Welcome
Welcome to a320

You are currently viewing our boards as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple, and absolutely free, so please, join our community today!

Diskmags and ezines

Any and all A320 homebrew topics

Moderator: Moderators

Diskmags and ezines

Postby ifightfortheusers on Fri Sep 25, 2009 4:28 pm

Hi, new to the forum, dont have my dingoo yet (shipped today, WOOT)
But I have been thinking about what I want to do with it when I get it.

Heres an idea (asbestos underpants on? check!)

Since the dingoo doesnt have any net connectivity other than USB , I was thinking if there was a way to present content on it away from the pc. Back in the BBS days they used to have downloadable interactive mags. The idea being , you didnt want to tie up a BBS line (and get raped by Ma Bell) reading a lot of text, so you would download an executable that usually had a selectable soundtrack , cool ascii graphics, articles and other content. That also spawned a demoscene that was HUGE in Europe. Check these for some background.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_magazine
And the still active scene here.
http://www.pouet.net/

Of course , once the WWW took off and the BBS scene died, so did diskmags. I think the dingoo would be an exellent platform for a revival of the diskmag. That is if anyone else is going to use theirs for something other than gaming. I suppose if you have an iPhone or other smartphone with a data plan , this would be a dumb idea. I dont have a smartphone as I am waiting for phone/data plans in the US to come down to sane levels. Plus I abhorr 2 year contracts and have heard too many horror stories of people getting phone bills for thousands of dollars. Just ask Adam Savage from mythbusters about his 11k phone bill. Ma Bell would be proud!
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/200906 ... 5374.shtml

So for example , you could make an astronomy mag with all of last months APODs with a selectable soundtrack that you could take with you.

So , if here was any interest in this , or if not, for my own edification, how would someone go about creating interactive content on the dingoo? I suppose one could use tools developed for the C64 sceners, and use the C64 emulator, but that wouldnt make good use of the dingoos' hardware capabilities.

Any suggestions, ideas or flames welcome.
ifightfortheusers
 
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Sep 25, 2009 2:29 pm

Re: Diskmags and ezines

Postby QBert on Sat Sep 26, 2009 12:16 am

Great idea. I'd see this as an ideal platform for informing people about classic games they've probably never tried before, that happen to run fine on the Dingoo. MAME4All's supported romset is full of classics, most of which the average Dingoo user would not have ever heard of.

As an old-time BBS user myself, your suggestion brought a smile to my face. Have you've seen "BBS: The Documentary"?
QBert
 
Posts: 13
Joined: Sat Aug 22, 2009 9:47 pm

Re: Diskmags and ezines

Postby ifightfortheusers on Sat Sep 26, 2009 2:43 pm

That was a great documentary. Anybody interested in the history/roots of computers and the internet should take a look at that. A lot of the files that used to be posted on BBSs' , along with other info including 90's era CD compilations of software we used to pick up a computer shows can be found at http://www.textfiles.com/
I think game reviews would be a great outlet for this type of program. I am getting a Dingoo mostly for MAME , 2600 and some of the old PC ports (Duke3d HELL YA). I would like to find out from others what they are emulating and why. Sure we could read about it in the forums or on another website, but it would be much better reading about games on the Dingoo, ON your dingoo.
Here is an example of a still produced scene mag that is kimd of what I'm thinking of.
A pdf reader on the dingoo would take up some of the slack left from the Dingoo "ebook" reader, but PDF files are so flat and uninteresting to me.
Well, I doubt there is an easy solution to this , unless someone ports dosbox.
ifightfortheusers
 
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Sep 25, 2009 2:29 pm


Return to Homebrew

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests