/vr/ - Retro Games

>>3355532
The PC-8801 looks pretty good if you ask me, be it the unit itself, the keyboard or the monitor. The mkII and later models do look good too, but the first model look the best though.

>>3355703
>Commodore 64 was the last non-PC/Mac platform to outsell either of those
Gives pause for thought.

Until very recently I hadn't realized that so many of the games I loved playing on my C64 came from the UK. I also never knew the machine had such a monster following in the UK.

But where was the machine a bigger success? In the US or the UK?

>>3356493
UK, definitely. The C64 enjoyed some early success in the U.S. but by around 1988 it was pretty much over for Commodore over there, as IBM clones had taken the computer market and Nintendo had taken the game market.

>>3356493
>>3356515
It was way more popular in the US during the early years, but was popular for a longer period in the UK.
The C=64 success in the US was so huge it crashed the market with almost no survivors (only Apple, IBM, Tandy, and a badly wounded Atari).
In the UK it mostly cohabitated with the Speccy (which was more popular if I'm not mistaken), BBC Micro/Electron and other machines.

The UK was in my opinion the main event as far as the c64 was concerned. The c64 was marketed differently in the USA. I think people in Europe, UK and Australia were more budget conscious then the Americans. At least initially, the c64 and dattasette combo were what sold the c64 in huge numbers because of the low price. Americans just didn’t go for the dattasette.

>>3356529
>It was way more popular in the US during the early years
In 1983-84, the C64 outside all other personal computers in the US. Apple II, TRS-80, Atari 8-bit, IBM PC, all of them.

>>3356530
>in Europe
Germany was the main market for the C64 in Europe if we don't count the UK, and disk-based games sold pretty well there. I'm pretty sure LucasArt adventure games and Ultima were pretty popular over there.

>>3356537
C64s were huge in the US during the mid-80s. Some schools had them in their computer labs along with Ataris, TRS-80s, and others, but Apple owned the school market back then.

Commodore ruled the UK for both the 8 and 16-bit generations. Only poor chavs had a Speccy and the Atari 8-bits never amounted to much here either.

>yfw the huge hero worship of Steve Jobs when he croaked
>yfw nobody cared when Dennis Ritchie died even though without UNIX and C, there would not be an OS X or iOS

Sure would have been nice if the C64 had had proper BASIC commands for sound and graphics functions.

>>3356619
on the good side, that made you learn assembly language faster. on, say, the Apple II where you had BASIC commands for drawing graphics, you had less motivation for that.

Also the VIC-II/SID were seriously powerful stuff and don't get me started on just how big a deal it was in 1982 to have a computer with 64k of memory out of the box, let alone for $600. back then, most computers had 48k.

>>3356619
At least it forced the devs to develop that kind of stuff in assembly language. Graphics and stuff in BASIC are pretty slow.

I thought there was a lot of love for the Apple II in the USA hence lots of homebrew/PD as well as commercial releases...probably more than the Atari I thought, clearly I was wrong.

>>3356638
The Apple II was expensive. My dad didn't know anyone who had one but he knew a bunch of people with C64s, Atari 800s, etc.

The Platinum //e is the best Apple II to have btw, it has all the bells and whistles like a 65C02 CPU, built-in numeric keypad, 128k of memory, bug-fixed ROMs, etc.

>>3356738
An enhanced IIe will run virtually all Apple II games. I don't think any games actually use the extra 65C02 instructions. Also most single-load games are <48k and will run on a II+. About 20 games can use the Mockingboard.

It seems that Apple II emulation is kind of shitty which doesn't make sense considering it's a much, much simpler computer than the Atari 8-bits or C64.

>>3356754
I've mentioned this before. AppleWin, the most prominent emu, isn't that great. Agat Emulator is the best one I've seen as of yet, it emulates the II as well as multiple Russian clones.

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

So how many games were released for the Apple II? When the IIgs was launched, Apple claimed about 10,000 software titles, but how many were games is anyone's guess.

>>3356761
Pretty much an inmeasurable amount. Over 10k is actually pretty likely. Aside from retail releases there were untold amounts of amateur releases, public domain stuff, personal games never released by the author, etc etc.

Same goes for most home computers of the period.

>>3356761
Off the record, the C64 can claim all that and more, but it depends on your definition of software. Do we include just commercial stuff or PD as well? It's easier to do counts for game consoles. For example, the NES/Famicom has about 1600 games total. This is made simple by the fact that there's only one system configuration for a console and also they do not have homebrew/PD titles.

>>3356761
10,000 is a fairly convincing number, but again, there's a big distinction between full-blown commercial games like Bard's Tale and Ultima, and homemade BASIC games traded around on a BBS.

Gamebase64 records 20,000 entries but many are dups, hacks of a game, etc. If we exclude those, we could perhaps assume 12,000 or so commercially released C64 games.

I've also heard that the Apple II had a lot of games which surprises me given the high cost of them. At least in the UK, the Apple II was a business computer far too expensive for the consumer market.

>>3356786
Not as much here. The computer gaming industry in the US was pretty much born on the Apple II.

As for Gamebase64, it lists 78 Electronic Arts games for the C64 but take away dups and actually EA put out 70 titles. Also the vast horde of Boulder Dash hacks/custom levels on there.

>>3356806
Just curious, but how many EA games came out for the Apple II as you suggest 70 is a low number. FWIW, Ocean had out around 90 C64 games, Activision about 80, Mastertronic about 130, System 3 about 10, etc.

>>3356814
I'm pretty sure just about every EA game on the C64 was also on the Apple II.

The Apple II was actively supported by the software industry ever since the Disk II was introduced in mid-1978. Having said that, it reached its zenith in the early 80s and by mid-decade, the C64 had displaced it as the Mecca of computer gaming, and a lot of games released from 1985 onward weren't even on the Apple II at all. If European games are also factored in, the C64's software library would be over 3x greater than the Apple IIs.

SSI, Broderbund, and EA were pumping out Apple II games right to the end of the 80s, but yes the C64 had definitely taken over by 1985.

The Apple II was a business computer in Europe and much too expensive to have at home. I only ever saw Apple II software for sale in London and only one shop with games.

Every region had its favorite computers, for example the MSX was nonexistent in the US and rare in the UK (where it got little other than shitty Spectrum ports) but quite popular in Europe and of course Japan. There's probably about 2000 MSX games (all models) which may seem small by C64 standards. Also how many Atari 8-bit games were there?

>>3356786
Generally not for GB64, there's one entry per individual game. However, the same game may get featured more than once if a) there were fundamental differences between the tape, disk or cartridge versions (see Congo Bongo, Zaxxon and Super Zaxxon) b) it was released in different (non English) languages c) it was released by different publishers in differing territories and there warrants a reason to double-dip.

Rough guess for C64 game releases is around 10,000 and probably more if continental Europe and Australia are counted. I also distinctly recall that Apple II game releases started dropping off after Reagan's first term and I'd never heard of any Apple game scene in Europe.

>>3356880

>>3356886
>>3356880
The weird part about that is that the Apple II's terminal decline started in 1983 if that ad is to be believed, but the IIe/IIc accounted for the vast majority of Apple IIs ever sold. There were only around 35,000 of the original II and about 120,000 of the II+, yet it seems they sold far more after the Apple II had passed its peak.

>>3356898

>>3355703
While true, the IIe was produced for a lot longer period of time than the earlier models, also I would imagine a rather disproportionate amount of Apple IIs from 85 onward were sold to schools rather than private consumers.

>>3356891
Still no real evidence that 16,000 Apple II software titles exist. I have about 2000 titles documented and with magazine type-ins and disk magazine publications, it's probably around 5000.

>>3356910
Yeah I think it was all magazine hyperbole. If that figure was true, we'd see way bigger online software archives than exist. Keep in mind that in those pre-Internet days, there wasn't any reliable way to track how much software was released for a given computer.

>>3356912
I'd say Americans are better positioned to answer that question than me. We saw bugger all of the Apple II in the UK and if any games existed here at all, they were probably PD.

It's important to set criteria.

Firstly, we can assume around 20-25 flight simulators were released for the Apple II. This is easy to document. Flight simulators are not one of the easier game genres to develop, especially on an 8-bit computer, and would have required professional programmers, so it's safe to assume no PD/shareware ones came out.

ow how many record keeping programs were there? Commercial, homebrew experiments, type-ins, public domain, educational, coursework.. Let us start with Appleworks and PFS. Do we include the add-on modules and disks as part of the package? Do we include different version numbers? 5.25 vs 3.5 issuances? What about graphing packages to digest data? Or sorting or printing add-ons?

What about art and paint stuff? Blazing Paddles, Deluxe Paint.. But what about the experiment where sumguy just polled the joystick for an etch-a-sketch like line drawing program? What about utilities that came with the Graphics Tablet?

And how about them Beagle Bros. Applesoft games? TextTrain for example? Is that a railroad game? A text demo? Is it an individual game or part of a compilation disk?

It's been years since I looked at the Bluebook, but didn't they list 10,000 titles in all? Not just games..

>>3356912
See that's where you're wrong, magazines from way back had the best resources, especially EG, with the most knowledgeable people Katz and Kunkel. Those guys knew their stuff, and the market worked with them. Better than GB64 which counts Boulder Dash screens from BDCK as entries.

But you're right, there should be an Apple II resource online like Atarimania or GB64, shame nobody bothered. Maybe it's too late now, a lot of software is probably lost.

>>3356923
I think you're giving them too much credit, and this is coming from a guy who was heavily influenced by EG. They were stand up individuals and a fine publication, but they were just as limited as anyone else in parsing through what was good info and what wasn't. Some things they got right, some things they didn't. Also, to be similarly fair, they weren't necessarily above doing the occasional advertorial/synergistic relationship, so we can't always say their stuff wasn't tainted a bit by dollars.

The Apple II absolutely needs a gaming-centric site like the ones you mentioned, but it seems like there's hardly any interest in retro computer collecting circles for the thing which is slightly mystifying considering how integral the Apple II was to computing history.

>>3356929
>>3356758
>>3356754
There is an Apple II collector community, but it's a bunch of autistic faggots similar to classic car collectors who disdain emulation and snub you unless you have exactly period-correct hardware.

>>3356923
>See that's where you're wrong, magazines from way back had the best resources, especially EG, with the most knowledgeable people Katz and Kunkel. Those guys knew their stuff, and the market worked with them
Sorry no, they might be knowledgeable but that doesn't magically give them the kind of resources required to keep an eye on everything being released even in just the USA. i'm still calling it as hyperbole because that figure can't be anywhere near proven.
>>3356929
>The Apple II absolutely needs a gaming-centric site like the ones you mentioned
Look at Games That Weren't, that pulls some far more obscure programs back from the "dead" on a regular basis so there's always hope. It just needs a group of people dedicated enough to the Apple II to actually do it.

>>3356937
Period correct hardware? New add-ons are being developed all of the time, and hardware is being tricked out regularly. Hardware is not an issue in the Apple II community, it's software, and specifically game software.

One thing that bugs me is that there's a lack of adequate programming resources for the Apple II online compared to the stuff available for the C64. For example, I can't find anything explaining how to do sprite animation that syncs up with the vertical retrace. Yes, a lot of games don't do that, but it's one of those autistic things to me where it bugs me if you get screen tearing. And the Mockingboard resources I found online only show hex opcodes for 6502 asm. Since I'm relying on emulation, I also can't be sure if any code I write would even work on a real Apple II.

I did some code examples for the Mockingboard, but whether it actually works outside of emulation is anyone's guess since it uses a sync technique that either does or doesn't work depending on the documentation you read.

>>3356943
I don't see anybody specifically being against Apple II gaming software, new or old. It just doesn't happen nearly as much as in other platforms.. Consider the C-64 and 400/800 and many consoles all have custom sound and graphics chips. Blitters, blobbers, bloobers, and blabbers. Co-processors and memory management silicon.. These chips make it fun and interesting (to programmers) to find tricks and shortcuts and undocumented features. The Apple II series has none of that.

As a side note regarding hardware. There is a "Theory of Operation" and code examples for the sync-wire mod. It's in a book whose title I don't remember at the moment. Anyone?

>>3356958
The hardware is irrelevant when it comes to making new games. Inferior platforms get new games on a more regular basis, and for that matter the Apple II only had a small window of a few years after release where it was the best gaming hardware on the market, yet it was still a major platform that other systems including Atari 8-bit and C64 received ports from. It's an odd thing how the Apple II has a lack of interest from retro computing collectors. Sort of similar to the TRS-80 CoCo although that was never a main computer gaming platform.

>>3356973
IDK, but the fact that Commodore was a big European thing and Apple wasn't could be a factor as well.

>>3356937
I'll give you an example of this autism:

>accidentally toast one of the 74LS chips on your Disk II by plugging in the controller cable backwards
>spend months looking for a replacement chip with a 1981 manufacturing date to be "authentic"

The Apple ][ is very Bare Metal, verses the C64/C128, or Atari 400/800/1200 or CoCo. There is definitely a bigger challenge to make decent "graphic" games.

>>3357006
In fact the CoCo is much more like the Apple II and it gives you very little to work with.

It should hardly come as a surprise that the Apple II was not a success in the UK; the bloody thing sold for £970! When you could buy a C64 for £245 or an Atari 8-bit for £299, Apple hadn't a chance.

>>3356954
VBLANK detection does vary between different models of Apple II. It's the same on the original II/II+ because the only real hardware difference between them is the presence of an extra TTL chip to produce 6 colors on the II+. For the later models, the IIe, IIc, and IIgs do have differences.

To be honest, I don't understand the reason for screwing around with the VBLANK on every Apple II model and in any case, I don't think most game programmers even bothered with it because it wouldn't work on every machine and also because the Apple II doesn't have hardware sprites/scrolling, so you really don't have enough free clock cycles to ensure the animation in a game syncs with the VBLANK.

>>3356929
I just suspect the Apple II isn't that fun to program compared with the C64 or Atari 8-bit.

>frame buffer graphics with artifact colors
>bleeper sound
>against VIC/SID/ANTIC/POKEY

>>3357056
And yet the ZX Spectrum has bleeper sound and frame buffer graphics but it has tons of fanboys still doing coding projects for it.

>>3357056
Also again, there's not a consistent way to sync the VBLANK on an Apple II the way there is on other contemporary computers. Your code has to be rewritten for every model of Apple II.

It requires overall more knowledge and programming skill to produce an Apple II game than it would a C64 or Atari game and if you had the choice, you'd probably just find the latter two easier.

One of the big handicaps with the Apple II is that they don't have any interrupts, so you can't multitask. Well, of course expansion cards can use the IRQ line, but nothing on the main system board does. You can't set pixels and have music playing at the same time for instance.

In short, the Apple II behaves more like a terminal or a homebrew kit computer than the C64 and Atari with their complex custom ASICs.

>>3357068
>>3356749
Actually the nice thing about the Mockingboard is that it does use the IRQ line so you can time your VBLANKs to it.

After trying to learn Apple II coding, I did find it a fair bit more difficult. Things that can be done easily on a C64 require you to jump through hoops on an Apple II.

So, which old platform(s) do you own? What do you play the most on it (or them)?

I would agree. Outside of low res/text mode stuff, Apple II game programming is a bitch. Any arcade game that gets decent, fluid animation and speed is a monument to programming skill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LQaKA6fB5s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqvle88pCGk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN6h_a5TrjU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKqk9kosCs4

>>3356923
I don't necessarily think gaming magazines are a good source for how much Apple II software was released. The main target audience for those magazines was teenagers and the quality of them was often not that good. "Serious" computer publications like BYTE and InfoWorld are a better source of information although of course they still were not without their flaws.

>>3356937
Another thing - Applefags for some autistic reason mostly hang out on Usenet and refuse to have a proper website along the lines of Lemon64 or AtariAge.

What weirds me out is the high number of Apple II Ebay auctions coming from estate sales. And it's generally divided among the socioeconomic bracket of the guy's estate.

>lower income
Hoard, pile, father's garage cleanout. All this is seems to be hand-me-downs left in a will or something like that. Junk heap, Basement cleanup, stuff. Typically a family member is left to dispose of this junk.
>higher income
Collection, coming from the estate of xxxxx, assemblage, selection, compendium, acquisition, offertory, repository, coming from the residence of, scarce find, rare, available for your consideration, a discovery in the estate of.. And so on and so forth.

Every now and then a huge estate collection shows up, acquired for free or low-cost by an auction service. And it appears none of this material will be scanned and uploaded to Asimov or likewise. All other classic micros have great scans of documentation and boxes. And Apple II has so little.

>>3357404
>Every now and then a huge estate collection shows up, acquired for free or low-cost by an auction service. And it appears none of this material will be scanned and uploaded to Asimov or likewise. All other classic micros have great scans of documentation and boxes. And Apple II has so little.
That is definitely a little weird considering the Apple II is so central to computing history and was made by a still-extant company unlike Commodore.

>>3357414
I told you, Applefags are hoarders/collectors who jerk off to low serial numbers.

I'm not kidding. These guys value low serial numbers above all else and original Apple IIs over the II+ and IIe even though the later models are far more useful. There have been original IIs selling for quadruple digit figures on Ebay.

Also for some reason, Apple II shit goes for more money if it was owned by some bigshot. Say if a NASA engineer owned a IIe, it will sell for triple the price of a IIe that was used by a local elementary school.

A lot of old-time engineers seem to like Apple IIs; it probably brings back memories of past accomplishments.

At a symposium I was at recently, someone offered me $5000 up front for one of my Disk IIs because it had a serial number in the triple digits even though there's no functional difference between it and my other Disk II with a six digit serial number. I turned the offer down, temping though it might have been.

>>3357427
>>3357404
It could be that Apple II owners are older and there could be a lot of retired engineers and scientists with them which explains the high number of estate sales. But IDK.

>>3357432
Well, maybe. A lot more people will have had memories of playing Jumpman on a C64 than they would plotting coordinates for a weather satellite or controlling a press at a Chevrolet plant. A lot of people also have memories of the Apple IIs in their school computer lab where you could play Reader Rabbit and Oregon Trail and not much else.

I think it's bullshit that the Apple II/II+ are almost entirely made of parts you could order from a Jameco catalog but Apple still felt the need to charge quadruple digit prices for them.

Come to think of it, has Apple _ever_ gone after the low end computer market? They seem to have always charged ridiculous prices from the beginning.

The thing is, Apple had been trying to get rid of the II ever since 1980. They tried with the Apple III, Lisa, the Mac, but nothing would work. By the mid-80s, they almost completely ceased advertisement for the Apple II line, but orders still kept on a-coming.

>>3357358
Applefritter is the closest thing around to something like that, but it's indeed rather slow compared to Lemon and AtariAge. There is an Apple II Enthusiasts group on Facebook that's very active. I've never bothered with Usenet but it's not too hard to get involved in the Apple community.

>>3357404
It's true that the Apple has a disappointing lack of preserved and scanned materials, particularly of disk-magazines and programming books. I don't know how Softdisk still expects people to pay $50 for a CD containing disk images of all their issues, but that's the only way to get them still.

>>3356619
the nice thing about BASIC is that it's a great tool to understand the very basics of assembly

there's no better way to understand what a memory location does than PEEKing at it and reading a manual at the same time

it's really useless as a serious programming language though

I remember this one archived comp.sys.apple2 post from the late 80s-early 90s with some dude complaining "We need updated versions of X software (forget what he was talking about), not more stupid games."

Now I could not remotely imagine someone on a Commodore group saying that.

It always nagged me that Apple IIs had at least three different major OS versions (DOS 3.2, DOS 3.3, and ProDOS) all of which are incompatible and use different disk formats. Nobody who used a C64 ever had to deal with that. Plug the disk drive in and it works. On any Commodore 8-bit (PET drives need an IEC adapter though).

The second stage's track (first stage on the master system version) of Aleste might be one of my favorite music of the game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6AG19bUPjQ (at 6:15)
Too bad they didn't support the MSX Audio standard too instead of only the MSX Music one, it would have allowed more custom patches instead of one at a time, as well as PCM sample playback.

>>3357974
Our family got a //e right around the time ProDOS came out. For all the software that passed back & forth before me, I don't ever recall having to deal with DOS 3.2. I'm not sure if I even came across it when my brother-in-law's family gave me all their Apple II stuff.

ProDOS was designed with with hard drives and large(er than the 144k 5.25") disks in mind. If you ever came across it, it was typically with applications like Appleworks. Games either continued to use DOS 3.3 or some proprietary loader.

is there anyone here who writes 6502 asm for the C64?

i recently wrote a small test to move two sprites around, it works but i'm not sure about the way i went about it

the routine to check for the joystick detection just doesn't feel right, it's about 19 lines of checking if certain numbers equal to $dc00

>>3360207
DOS 3.2 was only used by early stuff from 1978-80, so you're unlikely to ever run into that. It used a 13 sector 113k disk format and is not compatible with later versions.

>>3360207
The bigger multiload games usually are on copy protected disks with a custom DOS. A lot of pre-IIe application software also has a custom DOS (eg. Visicalc).

>>3360848
Also the controller ROM on the Disk II card was changed when they went to 16 sector disks which means that you can't boot from a 13 sector disk. To get around this, Apple included a utility called BOOT13 that lets you boot the things.

>>3360848
Little history lesson: The first publicly released Apple DOS was 3.1, introduced with the Disk II in the summer of 1978. There were no earlier versions as apparently the developers started with version 1 and kept incrementing the version number as they went along. A few months later, they fixed some bugs and came out with DOS 3.2, then 3.3 followed in 1980, after the new Disk II controller ROM was introduced.

Apple never did update DOS after that, apparently due to preoccupation with other projects like the Apple ///. When the IIe came out in 1983, ProDOS was introduced, but DOS 3.3 was still shipped with each computer for backwards compatibility. Like the other guy noted, ProDOS did not actually replace the older DOS, instead it was mainly there to support application software, 3.5" floppies, and hard disks while many games and utilities still used DOS 3.3.

The early Sierra adventures like WATP and Softporn Adventure were on 13 sector disks; they also require you format a blank save game disk under DOS 3.2 and they cannot save to a 16 sector disk.

>>3355297
I have a PS/2 Model 30 286 with a 486SLC CPU card, 200MB SCSI hard disk, and memory maxed out to 4MB. Even then, the thing is good as a basic productivity machine not a gaming rig. The little piezo speaker is also quite bad at game music. I think most ordinary 386/486 PCs would be superior at running late 80s-early 90s games.

Bottom line is, PS/2s are full of unobtainum proprietary junk and they're primarily designed as office, not home computers. Back in the day, you had to be afraid to use any non-IBM branded hardware/software with them. The irony is that the PS/2 mouse/keyboard connectors became an industry standard.

>>3356738
These came out in 87 and I'd assume most of them went to schools.

>>3356738
gee, it feels weird to see an Apple II displaying in anything but green

>>3360423
You can ask on Lemon64 if you need assembly language help.

Mousepaint for the Apple II, basically a baby version of MacPaint.

>>3362502
They had paint programs for the C64, but it's kind of hard to do that on a system with tile graphics. You really need bitmap graphics for it.

>>3362502
Looks just like Windows 3.1 Paintbrush.

>>3362620
Poor Woz. Must have been hard for him knowing that Apple management were plotting the Apple II's euthanasia back then.

Apple II games that can use a mouse:

Adventure Construction Set
Archon II (options screen only)
Arkanoid
Arthur
Balance of Power
Borrowed Time
Chessmaster 2000
Chipwits
Clue: Master Detective
Crossbow (can anyone verify?)
Dragon Wars
Destiny
Journey
METOO
Minesweeper (IIe mouse only)
Orge
Shogun
Summer Games
Tass Times in Tone Town
Universe II
Zork Zero

Commodore had two mice - the 1350 and 1351. The former is digital and works like a joystick while the latter is read off the paddle register and is a true mouse. The 1351 also has a joystick mode which you activate by holding the button down when the computer is powered on.

This is black crown a spanish pc game from 1991

Wait... you aren't intending to pirate it to play it, are you faggot?

Well, you're screwed because this game... is played with more than your computer.

>>3362667

Yes, it is also a tabletop game.

(Now your dick is wettening and I will say no more save for the fact that this game goes for 130 euro upwards)

>>3362663
As for games that support the 1351, a lot of puzzle and casual games mostly, also the small number of games with paddle support can use it.

>>3362667
>>3362672
Wow, I knew some computer games relied on items they supplied in the box (like Murder on the Atlantic on To7/70) but I've never seen a game going that far. How's the game itself?

>>3362386
i hate that forum though

>>3363093
You shouldn't have started a ZX Spectrum vs C64 flamewar on there.

>>3362336
>The little piezo speaker is also quite bad at game music
I'm pretty sure that the principal sound cards and MIDI controllers (AdLib, Soundblaster and Roland MPU-401) were available in an MCA version.

>>3363102

Why are retro computer enthusiast so adamant when it comes to wars? You'd think consolefags like Nintendo and Sega fanboys are the worse, but when it's all said and done, most of their shit is pure, blatant bullshit and nobody really takes it seriously. Sometimes they go into mild techno babble about comparing specs but they know that games is what matters the most, and that console wars are stupid.

But computer people are a totally different breed, they really care about the hardware more than the software and actually get serious about their arguments, I've seen people consider each other IRL enemies because of stuff like Spectrum vs C64, it's bizarre.

>>3364226
Spectrum users don't want to admit they got a shitty computer.
C64 users don't want to admit they just got a glorified game console, even though all they use it for is playing games.

>>3364241
wasn't the C64 originally gonna be a console

pretty sure that's what the VIC-II and SID was designed for

>>3364345
That's how they sold it in Japan -- as some kind of console-computer hybrid (well it was the Commodore MAX, but still, that's pretty much a C64 without the onboard ROM and with less RAM than even the VIC-20) but the Japanese users didn't like this prank and thus no Commodore computer ever sold in quantities in Japan after the VIC-20 (which was really popular in Japan). After that "incident", Commodore decided to sell a full-grown computer in the west instead, with 64k of RAM instead of a mere 2kB like with the MAX.

>>3364364
that's a damn shame because apparently notorious japanese programmers like satoru iwata got their start on commodore computers

it's the reason why he instantly "got" the NES

>>3364345
Nah that was the VIC-20 because its graphics chip was originally designed for arcade machines and terminals, but Commodore didn't find any takers so they instead decided to build a computer around it and also use up a giant pile of 2114 SRAMs they had laying around.

>>3364224
MCA sound cards are hard to find and expensive. Although it's a moot point here since the Model 30 has ISA slots.

>>3364241
>C64 users don't want to admit they just got a glorified game console, even though all they use it for is playing games.
My dad used FleetWriter on his. It was pretty advanced for an 8-bit WP. Had a spell checker and print preview even. Slow af though and doing word processing on a 40 column text TV screen isn't very nice.

>>3362336
The PS/2s introduced a couple of industry standards actually, including:

>1.44MB floppies
>VGA
>bidirection parallel ports
>mouse/keyboard connectors
>case/motherboard profile

>>3364570
Ah well then the PS/2 having a beeper is basically a non-issue for this machine, all PC clones (PC jr clones excepted) came with that stuff, and any ISA soundcards should do it.

>>3364565
>its graphics chip was originally designed for arcade machines and terminals, but Commodore didn't find any takers
Well it's normal for terminal manufacturers not to want to make 22-column terminals or arcade board designers not to use a chip that display stuff at a resolution barely higher than 160*120. Commodore making a home computer out of it was the best use possible for this chip.

>>3364592
>Ah well then the PS/2 having a beeper is basically a non-issue for this machine
It is if you run PC speaker-only games.
>Well it's normal for terminal manufacturers not to want to make 22-column terminals or arcade board designers not to use a chip that display stuff at a resolution barely higher than 160*120
The VIC I was designed in I think 1977 or 78 so it wasn't bad for that time.

>>3364608
>The VIC I was designed in I think 1977 or 78 so it wasn't bad for that time.
Still much inferior to the Apple II, though it relied less on NTSC fuckery to output more colors.

>>3364615
You wouldn't use an Apple II-style video circuit in an arcade machine anyway.

>>3364608
>The VIC I was designed in I think 1977 or 78 so it wasn't bad for that time.
For terminals it was. Most of the early video terminals had a 72~74 column display, and that was in the early 70s (70~71~72), and by the mid 70s 80 columns pretty much became the norm. While we can accept 22 column text for home computers, it's not something that is acceptable for terminals.

It always nagged me how Apple IIs could have 32 character file names and Commodore machines 16 characters+spaces but PCs had that damned 8.3 format for 14 years.

>>3364642
That's something that was inherited from CP/M. At least you wont have issues because of bad names when transfering files from an Amstrad CPC to a DOS PC then to an MSX.

>>3364641
>Most of the early video terminals had a 72~74 column display, and that was in the early 70s (70~71~72)
In color though?

>>3360976
Apple's marketing of the Apple II as a serious computer is a little funny considering Woz originally just wanted something he could play Breakout on. He even referred to Integer BASIC in his technical notes as "Game BASIC".

>>3356850
SSI released practically every game they had on the Apple II right up to 1990.

idk how anyone could play SSI gold box games or any CRPG from the 80s. they're insufferably dull.

>>3364735
Well, the high amount of disk access is pretty brutal. At least on the 8-bit versions; not on the PC or Amiga.

>>3364752
IDT you can even install the things on a hard disk with an Amiga since most of its games are on copy protected self-booting disks.

>>3364771
Most Amiga games are unplayable unless you got WHDLoad.

Must've been fucking awful when they made people pay for it.

>>3364735
>idk how anyone could play [...] any CRPG from the 80s.
Because even though you don't see anything fun in them that doesn't mean that they aren't enjoyable. I'm no expert in CRPGs, but there are people who say the same things as you about text-based adventure games, yet I find these pretty fun.

>>3364673
>Sacrificing between 58 and 110 columns of text for a few colors
What you want on a terminal is having a whole bunch of text, not having pretty colors. Those can be useful, but they come after the amount of text you can display.

>>3364771
Some games do run within Workbench, especially if they're puzzle/casual games, but action stuff nearly always was on a self-booting disk because it needs all available system resources and there isn't much to spare on an 8Mhz computer.

In the later years of the Amiga, it did become more common to have hard disk-installable games as they got bigger and you ended up with like 6-8 floppies per game.

>>3364804
That Amiga version of UFO Defense was quite horrible if you didn't have a hard disk or like 3 floppy drives.

>>3364752
Apple II games rarely have punishing disk access because multiload titles usually have a custom DOS and the "bare metal" nature of the Disk II means you can get some really brisk speeds compared with the much more sophisticated Commodore drives.

im impressed at how fun the MSX1 port of gradius still manages to be despite the limitations

they really put a lot of effort into it

>>3365348
That's because they got their priorities straight. The scrolling might not be perfectly smooth, but when you're playing, the vic viper respond to your command really well.
Anyway, the MSX version of Gradius II is great too, they did a good job by making original levels compared to the arcade version.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rare-Vintage-Radio-Shack-Tandy-TRS-80-Model-III-Micro-Computer/191924080253?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D37427%26meid%3D03722b1b83c346e4828e65948a1f2a62%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D2%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D232011686015

"Untested – I don’t know anything about this – Sellings As Is – For Parts / Repair"

You've got to be freaking kidding me. How hard can it be to plug it in and flip the power switch?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Atari-800-computer-48k-very-good-working-condition-/331900558051?hash=item4d46d09ae3:g:UnMAAOSwvg9Xevlq

>plugs it into a flat panel display

>>3356563
Implying Normie's know who Dennis Ritchie or what Unix is

>>3356563
>yfw the only time Ritchie gets mentioned in /g/ is to get mad at Jobs

>>3365574
Very hard. I got a 'broken' osborne for cheap because 'it hums but the screen doesn't come on, don't know any more to test it'. Got here and the contrast knob was turned all the way down.

>>3366795
well it IS unfair

he died a week later and no one gave a shit

>>3355703
Not sure if PCs ever sold more than a C64, plus the time line for the C64 is wrong. It


>>3356529
>>3356448
Still have a C64 that seems to power up, just need a monitor from CBM to see. Have over 600 disks of pirated games, some even I never heard of.

>>3367351
>Still have a C64 that seems to power up, just need a monitor from CBM to see

Vat. Just plug it into any old TV.

As a school work study project, I got majorly lucky to be assigned to the 2nd Apple dealer in BC in Sechelt of all places. He sold several thousands of them, only Btye Computers in Vancouver sold more.
>>3356549
Our school in 1977 had a number of PETs given to it by a local pulp mill updating its computers and getting a tax credit for them. I bought one (friends with school principle plus I fucked his daughter) for $150 and used it next year to start a BBS. I moved it all onto a C64, then a 286 PC before fianally ashcanning it in 1992

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Apple-Macintosh-Plus-1MB-Image-Writer-II-Complete-in-boxes-/112055771583?hash=item1a170b61bf:g:mVoAAOSwzLlXhSBz

This is dirt cheap for being in the original box and having a printer included.

>>3367371
Couldn't have been 77 because the PET just came out that year and they only shipped a handful by the Christmas season. Later date than that for sure.

>>3367361
WHO fucking has an old TV any more? I tossed one I got with my house that the old owners used to watch outside. Plus dont have the R/F converter

>>3367379
Many people still have old TVs m8, they can alway have their use, especially when you have old computer equipment. Also, you can plug the C64 in composite.
>I tossed one I got with my house
Meh, you could have at least sold it m8.

>>3367379
You can plug it into an HDTV. Some newer models don't have a separate composite jack, if so plug it into the green component input.

>>3367391
>>3367379
>>3367361
I take it when he read "any old TV", he somehow mentally rearranged that to mean "CRT TV" when I was using it in the more colloquial sense of "any TV you have laying around".

>>3367378
Let me think: Dad died in '81 when I was in grade 9. I got the computer in summer before grade 7. Ok then You're right it was 79. All I remember was how long it took me to save for it working at a car dealership for $15 to wash the cars on the lot. My gf at the time bitched cause I wouldn't take her out for a movie very often. She had cute freckles and boobs so it was OK

>>3367397
I want to get a proper composite monitor of the era.

Some guy had one on CraigsList but he works late and Im driving home by then

>>3367409
Ok but now knowing that, you can at least connect up your C64 to a TV to test it out.

>>3367397
>I take it when he read "any old TV", he somehow mentally rearranged that to mean "CRT TV"
Well I understand him, I kinda understood "TVs from the 80s and earlier" too when reading your post.

It's kind of like when I've seen Apple II auctions on Ebay where it's like "Untested I don't have a monitor" when the idiot could just plug it into any TV.

>>3367434
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1982-APPLE-II-PLUS-Computer-A251048A-A3M0039-Monitor-2-Disk-Drives-Surge-Prote-/322191324614?hash=item4b041975c6:g:2wgAAOSwygJXhqdG

Appears to be working but I am going to assume the seller does not know how to hit Ctrl+Reset to drop it into BASIC?

>>3367462
M8 just send those sellers emails instead of posting their shit there with that kind of comment. What do you expect us to do? Laugh at retarded ebay sellers for being retarded? That kind of shit is more anoying than funny when you spam like 30 of these per threads.
Look like the OP should have done what >>3308629 proposed.

>>3367542
>That kind of shit is more anoying than funny when you spam like 30 of these per threads.
There's a couple of guys posting these links. Usually one guy does something and 5 other idiots start copying him.

>>3367559
>>3367542
I'll tell you guys what the real spamming fuckwits are and it's >>3366725
>>3365331

these weebspammers who post ads for old JPC games

>>3367569
I never defended them. They count as spam too.

>>3367569
Meh these can alway trigger interesting discutions and the pictures can be quite nice. Endless eBay whinning have no value whatsoever.

>>3367569
These cause no problems, they can alway trigger interesting discutions and the pictures can be quite nice. Endless eBay whinning have no value whatsoever. Also, those are more related to the board (retro games) than trying to get others to mock sellers who don't know how to operate old office computers.

>>3362502
>Aids

>>3367594
>Also, those are more related to the board (retro games) than trying to get others to mock sellers who don't know how to operate old office computers
What about operating a home computer though? :^)

>>3367594
wasn't his point more that these guys can't do a couple seconds of Google searching?

>>3366815
I'm surprised it did work because Osbornes were not the most reliable or well-built computers around.

>>3367642
It's no hot news that many of the people who sell old computers don't do any researches and just want quick bucks. Whining about overpriced TRS-80 #2635 in here won't do shit but piss off people.

>>3367634
Still more on-topic. Old computer game posters are still more related to the board than bitching about some random fuck not knowing how to go into a BASIC interpreter.

Anyway, I'm the guy who posted the ads >>3367569 linked to, and I'll be responding to those who might whine about the stuff I post. You don't like old game and computer advertising? Just ignore them, they're in no way polluting the discussion here, and can alway lead to some discussions (like when I posted the Illusion City poster a few threads ago or more recently the FM PAC one that could have resulted in a bigger MSX-related discussion). Yeah, many of them don't lead to discussions, but the main reason why I post old computer and game ads is so to share them on an old computer gaming thread. Some people also enjoy having old advertising and promo scans, or even post them (like the anon who posted his Mindscape game catalog a few threads ago -- thanks for the dump m8, those were pretty interesting pics -- or more recently the Apple ads earlier in this thread) so it can alway be a contribution to someone's pic collection. It's true that many of them might not have an additional comment, but remmember where you're posting, this is an imageboard, if you want to share pictures, you're not forced to comment too. Last but not least, just read the OP for a moment
>Don't hesitate to share [...] ads & flyers
>ads & flyers

tl;dr : If you don't like what I post, just ignore it -- it's just ads that I'd like to share with people who are into old computer games and that they might enjoy for various reasons.

>>3366815
Lel that's exactly how I got my PC-XT laptop -- the contrast was turned all the way down and the seller though the panel wasn't working.

Also cont. from >>3367772

>>3367569
>these weebspammers
>weeb
I've posted plenty of western computer & game ads in previous threads. Seeing that you're using "muh weebshit" as an argument, and that the Apple II ads posted earlier don't seem to brother you, you might as well just go to reddit where you'll be in better company.

>>3367772
>Whining about overpriced TRS-80 #2635 in here won't do shit but piss off people

By "people" you mean "I find it offensive so I will project my personal butthurt onto the entire board'".

Also you just admitted to being the JPC spammer which kind of says a lot, don't it.

cont. from >>3367772 (You)

Also no, I don't only post ads and posters, most of the time I participate in other discussions within these threads.

>>3367569
>these weebspammers
>weeb
I've posted plenty of western computer & game ads in previous threads. Seeing that you're using "muh weebshit" as an argument, and that the Apple II ads posted earlier don't seem to brother you, you might as well just go to reddit where you'll be in better company.

>>3367798
I'm not the only one nor the first one whining about your shit.
>the JPC spammer
I don't only post Japanese stuff. I used to post more American and Brit stuff in previous threads, and most of the time, I don't even post ads and flyers.

>>3367772
>You don't like old game and computer advertising? Just ignore them, they're in no way polluting the discussion here, and can always lead to some discussions

>says we should just ignore his ads if we dislike it
>he can't extend the same courtesy to the guy with the Ebay links

Talk about not practicing what you preach.

>>3367810
>I'm not the only one nor the first one whining about your shit
not him but it's pretty painfully obvious that there's only about 2-3 people in these computer gaming general threads

>175 posts
>20 IPs

>>3367815
That's 2 different situations though.
Posting various ads and flyers can alway be useful to someone, is basically sharing pictures that pertain to the thread and can alway lead to a discussion from some anon who's interested.
Posting ebay links to overpriced TRS-80s over and over saying "Haha look how dumb he is he can't research shit on google" is basically a waste of post.
Some people might not like what's posted in the first situation I mentionned, but it can still lead to something interesting in this thread. This isn't the case about the second one.

>>3367836
>Posting ebay links to overpriced TRS-80s over and over saying
There was one link ITT about a TRS-80 and another about an Apple II.

>>3367835
Yup it obvious that there aren't many people, but I'm still not the only one who've been complaining (and it's not the first thread where some anon have been telling him that he should stop doing that shit, and that we're here for games)
Saying that there are only 2~3 is a little bit exaggerated though.

>>3367840
He's been doing it for multiple threads, and most of the links he posted in the previous one (and the one before) were TRS-80s.

>>3367840
what...you think I'm actually gonna go back through this entire thread and check that?

>>3367852
>He's been doing it for multiple threads, and most of the links he posted in the previous one (and the one before) were TRS-80s.

I posted a link about a TRS-80 about 2-3 times at most. I'd linked auctions with C64s, Apple IIs, Macs, and other crud so I have no clue why you only focus on that one computer in particular.

>>3367860

>>3367853

>>3367860
It's been at least 2~3 threads you've been doing this and the ones I've seen the most were about TRS-80s. I've been ignoring most of your post after the previous thread, but still, checking the thread in the morning to see if there were new posts about someone's PC-AT or Amiga config just to see someone complaining about yet another overpriced computers is still pretty damn annoying m8.

>>3367867
>It's been at least 2~3 threads you've been doing this and the ones I've seen the most were about TRS-80s

Like I said, >>3367860

Anyway, this discussion about spams and shit is getting pretty annoying too, let's get back to the real topic of this thread -- computer vidya and stuff like that.

Have any of you played to Indianapolis 500 (the DOS game, not the pinball machine)? It's got a nice intro tune (well, at least the when playing with an MT-32) and run quite smoothly on a 486 machine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXHEs9qPlTg
It's surely not the best you can get from an MT-32 (definitely not on par with Sierra game musics) but it's still a pretty cool intro.

>>3367919
>Anyway, this discussion about spams and shit is getting pretty annoying too

To be fair, it was not my fault. It was the fault of some spammer ranting about an Ebay auction or two I linked while he spams his weeb MSX/PC engine autism.

>>3367943
>>3367874
>>3367772
one man's spam is another man's interesting/constructive post

>>3367960
what? No it's not.

>>3367943
>an Ebay auction or two
>weeb MSX/PC engine autism.
Way to distort reality m8
Also, I don't know who's the most autismal -- the one sharing ads & stuff while participating to the topic discussed most of the time, or the one whinning about ebay sellers inability to test the machine they're selling and price them reasonably over and over?
Also, I'm not posting PC Engine stuff in these threads, it's not a computer it's a console. What are you even doing on /vr/ if you don't know that?

Anyway, it's the last post in this thread were I'll be talking about this shit. Now let's get back to talking about games >>3367919.

>>3367960
Well that's a point of view like another.

wtf happened in this thread!?

>>3368690
it boils down to two spammers arguing which one is a worse spammer.

>>3368698
I am not a spammer, assface. Those MSX ads I posted aren't spam unless your definition of spam is quite different from mine.

>>3368706
>I am not a spammer, assface. Those MSX ads I posted aren't spam unless your definition of spam is quite different from mine.
Except you're not the one who posted most of the MSX posters in these thread, and like I said, >>3367982 would be my last post talking about this. I don't know what you're trying to do by pretending to be me.
But anyway back to the main subject -- computer video games and the likes. Don't you guys own computers or something? Play vidya on them?

>>3368905
It's probably the same guy from earlier. Just report and move on.

>>3368905
>>3368706
Jesus Christ man, you could hide your samefagging a little better.

I don't even know who's trolling who anymore.jpg

>>3368909
>samefagging
Except I'm not, I just woke up like 15 minute ago and saw some anon pretending to be me when my last post before leaving this thread was about going back to the subject and not talking about this shit anymore.
Look like I did end up post 2 more messages about it anyway, but anyway, let's just go back to talking about computer games.

>>3370354
This thread has been ruined beyond repair, JPC-kun. Let it go already. A new one can be made instead.

>>3370354

can anyone identify this computer ?

>>3370428
Apparently a generic XT clone.

>>3370446

think again, its a AST 286, but cant find any information on the case itself and from where it camed from

>>3370471

another pic

>>3370471
that is strange. there's no system RAM on the motherboard itself and it's all on a card. there also doesn't seem to be a video card present. you can find a VGA card on Ebay and stick it in there.

>>3370490

this is its RAM

it has a ega/cga/mda videocard in it on the last slot along with a serial card, it camed with a EGA/CGA 14" monitor

It seems like a custom-built PC with a 286 board in a generic case. Proving this is the fact that it has a 360k 5.25" drive and what seems to be an MFM hard disk. Factory-built 286s would have nearly always had a 1.2MB floppy and an ESDI hard disk.

>>3370518

you must be right

cause that doesn't look you're run of the mil power supply

>>3370360
It's a guy reposting stuff I've already posted long ago (the filenames aren't X1C_.jpg and the likes). If it was me I would've posted something else some time before that day too. Also,
>JPC-Kun
I'm into all kind of computers, stuff from America & Europe (which make up 99% of my old computers) AND Japan. The people calling me a weeb are just butthurt because they don't like seeing nip computers and games in a thread meant for computers from all around the world.
Anyway, I don't know if another thread can be worth it, the quality have been degrading for the past few month and the number of people posting in these thread have been decreasing drastically. I think we should just let that one die and stop making a general out of it.

Are ZIP drives considered retro?

I heard some people managed to connect them to 80s era computers as a replacement for the floppy drive.

>>3373050
The platforms that you can use Zip drives on are older than 1995 - i.e. a Mac Plus, so I'd say yeah. I use one as a boot drive for my Macintosh SE.

>>3373093
>>3373050
>>3372742

New thread. Forget this one. It's been fucked beyond repair.