/vr/ - Retro Games

>>10444909
He just wanted the speccy to be the hottest thing around.

>>10444909
The early revisions of the ULA used a 4 um die and did get notoriously hot. They were known to be fairly unreliable and later they shrunk them to 2 um which eliminated that issue. There was an argument on sinclairzxworld about heat sinks and how beneficial they are or aren't but I think there's more than enough anecdotal evidence about how the reliability of the ULA significantly improved in the later revisions. I mean, there are FPGA replacements for the ULA now but even so...

heat is bad for anything, don't listen to those who say otherwise

>>10445151
heat is neat
can't beat heat

>>10445397
Skeet skeet skeet

>>10444909
it worked out since we couldn't afford any sort of coal to burn. just power on the speccy and it kept us warm

>>10447567
me speccy wins again.

Soviet bloc Spectrum clones would just use a bunch of TTLs in place of a ULA.

>>10447801
USSR did eventually clone the ULA wholesale, but early computers would certainly use whatever they could find to replicate its functions.

Wish this board had a less adversarial relationship with the speccy, it has one of the coolest homebrew scenes

>>10444956
The Issue 1-3 Spectrum boards had the original 4 μm ULAs and they're noticeably less reliable than later issues. The other chips don't get unusually warm and are not a major problem; the Z80 gets somewhat warm but can be swapped for a CMOS one that doesn't get much above room temperature.

>>10447823
People fear that which they do not understand.

fortunately the ULA is the only custom chip in there, the rest can be easily replaced or have a suitable modern equivalent

Oiy, what a dummy (of course he uses a Rick Sanchez avatar so how smart can he be?) Yes, Intellivisions get hot as fuck and this has been known to all since 1980 but...

>Here is a more detailed breakdown of everything i tried just recently and how i found out that burgertime was pretty cpu heavy and causing some issues!

It's an NMOS chip not a quad core PC. The CPU always runs at a fixed speed/temperature as long as power is applied, it doesn't vary under load like a modern PC does.

overheating mainly causes package failure of the IC, the die can become detached from the substrate and cause an open circuit. these failures can be detected by spraying compressed air on it which will temporarily restore it to operation.

>>10450585
>>10449391
Modern stuff is more reliable by any stretch. IC fabrication is better-understood and more consistent with better, tighter manufacturing tolerances than it was back then, chips run cooler, power supplies and capacitors are better, and keeping motherboards cool is also better understood. Swapping blown ICs was not unexpected back then; it's why Apple IIs had all socketed chips. Easier serviceability.

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/267724-problems-with-new-harmony-cart/

>says his 2600 worked fine with normal carts but would glitch when he used a Flash cart
>putting in a different 6507 fixed it
See what I mean about there being more variance in manufacturing tolerances back then. The Flash cart draws more power than a normal cart, this may have caused voltage sag and his CPU glitched as a result. Most ICs have a stated maximum and minimum amount of voltage required for stable operation but this particular 6507 might have been a little touchier about it than the one he swapped into it. That is to say one chip might work down to 4.3V but the other might only like 4.6V as the minimum current level.

https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/when-did-cpus-start-really-needing-thermal-grease.33215/page-2

just because they didn't sink them originally doesn't mean they didn't get hot

>>10450593
I'm inclined to agree with this guy. Stuff's not unreliable because it's 40 years old, it just wasn't very good to begin with and electronics components have come a long way since.

>>10451447
>these games were unreliable when they were only a couple years old back then
I don't disagree but back then nobody thought that a big deal. A five year old Defender cab was an outdated game nobody wanted to play anymore and arcade operators wanted the newest and latest games.

>>10444909
Clive is considered a genius but most of his stuff was junk, he just happened to get lucky and accidentally made a good computer. The blunders with the QL proved he didn't actually have a good vision for technology. Neo geo and pc engine were the same so doesn't mean they were bad.

>>10451894
He stole the idea from another guy and sacked him from the company. Common tale in the tech world.

>>10451894
the Spectrum wasn't "good" but it was cheap, easy to write software for, and had a reasonable amount of memory

>>10445151
yes surely everything works optimally -273C

>>10444909
I suppose your Spectrum probably won't get that hot if you only run it a couple hours a day in a climate controlled environment. Also its native habitat in Merry Old England doesn't really have scorching hot summers anyway. Running it all day could definitely cause heat buildup though and I'm sure quite a few were left running all the time back in the day.

bump

Absolute rubbish, m8.

>>10452027
>had a reasonable amount of memory
Unless you were an early adopter who bought a 16K model.

>>10444909
> that would add 50 cents to his manufacturing costs.
he was far more jewish than jack tramiel

>>10454297
based

>>10454719
None of them got shit on Madman Muntz.

>He carried a pair of wire clippers, and when he felt that one of his builders was overengineering a circuit, he would begin snipping out some of the electronics components. When the TV stopped functioning, he would have the technician reinsert the last removed part. He would repeat the snipping in other portions of the circuit until he was satisfied in his simplification efforts, and then leave the TV as it was without further testing in more adverse conditions for signal reception.
>As a result, he reduced his costs and increased his profits at the expense of poorer performance at locations more distant from urban centers. He reasoned that population density was higher in and near the urban centers where the TVs would work, and lower further out where the TVs would not work, so the Muntz TVs were adequate for a very large fraction of his customers. And for those further out, where the Muntz TVs did not work, those could be returned at the customer's additional effort and expense, and not Muntz's.

>>10451894
>Clive is considered a genius but most of his stuff was junk
when you have a fortune to spend on crazy ideas, sometimes some of those ideas stick, especially during any time when there's some tech evolution going on and nobody else in getting into the game. clive was a clever fucker.
>good computer
debatable. good for the price. no idea how anyone used the original thing with rubber keyboard. i remember reading about game developers using other computers or later spectrum with proper keyboard just to get anything done.

>>10454732
what a fucking madman. lmao.

>>10454737
>i remember reading about game developers using other computers or later spectrum with proper keyboard just to get anything done.
The early huge hit games Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy were programmed on TRS-80 and then sent to ZX Spectrum to execute over a custom built cable.

>>10454759
pretty nice setup. i've always found it interesting how mere mortals buy these computers and we're programming on them like cavemen but game developers are using link ups like this or using development machines and fancy in-circuit emulators that cost as much as a new car.

>>10454820
It's really sad that the teenager in the photo above (Matthew Smith) got addicted to drugs shortly after and completely wasted his life instead of becoming a British programming wizard.

>>10452039
When my dreamcast wouldn't start I would put it in the freezer for 30 mins and it would then work every time.

>>10456690
That would get it wet.

>>10454759
he cute

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