Random memory

[pne]

Back in the good old days when my machine was a Schneider CPC464 (sold under the "Amstrad" brand name in the UK), I once bought the game "Paranoia" on cassette tape.

Most of the tasks appeared to consist of finding enemy agents (identified by their coloured clearance level, e.g. purple) and shooting them.

Unfortunately, despite the name (CPC = Colour Personal Computer), the one I had bought second-hand had a monochrome (green) monitor—so I could never identify any purple or red or other agents. (Each colour mapped to a distinct shade of green, so the game was not completely impossible, only practically impossible.)

I think I ended up giving the game away to a friend, even though I had paid a fair bit of money for it. (On a visit to England, so I couldn't just bring the game back to the shop, either.)

Comments

[darth-spacey.livejournal.com]

The CPC hooked up to a standard TV, too, didn't it?

[pne.livejournal.com]

Not directly - the power supply was in the monitor, and there were two cables running between the monitor and the computer: power (monitor -> computer) and video (computer -> monitor).

So I suppose one could plug the video out cable into a TV (probably through a converter of some kind - I don't think it output "native" TV format the way e.g. a Commodore C64 did), but you'd still need the monitor in order to supply power to the PC.

[fledchen.livejournal.com]

For a brief time, ascii-braille books were available on cassette tape, and could be read with a refreshable braille device with a slot for the tape. I had a picture of one of the devices but lost it in a computer crash. There's probably a few images/articles about them somewhere on the web.