Old-School Gazette: Your source for the "latest" in technology and entertainment.
Friday, September 10, 1982.
Technology
A new graphics card has been announced from Hercules Computer Technology, named the Hercules Graphics Card, which will operate on IBM PCs. The card will be able to render both high-qualities text and high-quality bitmapped graphics. Current technology on IBM computers requires the user to choose between high quality graphics in the "Color Graphics Adapter" or sharp text display with the "Monochrome Display and Printer Adapter", but this new card will change all of that.
Hewlett-Packard has introduced a portable computer called HP-75C. It has 16K of RAM on board with an expansion port that allows adding more RAM, nearly-full-size keyboard, and a 32-character display. The software includes a text editor, a scheduler, and a BASIC interpreter. All this with a rechargeable battery pack. The release price is $995.
Video Games
A new home video game console has been released, dubbed the ColecoVision. The console uses a Zilog Z80 CPU and a Texas Instruments video chip. The console promises a more arcade-like experience than its competitors from Atari and Mattel, and seems to deliver with its launch lineup of arcade clones, including Sega's Zaxxon and the pack-in game of Nintendo's Donkey Kong. The console also has a number of expansions available, including one that allows the player to play games intended for the Atari 2600, so you don't need to manage or even own both of the machines if you're already fan of the Atari 2600.
Film
Today sees the release of "Endangered Species", a thriller about a detective from New York and a Colorado Sheriff working together to find the cause of local cattle mutilations. The locals suspect either UFOs or Satanic cults, but the pair will need to work together to find what's really going on.
Television
The characters "Bo" and "Luke Duke" have been written out of the series "The Dukes of Hazzard" due to a contract dispute regarding their actors, John Schneider and Tom Wopat. The characters will be replaced by cousins "Coy" and "Vance Duke", played by Byron Cherry and Christopher Mayer.
Sources, all of which are awesome and worth exploring independently:
http://kpolsson.com/comphist/comp1982jul.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_Graphics_Card
https://www.hpmuseum.org/hp75.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-99/4A
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_in_film
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_in_video_games
https://www.moriareviews.com/sciencefiction/endangered-species-1982.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_in_American_television
This was supposed to be out over a week ago, but things have been nuts for me lately!
This is a not-quite-official announcement of the Discord server I just created. Completely free. Don't need to be a supporter on Locals. Don't even need to be a member.
It's definitely not a secret that this community hasn't been active since Matt Hartley hasn't been involved. I think there are a few reasons why (one being that I had a lot less time to devote to it than I realized), and I think that making a completely free alternative would help, and I unfortunately don't think I can do that on Locals! You have to pay if you want to post. Discord should be free (unless I did it wrong).
Feel free to come join! It's still kind of experimental at this point, and I don't know how well I'll handle content moderation, which will probably be the biggest challenge.
