Perhaps some writefaggin' to get this going?
_______________-

I cursed at the public terminal. My Credipass card had more than that on it... unless... it spat out the receipt and I swore. Someone had tweaked the computer's clock, made it run faster. The $2.99 a minute was actually $8.97 a minute. Shitfuckers. I tore out my cart-drive, and considered flicking a few magnets inside the gaping drive hole as a thank you. I'd never get my Osbourne out of hock at this rate... well, I'd managed to get SOMETHING done, at least. Thirty-nine Com Port addresses for Langley.

Twenty bucks each... it was a start. But I had to top 50 if I wanted the pay, and I was broke now. I needed a rig that I could use free, and that meant one thing.

I'd need to go to Ty's house.

I like it. You have my support 100%. In return, NES with a tape drive and keyboard.
http://www.nesworld.com/nes.php

I like this.

No thanks, I hated the 80's.

great

Looks pretty sweet. Please continue.

>>9412191
"Ty? You in here?" I opened the door and walked in, down to the basement. Ty's mom was upstairs, I followed the rules and didn't bother her - the 78 year old woman had the run of most of the house, and liked it. Ty, the bread winner, holed himself up in the basement, in the middle of a desk of a dozen-plus rigs, shelves lined with others that he had tried and cycled out. He looked up, a weighty, but not quite obese fellow with a crewcut and bottle glasses. Husky, I guess you'd call him.

"Hey, Marco. What's new?"

"Ah, I got a job that needs finishing. Thought I'd see if I could bum a line for an hour."

"An hour?" He raised an eyebrow, attempting a Spock on me. "Come on. You know how much my bandwidth bills are now?"

"Yeah, and I also know that you're on three corp accounts to comp them all." I smirked. "Triple-billing isn't too wise-"

"Plug in." He sighed. "The usual fees apply."

"Hey, than...ks." I eyed his rigs. "Dude, you've gone Luxor with everything?"

"Nah, I'm doing three Lux`es, two IBMs and an R99."

"Man, no CarDs?"

"I just don't use them anymore. Too many dropped files."

"Fine, fine." I lugged down a suitcase rig, flipped the screen up, and started to wire it in. He rarely used the Spectrum, so I unplugged that one. "So what's the gig?"

"Langley probe."

"Again?"

"They'll find a way in one of these days."

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Modempunk

You'll love it.

>>9412716
Thinkin the same thing

...But I might be biased.

>>9412611
"Through a port you find, right?" He laughed. "Osborne's gotta get a clue, man. Langley's got nothing. They claim to have some big, fancy uber-computer. You know what they've got?"

"What?"

"A touch-screen."

"Lightpens? Overrated." The modem chirruped as it started in on its probe, first attaching through a BBS I liked, then stretching through a server in Colorado.

"No, man... like a full screen keyboard. Touch-activated."

"Huh. Nifty. You got to play with it?"

"Yeah. It's nice, but not really practical... I mean, I've got all the keys I can handle down here."

"True dat. Maybe for public terminals, so the drunks can't piss on `em?"

"That'd work. You gonna tell Os about that?"

"Nah. No source. Besides, tips don't pay. Ports do." The drive was doing its work, the program already running perfectly.

"Fair enough, fair enough." He leaned back.

"So what about you? What's your big project?"

No IBM, Windows, and Apple?

YES. WORLD OF AMIGA.

this thread is making me nostalgic for the old age of computing.
brb digging out old commodore

>>9412886
This was made in 1986. 4096 color display, 8 bit sound card.
Back then PC speakers making beeps and 4 color 320x200 was the norm.

What happened amiga, why didn't you take over the PC world?

oh god, im suddenly reminded of one of my favorite old computer games of all time...

>>9413068
>3-D animated fantasy role-playing game
Hehehe

Well, isn't that cute.

Modempunk plus 15 years, I guess. Or ultra-classic cyberpunk.

>>9412806
"Classified." A pause. He laughed. Ty was the guy who got stuff done. It was his motto, his creed, his modus operandi. Keeping secrets? Less so. If they wanted, the corps could shut Ty down, but it would come at the cost of all the wonderful work he did for them. He was the inevitable. The leak that always happened. He just leveraged that to his own ends. "Nah, I'm trying to hack the Fuji mainframes."

"Gutsy. Don't they have Z80-6's running?"

"Yeah."

"How ya gonna keep up with that?"

"I'm not. I've got them dialing into me through a few slow servers."

"...tricksy hobbit."

"Damn straight." He popped a tic-tac. "There's a bunch of corps that want in on their circuit design, since they're not exporting it."

"Good luck there."

"Than-" BLAM.

>>9413311
Holy Asian Dicks, Batman!

>>9413112
OH GOD, THE NON VGA VERSION OF QFG1, MY EYES, THEY BURN!

Remarkable Doom clone running on ZX Spectrum 128 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v7cFGneuaw

Very impressive 'Cytadela' clone running on ZX Spectrum 128 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rWooGqqQ5w

A black & white Wolfenstein clone, running on, you guessed it, ZX Spectrum 128 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHxBpmh-PF0&feature=related

Eastern Europe had a pretty incredible demoscene that actually produced some good software.

>>9413311
We froze. A thump came from upstairs. Another thump. Another. Closer. Closer. And then, down the stairs came a tall, blonde man in a trenchcoat.

Or what was left of him. A gaping wound was open in his back, and his clothing was ablaze. Ty's mom appeared, holding her prized Obrez.

"Son... we've had this discussion before." She pointed at the corpse, spitting on it. "Buy some fucking security!"

"Ma-"

"DO IT!" She stomped off, leaving us again. He sighed.

"I'll call the disposal boys."

"Who you gonna bill this one to?

"Eh, I dunno. Depends on which corp he was working for..." A pause. "Nah. No one. I've got some socked away."

A few seconds passed before we spoke again. He got up, hefting the corpse, and shoved it into the spare bathroom, closing the door behind it.

>>9413616
The rest of the visit was... cordial. If strained. We drank a few brews, and he put in the calls. The corpse was gone by the time I was, and Ty had a new sidearm to show for it. I think he was actually calling the Rent-A-Cops before I left, but I wasn't sure.

In any case, the ports checked out. 65 of them - I didn't want to get greedy and try for more. More than enough to get my baby out of hock. I hopped a light rail and headed downtown.

Of course, I couldn't meet with anyone to get my payment. That would attract attention. The Osborne Cyb-R-Station? Less so. I sidled in among a crowd of disaffected 30somethings, all intent on gambling their paychecks away on video poker or one of the more "interactive" affairs - vid-pachinko and puzzle games were getting popular. I hopped on a station, plugged my CarD in with a CHUNK, and slipped my credpass through the reader. It blinked a few times as it read the cartridge, and then flashed my name. Other people used the CarDs to record high scores and unlockable levels, that sort of thing. Useless shit. Mine had the ports and my account information on it, and set the gaming machine to pay me immediately. It also set me up for ten minutes of mandatory free play - I had to keep up appearances, after all. I stayed a full 30, then exited as gracefully as I could. My Cart Drive was empty again, except for my personal files, and my wallet was full.

Time to hit the pawnshop.

Anyway, neat demos aside, the development of the modern PC was really an inevitability. There was no one visionary who 'got it' but a great many, and the predecessors of today's home computer didn't emerge in the 80's, but as early as the mid-70's. Like most tales of American ingenuity, while heartwarming they're mostly myths to make it look like the emergence of a large, successful company isn't mostly circumstantial. Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, and their kin are mostly products of a favorable environment and good timing, and the computer industry wouldn't just have survived but would undoubtedly have thrived without them, just like it has in reality.

>>9413822
The thing about leaving your rig in hock - you can never be sure you'll get it back in the same condition you leave it in. People toy with them. They try them out. Make sure they run. Sometimes the owners set up the rigs, let people play with them in the store as an attraction. I've had to completely reformat my lovely little Ossy with the tiny screen, the powerhouse processor, and the twin CarD banks before, and it's a pisser. Each time it happened after I needed the cash enough to pawn it.

It was no surprise that when I turned it on, there was a file that hadn't been there before - a text file with an address and time. I figured that the owner had let someone print it out to prove that the serial port was working.

I must have been pretty tired. It didn't occur to me that I had taken the hard drive out before I hocked it... the file was on my CarD, and the date was four days from now...

--------

Fin.

Just a little stage-setting, natch. Too tired for anything else...

`Night, /tg/. May this thread still be here in the morning.

>>9413916

What you need to introduce to make this at least halfway believable is a circumstance that halts research. The reason that people in the USSR/FSU went to such extreme lengths to make old computers do things they were never built to do is because that's all they had. Not only were computers scarce and mostly acquired second-hand, there was no Internet, there were few advanced programming languages, and upgrades were highly uncommon and occasionally home-made. (And they did come up with some ingenious workarounds to compensate for their lower level of computer technology both in the realm of hardware and software.) An event around 1990 that suddenly grinds computer research to a halt and causes new computer hardware (including video game consoles which, despite their intended purpose, are perfectly capable computers) to become relatively scarce would be your best bet. You can make it as pulpy as you like. The inevitable result is that during whatever ramp-up back to business as usual ultimately takes place, people are going to push hardware to extremes that were never meant to be tested in order to remain competitive and maintain their livelihood. Combine this with a thriving digital underground (and not the same one that made 'The Humpty Dance') with some sort of special goals in mind (maybe private ownership of computers becomes unlawful because they've been requisitioned for private-public work, on top of a repressive authoritarian atmosphere that wants to quash the beginnings of the Internet) and you have fertile ground for storytelling.

>>9413937

Fun facts: Both audio and video cassettes can be used for data storage, and a 180 minute VHS tape can store two gigabytes of uncompressed data. In the Netherlands and elsewhere, during the 80's it wasn't unusual for BASICODE programs to be transmitted over the radio for home taping. While in tape-loading mode, most computers which accepted tapes can accept signals from any source - programs could even be stored in vinyl, if you were so inclined. Any medium currently used for data transmission, including the telephone, cable, and radio, was capable of transmitting data as early as the time when the first home computers were being marketed, but the devices to take advantage of this reliably and safely had yet to be commercialized. While preferable, most of the upgrading which took place from 1985 to 1995 was not entirely necessary to take advantage of at least some of the modern amenities, including multitasking, which was a feature of home computers as early as 1985.

>>9413822
Bravo op, what system where you thinking, gurps, d20 modern, what? I know d20 Modern had some nifty, if slightly clunky rules for cyberspace, and with commodore cybernetics a whole new world opens up

Modempunk is definitely the game for this.

>>9413937
I didn't say upgrades didn't exist... just that they didn't go in the same direction as in our world. Computers in this age would be as fast (nearly) and have as much power and storage, but they'd be neatly chopped into "family computers" - which are gaming-and-office centric and ill suited to programming and power usage - and the rigs, ugly little boxes with tiny screens that do entirely too much. That said, that's a great idea. Let's keep that sucker.
>>9413957
Radio transmitted programming? That's brilliant!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance_Electronic_Disc

ANALOG LASERDISCS

VIDEO WITH NEEDLES

>Clunky retro-cyberpunk. Yea, or nay?

You're an elitist old fart who misses the days when he was the only one who knew how the company's machines worked.

Your attitude was the reason no one could program a VCR, and why half the time when someone tried to use the "universal remote" they ended up flushing the toilet. Someone else's toilet. Halfway across town.


I was twelve, and I don't miss those days at all.

>>9414121

That's nice.

We're going to keep talking about it anyway, so you can leave the thread.

>>9414121
I'm 26. If you consider that to be old, hey, by all means. I just like the look and feel of the computers of the age.

That said:
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-04/100-year-old-trick-squeezes-fiber-optic-speeds-copp
er-wires
Fiber optic speed over copper wires. Fuck yeah.

>>9413990
Modempunk or GURPS.

>>9413916
>>9413937
I think both of you are overestimating the probability of our current Information Age. Babbage invented the idea in the late 1800s and Turing nailed it to the wall in the 1930s and yet we didn't see PCs until the 1970s.

GURPS Lensman explained their retro-tech by having Arisa throw a hot, wanton chick across Shockley's path just as he was about to invent transistors. Any butterfly effect could severely retard the progress of computers. Have a couple of the hippies who invented the hacker ethos die of overdoses or beaten to death by cops and computing would be a far different world today.

>>9414053

If you had a way to reduce the noise (probably by either boosting power or slowing the transmission) you could even use CB radios for it. Connect the radio's headphone jack to the in-jack on the computer, and presto. You could even multiplex the signal to a tape recorder if you wanted to. If this brings to mind the 'golden age' of HAM radio and young punks with rooms full of (sometimes illegitimately acquired) electronic hardware, sending coded messages in sidebands on AM/FM radio, you're on the right track.

Also recall the era of Cassette Culture. This is definitely a 80's phenomenon, and an intersection between home data taping and Cassette Culture would be fun to run with. A further intersection with hobby radio, 'zines', and the (unfortunately long-lost) optimism of the era further fleshes out what your underground consists of, and perhaps what it represents.

>>9413957

>programs could even be stored in vinyl, if you were so inclined.

This is bordering on steampunk.

>>9414253
see
>>9414093

>>9414242

Semiconductors. That was the limiting factor. Without semiconductor electronics, you simply do not have computers that fit on desks. Rooms, maybe. The emergence of the personal computer and everything that followed isn't a triumph of computer science so much as a triumph of materials science, chemistry, and electrical engineering. Babbage and Turing were incredible thinkers, but the machinery necessary to put their ideas into practice in the way we do today simply did not exist then. However, the utility of computing was fairly self evident, and as soon as people realized how handy automated calculation was, the incentives to produce that machinery - and any necessary materials to build it - emerged in short order.

contributing inspiration, is Tandy 102 old enough? I have three myself, I only know where two are, so I'll fish them up and show off

>>9414308

I should clarify that Babbage and Turing obviously produced working hardware, but it's fair to say that their visions were never fully realized in their lifetimes. (Much of Babbage's work was never finished.)

>>9414253

Originally, many of the first programs were stored on punch cards.

The same kinds of punch cards that had been used to 'program' mechanical looms since the 1700's.

Ah. The glory days.

>>9414491
My Win95 tower is sitting in the hallway ready to go on Craigslist ;_;

>>9414121

> Your attitude was the reason no one could program a VCR

Respectfully, that's mostly due to people refusing to read manuals. Even in today's age of user friendliness, most people are too unwilling to follow basic instructions and 'tinker' to figure even simple products out on their own. They perpetually require help because they're unwilling to learn. A chronic aversion to frustration does that to people.

I don't miss the 'bad old days' either. I'm immensely grateful for powerful technology - that my hard drive is 160 GB instead of 16 MB, that I have cable rated in megabits per second instead of old fashioned 14.4. But just like before, problems with computers (and most other electronics) exist between the keyboard and chair far more often than not.

Where incomprehensibility once reigned, illiteracy is now the norm. One wonders if the latter weren't always the case.

>>9414572

>>9414491
So, I get that Japanese cartoons are supposed to be read backwards, but what the fuck is happening there? It doesn't make sense either way.

>>9414636
This help? Start top right.

>>9414667
I tried that. It's still nonsense to me.

>>9414715

His computer is not working. He illustrated the process of frustration with cute drawings.

>>9414308
Very well put, and that's how it worked out in our world. Once Shockley invented the transistor the invention of the microchip was all-but inevitable.

The insane progression of the microchip according to Moore's Law however is a whole different story. I'm not an expert in the history of semiconductor engineering (most hacker histories focuse exclusively on the software guys) but even slight diversions, an expanded space program, an expanded Vietnam draft, could fuck up the timeline considerably.

I am offended though by references to the Internet. Back in the day we used BBS systems and we LIKED IT! There was a proto-net system among the BBS owners (what were they called, not ops or mods) swapping data files. That would be big in a modempunk world. Home computers accessed over a finite number of phone lines would be way more secure than anything on the net is today.

>>9411794
>>A world where the NES shipped with a keyboard and tape drive in addition to the cartridge slot and controllers.

>>9415075

>>9415075
>>9415106

>>9414892

The whole thing with BBS is that it was upset by other protocols and hypertext, but that was a 90's phenomenon. The world wide web just didn't exist in the 80's. There was a primordial ooze of ideas that eventually came to fruition on the 90's, and some other fun stuff, but HTML only came to be in 1990. But yes, leased lines on the POTS, with the exception of a wiretap carried out by someone who is either very close to or physically in contact with the medium, are extremely secure. That's why a lot of private companies use them, since you get all the bandwidth in the world and excellent security of transmissions. Either phone calls, media hijacking, or the physical running of wire between locations would in the fictional setting facilitate a great deal of BBS and other activity.

You could even get more sophisticated. Know what a 'numbers station' is? Surely to god you know what phone phreaking is. Hell, you could even hide binary cryptographic keys in sheets of candy buttons if you really felt like it.

As for the timeline of development, a lot of that work happened here in the United States, yes. A number of events could have upset the timeline by either accelerating or decelerating progress, and a lot of that would have fallen into the 1970's. A volatile era. Even something like a prolonged 1970's oil crisis could have slowed home computer development - or, on the flip side, encouraged further interest in semiconductor materials science due to solar power (which was very much in vogue at the time) which could have ultimately yielded microchips that were ahead of their time. (Recall that one big issues limiting the miniaturization of transistors on a chip was purity. Older chips could be manufactured with relatively poor and 'dirty' silicon, but newer chips must use extremely pure silicon.)

You remember how you could mess with someone's modem by whistling the start up sound?
That's not going to make sense, I'm not english but whatever :p


I like your idea OP, I mean the boring part about modern or futuristic settings is that nothing is a mystery.
Any retard can go buy something in the store that would be witchcraft a hundred years ago :p
By going back to the old days of clunky and unreliable things you give more leeway for imagination, this is probably why people like steampunk and such.

Also cyberspace on a commodore 64 would be slayer.

>>9415440

Do I ever have a treat for you:

http://www.dunkels.com/adam/tfe/

>>9415540
That's some cutting edge technology!

Now I need to write a torrent application in BASIC so I can download people's money to my cassette recorder when I'm on the fly.

>>9415376
>>Even something like a prolonged 1970's oil crisis could have slowed home computer development - or, on the flip side, encouraged further interest in semiconductor materials science due to solar power

Take out Carter (Nixon doesn't get caught or somebody else wins the '76 Democratic primary) and solar power and pure silicon gets set back. Any amount of handwavium could set back internet pornography by decades.

As long as Hackers are that setting's equivalent of Druids or Mages, I'm all for it.
I have to say, in theory, it's fuckin' awesome.

BEIGE BOXES

clunkin-

I mean bumpin

Definitely stolen for my retro cyberpunk campaign. The year is 2033, and every cliché is rampant. The PCs have hunted replicants and boomers, and were beaten up by Sho'nuff.

>>9412734
The ART !! MY GOD !!

>>9413616
I've been trying to figure out whether Ty's mom just has an awesome Guns stat, or if her Unique roll was based on "Nutty Soviet expatriate".

FUCKING BUMP

So would WarGames style hacking through letting your computer talk through a phone receiver at other computers be appropriate?

>>9414491
>2GB HDD
>$260

>>9414093
Holy shit. One of my aunts had a pile of those in her spare bedroom, and I never knew at the time just exactly what they were. Shame that I never watched any of them when I had the chance.

>>9426199
My friend has a pretty decent CED collection. You can still find the players and discs on eBay or in junk/ antique shops.

>>9425389
Yup, perfectly acceptable.

Hot damn, bump this shit

oh, its this thread!

modempunk, is it?
retro-cyber?
"the way people actually thought things were in the middle of the hacker scare"?

bumpan

Thread still alive?

BAM!

>>9411794
/tg/ already developed a game for this. Modempunk or somesuch, looking at suptg...

>>9439077
helps if I read the whole thread first.

Hivemind is hivemind.

Now I need to find pics of early luggables / IBM PCs...

>>9412917
be hardcore, post on 4chan from your Commodore 64 or similar...

Oh and GURPS Lensmen, GURPS Cyberpunk, and esp. GURPS Cyberworld are excellent fodder for this.

As for system, meh, either Modempunk or your cyberpunk system of choice. Original black box Cyberpunk (2010?) esp. for this. The only scans I've seen of it were missing one or two books though :(

>>9412716
Oh, hey, something came of that, then.

Also, the writefagging in this thread is terrible.

>>9412958
Cheap shit undermines all.

IBM Clones were the problem. The hardware got commoditized.

I have no idea how to play this.

I am a GURPS GM, and I have managed to get most anything built using the 4th ed materials. Ive thrown together Weird War 2 stuff, Battlestar Gallactica space exploran', all different sorts of flavours of fantasy. This game poses a unique challenge because of the limitations and accessibility attributed to retro-futurism.

You have an era of time. It has definable limits to the technology. There are no machine-guns in TL5 age of readson Europe. There are not computers in TL3 medival fantasy. However, in TL7 USA, with this alternate timeline, is the technology in any way limited or advanced from the normal timeline?

I've so far read that NO, most changed would be sociological, and that the tech would be clunky but still tech. You would have all the rules set forth in GURPS High Tech for transmission speeds capable, and there would be a bit of number crunching for the costs of certain devices, btu most of those get home-brewed on a setting by setting basis anyways.

This game looks like it would mostly only appeal to those of us who were born in 60-70. You guys in that age range have the first-hand knowledge of how the world worked in the 80's. You had the resentment and anger channeled against the correct stereotypes and leaders. You hated the right people, put the others on their pedastels and could feel what was right and what was very very wrong.

>>9415376
>but HTML only came to be in 1990.
TimBL didn't even have his server up until 1992. W3 is a lot more recent than people think.

>>9439835
again, check out older GURPS, 3e stuff. Should all be on PDF if not still in print from SJG, either their e23 or Warehouse 23 stores. Both worth supporting.

GURPS Cyberpunk, esp. Cyberworld, Lensmen, Ultra-Tech 2 for alt tech ideas, Hi-Tech, etc. good stuffs

Cyberpunk 2010 FTW!

(putting on sum Front 242 yay!

>>9439835
Actually it sounds like there would be a drastic difference in technology level here.

And what about a TL 5 Age of Reason Europe with steamships made by magic?
GURPS Tech Levels are arbitrary and useless when dealing with alternate history and alternate technology.

I remember someone, maybe you, told me that Tech Level had something to do with things like the discovery of a source of energy that allowed travel, and that you couldn't ever advance past that number without reaching that milestone.
Except what happens when you've got a source of energy that doesn't allow for travel of people, but does allow for travel of information? Or one that allows flying cars, but only within 'city limits'? It is possible to have a gatling gun without a train.

>>9411794
>>9411794
HEY OP
JUST WATCH THE MOVIE "BRAZIL"

IT'LL CLEAR EVERYTHING UP

im reading the whole thread, but has anyone mentioned that OP watch Brazil?

>>9446536
>>9446585
brazilmind

>>9446536
>>9446585
lol

>>9446585
>>9446536
this Op watch Brazil

I feel strangely compelled to run a game, set in the BBS era. The only thing that stays my hand is that one of my players was actually around for it and would deliberately roll up a high-intelligence character so he could hand-write the code that would recreate the viruses from those days.

>>9447831
If you were playing DnD, would you forbid him from playing mages?

I don't see what the problem here is.

>>9439210

Now what?

SOCIAL NETWORKING WOULD NEVER HAD EXISTED
IT'S SO... SO PURE...

Jesus Fuck yeah!

>>9448576

I think the problem is that the older player would steal the greatest moments in the history of computer-assholishness by writing out the source codes for the viruses and saying "This is how my character compiles his code. He was inspired by a dream he had about having sex with the Matrix, a movie that he is now writing the script for."

Or something like that.

>>9450808
>no social networking

>>9452028
So you're saying the GM would allow a player's real-world knowledge to transfer to his character in the game?

That's a shitty GM.

If that's not what you're saying, then I still can't see a problem. Lots of players create characters that want to take over/ destroy the world. Whether or not the characters can do it has no basis on how many push-ups or how much coding the player can do.

You know, this makes the rationale for having deckers/hackers on a shadowrun/edgerunner team about 100x stronger than in the current books. I mean, bandwidth between geographic points is minimal, there is no global network that script kiddies can cruise at will, and you really, really have to get into the building to connect to their mainframe or the run fails. NOW it makes sense.

>>9452028

>"This is how my character compiles his code. He was inspired by a dream he had about having sex with the Matrix, a movie that he is now writing the script for. Oh, while writing the script for that movie, he's busily creating the basics of a game that can be played with other people in the same way that people can use BBS systems. Crude characters would represent different things, such as goblins or whatever. The end goal is to turn that into a multiplayer experience with individual avatars. I've already got the business model drawn up here, and I'm claiming 'Blizzard' as my company's name. Why? Because it's always ICE to meet new people who like what you like."

>>9452151
a Black IC would in fact be a person who sits next to the companys phone cable, and pulls it out of the socket on demand

>>9452886

That's a white IC, dude.

Black IC is a guy with a gun hiding in the broom closet of the server room.

rolled 6, 5, 4 = 15

>>9452176
>Crude characters would represent different things, such as goblins or whatever.

We shall call this game 'Dwarf Fortress'.

>>9440540

I thought HTML had been implemented by 1990 at least on a research basis. I had no idea it wasn't actually demonstrated until 1992.

i think this needs the idea of "Credit Codes" as the only electronic medium for financial transfer. So at that point "money" could be stored on anything as anything. Turn a cereal box into punch cards if you are hyper paranoid. but a bank would probably have everything backed up onto VHS tapes. An alarm at the bank would probably trigger electromagnets on th doors or something.

copying a credit code is doable, but can be stripped away from you by another institution, say a bank, being able to prove that they have the code. So stealing them, or copying them with trickery, are two reasons that shadowrunners would be employed

also, perhaps the Seattle Computer Company wants a peak at xeroxes brand new "Graphical User Interface" and so send you to their offices with a cage to catch the creature this is supposedly all tied to, the "Mouse"

>>9453345
>An alarm at the bank would probably trigger electromagnets on th doors or something.

That's a pretty awesome idea.

>>9453501
it works to make the banks a bit more aggressive toward preserving their money.

>>9453773
And to make the runners sweat a little more. Are all these tapes they're lugging out suddenly just worthless plastic?

what are the street samurai like then?

>>9453889

Good question. Somehow, for this setting I'm not picturing the mega-cities associated so strongly with Cyberpunk, so I feel like the hitmen and hired guns of this setting would be a lot more... suburban.

To the OP writefag, neds more noir, but damn I'm enjoying this, got me a dick so hard it can cut diamonds, and I think I woke the neighbors with nostalgiaing.

>>9453889
Perhaps firearm tech is behind aswell. perhaps a nice suit and a tommygun.

>>9454027
rather then street sammies and Gillets, might avoid japanophile tendencies and fill that slot with a brawler.

None of that dance-fight crap, but they are willing to get right in there and open up the side of your head with a crowbar.

dunno, thoughts thoughts.

>>9454150
works. they arent "Street Sams" they Are "Sammy from the Streets" pay his kids college tuition and he will look out for the geeks while they make their money.

>>9454150
it would also make sense, that the thing that changed in this universe was the complete destruction of japans economy, so they never rebuilt after WW2. America never had anything to compete against, never saw home computing as a benefit. never saw astroboy on television.

Digital noir?

I can dig it.

Listen guys I'm not concerned with this whole modem, freaking hacking thin, imagine what would happen to weapons and such as well, remember there's 2 sides to any -punk the sciency nerds like Modemboys and fone phreekz, and then there's the guys who proect your asses. My .357 doesn't need some fancy ass targeting system to protect your ass, got that pal.

Also Modempunk/Retro-cyberpunk is fucking Weeaboo, just look at the Sprawl novels, we need some slang.

Some slang from the 'burbs and streets.

Cred: Money expands to also mean reputation.


uhm anyone else want a go at some slang making?

>>9454241
Or could just be we helooed them so little because we were focused on Germany, still has the less Japan is #1 but still makes them a big part (something like they have a fuckton of trade going through them to make Chinese products get through the American Embargo (hell wouldn't Nixon NOT reopening to China be a big stalling point?)

>>9454505
wires.
meaning connections in a literal sense, phone lines, leased lines, hard lines available, but also meaning connections in an interpersonal sense, like street cred, reputation and social engineering all together.

"the new x5 superchip? i dunno, man.. not easy to get your hands on those this side of the country. lemme check the wires, see what i come up with"

>>9454708
Gestalting: Using two terminals of differing brands to get at a place.

Luddite: Anyone not in the Terminal-boy/Phreek culture, mostly civilians but not including security, and the like.

Plattenspiel: Any data storage device from CarD's to actual vynil.

Checking the Radio: Using some sort of recording device to pirate a program, highly dangerous in the case of government institutions.

bump

Symbos on an amstrad CPC...

Amstrad 6128+...

Totally retrojunk even in 1990...

is someone going to archive this?

>>9456781

"Thanks for your request.
It has been added to our database and the thread will be archived as soon as enough request for that thread have been made.
This thread has been requested 1 times now."

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/9411794/

What if Xerox Labs hadn't been run by complete retards? Coputers - at least the interface and OS - would be 20 years ahead of where it is today.

>>9458092

Perhaps the same could also be said of Commodore. Acorn, most definitely. The Acorn RISC operating system was decades ahead of its time, as was BeOS to a lesser extent.

Of course, that's one of the interesting things about this setting. In a world where 'Wintel' doesn't exist and IBM is at best a footnote in PC history (and still primarily a mainframe manufacturer) all of the little software subcultures that hovered around during the late 1980's and early 1990's (basically at any point prior to 1995 - 1998) would have been longer lived and more robust. Assuming 1990 is roughly where we're at technologically, the word 'hacker' might still mean something else entirely, and people who know their way around the bottlenecks of computer hardware and how to pack the most information onto little ribbons and discs of Mylar would perhaps be more valued than people who can take advantage of Moore's Law today to make quick-and-dirty programs. (And storage is vastly easier and cheaper to manufacture than anything on silicon. There's no reason to assume that this would fall very far behind.)

>>9458358
Seattle Computer Company should be bigger
Xerox should have more stuff.
Xeroxes R&D should be legendary
The military should have some crazy shit (maybe almost fallout 3 in scope of computer tech)

>>9458358

An irony of a setting like this is that in the end, software technology might actually have wound up much more advanced, and may have scaled vastly better than software has for today's computers. I can't cite off the top of my head who said this, but I remember reading once about a computer scientist(s) who claimed that programmers occupying the lowest (but most numerous, productive, and economical) rung of the profession are outrunning Moore's Law. They claimed that commercial software was actually in a state of technological regression, and that more powerful computers had only made programmers sloppier and cheaper to hire by making it technically possible for lots of badly written programs to run.

While I can't help but think there may have been a little nostalgia and resentment behind his words, they made a rather compelling argument that if inefficient shortcuts and a lack of optimization and testing continue to be the norm, there may come a point at which either all computer upgrades are rendered moot or the quality of the user experience will fall. Rampant unresolved security issues and 'Patch Tuesday' are just byproducts of today's programming culture, and by extension an enabling environment provided by highly advanced technology, according to the argument.

In this setting, with these constraints, you'd go broke doing things you can get away with today.

>>9411794

So Sun Systems and IBM are king?
No, no...
That means XEROX NOW RUNS THE WORLD!!!
o_O

>>9458424
Nope this is totally true. Computer technology can be so inefficient that i have a programming degree. It works, and only rarely have people been able to see the difference in my programs. But the whole user interface thing has destroyed the research side of the industry. I think only microsoft does any knd of serious 1980s breakthrough shit anymore.

oh and in any time period of this setting, UNIX should be badass. Not as "good" as it is today (without microsofts help, berkley only had 2/3rds of the solution) but widespread among hackers.


linus torvalds should not exist. Stallman should be everyones BBEG

>>9454367

I like this.

With a lighthearted side of old nerd subculture and 80's futurism, and a somewhat darker infusion of real world cybercrime (with a dash of conspiracy theory on the side) this could be a fun and really varied setting. (A seamless joining of old, colorful nerd culture and gritty P.I. stuff is almost too dorky to go wrong.) Characters have to be street-smart and resourceful, hackers have to be more than 'skiddies' if they're going to earn their pizza money, and entirely too many Gordon Gekko figures and G-Men want a piece of the digital underground. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to navigate the often lucrative, often dangerous world of hacking and data trafficking in a world that's adapting to the 21st century even worse than our own.

>>9458583

hey

hey

did you fix that paper jam

bampo

>>9458611
Rather, Linux does exist, but it was never any good and it failed to gain any popularity worldwide. Being "finnish" system, it's used in some computers in University of Helsinki, but most IT students treat it as a joke.

>>9459390
different to now, how?

i jest of course.

>>9459397

To be fair, it's still a fairly prominent server OS.

But that's about the only thing you'll really want it for these days besides an OS of last resort.

>They claimed that commercial software was actually in a state of technological regression, and that more powerful computers had only made programmers sloppier and cheaper to hire by making it technically possible for lots of badly written programs to run.

As a long-time computer game player, I can agree with that. See: Origin "Upgrade your computer for WINGCOMMANDER only to have somebody deliver a game with exactly the same graphics but half the system requirements later on."

>Also recall the era of Cassette Culture.

Cassettes are still an important medium in all of the third world and plenty of develping countries.

>>9414491
Fuck you, Windows 95, just fuck you. Windows 3 ran more stable than you, though DOS was just plain faster and actually useable.

Let's not forget the Acorn Archimedes...

>Fuck you, Windows 95, just fuck you. Windows 3 ran more stable than you, though DOS was just plain faster and actually useable.

>Fuck you, Windows 98, just fuck you. Windows 95 ran more stable than you, though DOS was just plain faster and actually useable.

>Fuck you, Windows 98SE, just fuck you. Windows 98 ran more stable than you, though DOS was just plain faster and actually useable.

>Fuck you, Windows 2000, just fuck you. Windows 98SE ran more stable than you, though DOS was just plain faster and actually useable.

>Fuck you, Windows XP, just fuck you. Windows 98SE ran more stable than you, though Win2000 was just plain faster and actually useable.

>Fuck you, Windows Vista, just fuck you. Windows XP ran more stable than you, though Win2000 was just plain faster and actually useable.

>Fuck you, Windows 7, just fuck you. Windows Vista ran more stable than you, though Win2000 was just plain faster and actually useable.

bamp

>>9459977
>Saying Vista ran more stable than Windows 7 even in jest

DEEEEEERRRRRRRRRP.

>>9460478

> wut

>>9454402
>Also Modempunk/Retro-cyberpunk is fucking Weeaboo

You misspelled "Mary-Sue".

>>9454402
>Also Modempunk/Retro-cyberpunk is fucking Weeaboo.

I thought we all agreed that the term for Weeaboo was an alternative to wapanese. Or did I miss the meeting?

>>9462199
Eh I remember writing that, as an example look at some old Cyberpunk books, Japan was king as far as exporting culture in the era where terminal-boys and phreaks would rule the digital underground.

Still think Japan should have a part, just not as big as say Gibson-Sterling-punk.

>>9462199
Nah, anon's just being 'tarded and using "weeaboo" as a stand-in for "I do not like this, but lack the cognitive ability to articulate my feelings".

>>9462551
>>9462465
Whoops, spoke too soon.

That makes a little more sense now that I understand the context.

This thread is made of HERP and DERP.

>>9462465
I always thought that was pretty cool about the whole 80's cyber-punk that it was such a mish-mash of cultures. Maybe it's because the of the vocal 'weeaboo' stereotype have no become more commonplace both on the internet and in reality that it's become something to 'hate'. Or maybe am just over reading shit.
>>9462551
That's what I first thought and to an extent I feel

ITT: People who were not even born until the '90s pretend they know anything about computing in the '80s.

>>9462877
>NO FUN ALLOWED

If you haven't figured out by now that this entire concept is tongue-in-cheek... gb2/g/, I guess.

>>9413367

You're such a pussy.

>>9459977

Almost all of those are true (exception: Vista was always worse than anything at everything).

Microsoft's OS's have this thing where they have two launch dates, the day when you can first buy them, and a couple years later, the day when they're finally been patched to be better than the previous OS was.

>>9458583

Yeah, that sounds about right. However, OpenWindows is still supported, SPARC, POWER and MIPS systems never disappeared from the workstation field, and X-Windows system isn't as refined as it is today.

Apple runs itself into the ground after Steve Jobs leaves to form NeXT Computer Inc. This would be the last mistake Steve Jobs made, as he is quickly sued into oblivion over intellectual property rights By Ted Nelson. Eventually, Apple without its charismatic and visionary leader would switch CEOs several more times before being bought out by IBM in 1996. IBM liquidated the company.

Although praised as a major step over GeoWorks Ensemble, OS/2 is tried and forgotten as IBM attempts to switch home users over to their PowerPC based systems running AIX. This was mostly because of OS/2's retarded impossibly difficult to remember shortcuts and horrible yet well integrated GUI. However, the 4th version of OS/2 remains highly popular with various computer gamer circles and those who like to punch themselves repeatedly in the face... namely intel x86 die-hards.

>>9463704

Digital Computer was hopeless, and disappeared in 1998 after many failed attempts to bring VAX and Acorn to the desktop.

intel's Itanium saved HP from bankruptcy, and now can be found in most mid to low end servers. However, HP was forced to leave the workstation market, simply unable to compete with the likes of Sun and SGI, their cost:performance ratio too high. intel, however, continued to laugh all the way to the bank, pushing out LSI as the primary SGI chip manufacturer finally buying the company in 2002. Sun, being the Saab of the computer world, refused to purchase major components from intel for reasons unknown and ended up partnering with Fujitsu. They never looked back.

By 2002, 85% of the US' population didn't know what an ISDN was, and even fewer bothered purchasing it as most people found computers too overwhelming to use, considering that even the most advanced systems of the time still heavily relied upon command prompt backbones (many even refused to use their windowing system simply because of uselessness outside of multitasking with multiple terminal sessions). Cost was also a largely limiting factor. The few popular home computers continue to come from IBM in the form of their low end POWER workstations and pre-owned Sun machines. POWER users often install Amiga OS for family use in europe and asia.

>>9463704
>>9463729

>>9464109

What?

>>9463704
Man, I saw Ted Nelson mentioned and was all ready to congratulate you for actually knowing what you were talking about.

>>9413937
I think the easiest thing would be an early scare, possibly part of the Red Scare, about the potential uses of computers in missile control and espionage capability (the military didn't really take computers as seriously as they should have IRL). If computer tech all got classified as 'state secrets', and the military only leased tech to computer companies grudgingly, then home PCs become impossible, and computer operation becomes a highly specialized skill, not often seen outside major corporations and governments. The 'home computer' is built by techies who flaunt the laws which regulate computers into the same category as anti-tank weapons and assault rifles.

That sound plausible enough to grind research to a standstill? The very concept of fast, easy data transferal would be enough for the government to quash any research into flash memory and USB connections. Then just extend the Cuban Missile Crisis and Cold War by 30-odd years.

I forgot which one it was, but one of the Cyberpunk 2020 sourcebooks that was based on a novel had rules for command line style hacking instead of virtual avatars.

>>9459787
once I worked in a place where they still used 5 1/4 inch floppies and tape drives as their main storage.
This was in 2002.
Currently I work for a company whose engineering programs will only work in DOS on an ancient 486 PC. They dont want to upgrade even though it crashes at least once a day as "it still works" I'm trying to use dosbox to emulate the old PC so when it does fail we wont be fucked

>>9465642
Not surprised. I've seen a lot more tape drives than I thought I would since I started doing freelance tech support. Lots of people use legacy systems. Ever try to explain to a group of old men why flash drives make better storage systems than 'those funny silver records' (laser-discs)? I never thought I'd be tempted to return to retail.