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Police Automaton posted:It was kind of magical. The internet seemed a lot bigger back then, with you not knowing what's around the next corner. Todays internet feels more "tamed" and smaller, even though it really is not. I always wanted to set-up a second A2000 and run a BBS system on it people can telnet into via the internet, but ehhh. I don't think I could find people using it.
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Jul 18, 2014 00:46
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Police Automaton posted:
Here is the thing. Your information is good. Very good. Excellently loving GOOD. But.. it edges over the technical line and gets into the eyes glazing over level. And you know, it deserves to be more collated than just wallowing in here some place. But I don't want you to stop with the reminiscing or giving info. Just.. maybe dial it from a Graduate Studies level of tech info down to a Community College course. (Like in general for this thread's purposes we don't need a massive amount of info on computer audio. Basically it can more or less be streamlined into: Samples sound like the SNES, Synths sound more like the Genesis, MIDI is good electronicy music stuff musicians even use. For DOS gaming 81-90 get a Tandy 1000 if you want the best sound and music on the platform, and a Sound Blaster 16 or 32 for 90-97 era. If you have money and want to go through a bit of work, get a Roland MT32 if you want to be a PC Audio Sexual Tyrannosaur.) You know, keep it to Topic 101 level of tech info/work. Enough info so dedicated may want to learn more elsewhere but just enough so people who just want to PUSH BUTAN AND PLAY GAEME can quickly learn the important poo poo and get to being screwed over by bullshit Sierra puzzles. (Or UK 8 bit micro platforming.) (This is kind of why I wouldn't mind seeing the more hardcore stuff in SHS. It is kind of needed. But not for everyone. And wikis are generally for giant joy hating spergs. And have you tried reading Upgrading and Repairing PCs? I have the 10th edition from the middle/late 90s and its a goddamned megabook full of STUFF. I'd say it would make a bang up self defense weapon but its too large and unwieldy for even THAT.) But don't worry Apple users, there is love for you: http://www.dagenbrock.com/blog/?q=node/17 Crisis averted Apple II gamers can now play Flappy Birds. Also he has a bit of a recent post about making a control pad styled controller for the Apple 2 machines. This is a good thing. Especially given how Apple II hardware seems to go for stupid prices on ebay. This is the best news since someone started making Vectrex controllers out of more common console controllers. Well it WOULD be good news for me if I had gotten that boss rear end Craigslist deal of a IIC+ with monitor, multiple disk drives, multiple printers, and gobs of software for 75 bucks but the seller stopped communicating with me.  VVV Well don't lurk so much! POOOOOST! And I am still talking with various folks on the thread. Some people in the non #retrochat IRCs say they would love a hardcore old hardware thread. Some in this thread and in the retro IRC would not. I say we play it by ear for now but if someone wants to make on in SH let me know and I will pimp the thread here so folks can visit. I sure as hell am not the guy for it. Captain Rufus fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Jul 18, 2014 |
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Jul 18, 2014 03:20
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Speaking as a lurker in this thread, I actually enjoy super technical explanations. I would think having the TL;DR at the top (a "summarizing paragraph" as it were) might alleviate the problem without necessarily forcing people to dumb things down. Sure, maybe 5% of the readers really get what's going on, but this sort of discussion is already rare enough. Why limit it, you know? In retrocomputergame chat, as a kid I had a Laser 128 -- it was an Apple II clone. My dad bought it off this guy named Ira in Connecticut, I believe -- we're in Massachusetts, so this was a bit of a hike. I don't know what he paid for the thing, but I do recall Ira talking him into buying a RAM expansion of 1 meg with the explanation that he could write much longer documents. My dad's not a writer, so I don't know what convinced him exactly, but he paid $1000 for a single meg of RAM that would be utterly useless in 99.9% of what the computer did. I feel kinda bad about this looking back, but I was like 9 and had no idea what any of this was, so it's not like I could tell him to invest in actual Apple stock or anything. We had two whole boxes of legit/pirated games. I loved Wings of Fury, which didn't have the weird copy protection on the Apple II that it did on the C64, and the manuals differed -- I know this because when I later got a C64 (in like 1996) I bought a legit copy of WoF that had no manual, and when I tried to use it for the copy protection (a basic "what word is on page x, line y, word z" sort of thing) it wouldn't work. I called Broderbund, who was probably close to bankruptcy or whatever it was that eventually took them, and talked with a nice girl who took down my address and mailed me a copy of the manual. Still have it in a closet someplace. I also discovered through sheer luck that if you hit F1 through whatever the last F key was (F12? F8?), skipping one of the keys (I think it was F7), then ran down the 1 through 0 keys at the title screen of Hard Hat Mack, you could skip stages. I have no idea why that worked; I just assumed I stumbled upon a cheat code (I was systematically going through patterns at the title screen -- bored kid), but in retrospect I probably caused some sort of weird memory overflow or something by just inundating the game with weird inputs. Last story, since nothing I've said is really related to anything else. My dad used to announce for the local cable station when there were highschool football and baseball games, and he made me and my brother come along to help. So I did replay, or I did camera work, and once in a while I directed (it's not too hard with highschool sports). The van had an Amiga of some type. I think it was a 1200, but I don't know off the top of my head. Had video toaster, the whole shebang. I would buy european Amiga magazines for the demo discs, and at one point I got Airborne Ranger in a three pack of similar games. I would get up at 7am and go to the van (sometimes we just parked it at the house), start it up, power up the Amiga, and I'd play games for an hour or two. The demos mostly consisted of weird poo poo like a game where you shot smurfs (and barney may have been another common victim; my memory's hazy here). I only ended up with the C64 because we were no longer able to borrow the van to play with the Amiga. A volunteer (the whole cable access thing was volunteers except the president, who was paid a nominal salary) took pity on me and gave me her brother's old Commodore, as it was sitting in the attic doing nothing. George RR Fartin fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Jul 18, 2014 |
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Jul 18, 2014 03:54
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Hey if anyone is wondering whether they should dumb themselves down, please don't  If people don't like it they can scroll past. EDIT: quote:Like in general for this thread's purposes we don't need a massive amount of info on computer audio. Basically it can more or less be streamlined into: It's an enormously important part of retro computer gaming dude, asking people not to talk about it or to simplify it to such an absurd degree is ridiculous. d0s fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Jul 18, 2014 |
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Jul 18, 2014 05:58
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I actually ended up getting PMs from people (which really suprised me, I get PMs rarely, lots of lurkers itt) expressing support and asking me to keep doing the technical stuff. I can sort of see both sides, but ultimately have to agree with d0s that the technical aspects (especially regarding maintenance) are an integral part of retrogaming. Of course somebody who is interested in retrogaming doesn't have to be interested in retro-hardware/history but judging from PMs and the feedback and general direction of this thread, these two interests more often than not overlap, which I guess isn't that surprising. This thread also isn't moving as fast as somebody could completely lose track of what people talk about when ignoring certain kinds of posts, so for now I'll keep going. I have to agree though that I did get lost a bit in the audio side of things regarding old PCs (amongst some others) and will try to be more specific about topics and not try to touch too many sub-topics at once. If I don't end up being too lazy and can think of a topic that's really interesting in-depth, I'll open up a dedicated hardware thread. ( For example: I was thinking about demonstrating how to build a RAM expansion for the Amiga with cheap parts from an electronics store with going a bit into the theory of the whole memory-stuff, which is a topic which really would need it's own thread) Generally I think it'd be nice if this thread could be kind of a retro corner about all sorts of retro computer stuff from gaming to relevant topics in hardware, the more the merrier and all that. I will not answer to the PMs as I don't have a whole lot to add but want to say here that the interest is much appreciated. The next thing I will probably talk about is the 68k architecture and line of CPUs. These things were in just about everything that wasn't a PC and people seem to be confused how they stack up to each other and in regards to the x86-based line of CPUs. There's quite a bit of interesting stuff there, not only Amiga-related.
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Jul 18, 2014 10:07
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Police Automaton posted:The next thing I will probably talk about is the 68k architecture and line of CPUs. These things were in just about everything that wasn't a PC and people seem to be confused how they stack up to each other and in regards to the x86-based line of CPUs. There's quite a bit of interesting stuff there, not only Amiga-related. The 68000 is my favorite CPU of all time and the amount of awesome systems built around it is staggering, looking forward to this like crazy. EDIT Police Automaton posted:Generally I think it'd be nice if this thread could be kind of a retro corner about all sorts of retro computer stuff from gaming to relevant topics in hardware, the more the merrier and all that. Yeah see, this is what I think is awesome about this thread, and why I think people reacted strongly to wanting to kinda kill that. Retro gaming is kinda like a gateway drug to the whole world of retro computer hobbyism, and a strict technical thread would be kinda dry without people constantly bringing it back to "okay, and here's how to use this knowledge to play [awesome games for system being discussed]". d0s fucked around with this message at 10:24 on Jul 18, 2014 |
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Jul 18, 2014 10:19
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Police Automaton posted:The next thing I will probably talk about is the 68k architecture and line of CPUs. These things were in just about everything that wasn't a PC and people seem to be confused how they stack up to each other and in regards to the x86-based line of CPUs. There's quite a bit of interesting stuff there, not only Amiga-related. Looking forward to it.
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Jul 18, 2014 10:21
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Keep the technical posts flowing in this thread. They are perfect fodder for filling up the reserved-for-OP 5th post in this thread...as thread hotlinks. As a compromise for people disinterested in technical details, maybe put a bolded description at very top of technical posts so disinterested people know to skip them, and so Captain Rufus doesn't burn out. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Jul 18, 2014 |
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Jul 18, 2014 14:14
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It's the Retro Computer Thread. I can see the constant technical stuff getting tiresome in the general retro gaming thread since that deals with old consoles of the "Insert Cartridge, Play Gaem" variety, but dealing with the weird technical quirks, expandability options and configuration issues of old computers is basically half of their deal. They're weird dinosaurs that you have to tame into letting you play Knight Lore or whatever, a bit of technicality is more or less expected. It'd be nice if Automaton made things a little more understandable to the layman, but if he keeps things as is I'm not going to lose sleep over it as long as he keeps with the cool info.
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Jul 18, 2014 14:26
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The Kins posted:It's the Retro Computer Thread. I can see the constant technical stuff getting tiresome in the general retro gaming thread since that deals with old consoles of the "Insert Cartridge, Play Gaem" variety, but dealing with the weird technical quirks, expandability options and configuration issues of old computers is basically half of their deal. They're weird dinosaurs that you have to tame into letting you play Knight Lore or whatever, a bit of technicality is more or less expected. This, absolutely this. The incessant OCDing over RGB inputs and upscalers to get the absolutely bestest ever picture quality for old consoles on HDTVs in the general retro gaming thread is annoying as hell (if you're that nuts about graphical fidelity and looking just right, buy a goddamn CRT for cheap off craigslist and play the games on a screen they were designed for) and I can't stand it there, but here it's important. A lot of the technical stuff when it comes to old computers is needed knowledge just to get the drat things to work. Since games were often programmed with a specific configuration in mind you really need to know how to reproduce those conditions in order to even play them normally. The aforementioned audio configuration is particularly important--especially in that no-man's land of 90s DOS gaming when standards were yet to be finalized, you'd frequently have games that were specifically designed for Roland music and SoundBlaster effects, and not knowing the difference your game is going to sound like complete rear end. If you don't like the technical posts, you can just skip them.
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Jul 18, 2014 14:49
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This is a fully technical post - There were actually 6 "main" CPUs in Motorolas lineup, to keep it simple. I am not going to go too much in-depth about the original 68k because quite honestly, that is a topic that has been covered in countless blogs, articles, books and even on wikipedia and the information is all out there and won't just fall off the planet overnight. I'll mostly focus on the interesting tidbits and little quirks. Let's first talk a bit about Motorolas numbering and naming scheme. The CPUs were enumerated like this = 680x0. The even numbers in place for the x were reserved for major CPU versions, the odd numbers for minor improvements on the earlier main version. For example, the not very well known 68010 was a slight improvement from the 68000, the 68030 was a slight improvement from the 68020. The 68040 and 68060 were very different beasts, while a 68050 was never made, although Motorola did work on it for at least some time. More on that later. The 68070 is kind in the region of urban myths and "interesting tales of the usenet" but it was rumored that the plan for Motrola was mainly to revise the 68060s internal FPU, which would have made sense in the mid- to late 90s, as FPU performance became more and more important (This is where the Intel Pentium won out over all the others, the 68060 was actually on the level with the earlier Pentium if not faster on a clock-by-clock basis in all other regards). Motorola dropped the 68k line to focus on the PowerPC architecture. Additionally there were also EC and LC versions of these chips. (For example: 680EC040, 680LC060) These sub-versions usually left something out and were sold cheaper as a result, what EC (embedded controller) and LC (low cost) actually meant for each version of CPU varies. Usually in the case of LC it meant no internal FPU for the later 68040 and 68060, while in the case of EC it meant no MMU (memory management unit) and no FPU (if internal). Now you have to see that these parts weren't physically left out in the case of the 68030,040 and 060, but were in manufacturing absolutely identical to "full" units. The manufacturing process wasn't all that perfect at that time and manufacturing complex integrated circuits like this was a big challenge, so LC and EC parts often were units where in testing the MMU and/or FPU proved to be faulty or unreliable for some reason. Instead of throwing these units away, Motorola just electrically disconnected the connecting traces on the die via laser-cutting from the rest of the CPU and labeled them as either LC or EC. Makes sense as neither an FPU or an MMU was all that important for many of the different hardware/software combinations that utilized these chips. Later on the manufacturing processes for the 68040 and especially the 68060 got better and the demand for the EC and LC units was huge for embedded applications (like routers, modems etc.) so that Motorola just started labeling many "full-featured" units as LC and EC parts, their FPU and MMU remaining intact and fully working. This wouldn't interfere with the intended application in any way, so this was ok. Also wasn't a loss for Motorola as the only difference in the manufacturing was what they would print on the Chips. So if you buy one of these later LC or EC CPUs somewhere on the cheap, you might get lucky. You can tell that these labeling schemes were intended for the technical person, not for the layman. There wasn't any marketing department coming up with cool names! I assume most people reading this are familiar with the meaning of FPU, but MMU might be more unknown. In short, it allows you to redirect the access to memory regions, or to protect certain memory to be accessed by programs. The advantage of that is for example memory protection on a hardware basis in the OS, or usage of swap memory on the harddrive, making the CPU believe it's "real" memory. Two things that both weren't supported in the AmigaOS, so an MMU wasn't really of much use there. With the right software explicitly taking advantage of it, an MMU can be of benefit though and can even speed things up. Later MacOS and also 68k versions of Linux require an MMU to function. The 68k and 020 has no internal MMU, but can be equipped with an external MMU-Chip, the M68851. I actually lied and there are more CPUs (like the 68008 for example) and more variants (like V, SEC or CMOS versions of the 68k etc.) but we'll ignore these as they are not interesting for us. Lets go back a bit to the older chips. The 68000 was an interesting chip for many applications as it was easy to program, had a good performance and fell *just* into the right price margin in the middle of the 80s to be affordable for the building of home computers (and later on, consoles) compared to intels 8088 or earlier even higher cost 8086. (with 16 bit bus, the granddad of all CPUs of today) The 68000 gets often compared to the 8088 in terms of performance as they are both children of the late 70s, but quite honestly the more I think about it the more I'd say that this is not a fair comparison. In real-world use and application, it would probably be more fair to pitch the 68000 against the 286 performance-wise, although the latter had integrated features that would ultimately set intel on the right track, like for example an MMU. This shows really well that the 70s were an absolutely important time for the development of computers as we know them now, a fact that often gets overseen. Also intel was just another small fish in the ocean regarding CPUs. That all being said, the fabulous performance you see from systems with the 68000 is often not *entirely* because of the CPU, like I mentioned in an earlier post, lots of systems had customized chipsets that could do all kinds of amazing stuff without taxing the CPU. In the early 80s, Motorola released the 68010 which was a bit of a tidied, fixed up version of the 68000. It had sort of a special mode for very small loops which, amongst other things, made it a bit faster, but as downside was not 100% compatible to the 68000 in some software things. You can exchange the 68000 for an 68010 in any System without any additional parts as they are pin-compatible, but the performance improvement will be extremely low and probably not noticeable, or rather would reallllly depend on the application and kind of available memory. It might also cause problems with some software. It does offer the support for virtual memory though, which AFAIK only real-world advantage on an Amiga is that it will let you quit games in WHDLoad without resetting the computer. Interesting thing about the 68000 and 68010: They both had "only" a 24 bit address bus (not enough pins for more) but worked with 32 bit addresses internally. This was done by Motorola for forwards compatibility with future CPUs, the upper 8 bits would just be masked in memory accesses but the future programs would run. Ironically, programmers not following clean programming procedures would use the upper 8 bits for something else or just also ignore them in turn when writing their programs, causing those programs to go absolutely haywire on the memory on later "full" 32 bit 68k CPUs. This is one of the main reasons for spectacular crashes of older games on newer 680x0 CPUs. The Stock 68EC020 in the Amiga 1200 does not suffer from this problem, as it also has "only" an 24-bit address bus. (This is what EC means in it's case) I would assume with the 68000s ease of use and high tolerance to just about everything that there are still a whole boatload of embedded applications out there to this day, still utilizing a CPU like this in some form. Be it some automated sewing machine, some farm equipment or otherwise. I've never ever in my entire life seen or even heard of a broken 68000 which broke by itself. This is a theme with Motorola CPUs. The 68000 was second-sourced by many different manufacturers, including Toshiba, Signetics etc. etc.. In connection with early Amigas, 1000, some 500s etc.) I've ran into situations where either Motorola manufactured 68ks would not work in a specific Amiga, or were some Toshiba-manufactured 68ks would not work. I can only explain this with specific part tolerance problems but it was incredibly weird as the CPUs should be identical on the inside. This might be a hint for those weird "It worked before and I changed nothing of significance" kind of problems. Many early Amigas have Signetics-branded 68k CPUs. There is a metric fuckton of 68k's in the wild and they are cheaply available, which mostly is connected to the fact that at least Motorola produced them way into the mid-90s and they never, ever break. Well that much for the early 68k CPUs. I really just wanted to get first and foremost the labeling down, as there's already much confusion there. Later threads will contain pictures of different CPUs and hardware attached to it, as I will say a few words about the later 680x0 CPUs and general performance. I hope this was informative and understandable!
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Jul 18, 2014 17:01
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The 68070 was a weird variant Phillips put in the CDI. It's not much more than a stock 68000.
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Jul 18, 2014 17:35
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CRT 4 lyfe.
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Jul 18, 2014 18:26
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Edit: always Google first.
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Jul 18, 2014 23:09
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A question for PA or anyone else who knows: Are there any lesser known home computers that used the 68000 series beyond Lisa/Mac, Atari ST, X68K, and Amiga?
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Jul 19, 2014 07:35
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I think apple had a "portable" computer that used the CMOS version of a 68k, but I might mix that up with something else. Lots of game consoles had them. There might be a soviet version, as back then there was a strict trade embargo for "tech" so eastern-bloc countries would just aquire different western CPUs, reverse-engineer them and just make them themselves. (The eastern bloc was quite a bit behind in semiconductor tech compared to the west) But I don't know if the 68k was ever the goal of such reverse engineering. I know the Z80, intel 8088 and motorola 6800 was. (I have two such computers, one made in the USSR and one made in the GDR) As the 68k was so easy to utilize, There were quite a few "DIY"-computer projects that used the 68000, from completely homebuilt solutions to Kits you could assemble. You might wanna search in that direction.
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Jul 19, 2014 08:25
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d0s posted:A question for PA or anyone else who knows: Are there any lesser known home computers that used the 68000 series beyond Lisa/Mac, Atari ST, X68K, and Amiga? The 1984 Sinclair QL used the 68008 (a 68K with an 8 bit external bus). It was technically the first 16 bit computer ever sold in the UK as it beat the Mac to the punch by a few weeks. Despite some cool features it was too compromised by its budget design, the use of Microdrives being a particular problem, and it failed to make much of a splash on the market. When Amstrad bought Sinclair's computer line they killed it immediately. It is however one of the best looking computers of the era as my QL will demonstrate:    The aforementioned Microdrives were (and are) a massive pain to use. They are basically very tiny 8 track tapes (a single continuous loop of tape) and can technically store 100K. Effectively they store 0K because getting data back from them is extremely difficult. In future year 2014 the success rate is about one in ten. Apparently back in 1984 they weren't much better. I've got a 3.5" floppy drive attached to my QL and I think it would have been more successful had Sinclair gone with that from day one. Even though it would have driven up the price it would have seemed more like a professional computer. Like the Amiga there are still people writing software (mostly games) for the QL. Unlikely the Amiga the QL community is actually quite nice and friendly; if a little strange.  
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Jul 19, 2014 08:40
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Sinclair's industrial design was always so drat nice, I hardly ever want hardware for purely aesthetic reasons but most of their lineup elicts that reaction from me. I catch myself browsing eBay for Spectrums and stuff before catching myself like "dude you are never going to use that".
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Jul 19, 2014 08:47
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Not a home computer (unless someone at CERN nicked one to play Doom back in the day, I guess), but some of the NeXTs were 68K.
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Jul 19, 2014 10:19
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Prenton posted:Not a home computer (unless someone at CERN nicked one to play Doom back in the day, I guess), but some of the NeXTs were 68K. From what I understand it wasn't too surprising to see UNIX workstations in homes, particularly when the owners were IT people who had to bring work home. I do remember seeing a NeXT cube specifically at a somewhat rich friend's house around 1992, it was something only his father was allowed to touch and looking back it was probably used for work. I did hear stories of UNIX geeks (who just preferred the operating system, rather than needing it for work) having to shell out for Sun workstations and stuff, which is probably one of the reasons Linux got huge in the first place, if you wanted to use UNIX back then you settled for a really poor commercial PC clone version with very little software support, or you spent big money on a workstation (or you rented time on a big computer). That said, calling a NeXT a home computer is stretching it, but I had totally forgotten they used the 68K series processors. d0s fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Jul 20, 2014 |
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Jul 20, 2014 03:47
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I wanted to take a few pictures and say some more about the later CPUs, but I have to move that off by a few days because I lack the time and have my face molten off by the hot weather here. I'm still saying one thing though as I encounter it again and again: Don't overclock your 68k accelerator cards. The 68k line of CPUs (basically all of them except maybe the 030) are extremely overclocking-friendly. In the benchmark-crowd (yes, that's a thing with retro computers) This fact is often used (and abused) to overclock them to insane speeds. People do that, maybe glue a heatsink to the CPU (which all normally don't need to be cooled except the 040) and feel better about themselves and don't worry too much, as even the high end CPUs are still somewhat easy to aquire. What they don't realize is that they don't only overclock the CPU, but overclock the entire logic around it, which on many accelerator cards is already running at the limit of it's specs with the stock speed. This of course causes instability (especially with the memory) which often just naively gets shrugged off or not noticed (as the people don't use the computer for anything except making a picture for benchmarks anyways) but might also actually damage the custom logic (due to overheating), which usually is impossible to replace. Very common failure I've seen often is the memory controller on amiga blizzard cards (all of the higher end ones) which makes the card (if it still works afterwards) absolutely useless as it doesn't recognize memory anymore. A lot of expansions get broken forever this way. People usually don't talk about it because even with the whole abusive stance many parts of the community takes against the old hardware, actually breaking it is not a thing to do to remain popular and they still plan to resell it on ebay to fund another one. So don't overclock your cards, especially the higher end ones. The performance gain is usually purely theoretic anyways as most Apps were written for much slower systems in mind. In the same vein, don't buy "defective/as is" accelerator cards (especially if they are the high end ones) as usually at the point they ended up on ebay, the original owner already tried everything possible regarding repairing it and probably abused it severely in the process. In the same vein, there are these dual-sided SIMM memory sticks with 32, 64 MB or even 128 MB which usually are needed to get lots of memory into your old computer. They are very sought after and fetch high prices in the right crowds. Don't use them. You don't need that much memory in your old computer, usually they do not fit properly mechanically (giving potential to damage something) the drivers on the old cards were not intended to be used with that many DRAM chips (causing them to produce lots of heat and maybe break eventually) and DRAM is relatively power-hungry potentially causing stability issues. You do not need lots of memory in your old computer. Modern computers profit of lots of memory because modern OSes use memory that isn't directly used for caching of data in an intelligent way, so more is almost always better here and will noticeably improve performance. Old operating systems like AmigaOS don't do this, so memory that is free might as well not be there as it doesn't really give you an advantage in any way. Find out how much memory you need and stick that much memory in your system accordingly. You'll be hard pressed even in an high end Amiga to ever find use for more than 16-32 MB of RAM, as again RAM was very expensive back then and most Apps were written with a tiny memory footprint. Oh, another thing about these high capacity memory sticks from ebay: Apparently some people realized there's money to be made with this stuff and I've seen "new" 128 MB memory sticks with 3.3V memory on it. As all these old computers are strictly 5V systems the memory is doomed to break eventually as it's "overvolted" considerably. There are also some "homebrew" memory expansions floating around in some forums that also use such memory, even on Amibay. People misinterpret "5V compatible" in the datasheets and then make stuff that will break by design. "5V compatible" in this context means the chips can interface with 5V hardware at their I/O Pins, but they can't be run with 5V power supply. Mentioning a fact like this on a Forum like Amibay is a good way to get banned. I hope this was some helpful information for the 68k aficionados. Police Automaton fucked around with this message at 11:43 on Jul 21, 2014 |
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Jul 21, 2014 11:37
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Geez, Knights of Xentar went for over a hundred bucks. Was it rare in the US? I assume possibly cause it was a hentai game after all, back in those days even.
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Jul 22, 2014 09:06
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Dana Crysalis posted:Geez, Knights of Xentar went for over a hundred bucks. Was it rare in the US? I assume possibly cause it was a hentai game after all, back in those days even. I don't know. I've tried it. It kind of sucks and that's not even counting anime R rated art from time to time. Megatech really made one halfway decent game, Power Dolls. Which was their only non porny game though you did get G rated girlie pictures of the all female mech pilot cast as you completed missions in all their Japanese NEC PC dither style graphic glory. But computer games have always been niche over console, even if they were better on their home platforms. (Maniac Mansion was HUGE on NES. It was kind of a low seller on computers. Also see how people remember Shadowgate. Consoles just get more notice, especially in the retro era.) I am working on a new effort post of sorts.   Comparing and finding the best versions of Might and Magic 2 and 3 to play. (Hint: PC wins one, the console wins the other. EA just made some mistakes with some of their games porting over. Like Shadow of the Beast which was running at 60hz when it was a 50 game from the UK.)
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Jul 25, 2014 10:03
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Captain Rufus posted:I am working on a new effort post of sorts. Serious question--how do you measure what's best? Having played the console and PC versions of both MM2 and MM3, I can't see how anyone would even possibly consider playing the console versions for either. Like basically every console port of a PC RPG ever, they both suffer massively from not having a keyboard, with inordinate amounts of menu navigation, and even using the controller to type answers in one-letter-at-a-time for in-game questions, which is an enormous pain in the rear end. Like--and I'm not trying to be douchey or antagonistic--is your yardstick graphics only? Your past posts do seem to show something of an odd fixation on graphics and overall presentation when it comes to old games. Which is a little unusual when it comes to retro games, since ALL of their graphics are awful by modern standards. Nothing wrong with placing an unusual emphasis on that, of course, since everyone's preferences are going to differ, but I think most people into retro gaming aren't going to weigh graphical quality so heavily when picking what version of a game to play.
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Jul 25, 2014 17:04
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Genpei Turtle posted:Serious question--how do you measure what's best? Having played the console and PC versions of both MM2 and MM3, I can't see how anyone would even possibly consider playing the console versions for either. Like basically every console port of a PC RPG ever, they both suffer massively from not having a keyboard, with inordinate amounts of menu navigation, and even using the controller to type answers in one-letter-at-a-time for in-game questions, which is an enormous pain in the rear end. Fun? You know, how enjoyable it is to actually play the game. Presentation is part of the greater whole.
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Jul 25, 2014 19:51
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Captain Rufus posted:Fun? You know, how enjoyable it is to actually play the game. Presentation is part of the greater whole. OK, just curious. I generally don't think most console versions of CRPGs are much fun at all compared to their CRPG brethren because of input issues, that's why I was wondering.
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Jul 25, 2014 21:12
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When dealing with old computer games you're gonna run into some trouble declaring a version of a game "the best" particularly when it's a console port. The different systems' hardware configurations and limitations impart the games with unique looks and feels that people can become very attached to depending on what version of the game they grew up with/played first. Compare a game on an Apple II, C64, Amiga, B&W Mac, or DOS PC. These systems all have unique characteristics that their fans love, and some games "work" better within these limitations despite another system being technically better spec-wise. You're never going to convince me that the Apple II has better technical specifications than an Amiga, but you're also never going to convince me that playing Carmen Sandiego is more rewarding on an Amiga than it is on an Apple. The Apple version is the best to me despite not being the most technically advanced, or having the easiest interface, or however you define "fun". The Apple version is just the one I know, and the one it looks "right" (to me) on. Trying to separate the nostalgia from this hobby and objectively declare versions of games to be better than others based on how you personally feel about them is a bit strange. EDIT: By all means make an effort post about different versions of games, it's interesting! Just don't declare a version of a game "the best" as if you are an authority on the matter. Maybe point out what your personal favorite version is and explain why instead. d0s fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jul 26, 2014 04:17
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drat, that Sinclair QL does look pretty dope. Also I for one love "version comparisons" of any stripe since they often introduce me to some corner of the computer gaming world I never even knew about. I suppose we could argue that anyone deciding that console versions of CRPGs were superior was some sort of heretic, but I am also fascinated to learn how many of the games I loved had foreign console remakes/sequels I never heard a single peep about in my entire life.
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Jul 26, 2014 05:26
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d0s posted:When dealing with old computer games you're gonna run into some trouble declaring a version of a game "the best" particularly when it's a console port. The different systems' hardware configurations and limitations impart the games with unique looks and feels that people can become very attached to depending on what version of the game they grew up with/played first. Compare a game on an Apple II, C64, Amiga, B&W Mac, or DOS PC. These systems all have unique characteristics that their fans love, and some games "work" better within these limitations despite another system being technically better spec-wise. I dunno man, sometimes platform superiority is pretty clear to pick out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GObao5a7Fis
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Jul 26, 2014 07:10
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The Kins posted:I dunno man, sometimes platform superiority is pretty clear to pick out. I totally agree that there are plenty of really poo poo arcade ports, particularly on computers of the 80's and early 90's. I don't see a problem in that case to say that the original arcade version is the best. I was more talking about stuff where something doesn't have a clear "master" version, or cases where technology actually improved, so something was "ported up" with more enhancements than it's original (and probably well loved) version. Stuff like the Carmen Sandiego example I made happens a lot when talking about games originally designed for home systems that got ported around to all the different platforms, even over different generations such as 8 to 16 bit. In that case I think claiming (say) a 16-bit version as the best when the 8-bit version is something plenty of people love might not make a lot of sense. I think in general that when stuff gets ported down, so goes the quality because it's a compromise of the original work, but when a game is ported up it becomes a lot harder to be objective about stuff like that, especially when the original is considered a classic. I love Thexder Neo on the PS3 and PSP but it doesn't cancel out Thexder in my eyes, and I think a lot of Thexder fans would want to have some words with me if I went around saying so.
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Jul 26, 2014 09:44
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I have an obscure issue that I'm running into with my Atari machines. I figured this'd be a potentially better place to ask it than the regular Retrogames thread, so please bare with me. I have an Atari 800 and an Atari XE, the former being a family possession and the latter being an acquisition made a couple of years ago. I want to use the Atari XE more than the 800 due to my 800's brittle condition, coupled with its necessity on RF/coaxial to function. However, I have noticed very distinct differences between the two in the sounds of one of my game carts, Space Invaders*. I am not able to determine whether or not this is an issue with my specific Atari XE or with the Atari XE model itself, because I don't have another one to test. However, when using an Atari 800 emulator, I've been able to determine the sounds of my original Atari 800 copy and the emulated copy are identical (or nearly identical, if you want to get all ~*~*emulation*~*~ about it). The XE is just flat-out off. What sounds am I talking about? The sound of the saucer flying across the top of the screen, and the sound when you blow it up. Atari 800: You hear this sort of low-note arpeggio? noise. When you hit it with your laser, its noise scales in octaves until it inevitably ceases to make a noise. Atari XE: The first appearance of the saucer makes no noise at all. When you hit it with your laser, same result. Later appearances make a very high-pitched noise, but nothing like an arpeggio or anything that sounds like effort. Just a solid beep that doesn't end until it's dead. The sound of the player being shot by aliens. Atari 800: Highly-audible crackle, as though it were a stock explosion. Atari XE: Low-note thud, like it was an afterthought. Can anyone in this thread confirm/deny that this is an issue with all Atari XE models? If it isn't, and if this is an issue with my specific model, anybody know how I should go about poking the POKEY to fix it? On a final: I've considered that I'm being a bit  about this whole deal, but with the sounds of our childhood being so ingrained in the minds of my siblings and I, anything less than a faithful reproduction of the sights and sounds we experienced as kids just won't cut it. If anyone is familiar with the sound issues I describe, I'd love to hear it. Additionally, I've tried taking video of the sound differences, but it's a bit hard to play the game with one hand and film with the other. I might have my wife volunteer if you'd like some kind of audio/video evidence.
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Jul 26, 2014 12:03
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The Kins posted:I dunno man, sometimes platform superiority is pretty clear to pick out. I'm actually kind of impressed by this. Not that I want to play it, mind you, but compressing a game down to whatever resolution that is (60x40?) and having it somewhat kind of resemble the actual game is an accomplishment in itself.
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Jul 26, 2014 14:19
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Shlomo Palestein posted:I'm actually kind of impressed by this. Not that I want to play it, mind you, but compressing a game down to whatever resolution that is (60x40?) and having it somewhat kind of resemble the actual game is an accomplishment in itself. I actually like that version a lot more than some of the really blatantly halfassed ports of that game on more powerful systems, particularly (but not exclusively) by euro devs. There are tons of terrible European ports of Japanese arcade games on 8/16 bit computers where it's so apparent that the people making them just didn't give a poo poo (and interviews later on confirmed as much). There are also some really great euroports, the Amiga version of Rainbow Islands comes to mind. EDIT: I just noticed that thing has a really nice sound for it's age, what sound chip is that anyway? d0s fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jul 26, 2014 21:52
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Oh ports could be something dramatically different even in handling even if they looked the same. I'm reminded of Carrier Command. (ok that's an oldie) The Amiga version was rushed and terribly broken as a result. The enemy island AI was braindead and basically did nothing, didn't even try to attack the carrier, there also was no time compression which basically made the game completely unplayable as the distances between the islands you had to travel were enormous. Still the game was highly praised in reviews, probably because they never even tested that version to begin with. The PC version (I played many years later) had both functioning AI and time compression, which really made the game, well, a game. In the time before easy patching you'd run into such things quite a bit. There was a recent remake which after all I've heard also suffers from braindead AI, I guess they only played the Amiga version.  Because of an issue I have been confronted with again recently I wanna make a PSA to C64 owners in this thread:  Don't cut your system from power by pulling the power cord or switching off an external power strip while it is turned on. You risk destroying your C64. Always turn off at the C64s own power switch first. Here's the technical explanation: Older C64 mainboards generate internal +5V power for the video chip and the timing circuit via a 7805 linear regulator. (that's also why the computers case gets so warm in one corner after a while of operation) Now, if you cut the power to the system with the power supply still connected, capacitors discharge in reverse direction into the power supply via the 7805 regulator, which is terrible for the health of that regulator. It might survive this two or three times, but will eventually get damaged by this. A common failure mode for the 7805 after a few times of this is that it'll eventually give it's input voltage unregulated through to it's output pin, just like a piece of wire, destroying the VIC (graphics chip) by overvoltage first, which in turn will very probably destroy the C64s memory chips. Very, very commonly observed damage in C64s. This is a design error on older revisions of the C64s Mainboard. The C64s Mainboard was revised a lot by Commodore, later versions are not affected by this as they don't have this whole regulator setup altogether, but all C64s with the "Breadbin" case probably have an affected Mainboard. As Commodore sometimes in true Commodore fashion put older revision Mainboards they found somewhere in their storage in the newer, bigger cases it's hard to say what revision Mainboard ended up in your case and it's a safer to just never turn off your C64 that way. As this can be a very common design error, it might be safer to actually never turn any older system off that way. Two solutions for this problem for people with technical affinity who can wield a soldering iron: 1. Solder a diode (1N4001 or similar) from VOut of the Regulator to VIn. This is a by manufacturers recommended security measure for 78xx linear regulators and the usual configuration in all circuits employing these devices. Cathode to the input of the regulator. 2. Replace the 7805 linear regulator with a modern switching mode regulator replacement. (for example RECOM R-785.0-1.0 or similar) This Regulator is also a lot more energy efficient and will run a lot cooler, putting less strain on the power supply. They didn't use them back then because they didn't exist yet. Solution for everyone else: 1. Don't switch off your C64 that way. I hope this will save a few C64s. I didn't forget about the 680x0 post, and it'll come soon. EDIT: Be aware that a power failure will have the same effect. Where I live, they are not common. Your experience may vary. Police Automaton fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jul 26, 2014 23:03
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Wise Fwom Yo Gwave posted:I have an obscure issue that I'm running into with my Atari machines. I figured this'd be a potentially better place to ask it than the regular Retrogames thread, so please bare with me. I'm not an audiophile so no idea. But the 800 does composite out. See the large DIN type plug on the side. Also can SVideo from it. Just like the 130xe and Genesis 1 which have the same plug. And let's face it though. If you are using rf out from the 800 it is gonna sound worse, especially if you are using a TV game switch box or even worse one of those screw VHF to coax dongle thingies. Also the 800 is generally better built and runs more games than the XL or XE lines, especially if you don't get into modern releases. ( unlike the DOS world most normal people home computers had software coded for the installed models to sell to a bigger audience. So extra chips in the XL and XE were mostly ignored. In fact they make some software inoperable. Sort of like an early Win 9x to XP split.)
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Jul 27, 2014 00:03
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Shlomo Palestein posted:I'm actually kind of impressed by this. Not that I want to play it, mind you, but compressing a game down to whatever resolution that is (60x40?) and having it somewhat kind of resemble the actual game is an accomplishment in itself. Also I wish I could help about the Atari 800XL/XE issue as I have had both (and still have my XE), but I pretty much never noticed any differences at all. Though I certainly feel like I have a good ear for minor differences so that might still be a partial answer.
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Jul 27, 2014 04:09
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I wanted to start collecting old dos era PC games, but I wanted to know a good place to start, anyone got any advice for someone just starting out?
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Jul 27, 2014 07:25
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massecurr posted:I wanted to start collecting old dos era PC games, but I wanted to know a good place to start, anyone got any advice for someone just starting out? Cd based titles from the last days of DOS. Roughly 1994-96 though there were a few before and after. In general we can say there are 3 eras of DOS: CGA/EGA. Roughly 1981-1989. Pretty much a 8 MHz CGA PC with DOS 3 and 5 1/4 inch drives were king here. A good AT class 286 or one of the faster Tandy 1000s will give you what you crave. Low density disks were king and hard disks were small and expensive. A number of titles looked and sounded best on Tandy 1000s. Or competing platforms. Basically this era sort of sucks for DOS gaming. The VGA era. Roughly 1989-1993. 386 and 486 machines took hold. 256 color VGA or the IBM MCGA standards started up. Adlib, Roland, and Sound Blaster audio cards caught on. Extended and Expanded memory past 640k became a thing. DOS 5 and Windows 3.1 titles. High density 1.2/4 meg 5 and 3.5 inch drives were becoming standards, especially the 3s. Hard disks became standards even in home machines. CDROM was making itself known but caddies were dumb and few cared. Ps 2 mice and keyboards become commonplace. Last days of DOS . 486 50-pentium 100s. Some Windows 95 games had DOS modes. Others basically just had shells to run on top of Windows. Most games CDROM. System Requirements got really stupid requiring nearly yearly upgrades to the point overdrive CPU slots were standard in most 486 machines. Desktops mostly gave way to tower cases. Svga was present but wasn't really standard. 3d cards were making attempts at inroads here. In general each era can mostly be run by the later ones but sometimes there are speed issues, especially with CGA era stuff. Lots of fast XT and AT machines in the 80s had a turbo button so you could run at stock 8088 4.77 MHz speed for things that demanded it. The issue with DOS collecting is 1.4 meg 3.5 inch floppies and drives seem to die super easy. Also driver disks are basically needed for almost everything. And CGA is a blight on your eyeballs to the level even the Apple 2 and Sinclair Spectrum almost look good in comparison. These are things to keep in mind if you want to DOS game. If this doesn't scare you off, we can go from here.
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Jul 27, 2014 10:50
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massecurr posted:I wanted to start collecting old dos era PC games, but I wanted to know a good place to start, anyone got any advice for someone just starting out? Without knowing exactly what you're into I'll just say check out most of what Broderbund and Sierra published during the 80's and early-mid 90's as a kind of jumping off point, I think a lot of their titles have a sort of universal appeal. For pure action/arcadey games check out Epic, Apogee, etc. Someone more knowledgeable can tell you about Adventure/RPGs. It would be cool if you can name some genres you like so we could give you better suggestions, also as the post above mine suggests "DOS gaming" spans many years and somewhat incompatible systems so you should be a bit more specific when it comes to what era you're looking to get into. If you don't know what era you want to be into just get a fast 486 or early Pentium or something because there's tons of awesome games for that configuration. For what it's worth I've bought dozens of games on both 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" disks for many different systems and have had maybe four not work, three of which which I sent back to the sellers for full refunds, the last was an "as-is" auction. That said, it's 2014 and unless you're crazy like me there are way better ways to play these games on the real hardware besides buying legit copies on floppy disks. Look into CF->IDE adapters, floppy emulators, etc.
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Jul 27, 2014 12:31
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IMHO the only reason to collect DOS games these days is for the big boxes. Almost any really good game that is still worth playing today has had a source port or cleaned up release on sites like gog.com, so there's really no reason to buy or own the physical discs. As was mentioned, floppies are probably going to be unreadable nowadays and I would bet over the next 10-20 years we'll see those old CDROMs die too. If I were to get into collecting I would do it just for the awesome big boxes and artwork.
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Jul 27, 2014 16:48
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