
Rebuilding James Bond's Apple IIc – A Software Forgery [video] - codezero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGVfwEEjRfs
======
gregd
As someone who coveted the Apple //c in high school, I absolutely loved this.

Does anyone remember Beagle Bros software?

~~~
colanderman
I probably owe Beagle Bros most of the credit for nurturing my lifelong
interest in computers. (My father gets the rest for giving me the things in
the first place!) How many hours I spent poring through those charts and books
of peeks and pokes and two-liners. I want a way to recreate that magic for the
youth of today.

I had //e. The only thing I coveted more than a //c was a Laser 128EX/2\. (OK
and maybe a IIGS and a Mac…)

~~~
gregd
Me too! They single-handedly got me interested in "making a computer do stuff"
with those charts of peeks and pokes! Here I am ~35 years later and I'm still
making computers do stuff.

Well I started on a TRS-80 but quickly became obsessed when I got my hands on
a II plus and then an IIe. I never got to use a //c but remember a friend got
one. It was as close to portable as you could get then and I remember wanting
one really badly.

------
dhosek
The movie 2010 had another cool //c appearance—in that case Dr Heywood Floyd
was shown using the //c with an LCD display at the beach. It seemed so
futuristic back then. I don't think I ever took a laptop to the beach at any
point in the real calendar year 2010, but I did do so in 1995 and that scene
from the movie was on my mind the whole time.

~~~
throwanem
That actually checks out, after a fashion - in full sunlight you could _just
about_ make out the image on one of those old LCDs consistently. That said,
[https://madeapple.com/apple-iic-flat-panel-
display/](https://madeapple.com/apple-iic-flat-panel-display/) suggests it
didn't mount securely enough for any kind of portable use, or fold down for
transport. Good product placement, though.

I've never taken a laptop to a beach in my life. I'd worry about it ending up
full of sand, although my cameras have so far managed not to, so maybe that's
not such a huge risk. In any case, nothing worth doing at a beach seems likely
to involve a keyboard.

------
blakespot
Works great on a IIe, as well!

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/blakespot/49838052551/in/album...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/blakespot/49838052551/in/album-72157609631794748/)

I had particularly strong memories of that movie and that Apple //c scene. I
was compelled to share some of them in a blog post about Max’s achievement.
What an effort he put in!

[https://bytecellar.com/2020/04/29/apple-c-scene-
from-80s-bon...](https://bytecellar.com/2020/04/29/apple-c-scene-
from-80s-bond-film-a-view-to-a-kill-perfectly-re-created-with-applesoft-
basic/)

------
Com60Score
The code and disk image are up on GitHub for anyone who wants to run it
themselves: [https://github.com/MaxPiantoni/View-To-A-
Kill](https://github.com/MaxPiantoni/View-To-A-Kill)

------
tobr
That’s cool! But it’s clear he did not find the right font. What puzzles me
when I look at the map screen from the movie is that there are two point sizes
being used. “San Francisco” and “Palo Alto” use crisp lettering with 5 pixel
tall lowercase characters, while the rest of the labels are slightly larger
with more clumsy and distorted shapes. Maybe they scaled them up a little with
simple nearest neighbor scaling?

~~~
Com60Score
Hi I'm Max, this is my project. As you say the text sizes on the Map screen
are inconsistent in the movie. I did wonder if this could be to do with
image/lens distortion, either from the camera or the glass on the CRT.

I considered drawing them out pixel by pixel to match the movie exactly but in
the end I just settled for erasing the cap on the J in San Jose, so it would
match the movie more closely.

I'd love to know how they actually did it.

------
ngcc_hk
Per his request after watching to leave a comment - imho it Is a great work.
Some might say it is a total waste of time but what is a waste to one, is a
entertainment with great value to others. Bringing a small picture around and
draw it for 10 years is really a waste one may say. But to one it is trying to
re-create a beauty of a woman called Mona Lisa. Cheers!

------
Torwald
I did a similar map on a Z80 machine running CP/M. I used the MS ROM BASIC
that came with it. It had a PLOT command. First I would use BASIC to print the
city names on the screen, then PLOT the dots representing the coastline. All
in it's amber on black glory.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Amber monochrome was the "ergonomic choice" for working late back in the day.
Decades later to be rediscovered with f.lux, redshift, et al.

------
stuart78
This is amazing. I love the passion and dedication in projects like this. It
is so easy to take a few seconds of film like that for granted, but this is a
great reminder of how much work goes into the details.

~~~
mistersquid
The OP presentation is absolutely delightful. The challenge of (reverse)
engineering to a visual spec, the presentation of programming with severely
constrained resources, old school hardware, retro, egalitarian programming
language--so many fun parts about this project.

And all of it comes out of, as you say, "a few seconds of film".

------
akhilcacharya
1) this is an incredible effort

2) not to be “that guy” but technically it’s Stacey Sutton’s Apple ][c. As a
kid I was shocked that she had a personal computer in the mid 80s. Underrated
film in my opinion!

~~~
abrowne
For (2), they say that at about 00:19 ("Stacy one of the main characters has
one of these computers" according to the autogen CC). But would you have
clicked the link if the title was "Rebuilding Stacey Sutton's Apple IIc"? I
wouldn't have meant anything to me.

~~~
akhilcacharya
Of course, you're right. To be honest I clicked because I was confused as to
when James Bond himself used a IIc - only film from the era that I remembered
him using a computer was in the opening of License to Kill, and I was fairly
certain was an IBM PC. What I got was a pleasant surprise!

