New VIC dreams
Last night, I dreamed that there was a Vic 20 convention going on right here in Oshawa; I think it was at the Holiday Inn. All the people from Denial were going to be there, even those of you from other parts of the world! I was fighting to get the day off. I got the day off of work, then my wife started bugging me about doing that, telling me that she thought it was a waste of time. I explained to her how rare of an event this would be, and how there's going to be some really great people there! How could I not go, when people from Sweden were going to be there?
When I showed up, there was some cool stuff going on; 6502dude was showing off his megacart, and eslapion was selling his heat syncs. Golan was getting money from someone for something. I decided to go to the cafeteria, where I got some cafeteria food. I met up with an old school friend. He was apprehensive about showing me his grades. After that, the dream changed into some sort of odd Indiana Jones videogame, where I went too far down without completing another step first to complete the amulet which would allow me to defeat the green glowing skull that chased me around down there. I had to restart the level because I couldn't get back out.
When I showed up, there was some cool stuff going on; 6502dude was showing off his megacart, and eslapion was selling his heat syncs. Golan was getting money from someone for something. I decided to go to the cafeteria, where I got some cafeteria food. I met up with an old school friend. He was apprehensive about showing me his grades. After that, the dream changed into some sort of odd Indiana Jones videogame, where I went too far down without completing another step first to complete the amulet which would allow me to defeat the green glowing skull that chased me around down there. I had to restart the level because I couldn't get back out.
Dream? There really WAS a Denial convention in Oshawa yesterday. We were all there, and thought it really strange you didn't show up, but we knew what your wife was like. Sorry you missed it, it was awesome! Didn't you get the memo?
Last edited by ral-clan on Sat Dec 15, 2007 8:24 am, edited 2 times in total.
Last night, I dreamt that I was at my favourite flea market. It was spring time, the weather was fine, and there were a lot of outdoor vendors. I went into one of the barns, where someone was selling some books. One was a Vic 20 user manual I had never seen before; it appeared to be written in a different language. There was another Commodore manual, but I can't remember what it was now. He wanted $5 for both, so I bought them. As I read the Vic 20 manual, I found there were a lot of blank pages. I read further, and discovered it was actually a religious book that someone had put together, explaining how the Vic 20 and Christianity go together. At first, I thought it absurd; then I thought I'd scan it in and share it with Denial members; but reconsidered, realizing how religion is a "Hot Button" topic.
In an outdoor vendors table, I made a strange discovery. On a table full of kitchenware, someone was selling these odd Commodore 5.25" disk drives. They were labelled as 1881 drives, but these were white with a brown label, matching the Vic 20. The connection was non-standard, and there were no cables for them. They were screwed to a metal bracket, which also held some 3rd party Datasette. It looked like it fitted on to some sort of organizer console style case. The drives themselves were in between a regular 1541 and an Amiga 1010 drive in size (closer to the 1010). The lady wanted $15.99. I didn't argue; but after I pealed off $15 and started digging for change, she told me that it was enough. I realized that I probably could have offered her $10, but that such an obviously rare item was worth well more than $15, so I wasn't going to dicker.
In an outdoor vendors table, I made a strange discovery. On a table full of kitchenware, someone was selling these odd Commodore 5.25" disk drives. They were labelled as 1881 drives, but these were white with a brown label, matching the Vic 20. The connection was non-standard, and there were no cables for them. They were screwed to a metal bracket, which also held some 3rd party Datasette. It looked like it fitted on to some sort of organizer console style case. The drives themselves were in between a regular 1541 and an Amiga 1010 drive in size (closer to the 1010). The lady wanted $15.99. I didn't argue; but after I pealed off $15 and started digging for change, she told me that it was enough. I realized that I probably could have offered her $10, but that such an obviously rare item was worth well more than $15, so I wasn't going to dicker.
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eslapion
- ultimate expander
- Posts: 5458
- Joined: Fri Jun 23, 2006 7:50 pm
- Location: Canada
- Occupation: 8bit addict
During the great outage, I dreamed one of my university courses required using a VIC and the Super Expander to graph transfer functions of weird electrical circuits.
But in my dream, the graphs made no sense at all and they displayed lightning fast, a bit like in the old VIC-20 TV advertisements.
The classroom didn't have special computer desks like normal classes with computers have. The VICs were all loosely laid out on flat thick tables with cables and PSUs let loose everywhere, a bit like it was when I was a kid and I went to the VIC-20 club.
Each VIC had a puny sized color monitor, like those you can use with the playstation 1 and directly attach to it. Except these were kind of "attached" to the back of the VICs.
I don't remember seeing any disk drive or datasette so the math programs were like "inside" the VICs.
I remember what struc me was the super sharp colors and brightness of the small monitors. As if, at this small size, pixels were much finer and colors much brighter.
Now that I think of it, it pretty much reminds me of the type of display you can see on a portable oscilloscope such as these:
What struck me is what the teacher was showing us; how to make a basic program that graphs the module, phase shift and group delay of a notch filter...
But in my dream, the graphs made no sense at all and they displayed lightning fast, a bit like in the old VIC-20 TV advertisements.
The classroom didn't have special computer desks like normal classes with computers have. The VICs were all loosely laid out on flat thick tables with cables and PSUs let loose everywhere, a bit like it was when I was a kid and I went to the VIC-20 club.
Each VIC had a puny sized color monitor, like those you can use with the playstation 1 and directly attach to it. Except these were kind of "attached" to the back of the VICs.
I don't remember seeing any disk drive or datasette so the math programs were like "inside" the VICs.
I remember what struc me was the super sharp colors and brightness of the small monitors. As if, at this small size, pixels were much finer and colors much brighter.
Now that I think of it, it pretty much reminds me of the type of display you can see on a portable oscilloscope such as these:
What struck me is what the teacher was showing us; how to make a basic program that graphs the module, phase shift and group delay of a notch filter...
Okay, I had a rather smallish VIC-20 dream last night. I was at some sort of indoor sale (in a church basement or something). Everything that was for sale (mostly books) was in a small room stored inside open topped cardboard boxes. On top of one of the boxes was a strange looking VIC-20. It looked almost normal, except for the fact that on the casing, near the top-back just beyond the grill-lines and VIC-20 badge, the plastic went upward to form a ridge. The ridge ran all the way along the back running parallel to the grid lines. It was actually kind of attractive. I supposed this held some extra hardware or something (16K expansion came to mind). The labels were generally the same. The silver sticker on the bottom of the VIC said something like MODEL L-01.
I remember thinking at the time it was a prototype from Commodore Canada or something. It was just the VIC on its own with no cables or anything.
That's it! Of course I was going to buy it and take it home!
I remember thinking at the time it was a prototype from Commodore Canada or something. It was just the VIC on its own with no cables or anything.
That's it! Of course I was going to buy it and take it home!
I had another dream a couple of days ago. I had moved out to a place that had a large barn type shed near the house. Inside the barn the previous owner had left some miscellaneous junk. Nothing really interested me, but in a "closet" in the barn was a cardboard box on the floor. In the box was some broken old electronics. I remember a strange Panasonic heavy duty cassette player in bad shape was inside it. Out of boredom I hauled the box nearer to me to examine it. When I moved the box I uncovered an open trap door in the floor. Looking down into a lighted room under the trap door (the room was so large I could only see part of it from my vantage point) I could see there was a "warehouse" of old electronics in pristene (i.e. brand new, boxed) condition. Right below me was a stack of boxed Commodore 64s!
Then I woke up!
Then I woke up!
Waking from a dream last night, I had the image of the classic desktop push-button phone (the kind that's shaped like the old rotary dial desktop phones, but with push buttons), but it was colour co-ordinated to match a Vic 20. The housing of the phone itself was the same off-white as the Vic 20 case. The dialpad numbers were the same mustard colour as the F keys. The handset was the same brown as the keyboard. The colour combination looked really good on that style of phone.
