/vr/ - Retro Games

Talks about Princess Maker 2 made me finally install that game.
I am amazed how the game is rich on such limited CPU.

I am now in posession of a 1040STF, and I have no idea what I'm doing.

Any software recommendations, particularly in music and publishing software?

And can you reliably format a standard PC disk as a 720KB DS disk to use with these boxes? I can't seem to find a conclusive answer anywhere, I've got fdrawcmd and FloImg already.

>>3207408
The format used on the 1040STF drives is the same as a PC except for a different file system. Also you can't use 1.44MB disks, you'll need 720k disks.

>>3207419
Damnit. I don't know where the fuck I'm going to find those. I guess I'll go try anyway, fuck it.

>>3207454
Ebay's usually got plenty of 'em and I think you can get new disks from China or something but the quality is probably not as good as the stuff from the 80s.

>>3207468
Hmm, no blank disks so far but they seem to have more software than I expected on there, lots of games for $10 a pop, might be worth looking into. Thanks.

There's also this thing http://www.ebay.com/itm/Amiga-Atari-ST-Amstrad-USB-Floppy-Disk-Emulator-GOTEK-HxC-w-8GB-USB-key-/172081411589?hash=item2810d9f605:g:OeYAAOSwtO5XIrLp on there but other than violating my purist/aesthetic autism it's still a little expensive, plus I trust the compatibility about as far as I can throw it.

>>3207419
Also you'll need an older PC with an internal 3.5" drive to write the disks with. USB floppy drives won't work.

>>3207468
>>3207475
I'm a total retard, I always thought PC 720K disks were single-sided. Nevermind.

>>3207486
Oh yeah, I'm set there. Probably just going to put my P4 file archiver to work on it.

>>3207492
>I'm a total retard, I always thought PC 720K disks were single-sided. Nevermind.

No. They're always double sided.

The original 520ST has single sided disks but the 1040STF has double sided ones, so they're identical to PC 720k at the low level.

One important note about ST disks is that the first version of its OS (TOS 1.0) writes data sequentially rather than in parallel as a PC does. What this means is that each track on a PC floppy is considered to occupy both sides of the disk. Therefore you have Track 1/Side 1, Track 1/Side 2, Track 2/Side 1, etc, etc.

On ST disks, Track 1 occupies only the first side of the disk and the track on the opposite side from it is considered Track 40, not the back side of Track 1. The reason for this was mostly compatibility between double and single sided drives; if you had only a single sided drive in your ST, you can still read one side of a DS disk.

TOS 1.2 changed to writing parallel tracks, but it was not perfect. If you format a disk on the ST, you can write files with a PC drive fine, but formatting the disk with a PC will result in a disk the ST can't read due to the slightly different track/sector geometry that a PC puts on the disk. TOS 1.4 is the first one that can completely write disks to or from a PC.

>>3207504
Excellent, that's a little more doable.

>>3207557
Interesting, I still haven't gotten around to checking my TOS version, I think I'll do that now.

Also you may want to ask on AtariAge for help on additional technical details I'm not familiar with.

>>3207370
>yfw you realize you can just rename the files in Strip Poker so the nude pics come up first

http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=13

>>3207370

I always wondered who those two models were in that Strip Poker game.
and if they did more nudity, or maybe even porn.

The original version of this game was for the Apple II in 1982, the other ports came years later. Also the Amiga was the first computer that could actually do decent, photo-real images.

>>3207743
I wonder why someone just doesn't make new floppy mechanisms to replace shot ones. It shouldn't cost any more than all the Flash floppy emulators you can get now.

>>3207781
You could do that, sure, but the attraction of the Flash thingies is reliability, convenience, and ease of storage.

>>3207694
>>3207370
>yfw those women are old and ugly now

>>3207475
http://www.ebay.com/itm/3-5-DS-DD-Floppy-Disk-720K-Unformatted-DSDD-New-Sealed-Box-of-10-/201227860235?hash=item2eda1d790b:g:9woAAOSwD0lUdsx9

That was hard.

>>3207387

It's not the CPU that tells if you can or not make great games with a lot of content, it's the overall capabilities of the machine -- storage capabilities, graphic capabilities, and sound capabilities are what's more important for menu-driven simulation games. The CPU, for this kind of game, just need to be fast enough not to bottleneck the whole system. Anyway, PM2 need PC-9801 models with at least a NEC V30 to run well though (they need the right graphic modes available) which is almost as fast as a 80286. The PC version might need at least a PC-AT with a 286 and a VGA card. But this kind of game is also possible on Z80 machines (the first princess maker was released for the MSX2 too).

>>3207281

>it's impressive that gainax probably coded the game from scratch for every platform, though

Well I don't think it's from scratch -- they must have made some kind of internal documentation and analysis so they could rewrite the game engine for each platforms efficiently. Also, the graphics are usually the same from platform to platform, you just need to convert them while considering the various platforms capabilities.

>>3208063
See >>3207492
No need to be a dick about it.

>>3207791

And some people just want to use their original cubase copy though.

>>3207719
My father had the Atari 8-bit version when I was a kid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjqzOC0FD2s

>>3208229
My dad said he remembers this game but he thought the whole idea was completely retarded.

>320x200 four color cheesecake
That's...real fappable.

And the Apple II version shown above was much worse.

>>3207781
There's millions of 1.44MB drives around and since the life expectancy of a floppy drive is something like 30 years, I don't think we're likely to run out of replacement drives in my lifetime.

>>3208396

Many of them are chinese ones though, which life expectancy isn't really 30 years old, and need some tweaking to be compatible with anything else.

>>3208396
>There's millions of 1.44MB drives around and since the life expectancy of a floppy drive is something like 30 years

Also depends on the usage and whether you're feeding it dirty disks. I assume most retro computer hobbyists only take their machine out for a Sunday drive once in a while to play an old game instead of using it hard as a daily driver like they would have done in the 80s.

>and need some tweaking to be compatible with anything else

You probably mean how some of those drives don't have the jumper to set the drive number (ie. they're hard-wired to Drive 1). This isn't an issue for PCs of course though it would be if you wanted to use the drive in a non-PC machine like a TRS-80 or an Atari ST. You can also modify the things to force a drive number other than 1 (some cutting/soldering required); I read on an Atari ST forum of people doing it.

>>3208424
>You can also modify the things to force a drive number other than 1 (some cutting/soldering required)

That's what they used to do on Commodore 1541s since they're hard wired to Device 8 although you can send a software command to temporarily change the drive number (1571 and 81 have DIP switches to select the device #).

>>3208396
>>3208424
Unless it's Apple or Commodore stuff since they don't have the standard MFM/Shugart-style floppy interface and you can't sub a 3.5" drive for the original 5.25" one.

>>3208431
Taken care of by Flash emulators. Besides it makes getting files on them easier given that Apple/Commodore disks are completely and totally non-readable in a PC. The more standard stuff like a TRS-80 you can just stick a 1.44MB drive in.

>>3208431
>standard MFM/Shugart interface
Do you know how much weird, fucked-up stuff different manufacturers did with floppy controllers? Example the IBM cable twist.

>>3208440
It's all the same at the floppy end. Any floppy that has the Shugart 34 pin interface will work on any controller that also has it. The differences usually have to do with cabling/jumpering/installing terminating resistor packs.

For example, PC floppy controllers use the cable twist to switch the drive motors and each drive is jumpered to Drive 1. A TRS-80 controller doesn't do that, so you have to set the jumpers to whatever number the drive is supposed to be. Also when IBM introduced the high density controller on the AT, they added disk change and density selector lines. The main weirdness of the Atari ST controller is that it pulls the write protect detector line to ground for the disk change signal.

Other machines like the Kaypro 2 have a controller that turns on the drive light for whatever the most recently accessed drive was, so the drive lights are on continuously even if it's not in use.

>>3208445
8" drives I think had a 50 pin interface (the 34 pin connector was introduced on the Shugart SA-400) but you can make a homemade adapter.

>>3208424
>Also depends on the usage and whether you're feeding it dirty disks.

How can I tell if my floppies are dirty and how do I clean dirty floppies and drives dirtied by them?

>>3209089
Check this out: http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/clean_disks.html

Havnt played in a long time, made a quick favorite list, did I miss anything essential?

>>3208424
>I assume most retro computer hobbyists only take their machine out for a Sunday drive once in a while to play an old game instead of using it hard as a daily driver like they would have done in the 80s.
Unless you mean those guys on Lemon 64 who wear out their 30 year old disk drives archiving hundreds of disks worth of crap like old type in magazine programs and homemade Lode Runner levels (bbbbut I made these levels when I was 10 mmmmmuh childhood)

>>3208424
>have Gateway XP box from the early 2000s
>just out of curiosity, pull the cover off and check the floppy
>called it - no drive select jumpers

You cheap, cheap bastards.

>>3209651
Hope you like input lag.

I've lost two floppy drives in the two decades of computing I have under my belt. One was a drive in a 386 laptop that the head broke off the mount and the other was a shit Chinese drive without the drive select jumpers that one day just wouldn't read disks anymore (I really didn't even have it that long or use all that much).

>>3209689
Remove yourself back to the CRT general.

>>3209651
>>3209689
>>3209695

Wrong thread m80s, just go somewhere else if you wanna discuss that stuff.

>>3208424
http://www.trs-80.com/wordpress/hardware-replacement-hard-drive/

Nice Flash hard disk emulator.

Anyway, this bird has also been modded with 3.5" drives. As far as the issue of drive select jumpers, remember that you only need a 3.5" with them for Drive A (since it has to be jumpered to 0). You can use a jumperless drive for B since it's fixed to Drive 1.

>>3209762
"TRS-80 Model I’s require an adapter board to adapt the 40-pin connector on the Model I Expansion Interface to a 50-pin connector for hard drives.

Since these boards are virtually impossible to find today, Ian Mavric has created an adapter board, so those with Model I’s can connect to a real TRS-80 hard drive or a FreHD Hard Drive emulator."

He's probably talking about the hard disks produced for the Model II which used the 50 pin external floppy port on the computer. Apparently there did used to exist adapters to connect these to a M1/3/4.

For vintage computing I have 2 old TI 99-4a computers and some cartridge based games and business software. Got one years ago and couldn't get it to work with an old CRT using the two prong RF signal so I assumed the unit was borked. Got a second much later and same problem. Last month I just ordered a composite cable and they both work swimmingly.

Trouble is I have no idea how to use the joysticks since plugging them in doesn't seem to be all that's necessary.

I found a TI-99/4A in a Salvation Army once. Plugged it into a TV they had there and the power light came on, but no picture. Nothing. Not even a flash of light on the TV when powered on/off.

>>3210726
When I plugged it into my other TV via RF, that's the same response I got as in a light on the unit and nothing onscreen. My units actually work fine through composite though, but I can't vouch for any other units.

>>3209770
Actually though, they did have a hard disk for the M1/3/4 (adapter required to use it with a M1)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0HfzY2IzCo

The original Thunder Force only has a top-down multidirectionnal shooting phases compared to the other Thunder Force games (phases which have been gotten rid by Thunder Force III and isn't present in the later games). It seems to be a bit faster than the top-down missions in Thunder Force 2 too.

There's also another game called thunderforce on C=64 that has no link to the original X1/PC-88/FM-7 (I don't know which one of it) game :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqXA3AvniOA

Some nice FM tunes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lt519gpHUM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXeHDcA09Ts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09F1bNdlzb8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biY_CpsLf-k

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Tandy-1000-TX-model-25-1600-/322094463467?hash=item4afe5379eb:g:9F0AAOSwX~dWp346

Oh but they want juuuust a little too much for it.

>>3207370
good games?

>>3213246
Whut.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAFWGcPNAzw

Music mode of Wingman Special on PC-8801mkIISR. The MSX 2 version sound a bit different, but I kinda like both version of the main theme equally.

>>3213267
I meant that the games he linked (New Zealand Story and Frogger) are shit. Go link vids of some better ones.

>>3214593
Then what games would you rather see instead?

>>3214605
You know exactly what games he wants to see.

bump

Softporn Adventure was written in BASIC (it's not machine language). How much work would it take to convert this for a Commodore 64?

>>3215106
Depends. How big and complicated is it? I guess pretty. And it also does disk access which would have to be completely rewritten for the Commie.

>>3215106
Apparently this game requires DOS 3.2 and the old 13 sector disk formats; it doesn't like the DOS 3.3 16 sector disks.

>>3215106
>wanting to actually do this shit on an 8-bit machine
Protip: Programming actual retro platforms is annoying af and you'll want to headbang a coffee table dealing with the assorted limitations of them. It's a lot better to do a retro-style game in Flash with modern tools and file formats.

>>3215118
It's a text adventure. Can't be too bad. The biggest challenge would mostly be adapting the disk access stuff.

>>3215106
Do it for the PC-8801 and change a few things around to be more /jap/.

>>3215129
>implying anyone here actually knows shit about PC-8801 programming
>implying any docs available for it aren't written in moonrunes and you can't read them anyway

>>3215118
Petcat exists for the C64.

>>3215132
Doesn't fix the assorted technical limitations of the hardware.

>>3215145
I had more fun learning assembly on the 64 than learning C on Windows and UNIX to be honest.

>>3215106
This was on both the Apple II and Atari 800, however the Apple version is probably better to use since it's standard Microsoft BASIC and will be a bit easier to convert.

>>3215193
Atari BASIC doesn't support string variables, which is annoying. At least if you're used to how Microsoft BASIC handles strings. Atari BASIC does them more like C or Fortran.

From 101 BASIC Computer Games (modded for Commodore BASIC)

>>3215238
This should work on the Apple II as well; just change the first line to 5 HOME.

>>3214621

Naah, you can't use the "he's a weeb" excuse when he says these games are shit, as these games are a classic Taito and Konami titles, and that frogger was available on almost every computer of the time, even PC-88 and PC-98 computers.
I don't know how the C=64 port of New Zealand story holds, but saying that the Atari 800 port of Frogger is shit is either having outright shit taste, or just shitposting.

>>3215118

Except it can be a nice challenge and end up being more fun than using hundreds of C structures to use the slightest hardware-related stuff like in any modern OS. Also, messing with hardware stuff is usually easier in assembly language.

>>3215106

You'd have to locate PEEKs and POKEs try to understand what they means (by checking the memory map of the computer it's supposed to run on) in order to modify them, as well as try to see what instructions aren't available on the C=64 and try to replace them.

Anyway, some pretty damn good soundtrack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXiF88UL_bo

>>3215510
A text mode game probably doesn't have that many PEEK/POKE commands in it since all I/O can be done with INPUT/PRINT. Like I said earlier, the disk access routines are the most likely part of SPA that would need to be rewritten.

>>3215510
>I don't know how the C=64 port of New Zealand story holds
It was ported by Ocean. I'll let you guess.

>>3215546
oh really?

most taito ports were surprisingly competent, i wonder how they did it

>>3215546

>It was ported by Ocean. I'll let you guess.

Okay, I was about to say that okay, that port is shit, but after reading what >>3215550 said, I think I'll just give it a try and see for myself if it's a good or a bad port.

>>3215567
>>3215550
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0dH1a5O0aE

It's shit. Go play it on the NES instead.

>>3215575
ok yeah i see

rainbow islands had amazing ports though

All Ocean did was scoop up as many licences as they could and shit out rubbish ports of arcade games in two weeks.

>>3215575
SMS and Megadrive versions are better

>>3215584
Yes but Americans never got to see those.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feH_bz-PwRA

He has Diversi DOS on here; this was one of many 3rd party DOSes for the Apple II which improved on the functionality of DOS 3.3, especially in speeding up disk access which was cripplingly slow with Apple's DOS.

Somewhat like the TRS-80 where Radio Shack's in-house DOSes were ass and they needed third parties to make a better one.

>>3215575

Okay yeah it's shit.

>>3215578

Yeah I know, but the other anon said that they did make some decent Taito arcade ports, so I didn't want to claim that this one was shit too without at least giving it a try.

>>3215593
First party OSes always suck for some reason.

Atari DOS was innovative for its time. It was the first personal computer OS to incorporate device names for the console input, printer, modem, etc, a feature that would become a standard part of the IBM PC world with DOS device names like LPT1 and COM1.

>>3215593
Apple DOS was mostly designed to support BASIC; it wasn't that great at running applications, nor was it very adaptable for a lot of tasks. And every disk you format has a copy of DOS loaded onto it and a boot program (mandatory) which waste space.

>>3215636
wow really?

>>3215638
Yes. In DOS 3.3, you format disks with INIT filename, the file being placed first in the disk directory. If you reset the computer, it will boot that program, which can be either a BASIC program or a machine language one. When formatting a disk intended for data storage, it's typical to just write a small BASIC program like 5 PRINT"HELLO" which INIT places as the first program in the directory.

>>3215584
>>3215575
I presume you guys mean go play the superior amiga version

>>3215651

The graphics are good and the music decent (okay compared to the arcade, but still better than the megadrive version, which is close to garbage-tier), but the enemies seems pretty dumb compared to the arcade or PC Engine version, and their movement are a bit jerky. Also is it a 25 FPS slugfest like Atomic Robo Kid?

>>3215665
The Amiga version of TNZS is mostly notable for the fact that you get 25 lives if you type MOTHERFUCKINGKIWIBASTARDS on the title screen.

>>3215193
Yeah my father had it for our Atari 800 along with Sultan's Palace.

>>3215845
The Atari version of SPA had some quite ridiculous encryption tricks so you couldn't LIST the code in BASIC.

>>3207370
Anyone speaks moon here?
I seriously fell in love with the game but had problems with the framrate few months back and gave up.
So today i went through the menus and fond that you need to change the CPU type from z80 to r800.
I would appreciate if someone can translate the rest

>>3216126

You've got taste anon, Pleasure Heart is a pretty good shoot em up. Unfortunately i can't really help you, I don't understand moonrunes either and alway go straight for the game itself.

>>3216145
>pretty good shoot em up
It is indeed,not so much forced on avoiding endless bullet hell and small but interesting cut scenes with bright colors and simple shapes won me over.
I fell happy while playing it

>>3216126
I h-hope the mix of my entry level Japanese and Google Translate could help you, anon-kun.

>>3216229
Thanks man

>>3216243
NO FUCK STOP

I INVERTED YES AND NO, I'M SUCH A DORK.

That said, the final message makes zero sense if you clicked on no.

Thhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dj9D7AUT2g
The intro of the PC-8801mkIISR version of Emerald Dragon.

>>3216889
Gotta love that dithering.

>>3216248
>>3216229
I'm not sure if that's some sort of elaborate practical joke or what.
>>3216126
Speaking of Heart('s) schmups, I've got a Win 95 copy of Steam Heart's coming in the mail. That should be fun trying to get running. I feel like I ought to get myself a proper early 90s computer since I got rid of my original so many years ago.

I'm not sure if it would be best to go for a win 98 and go backwards compatible or get a win 95/3.1. Anybody got an opinion on that? If a 98 can easily run 95 and 3.1 stuff then that would seem to be the best bet.

>>3208229
>tfw the C64 version of this was the first video game you ever played

>>3217820

A Win98 setup should do the thing. Also, Win 9x discussion is off-topic.

Anyway, some more nice computer game tunes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dyn5490BPJM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w79mLxosqw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFdsjIML1Cc

Does anyoen have a download link to the latest ykhwong Dosbox build? The one on his site seems to be down.

>>3219835
The question is mainly for running 3.1 stuff while still having the flexibility to run 32 bit applications. And 95 just barely doesn't make the 1995 cut by 8 months.

Since I'm such a newbie with old Windows (since the last time I used a retro windows was when they were still in normal use), is there any value for using NT? Since the codebase is different I don't imagine it has a lot of compatibility with other Windows applications.

>>3221664
NT versions pre-2000/XP are worthless at running games. Don't bother.

>>3221664

No, not NT, just stick with Windows 98SE, it'll be better for that task. Also, Windows 95 IS the outer limit of the scope of this thread when it comes to PC stuff.

I'm pretty happy -- if everything goes right, i'll be getting an atari mega ST 2 + monochrome hi-res monitor + Steinberg Cubase by next week.
Unlike the all-in-keyboard ST models that came out before the STe, the mega ST has a blitter, as well as a socket for a 68881/68882 FPU.

>>3223792
The Mega ST is the model with 1.44MB floppies, right? Good for you; you won't be limited to 720k disks and the drive will be easier to replace if it breaks.

>>3223795

No, they still use 720kB floppies. Also, I still have 2DD 3"1/2 floppies (and the previous owner is giving me blank ones too).

>>3223795
Mega STE is the one with 1.44MB drives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrRVQNYy19I

>>3215106
>download Atari800Win to try it out
>find that the Break key is done by (literally) pressing on your PC's keyboard
>realize that my laptop doesn't have a Break key for some schizophrenic reason
>well fuck, I have to plug an external USB keyboard in for this?
>set up everything, get Atari800Win into BASIC
>try out a few type-in programs from 101 BASIC Games
>oh yeah...this is Atari BASIC, meaning I can't use string arrays
>what? I have to dimension string variables before I can use them?
>and I can't use the TAB function?
>screw you
>go find ROMs of Microsoft Disk BASIC for the Atari
>that's much better

>>3226285
What model laptop is it?

>>3226291
A Pavilion g7.

>>3226285
>not appreciating the challenge of trying a completely different BASIC than what you're used to

>>3226295
>>3226291
This has nothing to do with retro computers. Go gargle nigger cum.

>>>/g/

>>3226285
String handling in Atari BASIC works more like C or Fortran.

Atari DOS works more like TRS-80 DOS in that it has a menu you use to select different disk operations and you can jump out of BASIC or jump back into it. It's completely different from CP/M and MS-DOS (command line) or the Apple II/Commodore approach (disk commands are integrated into BASIC).

Not a bad approach though in terms of user friendliness instead of the myriad of stupid/cryptic commands you have to memorize in DOS or on the Commodore machines or whatever.

>>3226309
One reason why I've always loved Commodore machines is that you can just plug the shit in and use it. There's no OS disks or anything like that to bother with. Plug in the disk drive and turn on the power.

>>3226314
You ain't seen nothing until you've dealt with Apple II shit.

>two completely different disk formats (13 and 16 sector)
>two completely different and incompatible OSes (DOS 3.3 and ProDOS)
>plus you need both to run the full gamut of Apple II software
>this means half your disks need to be formatted for DOS 3.3 and the other half for ProDOS

>>3226335
The compatibility break with ProDOS is particularly enervating because Atari managed to retain compatibility with older 810 single density disks when they introduced the 1050 drives. Tandy also didn't break compatibility between the single density Model I and double density Model III disks.

>>3226346
That's probably more because the Apple II controlled its disk drives entirely in software; this extreme degree of low-level control made it harder to retain compatibility.

>>3226285
>what? I have to dimension string variables before I can use them?

Even if you just want to use a string variable as a prompt (eg. INPUT A$), you have to precede it with DIM A$(1). Whole lotta bullshit if you ask me.

http://www.atariarchives.org/c3ba/page031.php

This shows a l33t hax0r trick you can use to get around the string array problem in Atari BASIC.

Can anyone explain the difference between different Atari computer models to me? Not familiar with the shit.

>>3226790
There's the original 400/800, then the 1200XL, 600XL/800XL, then the 65XE/130XE.

The 400/800 were produced from 1979-83 and have 16k or 48k of RAM. BASIC is on cartridge. 400s also have a shitty membrane keyboard. Early models of the 400/800 have four joystick ports.

The 1200XL was a short-lived successor to the 400/800 in 1982-83 that proved a design nightmare and soon discontinued.

The 600XL/800XL were produced in 1983-85; these are generally considered the best model to have as they can run almost all 8-bit software. They have 64k of RAM and BASIC now on a ROM on the main system board instead of a cartridge.

The 65XE/130XE was a cost-reduced 800XL with 64 or 128k of RAM. Though it attracted little attention in the US due to the disappearance of Atari as a relevant hardware manufacturer, it was quite popular in Europe until being retired in 1991.

>>3226285
Use Altirra; Atari800Win is terrible and hasn't been updated in years.

By 1985, the amount of new software for the Atari 8-bit was dwindling fast; many software devs claimed that excessive piracy made it unviable to develop for although this was most likely just an excuse for the fact that there wasn't enough of an installed user base anymore.

>>3226809
>it was quite popular in Europe until being retired in 1991.

Maybe it still sold in some European countries, but it's not what I'd call a popular machine though. The ST was way more popular (even more popular than the Amiga up until the 90s).

>>3226830
The 8-bits' attraction was mainly price if you just wanted a low-cost computer to play cassette games with. Obviously the ST was much more useful for productivity and other such tasks.

>>3226825
One magazine at that time noted that it had been six years since the Atari 8-bits first came out and they were looking pretty outdated by the mid-80s.

Then again, the C64 was six years old in 1988 and still a major platform with lots of games coming out for it.

>>3226840
It's true that the C64 remained viable in North America up to the end of the 80s although by 88-89 an increasingly large amount of its games were being developed in Europe and simply converted to NTSC for the US market. Also not much productivity software was still being released for the C64 by 1988, the bulk of it had shifted to the C128.

>>3226832
>>3226830
ST was probably also more popular than the Amiga due to price.

The ANTIC wasn't really suited for NES kinds of games; it was fundamentally hardware that belonged to the pre-crash era. With only four monochrome sprites, you're not gonna be doing decent side scrollers.

Ah, the poor TI. Everything that could go wrong did.

>crap keyboard
>Texas Instruments was so obsessed with controlling all software development that they refused to publish any tech specs for the thing
>slow af BASIC
>stupid architecture that made it extremely annoying to program for
>nonstandard CPU that nobody knows how to program
>stupid expansion system

>>3226832

Like I said, it depends on the European country.

>>3226853

Not only that, it was popular among musicians with a home studio because it had MIDI support while still being cheaper than the Mac and the Amiga (neither of which had MIDI support without external serial modules or expansion). There was also desktop publishers that used the ST because an ST + an atari laser printer + desktop publishing software was cheaper than the macintosh alone.
Also, before the late 80s, Amiga games weren't that better than their ST counterpart, and were basically ST ports.
On top of that, it came out before the Amiga, there were multiple revisions and models for various targets (520ST, 1040ST, Mega ST1,2,4, 520STf, 520STfm, 1040STf, 1040STfm etc...) while Commodore just sat there with the Amiga 1000 being too pricey for most households, until 1987 when they decided to release the Amiga 500 and 2000.

It's not just because it was cheaper that the ST was popular, but because it was cheaper AND was able to be more useful than many other more expansive computers at the same time, all the while having various models for every kind of target market (low-end with the 520, mid-end with the 1040, professionals with the Mega and so on)

>The ANTIC wasn't really suited for NES kinds of games

Well no shit, it's a late 70s evolution of mid-70s hardware, a time where even arcade games hardly had any scrolling, while the Famicom was made with early 1980s arcade games in mind. You could still make some pretty good looking still pictures with it though.

>>3226895

>nonstandard CPU that nobody knows how to program

What the fuck, I've already read people on /vr/ call DIN plugs "non-standard" or "proprietary", but now fucking CPUs? Dude, there's NO "standard" CPU, it's just that most computer manufacturers just bought CPUs from a 3rd party supplier. TI just happened to make their own, so they used one of their.

>>3226895
As for the architecture, the TI-99-4A's 16-bit 9900 CPU had the potential to wipe the floor with 8-bit machines, but it had a crippled memory layout. Specifically...

>the 9900's 16-bit data bus required higher speed and thus more expensive RAM
>so to keep prices down, Texas Instruments decided to use the 9918's VRAM as main system RAM
>since you can only access the VRAM during the vertical retrace, it meant that the CPU had to pause and wait for that, in addition you only have a limited amount of clock cycles in which to do anything

>>3226912
>but now fucking CPUs? Dude, there's NO "standard" CPU, it's just that most computer manufacturers just bought CPUs from a 3rd party supplier. TI just happened to make their own, so they used one of their.

Commodore also made all their CPUs themselves since they owned the company that designed the 6502. :^)

What I mean by nonstandard is that nothing else used the 9900 and nobody knew how to program the goddamn thing. The reason the TI's BASIC was so slow? It's double interpreted because Microsoft didn't have any programmers that knew 9900 asm so TI gave them a high level interface to program BASIC with instead.

Result? TI BASIC first converts everything to the intermediate language that the interpreter layer uses which then turns it to machine language. This double interpreted BASIC combined with the computer's already clunky memory layout made it almost excruciatingly slow.

There was also the issue of TI trying to sell a 16-bit computer at 8-bit prices which made it impossible to turn a profit on the TI-99/4A. In addition, they manufactured the computers with high quality components unlike the numerous shortcuts Commodore took to keep prices down.

After realizing their initial mistake in excluding third party devs, Texas Instruments then announced that they would accept outside software development, but only if they had exclusive publishing rights and a percentage of the profit from software sales. Naturally, most devs balked at these extreme conditions. As a final blow, Texas Instruments installed a lockout check in the computer's OS ROM to prevent unauthorized third party cartridges from running, however this only affected the last run of "white case" TI-99/4As.

With the home computer market in meltdown mode and facing $110 million in losses, Texas Instruments pulled the plug on the TI-99/4A in the autumn of 1983. The massive loss of money the company sustained belies the fact that the computer was hardly a loser sales-wise as over 2 million were sold in its four-year run.

>>3226912
>atari laser printer
I forgot all about that dirt cheap laser printer.
They did it by having the computer control it directly with hardly any intelligence in the printer, I think it was?

>>3226928

Yup, and they bough MOS Technology so that they wouldn't be dependent to another company for something as important as CPUs (because of previous experiences when they were making calculators). It was also a mean to get their revenge on TI.

>>3226943

If nobody knew how to program the damn thing, it's because of TI's dumb policies, not because of some hypotetic "standardisation" bullshit or something. They wanted it the developpers to use their mini-computers (some models of TI990 also use the TMS9900) to develop for the TI-99. There were documentations about this CPU though, it's jsut that it was a TI mini-computer thing, not something as widespread as other micro processors:
http://datasheets.chipdb.org/TI/9900/TMS9900_DataManual.pdf

>>3226970

Yes, it used the DMA port or something like that if I recall correctly.

>>3226984
Here's the funny thing. Despite owning a chip fab, Texas Instruments still bought ICs from outside suppliers; only the core CPU and sound/graphics chips were made in-house.

>>3226984
All the same, this is back when all programmers knew 6502 and Z80 asm; hardly anybody knew how to code for the 9900.

Even the IBM PC had issues in the beginning because people weren't used to the x86 yet and they didn't know how to write efficient, optimized code.

TI weren't alone in this necessarily; Tandy also were not very encouraging of third party devs. Company-owned Radio Shacks could not sell third-party software, only franchises, and Radio Shack catalogs and other advertising did not acknowledge the existence of third party products at all.

Of course unlike the TI-99/4A, the TRS-80s used an utterly bog standard CPU and system architecture so they had more than ample software. They do seem to be ignored to a large extent by the Apple/PC/Commodore-centric retro computer community though.

>>3227001
>standard CPU

Here it is again. "widespread" would be more of an appropriate term.

>>3226995

The programmers who knew TMS9900 asm weren't the ones that were eager to write utilities or games for micro-computers, those were mostly the ones making atomic bomb simulations and other scientific programs for mini-computers.

>>3226995
>Even the IBM PC had issues in the beginning because people weren't used to the x86 yet and they didn't know how to write efficient, optimized code.
Off the record, this isn't exactly true either. There were plenty of good x86 coders in the 80s, except they were all employed by Lotus and Borland and weren't in the gaming business. Phillipe Kahn was a god; when Turbo Pascal first came out, it absolutely smoked Microsoft Pascal for its compact size and fast speed compared to the bloated, bug-infested, and expensive mess that Redmond were pulling out of their butts.

>>3227015
Microsoft have always had a reputation for sloppy, bloated coding ever since the 70s. I don't know what it is. Either they don't hire the best programmers or they don't train them or encourage good coding practices.

>>3227001
>They do seem to be ignored
My father called them "Trash-80s" and I grew up with kind of a negative image of them, but I don't really know much about them.

>>3226824
I should have guessed that when the "newest" version still didn't have a 64 bit Windows executable.

>>3227034
Perfectly fine computers and the Trash nickname is undeserved (well maybe a little bit for the Model I because they're so cheaply made that they die if you look at them funny). They are pretty boring compared with Apple or Commodore machines because they just have B&W character graphics and no sound.

>>3227001
>>3227034
>>3227039

They were actually the best sellers in the very early days of the home computer market (1977-1981). This was mostly due to competitive price, and they no longer had the edge there once the Vic-20 came around.

i haven't had much experience with Apple II emulation, but based on my limited experience with Apple2Win, I was not impressed not in the least because I could only run it 15 minutes before it would freeze and demand I get a registered copy.

>>3227046
Apple II emulation has stagnated. The A2 community is one of the bigger advocates of using real (and now expensive as shit) hardware, so sadly there isn't much work done on the emulation front. Maybe try a IIGS emulator like KEGS? I haven't tried it so dunno if it works with plain II stuff, but I don't see why it should.

>>3227056
*don't see why it sholudn't, dammit autocorrect.

>>3227056
That's too bad because the Apple II is a really really simple computer compared to the Atari 8-bit or C64 so it should be a lot easier to emulate.

>>3227070
I found something called Agat, looks pretty good, better than AppleWin at least.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/agatemulator/

It's from Russia and it was made to emulate the Agat series of Soviet clone computers, but does Apple II as well. The interface works like VirtualBox or VMWare, where you have multiple virtual machines with savestates that you can start and pause at any time. Even comes with a few games like Ghostbusters and Ultima IV.

Commodore machines in my experience are emulated really well except NTSC support because autistic Yuropoors refuse to implement it properly.

>nationalistic butthurt over 30 year old computers
Really, now?

Reminder to report and ignore.

>>3227158
It's more likely they don't have access to NTSC hardware to know how to emulate it properly.

>>3227195
Don't respond to him.

For some reason, I've never had much luck encountering Commodore hardware in thrift stores/flea markets over the years despite multiple encounters with Apple IIs, Atari 8-bits, and TI-99/4As. At least two times I've seen entire Apple II systems complete with a monitor, disk drives, and printers, I've seen TI-99/4As and Timex Sinclair 1000s still in their original box, but never once a Commodore machine of any kind.

>>3227218
Could depend on what was popular in your area as well. Maybe you didn't live in a Commodore hotspot.

Why do people love retro computers? My guess is nostalgia for some people, interest in how the hardware is so simple that software can be easily written by one person, the fact that everything is self-contained and not reliant on online services, maybe interest in the history of computer...

>>3227307
For me it's a bit of an odd thing because I was born in 1988 so my conscious memory of computers basically starts with the Windows 3.x era. The first computer I used actually was a Commodore 64 because my dad didn't get a new computer until 95 when he finally entered the 90s and got a 486, but I was in the first grade and barely knew how to do anything except play Kickman by plugging in the cartridge.

Commodores are my first love because of nostalgia to an extent, but I love them all from Apple IIs to TRS-80s to Amigas. Every machine back then was unique and had its own peculiar set of quirks/features one had to get used to. Though most of my childhood was spent on 90s PCs, and certainly there's nostalgia there, I've never quite had the same interest or found as much romance in them as the era when the 6502 and 5.25" disk were king. Maybe the Windows 9x era isn't as interesting because I lived through it and I have a been-there-done-that feeling. IDK.

>>3227307
Part of what I like about them is their design idiosyncrasies; before the IBM PC-compatible standard ultimately killed off almost everything else except for Apple machines, everyone had their own designs doing either what they thought was best, or what was most economical for them, or whatever.

And it's not just the inner workings either, there's also the fact that a lot of the early PCs had such amazing and sometimes outlandish design aesthetics (compared to today). Even today, when the machines themselves are beyond obsolete, many of them have designs that are still incredibly evocative of a sense of the untapped future potential of technology. They seem wonderful and mysterious compared to the minimalist and utilitarian designs of today.

>>3207408
Time Bandits is an awesome 2 player joystick game.


Bratacaas is ridiculously weird, hard to play, inscrutable, and yet, unlike anything you've ever played. If you can figure out how to play, yer a god. It's also known as Bandersnatch.

Hacker and Hacker 2 are both inscrutable and require an in-depth FAQ, but they're also super different from what you've come to expect from videogames. Landmark stuff.

Mudpies is a hoot.

Major Motion is a fun Spy Hunter clone which, in my opinion, is better.

I'd recommend the creepy ass Speller Bee, but it requires a dongle. It talks. So fucking scary. Worth getting it running again just for the voice synth.

I am basically just naming the games I had growing up.

>>3207408

For music, Cubase, pro24 and Notator are the most well-known sequencers for this machine. There are also other softwares like MIDI synth patch editors and the like (there's that Roland SoundCanvas utility for example).
As for publishing, there's Calamus, Pagestream, Publishing Partner and other softs.


Anyway, a few PC-8801 music disks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOuDHPaOXLM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owqDY0MAFPM
The second one is nicer than the first one (better overall sound, better interface, a few pictures too), but both of them are mostly arcade game music arranges.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSMcqGOCmU0
This one's mostly computer games arranges (though some sound so close to the original that you might think they're rips). Too bad the guy who recorded the video left that ugly scanline filter on, because that last picture is pretty good looking, and those black lines are kinda ruining it's brightness.

>>3228035
>but both of them are mostly arcade game music arranges.

Well forget what I said about the first one, it's a mix of both computer game and arcade game musics. The second is still mostly arcade games though (with maybe a few console titles like Hector '87 that are represented).

>>3227343
>this level of Hallmark Greeting Card smarm
Seriously, dude?

One thing I notice that's difference about Atari800Win versus VICE is the it makes you format disk images before using them, also it doesn't let you set different drive types. If you mount a 90k image, it treats the thing as an 810 drive and if you mount a 130k image, it treats it as a 1050 drive.

http://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/showpage.php?page=35

Prints a Playboy Bunny (I assume that's what it is) on the screen. This is formatted for an 80 column display so doesn't necessarily work the best on 40 column displays.

Also some tweaking has to be done for Atari BASIC firstly because of the TAB thingie, but also because...guess what? You can't use subscripted arrays with the READ statement.

120 FOR I=1 TO 4:READ B(I):NEXT I

Instead you'd have to do this.

120 FOR I=1 TO 4
130 READ C
140 B(I)=C
150 NEXT I

Instead of the TAB function, Atari BASIC has a register at memory location 201 ($C9) which controls tab positions. The default value is 10, which gives tab positions of 0, 11, 21, and 31.

So you set tab positions with a statement like 10 PRINT "","HELLO!". The null string followed by a comma substitutes for the TAB function in Atari BASIC, each of them advancing the cursor position 10 spaces. If you modify the value in 201, you can set different tab positions, but if you want mixed values (eg. move the cursor 5 spaces and then 11), you'll have to change 201 repeatedly, otherwise it will always move the cursor a fixed number of spaces according to 201.

The minimum tab position you can set is 3, setting it to 1 and 2 gives two and four spaces respectively and 0 causes BASIC to lock up, requiring a reset.

http://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/showpage.php?page=57

I love dice roller programs. It's not a BASIC book without them.

Also the example shows 10,000 rolls. On most 8-bit computers, this would be incredibly slow, possibly taking a couple of minutes to execute. I also tried running it with QBASIC and DOSBox set to the default 3000 cycles and rolling 10,000 numbers clocked it at 27 seconds. However, if I included a DEFINT statement to turn all variables to integers instead of floating point, then it took only 20 seconds.

Keep in mind that Applesoft, Commodore, and Atari BASIC lack proper integer support while Z80 and x86 versions of Microsoft BASIC do support them (on the Apple II however, you can just boot up Integer BASIC).

http://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/showpage.php?page=56

Would be a horrible snarled mess in Atari BASIC.

Another thing: Atari BASIC makes you dimension all arrays prior to use while Microsoft BASICs have a "grace" mode whereby you don't have to do it if the array is 10 or fewer elements.

>>3229226

That's because MS creates arrays that are always at least 10 elements long, wasting memory.

bump

>>3231174

/vr/ is a slow board, you don't need to bump a thread when it's only in page 7.

>>3226912
>>3226864
>>3226850
The C64 was only a year older than the Famicom while the Atari 8-bit was four years older. By the time SMB was out, the Atari 8-bit chipset just couldn't keep up with the new generation of games.

ANTIC had its strengths, especially in the large color palette and being able to do raster effects. For example, when they tried porting Ballblazer to the tile-based C64 and Famicom, it was a disaster. On the other hand, with only four monochrome sprites, it didn't have what it took for NES kinds of games even though the Atari 8-bit was actually clocked at the same speed as the NES (1.79Mhz) and a good 75% faster than the 1.33Mhz C64.

>>3230475
While true, in Atari BASIC it's common to dimension arrays larger than what you're going to use to allow a little extra headroom.

>>3231191
>1.33Mhz C64
By that logic the resulting pixel clock must been 10.66Mhz instead of 8Mhz.
However, the CPU clock was around a 1Mhz and keep in mind that "badlines" (CPU halted to allow fetching tile numbers) reduces the speed even further.

>>3231203
Example: The VIC-20 is only clocked at 1.2Mhz, but is actually faster than the C64 because of the system architecture.

Also keep in mind that the VIC-II chip can be set to use any of the four 16k quarters of system RAM ($2000-$7FFF being the power-on default). Any code in the VIC-II window will run slower due to contention between the CPU and the VIC-II, but code not in the window will run at normal speed.

The VIC-II can also be disabled via a register write; this is commonly used by fastloaders and the kernel cassette routines even do this when accessing the Datasette.

>>3228693
I never understood why 6502 Microsoft BASICs didn't have double precision numbers but maybe it was too hard to implement with the 6502?

>>3231216
Probably. The Z80 does actually have 16-bit registers so it's easier to perform mathematical stuff with it, one reason why it was the preferred CPU for business computers while the 6502 was the gaming CPU (Colecovision and Gameboy notwithstanding).

Arthur C. Clarke famously used a Kaypro II to write novels which he sent over the phone lines to the publisher from his home in Sri Lanka.

>>3231257
The original disk drives were Tandon TM-100-1s, but you can replace them with 3.5" 1.44MB drives. Main problem being you need drives that actually let you jumper select the drive number while a lot of the bastards are hard-wired to Drive 1. Keep in mind that you only need a jumperable 3.5" unit for the A: drive since it has to be set to Drive 0. The B: drive will be Drive 1, so it doesn't matter in that case.

There was an enhanced BIOS available for the Kaypro II which supports 720k floppies; if you want, you could grab an image of that and burn it to a ROM. Otherwise you'll be limited to single-sided 180k formatting which is a gross under-utilization of a 1.44MB drive's capabilities.

Also it's recommended you use real 720k disks instead of taping over the hole on 1.44MB disks.

>>3223792

Well, it looks like only the Mega STe has an empty FPU socket, not the Mega ST2. Well at least I can still solder a few RAM chip to have the full 4MB of RAM, and maybe updgrade the TOS in ROM (though I guess some games might not run as a result).

Had one of these once, then I got rid of it because the floppy drive and the A key on the keyboard broke.

Any recommendations for action games that would run on a 4MB Macintosh SE with System 6? I've got one with dual 800k floppies and a Zip drive as the boot disk and a good amount of software, but more recommendations are always welcome.

D-Side on Sharp X1 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d6ni4flvOw

Also, the PC-8801 version of Firehawk have a nice intro that isn't present on the IBM & clone port of the game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1BzPb5hlgg

>>3226895
Really about the keyboard? Personally I don't think it's that bad. Still feels nicer than using many modern dome keyboards.

Now the joysticks on the other hand...

Got this for £35. Waiting on the PSU + scart cable to arrive. Not sure whether or not to retrobrite. It's gud shit tho. Games/program recs?

>>3232467
>Really about the keyboard? Personally I don't think it's that bad. Still feels nicer than using many modern dome keyboards.
Not the construction/feel of the keyboard, the layout.

>>3232613
Oh yeah, I forgot that is pretty frustrating. Makes touch typing a pain, but then again, there's not much to do productivity-wise on a 40-year-old piece of technology.

>>3232778

Well, on some other machines there is though.

>>3232594

Do you have the Extra 1.3 floppy with it? Because PC drives can't read or write Amiga floppies, so unless you have another terminal program, you'd better have some kind of way to transfer stuff through the serial port (and with all these floppies it would be a waste to replace your floppy drive with an emulator).
What kind of software did the previous owner give you (I see Powerplay on top of the rest of the floppies)? As for useful software, you might as well check for Transwarp, it helps you recreate floppies from .adf files sent via a serial null-modem cable. And for games, if you don't already have it, give Hybris a try, it's a pretty good UFO Robo Dangar tribute imo.

>>3232778
>Makes touch typing a pain, but then again, there's not much to do productivity-wise on a 40-year-old piece of technology
>people didn't use computers for productivity in 1982
>Wordstar and Visicalc are just a bedtime story IT employees tell their children

>>3233725
>Do you have the Extra 1.3 floppy with it? Because PC drives can't read or write Amiga floppies

The specific problem lays in the fact that the Amiga floppy controller works much more like an Apple II controller than the IBM/Shugart standard on PCs. Although it's MFM, you can have variable speeds/bit rates which is not allowed on the IBM/Shugart standard controllers where there's only two fixed rotation speeds/bit rates for double and high density media.

Most importantly though, the Amiga doesn't use index sensing to find tracks, so even if you wrote an Amiga disk to be identical to a PC format, it would still be unreadable as a PC floppy controller can't find where the tracks are. Although this part is a mystery to me because Amigas only use 3.5" disks which don't have an index sensor anyway.

>>3234159

Actually there are 5"1/4 drives for the Amiga (external for the Amiga 1000 and 500, and internal for the Amiga 2000), and some utilities for the Workbench to read and write DOS-formatted 360kB floppies (that's why the Amiga 2000 have a 5"1/4 bay despite being released way before the democratization of CD-ROM drives, though the possibility to use an internal tape/cartridge drive could have been an argument too).

>>3234176
But see, that's because Amigas let you have a degree of low-level disk controller that's impossible on a PC. Thus an Amiga can be programmed to read PC disks, but not vice versa.

>>3234191

I know that, there were some suites to allow you to read and write DOS-Formatted 3"1/2 2DD floppies too. All I pointed out is that the Amiga DID have 5"1/4 drives (or else these PC emulators they were selling would have gone to waste in the late 1980s).

>>3234206
Sort of doesn't answer my question though about 3.5" drives and index sensors (Amiga doesn't use them, but 3.5" disks don't have an index hole anyway).

https://cortexamigafloppydrive.wordpress.com/

This guy installed a Gotex floppy emulator in his Amiga and had to totally reprogram the firmware which was designed for PC floppies.

>>3234210

Maybe because I didn't address that point, but the "Amigas only use 3.5" disks" one.

>>3232594
>Waiting on the PSU + scart cable to arrive

You do know an Amiga will work on VGA displays with a line doubler.

>>3231210
>Any code in the VIC-II window will run slower due to contention between the CPU and the VIC-II, but code not in the window will run at normal speed.
Explain me how the BA signal at the expansion slot works.
It's supposed to be high if the VIC uses the bus including the badlines and also there are eight 64kbit DRAM (called 4164) each for bit of an byte but each chip covers to whole 64kbyte area.
I simply don't get it how the DRAM is supposed to in/output the byte requested by CPU and the VIC (during the badline) at the exact same time.

>>3234159
>>3234176
>>3234191
>>3234206
It wouldn't make much sense to wire the index signal to one of the VIAs (where it could trigger an interrupt) if the Amiga would been fully incapable to use it. The other VIA has the ACK pin of the parallel port which can generate interrupts not only on Amigas but PCs too.
Is there something I don't know at all or is everybody forced to use the routines in the kickstart and not allowed to use their own?

>>3234210
>3.5" disks don't have an index hole anyway
The index signal is generated by the drive.
There are some drives where you can see a tiny magnet glued at the side of an disc attached to the spindle motor and a sensor that would sense the that magnet.
This is not only for keeping the drive running at "exactly" 300RPM but also to generate the INDEX signal.
I could take a pic of such a drive if you want.

>>3234256
>This is not only for keeping the drive running at "exactly" 300RPM

Important because 8" and 5.25" drives have a habit of drifting over time and requiring adjustment to run at the correct speed. A common symptom of this is that disks written with the drive will not be readable on other drives due to the slight speed difference.

>>3234256
>Is there something I don't know at all or is everybody forced to use the routines in the kickstart and not allowed to use their own?

If you couldn't use anything but the Kickstart routines, it would not have been possible to have the many bizarre copy protections found on Amiga disks.

I know PPC isn't strictly allowed, but I read that the Power Mac is MS-DOS compatible. Does this mean that my G3 Beige could play DOS games?

>>3234326

>but I read that the Power Mac is MS-DOS compatible

Well unless you're using a PC emulator it wont, you've been told bullshit. Even the PowerPC versions of Windows NT don't run on powermacs, so don't expect an x86-only OS to run on one.

>>3234349
Ah, OK. Sorry for stupid question. Are there any PC emulators?

>>3234358

There's VirtualPC for MacOS 9.

>>3234371
Ah thanks.

>>3234326
>I read that the Power Mac is MS-DOS compatible

Not natively. What they did was install a DOS compatibility card, which has an actual x86 CPU on board for running DOS 6.x and Windows 3.x.

>>3234593
Oh? So is it possible?

>>3234597

With a PC board he said, not a stock PowerMac.

>>3234326
>>3234597

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OcORkw2rJI

>>3234246
I wasn't too sure about video cables desu. I know I can get a VGA cable, but apparently it won't work with most games due to frequency differences or something. Is a line doubler really all I'd need? I was planning to get the OSSC but that isn't out for a while longer.

>>3234597
The "DOS Compatible" machines do have a dedicated x86 processor, but there were software PC emulators available, if you're into that sort of masochism.

>>3234141
I'm talking about currently. The context is that typing is a pain, but there's not much typing to be done on a TI-99/4A these days. What am I gonna do, settle my accounts with a copy of TI Home Financial Decisions?

>>3233725
Yeah, came off a bit too general there. Some 40 year old machines still have their uses, it's just hard to imagine a TI-99/4A being among them.

>>3235005
>I'm talking about currently. The context is that typing is a pain, but there's not much typing to be done on a TI-99/4A these days
If you're typing in lengthy BASIC program listings, then yeah, you'll regret that keyboard layout.

>>3234893
Amiga's video output is identical to VGA aside from scanning at 15Khz instead of 31Khz; fortunately the sync is also separated as opposed to SCART or old Macs which have composite sync.

Some Amstrad CPC demos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp3T9k42_-o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe8dislZkUQ
For those wondering why the picture is filled weirdly, it's because when Amstrad designed the CPC, they decided that in the memory, the first pixel line would be followed by the 9th (!!!) one, then by the 17th one, and so on and so on, then when we would hit the 193th one, it would go all the way back to the second line, then the 10th one etc...
They did that to make vertical text scrolling easier, but at the same time made bitmapped graphic scrolling harder. But with a well designed set of scrolling routines this weird video memory layout wont be cause any problem though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy2IvtAFgcQ

>>3235286
So what does that mean for me? Which cable should I be getting or does it really not matter?

I'd much rather use vga, but if I'd need a line doubler to use it on a modern screen then it's a bit too expensive for my liking.

>>3235349

Have you considered using a commodore monitor?

>>3235361
>30 year old monitor with a shot CRT and probably screen burn
>not to mention the whole peril of buying one online and having it shipped
There's reasons for things, anon.

>>3235362
The Amiga monitors use the same CRT as a 13" colour TV though, do they not? Seems like it shouldn't be hard to find a replacement tube if need me.

>>3235005
>not deciding your financial future on a 20+ year old computer

pleb

>>3235362
>30 year old monitor with a shot CRT and probably screen burn

You're getting these out of your ass anon. Mine's still in a really good shape, and is big enough (14") to view things correctly in all of the video modes available on an Amiga 500. And it's one of the worst Amiga monitor models that came out (Daewoo-made), Toshiba-made ones are great quality monitors with a pretty high dot-pitch. Hell, even C64 monitors are still good today most of the time.
Not wanting to risk shipping is a good reason not wanting to purchase one though.

>>3235370
More-or-less. Except TV CRTs have a lot coarser dot pitch. Assuming it's the same size, deflection angle, and electron gun arrangement (horizontal) it should work, but will be too fuzzy to be usable in 640x200 mode (not generally an issue for games, but could make Workbench hard to read.

>>3235393
I'm not though. I have a Dell Ultrascan 17" monitor that's noticeably less bright than it used to be and it also has the Windows task bar burned into the bottom of the screen. I have another CRT, an ADI Microscan 14" that was used as a daily driver for 10 years and it has a bad flyback transformer. Use any CRT as your daily driver and the thing will start degrading in about 7 years.

Generally speaking, computer monitors aren't as durable or able to last as long as a TV for a couple of reasons.

>>3235361
>>3235362
>>3235370
>>3235393
>>3235396
>>3235429

I would like a CRT TV or monitor at some point, I just really don't have the space, money, or desire for it right now. I know it won't look as good on an LCD, but it's the best I've got so just looking for the best solution available to me.

>>3235429
>Generally speaking, computer monitors aren't as durable or able to last as long as a TV for a couple of reasons.
Those being?

>>3235473
Displaying static images rather than the constantly changing picture of a TV is generally not the best thing for a CRT, also CRT computer monitors generally were not built as well because they assumed it only had to last the lifespan of the computer, ie. five or so years.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Radio-Shack-TRS-80-Model-III-Micro-computer-16K-Ram-Software-Manuals-Cover-Tandy-/222121632789?hash=item33b77b2415:g:xSsAAOSw74FXPAU3

Wait, what's this thing doing with a disk drive manual and a bunch of business software on disk if it's the _cassette_ model?

>>3235553
>Scripsit
>General Ledger

See >>3235005

>>3235429
>Use any CRT as your daily driver and the thing will start degrading in about 7 years.

That's what I've been doing for like 10 years with an HP UltraVGA 1280 monitor, and today I still have no problem with it. Yes, it's less bright (though a good rejuvenation process could make it almost as bright as in it's early days), but I don't have no screenburn nor does it have any Flyback issues. My only monitor that really had flyback problems was my Amstrad CPC one which is waiting for a new one (but that's a 1980's korean piece of shit, so it's not that big of a surprise).

And anyway, yes, you're taking these out of your ass when it comes to Amiga monitors. The monitors that had that kind of treatment usually found their way to the trash, and most of the one that are sold are still fine. Also, I don't think you'll be using your Amiga as your daily driver will you?

>>3235493
>also CRT computer monitors generally were not built as well because they assumed it only had to last the lifespan of the computer, ie. five or so years.

That's a 1990s PC clone manufacturer's logic, not a 80s computer & monitor manufacturer one though.

>>3236598
>That's a 1990s PC clone manufacturer's logic, not a 80s computer & monitor manufacturer one though.

Clearly he's never seen an IBM 5151 monitor with Lotus 123 burned into it.

>>3237150

The phosphor they used on these is totally different though. IBM 5151 easy burn-ins are more of a side effect of using more persistent (thus phosphor that's excited for a long time) than something that was intended. Also, it's kind of the exception that confirm the rule -- compared to most other computer monitor of the time, the 5151 wasn't reliable (caught fire when turned on without the computer already running, stuff like that) though it's picture is pretty good (according to the 5151 anon who posted pictures of his monitor).
Most other monitor manufacturers used way less persistent phosphor and an alluminum coating to protect said phosphor from burn-ins. Not all of them were great monitors (Tandy CGA and Amstrad CPC monitors aren't that great picture-wise) but it's still really easy to find perfectly working 80s computer monitor, with little to no issue.

Ad for TRS-80 Electric Pencil, also notable for being the first word processing program ever written on the Altair 8800. There were almost 80 different versions of this.

>>3237218

At first I though it was about some kind of lightpen.

>>3237208
The 5151 actually started life as the display for the IBM DisplayWriter word processing machine. It's somewhat unique in a number of ways, one of them being that it lacks a horizontal oscillator and depends completely on the video signal to drive the electron gun. This is why as you said, they can be damaged when powered on without a signal present and also why the monitor is designed to plug into the pass-through on the IBM XT power supply and lacks a power switch; the idea being that this would ensure the monitor can't be powered on without a video signal.

5151s are quite easily damaged through erroneous programming; if thrown out of sync, the flyback transformer can destroy itself. The various design shortcuts in the monitor can be explained by its original use on the DisplayWriter; since that was a dedicated word processing machine with no ability for the user to program the video circuitry, there was no possibility of accidentally damaging it.

Apparently IBM used the 5151 on the PC because of the limited time and budget available to design the computer; using a readily available component made things easier and cheaper.

The flyback transformer on the 5151 also is mounted in such a way that taking the cover off with the monitor sitting upright will result in the flyback falling off its mount and onto the CRT. If servicing a 5151, you must place it upside down when removing the cover.

The long persistence green phosphor is actually impossible to capture correctly in photos because it lays outside the RGB spectrum.

>>3237218
That ad is as 80s as it gets. It makes you want to listen to The Number of The Beast.

>>3237218
EP became a standard word processor for 8080/Z80 machines until being replaced by Wordstar. There was also an IBM PC port.

>>3237208
>>3236598
>>3235429
This is the model I have (pic isn't mine though). The CRT seems ok, but the flyback is shot. I think it has a leaking cap in it.

A lot of consumer TVs from the 90s would be factory set with the brightness/contrast jacked way up (so they'd look brighter in a store display) and stupid people often never adjusted them with the result that the CRT would weaken in only a few years. Even worse were some TV manufacturers that intentionally increased the high voltage in the CRT for a brighter picture.

>>3237304

Wow, look like some cheap made in korea/thailand/china stuff, no wonder it didn't last.

Computer monitors overall did get cheaper and less well-made in the 90s in response to consumer demands for lower prices (some color monitors in the 80s could cost several hundred dollars).

>>3237328
>didn't last
I'll have you know that thing was used hard as a daily driver for 10 years with a couple different PCs before it started developing problems. I more than got my money's worth out of it, especially for a low-end 14" Taiwanese monitor.

I can't find any info about the IBM version of Electric Pencil beyond some mentions in scanned magazines. There's not any screenshots of it anywhere either.

>>3237332
>10 years

Which is the bare minimum for a low end CRT monitor. Good monitors can take more beating than that, and I'm not even talking about really high-end Sony tubes that basically use the same components as broadcast monitors, designed to years with 24/7 uses (though they do have proper servicing during their lifetime).
You used your low end monitors as an example to why you wouldn't get a Commodore monitor for your Amiga 500, which are mid-end early 90s Daewoo at worst and high-end Made in Japan Toshiba rebrands at best, that mostly didn't see the kind of use of your monitors.
Not wanting to risk shipping is a good argument in favor of you decision, muh old and busted CRT based on your experience with low end Taiwanese tubes isn't really though.

>>3237363
>Which is the bare minimum for a low end CRT monitor

It actually could have lasted longer, but I have a pretty good idea of why the flyback is shot. When I was a kid, I read in a book somewhere about screen burn so I was paranoid about that and kept turning the monitor off any time I'd go out of the room, even for like two seconds. Turns out that repeatedly power cycling a CRT is bad for it; stresses the flyback. The CRT itself is still good though probably not as bright as it used to be,

>>3237363
>Not wanting to risk shipping is a good argument in favor of you decision, muh old and busted CRT based on your experience with low end Taiwanese tubes isn't really though.

While true, the other CRT I have is a Dell 17" like this one (except mine has speakers on it) and the tube has lost significant brightness and has screen burn. It wasn't even used as long or as much as that ADI Microscan which has no burn in. Considering this should be a better quality monitor, I'm disappoint.

>>3237375

Most of the time brightness loss is caused by an oxydation layer on the electron gun. This oxydation layer can be dealt with by boosting the voltage of the electron gun for a short time (or else you'll end up frying it), which is why it's better to use 80s (maybe 70s) and later CRT rejuvenators than earlier ones for that task, as these have more advanced diagnosis circuitry and signalisation, and sometimes have some process automated. Of course after rejuvenation the oxydation will reappear some time later.

>>3237381

Which Dell model was it? Some Dell models aren't that high-end, most of them are OEM rebrands of various monitors and quality isn't concistant between them.

I had a Proscan 27" TV that was used for 15 years and by the time it was retired, it had problems with the red gun (lots of bloom caused by the gun having problems focusing the beam) but that TV was used without mercy. It shouldn't have lasted as long as it did.

>>3237393
>Which Dell model was it?
I told you; it's an M770 like the pictured one except for having built in speakers.

>>3237412

After searching for a few pics of the back of the tube, I found either
>Assembled in Mexico
or
>Made in Taiwan

Look like it wasn't that higher-end then.

>>3237150
Never seen it IRL, but I remember encountering a PCjr monitor in a thrift store once (the IBM 4863) with nasty screen burn.

>>3237440
The other week I was perusing Ebay listings of TRS-80s and there was a Model III with severe burn-in. That one is a mystery to me because it was a cassette model. What exactly do you do on a cassette model TRS-80 that would cause screen burn like that? I mean, you're not gonna use a diskless computer in an office or for a POS terminal or for that matter much of anything except play games and write BASIC programs.

>>3237451
It could have been used in a Radio Shack store display although I'd think they'd prefer to showcase the higher end disk model.

Mitebcool to have a Model III; I could find a cassette model on Ebay and mod it with 3.5" floppies. Would also have to upgrade the RAM though and not sure how easy it would be to find the correct chips.

The shipping cost would be absolutely dreadful though even though a cassette model would weigh less without disk drives in it.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Radio-Shack-TRS-80-Model-III-Micro-computer-16K-Ram-Software-Manuals-Cover-Tandy-/222121632789?hash=item33b77b2415:g:xSsAAOSw74FXPAU3

This guy has one listed but the price...also it's not tested.

>>3237479
>comes with a bunch of useless software I don't even need
>not to mention all the other stuff I'd have to buy for it

>>3237479
>speculators
Does anyone else miss the days when thrift stores were filled with mountains of this stuff for like $10?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Tandy-1400LT-Laptop-/272251083592?hash=item3f636ddb48:g:D2YAAOSwd2xXQeCP

Not without a power supply I ain't.

This is from the 4/26/82 issue of InfoWorld.

Take my Apple - please!

It was certainly entertaining seeing David D. Busch's letter about humorless computers in the March 22, 1982 issue. But he left out the all-time Keystone Kop of personal computers, the Apple II.

What is funnier than watching a neophyte try to boot a 13 sector disk on a 16 sector disk card? Or what about the laugh-a-minute comedy as one waits eons to load a file into Visicalc, only to find that lowercase can only be gotten by taking the file into a slow-loading editor and retyping all letters to be in lowercase and then loading the file _back_ into Visicalc (another eon or two) to print it. How about the 80 column cards that only work with selected software, a real side splitter? In closing, let me quote from the very honest Calsoft Software Catalog.

"If an Apple program doesn't boot under DOS 3.3, try it under DOS 3.2 using the DOS 3.2 BASICs disk. Also some Apple disks will not boot simply by inserting the disk into the drive and turning on the power, others require that you first boot the DOS System Master (or any other disk containing DOS) and then load your program by typing IN#6. If a disk fails to load, try removing it from the drive and re-inserting it. Then try again. Check the product requirements. It may require a version of DOS or BASIC you don't have or extra memory or special hardware. Finally, give us a call. We may be able to solve your problem or point you in the right direction."

Hardly the kind of computer that will become a household appliance. I have an Apple II and a TRS-80 Model I. For all its tinny plastic and factory-supplied coating of oxidation, I can put several programs on my TRS-80 disk eg. Scripsit, Visicalc, Assembler, and BASIC, and operate the computer like a large mainframe terminal. Next to the Apple II, the Model I is a pleasure. The frustration of the Apple II, well, "It ain't really funny, McGee."

>>3237621
Surprising he'd say that given how notoriously flaky the TRS-80 Model I was. Apple IIs may have had more software incompatibilities, but at least you didn't have to worry about the thing spontaneously resetting itself while you were typing a lengthy BASIC program or being unable to retrieve files from a disk because they didn't include a data separator on the floppy controller.

>>3237641
>>3237621
Yeh but you can't play Lode Runner on a TRS-80.

>>3237641
The M1 was slow, flimsy, and unreliable BUT it did have a Z80 and a better BASIC (which included stuff like double precision numbers) than the Apple II.

>>3237660
>>3237621
>>3237641
On the other hand, the Apple II has a far bigger following in the retro computer community than the TRS-80 and Apple is still in the business in 2016 while Radio Shack gave up selling their own computers in the 90s.

>>3237665
Funny I remember Apple gave up on their own computers in the 2000s and decided to sell PCs with a proprietary OS.

Welp, Steve Wozniak originally wanted a computer he could play Breakout on. When you tried doing business stuff, the Apple II's architectural limitations (especially the lack of interrupts) became noticeable.

All the same, the TRS-80 Model I was too marginal and unreliable of a computer to make a decent business machine either.

>>3237671
If your definition of "their own computers" doesn't include using other companies' hardware in your designs then almost nobody has ever sold their own computers. That kind of logic is uselessly reductive.

TRS-80 Level II/III BASIC works similar to GW-BASIC/QBASIC. Many of the commands have the same syntax and file handling functions work the same way. If you tried to do that stuff on an Apple II or Commodore 64, you'd have to use the PRINT# statement to send cryptic command strings to a peripheral.

On the TRS-80, you just use LPRINT for printer output and file handing statements are pretty intuitive compared to the retardation of 6502 BASICs.

>>3238091
Microsoft developed a pretty much standardized core for their Z80 BASIC while 6502 BASICs were essentially customized by the licensee. For example, Level II BASIC doesn't have any particular machine-specific features other than SET, RESET, POINT, and MOTOR. Anyone who's used QBASIC will recognize a completely familiar set of commands.

http://www.trs-80.com/trs80-info-level2.htm

>>3238121
While true, most Z80 machines didn't have any bitmap graphics or sound, most were just text mode so there wasn't much special you could add to their BASICs.

"When Microsoft first produced a microcomputer version of BASIC, I initially had no reaction. The network at Dartmouth more than satisfied our needs, so I'd never had an occasion to use any microcomputer until 1983. Then I tried out an Apple II and when I first got a look at its BASIC, I almost vomited. We'd originally designed the language [back in 1965] as a structured teaching tool. The numerous microcomputer versions were a complete mess and nothing like how BASIC was supposed to be. None of them had anything resembling structured programming and all of them were completely different and totally non-compatible with each other."

-- John Kemeny

Nice thing about Commodore machines is no DOS disks. Just plug the drive in and it works. The shit's all self-contained.

>>3238167
I'm going to take a gamble and assume the original reason for the ROM DOS on Commodore disk drives was because the PET only had 32k of memory while the Apple II and TRS-80 had 48k, so with less space for a RAM-resident DOS, it made more sense.

>>3238180
It could have been, but Commodore also had a huge fuckton of different disk drives not just 1-2 types like most computers so imagine needing 250 different DOS disks for a 4040, 2040, 2031, 8050, 8250, 8280, 1541, 1571, 1581, and probably some I forget.

>>3238192
The nice part also being that all of those drives work on any Commodore machine (though for PET stuff you'll need an IEC -> IEEE adapter or vice versa).

>>3238192
Why did they have this many disk drives anyway? It's autistic.

>>3238465
>a series of 8-bit computer accessories from the eighties is autistic

I guess they do lack the ability to build a mental model of other people, but that's really the word I'd use.

There were at least 12 different production model floppy drives produced for 8-bit Commodore machines, not counting sub-models and variants of each. Other drives were planned but never progressed to sale or beyond the prototype stage.

The rarest production disk drive is probably the 8061/62 8" line. These are either single or double sided and can read IBM 3740 disks in addition to their own GCR format. When formatting a 3740 disk, only 220k is supported, but native mode GCR nets 750k per side. The double sided 8062 thus provides a total of 3.2MB of storage between its two drives.

There was also the 8280 which came a bit later and which has half-height drives. These are double sided and store 1MB total (500k per side), also able to read IBM 8" formats.

>>3238536
>>3238520
I should add; these things are _incredibly_ heavy. Indeed there was a time once when floppy drives were not little tiny 3.5" drives that weighed like 2 pounds.

Don't have a picture, but apparently there was also an 8060 single drive variant of the 8061.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIxoMSOtBB0
The Silpheed demonstration disk for the PC-8801 series. Look like they advise to play this game on 8MHz models (PC-8801MH/FH). Also, they do mention the CSM mode of the OPN chip in the little presentation.

>>3239159
According to this guy, PCs have been scrapped at a freaking huge rate compared with 8-bit home computers due to the notion of them being an appliance like a refrigerator.

>>3238536
>>3238520
Apparently these things did not support formatting IBM disks in ROM. If you format a disk with OPEN15,8,15:PRINT#15,"I:DISK1":CLOSE15, it will just use its native GCR format and there was a utility disk provided which has a separate formatter program for IBM disks and also a copy disk utility.

The utility programs I assume are written for the PET, but could probably work on any Commodore machine with a few mods.

>>3238536
>>3238520
Apparently these things did not support formatting IBM disks in ROM. If you format a disk with OPEN15,8,15:PRINT#15,"N:DISK1":CLOSE15, it will just use its native GCR format and there was a utility disk provided which has a separate formatter program for IBM disks and also a copy disk utility.

The utility programs I assume are written for the PET, but could probably work on any Commodore machine with a few mods. Also I'm not sure if the IBM support requires hard sector floppies; the mention of the 3740 seems to imply that.

>>3238536
>>3238520
The IBM support is interesting given that there were a bunch of other commonly used 8" formats such as DEC and Hewlett-Packard, yet they chose that one particular thing to support.

>>3240007
It's more likely that Commodore used IBM equipment for data entry and other work so they equipped the drives with support for it. If they'd used PDP-11s, you can bet the 8261 would support DEC disks instead.

>dig out some 5.25" disks I have in my stash of stuff
>one has this odd dark coloration on the disk jacket similar to a sweat stain on clothing
>what the fug? they've been kept safe and secure inside a box.
>do a little research on this particular brand (CDC Storage Master)
>mfw

THAT WAS MY IBM XT'S BOOT DISK.

>>3240161

Well, too bad, shit happens. Also
>nurutu
Get yourself some better reaction pics next time.

>>3240189
>>3240161
What happened?

>>3240216

>>3240241
>>3240236
>>3240161
One thing you could do is rotate the disk in the jacket by pushing the hub with your fingers and see if the media has any damage like he describes. If it looks ok and there's no mildew or peeling/flaking stuff, I wouldn't worry. Still, the problems they mention with CDC disks give pause for thought.

At least I didn't try to read those disks in my PC first. Generally if something looks abnormal, it probably is.

At least I didn't try to read those disks in my PCs first. Generally if something doesn't look right, it probably isn't. And I will try the trick he mentioned to see if my XT boot floppy is ok. The visible part seems fine, but I wonder what's with the part under that dark stained area of the disk jacket.

If your disks are toast, Ebay usually has 5.25" media though a lot is probably leftover stock from 25-30 years ago since I don't know anyone but Athena who still produce new 5.25" disks.

>>3240281
OH JESUS MOTHER OF GOD, STOP USING NARUGAY REACTION IMAGES.

>>3240356
>Narugay

Hey, >>3240281, keep on doing it. I love it when /a/spies get analblasted.

I'm going to take a photo of the disk in question later and upload it so I can show you what I'm talking about.

The Atari MegaST arrived, fully working, with a (cracked) Cubase copy. It's a Mega 1 so it only has 1MB of RAM, but it still has the blitter and I like the way it looks.
I'm gonna get some softs and games that support Hi Res monitors.

>>3240406

>/a/spies
Not him but norauto hate isn't only an /a/ thing, and posting reaction faces based on that show is something you'd expect from a gaia user not really a 4chan one. It still doesn't make answering with an all caps message like the other anon did ok though.

Apparently my sucktastic camera isn't able to capture the darkened area on the disk jacket, but I looked at the other disks in the box and none of them have it, just my XT boot floppy (DOS 3.3 is on there if you're wondering). The disk at the top of the pic originally had some WordPerfect tutorial junk on it, now home to PC Man and Dig Dug. For a duplicator-grade floppy used to distribute commercial software, it's rendered yeoman service.

And yes, these are genuine quad density disks even though on a PC, you're only using them at 360k.

>>3240527
>Not him but norauto hate isn't only an /a/ thing, and posting reaction faces based on that show is something you'd expect from a gaia user not really a 4chan one
Didn't Moot once sticky a Naruto GIF on /a/ to torture them?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1984-Macintosh-512K-Model-M0001W-Fat-Mac-Keyboard-Mouse-Non-upgraded-Serviced-/141997556037?hash=item210fb6c145:g:n4UAAOSwADNXPPLp

>512k Mac
>$999
>early mac so can only read 400k disks
>$999
>6 WATCHERS

How the fuck? I bought mine for like £60

This was a bit I found on a forum someplace.

"My experience with CDC media was less than edifying and what's more, Radio Shack used to purchase tons of the stuff because the expansion unit for the [TRS-80 Model II] used CDC disk drives. I remember an episode where several crates of diskettes stored in a non-air conditioned warehouse near the company's main offices in Fort Worth succumbed to the Texas summer weather. The floppy media all turned into oozing, blobby goo inside the disk jackets."

>>3240527
>Gaia
Is this 2002?

>>3240753
This board IS /vr/ :^)

>>3240757
Anything that happened in 2002 isn't retro by the board rules however. :^)

>>3240761
Mods are asleep, post Power PCs :^)

>>3208435
One thing to watch out for as well - PC floppy controllers utilize the Disk Change line which most 8-bit computers don't. Some drives had a switch to disable it for non-PC machines, but it became increasingly rare after 1995. In addition, some high density drives may get confused at the lack of a density selector signal.

The Drive Ready line is actually a rudiment left over from 8" floppies; since full-height 8" drives are always spinning as long as power is applied, the Ready line simply signals whether there's a disk present in the drive. The controller also periodically scans each drive present to see if its status changed.

On the original IBM PC floppy controller, either an NEC D765 or Intel 8272 FDC chip was used. Since these chips were designed for 8" drives, which are always spinning, IBM simply rigged the controller to always put the Ready line high and the drive select outputs are not wired to anything, so the scanning function of the FDC does nothing. The Ready function was taken care of by attaching a timer to the controller board, which checks if a disk operation hasn't been completed in a second, in which case the drive is issued a reset signal.

When the IBM AT was introduced along with high density floppies, IBM switched to an Intel 82077/8477 controller which among other things adds the Disk Change function (note that Disk Change is found only on high density drives; no DD drive has it). When you remove or insert a disk in a 1.2MB or 1.44MB drive, it sends the controller a signal to inform the computer and resets the drive by rocking the heads slightly back and forth. This is also why floppy drives on a PC make a loud grinding sound when accessed with no disk present; the drive moves the heads back and forth several times before giving up.

If you install a 360k/720k drive in a 286+ PC, the Disk Change line is ignored since those drives can't use it. Also note that 286+ BIOSes always reset the drive if an error occurs, but 8086 BIOSes do not do this.

>>3207694
That head looks like it was badly photoshopped on. It just looks so out of place and weirdly angled

>>3240574
When an auction like that has watchers they are usually just staring in awe at the seller's retardedness and waiting to see if anyone actually buys it for keks.

>>3241445
http://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-TRS-80-MODEL-III-LOW-SERIAL-1081-RADIO-SHACK-COMPUTER-TANDY-26-1062/301950975462?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D35389%26meid%3D44454c08b73847b38f876a73fda1c009%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D2%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D162060766099

Someone actually bought this TRS-80 with a blown CRT. I don't believe it. I don't fucking believe it.

8" drives can be replaced with a 5.25" 1.2MB drive fairly easily. You will have to build a 50 -> 34 pin adapter and also a converter to supply the 1.2MB drive's power requirements which are somewhat different from 8" drives.

As things would have it, 5.25" 1.2MB drives are fully electrically compatible with an 8" controller - the rotation speed (350 rpm) and bitrate (500 kbps) are the same. This is in fact because when IBM first introduced the 1.2MB drives on the AT, they produced what was essentially a scaled-down 8" drive.

For 3.5" drives, that will be trickier because they spin at 300 rpm, not the 350 required by 8" controllers. Supposedly a 3.5" drive on an 8" controller will do weird things like only write half a track on the disk and leave the other half blank.

>>3240829
From the info I found, the Disk Change issue may not be a problem. I've heard of people retrofitting TRS-80s with 1.44MB drives and the lack of a Disk Change line caused no apparent problems.

Since TRS-80s use a double density controller, this is expecting a 300 rpm rotation speed, which is what 5.25" DD and all 3.5" drives use. 5.25" HD drives (as noted above) spin at 350 rpm so aren't compatible with a TRS-80 controller.

>>3237472
>Would also have to upgrade the RAM though and not sure how easy it would be to find the correct chips

Model IIIs use 4116 chips which are 4k. The base cassette model has four of them for 16k and you'll need another 10 to max it out to 48k.

>>3237472
>Would also have to upgrade the RAM though and not sure how easy it would be to find the correct chips

Model IIIs use 4116 chips which are 4k. The base cassette model has four of them for 16k and you'll need another 8 to max it out to 48k.

>>3241527
http://www.jameco.com/1/1/2199-4116-15-dynamic-ram-16kx1-150ns-dram.html

I'm shocked you can still buy these. I assumed the last one was made in 1985.

Does Manfred Trenz work at Black Forest Games now?

What European/American-developed game did the best job at imitating anime in terms of artstyle?

>>3241445
Maybe. I just don't understand it - you can buy a broken one and fix it for $80-150 max. Macs are surprisingly tenacious machines.
>>3241448
Probably a collector. It'll probably just be displayed on some shelf.

>>3243001
>Maybe. I just don't understand it - you can buy a broken one and fix it for $80-150 max. Macs are surprisingly tenacious machines.
Apple had pretty good quality control pre-2000s; most of their machines were made from high quality components which resulted in equally high prices.

>>3243008
Yeah, that's true. I guess also most of them weren't meant to really push technology as such - at least not hardware technology- and so are relatively simple.

>>3241531
A lot of this stuff stays in production for robust/embedded systems. More modern ICs are too fiddly and fragile (and expensive) for industrial control systems and microwave ovens and the like.

>>3243239
Uh huh. Whereas PC SIMMs are generally discontinued from production after a few years since nothing else can use them.

>>3241503
>5.25" HD drives (as noted above) spin at 350 rpm so aren't compatible with a TRS-80 controller
Don't they slow down to 300 when a DD disk is accessed?

Commodore 64 or Apple II. Which computer is better overall and which one is better in the following categories?

Graphics
Sound
Price
Durability
Expandability
Performance
BASIC Programming
Gaming Library
Business Library
Keyboard
Open architecture
Design / Appearance

>>3243249
Apple II has the better application library (AppleWorks destroys anything ever made for a Commodore machine)
Apple II has the better gaming library in the sense that it's higher quality and has a _lot_ less shovelware. On the other hand, when a game exists for both machines, the C64 version is almost always better.
Apple II has better expandibility and open architecture; it doesn't rely on proprietary ICs and interfaces.
Price is irrelevant; the two computers came out 5 years from each other and hardware prices dropped significantly during that time.
Design/appearance? You can set your disk drives, monitor, or both on the Apple II.
Graphics: In most regards C64 wins easily but the Apple II's bitmap graphics are better suited for some tasks (eg. Sierra adventures most of which were never ported to the C64)
Sound: Not even a contest

Since there's several different models of Apple II while there's just one C64...

>>3243249
The Apple II actually came with an assembler and monitor.

>>3243249
>Open architecture

It doesn't exist, or at least it wasn't a thing back then with commercial machines. Both architecture had expansion ports (though the Apple II had more than one while the C=64 only had it's user port) and had documentations about it in the computers' respective user manual, but you're not supposed to clone them.

>>3243268

>it doesn't rely on proprietary ICs

Later Apple II models did. And no the Apple II isn't an "open" architecture.

>>3243249
Graphics: C64 easily. The Apple II just uses a TTL circuit for its video and completely relies on NTSC artifacting for color.
Sound: C64 easily
Price: C64 was a LOT cheaper than the Apple II
Durability: The cheaper price of the C64 did come at...a price. Apple II wins this one.
Expandibility: Apple II easily. Internal expansion slots and industry standard RS-232 ports.
Performance: Apple II. C64 is a slug performance-wise and the disk drives are even worse. Custom Apple DOSes gave a significant performance boost.
BASIC programming: Both machines have the same BASIC core, but Applesoft actually has functions for the sound and graphics hardware.
Gaming library: More debatable. Both machines had tons of games covering all genres.
Business: Apple II easily. 80 column text, usable CP/M support, faster disk drives, and AppleWorks.
Keyboard: Seems about same to me, but at least the C64 has function keys
Open architecture: Both machines had all their specs fully documented and published, but the Apple II didn't use proprietary ICs.
Design/appearance: Apple II. It looks more business-like.

>>3243289
You weren't supposed to clone the IBM PC either, but...

>>3243270
>Since there's several different models of Apple II while there's just one C64...

I think he means the 8-bit Apple IIs, not the Apple IIgs which is an Amiga-class machine.

>>3243298

Yes, and the IBM PC isn't an "open" architecture either, look at how the early clone manufacturers that didn't brother reverse engineering the BIOS got stomped (Tulip for example). The same thing happened to Franklin when Apple found out they were copying their ROM (the only thing they could protect because they only used off-the-shelf components).
If the PC division of IBM wasn't out of time and budget they would have poured some custom chips here and there, as well as an in-house CPU.

>>3243249
>Graphics
>Sound
C64 wins easily. You just can't compare a TTL video circuit and bleeper sound to dedicated sound/graphics chips.
>Durability
Apple II. It does seem that C64s are more fragile than Apple IIs although reliability got better after 1983.
>Expandability
Apple II. While it wasn't the first computer with expansion slots (that would be S-100 machines) it was the first that was reasonably priced. Also since Apple IIs were widely used for utility purposes or in schools, there exists many odd, interesting peripherals for them.
>Performance
Both same CPU so this isn't a contest.
>BASIC Programming
Apple II because you can actually do graphics without hundreds of inane POKE commands.
>Gaming Library
C64 is better at action/arcade however the Apple II was the go-to platform for adventures and RPGs, many of which series originated there. Also the Apple II ruled educational software without a contest.
>Business Library
Apple II
>Keyboard
They're about the same.

>>3243309
The reason the IBM PC was cloned successfully is for the simple reason that it uses vectored interrupts. It was very hard to clone an Apple II system ROM successfully because it had fixed ROM addresses while on the IBM PC, BIOS calls use a vector table so they can point to anywhere. Result being that it was simple to produce a workalike BIOS without actually copying IBM's code.

>>3243317
>Both same CPU so this isn't a contest.

Not really, the C=64 use a 6510, not a 6502, but the only difference is the addition of a few I/O ports.

>>3243320

Yup. Also, like said earlier, in later Apple II models did use custom chips (basically putting a bunch of TTL chips that have the same purpose into one bigger chip I guess), in order to make it harder to clone.

>>3243249
Sound/graphics: C64 easily. Apple IIs can't touch the SID for sound unless they have a Mockingboard and not really even then.
Price: C64 easily. Apple have always charged $$$ for everything.
Expandibility: Apple easily
Performance: Same CPU but C64 is 20% slower due to contention between the CPU and VIC-II
BASIC: Both BASICs are mostly the same as far as features and command syntax, but the Apple II actually has proper graphics support. On the other hand, Commodore BASIC has bitwise logic which Applesoft doesn't. The editor in Commodore BASIC is better.
Gaming: C64 easily
Business library: Apple II easily, especially the //e and IIc
Open architecture: Apple II easily
Appearance: Apple II

The Apple II came out 5 years before the c64 so it's hard to compare them. I think comparing it to a Commodore Pet would be more fair, but a stock Apple II versus a stock c64 would bow down to the c64 in the sound and game department. However, the Apple II was a much more professional looking machine, a tool really with 8 expansion slots, whereas the c64 was seen more as a toy. I think it was even sold at toys r us so it was actually marketed as a toy. Both computers hold a special place in history. I mean the c64 was the best selling computer of the 80s. However, because I've never really used an actual c64 I can't objectively call one the winner. The Apple II is an extension of who I am so I'll just leave it at that.

IMHO, design counts for a lot. The C64 really was designed to be a capable home computer. So was the Atari 8 bit series and other machines. Many of those design decisions came down to a consumer view vs a user point of view, and they had a profound impact on how the machines played out.

When it came to business software, there was no contest here. The Apple II had usable CP/M capability, standard RS-232 ports, faster disk drives (further improved by third party DOSes), 80 column text, and a larger, better quality library of applications.

In terms of scientific uses, test measurement, industrial automation, data logging, sensors, interfacing to control systems, I/O, higher end graphics output, plotting, CAD design, etc... an Apple 2 could be fitted with great devices, in the box, and supported as in the box things, due to how the system ROM was written. A C64 just didn't have any of that design vision incorporated into it since Wozniak had originally designed a computer for hobbyists like himself who could use it as a multipurpose tool rather than a consumer product. Apple II computers were used as development computers regularly too, this due to effective storage capability, robust programming tools and the ability to interface to development type hardware as needed on cards.

It was common to actually just buy cards that had some basic addressing setup, perhaps a PIA chip, and then just assemble to suit. Happened all the time. Doing this on an Atari or C64 machine was possible to a degree, but limited by the complex system design and lack of standardized, easy to implement interfaces beyond the game ports, and or Parallel / Serial port options the machines had.

>>3243338
>Doing this on an Atari or C64 machine was possible to a degree, but limited by the complex system design and lack of standardized, easy to implement interfaces beyond the game ports, and or Parallel / Serial port options the machines had.

Didn't the C=64 had a well documented user port though?

>In terms of scientific uses, test measurement, industrial automation

Commodore did produce machines for that purpose -- most PET models (and all CBM-II ones) had an IEEE-488, which was an industry standard for digital scientific and measurement devices communication. The C=64 could also use this bus with an adapter.

Most of the Apple II's design stems from Wozniak's attempts to develop low-cost, effective solutions to things that would have been extremely expensive in the 70s. The Disk II in particular was universally praised for the ultra-simplistic design (four ICs on the floppy controller board and six on the card) that managed to get more storage space than much more expensive FM/MFM floppy controllers. In fact, so much that Commodore stole the Disk II's GCR encoding and used it in a slightly modified form on their disk drives.

The Disk II is just an amazingly simple, efficient, and cheap design compared to Commodore's disk drives, also far, far more reliable. Woz managed to do a lot more with the constraints of 1970s technology than Commodore or Tandy did on the PET and TRS-80 Model I which were cheaper to buy, but which lacked sound hardware or bitmap graphics, didn't have expansion slots, and also neither were as reliable or well-built as the Apple II.

Apple needed the expansion slots because in order to compete you had to expand the machine with a sound card and/or CPU accelerator at the least.

In a modern day context, I honestly don't see why anyone would own an Apple 2 other than playing about with homebrew hardware addons.

The games for the most part are shockingly bad, in practically all cases the Atari and C-64 versions are better by miles.

The best thing going for it was much quicker disk speed than Atari or Commodore - but it's like going to a quality restaurant vs McDonalds. McD's will serve you a meal in under 2 minutes, but it won't be an experience worth remembering.

>>3243370

The PET did have some unpopulated ROM sockets, so I guess you could make some kind of expansion out of these.

>>3243372

The games on the Apple II might not be as good looking as Commodore and Atari ones, but it did have some really good games.

>>3243370
Importantly, the Apple II came out in 1977 when the personal computer industry was in its infancy. Nobody except electronics hobbyists was involved with it and the whole thing was still pretty much experimental at that point. The idea that a computer could actually be an appliance you'd have in your home like a refrigerator was just an idea people were toying with back then.

Whereas the C64 came out in 1982. Things were a lot different then. The personal computer and video game industries were big business, computers had become a mainstream, normalfag thing, there was a real software industry by then, and also the IBM PC had already been out an entire year. The C64 was designed for a specific market and to compete with specific enemies (ie. Atari and Texas Instruments). The presence of a cartridge slot and arcade game-friendly hardware very much proved what it was intended to go for.

>>3243383
>>3243372
The Apple II is a great platform if you like classic RPGs. Ultima, Wizardry, Might and Magic, Wasteland, The Bard's Tale, all originally released on the Apple II. They may not be the prettiest versions, but they're very playable. You have to remember that the Apple II was half a decade older than the C64.

>>3243372
I disagree on all points. The Apple II had these expansion slots before it had to compete with other 8-bit machines.

The games are shockingly good, actually, excellent playability and analog controls. Many new genres were pioneered on the Apple II first, and then ported.

It is this quick and reliable disk access that propelled the Apple II into the world of business and science. It does no good for gamer or professional alike if you cannot store and retrieve your information. To do it quickly is like bonus points.

As for disk storage, the Atari 800 and TRS-80 Model I had single density floppies with puny storage capability. The 1541 had a comfortably large storage capability, but was so godawful slow, loud, and unreliable. The Disk II however had decent capacity at 140k and was reliable as hell. They were better at surviving the torturous copy protection schemes that often fucked 1541 and Amiga drives beyond repair. Also Disk IIs don't weight 250 tons like a 1541 or Atari 810/1050.

>>3243395
>The Apple II is a great platform if you like classic RPGs. Ultima, Wizardry, Might and Magic, Wasteland, The Bard's Tale, all originally released on the Apple II. They may not be the prettiest versions, but they're very playable. You have to remember that the Apple II was half a decade older than the C64.

That the Apple II's design could complete against a later generation was testament to its design. Consider that the Apple II has much much more in common with the dedicated pong-style units and very early arcade motherboards, single-board hobbyist computers like the KIM-1, or the IMSAI and Altair S-100 bus systems; than it does with a C64 and A800.. Individual TTL logic, being the key point here. No custom chips.

Once you get into custom chips, the hardware starts closing up and complexity slows things down. Look what happened to the Amiga. This is a system that collapsed under its own weight seemingly. The machine had great specs on paper, and by all rights and means it should have been able to do arcade-perfect ports of many earlier games. But the damned thing was buried under bloated and buggy firmware trying to manage those custom chips.

We didn't see this problem on the C64 or A800 because the custom chips weren't complex enough. Not yet. They were still simple and "bare metal enough" to be an aid as opposed to a hindrance. The 6502 still had a good level of authority at the clock-cycle level. Now look at the Amiga camp - you had all sorts of shit going on on the bus. Too much police in the street not communicating with each other. The city traffic slows down while each cop radios to base for instructions. Too much "unrelated-to-what-you're-working-on" code has to be executed

>>3243415
While the likes of this complexity had never been seen in a toy computer before it was still badly implemented, it was only good for advertising fodder and niche applications. These custom chips needed a lot of CPU overhead to keep them sync'd. Now imagine throwing a memory management chip in there (onboard later 68xxx processors), how the fuck can anything get done? The system had barely enough power to boot itself! Oftentimes my shitbox Apple II would outperform the Amiga in untold number of instances.

In contrast, look at the 1st MAC systems. The same philosophy of the II applied. Do everything with basic hardware. Allow efficient bus usage and let the application data flow unhindered. In that environment software can work magic.

Thank god the C64 & A800 didn't bloat up like these early 16-bit machines. Same thing with the VCS, it has a custom chip, the TIA, but it is a low-count simplistic beast not weighing anything down.

One other point. All hardware on the Apple II connects directly to the expansion slots/CPU with no interference from the system ROMs/OS. It's as near to a bare metal computer as could possibly exist. This is the big difference between the Apple II and the Atari 800/Commodore 64/IBM PC.

Macintosh is a great computer.

Prove me wrong.

Back in the day, you could buy an Atari 800 or Commodore 64 in a department store and it was usually set up on display with a game running. Apple IIs were generally sold in dedicated computer stores and advertisements for them often emphasized business/utility/programming tools. The Apple II had very fine Pascal and C compilers which were faster and better than anything on the Atari or C64.

Since in this day and age we only tend to think of 8-bit computers in terms of gaming prowess, we tend to forget that the Apple II targeted a different market and was used for a much different set of tasks than the Atari or C64,

>>3243390
>Importantly, the Apple II came out in 1977 when the personal computer industry was in its infancy. Nobody except electronics hobbyists was involved with it and the whole thing was still pretty much experimental at that point. The idea that a computer could actually be an appliance you'd have in your home like a refrigerator was just an idea people were toying with back then.
those early adopters pioneered many computing niches, not just gaming. The Apple ][ was built to exploit those, right along with enough capability to deliver a reasonable home computing experience.

The masses that came later saw games and other things, which built demand. The VCS was there too, showing everybody what a TV game was and that was all exploited by the future machines, A8, C64, with titles like "Star Raiders" selling machines cold. What sold Apples? Education, and Visicalc.

>>3243415
>Once you get into custom chips, the hardware starts closing up and complexity slows things down. Look what happened to the Amiga. This is a system that collapsed under its own weight seemingly. The machine had great specs on paper, and by all rights and means it should have been able to do arcade-perfect ports of many earlier games. But the damned thing was buried under bloated and buggy firmware trying to manage those custom chips.

That's not that at all. The Amiga was pretty good at what it was supposed to do. It had some decent ports of arcade games that came out 2~3 years after it (R-Type for example) as well as pretty good exclusives (F/A-18 Interceptor and Hybris). Also, demomakers made some great use of the custom chips, which proves that they're not a hinderance but are actually quite useful.
The thing is most Amiga games back then were actually ST ports -- it's not that the hardware was unusable, it's just that they had to rush the developement and try not to use Amiga-specific hardware as much as possible so they could release it quickly.

I love my A8, but the Apple II will forever be more of a "serious" computer to me than any of the other 8-bit computers. It was expandable. It could do 80 columns. And, it had no dedicated graphics or sound chips. It was a general purpose computer, not a game machine with built-in BASIC and an expansion port.

>>3243449
>the Apple II will forever be more of a "serious" computer to me than any of the other 8-bit computers.

Actual CP/M boxes excepted.

The Apple II's analog joysticks do make gaming a different experience than the A8 or C64. Especially try Karateka or Choplifter on the Apple and then try it on the C64. The feel and playing strategy becomes quite different. Also the analog Apple sticks were better for flight simulators.

Or try Robotron. Again, the Apple port is a considerably different playing experience than on the A8 or C64.

As a fan of both, and from a purely gaming perspective, I think the Commodore 64 smokes the Apple. You can make any excuse you want about the Apple being released years earlier and not having dedicated graphics or sound chips, but I stand by the statement. The Commodore played better games period.

It also had games like Blue Max, Stealth, Beach Head II, Space Taxi, and other games I consider favorites. The Apple didn't. The list of "exclusive" Apple games I count as favorites is limited pretty much to Sabotage and Star Blazer, which was later ported to the Atari 800 as Sky Blazer anyway. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of Apple games that I like a lot. It's just that I can also play most of them (Lode Runner, Choplifter, Miner 2049er, Apple Cider Spider, etc) on other platforms. And they're often better on said platforms, even if only marginally.

This is only a fair comparison anyway when discussing the II+ and IIe which were more of the C64's contemporaries than the original II and its generic BASIC type-in games which is more comparable with the PET and TRS-80 Model I.

Gaming was one of the big things Wozniak wanted to do which led him to develop a clever, low-cost way of generating color graphics, also why the Apple II had a joystick port from the beginning.

The joystick port on the II/II+ was also literally designed to plug into an IC socket on the motherboard and it had sharp pins on it. Not very user-friendly, especially not child-friendly, but at a time when only electronics hobbyists had computers, it probably wasn't a big deal. Quite unlike the Atari 8-bit and C64 which were very much designed with the idea that they'd be sold in department stores and kids would use them.

Also nothing could beat the Apple II as far as displaying text.

>poke character into text RAM
>it displays on screen

That's it. I mean, the shit just werks. Quite unlike the Atari 800, Commodore 64, or IBM PC where you need to dick around with color/text attributes. Or God help us all, the Amiga which doesn't even have a true text mode.

So have any of you had to fix any retro computers?

>>3243459
Some people think the Apple II's analog sticks are a kludge compared to the digital Atari sticks, but I disgree.

Now lemme tell you the definition of a kludge, and that's the 1541 drive. Seriously, this bastard weighs 200 pounds and has a monster controller board running the entire length of the case. This is in comparison to the all of 10 ICs that the Disk II uses. Even the original IBM PC floppy controller is a much, much simpler design than the 1541.

And it wasn't reliable. The 1541s had horrible alignment and overheating issues, granted mostly on the early models, because Commodore set it up so the head bangs against a stop when it reaches Track 0.

That doesn't even get into the bugs. The VIA chip in the 1541 had a bug that prevented it from operating reliably at its intended speed, so rather than fix the chip, Commodore instead reprogrammed the firmware to send out data at a super-slow transfer rate akin to breathing through a straw. Also the Save & Replace command in the 1541's DOS was bugged and unusable. Fastloaders on the 1541 were an even worse kludge.

>>3243506
The Apple II had fastloaders too, but in that case it was mainly to skip redundant error checking. It also takes advantage of the fact that the Disk II controller simply sends raw bits into memory with absolutely no processing.

Most third party DOSes on the Apple II were much faster at reading than writing disks and the latter was a problem never adequately worked around, but probably not seen as a big deal because most people want fast load times and a lot more reading than writing is done on a disk anyway.

When AppleWorks was introduced, it topped Lotus 123 on the sales charts. Look it up. Lots of people used the Apple II for business and I guarantee software sales were better for Apple II than for CP/M machines.

The IBM PC was newer, more advanced hardware than the Apple II, but it was also 3x more expensive and didn't have Apple's large, established software base in the early days. If anything, PC clones only decisively dominated after 1985. In 1982-85 though, the Apple II was still king.

It does seem that the C64 and Atari 8-bit are better supported by the emulation/retro computer community. There's no site like Atarimania or Gamebase 64 to comprehensively document Apple II software, also Apple II emulation is comparatively poor against Atari/C64 emulation, nor does it seem like it's as popular with demofags.

Apple IIs were used by the US military, NASA, and scientific laboratories. Some of the calculations needed for the Cassini probe were done on an Apple II (keeping in mind that NASA missions are often planned a decade before they launch).

On the other hand, the C64 was quite popular with ham radio operators. Maybe because a lot of them were old guys who found the C64's fat text easier to read, maybe because the SID was good at generating tones needed by amateur radio. Though apparently the TRS-80 was also popular with ham radio, so IDK.

>>3243541
Actually it's most likely because someone came up with a really good software solution for ham radio on the VIC-20 and then it was just ported to the C64.

>>3243537
So how about C64 versus Atari 800? How does this stack up?

>>3243693
C64 is newer by three years; I'd think in most regards that it's the better machine.

>>3243697
C64 has better all-around graphics capabilities as well as sound, but it has a fixed 16 color palette.

Atari 8-bit has a faster clock speed but weaker sprite capabilities which force the programmer to make extensive use of software sprites. It has a comparatively huge color palette, but fairly difficult to use.

That's about hardware. The rest is marketing. Atari made a lot of mistakes in this field and that's why many software titles wasn't ported to Atari.

>>3243708
>C64 has better all-around graphics capabilities
IIRC: The only thing commodore has over the 8-bit is the ability to display hires text and hi-res graphics in more colors (limited to 40x25 res). You also get 256 characters vs 128. You also have the ability in the 4 color modes to have one color change among 40x25 res. The multicolor text is good for somethings though.

On the atari 8bits: DLI's, the ability to locate data for any screen row in memory, 128 colors, ease to mix different graphics/text modes, and overscan capabilities trumps many of the above. DLI's and the ability to locate parts of the screen in any part of memory makes scrolling (especially parts of the screen) easier.

Commodore wins on the sprites for most games. There may be a few weird cases where PM's might be of advantage. It is really pain to get lots of different multicolored objects moving around on the Atari 8-bit.

I like pokey better for sound effects in many cases but that is probably a personal preference.

I'm going to look at a different aspect and say the Atari's BASIC was much better since it didn't force you to use POKEs for everything.

>>3243697
Not across the board. It only has 16 colors on a graphics chip three years newer than the ANTIC which has 256 colors.

Not to forget: The C64's CPU is clearly slower. Even if the sprite system saves cpu time. The A8 is real 1.7 times faster.

Particular when much screen manipulations are done (Rasters,DLI and or Screen routines. They are done while the screen is shown on the display. This is also the time where DMA from ANTIC steals CPU cycles. So, using Screen manipulations are not stealing as much cpu power as many people think, because during the VBI the cycles are still at the same speed.
Doing a command there, means having 1.7 times faster finished than on the C64.

The Atari 8-bit had a faster CPU and more colors which to me seems like its principle advantages here, unfortunately games rarely made use of all 256 colors. Once the Tramiels took over Atari, they were finished as a company. They had people proposing upgrades to the aging A8 hardware. There were definitely enhancements that could have been made. Still, both Atari and Commodore after 1985 mostly hitched their horse to the 16-bit machines.

One nice thing about the A8 versus the Apple II or C64 is that its DOS was considerably easier to use and more intuitive than having to type in BASIC commands to format a disk or look at a directory or delete a file. In a lot of ways, it was easier and better designed than MS-DOS (which didn't even have the dignity to prompt you before deleting a file).

>>3243719
Wasn't CBM BASIC V2 rushed?
It has almost nothing.

I think the Atari 800 was a nicely designed and well-thought out computer with a lot of attention to detail. The architecture was quite advanced for 1979 and above the level of most other microcomputers out at the time. It even added some innovations such as device names for the console, disk drives, printer, and so forth which later became a standard part of the IBM PC world. Also the original 400/800 were built like a tank.

The C64 doesn't seem to fit this description so much. They built it on the cheap, rushed it out the door, and early machines especially had many grievous hardware and software gremlins. However, cheap was always a Tramiel trademark.

Atari also tried to keep some of the A8's more advanced features a secret which prevented it from getting all the software support it deserved.

>>3243745
Not at all. Actually, it just used the same 1977-vintage BASIC as the PET, which unfortunately was quite outdated by 1982. The main reason for keeping it was cost reasons; it was only 8k so allowed the user of cheaper ROMs.

On the other hand, some argue that Commodore BASIC's lack of sound/graphics functions was a plus since it forced the user to learn machine language.

>>3243728
>Not to forget: The C64's CPU is clearly slower. Even if the sprite system saves cpu time. The A8 is real 1.7 times faster.
No it isn't. On a full resolution screen mode the A8 is 1.2 times faster than the C64 because the A8 loses a lot of clock cycles to the bitmap DMA and other stuff like DRAM refresh cycles, while on C64 all these DMA cycles are "invisible" to the CPU due to a 2 MHz bus system.

Also games like Rescue on Fractalus have very little screen animation so of course they run fast. Of course in those games also the resolution is often reduced which leads to more free DMA cycles, but this still doesn't give you full 1.7 times speed. Typically you would end up with 1.2 to 1.5 times C64 speed depending on which screen mode you use.

Even the English C64 magazine ZZAP!64 admitted that the Atari 800 was the better machine when compared to the C64.

Matthew Smith, one of the elite Spectrum programmers, said that the Atari 800 was better than the C64.

>>3243773
Based on technical specifications not applications. There's a big number of C64 games which are impossible to do on A8. For example, Maniac Mansion and most late PAL games like Creatures and Turrican. No way can you do Creatures on an A8. The C64's strengths are: Having colourful playfield, mixing hires and lores, big sprites, a lot of sprites and SID music of course. A game like Armalyte or Turrican is simply not possible on the A8.

>>3243760
That's so weird when you consider that the cheap, shitty C16 and Plus/4 had a more advanced BASIC than the C64.

>>3243783
In fact this was based on applications, one cited example being Dropzone which they acknowledged was much better on the Atari than the C64.

>>3243785
Plus/4 uses some elaborate bank switching schemes for its memory setup, however it also came out three years later when it was cheaper to implement that.

>>3243787
>ports
Bad comparison. In most cases, a port will be inferior to the original version of a game as it was designed around that machine's hardware and some things might not translate well onto other machines. Also ports in many cases were done in a half-assed fashion.

It's a common problem though. When comparing platforms to each other, people often choose the names they know from their own platform. But with this strategy you will not see the strengths of the other platform, you will only see it's weaknesses.

Anyway, I don't think that Dropzone C64 is much different to Dropzone A8.

>>3243797
Except that's not true when you consider the many Spectrum ports that were much better on the C64 or that the C64 and Amiga ports of Ultima easily beat the Apple II originals. Almost all Activision Atari 2600 games were much superior in their home computer ports.

>>3243804
>Except that's not true when you consider the many Spectrum ports that were much better on the C64

This is false and can be disproved off the bat by the numerous shitty Spectrum -> C64 ports. Most of these were rubbish because the programmer usually translated all of the original Z80 assembly language into whatever its equivalent 6502 instruction was without the slightest attempt at code optimisation.

And it got even better because they also converted the Spectrum graphics directly into C64 hi-res mode. You can always tell these games (Dizzy series, Nosferatu, School Daze to name some) because they have the same identical monochromatic graphics as the Speccy original even down to keeping the original 256x192 resolution.

>>3243818
Do you mean the lo-res mode?
i like it better than the hi-res mode, fuck non-square pixels

>>3243818
I agree with you. I've tried my hand at it before and trying to literally translate Z80 assembly language into 6502 is a mistake. The two CPUs are extremely dissimilar and nothing will kill performance worse than trying this. While it may seem like a handicap at first that the 6502 doesn't have 16-bit registers, in most cases if you know what you're doing, it's not difficult at all.

So basically the C-64 only comes third when compared to A8 and Spectrum?

>>3243837
>C64
>behind the Spectrum at all
hell no

>>3243837
No, not at all. All this proves is that a lot of ports were done in an absolutely horse crap way. Check out Creatures, Turrican, Armalyte, Enforcer, etc for examples of fantastic C64 programming that pushes the hardware to the limit.

The battle was always Commodore 64 vs Spectrum, Atari 800 was way above those.

>>3243848
Not for us Americans it wasn't. More like Apple versus the world. ;)

>>3243848
>The battle was always Commodore 64 vs Spectrum
LOL maybe for Bongland.

>>3243861
I'm not kidding. The ZX Spectrum was never even sold in North America (in its original form) and isn't even a footnote in computing history here.

You know both the commodore 64 and Atari 8 bit had similar resolutions, but have different ways of controlling colours. I am sure the C64 could display more on screen colours with colour mapping but was limited to 16 of them. The Atari's 256 colour palette was groundbreaking for 1979; nothing else at the time came close, in fact it was not surpassed until the Amiga six years later. PC compatibles didn't manage anything comparable until VGA arrived in the late 80s. Multicolour characters on the Atari was limited to 5 colours (5th colour with bit 7) with the 4 colours of the PMGs. Atari had a trick with DLIs and overlapping PMGs for more colous.

>>3243880
>The Atari's 256 colour palette was groundbreaking for 1979; nothing else at the time came close, in fact it was not surpassed until the Amiga six years later

Almost but the Plus/4 did have 121 colours in 1985. Also I should note that the A8 does have a huge colour palette, but it's very hard to use all of those colours in a game.

Alas, Atari shot themselves in the foot by not publishing all of the technical specs for the A8.

>>3243890
Except that the Plus/4 doesn't have any sprites and the TED chip steals quite a bit of DMA. Also having 121 colours does not beat the Atari 8-bit which already had 256, besides the Plus/4 came out the same year as the Amiga, so...