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Flash Gordon Ramsay posted:Same case as the Centris 610 I had in college. Absolutely loved that machine. No idea why I remember this, but the centris (and quadra) had a caddy loading cd drive.
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Dec 15, 2022 06:59
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Snackmar posted:CRD mentioned something about this recently that I hadn't heard before: I've personally never seen a C64 hooked up to a Datasette, but he was saying that basically everyone in Europe with a C64 was loading stuff from tape, while over 90% of C64 installs in North America had a disk drive. Yeah UK here and I only knew one person with the disk drive, and it seemed like wizard magic compared to my tape deck. I used to have to choose my game wisely, start the tape loading and then go take a bath and brush my teeth while it loaded so I could get a little game time in before bed. If I chose a bad game or it didn’t load properly then it could ruin my whole night.
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Dec 15, 2022 11:17
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I remember getting annoyed that the XT's mechanical keyboard keys were so noisy that I couldn't sneak out of bed and get some more gaming time.
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Dec 15, 2022 11:21
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Snackmar posted:CRD mentioned something about this recently that I hadn't heard before: I've personally never seen a C64 hooked up to a Datasette, but he was saying that basically everyone in Europe with a C64 was loading stuff from tape, while over 90% of C64 installs in North America had a disk drive. Yep. I had a C64 and used tapes for a long time. We eventually got a disk drive, but that was when C64 was already pretty obsolete. Europeans were poor and behind the times. Similarly, in Europe Amiga meant Amiga 500 with floppies. And it was mainly a game machine for kids and teens. In the US the Amiga market was more adult and professional, because American kids and teens preferred to play games on consoles. lobsterminator has a new favorite as of 11:28 on Dec 15, 2022 |
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Dec 15, 2022 11:25
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I talked about this in another thread somewhere a few months ago, but can't find the thread to quote. Basically the US market was all about consoles and 8-bit computers were a niche thing sold mainly to enthusiasts who didn't mind buying expensive floppy drive systems that cost as much as the entire computer. Whereas consoles were not that popular in Europe, that niche was filled with 8-bit computers instead (the Master System outside the NES, and console sales didn't overtake computers until the SNES/Mega Drive era). There were dozens of competing platforms and the market cared a lot more about price. And nobody wanted to spend £300 on a floppy drive for a computer that cost £150. So everyone had cassettes, and everyone pirated those cassettes using their £9.99 twin-deck cassette player. Sweevo has a new favorite as of 17:07 on May 17, 2023 |
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Dec 15, 2022 12:36
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Here in Israel and probably elsewhere in the middle east the cassette based devices had only a brief moment before people moved on to IBM compatible PCs and Chinese knock-off Famicoms.
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Dec 15, 2022 12:51
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lobsterminator posted:Similarly, in Europe Amiga meant Amiga 500 with floppies. And it was mainly a game machine for kids and teens. In the US the Amiga market was more adult and professional, because American kids and teens preferred to play games on consoles. One of my relatives worked in a medical field and in ~1989 they replaced their aging Apple stuff with a few dozen new Amiga 2000s, only to get rid of them all within six months and replace them with IBM compatibles because they couldn't find any software they needed. They dumped the Amigas for almost nothing so I got one and it spent the rest of its life as a game machine.
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Dec 15, 2022 13:01
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Sweevo posted:So everyone had cassettes, and everyone pirated those cassettes using their £9.99 twin-deck cassette player. Didn't everyone use Turbo Tape on the C64? You first load the turbo program, and then used that to load cracked games in the turbo format. <- L to load a game, and then <-S to save it on another tape without losing a generation in a cassette dub. There were carts, like Final Cartridge, that had a turbo loader built in.
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Dec 15, 2022 13:16
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blugu64 posted:No idea why I remember this, but the centris (and quadra) had a caddy loading cd drive. Yep, mine didn’t even come with it, got the Apple 300 (I think) cd drive after the fact. The cassettes were a pain in the rear end but it protected my Myst cd. Also upgraded to a whopping 350mb internal hd. I also replaced the 68lc040 with a full 68040 at some point. Yay for socketed processors! (Though this was not a zif socket. Very much a miniature prybar and use force socket.)
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Dec 15, 2022 13:54
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axolotl farmer posted:Didn't everyone use Turbo Tape on the C64? I was like 6 and we were broke as gently caress, the c64 was a hand-me-down that I learned to use by reading a stack of Zzap64! magazines and loving around with an old longbox of tapes I got given with it. The fact I managed to figure out loading anything at all is a minor miracle.
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Dec 15, 2022 14:06
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IIRC the taxing on video games consoles in Europe is much higher than for general purpose computers, which is why the PS2 and 3 could technically run Linux so that Sony could classify them as such.
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Dec 15, 2022 14:58
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I’m sad they stopped doing it, yabasic on the ps2 was fun to mess around with for a while and surprisingly capable. I think ps4basic could have been great if it existed, especially if it let you save and share code with your PSN buddies.
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Dec 15, 2022 15:15
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r u ready to WALK posted:I’m sad they stopped doing it, yabasic on the ps2 was fun to mess around with for a while and surprisingly capable. I think ps4basic could have been great if it existed, especially if it let you save and share code with your PSN buddies. I coded PONG in I think 80 lines of YABASIC!
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Dec 16, 2022 09:14
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Dec 16, 2022 15:41
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Am I the only one who had no idea about this weird Sony tariff dodge I feel like I should have seen dozens of weird retro tech videos by now showing off cool Linux PlayStation emulation tricks or something
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Dec 16, 2022 16:30
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They weren’t that exciting and the PS3 version was deliberately hobbled by a hypervisor to stop it using any of the graphics hardware iirc, so you couldn’t do much 3D stuff with it even if you wanted to. Then they removed it entirely because piracy after people found exploits.
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Dec 16, 2022 16:48
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There were a few HPC clusters built out of PS3s back in the day, because the Cell processor could theoretically be really powerful, but in practice people found it hard to program. Also I can't imagine it was fun managing a cluster of game consoles; it's enough of a pain in the rear end with real server hardware.
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Dec 16, 2022 17:34
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Pham Nuwen posted:There were a few HPC clusters built out of PS3s back in the day, because the Cell processor could theoretically be really powerful, but in practice people found it hard to program. Also I can't imagine it was fun managing a cluster of game consoles; it's enough of a pain in the rear end with real server hardware. Correct me if I am wrong, but PS3 linux only had access to the PPC core and not the SPEs, which is where any of the interesting abilities where. edt: VVV Thanks, I knew there was something powerful or useful that you couldn't access. Lowen SoDium has a new favorite as of 18:04 on Dec 17, 2022 |
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Dec 17, 2022 00:13
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Lowen SoDium posted:Correct me if I am wrong, but PS3 linux only had access to the PPC core and not the SPEs, which is where any of the interesting abilities where. No, the only thing blocked off was the GPU (RSX?)
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Dec 17, 2022 00:44
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 I don't have a problem, what gives you the idea that I have one. Picked up these four PowerMacs (PowersMac?) for AU$100 the lot. Going from left to right, the B&W G3 powers up but doesn't display anything to my monitor. It does contain a couple of SCSI cards in it, one of the cards controlling a couple of SCSI HDDs in it. A friend of mine has a faulty B&W so they'll probably grab that off me. I already have a B&W G3 with a G4 CPU upgrade in it so I don't really want a second one. The Sawtooth G4 has either a faulty PSU or something in it that's causing the PSU to shut off as soon as it is powered up. This PowerMac will probably get the least amount of attention from me because it is a slow G4, the only thing of interest in it is a SCSI card. The Quicksilver powers up and loads OSX 10.2.8(!) from the HDD. However it sounds like the fans are dying in it so I'll replace them during the Christmas break, and look at wiping the HDD and putting on a fresh copy of OSX 10.4. The MDD is the PowerMac I wanted. This has the dual 1.25GHz CPU setup in it, and can run OS 9 as it isn't the FW800 model. Powers up fine and runs OSX 10.2.8 (holy poo poo I don't think I have touched that since 2003). Fans don't make any dying noises, but I'll replace both the PSU fans and the 120mm case fan. Will also do a HDD wipe and put on a fresh install of 10.4. For some reason it also has a 50GB HDD in addition to the 80GB HDD that has no partitions on it but it is connected up and running. Weird. I gave the G4 MDD a clean down, as it was covered in dust and gunk that computers seem to get when they are left in a warehouse or garage. Before:  After:  The old thing has come up nicely. As well as replacing the fans in it, I'll also grab an USB 2.0 PCI card for it so I can then install a Bluetooth USB stick in it.
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Dec 17, 2022 12:49
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Those have awful PSUs and bad airflow bakes the capacitors. Be prepared to recap them all.
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Dec 17, 2022 13:38
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r u ready to WALK posted:I’m sad they stopped doing it, yabasic on the ps2 was fun to mess around with for a while and surprisingly capable.
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Dec 17, 2022 17:26
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Awesome! I'm surprised there's almost no youtube results for it but I did stumble across this 16 year old video of an amazing 3d pool game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdpR3hU5bAI
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Dec 17, 2022 18:13
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c0burn posted:Those have awful PSUs and bad airflow bakes the capacitors. Be prepared to recap them all. So I have heard, I'll do that
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Dec 18, 2022 00:00
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You Am I posted:The MDD is the PowerMac I wanted. This has the dual 1.25GHz CPU setup in it, and can run OS 9 as it isn't the FW800 model. nice score. by the way, you can run os9 on fw800 models as well, these days. it's just one command to change a string in the open firmware.
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Dec 18, 2022 01:45
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You Am I posted:
That's awesome. Where I worked at the time those were current gave me the opportunity to work on all of those. I think I kept an upgraded Quicksilver as my main Mac there, although it is possible I ended up with an MDD. My memory is a little hazy, and I upgraded the processors in at least a couple of the machines I had over those years.
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Dec 18, 2022 02:09
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minato posted:Wow, YABasic sure is a memory. I'm one of the 3 original authors of the PS2 port of YABasic. I think I still have the source code buried somewhere. I did some of the graphics and mostly the (awful) USB keyboard driver. As I recall we built in a program that bounced an 3D red-and-white ball (like the Amiga one), and it worked at full frame rate on our test kits but strangely dropped below full frame rate on the pressed discs, it was most annoying. drat that was YOU. Far out trying to find a USB keyboard that was compatible in my small rear end country town was an effort.
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Dec 18, 2022 09:51
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I've been after this thing for a long while, because... come on: And just about the time Gonz posted it, the calculighter was finally on its way to me: https://i.imgur.com/n5vDZre.mp4 thanks to a very kind goon who happened to be in Japan at the same time I bought this. He was willing to act as a courier back to the states when the auction proxy chickened out of mailing a lighter internationally. I plan to feature it in a video where I build a storage/presentation case for some of my 80s calculators. I'll post it here in, uh,
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Dec 21, 2022 05:48
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C’est magnifique.
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Dec 21, 2022 06:13
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CRD got some additional information about the MusicStore from one of its designers, plus ruminates on the nature of bring a retrotech YouTuber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7Sx05f2evo
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Dec 23, 2022 03:26
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouLgXC5rbac Never had this, but several PC’s at school did, for some reason.
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Dec 23, 2022 06:57
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Techmoan does his year-in-review. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0kh9BXzAww At the very end he talks about his personal issues from the year and why he sounds like he does.
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Dec 26, 2022 19:27
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That man should just not read the comments at all.
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Dec 26, 2022 21:26
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Yeah it’s not the first time he’s reacted to the dummies. At least he knows not to actually make any changes due to them but he should just ignore entirely.
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Dec 27, 2022 06:49
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I have no idea how someone can be such a piece of poo poo as to unsubscribe from TechMoan because he has a nasal voice, but I also know someone who has refused to eat with another friend of ours for years because said friend bites his fork when he eats. Misophonia is a hell of a drug
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Dec 27, 2022 08:56
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Dr. Quarex posted:I have no idea how someone can be such a piece of poo poo as to unsubscribe from TechMoan because he has a nasal voice, but I also know someone who has refused to eat with another friend of ours for years because said friend bites his fork when he eats. Misophonia is a hell of a drug I unsub from anyone that does 'Established Titles' sponsorship
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Dec 28, 2022 05:36
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I also got a Christmas-Mac! PowerMac G4 AGP for me, 450 MHz Came with a working IBM DeskStar 20 GB drive, 256 MB of RAM. And a ridiculous amount of disgusting brown dust around the fans at no extra charge! A full days work getting everything apart and cleaned, worst mess was the fan intake behind the side panel. Got some Noctua fans on order to get it running silent. Been having a time getting OS X on there after wiping the original drive (since it had a bunch of PII on it), tried the WinWorldPC 10.3 disks but seems there's some issue with the disks I burned. OS 9 can't even launch any files off it, and booting off it kernel panics with a message like Unable to find driver for this platform: "PowerMac3,1". I think this is a symptom of a corrupt disk, since 10.3 should be supported on this hardware. Also had issues booting the burned Sawtooth recovery disks for OS 9, so had to do some voodoo with copying the original 10.3 installs Classic System folder onto a secondary drive, then booting off that to run the OS 9 installer from disk. Played a bunch of DVDs off the drive and that worked fine, but maybe the CD-laser is going bad or something... At least 10.2 seems to work so installing that (very slowly) now. Got one of those AliExpress IDE-SATA bridges and that seems to work good at least, even has a jumper to select primary/secondary, unlike the SD-IDE adapters.
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Dec 30, 2022 15:43
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You cant just post that and not a picture with it
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Dec 30, 2022 15:46
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longview posted:Got one of those AliExpress IDE-SATA bridges and that seems to work good at least, even has a jumper to select primary/secondary, unlike the SD-IDE adapters. I decided to rejuvenate my own inherited 2005 Mac Mini G4 early this year and put 1GB of RAM in it and found a 64gb IDE SSD to replace the 40GB spinning rust inside. I was real proud of it until I thought "so now what do I do with it" Rev. Bleech_ has a new favorite as of 17:40 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Dec 30, 2022 17:35
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Old mac ownership is mainly about the ~A E S T H E T I C S~
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Dec 30, 2022 17:48
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