/vr/ - Retro Games

This might be a dumb question but I'm new to this whole scene...

Can I use a 5 1/4 floppy drive with pic related? Any decent models people would recommend that aren't super pricy?

>>3409631
The pic might help

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVyU1GCBhLI
Zanac's a pretty good shooter on MSX, and is pretty much the spiritual predecessor to the Aleste games. If you own an MSX 1 machine, it's game that's worth owning. If you have an MSX 2 or later, you might as well check for Zanac Ex which is pretty much the MSX2 version of the game (better background graphics, smooth vertical scrolling...).

>>3409634
>>3409631
Yes, the XEGS can use the XE computer's peripherals, including the XF551 5"1/4 disk drive.

bump

>>3410306
Don't bump without posting content unless the thread is in page 10.

>>3410313
That's some really comfy setup there.

What should I know about buying new old stock blank floppy disks on eBay and Amazon? The prices seem quite reasonable, but are is there a catch?

>>3410465
Also, does anyone know of a cheaper alternative to Avery labels for 5.25" floppies? They look good but you can only buy a box of 800, and they cost $40 a box.

>>3409495
It's too bad the Commodore +4 wasn't just a black C64 with arrow keys and built-in software. Commodore fell into the Sega trap of trying to support too many different platforms and not having enough software for all of them, and you know there were probably a lot of confused customers trying to put their old Commodore 64 software into their sexy new Commodore +4 only to find out none of it worked.

And it's a shame because the system did have some good stuff going for it, like a much faster data connection for the floppy drive (something the C64 should have launched with), and the aforementioned arrow keys.

>>3410465
Avoid CDC StorageMaster and Wabash disks. Those were trash when they were new. 3M and Maxell had excellent quality. You couldn't go wrong with those.

>>3410527
Or better still, it might be nice if the TED chip didn't die if you sneeze on it.

I did see a Plus/4 at a flea market once in its original box. Cute but pretty useless since there are no NTSC games for the thing and they're so fragile you'd be afraid to turn the thing on.

>>3410527
The hardware UART and 20,000 bps transfer speed is kind of cool...too bad modems back then were 1200 bps or less.

>>3410527
The 7501 CPU seems to die more than the TED and some of the problems with TED chips have been traced to stupid things that users did like connect autofire joysticks and incorrectly wired 9-pin joystick adapters.

Basically what went wrong is that Commodore had just started using HMOS fabrication in 1984 and they were still working out the bugs in it, which resulted in lousy reliability of the 7xxx series chips.

>>3410579
I didn't know autofire joysticks could damage a computer. I never had an auto-fire computer controller pre-486 but please explain.

>>3410579
Taking the RF shield off the TED and heat sinking it helps.

>>3410527
If they had sold it as the $99 ZX Spectrum killer the TED was designed for, I imagine it would have been a much greater success.

However Jack Tramiel who oversaw the design of the TED left shortly after completion and the executives didn't know what to do with it.

>>3410465
What system(s) are you planning to use them for? Unless it's an IBM compatible with a 1.2MB drive, get the Double Density (360kb) disks. DD and HD disks look nearly exact but they are incompatible due to different magnetic coatings.

>>3410761
For the immediate future I'm looking to make some copies of C64 games using ZoomFloppy. I might adopt some other retro computers in the future, but the C64 is my main interest.

Tramiel wanted to go after the ZX Spectrum in Europe, which the C64 didn't directly compete against due to its higher cost. Also in the US, he wanted to target the low end market and replace the aging VIC-20. However, the Atari 400 and the short-lived Mattel Aquarius were the only true US rivals in this market segment. By the time the 264 line appeared in 1984, the low end market had collapsed and the computers were left without a reason for their existence. A total of 1 million 264 series machines were sold, the Plus/4 accounting for about 400,000 of them.

>>3410780
Obviously Commodore drives all use DD disks.

Continuing from the last thread, yeah it is a shame the C128 didn't get enough software support because damn, would it have been nice if LucasArts games supported it. When it came to running application software, the C128 wins hands-down and I think that's why it did still sell 4 million units--it fulfilled a desire among C64 owners to have a machine that was able to do productivity stuff as well as the Apple II. When it came to gaming however, the thing didn't have enough of an advantage to bother with.

anyone who's ever used a C128 knows that the only command you ever issue in native mode is GO 64

A couple big problems with the C128:

1. Jack Tramiel's obsession with cheap, affordable computers you could sell at K-Mart. This did help Commodore sell millions of units but also pigeonholed them as a maker of non-serious toy computers useful only for playing silly video games. This strategy was self-defeating in the US market where people preferred computers with a real keyboard/disk storage/expansion slots to Yuropoor preference for rubber keyboards and tape storage.
2. By 1984, Commodore obviously knew they needed a followup that retained C64 compatibility and also be more competitive in the small business market. In the typical Commodore tradition, cheapness and sales at retail outlets were emphasized, with no peripherals included. You had to purchase a disk drive/monitor/printer separately and in order to actually use the C128's capabilities, a 1541 drive and RF switch to connect it to a TV weren't cutting it. You needed a CGA-compatible monitor and a 1571 drive which both ran up the purchase price to over $1100 and then it wasn't long before low-cost PC compatibles like the Tandy 1000 appeared which ate into this market.

It would have helped a lot if Commodore bundled GEOS with the C128 like they did with the C64C and in retrospect, it makes little sense that they didn't.

You have to remember that Bil Herd considered C64 compatibility highly important since the Plus/4 was denounced for its non-compatibility. In fact, Herd said the C128 was a stopgap machine intended to run a year or two and "mostly designed to make a quick buck". He didn't expect it to last almost 5 years and become Commodore's second best-selling 8-bit machine, but he's since embraced it and now considers the C128 his greatest accomplishment.

And yes, it was also true that the market was moving decisively to 16-bit computers after 1983 and the C128's architecture also resembled Frankenstein's Monster.

>>3411486
it had some good features like the 80 column text and added RAM. I do agree CP/M mode was pointless especially with the horribly slow Z80. Commodore were well known for making a giant number of products, many of which never got past the R&D or prototype stage. The C128 got pushed hard because they needed some kind of new product out there--computer technology was evolving fast, they couldn't rely on the C64 forever, and the Plus/4 was mostly a failure. Commodore lost a lot of focus without Jack Tramiel, but they needed to keep going. The 1985 CES was coming up and a new product was essential, so Bil Herd & Co. drove themselves to long, grueling work sessions and 4 hours of sleep a night to develop the C128. Later on, the C64C was a nice improvement on the basic C64 design; it looked more modern, it cost less to manufacture, and was also more reliable.

There was a rift between Commodore US and Commodore UK. The former wanted more business computers and to compete with IBM and Apple while the latter wanted gaming and to compete with Sinclair and Amstrad. The C128 was clearly designed with American market interests in mind which explains why most of its strengths are in application software.

>>3411515
> The C128 was clearly designed with American market interests in mind which explains why most of its strengths are in application software.
Then why did the C128D only saw an European release and the American market didn't see a desktop model until the arrival of the cost reduced version? Also, in 1985 CP/M was losing speed greatly in the US (the IBM PC being for something in this) while it was still pretty big in European businesses (the Amstrad PCW sold really well until the 90s)

>>3411886
>Also, in 1985 CP/M was losing speed greatly in the US (the IBM PC being for something in this) while it was still pretty big in European businesses (the Amstrad PCW sold really well until the 90s)

While that may be true, the 2Mhz Z80 in the C128 was way too fucking slow and native mode applications like Paperclip run rings around it. I think the main reason for it was an ill-conceived idea that the computer's status as a productivity machine would be enhanced by CP/M capability.

>>3411896
I never said that it was a good CP/M machine, it's generally agreed on that CP/M on the C128 is too slow. What I was saying is that why would the C128 be designed for the US market when it was running CP/M and that this same system was getting replaced by DOS PCs and clones over there, while still being used in Europe.

>>3412278
I just added a low speed fan to my A600 the other day, it's cold as ice now!

>>3412485
Also a more aesthetically pleasing picture then the old one

This thread need more vidya desu.

>>3412485
Noice. Better keep it cool to enjoy it the best.
>>3412487
Pretty cool pic. What's the specs of the PC?

>>3412496
>Noice. Better keep it cool to enjoy it the best.
Yeah, the overclocked '020 on that white board used to get pretty toasty. Also a cool machine will last longer, that's what we all want, don't' we?

>Pretty cool pic. What's the specs of the PC?
It's a BLUE CHIP (Hyundai rebrand) XT clone from the mid 80's, I have messed around with it a little, like adding a NEC V20 and 8087 math co-processor and EGA graphics card, with Hercules and CGA emulation and monochrome EGA, had an Hercules board originally, replaced the 5.25' drive with a black 3.5' one, it also has a working ethernet NIC to use with mTCP stack, still has original MFM 20MB hard drive and runs DOS 3.30. Want to find a memory expansion board for it in the future, right now it has 1MB with 512KB usable for the system, also a 8+bit ISA Sound Blaster or clone if I see one for cheap.

>>3412517
Also got this beauty yesterday, 486DX4 laptop, Compaq Contura 430C.
I used to own a Armada years ago, visually exactly the same except it had a Pentium inside.
Got it with original adapter and Compaq laptop bag.

>>3412517
I see, that's a nice little XT setup you have there. With a V20 and an FPU it must be pretty powerful. What do you play on it most of the time?

>>3412520
That's one cute little fella, I like it's shape. Seeing that it has a 486DX4, I guess that it runs Doom pretty well doesn't it?

>>3412545
>What do you play on it most of the time?
Mostly there are better ports of the same games on the Amiga that my XT clone has, but there are some nice ones that are pretty fun on it, like Arkanoid, Thexder, Alley Cat, SimCity (Hercules), Flight Simulator 3.
But I mostly use it as a telnet client to play old MUDs.

>I guess that it runs Doom pretty well doesn't it?
Yes, even runs Quake decently! Was just playing Pinball Illusions a while ago with a external CRT.
Also happened to notice a really cheap 4MB memory expansion for it on eBay that I ordered a while ago, on board it has 8MB.

>>3412570
>Arkanoid, Thexder, Alley Cat, SimCity (Hercules), Flight Simulator 3.
Pretty good taste desu. Do you think it might run Silpheed, Firehawk and Zeliard or you've already tried and it's too slow for these games?
>But I mostly use it as a telnet client to play old MUDs.
Yeah, those are cool too. I had a friend that was really into one MUD I forgot the name (if I google a list of MUDs I'll surely be able to remmember it).

>Yes, even runs Quake decently! Was just playing Pinball Illusions a while ago with a external CRT.
Even better than I though. Well, I think it'd be a good idea to get myself a 486DX4 to replace the Overdrive DX2 that's currently in my 486 PC.

>>3412598
>Silpheed, Firehawk and Zeliard
I had some problems with Silpheed, that I can't recall anymore, I think it didn't like the CGA emulation.
Haven't tried Firehawk or Zeliard, but I'm sure to try them sometime.

>I had a friend that was really into one MUD I forgot the name
Aardwolf? That's one of the most popular still that I have been playing sometimes too.

>Well, I think it'd be a good idea to get myself a 486DX4 to replace the Overdrive DX2 that's currently in my 486 PC.
It surely won't hurt!

>>3412612
Among these two I'd particularily advise Zeliard, it's a really fun Adventure/Role-Playing game, and the PC port, even though it lacks the speech synthesis of the PC-8801 version, make better use of the FM chipset for it's musics (I don't know what Game Arts did in Zeliard and Veigues, but these games' PC-88 version seems to have a pretty meh soundtrack compared to their other titles). On the other hand, while still being a really good port, Firehawk's PC version isn't the definitive one (the soundtrack isn't as good as the PC-8801mkIISR one, they did away with the opening scene and a few other stuff).

>Aardwolf?
Might be that one yeah, it's name does ring a bell.

>It surely won't hurt!
Yup. That and a few more megs of RAM (currently have 8MB) will enhance the performances on Windows 3.1 and Doom.

>>3412780
Yeah, I remember Firehawk, but I never played Zeliard, already looking into it, thanks!

>>3412784
Np m8, have fun with these games and you cool setup, and good luck in your search for the SoundBlaster!

Anyway, while talking about Firehawk, I'm leaving the best tune of the game here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NAyfptUVQU

>>3411896
The C128 is a very good basic productivity machine and more than competitive with its nearest rivals the Apple //e and TRS-80 Model 4 although Paperclip and Speedscript can't beat AppleWorks.

>>3412805
That's a kickass tune!

Cool, some guy ported the old QBASIC Gorilla game to the C128.

>>3410527
The Plus/4's CPU is also considerably faster than the C64 at 1.73Mhz, but its BASIC in practice is not due to the constant ROM bank switching. In some categories such as processing strings, it does beat BASIC 2.0 because of better garbage handling (BASIC 2.0 often takes lengthy pauses).

Also the graphics commands in C128 BASIC are really freaking slow due to poor programming. There were some guys who wrote a C64 BASIC extension with circle and line-drawing commands that were 10 and 20% faster.

>>3413006
Neat

It's funny that the C128's startup screen has a Microsoft copyright notice. Like 8 years after licensing BASIC, Commodore suddenly decided to give them credit, although they'd modified it so much over the years that there probably wasn't anything left of the original code.

>>3411506
They should have dropped the cassette connector at some point. Would have saved some money and maybe also encourage Commodore UK to start charging more reasonable disk drive prices.

Well fuck. I did something stupid and broke the video cable I just bought for my C64. I didn't realize I had an older C64 without a chroma pin and the split chroma/luma cable's chroma pin broke off.

Is there a mod I can do to put S-video on an old 5-pin Commodore 64? It would be a shame to have to connect it through composite after all the work I went through to get a monitor for it, and I don't want to just buy another system.

>>3413139
What are you doing with a silver label C64? Those are unreliable junk and the video output is a fuzzy mess. Only worth anything as a collector's item.

Go on Ebay and get a C64C instead.

>>3413002
Yeah, too bad it's absent from the PC version. The one they replaced it with is pretty good too, but not as good as this one though.

>>3413159
Let him have his old C64 instead of ordering around some random anon on a mongolian magical tapestry forum. If he's happy enough with it then it's good.
>Go on Ebay
Worst advice you could give, overpriced shit everywhere when there are other sources that are way cheaper.

>>3413234
>>3413139
>referring to yourself in the third person
This is a whole new level of trolling.

>>3413251
>muh random samefag accusation
>trolling
You might as well lurk on >>>/g/ and stay there if you're just gonna shitpost.

>>3413159
I found it in a shop. It came with the box and it was in good shape cosmetically, but I didn't know there was going to be that big of a difference. I could return it but then it might take me weeks to find another one at a reasonable price. It did have a bad RAM IC but I was going to swap it out with one I got in the mail.

I'll make a choice once I've done some testing on the power supply. If the whole thing doesn't seem worth salvaging then just bring it back and keep my eyes on Craigslist. If the picture on it is going to be bad even with an s-video mod I don't want to fuss with it, even if it's a complete set.

>>3413159
>>3413287
Also, it's not a silver label. It's got the rainbow label with silver lettering. It looks just like the breadbin I had as a kid except it can't hook up to my monitor.

>>3413287
You're lucky all that was wrong with that thing was one RAM chip, possibly caused by the power supply. There's not that many silver label models around (only 360,000 sold before they went to the rainbow logo model) and they do have collectible value, but if you want something to actually use, a C64C is the best choice. Breadbins in general are not that reliable and the early units made in 1982-83 are especially bad.

As I mentioned, the silver label models have the original Revision 1 ceramic VIC-II which has pretty awful video quality. It was fairly common to swap these out for a later revision VIC-II so yours may not actually have the Revision 1 chip.

>>3413325
Like I said in >>3413316 it's not a silver label. It's an older unit but not that old.

>>3413316
Oh. Well, actually what you have is a Revision A board in a rainbow logo case. The Revision B boards have the 8-pin video output and were introduced in early 1983. The rainbow case seems to have been introduced in late 1982 before the PCB revision so some Rev A boards are in rainbow cases and others are in silver label cases. Commodore were notorious for cobbling together machines from whatever parts happened to be laying around. This also explains why early C64s often have orange VIC-20 function keys.

So actually it is a silver label unit aside from the case.

Pull the cover off and note the motherboard revision. It's probably a 326298 which had the 5-pin video output and ceramic VIC-II. The 250407 boards introduced the 8-pin video output and plastic VIC-II.

>>3413107
>and maybe also encourage Commodore UK to start charging more reasonable disk drive prices.

The problem with that was that the disk drive cost more to make than the actual computer.

I do think it was rubbish that Commodore UK never charged reasonable disk drive prices. Our gaming scene could have been a lot different if we'd had disks.

bump

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itHPe_pMG5o

PET Visicalc. This version bombed because Software Arts insisted on including their own custom DOS routines for copy protection reasons. While that wasn't a problem on the Apple II or TRS-80, the PET only had 32k of memory versus their 48k so this resulted in only a very small amount of worksheet space.

>>3413341
Neat. I am still hoping to mod it for S-video if I can, though. I just rebuilt the power supply for it and ordered new RAM IC s with sockets. It may not be the ideal C64 to start with but I'm willing to put the work into it.

This guy created a nice S-video board for his C64 and was going to sell them, but I don't know if he was able to drum up enough interest. I might be able to do reverse engineer it once my prototype boards arrive, although I've seen other similar mods. Maybe I'll see if I can contact the guy who designed that kit about buying one.

http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=42227&sid=d4a9246a6e4d0aebdd0278493027603e

It would've been nice to just have an 8 pin C64 but this is the hand I've been dealt, so I'll make it work.

>>3414332
This is definitely a 326298 board, but appears to be a slightly different revision than the one pictured here. It also seems that yours does not have the ceramic VIC-II, because like I said it was common to swap those out with a later revision VIC-II due to the bad video quality.

>>3414187
The slimline 8250LP. This is almost a holy grail for Commodore collectors.

>>3414372
They are not common in the US. The average commodore collector would not even care about them. So its the few of us that do, that get
excited to find one. The one thing I collect the most of is disk drives. The 8250lp is one of the last ones I am looking for, I expect that is the case with a few others.

>>3414383
Well, I got a non-working one from Germany. I cost me about 34 euros, plus an arm-and-a-leg for shipping (those things are HEAVY), plus got
hit with a big bank charge to do a wire-fund transfer since the seller wouldn't take paypal. I'm trying to repair my 8296D as the internal drives (an 8250LP) won't write to disks.

The 8050 and 8250 are rare because commercial PET software was generally distributed on 4040 disks. They were mostly popular for BBS storage.

But the real rarity are the 8280 8" drives or 9060/9090 hard disks. These were mostly designed for the business market and PETs were unsuccessful in the US as a business machine for several reasons.

>>3414396
>>3414383
Disagree there. The 8050 appears to be the most common PET drive. On the other hand, the 8250LP and 8280 are very rare and only show up on Ebay once or twice a decade. The US versions of both drives are so uncommon as to be near prototype status.

There's also the 8060 (single unit single sided 760k) 8061 (double unit single sided 1.6MB) and 8062 (double unit double sided 3.2MB) 8" drives. The 8280 (dual unit double sided w/ half height drives) came later.

I've seen a dozen or more 8250LP drives, a couple of 90xx hard disks, but never an 8280.

>>3414396
>>3414406
Yeah I agree. I have a bunch of software on 8050 disks and own two of them myself. They also show up on Ebay quite frequently. In fact I see more of them than I do the 4040.

I just got this Commodore 1541 disk drive off of eBay. Seller said "tested and working," and I think that means they just plugged it into the wall and saw the lights go on, because it doesn't work. When I turn it on the red light either never shuts off or never stops flashing, and the motor is always turning. There was also a really tight partially stripped screw on the underside, which tells me that someone tried to open it up and fix it at some point and then gave up.

I paid $40 including shipping. Is it worth fixing, or should I ask for a refund? They did list it as "tested and working" and it's clearly not, but if it's something I can fix without spending lots of money and pulling out my hair then I'd probably keep it. What do you guys think?

>>3414535
You could ask on Lemon64. I have no honest idea what would cause that particular set of problems.

http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=51916&sid=8ff12b7ba818e73f9afd960c66c307f7

Wait a minute. According to this, there's probably a fried 74LS14 which would throw the drive into an endless reset loop and it's usually caused when you stupidly unplug the drive from the computer when it's powered on. It could be other things too, but that's the most likely culprit.

>>3414549
>>3414549
I looked up the 74LS14 chip and it's pretty cheap. If that does get it up and running I wouldn't mind fixing it. If that doesn't solve the problem though I'd rather just cut my losses and send the thing back. I like repairing stuff but I don't want a parts unit seeing as I hardly run across any 1541s out in the wild.

Can someone tell me what the proper procedure is for turning the C64 and 1541 drive on and off is? People keep talking about how doing it out of order can fry the chips inside and now I'm scared.

>>3414595
You're welcome to look up the scanned user's manuals on line and they all say power on the drive first, computer second, and reverse for power off.

>>3414602
That's what my initial assumption was but I wanted to make sure. Thanks.

>>3414595
The disk drives and other devices first, the computer after, and for power off it's the other way around. Also, no disk in the drive on power up, it's not an Amiga or a PC it won't boot of the disk automatically. Also >>3414602 is right, the manual is easy to find online.

If you have secondary disk drives, power those on after everything else so you can change the drive number. For example, if there's two disk drives, begin by typing:

OPEN15,8,15:PRINT#15,"M-W";CHR$(119);CHR$(0);CHR$(2);CHR$(9+32)+CHR$(9+64):CLOSE15

This will switch the device # of the first drive to 9. Once that's done, power on the second drive which will default to 8. Similarly, if there's 3-4 drives, the first one will be either device 10 or 11 and then you keep going down the chain powering each one on and giving it a lower number.

The 1541-II, 1571, and 1581 have jumpers on the back to select the drive number so you don't need to do this; it only applies to older drive models.

>>3414605
>Also, no disk in the drive on power up, it's not an Amiga or a PC it won't boot of the disk automatically

It was generally established practice on 5.25" and 8" drives to not leave disks in the drive on power up/down because the drive electronics could send out random signals and scramble the contents of the disk. This was never a problem on 3.5" drives and you can always safely leave a disk in them on power up/down.

Since it will be a few days before my 74LS14 chip and socket arrive, I will have to shelve my 1541 drive for now. In the meantime though, here's a picture of the power supply I just rebuilt. It's a 9VAC power supply and a 5v DC power supply wired together into the original AC cable from the original power supply, and both are then wired up to the original output pin connecter cable. I also mounted a red LED onto the front to show that it's plugged in, which is the one "signature" I added to show that it's been altered. Otherwise it looks exactly like the original. It's also a lot lighter.

So far it's working great, although I haven't tested it very thoroughly. The 9VAC transformer does get fairly warm but it's not bad at all. The only thing it really needs is that I have to figure out a good way to secure everything so that the components aren't bouncing around inside. Preferably not by filling the thing up with resin.

Since it will be a few days before my 74LS14 chip and socket arrive, I will have to shelve my 1541 drive for now. In the meantime though, here's a picture of the power supply I just rebuilt. It's a 9VAC power supply and a 5v DC power supply wired together into the original AC cable from the original power supply, and both are then wired up to the original output pin connecter cable. I also mounted a red LED onto the front to show that it's plugged in, which is the one "signature" I added to show that it's been altered. Otherwise it looks exactly like the original. It's also a lot lighter.

So far it's working great, although I haven't tested it very thoroughly. The 9VAC transformer does get fairly warm but it's not bad at all. The only thing it really needs is that I have to figure out a good way to secure everything so that the components aren't bouncing around inside, because it's annoying and I don't want anything breaking. Preferably not by filling the thing up with resin.

>>3414651
>>3414653
At least delete the old post

>the PET, which came out in the 70's, came with a machine code monitor in ROM while the C64, which came out in 1982, didn't
what the fuck

>>3414742
It's already been discussed in previous threads, they didn't include it in the C64 like they didn't include it in the PET for cost-saving reasons.

What about we start talking about games in this thread? It's a Computer GAMING general yet there are only a few posts about video games. No wonder there's only 8 different posters in there if 75% of the 84 posts here aren't about games.

So, what do you guys actually play on you old computers?

>>3414747
Because why isn't there a old computer thread anywhere?

In /g/ these threads get hate because everyone is
>hurr go to /vr/ they have old computer threads
In /vr/ everyone is
>hurr it's a gayming thread, stop talking about hardware

Where the fuck do people talk general old computers then?!

No hate, you're right, this is a gaming thread.

>>3414762
There used to be a retro computer general on /g/, but it was filled with shitposting and autism (anons ordering others to change their setup in some way and then throwing a hissy fit when being met with a negative response), so the ones who were really into old computers moved to the /vr/ one. That happened like 2 years ago, and even though these anons from /g/ came here, we were still talking about both games AND hardware, often using games as exemple in hardware talks, posting pictures and stuff like that, because they understood that even though we were talking about old computers and that it was ok to talk about hardware, we were primarily a thread about video games.

>In /vr/ everyone is
>>hurr it's a gayming thread, stop talking about hardware
Not really, there are other threads talking about game console hardware and all, and we've alway talked about hardware here. My complaints come from the fact that for the past few months the majority of the gaming-related questions and posts seems to be purposely ignored and flooded by not so interesting, cyclic hardware discussion (a few thread ago there was that "- You can replace you floppy drive with x emulator - or you can replace x in floppy drives instead - or you can replace your floppy drive with x emulator - or you can replace x in your floppy drive..." and so on discussion that was like it would never end) that seems to repeat itself and can become quite tiresome. I'm not saying that everything that's technical is bad, I liked last years technical discussions about how powerful CPUs != best computer with the comparisons between what a 486+VGA and a Megadrive are capable of, it's just that I have the feeling of reading the same stuff over and over for the past few months.

Anyway, back to vidyas, have a webm. This game is a pretty cool tetris-clone with a wide playfield, made for the Amstrad CPC made by some German group.

>>3414785
>0:11
8bit chix~!

>>3414747
The reason I don't talk more about games is because I'm still working on getting a system working to play them on.

So I opened up my breadbin to see what revision of VIC-II chip I have, and as I suspected it's the older ceramic one-- the same that would be in a silver label breadbin. Pic related is mine. I'm trying to get the best possible picture quality out of this thing, and a newer VIC-II chip goes for about $10, although apparently it only uses 5 volts as opposed to the ceramic chip's 12 volts, and obviously with too much voltage it'll get fried.

There's a guy on eBay who sells split Chroma / Luma cables for 5 pin C64s like mine, although he warns that the picture quality will not be as sharp unless you have the newer VIC-II installed. Does anyone here know anything about how to step down the CPU voltage to 5V on old breadbins?

And don't worry about all of that ancient thermal plaster. I've got plenty of modern thermal compound handy and will be re-applying it before I put the RF shield back on. Eventually I plan to install a proper heatsink on the VIC-II and dremel out a hole in the RF shield to accomodate it.

>>3415368
Just bend the +5V pin up and wire it to a +5V terminal somewhere on the board, I mean, the rest of the pins are the same?

>>3415385
Yeah I looked it up and apparently that's the way to go. I'm seeing conflicting opinions as to whether or not it's worth it though, because apparently much like the older SID chips there's lots of variables with the ceramic VIC-2s, and some might even give better picture quality than the newer ones. There are also some people who claim that the VIC-2 isn't directly responsible for picture quality and that there are other electrical variables that will determine how each breadbin looks.

I should probably just order the 5-pin split Chroma/Luma cable and see how it looks before assuming I need anything else to clean up the picture.

>>3415392
Good luck!

>>3414535
>>3414549
>>3414561
I ordered a 74LS14 chip from Mouser that should be here this week, and I'm going to try replacing the one on the board to see if it fixes the thing. Apparently the service manual says that these particular symptoms are most commonly caused by a bad ROM chip, though.

The 74LS14 is a potential culprit, but if that doesn't work should I found a working replacement ROM chip that was only $2 + shipping. I double checked my board and it is indeed the correct model number.

If neither of those work I'm just going to send the thing back, but I'm optimistic. And thankfully the ROM on my board is socketed. I may be approaching my limit for how much money I am willing to sink into getting this 1541 working before I just return it, though.

I'm fast learning that with C64 if you think you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound. I haven't even bought any games for the thing except Commando and I still havent' gotten to play it. I also have a copy of Radar Rat Race but it's exactly the same as the VIC 20 version and does not impress. I've got my eye on some pretty sweet looking eBay auctions though, and eventually I'm going to buy a ZoomFloppy and just make my own copies of whatever I feel like playing.

Maybe I'll get a Chameleon 64 someday, but if that happens it won't be for quite a long time, and I will have to really love what I'm doing with the system before I'd consider something that pricey even if it's really easy to use.

>>3415368
>although apparently it only uses 5 volts
Must be the CMOS version. The CMOS version of the SID (aka 8580) also uses lower voltages, in that case it's 9V instead of 12V.

>>3415392
>and some might even give better picture quality than the newer ones
I highly doubt it.
If you really wanna get the best picture out of it then you should use expensive video opamps like the AD810 along with the so called AEC fix (feeding back the inverted signal to the luma signal to cancel out the interference). I could tell you how to do that but I don't think that you gonna get a very crisp picture with the older ceramic VIC-II like I get with my plastic VIC-II from 1989.

>There are also some people who claim that the VIC-2 isn't directly responsible for picture quality
It's not so far from the truth. Using a single transistor to amplify a video signal is never as good as using multiple transistors or even better yet a special opamp made for video signals.

>>3415489
Would the opamp combined with the newer VIC-2 give a noticeable improvement on my bread bin?

>>3415537
It could look like this.
But it's not very easy and requires careful adjustment (in my case I have 4 trimmer resistors) and doing so with an oscilloscope would be highly recommended (making sure that the synctips, black to white amplitude and color burst voltages are nominal).
Not to mention that some filters are needed to generate a decent composite signal or else it will have more artifacts and glitches than the usual blurriness.

>>3415582
And that's how it looked before, with the original VIC-II from 1984 and stock video amplifier (250407 board).

>>3415368
That's the newer HMOS VIC-II from the C64C and no you can't put that in a breadbin.
>>3415392
The early breadbins have rather poor picture quality, but this was mostly fixed by 1984 and the last breadbin PCB with only two RAM chips has excellent quality video ouput.

>>3415594
I think you are asking for too much. I would've sucked off a bus full of men if I could have my C64 look that clear in 1984.

The one advantage of the ceramic VIC-IIs is that they're less likely to need heat sinking since they originally used a ceramic shell for thermal reasons, but this was switched to plastic because it was cheaper. Revision A boards often also have other ceramic ICs, including RAM and on rare occasion, the SID.

>>3415594
250407 boards are from 1983, units made in 84-85 will have the 250425 board.

A true original silver label C64 also has the Revision 1 kernal ROM which can be easily distinguished because clearing the screen with Shift/Clr-Home will turn the background white. Anon's however is probably the Revision 2 if the computer has a rainbow logo case. Some early C64 software like WordPro actually broke on the Revision 2 ROMs since it was expecting a white background (this was later patched).

>>3414785
>My complaints come from the fact that for the past few months the majority of the gaming-related questions and posts seems to be purposely ignored
>gaming questions

Beg pardon? I only remember that one weeb trying to force everything to fap to MSX and NEC PC-8801 games. If we want game discussion, we're gonna need better posters than that.

>>3415608
Supposedly only prototype SIDs used ceramic shells but they have been found in early production C64s.

>>3415582
That's really cool. I don't have an oscilloscope but if I ever get one I'll give this a try. It would probably be cheaper to just buy another breadbin with the newer chipset, though. That's probably the kind we had when I was a kid.

>>3415631
I think the MSX is really cool but I've only ever seen one at MAGfest. The only games on it that I'm familiar with are the Metal Gear games and a few other ports of Konami 8-bit games.

>>3415631
>I only remember that one weeb trying to force everything to fap to MSX and NEC PC-8801 games
Here come the retarded redditor. Enjoying summer here? We've alway been talking about japanese computers and games in these threads since they've been created, a few years back, you know, when you weren't here? Also, most of the times the people wanting to talk about games try to start a titles on stuff like the Amigas, C64 and PCs more than the MSX. Also, the MSX was a popular architecture in some European countries, so no, it's not """""""weeb shit"""""""".

>>3415657
It has cool games from Enix, Compile and Micro Cabin too.

>>3415663
he thought the anti-jpc falseflagger was legit, don't mind him

>hurr summer

Please don't do that again.

>>3414747
>No wonder there's only 8 different posters in there if 75% of the 84 posts here aren't about games

There's 25 posters.

Looks pretty uncomfortable to type on (mostly because wrist position) plus that little screen would give you eye strain.

>>3415668
>>hurr summer
Okay, it might not be summer, but damn that's still one hell of a newfag.

>>3415672
No, there's 10 posters now, and 24 pictures m8 (25 now). Put your mouse cursor on top of the digits and you'll have the description

>>3415672
The post you're replying to was made last night when there were about 10 less posts in the thread.

>>3415684
19 actually, and there is only 2 new poster to the thread. (He mistook the number of pics with the number of posters).

MSX was rubbish. It got nothing but a couple of shoddy Spectrum ports.

>>3415605
Not so great convergence adjustments sure made everything a little more blurrier than it actually was which was amplified by the use of composite or RF and possibly cables of questionable quality.
And... yeah I know. On some things of mine, I always went full retard to get the best quality and reliability without spending "too much" on it.

>>3415613
Most chips have a datecode of either week 19 or 20 of 1984, so how does a factory gets batches of chips made in the following year?

>>3415641
>It would probably be cheaper to just buy another breadbin with the newer chipset, though.
Yes, the adjustment for the AEC fix is done by looking at the monitor anyways. And you need an inverter IC (and 1-4,7Kohm trimmers, 100pF caps) for that fix, a 74LS14 will do it.
The scope is only important to verify the voltages, also correct resistors, trimmers, capacitors and inductors will be needed for my opamp based amp.

>>3415678
But it looks aesthetic as fuck, just look at the shape and size of that thing.

>>3415678
It doesn't look so uncomfortable if you place it at the right height. Also, the monitor might be little (9" exactly) but for a 40-column display it's actually pretty decent, considering most 80-column terminals had 14" monitors. The fact that it's monochrome with a black background also help reduce the strain.

Anyway, while talking about the PET:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ053poqL10
The PET and TRS-80 model 100 seems to be nice little machins for these labyrinth exploration games.

>>3415716
Weak b8 m8.

>>3415718
>let me respond to the shitter to show just how NOT baited I am

Why couldn't this meme stay on /v/ and /pol/ where it belonged?

>>3415718
There were tons of PET games, almost all of them in BASIC. I don't specifically know of any in machine language other than PET Invaders and one Star Wars game.

>>3415724
Too bad though because PETs are one of the easiest computers to program in assembly there is.

>>3415724
Yeah, seeing how slow they are, it's pretty visible that they're BASIC games, just like the model 100.
Apparently there are some pretty recent games made for it though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPJTR61B6EU

>>3415728
Well it came from a time when commercial releases for micro computers being in BASIC was still a common practice.

>>3415724
A lot of them will run on a C64 with a couple minor changes, generally removing POKE commands for stuff like disabling the VBLANK flag (ie. the killer POKE). Some have embedded machine language routines which will be harder to convert. Also the PET has a backslash in place of the British pound sign so this will look fucked-up on a C64.

This wasn't an exclusively PET phenomenon though; early Apple II games (1977-80) were often written in BASIC as well and did not use HGR graphics mode, only text/low res.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqs6gIZbpxo

PET Invaders. Commodore made this one themselves incidentally; they did a Space Invaders clone on all later machines as well, under the name Avenger.

>>3415747
>that schematic to make a PET speaker
Now that's cool as fuck.

PETs are not capable of relocating BASIC code. If you load any BASIC program written on a later Commodore machine, you will see nothing when you type LIST because it gets loaded in a higher location than $0400. This is solved as follows:

>type 0 REM
>load the BASIC program
>type SYS 1024 to go to the machine language monitor
>type M 0400-0410
>change $401 and $402 to whatever the BASIC start address was on the machine it was saved on (01 08 if it was a C64, 00 1E if it was an unexpanded VIC-20, etc)
>exit back to BASIC
>delete the 0 REM line
>type LIST and there will be your BASIC program

The alternative solution is to use a sector editor on the disk to change the first two bytes of the program.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Commodore-Pet-4032-/322221014388?hash=item4b05de7d74:g:32gAAOSw6n5XqKbt

40xx PETs were a popular school computer as the large text was easy for young children to read.

>>3414428
Quick scan of Ebay today found two 8050s listed, but no 4040s.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SUPER-RARE-COMMODORE-CBM-8250-DUAL-DRIVE-FLOPPY-DISK-SHALL-WE-PLAY-A-GAME-/172296989730?hash=item281db36c22:g:RhQAAOSwZQxW6wgX

Oh, and found an 8250.

>>3415716
You're limiting your POV to just the British market.

>>3415678
I think these early Commodore computers inspired the computers in the Fallout games. It's that goofy yet iconic trapezoid screen.

>>3416064
That's just a standard terminal design that well predates the PET.

To answer a question from the previous thread, reset buttons do not clear memory at all. The only way to actually do that is to turn the computer off and wait 10 seconds.

>>3416064
Look like an ADM3a terminal more than a PET though.

>>3416441
One of the best game to own if you only have an MSX 1 model, and still a great game if you've got later models. Konami did a great job giving original stages instead of just porting the arcade version.

>>3412485
>>3412517
Amigas are generally very reliable computers if well taken care of, definitely moreso than 8-bit Commodores. The one major reliability problem with them are the blue barrel batteries (a horrible, horrible early 90s fad) in A3000/4000s. Never buy a big box Amiga on Evilbay unless the seller posts 3000x3000 resolution photos of the motherboard from every angle.

>>3415734
> Well it came from a time when commercial releases for micro computers being in BASIC was still a common practice.
Tell me more, please.

>>3416585
ok

>>3416585
Well what's more to add? Many (if not most) of the software released for home computers were made in BASIC because most of them had an interpreter to boot on, and because it's easier to make programs quickly in BASIC than in assembly language. If you want to release stuff for the new market that was the home computer market in the late 70s and fast, making BASIC games isn't a stupid idea. On the other hand, your games will be slow, though it all depend on the kind of game you're making -- text based adventures wont feel as sluggish as, say, a 3D-rendered labyrinth exploration game.
If you want you can take a look at the source code of some of these games by typing LIST after loading theme. Some later games don't let you do that though, and some others juste have a BASIC loader, the main game being in machine language.

>>3416571
Yup, it's a well know fact, not only a problem with bigbox Amigas.

>>3416653
It's true that many PC motherboards and the Amiga 500+ also have this kind of battery. But do you know what's worse? Pic related. These things and their clones are present on many 486 motherboards, and on top of being a battery, they're also an RTC and NVRAM module.

>>3416672
They are annoying but no problem if you have some tools.

>>3416680
This is what I usually do.

>>3416672
>>3416680
I remember the computer shop that serviced our 486 did some kind of mod where they wired up a AA batter holder to that thing so that we could replace it ourselves.

>>3416686
Yeah, you can find machines like that still.

>tfw you figure out how to get a custom character set on a c64
that was way too much work

>>3416487
>Konami did a great job giving original stages instead of just porting the arcade version.
that's because the MSX game came out first

that's right, the first sequel to gradius was on the MSX

>>3416712
Ah ok, I didn't knew that. Well, that's good to know they did the same thing with Gradius 2 as with Parodius.

>>3416672
>Amiga 500+
Nope. Uses same battery type as many trapdoor expansions.
3x Nicad cells in a row, 3.6V with mostly 60mAh.

>>3416894
Heh, I though it did use barrel batteries because my Amiga trapdoor expansion uses one.

>>3416894
>>3416903
All Commodore made Amigas and expansions use pic related.
Also almost all third party expansions made back in the day.

>>3416916
All new Amiga expansions and very few accelerators from back in the day used this.

>>3416916
Also this >>3416916
is what
>>3416672 >>3416571
was talking about.

In 2009, the C64 shooting game Uridium have been ported over to the MSX 1. While they kept the original title tune, they did add some kickass soundtrack using the integrated PSG chip as well as the SCC :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWS305hOKhE

If you want more game discussion in here, it might be nice if people actually used the catalog and quit making threads like this.

>>3417818

>>>/mu/67024696
Posting in epic thread to shill /mod/, a Tracker Music General on /mu/

Posting Rayxanber's soundtrack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKzm7meK9P8

>>3417849
>DOS
Are you retarded or just autistic?
What about Atari, Amiga, Macintosh, C64, Spectrum, Amstrad games and hardware?

>>3418045
>OctaMED 4.0
>not 5.0

>>3418629
>Hey look guys! I included autistic in my post! Do I fit in yet?
No need to be rude for no reason, especially when your post have nothing to add nor you're refuting his point, this isn't /b/ here.

>>3418631
I don't know about OctaMED, but for ProTracker people purposely use older versions because of modifications in the playback routines.

>>3413234
>when there are other sources that are way cheaper
Where should I look for older machines then? Ebay charges silly prices for mass produced machines, and there's not much of a selection on my local Kijiji/craigslist.

>>3418742
Local ad's, thrift stores, garage sales, recycling centers, asset disposals centers,
computer shops that sell refurbished computers might have some in the back,
also ask around friends or if they know who might have some.

Forums and eBay are usually mindlessly expensive because of collector and reseller faggots.

>>3418742
Look for older cities with low income populations. You'd be able to find lower in gear pretty easily. I live in northern Virginia and go to Richmond once a year to buy older kit there to sell up here. I've easily doubled the prices on Amigas and Atari STs I've found there. Video games are dirt cheap, specially for systems no poor person wants.

>>3418774
Amigas are ridiculously overpriced online.

>>3418742
What >>3418747 and >>3418774 said, and even though you said that on craiglist there's not so much selection locally, try to check in surrounding areas and/or states if you live in the US, and don't be affraid of shipping, a good company won't charge too much I think (though I don't really know about US shipping companies I don't live there).

Anyway, nice Thinkpaf 701 gif, really sexy indeed.

>>3418782
It seems to me that it's much harder thing to find those old ones in the US then in the EU.

Probably mostly because of more collectors/resellers and only having things like craigslist and eBay, while European countries always have their own popular resell/auction sites.

>>3418774

OH! And HAM radio festivals. Lots of good stuff there.

Today's haul for my Amiga.

>>3419202
Very nice anon! Makes me sad that I only have those games on WHDLoad and not real media.

>>3419202
>Space Hulk
>Pinball Fantasies
>Alien Breed
>Frontier Elite II
That's a really good bunch anon, have fun with these games!!

>>3419221
I have tons of games on WHDLoad but physical collections are just nicer. Frontier's books and starmap are in amazing condition considering the age of it.

>>3419223
Thanks anon, I will. To be honest, I only got Birds of Prey cause it was dirt cheap and I really love super early 3D graphics.

>>3419226
You're welcome. I didn't voide any opinion about Birds of Prey because I don't really know about this title. I'll check some gameplay vids of this game.

>>3419226
The only big box Amiga game I have is Desert Strike, pic related being on the box, else I have a bunch of old 90's bootleg floppies with awesome art on them, like bootlegs sold to the masses.

>>3419202
Nice.

I just replaced the inverter chip on my 1541 floppy drive and it still doesn't boot up. I'm almost positive that the DOS rom has gone bad. I've got a new one on the way but it probably won't arrive until Monday.

I've also got my new 4-pin chroma/luma cable and it looks really good. There is a slight "jailbar" effect but it's not that noticeable. Now if only my replacement RAM ICICs would hurry up and get here from Bulgaria I could get the thing up and running at 100%. I need to buy more games, too. The only disk I have is Commando.

>>3419692
>There is a slight "jailbar" effect but it's not that noticeable.
The AEC fix might be able to reduce it further. All you need is that inverter chip, 1Kohm trimmer and 100pF capacitor.

>>3419723
I'I'll give it a try sometime.

>>3419723
I'll give it a try sometime.

I just finished socketing all the RAM ICs on my C64. It was a real pain in the ass and I made some mistakes, but overall it's looking good. Hopefully it will be all systems go once my replacement RAM arrives from Bulgaria.

My tips from the experience:

1) do not try using hot air to desolder the ICs or you may end up with a black scorch mark on the back of your PCB

2) Do use a flat or "chisel" tip on your soldering iron. it helps a lot.

3) Prep the solder joints with flux before heating them. It will get the solder flowing a lot better

4) give all the legs the "wiggle test" with a tiny screw driver to find whichever ones are keeping the IC from popping out

5) use desoldering braid to clean up whatever the solder sucker misses

6) clean up the circuit board with some rubbing alcohol and an old tooth brush to get rid of any burn-on flux when you're done

This would have been a lot easier with an electric desoldering vacuum, but it is doable without one. It just takes a really long time and is annoying. I am glad I don't think I'd ever want to put this board through all that again.

I just finished socketing all the RAM ICs on my C64. It was a real pain in the ass and I made some mistakes, but overall it's looking good. Hopefully it will be all systems go once my replacement RAM arrives from Bulgaria.

My tips from the experience:

1) do not try using hot air to desolder the ICs or you may end up with a black scorch mark on the back of your PCB

2) Do use a flat or "chisel" tip on your soldering iron. it helps a lot.

3) Prep the solder joints with flux before heating them. It will get the solder flowing a lot better

4) give all the legs the "wiggle test" with a tiny screw driver to find whichever ones are keeping the IC from popping out

5) use desoldering braid to clean up whatever the solder sucker misses

6) clean up the circuit board with some rubbing alcohol and an old tooth brush to get rid of any burn-on flux when you're done

This would have been a lot easier with an electric desoldering vacuum, but it is doable without one. It just takes a really long time and is annoying. I am glad I had the IC sockets on hand, because I don't think I'd ever want to put this board through all that again if ever a piece of RAM goes bad again (which I highly doubt, but even so it's good to think ahead).

I miss the Gravis Gamepad. I have an iBuffalo SNES controller which more or less does the same thing and is all around probably better, but it's not the same experience.

If and when I get around to building a new 486 I'll definitely pick up a new Gravis, although I wish they'd make a USB version of the original for modern PCs.

>>3420625
What's the switch at the bottom of the controller for?

>>3420813
Lefty mode. That was a thing back then.

>>3420832
Ah ok. On my controller there are only switches to deport to of the front buttons on the triggers.

>>3420608
If you replace just one RAM chip, it's best to socket all of them because sockets add extra capacitance meaning the socketed chip will operate slightly slower than the soldered ones. Socketing the whole bunch ensures they all run at the same speed.

If the 1541 is resetting itself in a loop, something's preventing the CPU from operating properly. Almost anything could cause that; RAM, ROM, the CPU itself, a power supply failure, bad address decoding logic...

>>3420845
Interesting. I never would have thought of that, but I figured if I was going to socket one I may as well do them all in case one goes bad in the future. Seems unlikely given that I'm using a new, properly built PSU, but you never know.

Get a multimeter and check the reset line on the 1541's CPU. If it's at 0V, the reset line is stuck.

>>3420847
Most anecdotes I've read online suggest it's usually the ROM that goes bad. Most likely because of too much heat. I'll know for sure when my replacement ROM arrives on Monday. If that does the trick I'll go ahead and add my heatsinks to the chips to make sure they don't go dying on me, and possibly an internal fan later.

Get a multimeter and check the reset line on the 1541's CPU (pin 40). If it's at 0V, the reset line is stuck. Be careful to not short anything and especially not touch the transformer.

>>3420860
Also don't do this test unless the 1541 is disconnected from the computer because a powered-off C64 attached to a 1541 can still pull the reset line low, so you could get a false flag reading from it.

I would personally rather have a 1541-II than an original 1541, the one problem being that they're not 100% low level compatible which breaks a few games/copy protections (dunno which ones though).

>>3420898
The original 1541 has a certain nostalgic appeal to me. All of my family's Commodore stuff had that rainbow badge on it, and I distinctly remembered that shape and look on the 1541. Having to do some repairs is worth it to me.

Here come some computer game musics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMUrnNa5h-o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQKm3hiPSkc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2ZUskVaiuE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDz8AWqHoiE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1YSY7eMwvI
Enjoy the good sound.

why is aligning characters on a C64 in assembly so fucking hard jesus christ

>>3422402
Jesus won't help you in assembly, you're on your own.

>>3422402
>aligning characters
What do you mean?

>>3422471
just trying to get a graphic to stay together in general

and also perfectly centering it

>>3422473
>graphics falling apart
Superglue anon

>>3422402
>>3422473
i also wonder how C64 devs even did it back in the day, considering i have emacs and a binding set to assemble and run vice which allows me to test it in seconds

>>3422483
Bigger devs had cross assemblers on a minicomputer or a Unix workstation. Many smaller devs just had to pen their code on paper and enter it into the computer with a machine language monitor cartridge.

>>3419202
>>3419226
I checked Bids of Prey gameplay videos, it seems like a nice fighting jet simulator, though having a fast Amiga (at least a 68020 or 68030 with FastRAM and FPU) seems to be a requirement.

>>3424130
Does Birds of Prey really use an FPU? I don't think any officially released games do.

>>3424146
TFX supported FPUs for sure, and I'm sure there are other flight simulators that did too.

>>3424162
Interesting, I have to try TFX.

I replaced the DOS rom on my 1541 and it seems to be initializing just fine. I can't truly test it on my C64 until the replacement RAM arrives, but I went ahead and installed some nice copper heatsinks on the chips. They seem to do a good job of dissipating heat, a notable improvement over the bare chips. I've also got some left over if I decide to install a JiffyDOS chip at some point. Hopefully with the heatsinks on there, whatever caused the DOS rom to go bad before (most likely heat) won't be an issue going forward.

On an odd side note, when I first booted my C64 I got the out of memory on 0 error message, but after I socketed the RAM I get no text and some of parentheses scattered near the bottom of the screen. I wonder if I somehow damaged some of the RAM while desoldeing it? It probably doesn't matter since I'm going to be replacing all of the RAM anyway, but hopefully this doesn't mean I broke a trace or lifted a pad.

I want to buy a Commodore 64, I never had one before.

What's a good price to not get ripped off?
Thanks!

>>3424676
Also what are the must know things about a beginner C64 user.
What are the things I have to do for sure, what not to do?
Also, loading programs and games with your phone as sound files is okay for the beginning?

>>3425058
>>3424676
1. Get a C64C; they're more reliable than the breadbin
2. Throw the original PSU in the trash and get a third party one
3. Heat sink the VIC-II and SID

>Also, loading programs and games with your phone as sound files is okay for the beginning?

No because it doesn't use a normal audio cassette recorder with normal audio jacks. You need a disk drive to do anything substantial, but it's better to just get something like a 1541 Ultimate than deal with a decrepit 30 year old hunk of shit 1541.

>>3424670
>On an odd side note, when I first booted my C64 I got the out of memory on 0 error message, but after I socketed the RAM I get no text and some of parentheses scattered near the bottom of the screen
What character does it look like?

http://sta.c64.org/cbm64pet.html

>>3425085
It's 40 and 41, parenthesis. They're on different lines and not next to each other, through.

>>3425125
The binary for 40 is 00101000. That indicates stuck bits in RAM chips 3 and 5. C64 RAM faults are very easy to test for because it uses one bit from each chip to make a byte, so you can figure out which ones are bad by the characters on the screen. If you'd gotten an @ instead of the parenthesis, it would indicate that a bit is stuck in chip 2.

>>3425249
Neat. All this should go away after I replace the RAM ICs with fresh ones though, right?

>>3425268
You probably don't need to replace all of the RAM, just the suspect chips. It's possible that others are bad, but start with chips 3 and 5. Swap those and see if everything works.

>>3424676
>>3425058
Don't buy it for more than 50 bucks, There were more then 10 million of these sold worldwide it's not worth the price some are trying to sell them for. For the PSU, >>3425076 is right about getting a more reliable one, but don't throw the original in the trash like a moron, it could still have it's use (maybe it could be made more reliable by replacing the bad quality components that have been used originally with brand new, higher quality ones).
No you can't load games from you phone, this isn't a ZX Spectrum -- the cassette interface is a digital one and require the datassette to work. If you're into british titles well that might be something worth getting. As for the disk drive I'd say getting both a real one (for the real media you could end up getting) and an emulator for file transfers could be a good idea.

>>3425076
>>3425446
So there's no way to load anything without a floppy drive or datasette drive?
I guess you could get a datasette and use one of those audio cassette adapters with 3.5mm jacks? I don't have a way to write those old floppies for software to use on the C64.

The 1541 Ultimate is kind of cheating, it would be almost the same to just get an FPGA computer and run the C64 core on it...

Are there normal "SD card readers" that work like the floppy drive?

>>3425936
>I guess you could get a datasette and use one of those audio cassette adapters with 3.5mm jacks?
I guess you could, the cassettes themselves are you average Type I audio cassette.

>>3425936
Irrelevant because everyone has their own opine on what constitutes an "authentic" setup. There are some extreme autists who think anything but a breadbin+original 1541 is blasphemy, others go out and buy junk like Chameleon64s, SD2IECs, SwinSIDs, and so forth.

>>3425950
Yes. If you have a standard audio cassette recorder, you can record tapes from your PC. However, most of the better C64 games will require a disk drive. No disk=no Lode Runner, Bard's Tale, Maniac Mansion, Ultima, etc.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-II-Plus-A2S1048-with-two-disc-drives-/142085713866?hash=item2114f7efca:g:T80AAOSwaB5XsHZC

"As far as working order, I cannot be sure since I do not have the screen. When I turn the power on, you can hear a very high pitch whine, evidence something is getting power and using it."

Somehow hearing a high pitched whine when there's no CRT around is not a good thing.

>>3425961
This tends to happen when the PSU has bad caps in it. I notice in the listing, he doesn't say anything about the disk drives spinning up when he powers the thing on.

>>3425951
>SD2IEC

I guess that's what I need?
How does it work? Does it have floppy images on it or do you just transfer programs to the sd card like it's an floppy?
Would this let you run the C64 floppy games too?

>>3425980
Maybe, but it doesn't work with certain of the more advanced copy protections. The 1541 Ultimate is supposed to be compatible with everything, but I also don't know what specific games don't work on the SD2IEC.

>>3425980
You copy D64 images to the card and can swap them on the fly as you're using the computer.

>>3425983
That's nice.

>>3425982
The 1541 Ultimate is just an interface for emulating a floppy/tape drive, USB host and ethernet?
It's still uses the C64's CPU and SID chips, and everything else inside the C64?

It's not like the Turbo Chameleon, that emulates the whole system?

>>3425076
>1541 Ultimate

>>3425982
>1541 Ultimate

go advertise your product somewhere else

>>3425987
*yawn* This troll again. I already exposed you in a /g/ thread the other day.

>>3425986
Correct. It just emulates the 1541.

bump

>>3426160
Stop bumping the thread when it's not even page 9~10. /vr/ is a slow board you fucking newfag, you're contributing nothing nor you're helping anyone with your shit.

>>3426206
Exactly.

>>3424676
paid about 20 bucks for my C64C, only problem is that it didn't come with any sort of drive for it and the RF signal is fucking trash

Here's a gameplay video of the Sharp X1 port of Gradius :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seMaCT2MVNU

>>3426860
still better than the C64 version

>>3426278
Whut? Go online and get a composite cable.

>>3427685
no

>>3426278
What. Go online and get a video cable. They're like $8.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Commodore-64-128-rca-audio-video-monitor-cable-NEW-/291837991833?hash=item43f2e65b99:g:D3MAAOxyVX1Ryky4

At least you can still connect it up until you get your cable. The VIC-20 didn't have an RF box so without the video cable you can't do anything.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1982-RADIO-SHACK-TRS-80-MODEL-II-Display-Console-Keyboard-Manuals-Disk-/222218715410?hash=item33bd448112:g:oi0AAOSw9NdXr8p4

Nice but these guys are willing to pay vastly more than me for a pretty useless computer unless Visicalc is your thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FkEeJhXMFo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvQlp7RC13c

IDK about the quality of Apple II emulation but Pac-Man looks considerably choppier on Apple2Win versus the real thing.

>>3427843
Apple2Win is ancient shit written in like 2001 or something.

http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blog/2010-09-04-fixing-an-atari-400-screen-issue.htm

Tezza is one of the big honchos on VCFED. Here his Atari 400 had an apparently failed ANTIC that he replaced. I wonder if he knew he could have resurrected the dead chip by baking it in the oven since it seems like it suffered an electromigration-induced failure.

The oven baking trick is fairly well known on PC graphics cards since modern ones can get hotter than hell and quickly fail from electromigration. Note that this will most likely not work on ICs damaged by ESD or overvoltage. Thus any C64s you encounter where the PSU blew out the RAM...that stuff is not fixable and should just be thrown away.

Unfortunately, overvoltage is a common RAM killer due to aged caps and PSUs; it's probably a lot more common than the chip failing from electromigration, unless you're talking about 4116 RAM which always dies from overheating due to its triple voltage power supply.

>>3427843
He had a video as well of Ms. Pac-Man on the Apple II and the programmer of the game posted on the comment section. "I did this a year after graduating high school. One of my proudest accomplishments." I guess that just proves 1983 was a different time because I don't think you can get a job at a game dev nowadays unless you're like 30 and have a PhD in computer science from MIT.

>the idea of some pimple faced teenager with a GED being hired by EA nowadays
LOL.

>>3428084
Except you won't because EA will just hire Indian slave workers for 30% of your salary.

Ah, all the poor TED chips that could have been potentially saved with the old oven trick. It does seem that overheating/electromigration is responsible for the vast majority of Commodore IC deaths (bad PSUs usually kill the RAM rather than the main ICs in the computer).

>>3428074
That was a little odd that his ANTIC failed while running because most of the time, if an electromigration failure occurs, it will be at power up. That being because electromigration is essentially a failure of the bonding wires in an IC that connect a pair of transistors. The wires break from overheating like a light bulb filament and the point of the oven treatment is that applying heat with no bias (from electrical current) "fuses" them back into place. As you probably know, the jolt from powering on is what most of the time causes a light bulb to burn out.

When the first packaged ICs appeared in the 1960s, they actually failed from electromigration in about 2-3 weeks of use which led to a huge chunk of money and time being invested in correcting this unanticipated problem.

>>3428139
Most modern ICs use copper bonding wires rather than aluminum ones to reduce electromigration problems.

Electromigration is more likely to happen with those old 80s NMOS chips simply because their heat/power consumption is higher than CMOS chips. We did have a lucky break in the 90s for a while but electromigration began to become a problem again in the 2000s with chip sizes getting progressively smaller.

>>3428074
It's probably a good idea to heat sink ANTICs anywhere just like any GPU. Apparently Nintendo even heat sinked the PPU on early Famicoms although actually they don't get as hot as the CPU. However, no toaster NES has heat sinks on the ICs.

bump

This thread need more Amiga music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h1Z6gQMYLs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_93puzb_DZ0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8B1BapyJQc

http://www.lemon64.com/?game_id=1148

LOL, check out all these Yuropoors complaining how they don't understand baseball.

Is ripping images from PC-98 games possible?

>>3431541
Well yes otherwise there wouldn't be .fdi nor .hdi disk images of PC-98 games floating around on the internet.

>>3431557
I'm guessing you won't educate me on the ways of doing it.

>>3431596
The CD-ROM ones follow the Yellow Book standard so any CD-ROM imaging software should do (the ones that save as .bin+.cue are better).
For the cassette ones, I hope you have a good tape deck and that your soundcard's line in isn't a piece of shit, because you'll need that, on top of an audio recording software.
For floppy ones, you'll need at least the right drive (a 5"1/4 DD one, a 5"1/4 HD one and a 3"1/2 HD one, I doubt there are any games that came on 8" floppies, and DD and HD stuff with 5"1/4 floppies isn't a good idea), a PC with a floppy controller, and some floppy imaging software. I don't know which ones would be better for PC-98 stuff though, nor if they are fully readable from a PC either (like how the Atari ST can read DOS formatted DD floppies, but PCs can't read floppies formatted on ST), I'm no expert of PC-98 stuff. You might as well try to check PC-98-oriented forums for these kinds of infos.

I love u cities of gold but I can't get it to work on anything past windows 3.1. I can't find a way to save it for the version I have, either. Is the original that much better than my 96 version?

If I get an original game disk that no longer reads, is it possible to reformat it and write the game data back onto the disk?

>>3432246
Probably not. If it can't read the original data any more, it probably won't reliably hold rewritten data.

What order should I play the Ultima games in?

More specifically, when do I play the Ultima Worlds and Underworld spin off games?

>>3432261
With some determination is it possible to replace the magnetic disc itself without destroying the plastic exterior?

>>3432313
I'm curious about how important the data transfer feature is. Like, if you play Ultima V on the C64, will Ultima VI for MS DOS not be the full experience?

>>3432324
If you're going to do that, just put the original in a box and write the game to a ten cent blank floppy.
Unless you're trying to make a quick buck on ebay...

>>3431724
What setup do you have to make it run? Did you try it on Windows 9x? (I guess you did, but I wanna be sure) I think you'll have to get yourself some DOS installation running.

>>3432313
Some people will tell you to skip directly to the IV, but I think it can still be an experience to play them all. Be sure to check which platform has the best version of each episodes.
As for the spin-offs I've never played to them, but I guess that them being spin-offs, you don't need to wait before finishing a certain episode before starting them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVuOXnk5GCM

Damn, that looks nice. The C64 version can't beat the 16-bit ones, but they did a really good job for 8 year old hardware, especially the digitized speech (which you need a 6581 SID to hear, it won't work on the 8580).

>>3432649
Miles better than John Madden Football which actually came out less than a year earlier.

>>3432658
The 8-bit versions of JMF suck partially because the game was developed around the PC first and then dumbed down for them. But even the PC version is weaker than ABC MNF.

bump

There's something screwed up with my C64. I can't put it back together without making the RAM go screwy on me. Putting just a little bit of pressure on the board causes the RAM to go screwy, and if I close up the bin all I get is a blue screen. The system works fine if I don't re-assemble it, but closing it back up causes it to stop working.

The area circled in yellow is where my C64 doesn't like anything touching it. Just a bit of pressure from my thumb causes the blinking blue square in basic to start rapidly flashing and then the system stops working until I restart it. The keyboard is putting pressure on that spot and for some incomprehensible reason it's causing the connections with the RAM to fail. I also tried manually reflowing the solder on all of the IC sockets but I still haven't been able to fix the problem.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the spot on the back of the board where I accidentally burned the PCB, but from what I can tell there was no wiring there. I'm getting really aggravated because the system technically works, but at the same time it's useless if I can't put it back together.

Also, the 1541 drive is partially working now that I've been able to actually test it, but the only floppy disk I have is Commando and when I try to load it, I hear that knocking noise in the 1541, and I get an error message while the red light flashes. Would this mean the drive is out of alignment, or is the read head dirty? Is there any way I can fix it without a diagnostic cartridge, or is it the game disk that's the problem?

>>3433662
Upon further inspection I've narrowed it down to the area in the red circle. I tried removing one of the screws on the keyboard but it didn't make any difference.

>>3433662
I once used sockets in my A500 to have 1M chipram internally, wasn't a smart idea at all but somehow I managed to fit the shielding and keyboard in the case.
>The keyboard is putting pressure on that spot and for some incomprehensible reason it's causing the connections with the RAM to fail. I also tried manually reflowing the solder on all of the IC sockets but I still haven't been able to fix the problem.
If these RAM sockets are new, then they are the problem. You should have bought the more expensive precision ones.
However, are the legs of the RAM chips dirty?
Maybe take them out and dip them in solder.

>Would this mean the drive is out of alignment, or is the read head dirty?
You need to get a new floppy disk (or an old ones you don't care about) and format it. If the drive can read the freshly formatted disk fine then it's not aligned. Also cleaning the head is very important and should always be the first thing to do on a newly acquired but used drive, a dirty head could ruin (scratch) your disks.

To align a head you need a disk (best are ones written in a factory, not so great are ones written in other good drives).
There are different methods:
-You could use software that helps you reading the track.
-You could measure voltage on the "video amplifier IC" (NE592), if your drive uses that one
-An oscilloscope can be used.

The main task is to move (while it's spinning/reading) the head assembly to a position where the signal is the most strong (also highest amplitude on the scope or voltage on the amp). The software method is the least accurate as it tells you if it could either read the track flawlessly multiple times or not at all.

>>3433745
Did you inspected all the solder joints before?
Perhaps there are some dry ones under that chip.

>>3433762
I tried reflowing the sloder under that big chip and it doesn't seem to have made any difference. Could there be a broken trace somewhere that isn't making contact when the board flexes a certain way? How would I test for that?

>>3433821
You could try using a magnifying glass to find tiny cracks or blindly bridge some traces with wire.
You might could use something pointy and non-conductive like a pen or the eraser end of an pencil and push on the sensitive parts to pinpoint the pitfall, that's what I would attempt in that case.

>>3433867
I just decided to hell with it and wedged a piece of rigid plastic I had left over from another project between the brass RF shield and the back of the motherboard. The idea was that it would prevent the board from flexing, and lo and behold it worked. That thing isn't going anywhere and the C64 for all intents and purposes is now fully functional.

Granted it's not a 100% electrically perfect fix, but I'll take it.

As for the 1541, I guess I need to order a diagnostic cartridge and some more floppy disks to test with. I was going to order some game disks and blank floppies anyway.

>>3433883
Good to see that it's now functional, have fun with it! Nice trinitron by the way.

>>3433913
The actual C64 monitor looks a lot nicer. I have a special Chroma Luma cable that works with the older Commodores and it gives a really sharp picture. The only software I can test with right now is a Radar Rat Race cartridge but there was a weird ghosting effect on the Trinitron TV that doesn't show up on the 1702 monitor.

Also, I just ordered a lot containing Wasteland and Ultima for C64. I'm going to be ordering blank floppies and a 1541 diagnostic cartridge once I get paid this week, too, so hopefully I can get some real games going on the machine soon. Radar Rat Race is apparently an exact port of the Vic-20 version and it's pretty terrible.

>>3434305
Forgot to post a picture. This is the best my crappy phone camera could do at photographic a CRT, but it gets the point across. The picture quality looks quite good for such an old computer.

>>3434305
Yeah I know about the Y/C cable, also Commodore 64 monitors being manufactured by JVC, it seems almost normal for them to be quite good. As for the ghosting on the trinitron, do you hook your C64 in composite or RF? Have you tried adjusting the brightness? Anyway, good luck with the 1541 drive, and have fun with these new games.
>>3434325
Nice pic. As for the picture quality, it's quite good yeah, but there are other computers of the time like MSX models with an RGB output or the TO7 (which only has a SCART cable, no composite nor RF), when used with something like a Sony KX-20ps1 can give you a better quality though. The Amstrad CPC could output a pretty good picture too but the color monitors have a shitty dot pitch.

question anons

I bought an old Apple IIC a few days ago.
Is there a way to load software/games on it besides the 5.25" floppies?

Software for it is astronomically expensive and I don't have the tools to write data to a floppy from another computer

>>3434373
You could alway make a serial transfer program in BASIC and load little programs in memory you'd send from another computer, but otherwise all the interesting programs are on floppies, sorry m8. On earlier Apple II models there's a cassette port, but I don't know if there are any interesting software on cassette.
Have you tried checking for floppy boxes and the likes?

>>3434386
that's what I thought

saw some on ebay but the sellers are always turbojews that ask too much money for them and there's nothing I could source locally

the guy I bought the computer from didn't have anything either, just the machine that he wanted to get rid of

>>3434386
Isn't there stuff like for the C64, SD card loaders, etc? Floppy drive emulators?

>>3434373
>>3434429
This may be of interest, but you'll have to wait a year.

http://dreher.net/?s=projects/CFforAppleII&c=projects/CFforAppleII/main.php

>>3434397
Have you tried to search for these outside of ebay?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2UdOLbXOjk
Mad TV is a fun little management game.

>>3436368
I think I saw this one on Guru Larry a while back. These tycoon type games always seem to be interesting.

I just found this box outside on my property.
Are you guys ready for this?

>>3437945
The size of the box impressed me. Also it was lighter than expected, I thought I couldn't lift 35kg to my room but that was fucking easy.

>>3437945
>>3437949
>Sony multiscan 20-SF
I'd totally buy a monitor like that for a 486 with an SVGA card or an Amiga 3000/4000 with a Picasso IV.

>>3437949
Looks good so far.

>>3437957
I technically got the monitor for free, the seller (who told me that he paid 3000DM aka Deutschmark, 20 years ago) wanted to give it to someone rather than trashing it.
He also told me that he used it around 3 hours per day for the past 20 years which should amount to around 21900 operation hours.

I somehow got lucky as I asked him on the so evil ebay if he could go through the effort of shipping it to me. He was really nice of him to ask me as the local bidder who wanted pick it up in the following week didn't came neither replied to him.

I just realized that I posted in the wrong thread.

>>3437975
Just in case someone here want to see more:
>>3437984

>>3434373
http://asciiexpress.net/gameserver/

You can stream files into the cassette port if you have a II+ or IIe, though it won't help you with a IIc.

>>3437987
The IIc has a serial port but you'll need software for it.

I spent several hours trying out GIF viewers for the C64/128, but I couldn't get them to load or display anything.

>>3437975
I see. That's a pretty good deal, and 3 hours per day for 20 years is quite okay for an old computer monitor. Have fun with your new display anon!
>I just realized that I posted in the wrong thread.
Well technically it's a peripheral that can be used with old computers, and thus posting about it here is still on topic.

>>3437998
That isn't games, asshole.

This anon is a shitposter who like trying to act like he take the stance of other anons but act like a prick in order to discredit them. I suspect that he was the anti-jpc falseflagger too. Just report him and ignore his posts.

I was at a cool antiques and thrift shop and they had some cool competes. They had a awesome horizontal Dell that was probably late 80s or early 90s, but I passed because it only had 2 5.25" bays and one was for the 3.5" floppy drive. The video card was probably integrated too. They also had an awesome looking early 90s tower that I might go back for, although it was really dirty and I doubt anything worked. As a case it would be a great starting point if I washed it though-

The old PCs were all marked only $15. Is that reasonable for just a case to start with?

>>3437462
Yeah it's a really fun game, you have to go visit various offices in order to choose the programs the channel's gonna broadcast (films, documentaries, stuff like that) according to the budget you have left, which company you're gonna advertise based on how much they pay and how many time you're supposed to advertise them per day or per week. Everything is timed, even when you need to go to another office or even wait for the elevators. I've mainly played to the DOS version, but there's also an Amiga and Atari ST version.
While talking about this kind of game, there's also Mag! on Amiga, but it seems that it's in German only.

Hey guys, this is kind of a weird problem but maybe someone can help me.

I'm trying to play the Wing Commander games and Privateer that I bought through GOG, but I can't get my new CH Fighterstick to work with DOSBox. The stick works fine in modern games but in the Windows 10 Game Controllers menu, it acts like it's just a bunch of buttons with no analog axis and it acts as if nothing is working.

DOSbox has always been a bit fussy with joysticks and gamepads but it doesn't recognize any of the inputs on the CH stick, even when I used the control manager software to strip it down to as few inputs as possible. I only need the analog axis and first two buttons to work because I can map everything else in Xpadder.

What are some must play 68k Mac games?

Got this beauty recently.

Now that the post have been deleted, you can ignore >>3438440, I forgot to quote the anon's post.

>>3439565
There are the classic mac titles like Déjà Vu, Uninvited, Shadowgate, Shufflepuck, Balance of Power, as well as other titles like Defender of the Crown (which require at least a Macintosh II).

>>3439605
Are there any Mac exclusive games? I have played all of those on other platforms.

>>3439612
Shufflepuck is a Mac exclusive (though Shufflepuck cafe isn't). Otherwise no I don't know any, I'm no Mac owner, I'm just suggesting a few really well known 68k Mac titles.

>>3439620
Thanks

>>3439565
>>3439612
>Mac
>games
Jobs hated computer games.

>>3439978
>>Mac
>>games
>Jobs hated computer games.
Yup, and he didn't want the mac to be upgradable nor he wanted people to develop stuff on it, but the engineers still found a way to permit memory upgrades, software developpers still released games for the various mac models, and Apple did away with that guy a year after the original macintosh release because he became more of a nuisance than anything else.
No matter what you say, yes, macs did have games.

>>3439991
>No matter what you say, yes, macs did have games.
I know, I played them on PC and/or Amiga 2-3 years prior.

>>3440230
Some of them came on mac first though, like mindscape ones.

>>3439991
The Macintosh was one of Apple's biggest mistakes. The Apple 2GS was cheaper even with a monitor, and even though it had a slower CPU it was a much more capable machine. It could have been an actual competitor against the Amiga and IBM PC but instead we got Steve Jobs' shitty monochrome all-in-one with virtually no multimedia, gaming, and entertainment capabilities whatsoever.

The Apple 2 GS was everything people could have wanted from a 16-bit successor to the Apple 2 but they threw it under the bus to make way for a shitty machine that no-one wanted fueled by Steve Jobs' autism. The original Mac is the reason Apple was pretty much irrelevant for most of the 90s.

>>3440372
The monochrome monitor wasn't what's at fault -- many Atari ST were sold with monochrome monitors for serious applications (mainly music production, CAD and text processing), what was at fault was the fact that it didn't have enough memory for the kind of system it had. 128kB is too low for a 16-bit computer with a GUI-based OS.
Hopefully Apple kind of corrected the mistakes of Jobs after they did away with him by releasing the Macintosh II and other models, though they dun goofed in the 90s by releasing too many models too fast, in a matter of months sometimes -- I don't know which model exactly, but they released one before discontinuing it a few month later (not even a year) and released another model for the exact same price and with better performances. Just imagine being the last guy buying that model, seeing that if you would have just wait like a few days you'd have had a better computer for the same price, it doesn't really make you want to buy a computer from them anymore

Anyway, while talking about the Apple II GS, this computer's port of Silpheed seems really good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef63lEooUkw
The music is correct, though not as good as the PC-DOS or PC-88 versions, and the gameplay seems to remain untouched.

>>3439978
>>3439991
>1993 year Mac
>Steve jobs
Steve Jobs had not been in Apple for almost 10 years anymore by that time this computer came out.

>upgradable
Those computers have memory slots, even for video memory, they have NuBus expansion and a slot for CPU upgrades.

>>3440372
>>3440418
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h4tepFbMso

>>3440372
This is one of the most ill-informed posts I have ever seen.

>>3440701
He has a point though, if you liked games and were slightly advanced user the Apple series was a better idea than the Mac at the time.

See
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h4tepFbMso

>>3440693
>>1993 year Mac
>>Steve jobs
>Steve Jobs had not been in Apple for almost 10 years anymore by that time this computer came out.
>>upgradable
>Those computers have memory slots, even for video memory, they have NuBus expansion and a slot for CPU upgrades.

M8 re-read my post and you'll see that I said that
>Apple did away with him a year after the original macintosh release
and that
>the engineers still found a way to permit memory upgrades
NuBus and other stuff like that have been added with later models, produced when Steve Jobs wasn't there, but still, what I was saying was that the fact Jobs didn't like games had little effect to no effect on game developpers willing to release games on mac, especially when he wasn't even in the company during almost all of the 68k period.

>>3440693
That channel is damn comfy.

>>3440732
I didn't mean to argue with you, I was just expanding on your answer.

Why are VGA CRT monitors so hard to find these days? There used to be one in every home but I never see them in thrift shops or anywhere else. It's just a bunch of ugly old flat panels that no-one wants.

>>3441191
They are recycled or somewhere in a landfill, they ain't that durable too

>>3441191
Some thrift stores have banned them as donations because they just don't move, and it costs money to dispose of them.

>>3441249
>>3441197
>thrift shops don't want CRTs because they can't sell them
>go on eBay and they cost $100

What we have here is a problem of the right customers not being connected with the products that they want.

There's a local antiques / salvage / thrift store in my town, basically like the place from American Pickers. If there's something you want and they don't have, you can sign up and they'll call you when they find one. I asked about CRT monitors, and the guy was surprised that I wanted one and he said they throw them out and they might actually have a few in the sorting room. I wrote my name down and they're supposed to call when they find something, and it'll probably be dirt cheap.

It makes me sad that people are throwing these things away instead of finding homes for them. It makes me sadder still when I think of all the special brand-specific ones from companies like Commodore and Apple that are probably pulverized in a landfill instead of in someone's collection.

>>3441293
I agree, it's sad.

>>3439978
Not per se, but he did think computer manufacturers shouldn't go out of their way to support a frivolous activity like gaming and that game developers should be able to design their stuff around the hardware and not vice versa.

>>3441293
That doesn't mean anyone actually wants CRTs, it means Ebay scammers think "old=valuable".

Good luck finding a VGA CRT that's still in good shape and doesn't have screen burn/worn electron guns with low emissive output.

>>3441331
>>3441293
The high prices on Ebay are more an artifact of the high shipping cost of CRTs than anything.

>>3439978
What? Jobs wanted OS X to be a gaming platform but failed. He wanted even Halo to be a Mac exclusive.

>>3441331
>Good luck finding a VGA CRT that's still in good shape and doesn't have screen burn/worn electron guns with low emissive output.
Man, I scrap CRT's I can't store anymore because there's so many of them, excelent condition.

>>3441425
I can understand why so many CRTs get scrapped, but there are some that are significantly more valuable like the old Apple, Commodore 64, Amiga, and even the old IBM and Tandy monitors. I managed to pick up a Commodore 1702 a few weeks ago and it is really the perfect thing to complete a C64 breadbox setup. A lot of them ended up in landfills though, because of this assumption that so many people have that old = bad and worthless.

What's really annoying is that the thrift stores are full of old LCD monitors and no-one is buying them. A CRT monitor today still looks great even compared to more recent flat panels. An old LCD panel looks like garbage and they're never going to come back in style, ever, just like no-one wants a TV that only has RF input unless it's so old that it's black & white and has knobs on it.

If you want an old monitor, you're going to want a nice looking CRT, and if you want an LCD, you're going to want one that's new enough that it doesn't look like shit and actually has good contrast and little ghosting. Old LCDs are this awful place in between where they don't do anything well, and yet the thrift store shelves are packed with them.

>>3440724
apple were always a bunch of shadesters, their only good products were really the just the Apple II line

>>3441425
>I scrap CRT's I can't store anymore because there's so many of them, excelent condition.
Shit! Now that makes me pretty sad.
>>3441331
>Good luck finding a VGA CRT that's still in good shape and doesn't have screen burn/worn electron guns with low emissive output.
That's actually really easy, it's mostly mass-produced "multimedia" PC monitors that have been shat in the late 90s that are prone to them problems. If you check for models that are actually known to be good, you won't end up with that kind of shit. My 1997 Gateway2000 Vivitron and my 1996 HP Ultra VGA 1280, despite being used for 20 years (15 years as daily drivers), are still in a really good shape. Anyway, this have already been discussed here.
>>3441956
Amiga and Atari monitors are still kinda easy to find where I live, and can go as low as 5€ (just checked for the prices a few second earlier). A year ago, these Sony kx-14cp1 MSX monitors could be find as low as 5€ too (it mostly oscillated between 5 and 20€), though now there's none to be found, the last one being from some retarded reseller asking 90 fucking € because muh retro gaymen (shit was more expensive than a Sony kx-27ps1).

>>3442135
>Amiga and Atari monitors are still kinda easy to find where I live, and can go as low as 5€

Where is this magical place?

>>3442137
France.
Be prepared to add shipping if you want one though, the better prices are from bumfuck nowhere, and while shipping might only be 12€ for a 14" monitor if shipped for a French destination, I guess it can go REALLY high for international stuff.

>>3442141
Man, I want a Commodore monitor for my C64.

>>3442141
Well, look like I re-checked the 5€ Atari STe monitor ad, and it seems that it needs repairs. Still, there are other ads with Atari monitor for 20€, or Amstrad monitors for 10€ (some for CPCs, one for Amstrad PC).
>>3442146
Commodore 64 ones aren't easy to find here though.

>>3442135
>>Amiga and Atari monitors are still kinda easy to find where I live, and can go as low as 5€ (just checked for the prices a few second earlier).
If you're in a PAL territory then that sounds about right. Commodore 64 was even bigger in Europe and the UK than it was in the US, and the Amiga was lightyears more popular than in the US. There is tons of cool microcomputer stuff that's still very easy to find over there but really difficult over hear. Commodore 64 was very popular in the US but the distribution is all over the place because everything is so sparsely populated and spread out over here, even on the coast. Not to mention that there are lots of PAL-exclusive micro computers that never saw the light of day in the US.

>>3442169
It's not that easy to find Commodore 64 stuff here though, and they're usually overpriced as hell. On the other hand, Amstrad CPCs are piss easy to get, though the prices are becoming more and more ridiculous -- a CPC shouldn't cost more than 40€, unless it has like tons of books and floppies with it. Those were almost everywhere.

>>3442135
Don't agree at all. I've used a couple VGA CRTs in my time and they were all pretty dead when I retired them. Only an underage child who's never actually used the things would dispute this.

>>3442169
>Commodore 64 was very popular in the US but the distribution is all over the place because everything is so sparsely populated and spread out over here, even on the coast

I've seen more Apple IIs and even TI-99/4As in my time than I ever have C64s.

>>3442436
What brands of monitor were those?

>>3441956
Old CRTs were crap too. The typical consumer television from the 70s-80s was nothing to discuss. There's this kind of rose-tinted myth that all CRT TVs ever made were 2000s Sony Wegas.

>>3442436
This is bait.

>>3442442
The C64 was a fairly popular system in US, far more than Amiga was, but the Apple II is still more popular in the US then it was in the EU.

>>3442447
One of them was an ADI Microscan from the mid-90s. This was actually a pretty good little monitor but after 10 years of use the flyback transformer was shot.

The other was a Dell 17" from 1999-ish. Retired because it had screen burn and a dim picture.

The third was a huge-ass 20" Cornerstone, which was a higher end and not a shitty Taiwanese monitor. Retired because screen burn and dim picture.

>>3442461
>flyback transformer was shot.
That's easy to replace.

>>3442460
They sold about 12 million C64s worldwide and about 60% of those were in Europe, so maybe 4 million C64s were sold here. The Apple II sold 6 million total but about 90% of those were in the US and Canada. Keep in mind that after 1984, most Apple IIs were fleet computers sold to the school market.

>>3442463
Good luck finding the specific flyback that thing needs and not get electrocuted doing it. Besides...

>unironically repairing a shitty chink monitor
I shiggidy diggidy do

>>3442474
I got rid of that thing anyway. Don't have it anymore. It looked pretty sad after spending 10 years in a damp basement.

>>3442468
The great C64 boom in the US was in 83-85, but after that people wanted Amigas, PCs, NESes, etc. Yuropoors though, they just kept on fapping to 8-bit computers with cassette storage right on to the end of the decade.

>>3442436
Probably the oldest CRT monitors I use are an 80' 12" monochrome MDA monitor, color 12" Apple one from the early 90's and a VGA 15" Hyundai one from mid 90's, then there's a 24" NEC and 23" LaCie from the early 2000's. None of the suffer any problems like dimming, burn in or coil whine, been in use and never in storage.

>>3442474
>the specific flyback that thing needs
Flybacks are off the shelf parts, I have even used TV flybacks in monitors.

>get electrocuted doing it
You'd have to be fairly stupid to do so or not know how to properly discharge capacitors.

>unironically repairing a shitty chink monitor
He mentioned it was a "pretty good little monitor"

I rate 2/10, pretty /b/ grade bait.

>>3442468
That seems about right. As I said, the Apple II was far more popular.

>>3442484
I'm not him, but ADI was a garbage Taiwanese brand. The only CRTs worth fixing are expensive Trinitron kinds of shit.

>>3442490
Don't agree though. There were a ton of C64s around. Apple IIs were expensive for a lot of people and like I said it was heavily sold as a school computer rather than to end users, especially after 1983-84. Keep in mind as well that Apple II sales were spread out over a lot longer period (they were sold in three decades).

>>>/g/56190175

Seems like the /g/ thread is dead and it's nothing but people wanking to pictures.

>>3442497
The fact that they where used in schools and that there where more of them is probably why they are so common now, a lot of them survived to this day and age.
A C64 at that time was of course a way cheaper home computer.

>>3442502
The old thread >>56181267 only lasted 24hrs until bump limit and was pretty active.
The thread you linked is fairly new, probably will bump limit too, the past 4-5 /g/ threads only lasted a day before a new thread was made, this has been going on and off for past few months, I have been lurking in them.

>>3442492
As I said, it spent 10 years in a damp basement. I decided out of curiosity to connect it up and see if it still worked. The thing actually fired up and had a decently bright picture (indicating the electron guns were still in good shape) but seems to have had a major HV issue because the picture was shrunken and fuzzy as hell. Also it kept making a popping sound and the picture would "jump" when this happened. I believe this is due to the large capacitor in the flyback leaking. After about 5 minutes, I got nervous and turned it off.

I probably was taking a risk even plugging that thing in and lucky it didn't catch fire/explode.

>>3442502
The old thread >>>/g/56181267 only lasted 24hrs until bump limit and was pretty active.
The thread you linked is fairly new, probably will bump limit too, the past 4-5 /g/ threads only lasted a day before a new thread was made, this has been going on and off for past few months, I have been lurking in them.

>>3442505
>Apple II sold 6 million units
>C64 12 million
>6 is greater than 12
Sounds like this guy needs to play some Math Blaster on the ol' Apple II.

>>3442516
He just bloody said they sold more Apple IIs in the US than C64s.

>>3442516
>They sold about 12 million C64s worldwide and about 60% of those were in Europe, so maybe 4 million C64s were sold here.
>The Apple II sold 6 million total but about 90% of those were in the US and Canada.

Over 5mil in US vs 4mil in US, not sure who needs to play Math Blaster.

>>3442518
It was probably close to equal all things considered but a substantial amount of Apple IIs went to schools or even business/scientific use rather than home users. As for the home computer market, the C64 strode the earth like a colossus.

>>3442505
>The fact that they where used in schools and that there where more of them is probably why they are so common now, a lot of them survived to this day and age

Schools are not the best environment for preserving a computer in good condition. It's easy to find Apple IIes on Ebay, harder to find one in decent shape for that reason.

>>3442520
Yes, but that has nothing to do with why they are more popular now then C64's, school computers probably survived better than the home ones.
Also, one million units more is quite a big number, even if it's +-10%.

>>3442436
>I've used a couple VGA CRTs in my time and they were all pretty dead when I retired them.
You didn't read my post did you? I didn't say ALL monitors can be used that way, I said those who weren't mass-produced "multimedia" ones.
>Only an underage child who's never actually used the things would dispute this.
You're basing your whole argument on your setup and completely ignore all the former graphists and workstation monitors that are still really good despite being used heavily by their former owners. If someone's underage here, you're acting more like you're the one who is.
>>3442461
Oh so you're the anon from the last time. We already told you that your monitors were low-end & "multimedia" stuff, not exactly the kind that was built to last. Re-read my previous post and you'll see that a decent mid-90s monitor can definitely be used as a daily driver for 15 years and still be good afterward.

>>3442452
>Old CRTs were crap
Of course, if you're talking about these RF-only sets you got in the US, those weren't the kind of shit I'd buy unless it's for some Atari VCS/Collecovision setup. But many models of computer monitors and European TVs (particularily French ones, RGB-SCART ports were a requirement starting in 1980) were far from being bad. Hell, some models were actually pretty good -- have you ever taken a look at these 1080 Amiga monitors (the older the Amiga monitor model is, the better the dot-pitch was), or these KX-14CP1 MSX monitors, or even the screenshot of a 1702 C64 monitor posted earlier? Yes, some of them are bad, my Amstrad CPC monitor is kind of crappy, but at the same time, I've also got a 1982 Sony KX-27 which picture is really great.
And no, I've never used a post-2000 CRT TV set, only 80s and 90s ones.

>>3442524
Also the old C64 bread boxes are prone to failure because of their custom chips and shitty PSU that kills memory, far higher risk then Apple II's.

Funny 'cos I had a Dell Optiplex GXMT (Windoze 95 Pentium box) and man, Ebay does not have _any_ Dells of that vintage. There's not a single one on there older than about 2003.

>>3442529
Apple IIs after the II+ also had custom chips and the IIe line often had shitty Micron RAM that dies if you sneeze on it. Those Micron 4264 chips. A lot of Apple IIs and early Macs had those things. They suck and Apple most likely just used them because they were cheap.

>>3442537
There was an argument like that in an retro thread a while ago, I think the C64 used some shittyer fabrication process what was much more prone to failure then any Apple II chip?

>>3442452
I have a Sears 13" color set from 1978, which is a rebranded Panasonic. The CRT is in great shape and has a bright picture, but the actual image quality blows mightily. The colors are so damn washed out and the contrast, sharpness, and black levels are embarrassingly bad. Also it has a magnetized spot on the left that I can't get rid of unless by dumb luck Ebay turns up a degausser coil from an old TV repair kit.

>>3442543
The custom chips in the C64 get hot because they use 12v power. The PLA is especially bad and early ones from 1982-83 used a faulty manufacturing process. Also the Plus/4 chipset was one of the first things they used HMOS for and they hadn't gotten a handle on that yet.

Apple IIs don't have very many things other than RAM that usually goes wrong in them.

Atari used a lot of those wretched Micron 4164s as well (4264 was just their "brand name" for them). This is a 130XE board. Note that the RAM chip in the upper left is an NEC one and the others are Micron chips. The reason for this is that the Micron 4164s were so bad that Atari would just slap a chip from a different manufacturer in socket 0 so it would pass QC.

You know, I've rarely heard of bad RAM since the 90s unless the user did overclocking or improper ESD protection or some other dumbarse thing. I wonder if SIMM sticks give the chips more protection than in the olden days when they'd be in direct contact with the motherboard.

>>3442543
>>3442552
Yup, that stuff have been repeated here over and over for the past 3 months

>>3442548
The washed-out colors can be dealt with thanks to tube rejuvenation. For the contrasts and black level, it's because the brightness is too high and RF video alway make black brighter. Does the set have holes in the back for you to calibrate it with a screw driver? Anyway, I bet it only have an RF input though.

>>3442556
I feel bad for the poor 130XE. That extra RAM would let you do some cool stuff, but the computer itself is so cheap and flimsy compared to the older Atari 8-bits and also nothing can actually use it except a couple of demos and maybe an odd utility or two.

>>3442565
>The washed-out colors can be dealt with thanks to tube rejuvenation
Nah that's just because it's an ancient shitty 70s TV set. The supporting electronics are just not very good by more modern standards. If the tube was shot, you'd have a dim picture.
>>3442565
>For the contrasts and black level, it's because the brightness is too high and RF video alway make black brighter
It's pretty bright even with the brightness level turned down fairly low.
>Anyway, I bet it only have an RF input though
No, get out. A portable TV from the 1970s totally has component inputs.

>>3442565
>Yup, that stuff have been repeated here over and over for the past 3 months
it has?

>>3442576
Did you just show up in this thread yesterday from Reddit or something?

>>3442579
Oh, did you know that this phrase is filtered and you get a message saying your post contains spam if you type it?

>>3442579
No but I don't post in them all the time.

>>3442531
Duh? People threw all those shitboxes out. Ain't nobody gonna keep that crap.

>>3442560
Or maybe the technology just got better and RAM reliability improved. Most newer PCs don't even do a RAM test on power up anymore.

>>3442574
Meh calm your tits, a 1978 set could have had maybe composite input, and that's about when Sony and Philips started to put RGB SCART inputs on their European models.
I didn't knew it was a portable model though.
>>3442576
Yup. It's something that've even been repeated mutlitple times in some threads.

>>3442589
>Most newer PCs don't even do a RAM test on power up anymore.
They do, it's just very quick and not very accurate.

>>3442584
That's false you reddit troll.

Sorry for the ant-sized pic but it's the only one I could find. It's like this set, but mine doesn't have an anti-glare shield.

>>3442590
I've never seen a TV older than the mid-80s with composite inputs.

Ignore >>3442602, he might be the shitposter mentioned by >>3438440.

>>3442609
The shape is kinda nice, but it looks like a low-end TV set.
>>3442612
These late 70s Sony and Philips sets I mentionned that had a SCART socket could accept both RGB and composite. A few days ago I missed the oportunity to get a 1979 Sony KV-1615F that had such inputs (and an IR remote) for free.

>>3442614
What makes you think that? Just because I disapprove someone spreading lies?
Oh wait, it is you, that's just bait.

>>3442623
>What makes you think that?
>Anyone on 4chan that isn't a Newfag or a shitposter
>Saying "Reddit Troll"
Wew that was hard!

>>3442631
I had to say out Reddit to prove my point you dipshit, are you really that retarded?

>>3442631
>writes newfag with a capital letter
>writes reddit and troll with a capital letter
I'm sure anon mentioned >>3438440 is you

The /g/ thread is sure channeling their inner Reddit, I can tell you that.

>>3442597
POST RAM tests were never that good. I had a stuck bit in an old 256k SIMM in a 386 once that the POST failed to catch.

>>3442670
Are you the faggot who started rulefagging and shitting on everybody and calling them reddit fags on the /g/ thread?

>>3442672
Actually that was the only time I've ever had a RAM stick go bad on me in 21 years of computing.

>>3442672
Those probably have 41256 chips on them (eight of them=256k). The bad chip could have been desoldered and replaced.

>>3442691
Right. The earliest SIMM sticks were just a bunch of 41256s. That 386 had parity SIMMs so it had 9 chips and not 8 like this one, but you get the idea.

>>3442696
Are you sure they were 41256s? I kind of assume a 386 board would be too fast for 120 ns chips.

>>3442705
Not him, but even my 486 had 41256 on it's SIMMs

>>3442705
It had four SIMM slots and 1MB of memory, so that would equal 256k per SIMM although I have no idea what speed they were. But I guess it might have been faster because it was a 20Mhz 386 and the Apple SIMM you posted was designed for an old Mac with an 8Mhz CPU.

RAM would typically come in several different speeds so there could have been faster 41256s than 120ns. I somehow would think the stick he posted would be too slow for a 386 motherboard.

>>3442705
>>3442714
>>3442709
Those boards could also have added wait states to accommodate the RAM.