hardware retrofetishism

helping clear with searching and translating of some material for previous article, some thoughts disturbing my mind from time to time revealed again. i've decided do not interrupt that review written by a competent person and to say few words about the problem we have with our spekka and my point of view on its solution here.

in the beginning i'd like to say, that for me creativity is the higher grade of human existence and so i'm interested in art as its realization. i do have respect for those people, who try to create new modifications for our platform until their desire becomes a fetishism.

i'm somehow distressed with nemo's 'open letters' (i couldn't avoid of paying attention to it, especially because he is nearly the last spectrum compatible machines' manufacturer in russia). this man, who denies almost every achievement of modern civilization, thinking that everything is thrusted upon russia by western culture, at the same time he is the one of those who sold themselves. what does the 'money mantra' repetition mean? denying internet just because stupidity and unusefulness prevails over the needful information is ridiculous. it's quite evident that internet is the reflection of a real world, and if 90% of people like to spend their time discussing that shit spread by the mass media, internet will contain the same. but we can learn to reach out in finding what we are looking for. and it is exactly what the mankind is having some problems with. what nemo make his machine for? to use it as a text processor? gaining aditional opportunities with 7mhz? what is it for? we can't compete with multinational corporations controling the 'home computers' productions. parhaps, it's better for us to turn our efforts in the other direction.

we can realize ourselves in art, taking part in the making of such young and significant manifistation of modern life as demomaking. you can tell everybody about your feelings, emotions and your life attitude here. there are a plenty of means to do it, besides mhzs and megabytes, people could manage without that stuff for ages, realizing themselves in music, art and literature. of course, you can use this 'magnificant' kay for this, at the same time casting away all that accumulated experience of our platform because the majority of demos of the past few years doesn't work properly. but any development without learning and having esteem for the history leads into a deadend. i envy commodore users - practically, they have only 2 types of machines pal and ntsc, the last one is commonly spread in usa, where the demoscene actually doesn't exist. the amigaone developers also thought about preserving the historical baggage of the platform, which made the great contribution to demomaking in europe - to this technically modern machine based on g3/g4 processor a usual amiga 1200 can be attached, so user gets double processor system with the optional possibility to run applications on a 'native' hardware.

however, i've only seen vague mentioning of some technical parameters such as tacts per line and the speed of a slow memory (which deffers even on the original spectrums) while reading specifications of sparky, speccybob, spectrum3e, spectrumse. i have a strong feeling that its developers don't understand the purpose of their work...

well, i need a pentagon. a pentagon with its well-known and time approved parameters. a pentagon that allow me to watch tryptomine dream, shit4brains, power up and many other works in a proper author's way. a pentagon, that i can take at altparty or forever to show the deepness of my inner world to our western friends, without crushing it.

and i remember lyra, shock, dies irae, higher state and others - it is quite clear that it's easier to fix these works for pentagon than the reverse operation. the first example, that i remind, is a tr-dos version of losing victoria, made by triebkraft. on the other hand - the lame pared-down scorpion version of insult.

emulators are not a panacea for a dying hardware. this really powerful instrument forever will be just a program, working in an alien operating system. and it's not about sound or video modes it's about magic. magic of a man and computer joining together for the sake of creation on a deepest level, which is possible only on a few platforms nowadays. and we can be proud of this, but we have to reach for more. demomaking is becoming more than just a kind of sport by now. eventually, we began to pay our attention to feelings. and this way is infinite and varied. we have a responsibility on us for preserving the history and the ritual for the future generations.

the modern technoligies are far from those which were available 10-15 years ago, in the chaotic times of russian spectrum clones' development. however, huge multicase monsters sometimes appear nowadays, i can remind of ukrainian project, which made a lot of noise out of nothing and failed due to the authors' incompetency. now there is a possibility of making a machine, identical to a modern pentagon, that wont look like an alien creature's nest, winded round with wires. the only problem is people, who can realize it professionally. i think it's not even the matter of money, cos those who are interested in our platform's destiny in a new millenium can help with solving this problem.

everything here is no more than my thoughts bothering me since conversation with unbeliever in 1999. and i'm disappointed with the fact that i see no information in the press from people who can realize these realistic ideas into hardware. i hope the situation will change, time settles everything, but will there be those who are interested in spectrum now, at that time when it will happen?