article is based in part on the Jargon File, which is in the public domain
30.
United Federation of Planets
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The Federation was first introduced in the 1966–1969 television show Star Trek as the organization that sent the starship USS Enterprise on its mission of peaceful exploration. As the Federation has continued to explore the galaxy and expanded its membership, it has been challenged by hostile alien civilizations such as the Borg. The survival, success, and growth of the Federation and its principles of freedom have become some of the Star Trek franchises central themes, the Federation was originally conceived as an idealized version of the United Nations. The Federation has been well received by critics and fans, becoming one of the most enduring storylines. As part of the message he wanted the show to convey, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry intended to depict the Federation as an ideal. The social structure within the Federation is classless and operates within a money-less New World Economy, the Federation is described as stressing, at least nominally, the values of universal liberty, equality, justice, peace, and cooperation. The Federation also maintains its own quasi-militaristic and scientific exploratory agency, the television series and films depict Earth and humanity as holding a center-stage political role within the Federation, in some ways first among equals. The legislature, the Federation Council, is located at the Presidio of San Francisco, several other bodies of the Federation have been depicted. There is an executive headed by a Federation President, who keeps offices in the Palais de la Concorde in Paris. There is a branch as well, the highest court of which is the Federation Supreme Court. The Federations scientific, diplomatic and defensive/military arm is Starfleet, depicted as being headquartered at Fort Baker, just north of San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge. The Federation comes into conflict with other major powers in the galaxy such as the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Star Empire, the Cardassian Union, the Borg. The United Federation of Planets has existed as part of the Star Trek universe since the first season of the series and is the primary focus of all the Star Trek series. Several episodes of Star Trek, Enterprise follow events leading up the creation of the Federation, the formation of the Coalition seems to have been the event that provoked the xenophobic Terra Prime incident in the episodes Demons and Terra Prime. After Terra Prime leader John Frederick Paxton exploited the xenophobia on Earth, many of the aliens were unnerved, however, they were convinced by a speech from Captain Jonathan Archer to give the idea of a united organization of worlds a chance. Six years later in 2161, the United Federation of Planets was organized, the Federation is founded under a document known as the Charter of the United Federation of Planets October 9,2161, which is occasionally referred to informally as the Constitution. It draws text and inspiration from the United Nations Charter and other sources and this is intended to prevent even well-intentioned Federation personnel from introducing changes which could destabilize or even destroy other pre-warp-era cultures through interference. Starfleets Omega Directive supersedes the Prime Directive allowing for any means possible to destroy the Omega particle if encountered and it includes a set of guarantees of civil rights, the Seventh Guarantee being analogous to the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and its protection against self-incrimination
31.
Klingon
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The Klingons are a fictional extraterrestrial humanoid warrior species in the science fiction franchise Star Trek. Klingons are recurring antagonists in the 1960s television series Star Trek, The Original Series, initially intended to be antagonists for the crew of the USS Enterprise, the Klingons became a close ally of humanity and the United Federation of Planets in Star Trek, The Next Generation. In the 1990s series Star Trek, Deep Space Nine, the United Federation of Planets briefly goes to war with the Klingons, later in that series, the two join together with the Romulans to fight the Dominion. As originally developed by screenwriter Gene L. Coon, Klingons were swarthy humanoids characterized mainly by prideful ruthlessness, totalitarian, and with a martial society relying on slave labor, they reflected analogies with both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Although Cold War tensions are apparent in the characterization, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry did not intend any explicit political parallels, among the elements created for the revised Klingons was a complete Klingon language, developed by Marc Okrand from gibberish suggested by actor James Doohan. Spoken Klingon has entered popular culture, even to the extent that the works of William Shakespeare, a dictionary, a book of sayings, and a cultural guide to the language have been published. According to Guinness World Records, Klingon is the worlds most popular language as measured by number of speakers. The Klingons were created by screenwriter Gene L. Coon, and they were named after Lieutenant Wilbur Clingan, who served with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry in the Los Angeles Police Department. In the original series, Klingons were typically portrayed with bronze skin and facial hair suggestive of Asian people. The swarthy look of Klingon males was created with the application of shoe polish and long, thin moustaches, the overall look of the aliens, played by white actors, suggested orientalism, at a time when memories of Japanese actions during World War II were still fresh. The production crew never came to an agreement on the name Klingon, Coon was adamant about keeping the name, the Klingons took on the role of the Soviet Union in opposition to the United Federation of Planets playing the role of the United States. As such, they were portrayed as inferior to the crew of the Enterprise. While occasionally capable of honour, this depiction treated the Klingons as close to wild animals, overall, they were shown without redeeming qualities—brutish, scheming, and murderous. Klingons became the primary antagonists of the Enterprise crew, in part because the necessary to make Romulans was too time-consuming. For the first two seasons, no Klingon ships were seen despite being frequently mentioned and this was because of budget constraints— designer Matt Jefferies did not have the money to create a Klingon ship until the third season. When the episodes were remastered beginning in 2006, Klingon ships were digitally inserted into shots earlier than their original appearances, for Star Trek, The Motion Picture, the Klingons were retconned and their appearance and behavior radically changed. To give the aliens a more sophisticated and threatening demeanor, the Klingons were depicted with ridged foreheads, snaggled and prominent teeth, and a defined language and alphabet. Lee Cole, a designer, used red gels and primitive shapes in the design of Klingon consoles and ship interiors
32.
History of Microsoft Flight Simulator
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Microsoft Flight Simulator began as a set of articles on computer graphics, written by Bruce Artwick throughout 1976, about flight simulation using 3-D graphics. When the editor of the magazine told Artwick that subscribers were interested in purchasing such a program, at first the new company sold flight simulators through mail order, but that changed in January 1979 with the release of Flight Simulator for the Apple II. They soon followed this up with versions for other systems and from there it evolved into a series of computer flight simulators. - January 1979 for Apple II - January 1980 for TRS-80 Computer-graphics specialist Bruce Artwick and pilot, despite this, it ended up being one of the most popular Apple II applications of the early 1980s. The simulator was ported to the TRS-80 Model I, which had only rudimentary graphics capability. To squeeze the simulator into the TRS-80 limited memory and display, subLOGIC saw it necessary to drop the instrument panel, Flight Simulator for the TRS-80 therefore has the most simplistic graphics of all versions of Flight Simulator. Flight Simulator sold 30,000 copies by June 1982, tied for third on Computer Gaming Worlds list of top sellers, later subLOGIC released updated versions for both the Apple II and TRS-80 on 5 1⁄4 inch diskettes. The updates included enhanced terrain, help menus, and a bomb sight and this version, like the Microsoft release, did away with wireframe graphics for solid colors, and featured real-world scenery. InfoWorld in 1984 praised Flight Simulator II for the Apple as a complicated, Bruce Artwick has really done it all, and stated that it was superior to Microsofts version. II Computing listed it ninth on the magazines list of top Apple II games as of late 1985, based on sales and market-share data, subLOGIC instead finished a Macintosh version, released by Microsoft, then resumed work on the Amiga and Atari ST versions. Although still called Flight Simulator II, the Amiga and Atari ST versions compare favorably with Microsoft Flight Simulator 3.0, notable features included a windowing system allowing multiple simultaneous 3d views - including exterior views of the aircraft itself - and modem play. - November 1982 Sometime during 1981-82, Microsoft obtained the license to port the simulator to IBM compatibles PCs and this version was released in November 1982 as Microsoft Flight Simulator, and featured an improved graphics engine, variable weather and time of day, and a new coordinate system. Advertisements claimed If flying your IBM PC got any more realistic, youd need a license, early versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator were used as a test for PC compatibility. If a computer could run MSFS1.0 and Lotus 1-2-3, it was 100% IBM PC-compatible, compatibility difficulty included the unusual use of the x86 assembly DIV command, where a DIVIDE BY ZERO command would be issued every time a screen refresh was needed. This technique often required hardware changes to assure compatibility with MSFS1.0 software, there was a dogfight mode with the Sopwith Camel and crop-dusting mode included. - Released in 1984 In 1984, Microsoft released their version 2 for IBM PCs and this version didnt differ too much from MSFS1, the graphics were somewhat improved, as well as a more precise simulation in general had been created. The new simulator expanded the coverage to include a model of the entire United States. However, compatibility with subLOGIC Scenery Disks was provided, which were released in the years, gradually covering the whole USA, Hawaii, Japan
33.
MIDI Maze
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MIDI Maze is an early first person shooter maze video game for the Atari ST developed by Xanth Software F/X, published by Hybrid Arts, and released around 1987. The original MIDI Maze team consisted of James Yee as the manager, Michael Park as the graphics and distributed processing guru. The game constructed multiplayer networks using the MIDI interface and it has been suggested that MIDI Maze introduced the concept of deathmatch combat. Up to 16 computers could be networked in a MIDI Ring by connecting one computers MIDI-OUT port to the next computers MIDI-IN port, unless the computers were looped correctly, more than 4 players tended to slow down the game to a crawl and make it unstable. Graphically the game was simple with a humorous twist. The game area itself occupied only roughly a quarter of the screen, all players were shown as Pac-Man-like smiley avatars in various colors. Bullets were represented as small balls, the game was started by one designated master machine, which set rules, divided players into teams, and selected a maze. A number of mazes were supplied with the game, and additional mazes could be constructed using a simple text-editor or one of various third-party tools, the game was very popular at gatherings of Atari ST users until the end of the Atari ST era, circa 1993. A prototype of MIDI Maze was found for the Atari 8-bit family and it is possible to connect ST and 8-bit to a network and play together. A three-day all-day MIDI Maze tournament is one popular attraction at Con of the North, MIDI-Maze II was later developed by Markus Fritze for Sigma-Soft. This game was released as shareware and contained gameplay improvements over the original, an improved variation, based more closely on the original Midi Maze, was Midimaze Plus from Robert and Werner Spahl featuring a compass and more detailed info on players. WinMaze, based on MIDI-Maze II, supports up to 32 Windows-based players networked via LAN, includes a number of enhancements from the original, WinMaze is authored by Nils Schneider and Heiko phoenix Achilles provided the games graphics. A Game Boy version was developed by the developers, Xanth Software F/X. James Yee, owner of Xanth, had a vision to port the 520ST application to the Game Boy, with support from Michael Park, graphics rendering techniques and communication protocol knowledge was passed on to Robert Champagne, the games programmer. George Miller was hired to re-write the AI-based drone logic, giving each drone a unique personality trait and it is notable for being the only Game Boy game to support 16 simultaneous players. A SNES version, also programmed by Robert Champagne, was released the following year, the SNES version featured completely different graphics and levels from the earlier Game Boy version. A variety of music for this version was composed by George The Fat Man Sanger. A Game Gear version, programmed by Darren Stone, was released to the Japanese market and it is a colorised version of the monochrome Game Boy edition, supporting two players via two handhelds connected by a cable
34.
Atari ST
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The Atari ST is a line of home computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial ST model, the 520ST, saw limited release in April-June 1985 and was available in July. The Atari ST is the first personal computer to come with a bitmapped color GUI, the 1040ST, released in 1986, is the first personal computer to ship with a megabyte of RAM in the base configuration and also the first with a cost-per-kilobyte of less than US$1. The Atari ST is part of a generation of home computers that have 16 or 32-bit processors,256 KiB or more of RAM. It includes the Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, Apple IIGS, and, in certain markets, ST officially stands for Sixteen/Thirty-two, which refers to the Motorola 68000s 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals. The ST was sold with either Ataris color or monochrome monitor, the systems color graphics modes were only available on the color monitor, while the highest resolution mode needed the monochrome monitor. In some markets, particularly Germany, the machine gained a foothold as a small business machine for CAD. Thanks to its built-in MIDI ports, the ST enjoyed success for running music-sequencer software, the ST was superseded by the Atari STE, Atari TT, Atari MEGA STE, and Falcon computers. The Atari ST was born from the rivalry between home-computer makers Atari, Inc. and Commodore International, when his idea was rejected, Miner left Atari to form a small think tank called Hi-Toro in 1982 and began designing the new Lorraine chipset. The company, which was later renamed Amiga Corporation, was pretending to sell video game controllers to deceive competition while it developed a Lorraine-based computer, Amiga ran out of capital to complete Lorraines development, and Atari, owned by Warner Communications, paid Amiga to continue development work. In return Atari received exclusive use of the Lorraine design for one year as a game console. After one year Atari would have the right to add a keyboard and market the complete computer, as Atari was heavily involved with Disney at the time, it was later code-named Mickey, and the 256K memory expansion board was codenamed Minnie. After leaving Commodore International in January 1984, Jack Tramiel formed Tramel Technology with his sons and other employees and, in April. The company initially considered the National Semiconductor NS320xx microprocessor but was disappointed with its performance and this started the move to the 68000. Tramiel learned that Warner wanted to sell Atari which, in mid-1984, was losing about a million dollars per day, interested in Ataris overseas manufacturing and worldwide distribution network for his new computer, Tramiel negotiated with Warner in May and June 1984. He secured funding and bought Ataris Consumer Division in July, as executives and engineers left Commodore to join Tramiels new Atari Corporation, Commodore responded by filing lawsuits against four former engineers for theft of trade secrets. This company was originally called TTL, later renamed to Atari Corp, at the time of the purchase of Atari Incs assets, there were roughly 900 employees remaining from a high point of 10,000. After the interviews, approximately 100 employees were hired to work at Atari Corp, Amiga Corp. had sought more monetary support from investors in spring 1984
35.
MIDI
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A single MIDI link can carry up to sixteen channels of information, each of which can be routed to a separate device. These messages are sent via a MIDI cable to other devices where they control sound generation, a simple example of a MIDI setup is the use of a MIDI controller such as an electronic musical keyboard to trigger sounds created by a sound module. This MIDI data can also be recorded into a hardware or software device called a sequencer, advantages of MIDI include compactness, ease of modification and manipulation and a wide choice of electronic instruments and synthesizer or digitally-sampled sounds. MIDI technology was standardized in 1983 by a panel of industry representatives. In June 1981, Roland founder Ikutaro Kakehashi proposed the idea of standardization to Oberheim Electronics founder Tom Oberheim, in October 1981, Kakehashi, Oberheim and Smith discussed the idea with representatives from Yamaha, Korg and Kawai. Smith proposed this standard at the Audio Engineering Society show in November 1981, MIDIs development was announced to the public by Robert Moog, in the October 1982 edition of Keyboard magazine. By the time of the January 1983 Winter NAMM Show, Smith was able to demonstrate a MIDI connection between his Prophet 600 analog synthesizer and a Roland JP-6, the MIDI Specification was published in August 1983. The MIDI standard was unveiled by Ikutaro Kakehashi and Dave Smith, MIDIs appeal was originally limited to professional musicians and record producers who wanted to use electronic instruments in the production of popular music. The standard allowed different instruments to speak with other and with computers. This interoperability allowed one device to be controlled from another, which reduced the amount of hardware musicians needed to own, MIDIs introduction coincided with the dawn of the personal computer era and the introductions of samplers and digital synthesizers. The creative possibilities brought about by MIDI technology have been credited as having helped to revive the industry in the 1980s. MIDI introduced many capabilities which transformed the way musicians work, MIDI sequencing made it possible for a user with no notation skills to build complex arrangements. A musical act with as few as one or two members, each operating multiple MIDI-enabled devices, could deliver a performance which sounds similar to that of a larger group of musicians. By performing preproduction in an environment, an artist can reduce recording costs by arriving at a recording studio with a song that is already partially completed and worked out. Educational technology enabled by MIDI has transformed music education and those new to the subject of MIDI might confuse it with digital audio. MIDI symbolically represents a note, whereas digital audio represents the sound produced by the note, MIDI was invented so that musical instruments could communicate with each other and so that one instrument can control another. Analog synthesizers that have no digital component and were built prior to MIDIs development can be retrofit with kits that convert MIDI messages into analog control voltages. When a note is played on a MIDI instrument, it generates a signal that can be used to trigger a note on another instrument
36.
Ethernet
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Ethernet /ˈiːθərnɛt/ is a family of computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks, metropolitan area networks and wide area networks. It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1983 as IEEE802.3, over time, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies such as token ring, FDDI and ARCNET. The original 10BASE5 Ethernet uses coaxial cable as a medium, while the newer Ethernet variants use twisted pair. Over the course of its history, Ethernet data transfer rates have increased from the original 2.94 megabits per second to the latest 100 gigabits per second. The Ethernet standards comprise several wiring and signaling variants of the OSI physical layer in use with Ethernet, systems communicating over Ethernet divide a stream of data into shorter pieces called frames. As per the OSI model, Ethernet provides services up to, since its commercial release, Ethernet has retained a good degree of backward compatibility. Features such as the 48-bit MAC address and Ethernet frame format have influenced other networking protocols, the primary alternative for some uses of contemporary LANs is Wi-Fi, a wireless protocol standardized as IEEE802.11. Ethernet was developed at Xerox PARC between 1973 and 1974 and it was inspired by ALOHAnet, which Robert Metcalfe had studied as part of his PhD dissertation. In 1975, Xerox filed a patent application listing Metcalfe, David Boggs, Chuck Thacker, in 1976, after the system was deployed at PARC, Metcalfe and Boggs published a seminal paper. Metcalfe left Xerox in June 1979 to form 3Com and he convinced Digital Equipment Corporation, Intel, and Xerox to work together to promote Ethernet as a standard. The so-called DIX standard, for Digital/Intel/Xerox, specified 10 Mbit/s Ethernet, with 48-bit destination and source addresses and it was published on September 30,1980 as The Ethernet, A Local Area Network. Data Link Layer and Physical Layer Specifications, version 2 was published in November,1982 and defines what has become known as Ethernet II. Formal standardization efforts proceeded at the time and resulted in the publication of IEEE802.3 on June 23,1983. Ethernet initially competed with two largely proprietary systems, Token Ring and Token Bus, in the process, 3Com became a major company. 3Com shipped its first 10 Mbit/s Ethernet 3C100 NIC in March 1981, an Ethernet adapter card for the IBM PC was released in 1982, and, by 1985, 3Com had sold 100,000. Parallel port based Ethernet adapters were produced for a time, with drivers for DOS, by the early 1990s, Ethernet became so prevalent that it was a must-have feature for modern computers, and Ethernet ports began to appear on some PCs and most workstations. This process was sped up with the introduction of 10BASE-T and its relatively small modular connector. Since then, Ethernet technology has evolved to meet new bandwidth, in addition to computers, Ethernet is now used to interconnect appliances and other personal devices
37.
Internet
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The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that use the Internet protocol suite to link devices worldwide. The origins of the Internet date back to research commissioned by the United States federal government in the 1960s to build robust, the primary precursor network, the ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1980s. Although the Internet was widely used by academia since the 1980s, Internet use grew rapidly in the West from the mid-1990s and from the late 1990s in the developing world. In the two decades since then, Internet use has grown 100-times, measured for the period of one year, newspaper, book, and other print publishing are adapting to website technology, or are reshaped into blogging, web feeds and online news aggregators. The entertainment industry was initially the fastest growing segment on the Internet, the Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking. Business-to-business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries, the Internet has no centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage, each constituent network sets its own policies. The term Internet, when used to refer to the global system of interconnected Internet Protocol networks, is a proper noun. In common use and the media, it is not capitalized. Some guides specify that the word should be capitalized when used as a noun, the Internet is also often referred to as the Net, as a short form of network. Historically, as early as 1849, the word internetted was used uncapitalized as an adjective, the designers of early computer networks used internet both as a noun and as a verb in shorthand form of internetwork or internetworking, meaning interconnecting computer networks. The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used interchangeably in everyday speech, however, the World Wide Web or the Web is only one of a large number of Internet services. The Web is a collection of interconnected documents and other web resources, linked by hyperlinks, the term Interweb is a portmanteau of Internet and World Wide Web typically used sarcastically to parody a technically unsavvy user. The ARPANET project led to the development of protocols for internetworking, the third site was the Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, followed by the University of Utah Graphics Department. In an early sign of growth, fifteen sites were connected to the young ARPANET by the end of 1971. These early years were documented in the 1972 film Computer Networks, early international collaborations on the ARPANET were rare. European developers were concerned with developing the X.25 networks, in December 1974, RFC675, by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal, and Carl Sunshine, used the term internet as a shorthand for internetworking and later RFCs repeated this use. Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation funded the Computer Science Network, in 1982, the Internet Protocol Suite was standardized, which permitted worldwide proliferation of interconnected networks.5 Mbit/s and 45 Mbit/s. Commercial Internet service providers emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990
38.
Game Boy
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It is the first handheld console in the Game Boy line and was created by Satoru Okada and Nintendo Research & Development 1. This same team, led by Gunpei Yokoi at the time, is credited with designing the Game & Watch series as well as popular games for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Redesigned versions were released in 1996 and 1998 in the form of Game Boy Pocket and Game Boy Light, the Game Boy is Nintendos second handheld system following the Game & Watch series introduced in 1980 and it combined features from both the Nintendo Entertainment System and Game & Watch. It was either bought as a unit or bundled with the puzzle game Tetris. During its early lifetime, the Game Boy mainly competed with Segas Game Gear, Ataris Lynx, the Game Boy beat its rivals and became a tremendous success. The Game Boy and its successor, the Game Boy Color, have sold over 118 million units worldwide, upon the Game Boys release in the United States, it sold its entire shipment of one million units within a few weeks. The Game Boy and Game Boy Color were discontinued in the early 2000s in favor of the subsequent Game Boy Advance, the Game Boy has four operation buttons labeled A, B, SELECT, and START, as well as a directional pad. There is a control dial on the right side of the device. At the top of the Game Boy, a sliding on-off switch, the on-off switch includes a physical lockout to prevent users from either inserting or removing a cartridge while the unit is switched on. Nintendo recommends users leave a cartridge in the slot to prevent dust, the Game Boy also contains optional input and/or output connectors. On the left side of the system is an external 3. 5mm x 1. 35mm DC power supply jack that allows users to use a rechargeable battery pack or AC adapter instead of four AA batteries. The Game Boy requires 6 V DC of at least 150 mA, a 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack is located on the bottom side of the unit which allows users to listen to the audio with the bundled headphones or external speakers. The right-side of the device offers a port which allows a user to connect to another Game Boy system via a link cable, the port can also be used to connect a Game Boy Printer. The link cable was designed for players to play head-to-head two-player games such as in Tetris. However, game developer Satoshi Tajiri would later use the cable technology as a method of communication. CPU Custom 8-bit Sharp LR35902 at 4.19 MHz and this processor is similar to an Intel 8080 in that none of the registers introduced in the Z80 are present. However, some of the Z80s instruction set enhancements over the 8080, still other instructions are unique to this particular flavor of 8080/Z80 CPU. The IC also contains integrated sound generation, the unit only has one speaker, but headphones provide stereo sound Display, Reflective STN LCD160 ×144 pixels Frame Rate, Approx
39.
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
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In Japan, the system is called the Super Famicom, or SFC for short. In South Korea, it is known as the Super Comboy and was distributed by Hyundai Electronics, although each version is essentially the same, several forms of regional lockout prevent the different versions from being compatible with one another. It was released in Brazil on September 2,1992, by Playtronic, the SNES is Nintendos second home console, following the Nintendo Entertainment System. The console introduced advanced graphics and sound compared with other systems at the time. The development of a variety of enhancement chips integrated in game cartridges helped to keep it competitive in the marketplace. The SNES remained popular well into the 32-bit era, and continues to be popular among fans, collectors, retro gamers, and emulation enthusiasts, some of whom still make homebrew ROM images. To compete with the popular Family Computer in Japan, NEC Home Electronics launched the PC Engine in 1987, the two platforms were later launched in North America in 1989 as the TurboGrafx-16 and the Genesis respectively. Both systems were built on 16-bit architectures and offered improved graphics, however, it took several years for Segas system to become successful. Nintendo executives were in no rush to design a new system, designed by Masayuki Uemura, the designer of the original Famicom, the Super Famicom was released in Japan on Wednesday, November 21,1990 for 25,000 yen. The systems release also gained the attention of the Yakuza, leading to a decision to ship the devices at night to avoid robbery, with the Super Famicom quickly outselling its chief rivals, Nintendo reasserted itself as the leader of the Japanese console market. Nintendos success was due to its retention of most of its key third-party developers from its earlier system, including Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Square, Koei. Nintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a version of the Super Famicom. It began shipping in limited quantities on August 23,1991, the SNES was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland in April 1992 for £150, with a German release following a few weeks later. Most of the PAL region versions of the use the Japanese Super Famicom design, except for labeling. The Playtronic Super NES in Brazil, although PAL, uses the North American design, both the NES and SNES were released in Brazil in 1993 by Playtronic, a joint venture between the toy company Estrela and consumer electronics company Gradiente. The SNES and Super Famicom launched with few games, but these games were received in the marketplace. In Japan, only two games were available, Super Mario World and F-Zero. In North America, Super Mario World launched as a bundle with the console, and other titles include F-Zero, Pilotwings, SimCity
