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d0s posted:It's a Rev B motherboard but with a normal 6502 (not a 65c02) and the original ROMs. I thought a bunch of later games/apps required that upgrade. See the wiki for Airheart, which states it requires an enhanced IIe because it's a double hires game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airheart Ohhh, OK! I had completely forgotten about that revision. You're fine. Double-Hires games will work OK. My IIe I got in 1983, 2 years before that revision came out, and it plays Double-Hires games like a boss. Before I could play the Sierra games I had to upgrade it to 128k of RAM (actually because I'm insane I eventually upgraded it to a megabyte of RAM) but that was the main barrier to playing the higher-end games. If you want to be absolutely sure, give Temple of Apshai Trilogy a whirl--it gives you the option to choose between regular hi-res and double hi-res when you start, so if one mode works and the other one doesn't you know what the problem is. Prince of Persia, by the way, is a weird game--the title screen IS in double hi-res but the game itself is in normal hi-res. Kind of weird with the sudden transition from 16 colors to 5. Maybe they did it because regular hi-res is faster? Dunno.
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Jun 15, 2016 01:00
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Genpei Turtle posted:Ohhh, OK! I had completely forgotten about that revision. This is weird because every single double hires game I'm trying most definitely doesn't work, and I do have an 80column/64k card jumpered properly. I also have a 1meg RAM expansion in slot 5 so it should be plenty. Sadly Temple of Apshai isn't on the disk server so I can't try that particular game but so far I've tried: Airheart Heavy Barrel Maniac Mansion and a few others and they just freeze to a garbled image or a "starfield" looking thing with a black background with a few random pixels lit up. Maybe something's wrong with my motherboard, the IIe was an outdoor flea market find ages ago and might have led a hard life. I'm still gonna get an enhancement kit, even if it's not required for double hires maybe one of these chips is failing in my system. If that doesn't work I guess it's new motherboard time  I really wish I hadn't sold the IIc I had lying around back when apple prices started going crazy thinking my IIe was working perfectly
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Jun 15, 2016 01:21
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Shlomo Palestein posted:My opinion on Robocop is mostly just because it's impressive given the platform. I remember passing Tandy computers in Radioshack running their version of Robocop and being utterly unimpressed (despite, in my mind, the Tandy being a better computer). At the time, I didn't really think about how slow the game was, but more how it covered all the beats from what little I had managed to play of the arcade game. If its your only retro computer rock em out but.. most of those games are even better on the Atari 8 bits or C64. But that depends on how you play, what you want out of your play, your access (legal or not) to various games, and so on. Only each person can answer those questions. There isn't really a right answer. You want stalgias? Best possible gameplay? Best looking hardware? Easiest and most reliable hardware? Cheapest? Cart based? Modern add on use? YOU GOTTA DO YOU FOLKS. And as the news has sadly shown us again now more than ever? Live Every Week Like it is Goddamned Bitchass Motherfucking Shark Week! I almost got a God tier Apple IIC+ setup from a Craigslist seller but they stopped responding to messages. I took it as a sign. Besides, where the gently caress was I gonna put 2-3 Applewriters? The only reason I have a Mac Plus is because Acid Police sent me a loose one. I had to provide all the gubbins. And now thanks to Kthulhu5000 I wanna replace it with a IIsi because its pretty and powerful while still having what I need for my purposes. (I have bought a keyboard and mouse for it already. Sadly lost the seller's auction for a machine. And I was THIIIIS close to bidding on his swivel desktop publishing monitor. Black and white but swivel for portrait or widescreen. Can we say what every SHMUPper needs if in color? Yes. Yes we can. Plus the KB/Mouse also gives me the option for a IIGS as well...) We can't all have LGR's hall of all the computers. Or TanruNomad's. Or that NZ guy.. Tezza? Who seems to have all the goddamned things. That's sort of why I have my rough buyer's guide on the first page of the thread. To give some thoughts on what all is out there. Because most of us can't have all of these machines and when you get into the sorts of stuff your Amigas and Trash 80s and TI 99s need to have attached or modded it gets a little wackadoo. ( I didn't and probably won't add in FPGA or RasPi machines to the list because they aren't legit. Nor all these ARM type Kickstarter rigs. Some might be a fantastic choice or pretty good like the MCC or the JRI-RIGG but.. not legit machines. At that point why not just emulate? Though the newest Spectrum machine looks gorgeous, especially the white model: http://www.vintageisthenewold.com/interview-henrique-olifiers-talks-about-the-zx-spectrum-next/ Depending on price and what all it can do once actually released to non crowdfunders if it comes out I might look into it. Its pretty! And it takes after the already great looking 128 Speccy.)
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Jun 15, 2016 01:45
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The Kickstarter for The Commodore Amiga in Pixels is on the go right now. You may not be totally interested in the book, but you might be interested in one of the addons: a boxed limited edition of the previously unreleased Amiga version of Steve Crow's Starquake.
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Jun 15, 2016 13:15
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d0s posted:This is weird because every single double hires game I'm trying most definitely doesn't work, and I do have an 80column/64k card jumpered properly. I also have a 1meg RAM expansion in slot 5 so it should be plenty. Sadly Temple of Apshai isn't on the disk server so I can't try that particular game but so far I've tried: Hmm....not sure then. Try Dragon Wars or Eidolon or King's Bounty maybe? I almost wonder if it's not the way that site distributes the games. I'd try it out but don't know if it'd work on the IIgs. (my IIe is at the parents' house) But I know for a fact that early rev B mobo IIes can do it. quote:I really wish I hadn't sold the IIc I had lying around back when apple prices started going crazy thinking my IIe was working perfectly Eh, FWIW if I could only have one model of the Apple II line it'd be the IIe. I'd even pick it over the IIgs. As a general computing platform you can do so much stuff with a IIe with all the expansions they made for it.
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Jun 15, 2016 13:15
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[quote="Genpei Turtle" post=""461063390"]Eh, FWIW if I could only have one model of the Apple II line it'd be the IIe. I'd even pick it over the IIgs. As a general computing platform you can do so much stuff with a IIe with all the expansions they made for it. [/quote] oh no doubt, same here. I just meant I wanted the IIc around as a control to see if it really was my hardware or the disks or what. there's a reason I sold the IIc and kept the IIe  I have a hunch that the memory in my 80column card might be failing, because double hires mode does turn on but everything is garbled and it usually crashes after that, so I ordered a brand new in box copy of the latest one made (only $25 shockingly), and also ordered the enhancement chip kit anyway for $15 from a dude in bulgaria because why notedit: I know it's not the disk server because I had a legit copy of dazzle draw that did the exact same thing, always assumed it was that one disk but it crashed in the exact same way as every DHR game on the disk server. I threw it out like an idiot (dazzle draw rules) d0s fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Jun 15, 2016 |
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Jun 15, 2016 23:55
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Update on the double hires issue, it was my 80col/64k card. Got the NOS one and installed it and now all DHR stuff is flawless here's a pic of my slots I took while I was in there:  1: SSC 4: Mouse card 5: lots of RAM 6. duodisk controller I really want a second SSC in slot 2 for comms stuff but goddamn they have gotten expensive lately d0s fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Jun 18, 2016 |
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Jun 18, 2016 01:18
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Isn't that neat. These things were built to last. I'd assume the defective card has 4164 (?4264) RAMs, and I'd even make a double guess and assume it has RAM by MT (recognizable by you guessed it, an "MT" on the ICs) I've seen a disproportionately big number of those RAM ICs fail in C64s. These RAMs are organized to work in parallel, so one bit per RAM chip. You can find the defective RAM sometimes by piggybacking a second 4164 RAM IC on top of it and see if that resolves the issue, the working IC usually "speaks louder" than a defective one (you can also piggyback 2 ICs if it doesn't help). Don't run it long like that though, it can damage things further. With MT RAMs if they die, they sometimes also get very hot when in operation. MT was just bottom of the barrel back then, their speed ratings a mere optimistic suggestion. Nowadays they make very fancy high-quality RAM so I guess that worked out for them. You can easily get higher quality 4164 replacements cheap, some electronics suppliers even still carry them. Texas Instruments and Siemens is a good choice if you can choose. You should also try to match the speed rating of the originals -10 -12 -15 (which stands for 100 ns, 120 ns or 150 ns respectively, there was no 15 ns memory at that time) faster is ok but slower is not. That all of course assuming you want to try fixing that card. The issues I had with my Performa were all resolved by installing 7.1.1. I am pretty sure I did something wrong with the installation of the higher System software but now everything works and I'm quite happy with how things are with that pizza box. Police Automaton fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Jun 18, 2016 |
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Jun 18, 2016 01:58
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Police Automaton posted:Isn't that neat. These things were built to last. I'd assume the defective card has 4164 (?4264) RAMs, and I'd even make a double guess and assume it has RAM by MT (recognizable by you guessed it, an "MT" on the ICs) I've seen a disproportionately big number of those RAM ICs fail in C64s. These RAMs are organized to work in parallel, so one bit per RAM chip. You can find the defective RAM sometimes by piggybacking a second 4164 RAM IC on top of it and see if that resolves the issue, the working IC usually "speaks louder" than a defective one (you can also piggyback 2 ICs if it doesn't help). Don't run it long like that though, it can damage things further. With MT RAMs if they die, they sometimes also get very hot when in operation. The old board I had (rev B) did indeed have RAM by MT, it looked like this:  The new one is a rev D and has NEC RAM:  Something you may find cool is that the giant 1MB RAM card in there, it was only used natively by very few programs but you could use it as a ramdisk and boot any software form it [edit: any proDOS software], a popular thing to do was load all of appleworks onto it before use which eliminated all the drive seeking. I actually have a copy of appleworks 3.0 coming to me because I want to do some actual productive stuff with my IIe like use the database to keep track of my game collection, having the RAM card is just a happy coincidence because it came with the computer back when I found it at the flea market way back when. EDIT: actually from looking at my picture I'm pretty sure that the RAM in my specific rev D card is not NEC but TI RAM d0s fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Jun 18, 2016 |
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Jun 18, 2016 02:40
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It really comes with the age of the system, later on higher integration and you see the 41464 RAMs popping up in such systems, as you can see, the card is much smaller, 64k organized in two RAM ICs. The C64 had that too, for a short while with the old breadbox-style revision boards then later on in the C64 II/C. The 41464 RAMs are not as cheap and easy to source today and sadly are often cannibalized from old graphics cards. Early A2000 RAM cards also used 41464 DRAMs to reach capacities ranging from 2 - 8 MB. Seeing how you talk about the giant 1 MB card you have there, you can imagine how obscenely huge these cards were to house all those chips. They also had quite the heat output, reminiscent of modern graphics cards. I once drew up a schematic where you can replace the 41464 by easy to get SRAMs my electronics supplier had for very cheap. The advantage with SRAM is that it doesn't need refreshes and is very low power when nothing happens, so you can buffer it's contents with a simple coin cell for a very long time. So for example a C64 with battery buffered RAM basically. I never tried that schematic out as I simply had no use for such a construction, but it is possible. You could probably do such a modification with all kinds of RAM cards but you'd also need some kind of software support in it if you truly want battery buffered memory, depending on how the system initializes this stuff. You could also do this with EPROMs in these old systems, really. Sadly, NEC is also pretty much garbage RAM. Not so much in that it fails but so much in that the timings mostly are bullshit. It's addmitelty not such a big problem in finished designs as whoever manufactured whatever the RAM is in probably already accounted for the "creative" ratings, but back then you wanted to up your RAM expansion (or build one) were happy about getting all that RAM for cheap and then nothing worked properly because at it turns out the RAM just cannot really run reliably at those speeds that are printed on it. Pretty annoying to say the least. Companies pulled this poo poo A LOT because they could. In that era, you'll mostly encounter MT (often defective for some reason, "MT" logo) Texas Instruments (their Logo is a small outline of the State of Texas) NEC (NEC written in that fancy font) Hitachi (Sort of a Crosshair logo, on the Rev D Picture, U5 has the Hitachi Logo) Mitsubishi (you probably have seen that logo, it hasn't changed) and Siemens (just SIEMENS in all caps, we germans don't have time for fancy fonts or logos) I only put Siemens and TI in the high trier because their DRAMs contrary to the competition usually could manage way more aggressive timings than what they were specced for, I made that Cyrix 5x86 of mine really fly with Siemens DRAM by running very aggressive timings coupled with a 50 Mhz FSB. With Hitachi RAM I also had the System wouldn't even POST with those settings. RAM-Disks generally are pretty awesome for these old systems, especially since for many systems it's relatively cheap nowadays to deck them out with lots of RAM. Seeing how many of the other interfaces these Systems have usually eat CPU-cycles pretty heavily by themselves, (PIO IDE for example) a RAM-Disk, besides eliminating seek times, also usually is a lot easier on the CPU. It really speeds things up.
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Jun 18, 2016 04:04
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d0s posted:Something you may find cool is that the giant 1MB RAM card in there, it was only used natively by very few programs but you could use it as a ramdisk and boot any software form it [edit: any proDOS software], a popular thing to do was load all of appleworks onto it before use which eliminated all the drive seeking. I actually have a copy of appleworks 3.0 coming to me because I want to do some actual productive stuff with my IIe like use the database to keep track of my game collection, having the RAM card is just a happy coincidence because it came with the computer back when I found it at the flea market way back when. This is even more fun with the Apple IIGS, because you can get up to about 8.25 MB of RAM - and really go crazy on the RAM disk stuff. Which ends up being especially neat because ProDOS volumes only go up to 32 MB each on hard disk.
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Jun 18, 2016 15:20
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for "only" $300 you can get 6mb on a IIe with these two parts combined https://www.ultimateapple2.com/catalogzen154/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_16&products_id=116 https://www.ultimateapple2.com/catalogzen154/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_16&products_id=73 I am not sure why you need this on a IIe where 1mb feels like an embarrassment of riches e: for fun I found the datasheet of the original card that thing is a clone of: http://ae.applearchives.com/apple_e/ramworks_iii/ramworks_iii_brochure.pdf e2: apparently 8mb is possible on a IIe as well, if you're willing to stomach a very silly looking card http://www.ebay.com/itm/RamWorks-8M-for-Apple-IIe-/152134707833?hash=item236bef6a79:g:0XoAAOSwGIRXZXBJ d0s fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jun 18, 2016 |
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Jun 18, 2016 17:28
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I'm sorry to double post but I have another Apple II question maybe someone could help me with: I have one of these 3.5" floppy drives (A9M0106), currently hooked to my Mac SE. With a Superdrive (they sure love that word) card it's possible to use with a IIe:  I think it would be fun to use it with my IIe but not $400 fun. Does anyone know of a cheap alternative? I know there are plenty of dudes cranking out weird Apple II hardware now so maybe someone has cloned this. It's not a huge deal for me as there was very little non-GS software released on 3.5" disks but I just see something weirdly cool about using them on a machine like this, and blank 3.5" floppies are easier to get and cheaper than DSDD 5 1/4" disks. If you'd like to become depressed about your hobby check out how much this card was selling for in 2004. I would also like to know if there is any cheap SCSI controller available as I'd love to hook a HD 20SC to it as well (I'd like to stay reasonably period correct and avoid CF/SD/etc devices). I don't know why but I love the idea of an old style Apple II with slightly more "modern" additions like these, I understand even SCSI CD-ROMs can be and were used back in the day. I only want to go as far as adding on stuff that gives it more utility rather than slapping on accelerators & related  crap. I want to look into light pens, handheld scanners, drawing tablets, a small thermal printer (even though I have printing covered with an Imagewriter II), etc etc. I did manage to find a second SSC for $20 which I'm gonna use for ADTPro and other serial comms stuff. This is a weirdly addictive computer, I never really felt the need to do much with my other computer systems and just treated them as game consoles but for some reason I feel like I need to build this idealized OCD Apple II and actually use it for stuff. It's like the thing begs you to be creative with it, and for all they say about Steve Jobs I've never felt that about any of "his" projects, which I mostly see as cool appliances at best. Wozniak really was on to something imo
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Jun 22, 2016 18:20
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d0s posted:I'm sorry to double post but I have another Apple II question maybe someone could help me with: There were people talking about building replacement cards last year, but I don't think any of those products have reached working prototype stage, let alone what passes for mass production in vintage computer parts. Laser/VTech sold a "Universal Disk Controller" card that could handle the Apple 3.5 inch drives in a IIe as well as the Laser 128 clone. You might try looking for those for sale on various old Apple community forums, but they might even cost more. There are probably other random companies who made similar replacement cards back in the day as well, so hunting through old computer magazines might get you leads.
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Jun 22, 2016 18:41
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fishmech posted:There were people talking about building replacement cards last year, but I don't think any of those products have reached working prototype stage, let alone what passes for mass production in vintage computer parts. I just looked into it and apparently it happened: https://www.ultimateapple2.com/catalogzen154/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_16&products_id=101 Unfortunately sold out (and still kinda steep price, but I guess it makes sense for something so niche)
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Jun 22, 2016 18:55
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d0s posted:I just looked into it and apparently it happened: Huh, I guess I hadn't heard of that particular project. Though I think the ones I was thinking of were going to support 5.25 and 2.5 inch disks, which that one doesn't (though that isn't much of an issue until you run out of slots).
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Jun 22, 2016 19:02
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I just found a folder of pictures from 2000 on my old backup drive that kind of shocked me, but first some backstory: When I was in high school between 1998-2001 I worked at a small computer repair shop with some equally nerdy friends. We made pretty awesome money for high schoolers and what I did with it was go to a local flea market and buy every piece of old "interesting" computer and game hardware/software I could find, which at the time was practically being given away. I lived with my dad in a three bedroom house that also had it's garage turned into a room. I filled this room with gear and tinkered with it, learning the ins and outs of most of the systems we discuss here and some I've never seen mentioned. At some point we moved, I "grew up" and threw away most of my "junk" while only keeping some of the most sentimental or important seeming stuff: A C64, an Apple IIe, A500/1200, a few macs, etc. Pretty much anything I didn't have a lot of games for got junked. It seems I kind of forgot that I had most of what I had. Seeing it again is one of those hindsight is 20/20 things. Here's what you got exclusively from flea markets with a part time job salary in the late 90's. I had never used eBay at this point: http://imgur.com/a/QMugo/all A lot of those computers I have no recollection of owning such as the Laser 128 and the Mac IIci, and I thought I only had one Apple IIc not a pile of them. Here's what it looked like after we moved and I already paired it down a lot, I got rid of most of this soon after, I think I did sell quite a bit on ebay after this point:  Here's another thing I sent to it's doom:  Here's an authentic late 90's LAN party in that house, I'm wearing the embarrassing free software foundation shirt:  Here is a friend with a strange hat:  If you're gearing up to call me a monster for dropping most of this off to a recycling facility understand that at the time this was literally garbage, I'm sure somebody out there could have predicted it's future value but not a 15-16 year old teenager. I bought them for $5-15 from Haitian refugees at the grimiest flea markets in South Florida, they probably got them from dumpsters. poo poo, I got some of it from dumpsters. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life hauling a room full of this stuff around with me, and I had to move out anyway. In fact those pictures I posted recently of my IIe are from my dad's place where I was visiting and where the few old computers I have still stay. I get to mess with them a couple times a year, there's no way I could maintain 20 times that amount of stuff. I really should have given it all to someone who would take care of it but at the time I didn't even know other people did this really, or at least other people who weren't double my age. Oh well. EDIT: I should mention that everything you see in the pictures worked. The stuff that didn't I stripped for parts and got rid of. Even though it all worked for the most part there wasn't much to do with it unless I got really lucky and found software/games/peripherals which typically only happened with the most popular systems. This was way before the time of "oh I'll just hit up ebay and make this a complete system" EDIT2: Can somebody tell me what this is:  All I remember is that it was pristine, it had a hard drive and it ran CP/M. It was a Serious Business Computer from the days before the IBM PC. It was all one piece (except the keyboard), the "tower" curved under the monitor and hooked on to it. I am worried I threw out something seriously valuable with this one d0s fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Jun 22, 2016 |
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Jun 22, 2016 22:33
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Your collection made me do the eye-popping face but in real life. I R L Also to be fair, part of the reason these machines have developed their value is because people slowly got rid of them in enormous quantities, meaning the remaining systems are THAT MUCH COOLER WOOO
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Jun 22, 2016 22:53
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Dr. Quarex posted:Your collection That's the depressing thing, I never saw it as a collection. I have never had the collector mentality where this stuff has to be hermetically sealed and saved forever. It was "my computer junk" that I messed with, to learn about what happened before I was born and while I was too young to understand, because that poo poo fascinated me. It served it's purpose and I got rid of it. I wish I had more of that collector mindset, even today I let poo poo go too easily when I feel like I'm "done" with it
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Jun 22, 2016 23:04
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d0s posted:EDIT2: Looks like a Televideo TS803 http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1077
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Jun 23, 2016 23:43
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Kthulhu5000 posted:Looks like a Televideo TS803 Yep that looks like it. Can't find one on ebay but a similar model has a BIN of $3000 with 13 watching
d0s fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Jun 24, 2016 |
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Jun 24, 2016 00:02
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d0s posted:Yep that looks like it. Can't find one on ebay but a similar model has a BIN of $3000 with 13 watching Looking on Terapeak's eBay stuff, a Televideo TS-803 sold in May for just $70 though - albeit without a keyboard or that other vast array of accessories. In March one sold for $199 with keyboard, documentation, and disks. And one sold with the same sort of stuff in Sepetember 2015 for $127.50. So take heart: you definitely didn't lose out on over $1000 of computer there.
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Jun 24, 2016 01:03
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fishmech posted:Looking on Terapeak's eBay stuff, a Televideo TS-803 sold in May for just $70 though - albeit without a keyboard or that other vast array of accessories. In March one sold for $199 with keyboard, documentation, and disks. And one sold with the same sort of stuff in Sepetember 2015 for $127.50. Oh drat I didn't even know about Terapeak, I used ebay's "completed/sold listings" thing and didn't get any results so I figured it was some super rare thing.
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Jun 24, 2016 02:53
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d0s posted:Oh drat I didn't even know about Terapeak, I used ebay's "completed/sold listings" thing and didn't get any results so I figured it was some super rare thing. Well I mean, the thing with Terapeak is that it costs a decent bit of cash per year to use, especially to go back more than 90 days. I only have access to it because of my job. It can be worth it as an individual if you're running an eBay or Amazon shop as a serious side business of course.
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Jun 24, 2016 03:00
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Well given the UK money is now tanking thanks to Brexit anyone who wants to fill their UK software holes now has a hella good opportunity. Shipping will still be pricey but this is our chance to get Amiga stuff ala the PC Engine days with that Jpn site that had all the stuff cheap. I still regret not getting Ogre for the MSX.
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Jun 24, 2016 10:03
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it's time to get productive this was actually sealed, so I got to experience the full "event" that software ownership used to be  Sadly I won't be seeing my //e for months so I have to follow along with the manuals in an emulator for now but the end goal here is to maintain a working Appleworks database of all my game/computer crap. It's an incredibly slick program for it's age (1989) & the machine it runs on. This was supposed to be the final version (3.0) of Appleworks for the standard Apple II series, and most of the work was actually contracted to Beagle Bros who were very popular for making addons to previous versions. There were actually further versions released by a mail order company up until about 1994 shockingly but this was the last version published by Claris/Apple. There's an awesome history of this suite here: http://apple2history.org/history/ah19/
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Jun 25, 2016 02:43
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Captain Rufus posted:Well given the UK money is now tanking thanks to Brexit anyone who wants to fill their UK software holes now has a hella good opportunity. Shipping will still be pricey but this is our chance to get Amiga stuff ala the PC Engine days with that Jpn site that had all the stuff cheap. I still regret not getting Ogre for the MSX. Are Amigas voltage-agnostic at the PC end (that is, they're happy with either US or UK/EU power supplies, since it all gets converted to a different voltage anyway), or are they hard fixed for 110V / 220V operation internally? And there's a reason why you don't hear too much about people bring in stuff from the UK and EU, even with favorable exchange rates, and that's because there seen to be so many gotchas and extra bits you need. Oh, it needs a proprietary monitor or an adapter for such. Oh wait, it hooks up to a TV - nope, PAL only! OK, video should be sorted and - different wall voltage, it's not working right or at all. Add in the shipping cost for games, and the whole UK and EU computing world just seems to have such a high barrier of entry to do "right". Unless you have some irrational love for the Speccy and the like and don't reside in the UK, there's so much expense and hassle involved that it's not really worth doing.
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Jun 25, 2016 04:13
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Kthulhu5000 posted:Are Amigas voltage-agnostic at the PC end (that is, they're happy with either US or UK/EU power supplies, since it all gets converted to a different voltage anyway), or are they hard fixed for 110V / 220V operation internally? Some are switchable, some are hard wired. HOWEVER: if you're going to keep the system for good, you can usually replace the power supply entirely within, especially if you're handy with a bit of soldering. Usually just by way of buying a third party or first party power supply for the US power input (or vice versa if you're bringing a computer into Europe and so on). For example, this power supply can be bought to swap into desktop-case mounted Amigas (which is to say, Amigas that were originally the all in one to the keyboard, but were placed into desktop cases) http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=866 Then for the Amiga 2000, 3000, and 4000, which as designed and sold were already in desktop cases, you could dump the standard power supply and install any standard ATX power supply from a PC, by way of these sorts of adapter cables: http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=998 http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1164 http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=615 Even if the Amiga desktop you bought comes with a switching power supply, you might want to replace with a modern ATX power supply anyway. They tend to be more efficent, and more importantly haven't been worn down by years of use. Edit: and I forgot to mention: most of the integrated with keyboard Amigas used an external power brick rather than an internal power supply. So you can buy a loose American power supply if needed, or if you're really daring strip off the special plug and hook it into a multivoltage supply (most of those Amigas will have -12V, +5V, and +12V coming in off the power brick, as well as the ground.) The power supply for desktop-ized Amigas is suitable for most of them, as it sends the power out the same sort of plug. fishmech fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Jun 25, 2016 |
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Jun 25, 2016 04:28
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Kthulhu5000 posted:Are Amigas voltage-agnostic at the PC end (that is, they're happy with either US or UK/EU power supplies, since it all gets converted to a different voltage anyway), or are they hard fixed for 110V / 220V operation internally? I imported my PAL A500 from the UK for about $70 shipped a couple years ago (from ebay shockingly). I use it with a US A500 power supply I was lucky to have around, there are no problems. I assume you could use one with a stepdown or something and get the same result. The US 1084 monitors display the PAL RGB signal just fine with a little geometry tweaking which on my (daewoo made) model meant opening the case to access hidden controls. I would like to take advantage of the collapse of the British Empire by finding a PAL C64 to go with it, though they can keep the Spectrums which will provide a fine source of microscopic amounts of gold and other metals that may be used for barter in the
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Jun 25, 2016 05:59
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Well, admittedly, I'm not in the market for one right now (got an Atari 1040 STF I need to get in operational shape right now, though I might just sell it at this point). But I figure that it might be good info for everyone to know, especially if the drop in the British pound is giving people ideas.fishmech posted:Edit: and I forgot to mention: most of the integrated with keyboard Amigas used an external power brick rather than an internal power supply. So you can buy a loose American power supply if needed, or if you're really daring strip off the special plug and hook it into a multivoltage supply (most of those Amigas will have -12V, +5V, and +12V coming in off the power brick, as well as the ground.) The power supply for desktop-ized Amigas is suitable for most of them, as it sends the power out the same sort of plug. Yeah, this is what I was thinking of when I asked the question - the ones with external power bricks. d0s posted:I imported my PAL A500 from the UK for about $70 shipped a couple years ago (from ebay shockingly). I use it with a US A500 power supply I was lucky to have around, there are no problems. I assume you could use one with a stepdown or something and get the same result. The US 1084 monitors display the PAL RGB signal just fine with a little geometry tweaking which on my (daewoo made) model meant opening the case to access hidden controls. I would like to take advantage of the collapse of the British Empire by finding a PAL C64 to go with it, though they can keep the Spectrums which will provide a fine source of microscopic amounts of gold and other metals that may be used for barter in the My 19" Sony PVM apparently handles PAL and NTSC, so if I were to get one, I'd probably be OK on the video front (and this Amibay review of my model says the Amiga's RGB works on it). But for other people, the cost of either getting a PVM and SCART cable, or a 1084, could sour the whole idea for them.
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Jun 25, 2016 06:57
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Question for Amiga people: Was there ever a driver/method to use an Apple Imagewriter on earlier Amigas (A500 specifically)? I know there's a 25-pin serial port on the A500 so connecting it would be no problem as the Apple II uses the same interface, but I'm not sure where to find any information about this, I don't even know how printing works on the Amiga really.
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Jun 25, 2016 08:15
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I know for the Amiga there were Pal converter programs you ran before the actual program and thus you just needed to adjust the screen size. A multi sync monitor/tv could help there too. Dunno about the C64 but honestly us games were better unless you were an action only snob. Plus you know, disk drives. Though quite a few UK games got NTSC releases.
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Jun 25, 2016 09:44
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Kthulhu5000 posted:...especially if the drop in the British pound is giving people ideas. Conversely I guess this means I'm never getting a PC Engine now, as I'm in the UK and my money is now worthless.
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Jun 25, 2016 12:09
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Captain Rufus posted:I know for the Amiga there were Pal converter programs you ran before the actual program and thus you just needed to adjust the screen size. A multi sync monitor/tv could help there too. 1. Those converters are not very good and incompatible with many games. I spent a lot of time annoyed with them before going PAL and never looking back 2. The C64 is known around the world for it's action/arcade games, many of which are unique to the system. It does have the same US RPG/adventure game ports every other halfway popular computer of the time did but that's not really what made the system stand out. Yes, a lot of the very best PAL games of the system got a US release on floppy disk, and I wouldn't really recommend anyone in the US get a PAL C64 before an NTSC C64 if they intend to buy legit games. Luckily I already have a US C64 and a pretty big library of floppy disks so I'm willing to spend a small bit on a PAL C64 to explore the stuff that didn't get brought over, which there is a ton of. I find it a bit strange to hear someone refer to action computer gamers as snobs, as historically it has been the other way around. Comparing apples to oranges and then declaring one objectively better seems to be the definition of snobbery, imo
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Jun 25, 2016 17:51
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legooolas posted:Conversely I guess this means I'm never getting a PC Engine now, as I'm in the UK and my money is now worthless. Unless you are gonna get a flash cart and burn CDs you.. Don't want one. Even common games run absurd amounts. In computer games it's really only adventure games, RPGs, and MSX carts that are overwhelmingly pricey. Maybe start dealing in old UK software to trade/exploit the whales once they are tired of PC engine and Neo Geo? Take advantage of Doctor Who, Games Workshop, and Fighting Fantasy nerds? Those games that only had UK releases on the portable consoles? ( Apparently there are TWO different International Karate GBA games somehow. And I kind of want them because I am a dumb dumb. Course there are many classic arcade and computer remakes on portable consoles and most of them go for sick amounts, even more so for the few console ones. Like Mr Do on both GB and SNES. Or the Jpn only Elevator Action game. ) You can still find deals in retro computing but the whales and the loons who not only want every Infocom, Origin, or Sierra game but every platform and variant are intruding. I mean yeah, Acorn Archimedes Elite is both ultra rare and the best version of that game and all but.. how many versions of Zork do some of these people need? Edit: http://www.armigaproject.com someone needs to see if this is worth a drat and let us know. Captain Rufus fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Jun 25, 2016 |
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Jun 25, 2016 22:31
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haha "3D printed case" listed as a feature, who buys this dumb poo poo e: holy poo poo I just realized it's not even an fpga but a single use emulator box with a floppy disk drive, for some reason d0s fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Jun 26, 2016 |
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Jun 26, 2016 02:01
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To go back to the power stuff a little, ATX power supplies aren't a good idea for these computers. Modern Power Supplies are built around the +12V, as modern Mainboards do a lot of point of load regulation, generating the appropriate voltages where they are needed. The +3.3V and +5V rails are basically only there for drives and legacy purposes and pretty pitiful regarding things like Ripple, transient response etc.. Another problem also is that these Power Supplies also need a minimum (and usually quite substantial) load on the +12V to work to spec, they run into a lot of problems if they don't have a proper load on the +12V and will run very inefficient and also age quicker at best and deliver out-of-spec voltages on all rails at worst. (the ATX spec forbids the worst case, but well, it happens) This can lead to general system instability and excessive ripple will make filter line caps on the mainboard age quicker, can cause general instability by itself or in worst case premature aging and damage of components. Modern power supplies also tend to bring up their +5V rail pretty quick which can especially cause MACHs (found on many of the more expensive Amiga expansions) to go into latch-up. (=basically short out internally and die. I have at least one of these cases here somewhere where a MACH got so hot that it's case exploded and the die was visible, cause was probably excessive ripple tho) AMD in it's Datasheet detailed good Design principles to specifically protect from this very case but well, it's not implemented like that on a lot of stuff. These old systems (not only Amigas, old PCs too) do no or very little point of load regulation and very basic line filtering though caps and pretty much rely on a clean, stable, balanced against the +5V (+/-5%) supply. (< 100mV ripple) contrary to modern computers, the +12V are rarely needed here (usually just for audio circuity op amps and drives, with people using these old systems in 2016 often eliminating the +12V need for drives by using more modern solutions) and in some old power supplies the whole +12V/-12V thing is covered by a simple 7812/7912 who, contrary to the high-power +12V rail in a modern ATX supply, doesn't care if he's got no work. Yes, modern ATX power supplies are computer power supplies but they are just not designed and built for *these* computers, but for *very different* computers. It can't be stressed enough. Power supplies do age and develop age-related problems with their secondary side filter caps, power switches, mains line filters and stuff like that but that's all stuff that's fixable for a somewhat knowledgeable person. With some maintenance they're usually good as new and can be kept running pretty much indefinitely. Especially in the case of the Amiga supplies I can say that there's nothing inherently bad about them, quality-wise they're all ok and the earlier, german-made A2000 supply for it's time actually is kind of nice. They all have safety features like short-circuit protection etc. and aren't really any worse in these regards compared to modern supplies. Yes, they are not very energy efficient and certainly not "green" but then again the computers (be it 386s, amigas or whatever) connected to them rarely go above 25-60W (if fully kitted out) even under full load. (while load-no load makes often no difference as the CPUs etc. in these computers don't have any power saving features, it simply wasn't needed) My Amiga 2000 which has an 060 accelerator, a real SCSI drive, and a whole high-end 486 with all of it's expansions built in doesn't go much past 90W, to give you a frame of reference, and yes, the work is still done by the same power supply the system came in 1987 with. I highly doubt you could even get 20A on the +5V rail of a modern supply. If you must use a different power supply, look into AT-power supplies. They are built around the +5V rail and are designed for a similar usage scenario. Be aware though that many of them are of *very* bad build quality. This was the time when a computer was obsolete in 6 months and people didn't know about the importance of better quality power supplies and just wanted to save money where it was possible at all. Also these are old and also will need maintenance. The biggest problem with all Amigas past the 2000 was also the layout and the whole power infrastructure of the Mainboards which wasn't really made with many power-hungry expansions in mind. Just not really a design with much headroom. If you don't go crazy with PPC cards and the like though the original power supplies will do fine. If you want something a little more powerful and a little better, there are medical power supply bricks that deliver +5V/+12V/-12V, these are usually built very well but it might be hard to get them at "non-industrial" prices. Same applies here though, they might need a minimal load on the +12V the systems won't deliver. Another good option are DC-DC power supplies like the PicoPSU, but that technology needs to kind of prove itself still, so I don't know about long-term reliability. I know many people run their old computers on ATX power supplies and will continue to do so and I'm aware these computers don't explode all the time, I still would never recommend it. It's just some personal advice of mine. Also it's very hard to see a relation between cause and defect in 20+ year old computers and even system fail as a consequence of the wrong power supply used, especially in these circles you might never hear of it. Generally I advise to just run a computer with whatever power supply it came with/is time appropriate after taking a close look at the power supply in question. You can do the least wrong there. There are some exceptions where the power supplies are just bad but you usually already know about that in such cases. Also my K6 died. (already identified the cause) and it also was power related but I sperged out enough already for now. Police Automaton fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Jun 27, 2016 |
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Jun 27, 2016 01:13
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Looking through the Apple //e Reference Manual I just got in the mail, it's a really cool reference that seems way more comprehensive than what other companies would give to the general public (though I may be wrong, it's just the only book of it's kind I've personally seen). Also, never beat your Apple II with a hammer or throw it out a window: I would really love to see a book like this for the A500 if Commodore ever made one, I'm not a low level programmer or hardware designer but it's just a rad document to own for a system you like
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Jun 27, 2016 16:03
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https://ia801707.us.archive.org/11/...7_Commodore.pdf Came with the computer, I still have mine, it came with that and a less technical (how to use a mouse etc.) user manual IIRC. Mine isn't in collectors condition anymore though, some of the schematics pages fell out. That's also where I stole the phrase "excessive cleverness of programmers" from. E: Also books about the OS and I think about Amiga BASIC? I'm not sure anymore. I should still have them somewhere. Police Automaton fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Jun 27, 2016 |
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Jun 27, 2016 16:18
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d0s posted:Looking through the Apple //e Reference Manual I just got in the mail, it's a really cool reference that seems way more comprehensive than what other companies would give to the general public (though I may be wrong, it's just the only book of it's kind I've personally seen). Also, never beat your Apple II with a hammer or throw it out a window: They were fairly commonly available for the older ranges of computers - after all these computers nearly cost as much as a used car might, and you were still expected to crack out some software on your own. Quality of the stuff inside varied depending on manufacturer - Apple and IBM tended to have the best written and most comprehensive. Various fly-by-night CP/M machines would be much less indepth.
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Jun 27, 2016 17:13
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