koz1000

6 ms·

1.
by koz1000 7mo ago
As they say, it was a different time. I'm friends with someone that worked at Atari around that era and he'll be the first to tell you it was a very loose atmosphere there.
2.
by koz1000 2y ago
The amount of homebrew games has been growing year after year, and the results are getting pretty impressive. Here's a review of what showed up at Pinball Expo 2024: https://pinballexpo.com/homebrew/
3.
by koz1000 2y ago
My last name contains the character sequence "rz". Back in the BBS days this would trigger a Zmodem transfer on certain clients. It made a lot of people upset.
4.
by koz1000 2y ago
If you ever played a Williams Bally/Midway pinball machine from the 1990s dot-matrix era (Addams Family, Twilight Zone, Attack from Mars, Medieval Madness, etc), all of the artwork and animation for those displays was done entirely by
5.
by koz1000 3y ago
We switched to C++. Nobody had a problem with the switch, although multitheading became a sticky point with some of the developers so we had to write an API to simulate nonpreemptive tasking like the old assembly system.
6.
by koz1000 3y ago
It also ran Williams' line of pinball machines all the way until 1999.
7.
by koz1000 3y ago
I was working on an 8-bit system back in this same time period. We couldn't afford flash devices and the kit required to reprogram them. But we did a similar trick with an extra write pin located near the ROM socket, then used a specia
8.
by koz1000 3y ago
Guess we shouldn't spoil how William Gibson's Neuromancer ends, then.
9.
by koz1000 3y ago
I worked with erasable EPROMs back in the day. It was a pain in the ass.
10.
by koz1000 3y ago
And a lot of smaller microcontrollers still use a UART port and serial protocol to reflash the device. It's the lowest common denominator for hardware interface and the simplest thing that works.
11.
by koz1000 3y ago
And, not you specifically, but you're the guy that ruins RTO for everyone else. I'm hybrid and every Wednesday there's a wave of people that slide in, put in their earbuds, and shout into Teams calls for eight hours. It'
12.
by koz1000 3y ago
Glad you're enjoying it. We had a lot of fun making this one. I have lots of early photos and stories going up on Mastodon. Go check it out.
13.
by koz1000 3y ago
It's been 26 years. I figure that's long enough. =)
14.
by koz1000 3y ago
If your NGG is on free play, here's the code to warp to the hole in one challenge (the final mode): Both flippers, then 3L, 1R, 9L, 1R, 1L, 1R. Then hold the left flipper button in before starting the game. Have fun! (Source: I wrote t
15.
by koz1000 3y ago
My kid routinely asked for access to Photos, which seemed pretty benign. Turned out she was screen recording entire Netflix movies and saving them in her Photos cache, not only bypassing every single restriction but also tanking my iCloud
16.
by koz1000 3y ago
Given how people stuff their carts, seems like you could easily bury something expensive at the bottom. If the store is super busy the receipt checkers probably won't disassemble your whole cart.
17.
by koz1000 3y ago
That's right. Bally/Midway left the city for the suburbs during the boom years, with offices in Rosemont and factories in Franklin Park and Bensenville. The Franklin Park factory is actually still in use. It now makes equipment fo
18.
by koz1000 3y ago
The more likely reason is that it was a test machine, as shown by the paperwork in the cabinet and the low play count. It was put on location for a few weeks to gather earnings data and then probably pulled back to the factory. A lot of tho
19.
by koz1000 3y ago
The EXORciser was also used by Williams Electronics to develop software for pinball machines in the 1980s, as well as the Defender video game. Here's Steve Ritchie and Larry DeMar working on Black Knight: https://64.media.tu
20.
by koz1000 3y ago
One embedded platform I worked on was developed in the late 80s, launched in 1990, and code I wrote in 1994 is still running. It's a 6809 processor with a little bit of RAM and 512KB of EEPROM attached. The entire code base is pure ass
21.
by koz1000 3y ago
Chicago Gaming just announced a non-remake, Pulp Fiction. The designer and programmer are veterans from the Williams days (Mark Ritchie and George Petro) https://www.chicago-gaming.com/coinop/pulp-fiction The old Syste
22.
by koz1000 3y ago
That's the Galloping Ghost Arcade in Brookfield. They now have the largest collection of arcade videogames under one roof, and they're growing their pinball collection. https://www.gallopingghostarcade.com/
23.
by koz1000 3y ago
Indiana Jones and all other Williams/Bally pins were written in pure 6809 assembly language up until the launch of the Pinball 2000 project.
24.
by koz1000 4y ago
Stern tried this a long time ago to compete with Golden Tee Golf tournaments, since those games were paying people cash and killing pinball in street locations like bars. The problem was stopping nefarious players from taking the glass off
25.
by koz1000 4y ago
Why do all the tech? The goal is to have the ultimate model of just-in-time manufacturing: to never run out of supplies and, without sounding creepy, to know precisely what the customer plans to order and have it in a bag in and in their ha
26.
by koz1000 4y ago
I have a hunch if the developers eventually got this to run on original Midway hardware and installed it at Galloping Ghost Arcade outside Chicago that Ed would show up to check it out and say hi.
27.
by koz1000 4y ago
Yes, Fluke Electronics.
28.
by koz1000 4y ago
A lot of games I worked on kept a running counter in RAM and then seeded the PRNG when a coin was inserted. That was random enough.
29.
by koz1000 4y ago
Warren obviously downplays his work after Gottlieb/Ratslime* because this talk is about Q*Bert but it's worth watching the documentary Insert Coin about the technology he was helping to develop at Williams/Bally/Midway i
30.
by koz1000 4y ago
I'm curious about the quality of the uSD card holders on all of these units. Do they all use quality non-corrosive fingers with enough force on the contacts? I once had an intern that told me all about his RPi project to do model rocke

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