RSS blogs: Darek's Dungeon / Darek's Secrets / SoftMac Central
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RSS blogs: Darek's Dungeon / Darek's Secrets / SoftMac Central | |
So you think you're clever and fast enough to answer these Emulators related questions? Ok then, you have two ways to win.
If you are participating in our New Year's Midnight Mystery Download contest, simply answer any one of these multi-part questions (all parts of the multi-part question must be answered correctly) and send your results by email to our tech support email address. You will probably lose for not being fast enough though. So to increase your chances, send your answers directly to our instant messenger live chat address as soon as you have the correct answers, then email us as well.
Items up for grabs include a Matrox G45 dual monitor output AGP video card, a Gemulator ROM card with Atari ST ROMs, a Gemulator ROM card with Apple Macintosh ROMs, a Mac OS 7.5 floppy boot disk and CD-ROM (for use with 68000 to 68040 based Macs and emulators), a Mac OS 8.1 CD-ROM (for use with 68040 Macs and emulators), a SCSI interface card (great for connecting those old Atari ST and Apple Macintosh hard drives to your PC), PC mice, and other items, including possibly some of the ones listed below.
UberGeeks! Did you miss the Midnight Mystery Download but think you're still smarter than everyone else? Fine, prove it! The first person who correctly answers all 40 parts of all the 6 questions within the first 72 hours of the year 2004 (i.e. by midnight Saturday, Seattle time) and meets the other requirements (except for having to download and send the screen shot) will win his or her choice of the following:
To make it interesting, if the winning answers are correctly submitted within the first 24 hours (any time during January 1 2004 Seattle time) the UberGeek will win all 5 of the above prizes PLUS both Dead Or Alive Xbox games. The following 12 hours, 4 prizes and no DOA. The next 12 hours, just three. The next 12 hours, two prizes. And in the final 12 hours it will net you just a single prize of your choosing. After the 72 hours the UberGeek prizes will be given to various winners of the Midnight Mystery Download contest.
See the prizes ===> 
Cheating is allowed, so use Google or ask your geek friends, but remember that only one person can claim the UberGeek prize.
Good luck, you dateless shut-in geek nerds. I mean, WINNERS! ;-)
Question #1
A multi-part question having to do with items posted at one time or another on our web site. Most answers can still be found on this web site directly so this one is super easy.
a) The mystery software posted on January 1 2004 is not the first time Emulators has release a product upgrade at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve. When did we do it the first time and what was the exact product release (name and version number). Hint: it was technically one of the first product releases of the 21st century.
b) In what month of what year did we launch the Gemulator 1.0 Atari ST emulator for MS-DOS product? Hint: It was at the annual Glendale Atarifest in Glendale California.
c) On what date did Emulators acquire the Fusion PC product from Microcode Solutions?
d) On what date did Emulators release and post the final free Fusion PC 3.0 emulator to this web site?
e) What was the booth number of the Emulators booth at the Comdex 2000 Las Vegas show?
f) Emulators Inc. was renamed so in 1996. What is the original company name that Emulators Inc. was founded as more than 15 years ago?
g) What is the significance or hidden meaning of that original name?
h) In what Canadian city was our company first started?
i) In what U.S. state can you find the towns of Springfield, Shelbyville, and Simpsonville all near each other?
j) On what date did we give away most of our inventory of old PC, Atari, and Macintosh computers to local Seattle geeks?
Question #2
This multi-part question is mostly for you Atari 8-bit geeks. You'll need a good memory or back issues of 1980's computer magazines to answer this one.
a) In what issue of ANTIC magazine did Darek first get an article published? Answer with the cover date and/or issue number.
b) What was the topic of Darek's article and how did it relate to the theme of that month's issue?
c) Which computer magazine first published an article about the ST Xformer Atari 800 emulator?
d) The publisher of a competing magazine to ANTIC was recently running for governor of California. Who is that person and what was the name of the magazine?
e) Which computer magazine's publishing company also printed the book "Mapping the Atari"?
f) Which Atari 800 cartridge was released first - Star Raiders or Boulderdash?
Question #3
This multi-part question is ideal for you Atari ST/STe/TT geeks.
a) The Atari ST was once featured on the cover of BYTE magazine. What is the cover date of that issue, or, which model of Atari ST was pictured? Answer either one.
b) Before developing Gemulator, Darek's Quick ST product was a faster lower-cost alternative to what other commercial screen acceleration product for the Atari ST?
c) The publisher of the magazine in question 2c also published an Atari ST magazine which once published Darek's two-part article and source code to ST Xformer. What was the name of the magazine and what was the cover date of at least one of the two issues featuring the ST Xformer article?
d) Which version of TOS is referred to as the "Rainbow TOS" and why is it called that?
e) Local Seattle area Atari geek Bruce Noonan authored what Atari ST processor which was based on a popular Atari 800 word processor?
f) Our other company co-founder was also published in 1987 in a competing Atari magazine (to the answer of question 3c). Name the person, the magazine, and the cover date of the issue.
Question #4
This multi-part question is best tackled by Mac and Mac OS users.
a) What magic keystroke in the early Apple Finder causes a different credit screen to appear?
b) At what version number did Apple officially brand their Macintosh system software as "Mac OS"?
c) What do the acronyms ADB, HFS+, VIA, SCSI, and SCC stand for?
d) Who are the creators of the following Mac OS or Macintosh emulators: SoftMac 2000, Fusion PC 2.0, Executor, Magic Sac, Gemulator 98, Basilisk II, Spectre GCR, and vMac? Answer with a company name and/or a significantly contributing developer of each.
e) On what date was the Mac OS X Public Beta released? Just a month and year is fine.
f) How does one bring up the Easter Egg in Mac Word 6.0?
Question #5
This multi-part question is for you hardware fanatics. It may also help you to have a printed Gemulator or SoftMac manual handy.
a) The Gemulator ROM card has how many ROM sockets?
b) How many pins are there on each ROM chip of a 6-chip set of "Rainbow TOS" ROMs?
c) What is the clock speed of the 6502 processor used in the Atari 800 and why was that clock speed chosen? You must state the clock speed to at least 3 significant digits of accuracy!
d) The Macintosh Classic, an updated version of the Macintosh SE, used an 8 MHz 68000 processor. What processors and clock speeds did Apple use in the Macintosh Plus and Macintosh LC475?
e) The original Atari ST computers used an 8 MHz 68000 processor. What processors and clock speeds did Atari use in the more advanced Atari STe and Atari Falcon computers?
f) What is the default i/o port address that the Gemulator ROM card is preset to? Answer in hexadecimal.
Question #6
This multi-part question is for you machine language experts. Cross-platform experience is helpful.
a) What is the 6502 machine language code sequence for the NOP instruction? Answer in hexadecimal.
b) What is the 68000 machine language code sequence for the NOP instruction? Answer in hexadecimal.
c) What is the 68040 machine language code sequence for the floating point NOP instruction? Answer in hexadecimal.
d) What is the PowerPC machine language code sequence for the NOP instruction? Answer in hexadecimal. Multiple correct answers.
e) As you've just seen, the 6502, the 680x0 family, and the PowerPC family of processors use radically different instruction encodings. Thus the PowerPC processors used in Power Macintosh computer use an entirely different machine language instruction set than the 68000 and 68040 processors used in the original Macintosh computers. However, by chance or by design, a certain group of 4-byte code sequences have the property that when treated as a single 32-bit instruction, they have virtually identical meaning on the PowerPC, the 68000, and the 68040 processors, both in terms of the assembly language instruction mnemonic and in terms of the functionality of the code sequence. What is this magic group of instructions that have the similar mnemonic, similar encoding, and similar meaning on all three processors?
f) Exactly how many instructions are in the magic group from part e?