deater

Not quite the same, but you can run everything in an emulator. For the 6-channel sound demo you'd need to run something like MAME or AppleWin (they both have Mockingboard support) and this disk image: http://www.deater.net/weave/vmwprod/mockingboard/mock_test.dsk If you just want to play the Applesoft BASIC version of the game you can actually use a web-browser based emulator such as https://www.scullinsteel.com/apple/e and the following disk image: http://www.deater.net/weave/vmwprod/ksp/ksp.dsk I will warn though that it's a bit tricky to play, and *really* slow.

The graphics on the screen while the music is playing are just screenshots from an older version of KSP, that I scaled down in size and then reduced to the six colors the 6 the Apple II has in high-res mode. The music I made by hand based on some sheet music I found online. The gameplay after the music is from a version of KSP I made in Appplesoft BASIC a few years ago (that had a much worse, 1-bit beeper version of the theme) http://www.deater.net/weave/vmwprod/ksp/

Hello I just got a new soundcard for my 30 year old Apple IIe computer and I coded up a 6-channel version of the KSP theme as a demo.

Robert landed on Laythe (finding land was hard) and then his ship slid a long way, but eventually came to a stop. First Kerbal on Laythe! No ladder though so he can't get back into the ship (it slides down the hill whenever he tries). Soon after the other Jool mission arrived and parked in Bop orbit. At more or less the exact same time the pirate twins had caught up with Valentina (a lot of careful switching back and forth happened here) and she reluctantly agreed to team up for the time being. Back near Jool, one lander made it to Bop no problem (we even had a contract for that). Another managed to make it to Val and while Ludbert survived the landing somehow, his ship did not. (And he was stuck in "on ladder" state which took forever to figure out how to fix). We're now so close to completing operation Patillas. Last step is getting someone down on Tylo. Is it possible? Can we land our giant ship successfully? The answer seems to be "no". Frustrating. Pictures are more details here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y30_landings/

The mission to Jool finally made it, and we dimmly recalled it was some sort of rescue mission. Yes, there they are, ran out of fuel trying to get to Pol. Sherbert and Gwenlin managed to match orbits, dock, and transfer some fuel. So it looks like Robert is going to try to land on Laythe. Viremma decided it would be best if she stayed with the newcomers. While Robert braked into Laythe orbit (polar, but not polar enough for the resource scanner to work) the rest skipped across to Tylo for unknown reasons. In the middle of all this the pirate twins made a massive burn near Eve, wonder what they are up to. Pictures and more comments here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y29_jool/

The troublesome twins on Gilly finished refeuling and went off in search of a Pilot. Orbital Mechanics were not in their favor however. Around scenic Dres, Mac-nerd was having trouble with off-axis thrust now that one lander was gone. So he detached the other lander in hopes of docking it in a more central location. He wasted a lot of time before he finally realized the lander had a clamp-jr and the mothership was regular sized. He eventually just abandoned the lander (no!) and did manage to snag the asteroid and pull it into low-Dres orbit where he's awaiting orders. Our brave three-Kerbal Eeloo mission arrived and has no trouble entering orbit. The plan was to land and refuel, which had gone so well on Gilly. Somehow they didn't take into account that Eeloo has a lot more gravity. After lots of "simulations" where the ship kept tipping over and exploding the detachable command ship, it was decided that Phil-zor would have to separate the top at the last minute and let the ship land on its side. If only we had thought to mount one of the drills 90 degrees off we'd be doing fine. Enough for one day, we also have a crew arriving at Jool more or less simultaneously but that will have to wait until the next update. Pictures and more here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y29_eeloo/

Updated to 1.2 which has gone well so far. Did not enable comm-net yet. That might go OK, although I currently have too many plans that involve scientists/engineers in landers. Anway, our brave crew of Nedbury, Kimchee, and Mac-nerd have finally made it to Dres! Let's see if those tourist brochures were lying. Anyway we sent Kimchee down in a lander, first attempt to land these things w/o a parachute. Mostly went OK, only lost a docking ring in the process. She landed by chance near the prominent canyon. We had also been dragging a rover the whole way there, so we sent Nedbury down in that. We were hoping to land near a probe we sent years ago, but ended up landing in the pitch dark. Remarkably that went well although we ended up landing upside down and broke a solar panel. Mac-nerd and the orbiter are on their way to meet an asteroid we had accidentally started tracking a decade ago. Far enough out that that's going to take a long time to get there, and in the meantime some other missions are going to start reaching their destinations. Some pictures here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y29_dres/

update: my presentation of this paper won an award for "most gratuitous use of umlauts in a scientific presentation" You'll note the award statuette has a typo on it.

We have a paper in the MEMSYS'16 computer memory conference being presented this week. TLDR: it's about measuring the power consumption of DDR3/DDR4 memory. Anyway you might recognize one of the benchmarks we used: If you're bored you can read the full paper here: http://web.eece.maine.edu/~vweaver/projects/rapl/rapl_validation.html

What to do while waiting for ore mining on Gilly to complete? We still have a while before the outer-systems ships get to their destinations. Hmmm we seem to have started tracking some Class-E asteroids. I guess we should do something about that. At great expense we recruited a new pilot (the astronaut complex *finally* refreshed) and eventually launched a ship to the first asteroid. The underpowered SAS and level-0 pilot conspired to make it impossible to capture the asteroid before it left Kerbin's SOI. We did manage to get the ship turned around and after some lengthy aerobraking managed to land it in more or less one piece. We refurbished things, added SAS, and the now Level 1 Tanrod was sent off to try again with Asteroid 2. After a number of explosions/unexplained warps we discovered it was a bad idea to try to use the claw at exactly the moment we were re-entering Kerbin's SOI. We had just barely enough fuel to capture the asteroid out beyond Minmus. Now that we have it we need to figure out what to do with it. Some pictures and more details here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y28_asteroids/

With minmus sorted, it was time to launch the Gilly ship. The trip there was uneventful, and they landed and mined some fuel. They had landed on a slope though and so they ended up sliding down the hillside, mining all the while. Eventually it leveled off a bit. Rabies left her companion behind to run some errands. She was hoping that at least one of the two Kerbals in distress in low Eve orbit was a pilot. After a lot of painful orbit matching she rescued the two, who turned out to be twins. They were also both "scientists". Tough luck. Then without warning one of the twins staged the lander with Rabies inside. Rabies was forced to unexpectedly land on Eve! Luckily the lander survived, but now she's stranded. Could she at least finally check off that data-from-Eve contract we hae? No! Three landers on Eve and somehow none of them have an antenna. The mystery twins went back to Gilly to refuel (as somehow the Gilly->Eve trip took more fuel than Kerbin->Gilly did). Who knows what nefarious things they'll be up to next. Full story with pictures here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y28_gilly/

Poor Gregwell, we couldn't really make him finish his Minmus patrol on foot, so we sent him a rover at great expense. And then Wexny stowed away on the ship against orders. We stopped at the Minmus asteroid along the way to refuel the robot ships there, and left Wexny there, maybe she'll think twice next time before sneaking on a ship. We landed the rover and it managed to mostly work despite landing upside down. One of the wheels was broken, but by using the rocket thruster we managed to get along OK. Even with the rover it too Gregwell a while to check off the three remaining sites before finally mission control declared the scary readings to be sorted. He still suspects he was being hazed. With Minmus sorted out, it was time to continue with our launch schedule. The window to Eeloo opened and we launched Phil-zor and crew on their way. We wasted a lot of fuel on this, as the nuclear rockets are slow to accelerate so the burns start early in the orbit and the maneuver nodes don't seem to compensate well for this. Hopefully we have enough fuel left to do something useful once we get there. More pictures and commentary here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y26_minmus/

We're continuing with our mysterious mission, which involves the launch of two more giant rockets, this time equipped with mining equipment. Guess what we get to do next? Docking and refueling! Fun fun fun. One of the ships was missing an engineer, so we sent one. And of course we sent her to the wrong ship. Oops. Measure twice launch once I guess. We finally got all of that sorted out and waiting for launch windows, so it was time to bring in a few contracts. Collect Component D06Z-Q? Good thing our refuel ship had a claw. It turns out to be an empty solid rocket booster, and surprisingly the landing was completely uneventful. Data from the surface of Eve? Sure, we have two Kerbals there. But oops, we forgot, no antennas for either Data from Minmus? That's what Minmus base is for. And it turns out we had 500 science queued up in our lab (I had been avoiding checking in for fear of all the landing legs exploding. Luckily they didn't despite some scary warning messages). Transmitting 500 science takes a *long* time though, good thing we had lots of solar panels. One last thing, we had reports of anomalies just to the NE of the base. Let's send Gregwell out to invetigate, it isn't far and this doesn't sound at all like the plot to a horror movie. He gets there... nothing. But wait, says mission control, go a bit further to site2! OK. Nothing there. How about site3? We're getting a bit far from home here but OK. Nothing there. Site4? Well nothing there and now we're out of EVA fuel. Great, poor Gregwell. Was this some sort of prank? Or is the Kraken trying to separate my poor Kerbals so it can take care of them indivdually? Anyway, pictures and more details available here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y26_contracts/

Well, I think the ghost Kerbals don't cost any money to recruit, do they? They just show up haunting the astronaut complex. Though I have to admit I have been cheating a bit with the funds. I feel like it's only fair, as a bug in the game wiped out a huge pile of almost-complete contracts a while back. ... So we launched the refueled ships to Jool! One in a very long burn, one in 3 burns split across 3 orbits which turned out to be a bad idea and wasted a lot of fuel. So we have a few years before they get there (and of course one of the ships we were trying to rescue finally got kicked out of Jool orbit ) In the meantime a shadowy cabal has sponsored a Dres mission. I think they found one of those "Vacation on Sunny Dres" fliers. This involved some poorly-thought out rover design, as well as the usual round of tedious refueling. We tried sticking parachutes on our refueler boosters in hopes of recovering some funds, and that was a bit of a disaster until we sorted the staging out properly. It's a pain getting a Dres intercept, I feel like it's easier to get to Gilly. More notes and pictures here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y27_launches/

We have a ship design we like, but it only can get to orbit with half a fuel load so I guess it's time for endless refuel missions. We've updated our ship design two have two escape pods. A bit hard to deflect probing questions, such as why a ship that can hold 17 crew only has escape pods for 2 passengers. Our stripped-down refuel ship eventually stopped crashing and started delivering fuel. We sent some engineers and scientists along on the robot-piloted ship (the KSC is all out of pilots it seems) to build some experience. Or they'd build some experience if their landing craft stopped crashing. Eventually we sorted out the parachute problems and the ghosts of the sadly departed helped finish the refueling. Let's hope the next update is more exciting. Returning to Jool yet again, maybe this third time we'll have enough fuel to do interesting things there. Pictures here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y27_refueling/

Well as you can imagine yet another Jool mission ended poorly. We loaded all of our remaining fuel into a lander and sent them off to process some ore. Moving really fast, but maybe some aerobraking would work? They thought an inflatable heatshield and some parachutes would let them land safely on Laythe. Oops. (Haven't tried a Laythe landing since before deadly re-entry). Anyway in the end they did not burn up in the atmosphere, but now they are out of fuel in a distant Kerbol orbit. Time for a rescue mission I suppose. Who can we trust to save us? Valentina where are you? Oh, your ship got ejected into interplanetary space while we were busy fast-forwarding to Jool. Excellent. Anyway Plan B, build a fuel heavy rescue ship. This took forever to get right, getting to orbit was a major challenge. Who will crew this thing? We are out of Kerbals, and the astronaut complex wants 500k for mostly engineers. But wait... we have a long-forgotten MunBase not doing much. So let's get it back to low-Kerbin orbit and restaff from there. Next plan is to top off on fuel and launch the rescue mission. Pictures here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y27_bingofuel/

OK, let's fuel up our Jool ship! We need some refueling rockets, let's just slap something together with our existing booster, how hard can it be. Oh, we forgot solar panels and reaction wheels We did manage to get near enough so our passenger could EVA over but the fuel load was a total loss. A quick redesign and we sent two successful refuel missions, although even when using the claw it's a pain docking (too many parts for my machine, things drag to a crawl within 2.2km). About to launch, when Houston interrupts. One more refueler? But we're at 95% fuel, I thought we were good! A surprise on board... this might be fun. But it wasn't fun. Four tourists? What are we going to do with them? Sigh. Time to launch... first burn goes OK. Second burn is a horrible mess. The last burn is just unworkable. Thrust vector is *not* through the center of mass. Valentina, we need you to adjust the position of your shuttle. Valentina: I'm going to adjust my shuttle back to the Mun, see-ya! Well, um, OK. I guess you've been promoted Detrix. Off to Jool! And they made it! Though they had to seriously dip into the landers' fuel supplies in order to make orbit so I am not sure what's going to happen next. The landers have ore processing capabilities but I am not sure if there's enough fuel left for them to land anywhere useful. Should be interesting trying. Pictures and more here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y22_departure/

After a long hiatus it was time to continue the buildup to the Jool mission with a new director in charge at KSC. The lander testing had been... sort of.. successful, so it was time to send them up to the mothership. That more or less went OK. Then it was time for Valentina to fly up the captain's yacht. It's mini-shuttle design (for aesthetic purposes) just did not want to launch straight past 3000m. After lots of spectacular explosions (which Valentina kept annoyingly surviving, costing $$$) we eventually came up with a booster with enough control surfaces to get to orbit with only one major spinout along the way. So docking the yacht... should be easy? Did anyone double check the measurements? What do you mean it won't fit? Argh! Luckly Valentina did some clever piloting with a claw, although it's unclear it will survive the acceleration of a Jool insertion burn. Next up is a bunch of boring fuel launches I suppose. Pictures and more commentary here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y22_docking/

So, I tried to travel to the future because I was impatient to get a bug-fixed KSP release. My time machine malfunctioned though and I ended up in alternate-1987 and instead picked up a version of KSP for the old Apple II computer. I decided to give it a playthrough anyway, you can see the video here:

With at least 1/3 of the Kerbals back on Kerbin it was decided this might be a good time to *upgrade to 1.1.2*. That went better than expected, with the worst effect so far being all the flags falling over. I think the current plan is to make a large Jool mission. So we've been testing (and exploding) a lot of command ships and carriers, though we did finally get something into orbit. Lander testing has been going worse. Even with the inflatable heatshield we can't seem to land a large lander without it flipping disastrously. Not sure how we'll manage a Laythe landing if we can't figure this one out. (The last time we landed on Laythe was pre-deadly re-entry). Some pictures of explosions here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y22_explosions/

It's finally time to rotate the crew back from IkeStationZebu, and Bill and Detrix should be arriving back on Kerbin around the same time. First we got a contract to rescue a Kerbal from low-Kerbin orbit. We decided to send Metroid Kerbin in a way-overpowered ship. She stopped along the way to pick up the remnant of the Class-A asteroid that's been getting in the way. Then we rescued Sigbert and tried to land the asteroid on the VAB. (Sigbert was happy to go along with the prank). We missed the KSC by 20km, but somehow mananged to land our large ship mostly intact. I consider the mission a success in that no one died. Meanwhile, in the Joolvian system, Luzor finally got a Pol encounter. Sadly he was about 150m/s short of entering orbit, but he tried to EVA his way to the surface. Hurtling toward the ground at 100m/s he was rethinking this plan, but then amazingly he hit the surface... and bounced. And bounced again. And somehow lived. So, contract complete I guess. Back near Kerbin, the Ike crew returned and stopped by to orbit Minmus to see what Valentina was up to. Bill and Detrix swung by the Mun and managed to land really close to KSC. Having an asteroid on the plains makes a nice navigation marker. More details and pictures here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y20_physics/

Took a long time to continue on this game, other things going on. Still running on 1.0.5 for now, too much of my infrastructure depends on landing legs and wheels for me to risk 1.1. Anyway, finally our robot crew rotation trip made it to Duna and (eventually) we got it docked to Ike Station Zebu. The crew have 100 days or so to decide which three of them get to return to Kerbin. Meanwhile, in deep space, another robot ship approaches Bill and Detrix who have been stranded for 10 years since their IkeStation expansion mission went horribly wrong. The meetup went well and Bill and Detrix are super happy to be rescued! Trying to find a maneuver node home involved a lot of clicking all over (the other ship was too close). This might have unknowingly caused disaster. in the end we scuttled their old ship so we could navigate properly. What about Jeb? In his darkly lit cabin he is piloting an Ike base we have a contract for. He actually launched before the other Ike rocket but he had a less ideal Hohmann orbit. Anyway he managed to land on Ike first try no problems! That never happens. He fired up the mining gear and all was looking good. Did we get the contract? I was worried about that because it specified "on wheels" and while we had wheels on the base we probably weren't really "on" them. Check the contract list? *blank*. !?!?!?! It sounds like we might have triggered a known bug where if you click a lot in interplanetary space it erases all your contracts. Fun times. Maybe the auditors finally figured out how we got the money for this mission and zeroed out all contracts as a consequence. Well not sure what to do about that. Luzor arrived in Jool space for our Pol mission, but a bit pointless without a contract. Maybe that's a good thing, he's in a horrible polar orbit and steering is fun because he's a scientist without SAS skills. More details and pictures here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y19_ike/

We're not going to give up on this ore thing. Let's do some testing on Kerbin (should have done this first, obviously). After some annoying mistakes did finally come up with a design that could land 400 ore safely. Got the new design ready for launch, we're on the pad, about to press space when *bloop* "contract complete". What??? We're still on the pad? Did they finally finish scraping the 400 ore off the mountainside from last time? I have no idea what just happened. Well we have the ship ready, let's go get some ore anyway. Managed to snap off our transfer engine when staging. Sigh, let's try again. Made it to the Mun this time, landed in a deep hole. Our ghostly rover driver managed to knock our lander over. We did recover and fly back upright, but then the sun set. While waiting for Munar dawn we launched a ship to Duna. Unmanned, as it turned out there wasn't a single pilot available in the entire astronaut complex. Finally, dawn on the Mun. We loaded up on ore and fuel and flew back to Kerbin. Flawless landing. Retroactive contract complete I guess. See more details and pictures here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y18_enough_ore/

OK, so trying to clear out some of the huge mass of accumulated contracts. Let's see about that 400-ore from the Mun one. Doesn't sound like it should be so bad. Let's add some struts and chutes (and lights for the lander) and we're set, right? Just-returned Jeb is going (he misses space) and Leaukiki has finished her science training and is returning to hopefully improve the efficiency of the science lab. We land and dock OK, but it's going to take a few days to mine the ore and process a little more fuel. In the meantime we launch a rescue ship for Bill and Deatrix, who you might recall are stranded out beyond Duna orbit. Jeb makes some fancy maneuvering to leave the Mun base and makes it back to Kerbin. We try to land near the KSC forgetting that there's a mountain range on the prograde approach (oops) but manage to avoid that particular disaster. Just like last time though, we flip when the chutes deploy, land ore first, and we lose half the ore load and contract is incomplete Just about now the Duna window is opening so we send Jeb with that Ike base we unwisely promised a while ago. That looks like it might work out, although the contract vaguely calls for the base to be on wheels, and despite having wheels all over the base it's not marked off in the contract list. I guess we'll see how that goes when we get there. Pictures and more details here: http://www.deater.net/weave/pictures/kerbal/career_y18_ore/

Well I'd like to think in the real world if some astronauts got stranded someone would provide money to rescue them. Probably at a large cost of reputation points.