LGR - Opening Stuff You Sent Me! April 2018
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 9
Cameron
The AlphaSmart is totally oddware. I would love to see you do a video on it. Pretty sure it was designed by a former Apple engineer. They run on a version of the Palm OS. They were designed as educational accessibility tools giving students who had trouble writing by hand a way to take notes and write in-class essays. Those ports you noticed on the side are for hooking it up to a computer. The computer will recognize the device as a keyboard. When you hit -send- on the device, it rapidly types what is written on the screen. The cool thing about this is that AlphaSmart's can still be used today. People who write novels and the like love them because they offer a -distraction free- writing experience. The $500 Hemingwrite (Kickstarter e-ink wordprocessor) was designed for this very reason. AlphaSmart products were also quite expensive, but the due to the bulk purchases schools made, can be found quite cheap online. Finally, they had amazing battery life and run on AAs. People report getting a year or more of use out a set of batteries. Weirdly, at least some files are stored in volatile RAM.
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The AlphaSmart is totally oddware. I would love to see you do a video on it. Pretty sure it was designed by a former Apple engineer. They run on a version of the Palm OS. They were designed as educational accessibility tools giving students who had trouble writing by hand a way to take notes and write in-class essays. Those ports you noticed on the side are for hooking it up to a computer. The computer will recognize the device as a keyboard. When you hit -send- on the device, it rapidly types what is written on the screen. The cool thing about this is that AlphaSmart's can still be used today. People who write novels and the like love them because they offer a -distraction free- writing experience. The $500 Hemingwrite (Kickstarter e-ink wordprocessor) was designed for this very reason. AlphaSmart products were also quite expensive, but the due to the bulk purchases schools made, can be found quite cheap online. Finally, they had amazing battery life and run on AAs. People report getting a year or more of use out a set of batteries. Weirdly, at least some files are stored in volatile RAM.
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Abdulaziz
I'm sorry, but abadonware sites has gotten really horrible, they were removing some popular games, and My Abadonware site has no DOOM, no Epic Pinball, no good popular games, instead they decided to have mostly obscure games, and no Duke Nukem either, and has no games that defined the MS-DOS gaming culture, Can you please let me know an abadonware site that has lot of popular DOS games like DOOM, Duke Nukem, QUAKE, DOOM 2. Yet still be downloadable, I don't know how to find that kind of site because I tried to Google that and it came up empty for that kind of site that has a lot of games that defined the MS-DOS gaming culture, Also I don't have money for GOG games, so Can you please help me, Let me know in the comments?
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I'm sorry, but abadonware sites has gotten really horrible, they were removing some popular games, and My Abadonware site has no DOOM, no Epic Pinball, no good popular games, instead they decided to have mostly obscure games, and no Duke Nukem either, and has no games that defined the MS-DOS gaming culture, Can you please let me know an abadonware site that has lot of popular DOS games like DOOM, Duke Nukem, QUAKE, DOOM 2. Yet still be downloadable, I don't know how to find that kind of site because I tried to Google that and it came up empty for that kind of site that has a lot of games that defined the MS-DOS gaming culture, Also I don't have money for GOG games, so Can you please help me, Let me know in the comments?
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MAN
The Alpha Smart is basically a small portable word processor. I was in an experimental class from kindergarten to 6th grade, and we were required to do all of our school work on an alpha smart. We used them all day in school, and we took them home at the end of the day. It was an experiment in comparing student grades and achievement via pencil and paper work versus digital work. It was a completely flawed seven year test, because we were still required to do each assignment pencil and paper for penmanship. Of course our grades were going to improve, because we had to do the work twice.
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The Alpha Smart is basically a small portable word processor. I was in an experimental class from kindergarten to 6th grade, and we were required to do all of our school work on an alpha smart. We used them all day in school, and we took them home at the end of the day. It was an experiment in comparing student grades and achievement via pencil and paper work versus digital work. It was a completely flawed seven year test, because we were still required to do each assignment pencil and paper for penmanship. Of course our grades were going to improve, because we had to do the work twice.
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PAKTRA
I had Alpha smarts back in elementary school as part of the new wave of _-computer-assisted learning-_.
They were intended to replace the then table-top typewriter/ desktop PC with a more portable (than a computer lab) and --cheaper than the laptop computer-- _efficient_ word processor that could then be uploaded to the main frame and reviewed and printed off by the instructor.
I had dysgraphia which is basically dyslexia for writing but never learned how to type effecently either so this was doubly useless.
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I had Alpha smarts back in elementary school as part of the new wave of _-computer-assisted learning-_.
They were intended to replace the then table-top typewriter/ desktop PC with a more portable (than a computer lab) and --cheaper than the laptop computer-- _efficient_ word processor that could then be uploaded to the main frame and reviewed and printed off by the instructor.
I had dysgraphia which is basically dyslexia for writing but never learned how to type effecently either so this was doubly useless.
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Alexander
I notice the Starship Titanic box you have at the back there! Are you going to do a review on it at some point or is it a game you've had for a long time? I have a disc copy my dad bought from one of the programmers of that game when it came out years ago but I haven't got a compatible windows machine to run it as my old XP machine died: ( Would you mind doing a review if you haven't done so already for nostalgia reasons? Thanks!
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I notice the Starship Titanic box you have at the back there! Are you going to do a review on it at some point or is it a game you've had for a long time? I have a disc copy my dad bought from one of the programmers of that game when it came out years ago but I haven't got a compatible windows machine to run it as my old XP machine died: ( Would you mind doing a review if you haven't done so already for nostalgia reasons? Thanks!
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Fedor
There's a -fun- story about that Top Gun by Spectrum Holobyte. At that time, Microprose was already owned by them, and the Civ2 was in development alongside the Top Gun. And the Sid Meier himself said that Spectrum Holobyte was more focused on advertising Top Gun than on giving any attention to Civ2. And here we are today, everyone have heard of Civ2, but nearly no one knows about Top Gun by Spectrum Holobyte.
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There's a -fun- story about that Top Gun by Spectrum Holobyte. At that time, Microprose was already owned by them, and the Civ2 was in development alongside the Top Gun. And the Sid Meier himself said that Spectrum Holobyte was more focused on advertising Top Gun than on giving any attention to Civ2. And here we are today, everyone have heard of Civ2, but nearly no one knows about Top Gun by Spectrum Holobyte.
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Sperogen
the alpha smart pro is for word processing, and it was also used for teaching correct grammar and pacing. it hooks into the computer mac or pc and I believe it did have software with it. I reme, ber when I was a kid trying to buy one of these off the school librarian because I though I could use it as a device for writing that epic sci fi novel I never published.
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the alpha smart pro is for word processing, and it was also used for teaching correct grammar and pacing. it hooks into the computer mac or pc and I believe it did have software with it. I reme, ber when I was a kid trying to buy one of these off the school librarian because I though I could use it as a device for writing that epic sci fi novel I never published.
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porklaser
I had one of those Ditto tape drives. Not a bad unit. About as fast as you'd expect for a parallel port tape drive though. If I remember it's mechanism was from another company and the tapes were a standard type. The software wasn't too bad and did the trick. Took all night to back up a full gig of data.
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I had one of those Ditto tape drives. Not a bad unit. About as fast as you'd expect for a parallel port tape drive though. If I remember it's mechanism was from another company and the tapes were a standard type. The software wasn't too bad and did the trick. Took all night to back up a full gig of data.
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Matt
Ooooh. I remember those Alphasmart Pro's. Used to use those in typing class around '98-'00. From memory they are just basic word processors. No BASIC or anything of that nature. They basically acted as keyboards on connected PC or Mac devices and would shove over the written text that way.
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Ooooh. I remember those Alphasmart Pro's. Used to use those in typing class around '98-'00. From memory they are just basic word processors. No BASIC or anything of that nature. They basically acted as keyboards on connected PC or Mac devices and would shove over the written text that way.
reply
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