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@@MichaelBattaglia Well, as mentioned at the start, I'm out of action with a bad cold. I brought the rest of the household down with it too despite best practices 🤧 As indicated at 12:00 this video uses a fair amount of AI to get it out of the gate. Achoo!
For me, 1985 when I was aged 16 and received my own first computer, an Apple IIc. I lost my mind and programmed it like crazy, including D&D rules and other role playing games popular at the time. Not to mention playing the games like Ultima 3 and 4 at 4am in the morning during the summer. Good times!
What I found: Journal of Microcomputer Applications Volume 7, Issue 2, April 1984, Pages 167-188 MICROTEXT: a new dialogue programming language for microcomputers. Abstract MICROTEXT is a new dialogue programming language that has recently been developed by the United Kingdom's National Physical Laboratory. This paper presents an overview of the language, describes its mechanism of program creation and then provides some examples of its use in the context of dialogue engineering. You can find the text on Elsevier, I could not find an alternative location. Not sure if this is what you are looking for.
A catching story, I have to say. I hope you will eventually find out more about the mysterious MicroText and share it with us. And I hope you will get better soon!
@_bob_8170 There was always the joke about "BOB"... (Battery Operated Boyfriend" - wink wink...) which could actually do very little.... but even BOB the Battery Operated Boyfriend... is fast becoming a reality... Maybe him them.
Nice reveal at the end Peri! I was thinking throughout the whole video that there was something off. I've got to say, AI is becoming scarily good. Get well soon
"'ve got to say, AI is becoming scarily good. " The cadence is off. Before the commercial, I'd come to the conclusion it was AI or Peri's cold was so bad he was using a device to breathe.
Did a quick search in the British Newspaper archive. Found two references to Robert Watson who was an I.T. tutor at Spalding and another who was an office skills tutor in Kilmarnock in the 1980s. Both have photos so if you can remember what he looked like that might help ID him. OFC might someone else entirely.
Your teenage request for programs to run independent of C64 MicroText reminds me of the numerous requests for the same feature to be implemented in the Action! programming language for the Atari 8-Bit computer line.
I think your stories are great. The world is full of stories and as my dad use to say "if you don't know where you have been how do you know where to you are going" thank you Fractic family 🥰
I have to say that I'm impressed that as a 14 year old in 1987 with a C64 you didn't make a copy of the disc... But on the other hand if you had then it might have turned up in a box somewhere and help solve the mystery!
That's a good point. I don't think I knew of a way to clone disks then as the 1541 was so new to me and I had it maybe 1, 2 weeks max. Plus I would never entertain such a devilish idea as copying someone's hard work 😇
@@RetroRecipes Had I been in your shoes I probably wouldn't have got to the point of making a copy either.... The idea of spending my money on a floppy disk so I could make the copy (even if I could figure out how to do it with just 1 drive) would have seemed a waste vs buying another game or saving the for the drive itself.
@@RetroRecipes Sometimes copying someone's work is also archiving their work. In hindsight this would have been one of those times, not all "copying" is evil.
I never got my hands on a c64 disk I didn't immediately want to copy 😂. Great story, sir. There are so many things lost in time. Wish I still had all the programs I wrote back then.
Back in the day when I played Elite, I wrote a database on the C64 that stayed in Ram, that had the statistics of all the ships so you could look them up. It would have been nice to have something like microtext perhaps so, I could've made rotating wireframe images of the ships that rotated and spun around on the screen above the text. A mate wrote a more advanced version that loaded the information of floppy, but since I didn't have a floppy drive at the time. . .
I remember when zzzap, or c64 came with two tape cassettes which were transparent and had shiny metallic foil inside, one was red and the other blue. I thought that was the most futuristic thing ever. I was about 8.
This was a really fun watch Retro Recipe.. It was fun watching you investigate on old hardware and programing language lately. Also hope you recover soon from your cold.
I do wonder if the request for (what is basically) a complier might have killed it. I could see if they were internally already arguing about that and a bunch of people told them it needed one, or just Bob made it sound like a lot of people complained, that could help push them over the edge.
There were fancier versions of BASIC on various platforms that had the exact issue: the program could only be run if you had that cartridge/program yourself. This was common practice at the time.
I was a ZZap!64 subscriber and had various cheats published, many with tiny machine code loaders to break into the games to allow people to enter pokes, those were the fun old days.
I so knew the voice was AI and i hope you are feeling better soon. I so hope something turns up about this as it would be nice to see what happend to it as i think if something like this may of got more it to doing programing (maybe). As always totally enjoyed the video and fingers crossed that something turns up, so until next time keep up the amazing work. You guys take care enjoy the weekend 🙂🙂
@@RetroRecipes It might be hard to find out anything because all people who were involved in that project are in an elderly care home at least and some might suffer from a (un)healthy dose of dementia by now. Sadly, you are 10 years too late with your endeavour.
An idea to verify the tenants name. You know your own address at the time. Look for archived phone books from the time. Good luck finding more about that programming language.
@@RetroRecipes Any chance of relatives to reach out to or finding Bob/Robert himself? its unlikely but not impossible they might still own the same drive and disks you were using. Stranger things have happened.
You are living proof if you dream when you are a child and you don’t loose that sense of wonder you achieve your dreams- it’s amazing to me how many things you loved become things you do now- very inspiring to the kids of today!
I remember seeing magazine adverts for "White Lightning" when I was kid.. I think I owned a Vic-20 at the time and I used to drool over the promise of "game makers" that were available on the C64. Today, I am sad enough to own a copy of White Lightning and Basic Lightning, along with their awful red-paged manuals. Hehe.. I also had the same naive dream that when I bought a copy of Laser Basic (the successor to White Lighting) that I'd be creating "Ocean" games that would load with a Martin Galway SID track.. Boy was I easily misled as a kid. The power of marketing.. I may as well continue my "game making" rant .. lol.. I bought "Game Designer" for the Vic 20.. That was awful.. "Game Maker" for the C64... awful.. AMOS and AMOS 3D for the Amiga... did nothing with that while working in a supermarket to earn cash to fuel my Mini while at Uni.. I won't even mention what PC game dev tools I acquired and played with. Man I wish I was still 10, back in the 80's with all of that time to dream and do stuff. 40 years on we have so many cool things that are available and no time whatsoever to enjoy them. All work and no play..
Get well soon! Fourteen year old you was probably right and the whole thing was a bit useless without a stand-alone interpreter that could be distributed along with one's creations in MicroText. Without that, I mostly see educational uses, like an introduction to programming. But then again, back then it was common to just write something for yourself or your family and simply use it only on your family computer at home. Totally valid. Also, if I recall correctly, on systems without BASIC on ROM, programs were often just somehow bundled with the BASIC "package" somehow. I forgot how it worked for GFA BASIC on the Amiga, in which I definitely "released" (as in being able to give it to friends on a disk) some silly games. AMOS BASIC (Amiga, too) I think had a mechanism for creating a release built in.
4:10 I do remember typing a similar command back in late 1985 or early 1986. If I'm not mistaken, one of the numbers was for the octave. You would write couple of lines and then play it back. We also did some light graphical design, similar to LOGO. That was in an early high school computer lab in Eastern Europe. Some of the computers were older brands that I didn't know back then (but of course I knew all the Ataris, Commodores, ZX Spectrums, Amstrads, etc.). They were probably some local brands and or some IBM clones. Main attraction for me, of course, were games on ZX Spectrum that was there. We were allowed to play part of the time, but we had to learn some programming on these other machines. The club wasn't the part of the curriculum yet, but more of an after school club for students going to that school.
Loved my Commodore 64 back in the 80's. I remember my parents buying me the Commodore 64 Programmers guide. It had about a thousand pages in it. I would be up till 3 or 4 in the morning learning to program.
It was very common back in the day to over-highlight a program that never got officially released or recorded....sometimes, when it comes to programming languages, they would get absorbed into other projects. Fortran already had the ability of programming using common words, and languages exploded around that time. The other issue is that if a program didn't catch even a little steam while others overshadowed it, then it would get "lost to history." I remember owning a digital "typewriter" that you can edit/save/load documents onto floppy disks before you would print them to the paper feed, all done digitally, and used your TV as the display....it also had a couple games you could play on it, but it came with no how-to material, and I can't even remember the name of it anymore. It literally died to history because of how fast computers grew. I think the 86 processors and first windows came out like a year after or something. Computer science went way too fast, I still miss the days of asm programming the c64 in my bedroom when I was about 10 years old (prodigy?). I still have that big blue book sitting right next to me.
What an interesting conundrum, and subsequently fun Commodore video. I love it when we get a proper Commodore (or retro computer) video. Not that I don't like all other videos because I do, but you have created a microcosm of nostalgia in the RR community regarding the retro computer videos since they are the roots of your channel. Interesting if you think about it from the viewer's standpoint. Even when I hear the incidental music I get that warm, fuzzy Retro Recipes feeling. (BTW, you sound fine. After the last time I had the C-icky earlier in 2023, I could hear the difference in my voice. but others didn't HAHA.) Fun video!
Thanks man. And yes it is interesting how - as you put it so eloquently - those are the roots I sewed. Would you believe even I get nostalgic for that style too, and the beauty is, I can just make another one! Ta-da!
@@RetroRecipes LOL! Yes, I can see how you would get hungry for another video like that. But variety is good too. You’ve definitely served up a nice buffet variety from the Retro Recipes Kitchen to keep us all engaged. Feel better soon, Peri!
I didn't see the twist at the end coming! 😮Excellent! 😊Peri, I hope you are better already. I just read a bit but it seems that was an advanced version of Microtext ported to the C64. Check the full text of Ian Bruce Jones' thesis "THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTERACTIVE VIDEODISC SYSTEM ", available online, for a summary on the capabilities of graphic-enabled Microtext 3. Also "The design and evaluation of a micro-computer based authoring system for trainers" (1983) by Bevan and Watson for the purpose of Microtext. I couldn't find any academic paper that may have used Peri's review, though.
Yeah, this is probably the best way to find more info. It's an intriguing thread from the potential history of the C64 that wasn't. Have you reached out to Frank Gasking from Games That Weren't? This is exactly the sort of thing in his ballpark. It's not a game, but it IS lost software at its base. Aside from that, the clamshell of Ghostbusters brings back SOOO many memories. I got it as a gift for Christmas 1984. So many good memories. Plus the game itself still holds up as a milestone of the time, AND it was by Activision. A company that has survived long enough to subjectively go from hero to villain. History tends to look a helluva lot different if you actually experienced it, but thus is life.
CJ, amongst other “more obvious” things, I’d like to thank you for re-introducing me to Level 42. I guess they were too advanced for my teenage ears back in the mid ‘80s when I first heard them. They are brilliant musicians, and “World Machine” is such a groovy album! OK, now I'm off to watch the vidio... 🏢4⃣2⃣
1987, It could be bad timing. That is right around time of 16 Bit systems and MicroTEXT sounds like it was very much tied to the 8 Bit machines it was written for. What I mean is moving something based on text you type on the screen and then putting in a command would be less useful with the kind of graphics the 16 bit machines could give you. Also your 14 year old pointing out that the programs didn't run by them selves, is another 8 bit versus 16 bit issue. Or to say an interpreter versus a compiler language issue. In the 8 bit days almost all BASIC languages were interpreter languages and the only reason they didn't need a disk to load the lagnuage first was because BASIC was in ROM. I think there is a C language for the C64, but the memory resources and required might be hard to do in 64k of ram to compile a program, moreso than having an assembly language on the C64 and a lot more complex to write a compiler than an interpreter. I remember such languages like LOGO on the C64 having the same requirements as MicroTEXT, so maybe while a valid point, it was just no something the programmers had the resources to do on that 8bit platform and just using Assembly to program with lesser tools that programmers on 16 platforms later have. Many C languages were written inside another version of C for instance instead of assembly for example.
You're right. The Amiga 500 was released just a few months earlier, and would've gained some momentum by the time I beta tested MicroText. It's very likely they decided to focus on Amiga instead, hence the later laserdisc controller version made with Ariadne. We shall see!
My mother keeps telling me that it is very bad living in the past but I can't help it, the 80's were the best time to be alive and using Commodore's. I just want to go back.
8:17 - "Ceefrax" - ooh, I see what you did there! ;) Don't understand why Knight Rider was shortened to 'knightrdr.' when 'knightrider' would fit... ;)
I'm the same age as you Peri and 1987 was a special for me, i guess its the year that i look back with most fondness, enjoying my Atari 800XL. Get well mate, from a fellow Retro Londoner. I hope you get some new info on MicroText, interesting story.
I hope you get well soon my friend, I had a bad cold over Christmas not good :( ... i remember a speech program i had on my BBC model B and had commands like pitch etc
"Programmers in Ferraris" reminds me of the early nineties, Lawrence, KS. You'd see a number of expensive sports cars in front of bars on weekend nights with license plates bearing some variation on "NEWTEK" -- it was a hotter scene there than Topeka, I guess. The one specific car I remember was an NSX, the only one I ever saw in person. Don't know which principal owned it . . . Clever Nickname would probably remember.
I wonder if (based on your review) they were working on a way to compile your code from Microtext out to a standalone PRG file and never got it finished. It was a valid complaint, and IIRC other creation tools (like Pinball Construction Set) allowed you to save your work into a standalone/runnable format.
Perifractic had his first brush with greatness as a kid… who knew? I definitely want to find out more about MicroText and how it works. It sounds like this could be a fun project for someone to re-create.
I hd the whole collection Zapp 64 - I had them stored around my dads house, when we were clearing out the house after he had passed, I though - I won't be needing them again - and binned them !
that manual with the spiral binding I saw that out at SWIC in the late 1990s it was a discard at the library because the college got rid of the 64s prior to 1990 hence got rid or discarded manuals in favor of Windows that they would be forever buying upgrades for but should have kept IBM and the Commodore and the Chromebook but that is just me but you might want to check with some of the colleges or the computer institutes they might have some idea truth
You show a brief image of the Ghostbusters game. My old business partner (Alex Demeo) worked on that game back in his Activision days. He also designed Ghostbusters II for the NES several years later. He has some great stories about what it was like working on those games back in the day.
If people are still turning up lost Atari 2600 prototypes, C64 Microtext is out there. It probably has a compiler. Sounds like it works like the ACTION! programming language by Optimized Systems Software for the Atari 8-bit. Though it came primarily on cartridge.
Great story. I hope you get some good leads coming your way. As for your voice, the more i watched the video, the more i got a feeling that this was AI. AI has become great at copying people's voices but in a very monotone sounding way. All the best.
1:46 similarly for me, the 1541 Disk Drive was like wanting a Ferrari. It was never going to happen on our family budget. I never even met anybody who had one.
Microtext sounds fun, and the mystery is one I would like to see solved, although I had never heard of it before. I've always wondered what happened to Amiga-E as well after its use in Photogenics it should have been taken up by other developers. Good luck on your search Perifractic and was that Jose Fractic I spied handing your shorter self the disk drive package? A very entertaining video as always. Get well soon.
Another excellent language for the C64 was Promal, which was a structured language that used indentation much like modern day Python. And no mention of C64 languages would be complete without a hat tip to the MAE assembler, which worked with my 80-column green screen video adapter.
Veery convincing AI voice, Chris. Realised it at the false inflection point at 1:13 when talking about how your folks were sadly no longer around to ask about the guy's name. Specifically it was the word pair 'to ask'. Only a few of these 'uncanny valley' moments though, and the artificial breathing really sells it. Great work!
I think Commodore 64 could be revived, if it wanted to be. It was awesome, to change the titles of games, doing little things with scripts... That Language was ahead of its time... I do miss the 64, and the games were awesome, just imagine if it would have continued today!
During the whole video I had the suspicion that it was an AI version of your voice doing the voice over. Even though AI voice has come a long way, it still sounds monotonous compared to a real voice. In this case it's a great replacement for if you have lost your voice but still want to make a video. Much better than other YT channels which just cram out videos about unbelievable technological advancement pasted on a collage of stock footage. What I mean to say is , yet again, you show us that you create quality and creative content with tools which others just use to shovel out quantity over quality.
Mendella Effect!!! After your review, there was a shift and now in another dimension, it replaced BASIC and Bob is known by everyone as the richest guy on the planet.
Another quality video. Perhaps you could track down the 'Microwriter' next? I was the beta test subject for the first left handed Microwriter as a child in the early 80's. I cant find my name 'Matthew Harding' by googling associated with it though there was articles in newspapers with my picture.
Interesting! And invented not far from where MicroText was. The NPL who founded that were in Teddington, and Microwriter was based in Mitcham. I'm not sure when I'd get to such a video but I'll keep it in mind and see if anything sparks from it.
There's still teletext in Hungary, but not a lot of people use it nowadays. The stories you have surrounding the C64 are amazing. [Sigh] It was so cool to be a kid in that era...
Here in the Netherlands it is used by 5 million people each day (traditional TV and mobile apps combined). It's so popular that stopping cannot even be considered. A recent problem was that the editing software did not run on modern computers, but public broadcaster NOS did decide to develop new 64-bit software to do the old 8-bit teletext :) The switch to the new software did take place only a few weeks ago, so I guess they will continue with teletext for many years to come.
Undeniable shades of Titor here Chris! And yes, we're all turning into Dan Wood. I saw Bevan i this video so I'm kinda obligated to post this now: th-cam.com/video/wtfjzmYZvTw/w-d-xo.html
48? Teletext was rolled out in the Netherlands in 1980. The only country with a teletext service in the 70s was the creator of the whole thing - the UK. Anyway, nice that it's still a thing over there.
Loved my c64. I had the terminator 2 pack that came with the game in cartridge fourm that you stuck in the back, and it still took ages to load, but it was pretty cool
Bob might be keeping a low profile, did he use thumbtacks to put up posters then hide the damage with toothpaste? Perhaps you should reassure Bob that any party related damage to the flat is forgiven.
Hi Good Story - puzzle Maybe it just never took of, or was used somewhere else as a scripting language or even used in part on the TED chip or the newer 128 version of basic As for AI voice, i hope one day they will bring out 2 of my favourites Tom Baker ( 4th Doctor ) Mel Oxley ( Voice of SID in UFO )
Amazing that I missed growing up and learning about programming computer. My first one was a vic 20. I had to give it back on the market stall as I wanted to feel about nostalgia in 87. But the money I borrowed was needed to be given back. Few yrs later I joined a programming class in 1990, and was quite puzzled with cobal/pascal programming. But I definitely enjoyed the graphics side of programming though.😊
Another great video. Never heard of it. But i used Simons Basic some great commands and think sprite editor. And always did like the BBC model B as used in schools and and great Basic to. Ohh those peeks and poke lol.
It's not bad Ai. it's not quite Perifractic. It might be the script or the way the sentences are put together is done but there are a few things here and there. But as an experiment it's a good show of what is possible And as many people have indicated it is all getting rather good and will continue to improve.
ChatGPT writing scripts. AI generating Perifractic’s voice, image and rendering his studio. Then he can retire and just look after his old car and computers. And Babyfractic, of course… He WILL be the next Max Headroom! Is this Perifractic’s dream, or nightmare…?
![โอ้เธอช่าง... - บี้เดอะสกา ft. ต๋อง เทวัญ (Prod. by ป๋าเพชร) [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/zbWhiLFmVL0/mqdefault.jpg)
Thanks for watching! _cough cough cough_ Want double the ЯR content and a backstage experience? 👾 Check out Retro Recipes PowerUp! 🚀 patreon.com/perifractic 📼 Dive into bonus videos, get an early start on main vids, jam out to ЯR music, see your name in lights & more! ✨ By supporting the heart and soul of ЯR you help us keep the channel & nostalgia alive 🙌
OR you are living in a MANDELA WORLD...😀
@@allwaizeright9705 th-cam.com/users/shortsXrRyWmCth_k?feature=share
What's the deal with the stock videos?😅
@@MichaelBattaglia Well, as mentioned at the start, I'm out of action with a bad cold. I brought the rest of the household down with it too despite best practices 🤧 As indicated at 12:00 this video uses a fair amount of AI to get it out of the gate. Achoo!
Ah! I thought you’d generated the voiceover in this video using an AI model of your voice. 😅
For me, 1985 when I was aged 16 and received my own first computer, an Apple IIc. I lost my mind and programmed it like crazy, including D&D rules and other role playing games popular at the time. Not to mention playing the games like Ultima 3 and 4 at 4am in the morning during the summer. Good times!
What I found:
Journal of Microcomputer Applications
Volume 7, Issue 2, April 1984, Pages 167-188
MICROTEXT: a new dialogue programming language for microcomputers.
Abstract
MICROTEXT is a new dialogue programming language that has recently been developed by the United Kingdom's National Physical Laboratory. This paper presents an overview of the language, describes its mechanism of program creation and then provides some examples of its use in the context of dialogue engineering.
You can find the text on Elsevier, I could not find an alternative location.
Not sure if this is what you are looking for.
A catching story, I have to say. I hope you will eventually find out more about the mysterious MicroText and share it with us. And I hope you will get better soon!
Hopefully it isn't catching 🤧 But thank you!
Hopefully Bob sees this.
Which Bob?
@_bob_8170 There was always the joke about "BOB"... (Battery Operated Boyfriend" - wink wink...) which could actually do very little.... but even BOB the Battery Operated Boyfriend... is fast becoming a reality... Maybe him them.
Nice reveal at the end Peri! I was thinking throughout the whole video that there was something off. I've got to say, AI is becoming scarily good. Get well soon
Thanks for watching to the end 🙌
Always 😎
I thought the same thing. Us humans are amazing at how quickly we learn to pick up the inconsistencies.
"'ve got to say, AI is becoming scarily good. "
The cadence is off. Before the commercial, I'd come to the conclusion it was AI or Peri's cold was so bad he was using a device to breathe.
Did a quick search in the British Newspaper archive. Found two references to Robert Watson who was an I.T. tutor at Spalding and another who was an office skills tutor in Kilmarnock in the 1980s. Both have photos so if you can remember what he looked like that might help ID him. OFC might someone else entirely.
Thank you. I might remember his face. Sadly it's such a common name though.
8:06 - teletext is still there in europe on most tv where we have dedicated buttons usually 4 colours to make things easier.
Indeed, still there.
WOW!
Yep still here. My dad still uses it
Your teenage request for programs to run independent of C64 MicroText reminds me of the numerous requests for the same feature to be implemented in the Action! programming language for the Atari 8-Bit computer line.
I think your stories are great. The world is full of stories and as my dad use to say "if you don't know where you have been how do you know where to you are going" thank you Fractic family 🥰
Very well said Daddypower
I have to say that I'm impressed that as a 14 year old in 1987 with a C64 you didn't make a copy of the disc... But on the other hand if you had then it might have turned up in a box somewhere and help solve the mystery!
That's a good point. I don't think I knew of a way to clone disks then as the 1541 was so new to me and I had it maybe 1, 2 weeks max. Plus I would never entertain such a devilish idea as copying someone's hard work 😇
@@RetroRecipes Had I been in your shoes I probably wouldn't have got to the point of making a copy either.... The idea of spending my money on a floppy disk so I could make the copy (even if I could figure out how to do it with just 1 drive) would have seemed a waste vs buying another game or saving the for the drive itself.
@@RetroRecipes Sometimes copying someone's work is also archiving their work. In hindsight this would have been one of those times, not all "copying" is evil.
@@subuntu Of course, but it's hard to think like that at 14. I barely knew I was born :)
I never got my hands on a c64 disk I didn't immediately want to copy 😂.
Great story, sir. There are so many things lost in time. Wish I still had all the programs I wrote back then.
Back in the day when I played Elite, I wrote a database on the C64 that stayed in Ram, that had the statistics of all the ships so you could look them up. It would have been nice to have something like microtext perhaps so, I could've made rotating wireframe images of the ships that rotated and spun around on the screen above the text. A mate wrote a more advanced version that loaded the information of floppy, but since I didn't have a floppy drive at the time. . .
I remember when zzzap, or c64 came with two tape cassettes which were transparent and had shiny metallic foil inside, one was red and the other blue. I thought that was the most futuristic thing ever. I was about 8.
This was a really fun watch Retro Recipe.. It was fun watching you investigate on old hardware and programing language lately. Also hope you recover soon from your cold.
Lol in my Dayquil induced haze I misread that as you enjoy videos like this so you hope I never recover from my cold 😅
I do wonder if the request for (what is basically) a complier might have killed it. I could see if they were internally already arguing about that and a bunch of people told them it needed one, or just Bob made it sound like a lot of people complained, that could help push them over the edge.
There were fancier versions of BASIC on various platforms that had the exact issue: the program could only be run if you had that cartridge/program yourself. This was common practice at the time.
Or a simple runtime version of the interpreted language distributed along with any programs written in it.
I was a ZZap!64 subscriber and had various cheats published, many with tiny machine code loaders to break into the games to allow people to enter pokes, those were the fun old days.
Congrats!
I so knew the voice was AI and i hope you are feeling better soon. I so hope something turns up about this as it would be nice to see what happend to it as i think if something like this may of got more it to doing programing (maybe). As always totally enjoyed the video and fingers crossed that something turns up, so until next time keep up the amazing work. You guys take care enjoy the weekend 🙂🙂
The clue for me was the "Wasn't it?" after his PCBWay joke 😅
A "P.G. Barker" wrote an article about it in: Journal of Microcomputer Applications
Volume 7, Issue 2, April 1984, Pages 167-188
Correct but that's the 1983/4 BBC version I mention, whereas my C64 story took place in 1987.
@@RetroRecipes It might be hard to find out anything because all people who were involved in that project are in an elderly care home at least and some might suffer from a (un)healthy dose of dementia by now. Sadly, you are 10 years too late with your endeavour.
@@jorgdahn3736 Diana Murray who was interviewed about it in 2023 (who I quoted talking about Bob Watson) seems fine, I just can't get hold of her
@@RetroRecipes I keep my fingers crossed (and am awaiting an update 🙂). And I should have listened mor carefully 😞
@@jorgdahn3736 It's all good!
1:43 Josie Fractic 😍❤
Bob!!!
So, no-one's going to mention the eye-bleeding text justification algorithm on the Amstrad?
Very cool story! Did a similar thing for IK Multimedia back in early 2000s with a simple beatmaking app and look where they are now.
This reminds me of Simon's BASIC for the C64. I have the cartridge and manual.
An idea to verify the tenants name. You know your own address at the time. Look for archived phone books from the time. Good luck finding more about that programming language.
Tenant was 100% confirmed as Bob Watson :)
@@RetroRecipes Any chance of relatives to reach out to or finding Bob/Robert himself? its unlikely but not impossible they might still own the same drive and disks you were using. Stranger things have happened.
@@Spokavriel No, we weren't close, just tenants, and nobody kept in touch with him unfortunately
@@RetroRecipes Maybe try contacting NPL or other places Bob supposedly worked at? They may still have contact info.
The MicroText SOUND command seems similar to the Commodore V3.5 SOUND command, as on the C16 & Plus/4 machines.
Loved the Dan Wood reference! :)
You are living proof if you dream when you are a child and you don’t loose that sense of wonder you achieve your dreams- it’s amazing to me how many things you loved become things you do now- very inspiring to the kids of today!
Thank you for your kind words! Means a lot 👍🕹
I remember seeing magazine adverts for "White Lightning" when I was kid.. I think I owned a Vic-20 at the time and I used to drool over the promise of "game makers" that were available on the C64. Today, I am sad enough to own a copy of White Lightning and Basic Lightning, along with their awful red-paged manuals.
Hehe.. I also had the same naive dream that when I bought a copy of Laser Basic (the successor to White Lighting) that I'd be creating "Ocean" games that would load with a Martin Galway SID track.. Boy was I easily misled as a kid. The power of marketing..
I may as well continue my "game making" rant .. lol.. I bought "Game Designer" for the Vic 20.. That was awful.. "Game Maker" for the C64... awful.. AMOS and AMOS 3D for the Amiga... did nothing with that while working in a supermarket to earn cash to fuel my Mini while at Uni.. I won't even mention what PC game dev tools I acquired and played with.
Man I wish I was still 10, back in the 80's with all of that time to dream and do stuff. 40 years on we have so many cool things that are available and no time whatsoever to enjoy them. All work and no play..
Get well soon!
Fourteen year old you was probably right and the whole thing was a bit useless without a stand-alone interpreter that could be distributed along with one's creations in MicroText. Without that, I mostly see educational uses, like an introduction to programming. But then again, back then it was common to just write something for yourself or your family and simply use it only on your family computer at home. Totally valid. Also, if I recall correctly, on systems without BASIC on ROM, programs were often just somehow bundled with the BASIC "package" somehow. I forgot how it worked for GFA BASIC on the Amiga, in which I definitely "released" (as in being able to give it to friends on a disk) some silly games. AMOS BASIC (Amiga, too) I think had a mechanism for creating a release built in.
The 8-bit computer centric videos are by far my favourite!
4:10 I do remember typing a similar command back in late 1985 or early 1986. If I'm not mistaken, one of the numbers was for the octave. You would write couple of lines and then play it back. We also did some light graphical design, similar to LOGO. That was in an early high school computer lab in Eastern Europe. Some of the computers were older brands that I didn't know back then (but of course I knew all the Ataris, Commodores, ZX Spectrums, Amstrads, etc.). They were probably some local brands and or some IBM clones.
Main attraction for me, of course, were games on ZX Spectrum that was there. We were allowed to play part of the time, but we had to learn some programming on these other machines. The club wasn't the part of the curriculum yet, but more of an after school club for students going to that school.
Loved my Commodore 64 back in the 80's. I remember my parents buying me the Commodore 64 Programmers guide. It had about a thousand pages in it. I would be up till 3 or 4 in the morning learning to program.
It was very common back in the day to over-highlight a program that never got officially released or recorded....sometimes, when it comes to programming languages, they would get absorbed into other projects. Fortran already had the ability of programming using common words, and languages exploded around that time. The other issue is that if a program didn't catch even a little steam while others overshadowed it, then it would get "lost to history."
I remember owning a digital "typewriter" that you can edit/save/load documents onto floppy disks before you would print them to the paper feed, all done digitally, and used your TV as the display....it also had a couple games you could play on it, but it came with no how-to material, and I can't even remember the name of it anymore. It literally died to history because of how fast computers grew. I think the 86 processors and first windows came out like a year after or something.
Computer science went way too fast, I still miss the days of asm programming the c64 in my bedroom when I was about 10 years old (prodigy?). I still have that big blue book sitting right next to me.
What an interesting conundrum, and subsequently fun Commodore video. I love it when we get a proper Commodore (or retro computer) video. Not that I don't like all other videos because I do, but you have created a microcosm of nostalgia in the RR community regarding the retro computer videos since they are the roots of your channel. Interesting if you think about it from the viewer's standpoint. Even when I hear the incidental music I get that warm, fuzzy Retro Recipes feeling. (BTW, you sound fine. After the last time I had the C-icky earlier in 2023, I could hear the difference in my voice. but others didn't HAHA.) Fun video!
Thanks man. And yes it is interesting how - as you put it so eloquently - those are the roots I sewed. Would you believe even I get nostalgic for that style too, and the beauty is, I can just make another one! Ta-da!
@@RetroRecipes LOL! Yes, I can see how you would get hungry for another video like that. But variety is good too. You’ve definitely served up a nice buffet variety from the Retro Recipes Kitchen to keep us all engaged. Feel better soon, Peri!
I didn't see the twist at the end coming! 😮Excellent! 😊Peri, I hope you are better already.
I just read a bit but it seems that was an advanced version of Microtext ported to the C64. Check the full text of Ian Bruce Jones' thesis "THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTERACTIVE VIDEODISC SYSTEM
", available online, for a summary on the capabilities of graphic-enabled Microtext 3. Also "The design and evaluation of a micro-computer based authoring system for trainers" (1983) by Bevan and Watson for the purpose of Microtext. I couldn't find any academic paper that may have used Peri's review, though.
Thank you! Correct, but that was the Amiga version only I think. I can't find anything online stating MicroText was ever released on the C64.
Yeah, this is probably the best way to find more info. It's an intriguing thread from the potential history of the C64 that wasn't. Have you reached out to Frank Gasking from Games That Weren't? This is exactly the sort of thing in his ballpark. It's not a game, but it IS lost software at its base.
Aside from that, the clamshell of Ghostbusters brings back SOOO many memories. I got it as a gift for Christmas 1984. So many good memories. Plus the game itself still holds up as a milestone of the time, AND it was by Activision. A company that has survived long enough to subjectively go from hero to villain. History tends to look a helluva lot different if you actually experienced it, but thus is life.
Get better, dude! Us 50 year old nostalgia junkies need a little more rest sometimes to get over feeling ill.
Hope Bob is out there and watching...
CJ, amongst other “more obvious” things, I’d like to thank you for re-introducing me to Level 42. I guess they were too advanced for my teenage ears back in the mid ‘80s when I first heard them. They are brilliant musicians, and “World Machine” is such a groovy album! OK, now I'm off to watch the vidio...
🏢4⃣2⃣
You're welcome; glad you hear you've Levelled up!
Thumbs up for World Machine. Excellent album.
Level 42? You’re only human after all…
@@derekjc777Well said. I guess making mistakes is a part of life’s imperfections...
1987, It could be bad timing. That is right around time of 16 Bit systems and MicroTEXT sounds like it was very much tied to the 8 Bit machines it was written for. What I mean is moving something based on text you type on the screen and then putting in a command would be less useful with the kind of graphics the 16 bit machines could give you. Also your 14 year old pointing out that the programs didn't run by them selves, is another 8 bit versus 16 bit issue. Or to say an interpreter versus a compiler language issue. In the 8 bit days almost all BASIC languages were interpreter languages and the only reason they didn't need a disk to load the lagnuage first was because BASIC was in ROM. I think there is a C language for the C64, but the memory resources and required might be hard to do in 64k of ram to compile a program, moreso than having an assembly language on the C64 and a lot more complex to write a compiler than an interpreter. I remember such languages like LOGO on the C64 having the same requirements as MicroTEXT, so maybe while a valid point, it was just no something the programmers had the resources to do on that 8bit platform and just using Assembly to program with lesser tools that programmers on 16 platforms later have. Many C languages were written inside another version of C for instance instead of assembly for example.
You're right. The Amiga 500 was released just a few months earlier, and would've gained some momentum by the time I beta tested MicroText. It's very likely they decided to focus on Amiga instead, hence the later laserdisc controller version made with Ariadne. We shall see!
My mother keeps telling me that it is very bad living in the past but I can't help it, the 80's were the best time to be alive and using Commodore's. I just want to go back.
Recordar es vivar. Remembering is living.
@@RetroRecipes . Recordar es vivir. Just a little correction :)
8:17 - "Ceefrax" - ooh, I see what you did there! ;)
Don't understand why Knight Rider was shortened to 'knightrdr.' when 'knightrider' would fit... ;)
I'm the same age as you Peri and 1987 was a special for me, i guess its the year that i look back with most fondness, enjoying my Atari 800XL. Get well mate, from a fellow Retro Londoner. I hope you get some new info on MicroText, interesting story.
I hope you get well soon my friend, I had a bad cold over Christmas not good :( ... i remember a speech program i had on my BBC model B and had commands like pitch etc
"Programmers in Ferraris" reminds me of the early nineties, Lawrence, KS. You'd see a number of expensive sports cars in front of bars on weekend nights with license plates bearing some variation on "NEWTEK" -- it was a hotter scene there than Topeka, I guess. The one specific car I remember was an NSX, the only one I ever saw in person. Don't know which principal owned it . . . Clever Nickname would probably remember.
Very entertaining, as always. I hope you’re feeling better.
Bring the 80's back
Kingsoft 1986 for Commodore Plus4 and other Commodore computers, no listing for C=64
This was so incredibly well edited, im impressed!
Thank you for your kind words! Means a lot 👍🕹
I got the Eliza reference. Really like your channel!
ELIZA was so cool. I still have my copy on the Amiga.
Bob Watson was a passenger in the Duel Truck. He perished in the crash.
I have no way to prove that isn't true
I wonder if (based on your review) they were working on a way to compile your code from Microtext out to a standalone PRG file and never got it finished. It was a valid complaint, and IIRC other creation tools (like Pinball Construction Set) allowed you to save your work into a standalone/runnable format.
That would be quite a claim to fame from me!
Perifractic had his first brush with greatness as a kid… who knew?
I definitely want to find out more about MicroText and how it works. It sounds like this could be a fun project for someone to re-create.
Yeah! Starting with the Acornsoft package would be a good place to start. However I am hopeful the original will turn up. We shall see...
Interesting story, I liked the Ceefrax page! When I saw the episode title I instantly thought of the Teletext adapter.
I had never heard of that one until then!
I hd the whole collection Zapp 64 - I had them stored around my dads house, when we were clearing out the house after he had passed, I though - I won't be needing them again - and binned them !
I did the same thing :( Recycled every one. Idiot!
that manual with the spiral binding I saw that out at SWIC in the late 1990s it was a discard at the library because the college got rid of the 64s prior to 1990 hence got rid or discarded manuals in favor of Windows that they would be forever buying upgrades for but should have kept IBM and the Commodore and the Chromebook but that is just me but you might want to check with some of the colleges or the computer institutes they might have some idea truth
Ahah love how you flipped Josie off in a very british manner :)
You show a brief image of the Ghostbusters game. My old business partner (Alex Demeo) worked on that game back in his Activision days. He also designed Ghostbusters II for the NES several years later. He has some great stories about what it was like working on those games back in the day.
Sounds like a computer generated version of your voice to my ears!
The answer is there if you watch to the end :) This is a short bit of storytelling to be consumed whole.
If people are still turning up lost Atari 2600 prototypes, C64 Microtext is out there. It probably has a compiler. Sounds like it works like the ACTION! programming language by Optimized Systems Software for the Atari 8-bit. Though it came primarily on cartridge.
Great story. I hope you get some good leads coming your way. As for your voice, the more i watched the video, the more i got a feeling that this was AI. AI has become great at copying people's voices but in a very monotone sounding way. All the best.
1:46 similarly for me, the 1541 Disk Drive was like wanting a Ferrari. It was never going to happen on our family budget. I never even met anybody who had one.
😪🥲
... and the games cost £5 - £10 more than the tape versions !
No wonder C64 Disk Drives never took off in the cash-strapped UK of the 80s
Microtext sounds fun, and the mystery is one I would like to see solved, although I had never heard of it before.
I've always wondered what happened to Amiga-E as well after its use in Photogenics it should have been taken up by other developers.
Good luck on your search Perifractic and was that Jose Fractic I spied handing your shorter self the disk drive package?
A very entertaining video as always. Get well soon.
No that was Bob :D
@@RetroRecipes LOL. Bob should be reasonably easy to identify then, such a strapping young fellow..
Flashheart gets far too many friends that way.
Another excellent language for the C64 was Promal, which was a structured language that used indentation much like modern day Python. And no mention of C64 languages would be complete without a hat tip to the MAE assembler, which worked with my 80-column green screen video adapter.
That's a pretty good AI. It felt so much like a human I didn't even notice it except when you (or it, I guess) mentioned it.
Veery convincing AI voice, Chris. Realised it at the false inflection point at 1:13 when talking about how your folks were sadly no longer around to ask about the guy's name. Specifically it was the word pair 'to ask'. Only a few of these 'uncanny valley' moments though, and the artificial breathing really sells it. Great work!
“Ceefrax”.
[stands to applaud]
Cheers to Martin Atkins for that gem!
The way this sounds reminds me of "Amiga E" on the Amiga, or like Lua on modern systems...
11:02 - "labatory" - is that where you keep test tubes and bunsen burners in a toilet? ;)
I think I have the answer: Mandela Effect.
I think Commodore 64 could be revived, if it wanted to be. It was awesome, to change the titles of games, doing little things with scripts... That Language was ahead of its time... I do miss the 64, and the games were awesome, just imagine if it would have continued today!
Good old head knocking Commodore 1541 oh the memories
Precision Can Benefit? Prototype Certified Brands? Professional Carbon Backings? Just a few more PCB ideas for this one?
AIfractic and Josiefractic keeping the channel running while Perifractic is down for maintenance.
Hah you're not wrong mate! 🔩🔧
During the whole video I had the suspicion that it was an AI version of your voice doing the voice over. Even though AI voice has come a long way, it still sounds monotonous compared to a real voice. In this case it's a great replacement for if you have lost your voice but still want to make a video. Much better than other YT channels which just cram out videos about unbelievable technological advancement pasted on a collage of stock footage.
What I mean to say is , yet again, you show us that you create quality and creative content with tools which others just use to shovel out quantity over quality.
Thank you so much for sharing that viewpoint!
Great investigative video.
Well that was an interesting and obscure tidbit of Commodore history!
Mendella Effect!!! After your review, there was a shift and now in another dimension, it replaced BASIC and Bob is known by everyone as the richest guy on the planet.
th-cam.com/users/shortsXrRyWmCth_k?feature=share
I think the person bringing the disk drive was Alice, of Alice & Bob crypto fame.
Another quality video. Perhaps you could track down the 'Microwriter' next? I was the beta test subject for the first left handed Microwriter as a child in the early 80's. I cant find my name 'Matthew Harding' by googling associated with it though there was articles in newspapers with my picture.
Interesting! And invented not far from where MicroText was. The NPL who founded that were in Teddington, and Microwriter was based in Mitcham. I'm not sure when I'd get to such a video but I'll keep it in mind and see if anything sparks from it.
@@RetroRecipes That would be pretty awesome.
There's still teletext in Hungary, but not a lot of people use it nowadays. The stories you have surrounding the C64 are amazing. [Sigh] It was so cool to be a kid in that era...
Here in the Netherlands it is used by 5 million people each day (traditional TV and mobile apps combined). It's so popular that stopping cannot even be considered. A recent problem was that the editing software did not run on modern computers, but public broadcaster NOS did decide to develop new 64-bit software to do the old 8-bit teletext :) The switch to the new software did take place only a few weeks ago, so I guess they will continue with teletext for many years to come.
@@danielmantione Awesome!
Undeniable shades of Titor here Chris! And yes, we're all turning into Dan Wood.
I saw Bevan i this video so I'm kinda obligated to post this now:
th-cam.com/video/wtfjzmYZvTw/w-d-xo.html
I hope you feel better soon. Get some rest and thanks for the story!
Yeah that sounds like Simon's Basic, maybe whoever developed that bought Bob's project.
I can see why you'd think that but Simon's was written by someone whose last name was Simons in 1983, 4 years before I beta tested MicroText.
I searched ''Teletext'' here in the netherlands and,... we still have it!!!! it's still there after 48 years speaking in 2024!!
48? Teletext was rolled out in the Netherlands in 1980. The only country with a teletext service in the 70s was the creator of the whole thing - the UK. Anyway, nice that it's still a thing over there.
You could tell something was not right with the narration but wow, it's spookily good.
Great vidieo as always! Thanks, and get well soon!
Loved my c64. I had the terminator 2 pack that came with the game in cartridge fourm that you stuck in the back, and it still took ages to load, but it was pretty cool
I wonder how many thousands of programmes were started and abandoned in the 70s 80s and later for a multitude of systems
A fascinating mystery! Have you thought about putting an appeal in the local press to see if anyone else remembers him?
I thought that Bob was your uncle.
Bob might be keeping a low profile, did he use thumbtacks to put up posters then hide the damage with toothpaste? Perhaps you should reassure Bob that any party related damage to the flat is forgiven.
Hi Good Story - puzzle
Maybe it just never took of, or was used somewhere else as a scripting language or even used in part on the TED chip or the newer 128 version of basic
As for AI voice, i hope one day they will bring out 2 of my favourites
Tom Baker ( 4th Doctor )
Mel Oxley ( Voice of SID in UFO )
Amazing that I missed growing up and learning about programming computer. My first one was a vic 20.
I had to give it back on the market stall as I wanted to feel about nostalgia in 87. But the money I borrowed was needed to be given back.
Few yrs later I joined a programming class in 1990, and was quite puzzled with cobal/pascal programming.
But I definitely enjoyed the graphics side of programming though.😊
Another great video. Never heard of it. But i used Simons Basic some great commands and think sprite editor. And always did like the BBC model B as used in schools and and great Basic to. Ohh those peeks and poke lol.
Just one poke?
I did wonder if your voice was AI as we use AI in the company I work for. It follows the same sound/structure for the voice. Well played though :)
It's not bad Ai. it's not quite Perifractic. It might be the script or the way the sentences are put together is done but there are a few things here and there. But as an experiment it's a good show of what is possible And as many people have indicated it is all getting rather good and will continue to improve.
Fascinating, I never heard of this MicroText programming language before.
I hope you are able to find out more about it.
PerILLfractic sounds like text-to-speech 😂
12:00
@@RetroRecipes dammit. I meant to delete my comment after I got to that part 🤦♂️
There's always programming the interpreter yourself.
ChatGPT writing scripts. AI generating Perifractic’s voice, image and rendering his studio. Then he can retire and just look after his old car and computers. And Babyfractic, of course…
He WILL be the next Max Headroom!
Is this Perifractic’s dream, or nightmare…?
Sounds d-dreamy
Nightmare