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A dubious Chinese Framemeister knockoff works for me. I've already ordered the Indivision though so we'll see how it all works. Other than the video I'm extremely happy with the computer.
Luigi Thirty fucked around with this message at 13:37 on Nov 4, 2016 |
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Nov 4, 2016 13:30
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Luigi Thirty posted:A dubious Chinese Framemeister knockoff Tell us morrrre
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Nov 4, 2016 15:23
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Shlomo Palestein posted:Tell us morrrre That GBS-8820 thing. I do have a Fat Agnus so the Indivision would give me the ECS modes even if it's an emulated Denise and therefore unclean.
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Nov 4, 2016 15:27
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Luigi Thirty posted:That GBS-8820 thing. Watch out, the sellers always say that's not for "old computer" use. 
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Nov 4, 2016 17:18
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Gromit posted:I have Schrodingers A2000 in my shed. It, along with an A500 and C64, has sat in there for a couple decades and I'm too scared to get it out to find that the battery was melted everything. While I don't look, it's in perfect condition! Open it up, take the battery out. These things are always repairable. Charles Get-Out posted:Watch out, the sellers always say that's not for "old computer" use. If they do I'd wager a guess (without knowing) and say it's probably because it can't deal with HVSync and the whole polarity thing with those. In that sense the Framemeister isn't really for "old computer" use either. CSync creation isn't difficult, *proper* CSync creation is non-trivial though and not really possible *that* easy from HVSync. Good thing is this is usually not necessary. At least the Framemeister eats even really hosed up things there, I don't know how the GBS8820 keeps it but I heard positive things. The upscaling is not on the same level as the Framemeister obviously and it doesn't do fancy things like fake scanlines but hey, it's 15 bucks, what can you possibly want. I remember that there are a few things to observe though with that thing so it's probably wise to google before buying. The positive thing about an external upscaler like this is that you can have one solution for everything old you have lying around. If you buy something like the indivision, it's only for that one computer and nothing else. Even if you're not interested in consoles like I am not, you already even have with old PCs and Macs which are VGA compatible the problem that a) many modern LCDs don't even have a VGA connector anymore b) the picture quality will be terrible with the resolutions these screens usually have natively c) The systems sometimes do something terrible to the signal which the screens often can't deal properly with. It's why I took the plunge with the Framemeister and it's high price, it works with everything from C64 to Pentium 3 and I don't have to worry about all that again anytime soon. Luigi Thirty posted:That GBS-8820 thing. There was a driver for the Indivision floating around that allowed 256 color screen modes IIRC, development was abandoned though. It might be worth a look. I wouldn't get too excited though, no matter how that works it's going to be dog-slow.
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Nov 5, 2016 11:09
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Hmm, the mouse port on the A2000 stopped reading mouse movement but it still reads buttons. Amiga.org suggests that I probably blew the short circuit protection fuse going to the port's +5V pin somehow and that it's very common. If I bypass it I run the risk of burning out a trace if it happens again. Guess it's time to stock up on Picofuses. I did get the Indivision ECS installed, flashed to 1.1, and running Workbench at 1024x768 4-color though!  I also put in a dual serial port card and a SupraRAM card with 6MB on it.
Luigi Thirty fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Nov 8, 2016 |
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Nov 8, 2016 17:05
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Be aware that 6 MB is going to be the natural limit for this computer, but you probably know about this. To reiterate for others, Zorro II is limited to 8 MB and even cards like the serial card in that example need address space. The RAM on the SupraRAM will be significantly slower than the local 32-bit FastRAM on the Accelerator. The OS actually will put a higher priority to the Accelerator RAM and fill it first, then the SupraRAM, then as last option the ChipRAM. Most (even if not all) accelerators add their local FastRAM outside this address space, so they are not touched by this limit. If you add a 4.7 ohm resistor instead of the Picofuses, you don't run any danger of burning a trace as that will act as a current limiter. That's the way it is solved for example in the A1200. More correct would be a Polyfuse of 250 mA. A Polyfuse is a self-resetting fuse that'll heat up as it's current limit is reached which will up the electrical resistance until the circuit is open. When it cools down it'll work normally again. That way, it doesn't need to be replaced. This is how ports in more modern computers are usually protected. E: What's your +5V? Did you measure it? Police Automaton fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Nov 9, 2016 |
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Nov 9, 2016 10:25
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Yeah, my multimeter registered +5V on one end of the fuse and 0V on the other. The board's been recapped and there's no battery damage that I can see.
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Nov 12, 2016 21:37
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Well yes, In my opinion that's a blown fuse then. I don't think any computer has given me as much joy over the years as the A2000. The C64 came close even if I didn't have one when they were the rage and only got one later. The PCs, you know, they were great and all but you just expected these things to work, they were work horses. The 500 Mhz Pentium 3 I once had with a server board and BX chipset, that thing I loved, too. It's a pity I gave it away. I used it for many years, or let's say, it was very longlived for how long you kept a computer back then. I recently bought a small and incredibly cheap asrock board with AMD SoC soldered on and I use it for daily tasks and it's actually the first time in a while I actually enjoyed a PC and didn't just see it as a thing that has to work. It's silent, low on the power consumption but still a proper PC and it also has exactly the amount of power I need for my average tasks. Funnily I bought a 5820k with all the fixings just about a year ago and didn't enjoy that thing and it's three thousand fans nearly as much even though I still need it. Maybe I've just gone mad with the years. Maybe some people here still remember that dutch 8088 clone board I was in the process of repairing. I put it a bit on the back burner after removing all that battery gunk because I couldn't think of a case to put it into and it did seem like something customized non-standard because of the additional ports. After doing some intense research (holding it up to a baby-AT board) it turns out that in fact it is standard and will fit in most AT cases, just the mouse (bus mouse, and it isn't even populated with the needed IC, so no loss) and serial port needs to be desoldered (the serial port helpfully has a non-populated header you can add instead) and some of the mounting holes need to have solder removed. I honestly don't really get why I thought it was non-standard, as this makes not a lot of sense if you really think about it. I already have the proper case, a hot-pink/beige desktop number. I also have one of those 8-bit CF-Card card/IDE controllers and I think I saw a 5,25" drive somewhere in the basement. It will not be one of these collectors items you see on eBay but it will be mine and that's what matters. It's also always nice to get a computer to full work order that was basically sold as scrap. All I need now is an afternoon to do all this. Contrary to most 8088 you see flying around, this board actually has a lot of the needed functionality already onboard and doesn't need a floppy controller etc. cards so that makes things easier too. After a bit of digging, I figured out that the custom Faraday IC this board uses has a Software-setable (!) register were you can set the clock the chip gives to the CPU to 4.77, 7.15 or 9.54 Mhz the default 8 Mhz specced NEC V20 the board came with is probably able to do the 9.54. Not sure what graphics card I'll pick, I have everything here from these huge original CGA cards to Hercules to some of the more exotic EGA variants with special screen modes. VGA just doesn't seem right. Not even sure what I'll do with it, a 8088 doesn't have that interesting of a software library. We'll see. Police Automaton fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Nov 13, 2016 |
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Nov 13, 2016 20:23
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Yep, replaced the fuse with a resistor and the mouse port works perfectly. I can play Lemmings again!  I'll order some fuses and swap out the resistor once they get here.
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Nov 13, 2016 20:51
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E: Wrong thread.
Not a Children fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Nov 14, 2016 |
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Nov 13, 2016 21:15
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Police Automaton posted:
If you can get a hold of them, one of those VGA boards they used to have that exact compatibility with CGA/EGA modes (including having a composite out to properly use some of the CGA modes) but done over the VGA connector would be very nice. Even though you'd never used the normal VGA modes it's just so much easier to deal with finding a monitor to use. You will have a better time with an EGA or VGA card than with whatever CGA/MDA card the board was originally intended to use. You get surprisingly bad text display speed on most of those.
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Nov 14, 2016 00:07
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What is the best solution for getting HDMI out of an Amiga 1200? The indivision? I think I'd really enjoy restoring one, I miss the Zen of board repair and recapping one would be a fun project. If I can get HDMI out I can give it my spare TV as a display.
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Nov 14, 2016 00:26
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GRINDCORE MEGGIDO posted:What is the best solution for getting HDMI out of an Amiga 1200? The indivision? I think I'd really enjoy restoring one, I miss the Zen of board repair and recapping one would be a fun project. If I can get HDMI out I can give it my spare TV as a display. The Indivision appears to modify the Amiga to do VGA output. Which might be enough if your TV supports it, although it will probably be a 4:3 aspect ratio. Otherwise, you'd probably have to convert the RGB output from the Amiga to HDMI (so you would hypothetically need a SCART cable and one of those SCART RGB-to-HDMI upscalers). Note that this could potentially introduce lag, since every frame of video from the Amiga would have to be upscaled and processed to the digital HDMI format, and cheap upscalers aren't known for doing this speedily. EDIT: Never mind, it appears they released a revised version of it that does DVI output, which can be adapted to HDMI http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1148 Kthulhu5000 fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Nov 14, 2016 |
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Nov 14, 2016 03:03
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fishmech posted:If you can get a hold of them, one of those VGA boards they used to have that exact compatibility with CGA/EGA modes (including having a composite out to properly use some of the CGA modes) but done over the VGA connector would be very nice. Even though you'd never used the normal VGA modes it's just so much easier to deal with finding a monitor to use. I have boxes full of ISA VGA cards, there's a chance I already have one. I wanted to catalog all of these but my ~*girlfriend*~ broke my camera. No not of anger about all the old computer parts everywhere, it was an accident. It's fairly trivial to adapt an digital signal like that to VGA. CGA is RGBI (Red-Green-Blue-Intensity) and as it's digital, the output pins only know two conditions, 1 or 0 - on or off. (hence digital) The Output is TTL level so either 0 or +5V. The intensity output is a special case; for example if you have R-G-B-I 1-0-0-0 this is dark red, if you have 1-0-0-1 this is bright red. That's all the intensity pin does. VGA doesn't have intensity, the signal is analog and the color intensity of one of the color channels is controlled by the voltage level. Now, one of the color channels' signal is 0.7V peak-to-peak. (this means, 0V is black and 0.7V is full intensity) If you know this and ohms law it becomes trivial to make a circuit with a few resistors and diodes to drop the TTL-level signal to something a VGA-Input can work with. There are probably dozens of schematics you can google. (probably contrary to those schematics though, I'd advise to use variable resistors you can fine-tune with a screwdriver to get the intensity you want, as the TTL levels will only be exactly 5V in theory) There's only one problem with this solution: with 1-1-0-0 you get yellow, which is actually interpreted as brown ("IBM brown") by most CGA monitors. So this color will not display correctly, or rather, as intended. Some Monitors actually did this wrong, too. If you want to get really creative, you could use an arduino of some sort with some outside circuity to do this for you and also get IBM brown. Then you can program your color palette freely. If you really want to overengineer it, you can even connect to this via serial to your oldputer and program your color palette in real time! I haven't got the slightest clue how feasible this actually is. I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader. EGA has a bigger color palette and therefore an intensity pin per color channel to support this. This makes things a bit more complicated, but the theory is essentially the same. You still don't have a signal that's up to VGA spec as it's 15 kHz. I solved this by feeding everything through a kvm switch (which I modified to create a CSYNC signal at output) and then into my Framemeister. This gives you a much better picture with pretty much every old computer. Most modern monitors that even still have an analog input look atrocious at those resolutions and don't really give a crap about upscaling as these resolutions are only used on more modern computers if you go into a BIOS at best. The CGA cards also have composite out which will also work in a pinch, funnily enough the composite out is usually done very cheaply and doesn't do proper brown either. About performance, yeah, might be. But I don't know, half the fun is to use the age appropriate parts, a later VGA card just feels a bit anachronistic. Not that it makes a lot of sense to not use one, but you get what I mean. I don't really think I'll do a whole lot with that computer There's not a whole lot of attractive software for it. But maybe I will, who knows. --- The indivision ECS and AGA work differently, while the ECS emulates the chip, the AGA version actually does post-processing on the signal and you get the true output. By the way, being quite weird like that the Amiga also has an digital RGB output at it's video port.
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Nov 14, 2016 12:13
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Something's up with the hard drive now. I'm getting read errors and HDToolbox says I've got a bad area  Good thing I've got some extra SCSI-2 hard drives from my Mac parts pile. I've backed everything up overnight using Amiga Explorer and rebuilt my system in WinUAE for now. I made a boot disk so I can still make Amiga floppies from ADF files, grab another hard drive and format it with PFS.
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Nov 19, 2016 19:06
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I mentioned it often in this thread but I'd always go with SCA server drives over these ancient SCSI drives. That being said, in modern drives having errors like that is often a sign of imminent failure because of how these drives usually mask such problems. In these old drives, it doesn't necessarily mean as much. I've seen drives with marked bad sectors trucking along for years after the fact, you should just get worried if they multiply in very short order. My ~300 MB IDE drive I had in my 486 from back then got a few bad sectors in the early 90s and still works to this day. There never were additional ones. It's not an abnormal thing to have for a drive, even for modern ones. It's also not like you store important data on them anyways. Drives no matter what age can basically crap out any minute. You should always handle important data with that view in mind. That being said, it might also be worth it to try a memory test tool, defective memory can cause all sorts of strange issues. Bad SCSI wiring can also cause the impression of failures that aren't really there. I now have to wait for a few parts to arrive before I can put together the dutch XT. That thing is really, really cheaply made. I desoldered the 90-degree angled triforcon Molex connector (similar to those in the A2000) and replaced it with that standard Molex connector you see on AT boards. (got one from a P3 board, it still has an ATX connector so no loss) That was also the original idea in the board design of this computer but they somehow abandoned this in favor of this strange, non-standard thing. They also wacked a -5V regulator onto the board without any stabilizing caps. ) Apparently another thing their power supply apparently didn't serve although the connector for it is there. Generally they didn't like ceramic caps. Some ICs on this board have blocking caps, some just don't. Was there a ceramic cap shortage in the Netherlands? Who knows. I will also add all of the ones they skipped because it's just such a no-brainer and can only help with stability. I will also remove their +5V reset line magic they did (battery leaked all over it anyways) and tie the reset line of the FA2010A directly to the power good line of the power supply, a line their power supply apparently didn't have either. This thing was made on a budget, that much is certain. I found a different desktop case today on eBay, which is beige and seemingly built like a tank, like many of those early XT cases were. Let's see if I can fit it in there.
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Nov 19, 2016 23:27
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Yeah, I've worked with old equipment so I know hard drives can be finicky. It was making strange noises, grinding occasionally, and clicking. It finally totally died earlier, clicking on startup and no longer being recognized. 
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Nov 20, 2016 01:25
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Rippers, at least there is the SCSI2SD now. In a few years there might be even more and nobody has to rely on these old drives anymore. The SCA drivers are a lot younger but for harddisks, even they are not that fresh anymore and just like me, they're not getting any younger. I poked around some more in the Transmeta computer (HP ThinClient t5710) regarding sound in DOS but it's pretty hopeless. DOS Sound compatibility was merely an afterthought and not a goal, that much is pretty certain. There were also some frankly quite bizarre stability and speed issues in DOS and with DOS applications I couldn't nail causes down for. I almost want to go as far as to blame the x86 emulation but I honestly don't know and didn't have the time/nerve to investigate further. That all being said, it does make for a decent Win 9x machine. There's drivers for everything available (for the graphics chip you have to dig a little) and the Radeon 7000M while by far not the best of the bunch can hold it's own with many games and is pretty compatible. The power consumption (~14W with the original brick, it takes 12V directly and has all the needed regulators onboard) is hard to beat in regards to other 9x-era machines especially when you consider that the thing clocks in performancewise somewhere with a mid-range P3. If you're on a budget (both money- and room-wise) this is a quite nice, fanless pseudo-retro machine with an exotic CPU for that special hipster cred. Kinda surprised it didn't catch on more for the retro enthusiasts, although the scope is certainly limited. The board also is standard ITX form factor (which took me way too long to notice) which means you can put it in any ITX-case which has a riser card or a slot for a card and add some card to it, like a sound card or maybe even a voodoo card. Regarding price/availability: For example, I saw a listing on german eBay for 14 bucks incl. shipping. That's not a bad a deal for a Win 9x machine IMHO. There are better options but hey, fanless and tiny! That's always the problem if you want to put together a small, low-powered machine that runs DOS natively. You usually get DOS running alright but you don't have sound support for the old stuff. Today I bought a small Geode GX 1 ThinClient because this thin client business has piqued my interest. Interesting about this thinclient is that it comes with a riser card which can accommodate either an PCI or an ISA (!) card. It's CPU is a National Semiconductor Geode GX 1, which basically relabeled from the Cyrix MediaGX which is apparently basically a somewhat improved Cyrix 5x86 with integrated video and audio support. There's a few die shrinks and faster clock rates between those designs so I'd assume it fares quite a bit better than the original. There are later versions of this from AMD but checking the datasheets, those dropped DOS-important features like a rock and seem to have a different CPU core. I don't know where you'd put that machine performance-wise, Probably somewhere in the Pentium area. it's hard to say with an edge case like this. Will be interesting at any rate and worth the ten bucks for playing around with. I'm even cautiously optimistic that sound in DOS will be a thing with this. If not, there's room for a proper sound card, according to the datasheet it should work then in DOS relatively unproblematic. Too bad there's no realistic excuse to run these things as servers of some sort when you can get some much more performant and low power ARM board for ten bucks, but hey! Man I really need to setup something to throw all this info onto. I also really need to stop buying things. I told myself two years ago I wouldn't anymore.
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Nov 23, 2016 20:51
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I've been on a drat spending spree buying add-ons for my A2000. It's amazing how expandable this computer is! I ended up buying a SCSI2SD which meant I didn't need the adapter that was loving up my SCSI bus, letting me install an 8x SCSI CD burner as well. Haven't tried burning any CDs yet but I was able to install OS 3.9 with it. Picked up a Plipbox from Amibay to give me an Ethernet port - 20KB/s downloads from Aminet on a 40MHz computer!  I'm going to work on setting up Samba so I can get a shared folder with my WinUAE install. Not enough RAM to use the fancy CSS-capable web browser though so I'm stuck with A-Web II.I'm going to yank the Gotek out of my ST to replace the floppy drive that I managed to blow up by shorting the power lead. Whoops. What's left, a video card? A Video Toaster? Probably a full 68030 so I can run Enforcer since I'm getting into programming the thing too. I can blit a square!
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Dec 2, 2016 05:40
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Try to find a GOPHER client and then marvel and wonder why that died, there's still a bunch of sites reachable. I don't know if there's a decent support for that in an AmigaOS browser, but for the 68k Mac there are a few. Besides that, there's also quite a bunch of BBS systems you can reach with a telnet/terminal client, just don't exchange any sensitive information via telnet. Most BBSes still around actually allow you to use SSH but the Amiga is not really capable of it and all software in that regard is horrendously outdated. The best way to do this somewhat properly is to telnet into a computer locally and then SSH out into the internet. A Pi or something of that sort could be a nice proxy computer for such experiments. You could also slap a curses-based roguelike (like for example, oh I don't know, Nethack or Cataclysm:DDA) on it and play it from your Amiga, terminal-like. Or finally get into emacs like more people should. There's also lots of other telnet-reachable services still online but they get fewer every year. If you visit BBSes prepare to get depressed, even some of the very old ones with rich histories are pretty much ghost towns now. It's sort of understandable, but man, still. I'm not sure if it's still offered but there's also the newer X-Surf card from individual, a network card. It's a good card, pretty fast. Of course you could argue what you'd need a fast network card in an Amiga for. The A2000 is only really hampered by the speed of the Zorro II bus which means that you could run into problems at higher resolutions with graphics cards because of bus saturation. A Merlin or Picasso II is a decent choice, The Retina Z2 is not really advisable without an 2 MB ChipRAM upgrade and even then only if you can get it for very cheap and if you really like to oogle at old technology and the really old ways. They all carry PC graphics chips, the Picasso has one of the earlier Cirrus Logics, the Merlin has an Tseng ET4000W32, and the Cybervision 64/3D (the /3D component is important, the Cybervision 64 is Z3 only) has an S3 Virge. These are the common choices. Contrary to online opinion, in an A2000 they all pretty much perform about the same. The Cybervision is capable of a little bit more in ways of resolutions and refresh rates because it's the fastest and also has more VRAM but really, it doesn't matter. Contrary to other computer platforms, with the Amiga a graphics card is a specialized and optional part you gotta have a use for. Most programs don't support it, the few that let themselves get beaten into displaying on a card screen with tools like ModePro will usually not take advantage of higher resolutions and all the interesting pixel art programs except grafx2 (not even really for the Amiga) and Personal Paint don't support them. The most interesting classic usage scenario for a graphics card is usually running Mac emulation, but these days it's much easier (even cheaper) to get a nice Mac. For Mac emulation you also lack the RAM and processing power somewhat. The original Video Toaster needs an NTSC Amiga to work properly. Another card that goes into the video slot is the Opalvision, it comes with a nice 24 bit-color paint program which can also open all kinds of formats and a programming reference you can find online. There's also a tool to make .gif-like 24-bit color depth animations with. There's also some Karate game exclusively for the Opalvision, but I could never get that running properly on my 060.
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Dec 3, 2016 01:01
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Yeah, I downloaded Shapeshifter to see if Mac emulation would work at all and it doesn't take advantage of 32-bit RAM despite using a 32-bit clean ROM so I could only give my Mac the 6MB of my Z2 RAM card. It also crashes before booting a System 7.5 install floppy. Reminds me that I should put my Power Mac 9600/350 back together. I did order an X-Surf 100 since it provides something important with an expansion card: a USB port! USB probably doesn't work too well on Z2 but it's compatible with both Z2 and Z3 if I ever pick up an A3000.
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Dec 3, 2016 04:59
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You really want a graphics card and an MMU for shapeshifter, which really isn't worth it these days I think. I'm not a big fan of USB in the Amiga, probably because so many implementations were so bad. I don't know how the one for the X-Surf is. I found even with an A2000 and a theoretically faster 060 CPU&Cybervision 64/3D the results compared with the Performa 475 performance wise are a wash. The Z2 bus becomes a huge hinderance at higher resolutions and the performance advantages of the 060 are mostly theoretical in that applications already not happy with the 33 Mhz 040s Performance won't be that much happier with the 060 either. Most things that need a faster PPC there are better on the PC anyways. It's of course cool to have a computer which spans Software from Shadow of the Beast and Defender of the Crown to Master of Orion 2 but in practice it's barely worth it. I got the small Geode system. The first observation I made is that the internal power supply has no additional cover and when taking the cover off I put my hand right into the power supply. Ooops! Interesting computer otherweise. I didn't make many more observations. This is kind of personal but today I found out that I will be laid off next year. I can't say I saw that coming. I guess I'll have time for the blog after all.
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Dec 3, 2016 23:22
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Sucks about the lay off. But you seem to really have your poo poo together. Good luck.
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Dec 7, 2016 09:18
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Yeah man, that is awful. And to my simpleton brain, your abilities and interests seem incredibly useful in finding a job, though maybe you should just go into the charging-obsessive-weirdos-too-much-for-old-fixed-up-hardware racket?
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Dec 7, 2016 14:15
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Thanks! Problem with that racket is that it's a small racket, not *that* many people interested in old computer crap. Just gotta look at how active this thread is, really. Skills or not, I'm also just not a starry-eyed early-20-something anymore. It's not my first interruption in my CV, but things are getting a bit complicated, especially considering I had a huge expenditure because of family reasons and was pretty much counting on earning that money back in the next few months. Also competing with those starry-eyed early-20-somethings for employment doesn't exactly get easier by the year. To top off that last bit of news and making things even a bit more live-journal-esqe, my girlfriend left me on my birthday. (Not the A2000, the human one) To be fair, that one I kinda did see coming.This has been an interesting month so far. Current mood: cute But you know, you gotta Ac Cent Tchu Ate the positive. I was screwing around with the Transmeta ITX Board and took a really cool picture of the CPU:  (The Dust I only noticed later, for a fanless computer, there really was a lot of it. There's a reason for that. Also yes, this CPU needs a Heatsink. I took it off, else the pic would've been very strange. It's a very small one, about Atom-sized [the CPU, not an actual Atom]) The small Geode ThinClient I had running but didn't do much with because the Power supply was making an unholy whining sound in a high frequency that was really bothersome and even worried one of my cats. I need to look where it's coming from and expend some plastic lacquer and see if that's all. I was thinking about setting up the blog but I'm not sure how I want to do it. I even had the idea to do it with static HTML pages I can directly export from emacs. The cool upside would be that it'd even be readable on an Amiga. The downside is it would look like something that would've been created in the time people actually still browsed with an Amiga. I'm also not sure if it's worth the effort, I seem to be even killing this thread sometimes, and not in a good way. I could also cover the game I want to make and now I can actually do because there's time. (I feel it's time for another Darklands-esque RPG) We'll see.
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Dec 8, 2016 02:49
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Police Automaton posted:I was thinking about setting up the blog but I'm not sure how I want to do it. I even had the idea to do it with static HTML pages I can directly export from emacs. The cool upside would be that it'd even be readable on an Amiga. The downside is it would look like something that would've been created in the time people actually still browsed with an Amiga. I'm also not sure if it's worth the effort, I seem to be even killing this thread sometimes, and not in a good way. I could also cover the game I want to make and now I can actually do because there's time. (I feel it's time for another Darklands-esque RPG) We'll see. Generate static pages with Jekyll or something similar. Push to Gitlab Pages to host.
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Dec 8, 2016 02:52
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I would just do the first few with something like blogger. You can set up a more interesting workflow once you get a feel for blogging.
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Dec 8, 2016 07:23
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Thanks for the advice, I was already looking at jekyll, but I might also try a more heavyweight approach. It's cool to see how people come out of the woodwork so to say to post. Thread is more frequented than I apparently think.
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Dec 9, 2016 19:56
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Police Automaton posted:Thanks for the advice, I was already looking at jekyll, but I might also try a more heavyweight approach. It's cool to see how people come out of the woodwork so to say to post. Thread is more frequented than I apparently think. Github Pages made it even easier recently, all you have to do is put markdown files in a repo and it will generate a half-assed site for you as of this morning. There's a lot of people who read this thread, not very many who post. I have no time for this hobby at the moment and all my stuff is in a huge pile in a room I try to avoid.
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Dec 9, 2016 21:16
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I enjoy reading through as well. I just have very little to add of substance. I love the technical and historical posts throughout.
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Dec 10, 2016 04:02
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Ta-da! Carefully popped the old EC030 out of the accelerator and installed the new full 030. Now I can run Enforcer and know when I overwrite Execbase with my lovely code!
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Dec 10, 2016 05:37
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Seat Safety Switch posted:Github Pages made it even easier recently, all you have to do is put markdown files in a repo and it will generate a half-assed site for you as of this morning. I really haven't had much I could contribute lately. HEY LOOK I GOT GAME BOXED CHEAP isn't really contributey enough. And I am sure everyone is already reading Vintage is the New Old and Indie Retro News and knows about the latest Win UAE builds or the GIANA SISTERS CONSTRUCTION SET. I didn't really want the thread going super technical but... If people like and enjoy it rock on and get down wit yo bad self. I... have a cheap Macintosh book coming in the Mail? Hray?
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Dec 13, 2016 22:53
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quote:Vintage is the New Old and Indie Retro News Honestly, never heard of them.  The Socket on Luigi Thrity's accelerator card is a through-hole PGA socket, so it's not very dangerous to replace the chip with household items if you're careful, even though you can screw up the socket. Back then when these LIF (Low-Insertion-Force) sockets were still used (386s/486s for example) for CPUs intel would sometimes give out such comb-like pga chip pullers. You can still screw up a chip/socket with them but it is a lot less likely. There are not lots of shops who still carry those but some of the better-equipped electronics suppliers still do. Or scourge eBay. They're handy to have. There are also more professional chip pullers but they're very expensive and I don't have the slightest idea where you'd even get such a thing these days. (You'd probably have to order them specifically) They're also usually tooled to a specific pin count/package size. You also have some hardware of that era around that has actually SMD PGA sockets, I'm not sure which off the top of my head but some Amiga accelerators have them. They were very rare, but existed. If you remove a chip there with household items it's very likely you will produce bad connections in the socket/rip the socket off. I don't recommend it, ever, not even with the comb-like pullers. These sockets need professional-level tools to replace, not to mention the possible PCB damage and the sockets themselves you don't really get anywhere anymore. I didn't get around to do anything in the direction of the blog because I'm currently a bit busy with job applications and picking up the pieces. I'll probably not only go technical on that blog but also tell a few stories about my country and my younger years where I actually didn't always have my poo poo together, like that time where I worked in a TV repair shop and carried a lot of heavy TVs around, when people still repaired such things. You run into some interesting people's apartments. One time the first question upon entering such an apartment was if I was jewish for example. (I get spanish a lot, I got russian once or twice, but jewish was new to me) I also carried medical equipment around for a while. Come to think of it, I spent a lot of time carrying. My application spree just kind of reminds me of these old stories and it'd be good to write them down before they're gone somewhere in my aged brain. They will not be retro-computing specific but they might have older technology in general.
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Dec 16, 2016 01:06
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http://www.vintageisthenewold.com http://www.indieretronews.com Here ya go. The sites in question.
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Dec 17, 2016 11:48
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Now that I've got an X-Surf and the new AmiSSL is out... highly secure web browsing on a 40MHz computer! I love playing with this thing. And there's just nothing like an old CRT for all the games I've got on it. (I've got an LCD monitor nearby for when I want high-resolution video.)
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Dec 18, 2016 07:13
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Captain Rufus posted:http://www.vintageisthenewold.com Much obliged. Luigi Thirty posted:Now that I've got an X-Surf and the new AmiSSL is out... highly secure web browsing on a 40MHz computer! Man, the lack of RAM must be killing you. (then again, thinking which sites you can actually visit at all, maybe not) First time I actually heard AmiSSL is being worked on again, not sure if I'd trust it (not because of the authors being malicious or anything, more because of how little in-field testing it probably gets) but how sensitive can anything involving an amiga be anyways. It should at least unbreak a lot of things.
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Dec 19, 2016 00:03
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Police Automaton posted:Man, the lack of RAM must be killing you. (then again, thinking which sites you can actually visit at all, maybe not) First time I actually heard AmiSSL is being worked on again, not sure if I'd trust it (not because of the authors being malicious or anything, more because of how little in-field testing it probably gets) but how sensitive can anything involving an amiga be anyways. It should at least unbreak a lot of things. I've got 12MB on the accelerator and the 6MB SupraRAM card. 18MB is enough to run Genesis and IBrowse. NetSurf, the browser for RiscOS and M68K systems that supports CSS2, needs 32MB but doesn't run on ECS Amigas without a video card anyway.
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Dec 19, 2016 01:19
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Old game sperging itt. I was looking back at some of the posts here, about the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. What I find most amazing about any of these old retro systems is how much effort went into optimising games and software for these old systems, and sometimes, in how many features they managed to actually implement well. Actual Wizards. One example is Quazatron, a ZX Spectrum game where you play a little robot dude who has to genocide all the other 'bots in isometric maps by shooting them, blowing them up from a distance, knocking them off ledges, or hacking them and stealing parts, such as batteries, weapons, shields and special items. It's the first game I played with a hacking minigame, a built in map, information pages on upgrades you can find / other bots, and an upgrade system where you actually see differences in the weapons you fire. The little dude even has different "facial" expressions, from happy to upset, depending on how much power it has left. It was quite a shock to play back in the mid 1980s for me at least. I actually saw someone on another forum mention that some PC game, I think Deus Ex, was the first to implement a hacking minigame. I wondered if Paradroid, the game this takes a lot of ideas from was actually the first in the mid 1980s. If anyone played this ever, and enjoyed it (or Paradoid) the closest modern game I can find is Robot Assault by Puppy Games on Steam. Although the modern homage to this game cuts out a ton of features from the original, which ran on a 3MHz computer from 1982. GRINDCORE MEGGIDO fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Dec 22, 2016 |
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Dec 22, 2016 16:07
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GRINDCORE MEGGIDO posted:Old game sperging itt. Every once in a while when I'm killing a process in task manager I'm struck by the fact that an MSX wouldn't be able to hold Notepad in memory. Spectrum people, I want to get a Ultimate/MSX conversion but I only have budget for one because they are kind of expensive. Which is the most entertaining out of Alien 8, Bubbler, Cyberun, Knight Lore, Night Shade, Pentagram, and Gun Fright?
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Dec 22, 2016 17:13
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