User talk:Mahjongg/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Categorization

Hello! I've removed some of your category contributions since they were redudant, see Wikipedia:Categorization#When to use categories: "An article should not be in both a category and its subcategory, e.g. Microsoft Office is in Category:Microsoft software, so should not also be in Category:Software". Best regards //RustyCale 09:33, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks RustyCale, I was aware of the problem but you are one step ahead of me.

Ski tow?

Personally, I think adding ski tow to "category: transportation" is a bit of a stretch. Ski tows do transport people from A to B, but so do escalators and elevators and merry-go-rounds (well, sort of), none of which I really think of as transportation. To me, "transportation" means of carrying people or goods to various places, not just back and forth between locked-in spots. I didn't change it, but just thought I'd mention it. - DavidWBrooks 13:58, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

---

Yes I agree, there are several topics that are in a "grey area", you have to draw the line somewhere!

For example I could have chosen to include a topic about the "Transportation of illness" from one person to the next. Because you could argue about this as being a form of "Transport" of bacteria or virii, but that would really be a stretch. (actually I did add topics about transporting heath and information).

But personally I think that adding anything that is used to transport persons or goods should be included, Elevators and escalators are used to transport people so I added those, but yes the decision to where to draw the line is a difficult one.

But think, if every topic should fall in *some* main category, then in what other category should a ski tow fall than in this one?

Not including the "Transportation of illness" is acceptable because it falls under the main category of "category:medicine" and a person who "walks the topics tree" is more likely to start with the topic of Science=>Medicine than Science=>Transport, but a tow lift does not fall directly under any other main category that I can think of, so I included it in this one.

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Okay, I have given this some more thought and came up with the idea of creating the sub category Vertical transportation devices, of which the ski tow is a member (along wth lifts and escalators etc). So I could replace the "category: Transportation" with the category Vertical transportation devices. I hope this solves your objection, although the creation of Vertical transportation devices may cause others to object that this sub category is a bit of a stretch. We will see......

lists of monarchs, &c.

These should be categorized in Category:Lists of office-holders, not in Category:Lists of people. john k 18:38, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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Ah, I see....and does that mean that when the &c. happens to be currently in office I should _only_ put them in Category:Lists of current office-holders ? not in both, nor in both this category and the category 'Lists of people'? What is the rule here exactly? and why?

I know that generally I should not put a subject in both a category and a subcategory of that category, but sometimes the _why_ of this 'rule' seems less obvious when applied to a somewhat more involved practical situation instead of the simple example that is given to explain this 'rule' in the help pages.

For example: perhaps I shouldn't categorise "red headed asian jews" in the category 'Lists of people' because there is a category asian jews of which red headed asian jews" is simply a subcategory so I would be breaking the rule if I did. But then, 'asian jews' itself is simply a subcategory of 'jews', so perhaps I should not put 'asian jews' in 'Lists of people' too, which is absurd...

Shouldn't the categorising be there to help navigate between similar topics? It seems to me that strictly adhering to the 'subtopics rule' is not allways helpfull.

Anyway, it is not only the six or so variations on "lists of monarchs" that are to be moved to Category:Lists of office-holders when this 'rule' must be strictly adhered to, but there are perhaps 50 or so other entry's in lists of people too that can be loosly interpreted as office-holders. List of diplomats for example, or List of Byzantine Emperors.

I do understand your logic, but in my opinion list of diplomats (for example) should be categorized BOTH in Category:Lists of office-holders AND in Category:Lists of people. And perhaps in Category:Lists of current office-holders too if the list is talking about diplomats that are currently in office.

To make my point clear: what happens when half of the list list of diplomats lists diplomats that were once in office and the other halve of the list lists diplomats that are currently in office? should I place this list in Category:Lists of office-holders or in Category:Lists of current office-holders ??

I think I should be able to put them in BOTH! Similarly I think lists of monarchs, &c. should be both in lists of people AND Lists of office-holders . Monarchs are people too, and perhaps a user will not look for list of monarchs in the category list of office holders but will try to find it in list of people instead, and there is no reason, in my opinion, why he should not be able to find it there if he so chooses to browse through wikipedia...

"Lists of Officeholders" is a clear wikipedia category which means a list that shows succession within an office. List of governors of New York, for instance. A list of current office-holders would be, say, a list of current US ambassadors. A list of Kings of Galatia is clearly a list of office-holders. Category:Lists of office-holders is a subcategory of Category:Lists of people. Unless there is some way that the list is not a list of office-holders - that is to say, it is not a chronological list of people who have held some office - then it should go in that subcategory. Main categories should be kept as clear as possible. That's what subcategories are for. john k 03:29, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

List of diplomats is clearly not a list of office-holders in the sense that that is usually meant, although I see your point. List of Byzantine emperors clearly is. john k 03:31, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Okay, I see your point now. only lists with a timeline should go into Category:lists of office-holders, and only lists with only current holders of an office should go in Category:list of current office-holders.

I agree, list of Byzantine emperors clearly belongs in the first category. And List of diplomats was just a far fetched example so lets ignore it, it seems to only belong in Category:lists of people).

still my real question is this: where do I draw the line in the desire to "keep main categories as clear as possible". Sometimes I see situations where it is not so clear that this rule should be strictly adhered to. See my above example with sub-sub-sub categories.

However for list of Byzantine emperors and similar I can agree that they belong in the category Category:lists of office-holders.

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

• Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
• Multi-Licensing Guide
• Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

List of fictional Elvis impersonators

The List of fictional Elvis impersonators is currently nominated for deletion. As a previous editor on that article, your opinion in this matter is valued. -Litefantastic 20:12, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Aster CT-80

Hello. I also are a old computer collector from Madrid, Spain. I have read about your design of Aster. Have you more info about this? After the dead of digidome.nl, only your article at wikipedia have info about this. Photos, diagrams, etc are welcome. I have a retrocomputing site and orking in translate article to spanish.--Museo8bits 12:35, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Dear "museo8bits", unfortunately the old Asters I have are burried beneath a stack of other old computers in a small room. I have about 80 or 90 old computers (i lost count). When I have the time I want to clear out the room to test and photograph them, including the three different models of the Aster I have. And make some kind of wall rack so I can put the computers in a rack instad of stacking them on top of each other. I also want to make backups of the eproms of the asters. At the moment however I am very busy. I hope I can do this job sometime in the first quarter of next year (2007).

Hi! Just discovered on your Aster CT-80 page a link to a picture on my page. I used to work for a company called Micro-Plus in the eighties, an Aster reseller. I still have that original picture here and can send you a better scan if you're interested. I'm completely ignorant as a Wikipedia user, so I don't know how to contact you... Keep up the good work!--Niels.horn 01:45, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Niels, I rather not reveal my e-mail address on this page for all the world to see! Which picture are you talking about?

You know what,wy don't you upload the picture to wikipedia, then I can have a look at it,and download it, or maybe put it in the article. I am not short of originalpictures, I have an album full of Aster Pictures, and too many pictures in the article looks too crowded. for example I have a picture of the old MCP shop. Maybe that is a picture that enhances the article. What I do not have is pictures of the second and third versions, although I -own- these computers, but they are stored in a small room, and difficult to get to.

Hi, it's "A picture of the Aster CT-80 model two used for a business application", that's on my page for an old accounting system. I could upload it if I knew how to do that :-) I'll try to find out how this works and tell you the result on this page. Niels.horn 16:02, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Moving/renaming pages

For future reference:

• When a page's title needs to be renamed please use the "move" button on the top of the page. This moves the page history and automatically places a redirect to the new page (use this feature judiciously). (I am specifically referring to the Spin (programming language) article.)
• When editing disambiguation pages, make sure that the link you are putting is the correct one parenthesis and everything. (See this edit.)

You have a lot edits, so I am honestly perplexed by these edits, but I wanted to let you know about them. --Stux 22:49, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I did not know how to rename a page and "move" did not seem to be what I wanted. So I learned something new, thanks Mahjongg

P.S. if you wonder why I wanted to rename the page, I just wanted the page name to be "compatible" with "Category:Concurrent programming languages" where all the articles use "(programming language)" instead of "(computer language)" Mahjongg

Re: removal of "XGameStation" as demo platform

Dunno if you were keeping a watch on my talk page for a reply to your message, so I'll respond here to be safe.

Thanks for understanding the nature of your article change. We want the article Demo (computer programming) to remain as platform-neutral as possible, keeping platform specifics to sub-articles such as Amiga demos and ZX Spectrum demos. Specific platforms are only briefly mentioned in the article. To write a whole paragraph or two about a specific platform, especially one not yet notable for demos, makes the article severely unbalanced. I'm not saying you can't mention the XGameStation in the article at all, but I would suggest you keep the mention down to only one or two sentences - and that they are based on historical evidence, not promotion or hopeful intentions. For the time being, I would like to see info about XGameStation demo making confined to the XGameStation article itself. Then if there's enough, it can be mentioned in Demo (computer programming). --Vossanova ^o< 15:03, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposed removal of ":List of home computers by video hardware"

A tag has been placed on List of home computers by video hardware, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done because the article seems to be about a person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable, that is, why an article about that subject should be included in Wikipedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not assert notability may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable, and if you can indicate why the subject of this article is notable, you may contest the tagging. To do this, add {{hangon}} on the top of the page and leave a note on the article's talk page explaining your position. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would confirm its subject's notability under the guidelines.

For guidelines on specific types of articles, you may want to check out our criteria for biographies, for web sites, for bands, or for companies. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. FirefoxMan 17:34, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

The proposed removal has been cancelled, and I will continue building up the article Mahjongg 01:34, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Mega duck/cougar boy

In Mega duck/cougar boy, you wrote that the Mega Duck "came on the market in 1993 to be mainly sold in France, the Netherlands and Germany for about €60,- ." However, the euro did not exist as a currency in 1993 yet; it didn't become an official currency until 1999. Could you please find a way to rephrase that statement? --Metropolitan90 14:38, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Dear Metropolian60. Yes I know the Euro did not exist in 1993. The €60,- figure I quoted is because I recently aquired both a Mega Duck and a Cougar Boy. The Cougar Boy was still boxed and carried a price of fl 129,- (Dutch gulden) which calculates to about €60,- using the official rate of 2.20371 Gulden to the Euro. However I think it's not that usefull to state a price in Dutch guilders in Wikipedia so I mentioned the price in Euro. Also note that this price is a ballpark figure, I only have this source of information. There is precious little information on the internet about the Mega Duck / Cougar Boy. There is some information here: http://www.pelikonepeijoonit.net/duckfaq1.txt (I will add this link, and the price in guilders, to the page). In the meantime I opened up the mega Duck and the electronics are very similar to the supervision (which I also own), it's mainly a 82 pins VLSI, and two GM76C88LFW-1T RAMS, and not much more. Although the cartridges are not interchangable I suspect there is a link between the Mega Duck/Cougar Boy and the Supervision. I will check by opening up my Supervision again and compare the VLSI chips. The LCD screens seem to be (almost) identical. If thats true maybe I can say something about the resolution of the LCD too. Otherwise I have to start counting the pixels :-).

In my memory the screen of the Supervision seemed very much alike the one in the Mega Duck, but now I have them netx to each other I see that the screen of the Supervision is much larger. so they are definitely not the same, although they are of the exact same type. There are so many other similarities, same (smaller than standard) power connector, link connector, power switch contrast and volume regulators, buttons, they are all on the same place on both machines. Coincidence? Ill open the Supervision to see...Mahjongg 20:40, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I opened up my Supervision too, and the VLSI chip is NOT the same, although they both use the same 80 pins package (16 pins vertical, not 17 as I thought before, I miscounted, and 24 pins horizontal. 2x(16+24)=80. But the clock crystal is not connected to the same pins, and there are other clues too. But both use two RAM chips in 28 pins SMT packages (although the Supervision uses the cheap "die on PCB" package for the RAM's. There are many other similarities inside, so I still think there is some connection between the two. Also I now know the clock frequency, because it was printed on the crystal. The Mega Duck is clocked at 4.194304 MHz! That is not a random frequency either it's two to the power of 22 (2²²) = 4194304Hz. so with a 22 stage binary counter you can generate exactly 1 Hz. But it's also simple to generate any binary multiple of 1Hz. I will add this, this, and some other new information to the Mega Duck/cougar boy page Mahjongg 23:13, 18 January 2007 (UTC).

I now created two articles showing both the electronic circuits of the Megavision and the Mega Duck, as you can see they are remarkably similar inside. Mahjongg 01:02, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

After complaints the articles were not "encyclopedic" enough, (something which to I a certain degree I can understand, its more a "how things work" article) I removed the articles, but placed the pictures on my user page.

Chiclet keyboard

Hi there,

I accept your criticisms regarding the keyboard diagram and most of your changes to the article were helpful. However, if you wish to draw readers' attention to disputed content, can you please use the formal tags (e.g. {{Disputeabout|Whatever dispute was about}}), rather than mixing editorial dispute with content. Thanks!

Fourohfour 22:31, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Fine, I was not directly aware of this tag, I will use it in the future. Mahjongg 23:48, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Watara Supervision internals

An editor has nominated Watara Supervision internals, an article on which you have worked or that you created, for deletion. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also "What Wikipedia is not"). Your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Watara Supervision internals and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate. Thank you. Please note: This is an automatic notification by a bot. I have nothing to do with this article or the deletion nomination, and can't do anything about it. Jayden54Bot 15:43, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Although I !voted delete, I liked the article. Have you thought about putting it somewhere else? Wikibooks maybe? Regards, CiaranG 00:31, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

No, but I'm busy placing a very skeleton version of a combination of both my Watari and mega duck articles on my user page, so you can still see the similarities between both designs. I don't think its "encyclopedic" though. I will look into wikibooks, I am not familiar with them Mahjongg 00:35, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

iPhone screen

Greetings. Your concept of how the iPhone scrolling works is interesting, but I can't find any evidence from reviews or videos to agree with it. The scrolling actually appears to coast to a halt, not continue forever until you brake it. Unless you can point out a reference otherwise, I'm going to remove that description soon. Thanks! Kevindarling

Did you look at the keynote where steve jobs demonstrates the IPhone, i remember seeing him do it, the only part of my description I am not fairly certain of is that I actually saw him 'braking'. I am certain the display scrolling behaved like he was controlling a physical object. So the braking is perhaps just in my mind, as the "natural consequence". I would like to check the keynote again, but I continuously cant get a connection. Maybe later. Mahjongg 23:44, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay, Mytube came to the rescue, and you can see the keynote here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfYQ-KpUioA&mode=related&search= At about 2:50 you can see him scroll the screen, and yes the scrolling quickly coasts to a halt, but just before he selects the beatles song you can see that he "drags" the lists. Its hard to see if he starts doing that before are after the display came to a halt though, but my mental impression was that because he dragged the display (The display followed his finger while he kept it on the display, versus just giving it a sweep) he had "total control" over the movement, and that implies also the possibility to halt it. But agreed, we don't know that for sure until we get one to try, So, for the moment, its more a hypothesis than a fact. Mahjongg 00:06, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I see the source of your impression now. What actually happens is that it follows the finger up or down exactly until you let go. Then (if you're moving enough when you let go) it coasts for a while until it slows to a stop. But there's no "dragging" or "braking" involved. I've been doing touchscreen programming since 1990, and have implemented this kind of coasting myself. It would actually be counterintuitive to have braking, since if you touch the screen you expect it to follow your command instantly. Regards, Kevindarling

PS, I just checked your page. We're quite similar, even down to the complete collection of BYTE <g>! However, I went down the 6800-6809-68xxx path instead. Kevindarling

After thinking about it, I take it back about a drag motion being counterintuitive. It would be useful if you had a pressure-sensitive touchscreen, thus it could tell how much braking you were doing. Good idea! Kevindarling

Its a pity that Steve never tries to touch the screen again before it comes to a halt. Perhaps thats not coincidental, his "shows" are always very well "choreographed". Perhaps the software is not finished yet! If Apples engeneers are smart, and I think they are (I don't own a Mac for nothing) I think they will make the interface as intuitive as possible, and that means they should try to mimick the behaviour of a "real" object as much as possible. And then it stands to reason that if you put an unmoving finger on a "spinning" object that it will slow down. The difference between completely controlling the exact movement, and accelerating/deccelerating the "wheel" should be actual speed of the wheel, if it turns slowly if you touch it, it should not have enough momentum to overcome your force, and you should be able to "control" its angle of turn completely, if its turning too hast it should merely decellerate (ar actually accelerate if you wipe the screen in the direction it is already "spinning". But maybe I am too enthousiastic about the engineers, and what they have done. At the moment its very hard to see from the available evidence how far they have taken the "emulate a real object" idea. By the way, I do am a fan of the 6800/6809/68000 etc. When I started with my KIM I looked for other hobbyists in my home town, and found somebody who owned a MEK6800D2 development system, (I learned to appreciate the clean design if this micropocessor, and later the 6809 and especially the 68000) and we are good friends to this day! Mahjongg 11:50, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I re-worded the article to convey that most observations are speculative at the moment. Mahjongg 12:03, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for updating the article. I really think you're ahead of what they've done. Try watching here from about 50 seconds in. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgW7or1TuFk My personal guess is that someone once accidentally showed Jobs a scroll demo where the cpu couldn't keep up, thus it appeared to coast after you lifted your finger. And he liked it :-) Kevindarling

Hmm, I had not seen this clip, but if my eyes do not deceive me in this clip the Apple employee really -does- "brake" the scrolling. You can see it at exactly 1 minute and 1 second into the movie ( 01:01 ) just before he selects the telephone number he dials, the display is scrolling and seems to abruptly stop exactly the moment he puts his finger on the display. If I see it correctly, the moment he puts his finger on the display the IPhone is still scrolling too fast for it to "coast down" at that moment, Also it stops too abruptly. Still, it might be an illusion. Mahjongg 21:31, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

No, you're right. Coasting stops the instant you touch the screen, and the screen again follows your finger. What does not happen is the concept of dragging or braking. It's just either coasting or following. Kevindarling

Aha, well perhaps this subtlety in language might be the problem. Remember English is not my natural language, I'm Dutch. When I say touching the screen brakes the scrolling, I meant, it would stop the scrolling, (instantly, or nearly so) and when I said you could then "drag the screen" I meant that from the moment the scrolling stopped the screen would follow your finger movement exactly. I think the rest is just a matter of semantics.Mahjongg 11:39, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

MSX as Spectrum Emulator

Hi! I cannot agree with that statement. A vast minority of titles used the color by character style, after all. I assure you that when porting from the Spectrum to the MSX the color by character was preserved because it was easier to port this way, without drastic changes in the game graphics engine. In fact, I think that this trivia entry should be deleted because its not verifiable, nor properly cited. I am into MSX since its beginning here in Brazil, and I was never, never aware of this kind "of emulation". I did not want to hurt the feelings of the author by deleting the sentence right away and so I have only removed the worst parts of it. Calling this porting a kind of emulation is not accurate... in fact its completely nonsensical: it is a false information. It was not even simulation for that matter. It was a direct port of the code, without enhancements. This happened currently when the PlayStation 3 was launched: lots of XBOX360 titles were ported to the PS3 without benefiting from the better graphics card or the better parallelism of its core processors. Would you call it a kind of XBOX360 emulation? No, its a porting technique: you keep the standards of your software (game or whatever) to the lowest common denominator, so its easy to port to many different systems. That's why I will not let this miss-information to enter the MSX article (or, at least, that's why I will try to convince my fellow wikipedians not to bring it in again.. :-). Regards Loudenvier 13:26, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Dear Loudenvier, It appears to me that we do not really disagree that much at all, except for the semantic problem of using the word "emulation". But it wasn't for nothing that the word emulation was used inside quotes, the qotes were used to express that the word was not used in its normal context. The author did _not_ mean to imply that any -real- emulation was going on, only that the programmer treated the MSX system as if he was programming for a Spectrum!

And yes, I agree "A vast minority of titles used the color by character style, after all". Where did I imply this was not the case? Using "tilled" graphics is often very efficient for simple video systems, to preserve memory.

But MSX titles especially designed for MSX, not just ported from a Spectrum title, also used techniques unique to the MSX. For example Sprites, and the much better color resolution.

Deleting information because there is no reference to it is considered simply -wrong- on wikipedia. If everybody did that there would not be much information left. In cases where the accuracy of something is in dispute, and there are no references, it is the norm to use the "Fact" template, like this :.

Your reference to the Playstation 3 and the XBOX360 is completely nonsensical, these are systems that could not be made more different internally than they are, so it stands to reason that any software that must run on both systems has to be ported.

In contrast, the Spectrum and MSX shared -so many- features that for a Spectrum programmer it was simply much easier to modify his existing program a little bit, than to start again so he could use all the resources of the MSX graphics chip. Often the only real improvement that was made to the game was to add sound routines that use the sound-chip of the MSX. The Spectrum did not have any sound hardware except for one I/O port you could toggle with software, so it had lousy sound. This fact, the "lazyness" of spectrum software authors, was the main reason that MSX software from Europe often was not as good as the software from Japan, (Where the Spectrum had little success) which -did- use all the features of MSX

I am aware that MSX was very popular in Brazil (it also had something to do with and embargo, if I recall well, I own a "cougar boy" handheld game, that was also popular in Brazil for similar reasons). But let me tell you it also was very popular in the Netherlands. As a matter of fact, I worked for two different companies, (three if you count that I was also "lend out" to Sony by one of these two) that published software for MSX, and I wrote software in Assembler and C for MSX. I think I know a bit about what I am talking about here.

The current trivia entry as it is completely correct in my view, and gives a valid point of view that is noteworthy. It should stay Mahjongg 16:41, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, Spanish MSX titles were great! Even better than most japanese titles (Astro Marine Corps, Titanic, La Abadia del Crimen, among others). The analogy with XBOX360 and PS3 still stands... It doesn't matter that the hardware is so different, since the games are written in a game specific framework (probably C++ or something like Unreal Engine), and then only the engine is ported to the new system, the game code is almost the same, just like the Spectrum to MSX "port" the new version for the PS3 did not used the new capabilities of the machine, the developers opted to keep the game just like it was in the 360 verstion (isn't it the same that happened when porting SPECTRUM to MSX?). Its wrong and confusing to call it "emulation". (did you know that a brazillian company wrote an almost 100% compatible ZX Spectrum emulator for the MSX in 1987? It sold 2 copies in its entire commercial life).

And you are wrong when you said that information should not be deleted from wikipedia when it is not referenced. It should, or else we would have lots of articles with unreferenced content that never get pruned. This entry in the trivia looks to me something not verifiable, which is a requirement for anything that enters wikipedia. But I agree with you that a tag should be placed first, for a while... I am still more diplomatic than that: I just removed what was blatantly wrong (the emulation part), and let the rest stands without deleting anything...

I learned to program in the MSX computer (BASIC, then Pascal, then ASSEMBLY - not C, which I used on the IBM PC XT solely). I really love to contribute to the MSX article for that matter. It was a huge success in Brazil, extremely popular, its a shame we could not use such adjectives in the MSX article itself :-)

And you do not need to warm me about your reply... Your talk page is on my watchlist :-)Loudenvier 16:59, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Again, I -agree- that calling it "emulation" is too strong a term. remember, I did not start to use the term, but -I did- understand what the original author tried to say. When you say "I was never, never aware of this kind "of emulation"." then Duh, of course you were not, because no emulation was going on....! Using the wordt "emulation", -I say it again- is just semantics for "treating the MSX as a Spectrum"!

The point the original author tried to make has nothing to do with "emulation", but tries to explain why, dear I say it.... Okay Ill be frank... It tries to explain why British MSX software authors made such lousy MSX software! Its part snobbism, part lazyness, part "MSX is not invented here" part nationalism (Britain is better than Japan) on their part that they simply did not have the heart for it to say. Okay I have already written a Spectrum game but now there is also this MSX market and I also want a piece of that pie so I will do my utmost to create the best possible port of my game. Instead they took "the lazy way out". In Brazil most authors who wrote MSX software wanted to create the best possible game, that the MSX hardware could support, so they used -all- available resources not only those that happened to also be available in the Spectrum. I think you will agree that the MSX system is definitely superior to the MSX, as your story about the Spectrum emulator for MSX implies, it simply had nothing to offer.

That the same game is running on the Playstation 3 and XBOX360 and only the implementational technicalities are different is logical. But what I wanted to make clear is that this fact is simply not relevant to the -real- discussion.

I won't make a point out of it, but I never said that it was wrong to remove invalid information from wikipedia. I simply said that if the -only- reason to remove information was that there was no reference to it, than that fact alone should not be reason enough to simply remove the information without warning. Also I don't understand you eagerness to remove the whole trivia section, it's simply fun to read. I like MSX (very much, I wanted to buy a 1chipMSX, but unfortunately the only batch that was available was sold during a vacation), you also like MSX. I want to make clear I do not dislike you, I simply think you are overreacting a bit to the word "emulation", thats all. With best regards, Mahjongg 11:41, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't want to remove the entire trivia section, I was eager to remove the specific entry about the "emulation crap" :-) But decided against it... But how could you say british programmers were lazy? Rememeber Head Over Heels (game)? Elite (computer game)? and many others... I really do not remember a single color by character game... Could you provide me some examples? I am really curious about it... Also, it only happened with text based games, right? Screen 1, correct? The Screen 2 games, being pixel oriented, didn't suffered from this, am I right? Anyway, it is very nice to discuss the MSX with somebody who actually used it! By the way blueMSX is great, I don't know how long I have not turned on my old Gradient Expert and Sharp HotBit because of the simplicity of running everything in this incredible emulator. Loudenvier 14:58, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Dear Felipe, Ah yes, I thought I read that you wanted to remove the entire Trivia section, but now i read it again I see I misread that sentence, sorry.

Yes, i do remember head over heels, one of the first 3D trigonometric view games. Not the first, I think there was one older game that used the same technique, and of course I remember Elite, the SF trading game with vector graphics. Good stuff, although I did not play both these games myself much (I played Elite on an Apple ][). My first "computer game" was a game called "nim" on a KIM-1. I wrote it myself, on paper, in 6502 Assembler. Ah, the memories...

My favorite Spectrum games were "Manic Miner" and "Jet Set Willy". Both were also converted 1:1 to MSX (and many other systems, but not all by Matthew Smith).

I owned a Sinclair spectrum, (and by the way also owned the ZX80 and the ZX81) before the MSX, so that was where I played these games on. But the point I wanted to make is this, I did not meant that British game programmers were lazy, I knew a few from one of the companies I worked for that wrote game software, and they were anything but lazy. I meant that when converting Spectrum software to MSX they were "lazy" (please do not take this so literal again!) in the sense that they did not put as much energy in it as they did when converting to other platforms, (the Amstrad CPC for example), the reason is a) they did not have to. but also b) They disliked the MSX, because it was not a British invention. Games like Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy are coincidentally prime examples of this trend. The MSX versions are almost spitting images of the Spectrum versions, nothing extra is added at all!

Sorry! I forgot to put the :-) after the "how could you say british programmers were lazy?"... It was meant as a joke! Sorry again... And please, do not take me so literal again, I am hardly that literal!!! :-) :-) :-) (remind to self: when joking electronically never forget the smiles :-) ). Loudenvier 12:45, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Almost all games that were converted from Spectrum games suffered the same horrible "attribute clash" as the Spectrum, and that was not necessary!. The spectrum could only display two colors in each 8x8 pixel "tile" (block of pixels). In contrast, MSX systems could actually display two colors in each row of 8 pixels ( or 8x1 "tile" ) So color clash problems should be much less severe on an MSX. But while converting Spectrum games to MSX most programmers filled all eight rows of a 8x8 pixel block, (that in principle could all have different sets of colors) all with the same color combinations, so they were "throwing away" this advantages that the MSX video system had. That is one reason why the author said that programmers were "emulating" the video hardware of the MSX. MSX1 had three "video modes", Mode 0, Mode 1, Mode 2 and mode 3. Mode 0 could display 40x24 text, but only in two colors. Mode 1 could display 32x23 text, but could actually assign two (foreground and background) colors to each consecutive set of eight characters in the character-set, That meant that with smart programming you could display 32 combinations of two colors at the same time. And this mode was very fast for games. Unfortunately MSX basic did not support this, and only used it as a 32x24 two color text mode. Then mode 2, it could display 256x192 high resolution graphics, and as said, it could use two different colors for each 8x1 line of pixels. So its "pixel resolution" was 256x192, but it's "color resolution" was only 32x192. In contrast, the spectrum also had a "pixel resolution" of 256x192, but its color resolution was only 32x24. Then there is Mode 3, it is very similar to the "lowres" mode of the Apple ][, in it each pixel could have any of the sixteen available colors, but the resolution was only 64x48. I don't think any game ever used this mode. Yes, it's nice to talk about this again, I am very much into "old school" gaming. I recently bought an XGameStation.

Oh! I know a lot about MSX specs... I wrote the MSX BASIC article almost alone ;-). And I did also programmed some games for the MSX (mostly educational, for my younger brothers..) I was young myself at that time - 13 years old - It was much better to learn to program in a computer like MSX where you can actually understand the hardware, BIOS, etc without all the mess of understanding 1.000.000 different card boards as it happens in the PC today - did you read the fabulous MSX Red Book? Loudenvier 12:45, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Huh, I did not know there was a MSX BASIC article, I remember that I looked for one, Now that I know I see the links. Even In my own 1chipMSX article! Thanks for the tip, I will study the article. Yes, the reason I am so interested in retro is that I think that a new generation misses the opprtunity to start learning about computers on a simple to understand platform. The XGameStation is not as simple as MSX, (its much more flexible, and advanced), but it's much better than a PC. I am not sure it's the same book, but If you are talking about the official MSX specification and documentation, then of course yes, I have read it. I still own a copy. Its an A4 size book about 3cm thick. It has -all- the technical specifications about the hardware, bios, basic etc etc. I needed to learn this book by heart, because I had to write low level routines, and later design hardware expansion systems, for it. I think I wrote the most advanced memory mapper routines on the market for it, for "MT-Base", a database system. Wrote special cassette loader programs that had copy protection, and could also load directly to video ram for a loading screen effects, and with the same rainbow effect in the display border that the spectrum had. Also helped writing the special buit in application firmware for the Sony F9P, and many many other things. On the hardware side, I designed cardridges, both the enclosure and the PCB, and o.a. a cartridge based modem, the MT-Telcom.

I noticed we have some other things things in common, (besides or interest in MSX and Wikipedia) as well. We both drive Opel Astra's, Mine is over ten years old though. Also, where I live is twenty minutes by car from the beach (the gray north sea), but its not quite as nice as in Rio, I would trade with you any time, it's very cold an rainy here. Also just two weeks ago we had Carnaval here, not quite the same as in Rio, I can imagine, no samba music! And I was dressed as a Viking.... Also, I am (at least, used to be) an avid SF reader, Heinlein, Asimov etc.

One last thing, I would like to try BlueMSX, but alas, I am a Mac user. But recently I installed Windows XP on an old PC to run the programming software for my XGameStation, so who knows. I do have "MAME" and "MESS" on my Mac though, and these are also -real- emulators :-).

P.S. I mentioned that I understood there was some kind of embargo going on in Brazil at the time (1990's), and that is why the MSX was popular as a "business" system. Is this true? Why was there an embargo?

Yes, there was an embargo: brazillian government wanted the IT industry to develop by itself and prohibited importing computers and electronics. Everything had to be made "indoors", by the national industry. But there were a lot of brazillian made computers, which were legal because they were made here in Brazil: they were almost all clones from ZX Spectrum, TRS 80, etc (TK 90X, TK 95, and others). Most of them made via reverse engineering. The factor that made the MSX a success was because it was made by big companies in brazil and the MSX was cheaper than the Apple and comparable in price to the ZX Spectrum clones, which were all far too inferior. The MSX2 came to Brazil soon, in the form of a home-made conversion kit, almost inexpensive: you could have better than NES hardware for much less money: how could the MSX not be this huge success? The IBM PC take a lot longer to came to Brazil, and it was far too expensive, more than 1000% (a thousand percent!) higher price.

YEah, I designed a clone of the TRS-80 myself, it had all the possibilities of the later Model III, and more.... The original was too expensive in Holland. As the time for many things MSX was much better than a PC, especially the video. It's a pity the memory expander system was not better documented (which slots would be used for RAM expansion etc), that was the greatest source of incompatibility. And maybe the Z80 was not the best choice, a 16-bit chip would have been better, or a standard for adding a second 16-bit co-processor. And the fact that BASIC could not use the memory expander was a bad decision. Al that meant that a PC wass still better for serious business use. Perhpas otherwise we would still have had MSX systems.

Since I am a Bodyboarder I can't figure myself living away from the warm waters and waves of the Atlantic. I really prefer Florianópolis to Rio, better waves, better women and less urban violence, but I am happy here... I don't like Carnival though... I like progressive metal and can't stand the Samba beat! :-) 12:45, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Zoetermeer, the city where I live has "the dutch water dreams", a complex where among other things you can do indoor boarding see here [1]. I'm not really a Carnival person myself,I did not go for years. Carnival here has nothing to do with salsa, and the texts of songs that are played are really stupid sometimes. I like progressive metal too, but I like many other music styles too, from classic to jazz, and punk and heavy metal. I like the Ska band "madness" but also Janis Joplin and Eric Clapton.

I am 50+ and have never been into sport much, except for longboat rowing (six rowers and a helmsman). I have Asthma. So I am a potbellied, (well not really, I weigh 85 Kilo) "old" guy :-) Florianopolis sounds nice, We have a artifical wild water (canoe etc) track in my town, and a artifical ski hill (with artificial snow).

The MSX book I was referencing to was the best book on MSX 1.0 hardware and software, originally published by Kuma Software. you can find it here: [2] in text format. Go check it! Loudenvier 18:09, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay, that was not the book I was referring to, but coincidentally my book is also on that site, the top book the "MSX Technical Data Book". That was the official book for MSX-1 developers. It was not for sale in any bookshop. Ik knew the Kuma book too, but did not use it much (for work), as the "white book" was the official one. Also, I did already have several books that explained the inner working of Microsoft extended basic (the "12K" Basic, that Microsoft sold to several home computer manufacturers, and that was also the basis of MSX basic. Generally though game programmers did not use any routines from Basic, only from the BIOS. P.S. you can see a picture of the MSX modem, I designed The MT-Telcom, here : [3]. scroll down till you see the picture.

P.S. I now started a MSX-DOS article too.

RUN Magazine

Woops!! my bad...I see the reference now. Perhaps it would be a good idea to include it in the RUN artical, so others won't be confused the way I was. My apologies for the misunderstanding.Chahax

Good Idea, I did just that, Thanks for the idea. Mahjongg 17:01, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Talk:Xbox 360 technical problems

In case you come across it before I get the chance I just want to let you know I'm not ignoring what you said, the other issues brought up were a lot shorter and less complicated so I could answer them within my time constraints. I'll try and have a response to yours later in the day.--Oni Ookami Alfador^Talk|@ 18:02, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks, no rush needed.Mahjongg 00:38, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

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