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Police Automaton posted:https://ia801707.us.archive.org/11/...7_Commodore.pdf That is rad, the only A500 documentation I have is this thing:  I don't remember what's inside it but I'm pretty sure it's not what you posted and it's also bound like a pulp novel and falling apart  e: I forgot I also have that awesome IBM-style binder that came with the A1000 but it's... about the A1000 d0s fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Jun 27, 2016 |
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Jun 27, 2016 17:35
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fishmech posted: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. Basically, also the target group for computers was a different one. People buying computers around that time were expected by the companies to be actually interested in these details to do some homebrew hardware and software, or even just own repairs, modifications and stuff. I guess time has shown it didn't turn out *exactly* like that and a lot more users ended up being more casual and more interested in the "what" than in the "why" but I like to imagine that was the original thought. It certainly was more of a niche thing targeted at a more specific subset of people and not like today where every self-proclaimed "geek hacker" orders his overpriced and ready-made raspberry pi gadget online. For quite a while I was the only person in my cycle of less technical friends and acquaintances who even had a computer and People were like "can.. can I see it? You know, the Amiga!" I didn't miss a beat to show it off because it was a cool thing to brag with, of course. d0s posted:That is rad, the only A500 documentation I have is this thing: I don't know what's up with these things, they basically fall apart by themselves. I also wouldn't be surprised if commodore in their infinite wisdom decided to cut out the technical reference manuals and other books later on to save a few pennies. I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised. Or maybe they just came with the A2000, I doubt that though. The manual itself isn't 2000 specific, that would be hard anyways as the A500 and B2000 (not a typo, that's how Commodore references the cost-reduced A2000 in the Manual) are basically identical, besides the passive ISA and Buster/Zorro stuff. The Braunschweig A2000 that manual references (the one I have 2 Mainboards of and I don't think it has ever been sold, there are a few Mainboards in the wild but I've never seen a complete machine like that that came like this originally) was quite different built-wise. It is basically an A1000 with a Zorro bus, and also had the Buster custom IC who does the Zorro stuff in the B2000 implemented as custom GALs. It also has the old A1000 Agnus. Thanks to the reference Manual I could fix one of the boards that had some GALs missing, because the Manual includes the equations for those ICs.
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Jun 27, 2016 18:42
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Police Automaton posted:To go back to the power stuff a little, ATX power supplies aren't a good idea for these computers. [snip]  I can't remember if it was in here or that GBS thread but you mentioned your 030 Amiga running Mac OS - say someone was interested in this stuff but has never owned an Amiga nor Macintosh, do you have any recommended starting points or websites to learn more about it?
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Jun 27, 2016 19:36
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Mechanism Eight posted:I can't remember if it was in here or that GBS thread but you mentioned your 030 Amiga running Mac OS - say someone was interested in this stuff but has never owned an Amiga nor Macintosh, do you have any recommended starting points or websites to learn more about it? Was probably with the 060. I don't know about any website but the most easiest starting point to make such a setup would be the Shapeshifter (the software to do that) .guide file which you can find on aminet here. The manual describes very well how to set the software up. I'd also look into the mmulibs tools and their respective .guides regarding OS patches Shapeshifter support and shapeshifter graphics drivers using the MMU, Thor made a lot of effort writing these tools and documenting them very, very exhaustively and he really knows a lot about the software side on the Amiga and AmigaOS, on top of that he's also a nice guy and is always delighted to get feedback of any sort on his software. I know it just sounds like such a brush-off to tell you to go read some manuals but these manuals are actually helpful to read for the setup and explain things well. People sadly aren't used to read manuals anymore and good manuals aren't really written anymore either, so that sucks. With this old stuff though reading Manuals always helps and tells you a lot. There's also Fusion for the Amiga which is another Emulator like Shapeshifter. There's a bit of Drama about both these software programs but I will not go into that. If you want to test such a setup in emulation with WinUAE you have to activate MMU emulation in the CPU settings, just select 020 (the 68020 has the most stuff and later 68k CPUs just cut down on that number, so there's no advantage in picking them in emulation) fastest possible and MMU. Be aware that for MMU support you have to disable both 24-bit addressing and JIT. Disabling JIT will make the emulation A LOT slower and you'll need a beefy computer to have MacOS running with any kind of speed inside the emulated Amiga. My i7 5820k without JIT isn't as fast in MacOS emulation inside Amiga emulation than my 060 Amiga is. In the ROM settings you can then also activate "Shapeshifter Support" and then you won't need to add that program to the startup-sequence that you'll read about in the aforementioned manuals. That's pretty much it. You can mount MacOS drives while the Emulation is running on the Amiga side and then copy files from the Amiga into the MacOS images. There are some Images floating around with preinstalled MacOS 7.x installations, you can use one of those to start off, Shapeshifter is compatible with them. They'll also work on a real Amiga. Everything else is in the Mac-Realm, a thing I don't know a lot about. Be aware that like with modern PC Emulators, you'll need a 512 kb Mac ROM image, these are not available freely legally. If you want to do this on real hardware and don't own the hardware yet, I would not bother for economical reasons. An Amiga in which Mac emulation is worth it costs a lot of $$$$. Graphics output with OCS/ECS will be 16 colors and even with AGA will be quite a bit slow so you'll want an Amiga with 040/060 Accelerator card and graphics card to get good results, but at least an 030 with MMU and AGA to get ok results. The 16-bit Zorro 2 Bus on the A2000 is pretty slow for this and 640x480 full screen updating programs will be kinda laggy, an A3000 or A4000 with Z3 graphics card (which also are the most expensive parts to get) will fare better. Back then Mac emulation made sense as people still had their Amigas, Macs were expensive and it was a cheap way to get more software for your Amiga. Nowadays it's barely worth it. It's a lot cheaper to just get a classic 68k Mac. I got a Performa 475 which is a 040 Mac not too long ago for about 30 Euros I think and I'm in absolute love with that thing and it's not even one of the cool Macs to have. Even equipping it with a faster 040 and a Network card wasn't really expenisve. It's also a lot better designed and built than any Amiga. Other people here can probably tell you more about anything regarding Mac, I don't know a lot about Macs. If it doesn't have to be 68k you could also get a PowerPC Mac which I heard are very backwards compatible to 68k Stuff, and also pretty plentiful and cheap, at least over here.
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Jun 27, 2016 21:24
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68K macs are super fun, just about all the software made for them has been archived & put on the web/hotline by mac fanatics and compared to other old systems it's relatively easy to actually load the software on to them as they got on the ethernet bandwagon early for consumer machines and many have CD-ROMs built in. I use an SE for black & white stuff and a 631CD for everything else. It's probably easier to get a basic 68k mac and a basic A500 setup which will both run the best of their respective platforms than it is to build a superamiga, unless it's one of those "journey is the destination" things for you and you just like the idea of mac emulation on an amiga
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Jun 27, 2016 22:04
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The thing also is these "Superamigas" aren't really of use for anything else except Mac-Emulation (which btw. also isn't emulation in the Sense Mac Emulation on a modern PC is, it's more like a VM really and it also has very little overhead) there's a lot of diminishing returns if you go past 020-030 on the Amiga regarding real Amiga Software. Most Games don't really take any advantage of it (quite the contrary even, often it's a compatibility nightmare) and most software that would have serious gains by running on something past a 030 on classic Amiga you won't want to use nowadays anyways (video editing, image editing and internet applications on a Amiga? No fun) The reason for that is that almost all software developers of importance abandoned ship in the early 90s as they noticed Commodore seemingly wasn't really interested to go anywhere and the later accelerators and Amiga models weren't really interesting for anybody except the "true believers", which some of are now the very batshit insane people of the Amiga community. Amiga's got a lot of "artisanal crafted" Expansion Hardware by small 3rd party outfits that sounds nice in theory but at the end of the day just is not really all that useful (and wasn't back then either). Even graphics card support in the most recent version of the 68k version OS to this day remains being a 3rd party hack. Fun to play around with but you'd have to have a very specific use. This is all for the 68k side of things, PPC on the Amiga is just dumb and unfinished and a waste of time and money. It's the old problem many of these home computers had in their last breaths, if there's no software for it, the hardware is useless. One of the things I really find an Amiga is still very nice to use for these days is pixel art, as there are quite a few cool programs. Surprisingly, I found very little in that way for the 68k Macs when I looked around.
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Jun 27, 2016 23:05
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Speaking about 68k mac gaming, here's a crowdfunding project to fund a book about the history of mac gaming.quote:The Macintosh changed videogames. It seldom gets credit for this, but it did. It — and its tight-knit community — challenged games to be more than child's play and quick reflexes. It showed how to make human computer interaction friendly, inviting, and intuitive. I don't know much about mac gaming, but I definitely recognize a few of those names, like Yoot Saito and Aspyr and Bungie.
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Jun 27, 2016 23:11
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Thanks for the Amiga and Mac advice, guys. I've mostly a mix of technical curiosity and misplaced nostalgia for systems I was too young to appreciate at the time so I'll grab the docs and play around with winUAE. Real hardware though? I'll shelve that next to my "it sure would be nice if Falcons cost less than £600" dreams
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Jun 28, 2016 00:43
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Police Automaton posted:The thing also is these "Superamigas" aren't really of use for anything else except Mac-Emulation (which btw. also isn't emulation in the Sense Mac Emulation on a modern PC is, it's more like a VM really and it also has very little overhead) there's a lot of diminishing returns if you go past 020-030 on the Amiga regarding real Amiga Software. Most Games don't really take any advantage of it (quite the contrary even, often it's a compatibility nightmare) and most software that would have serious gains by running on something past a 030 on classic Amiga you won't want to use nowadays anyways (video editing, image editing and internet applications on a Amiga? No fun) The reason for that is that almost all software developers of importance abandoned ship in the early 90s as they noticed Commodore seemingly wasn't really interested to go anywhere and the later accelerators and Amiga models weren't really interesting for anybody except the "true believers", which some of are now the very batshit insane people of the Amiga community. Amiga's got a lot of "artisanal crafted" Expansion Hardware by small 3rd party outfits that sounds nice in theory but at the end of the day just is not really all that useful (and wasn't back then either). Even graphics card support in the most recent version of the 68k version OS to this day remains being a 3rd party hack. Fun to play around with but you'd have to have a very specific use. This is all for the 68k side of things, PPC on the Amiga is just dumb and unfinished and a waste of time and money. It's the old problem many of these home computers had in their last breaths, if there's no software for it, the hardware is useless. If you really want to talk about batshit insane microcommunities with with ridiculous bespoke hardware, the Amiga is nothing. You need to look at the Sinclair Q60. Yes, that is an 8-bit computer with 48kB ROM/128kB RAM from 1983 kludged into running 32-bit graphics at 80MHz on a 68060.
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Jun 28, 2016 01:01
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Mechanism Eight posted:Thanks for the Amiga and Mac advice, guys. I've mostly a mix of technical curiosity and misplaced nostalgia for systems I was too young to appreciate at the time so I'll grab the docs and play around with winUAE. Real hardware though? I'll shelve that next to my "it sure would be nice if Falcons cost less than £600" dreams If you really don't have any nostalgia attachment and change your mind someday, that A500/Mac advice from d0s is good and could be done pretty cheap. Just don't go down the rabbit hole of expensive and rare expansions and upgrades. Nobody had them back then either. That's why they're rare now. Segmentation Fault posted:I don't know much about mac gaming, but I definitely recognize a few of those names, like Yoot Saito and Aspyr and Bungie. Man I loved SimTower, heard about Yoot Tower only many years later. (which is basically SimTower 2) Replaying the game I'm not sure where that love even came from. I think it was just watching all those people go about their day, although it was fairly simplistic I guess. Jedit posted:If you really want to talk about batshit insane microcommunities with with ridiculous bespoke hardware, the Amiga is nothing. You need to look at the Sinclair Q60. Are they also acting like the Sinclair will make a big comeback any day now and have lots of license holders sitting on 20 year old licenses to old software crap pretty much in anticipation of that event? Well I guess I already know the answer. I don't think I'm ready for more insanity of that kind. Another edit: quote:Text mode Webbrowser (not released yet) Wow even "text based" and "POP3". Something tells me these softwares are not released yet for a very long time now. That's pretty much the story with these lingering developments and exactly what I was talking about earlier. Police Automaton fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Jun 28, 2016 |
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Jun 28, 2016 01:02
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Jedit posted:If you really want to talk about batshit insane microcommunities with with ridiculous bespoke hardware, the Amiga is nothing. You need to look at the Sinclair Q60.
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Jun 28, 2016 03:22
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Dr. Quarex posted:Well for as much as I am shocked and mildly appalled by this, when I checked out the Sinclair QL I did immediately say "whoa," so I can totally understand the visual appeal of having that computer be useful. I just... I just think there must be an easier way to do that than by actually making a new compatible motherboard. People still do that for much newer systems: a lot of the late IBM branded /early Lenovo branded ThinkPad laptops from say 8-11 years ago? There's a hobbyist community that's gotten companies to manufacture a drop in replacement motherboard with a CPU and corresponding gpu that's only a year or two old. People just love that era's form factors that much, but wanted them with modern capabilities. Especially in the convertible tablet ThinkPad laptops with the Wacom screens.
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Jun 28, 2016 04:06
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Dr. Quarex posted:Well for as much as I am shocked and mildly appalled by this, when I checked out the Sinclair QL I did immediately say "whoa," so I can totally understand the visual appeal of having that computer be useful. I just... I just think there must be an easier way to do that than by actually making a new compatible motherboard. "What you don't understand is that there is a 600 quid a year business at stake that depends on the continued tip top operation of a Sinclair QL!" * Said business is in a small village of elderly people, and involves transcribing paper letters to e-mail and vice versa, while the owner studiously spends the rest of his time ensuring his customers don't catch wind of other methods *
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Jun 28, 2016 07:28
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fishmech posted:People still do that for much newer systems: a lot of the late IBM branded /early Lenovo branded ThinkPad laptops from say 8-11 years ago? There's a hobbyist community that's gotten companies to manufacture a drop in replacement motherboard with a CPU and corresponding gpu that's only a year or two old. It's got nothing to do with the form factor in the case of the Q60, it lives in a mini-tower case. Someone just wanted the QL to be able to emulate Wing Commander III at 50fps.
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Jun 28, 2016 08:29
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Hi guys! I want to relay a question to you. My girlfriend wants to relive a game from her childhood called Bolo, a German breakout clone for the Atari ST (based purely on the information from the link, I've never seen it). She struggles with emulation and seems to not be the only one having issues, seeing as the very OP of this thread states that Atari ST emulation wouldn't work for them. I have absolutely no idea of computer stuff in general, so I also couldn't really help her beyond casual googling. That's why I'm asking here: has anyone managed to emulate Atari ST games on Windows 7? If not, how would you approach the problem? I'm guessing it is okay to ask because the OP itself talks about emulation, if it's still not cool then of course I don't want you linking  , I'm just completely at a loss because tons of pages that do talk about Atari emulation get really technical really fast...
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Jun 28, 2016 20:47
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Simply Simon posted:I have absolutely no idea of computer stuff in general, so I also couldn't really help her beyond casual googling. That's why I'm asking here: has anyone managed to emulate Atari ST games on Windows 7? If not, how would you approach the problem? I'm guessing it is okay to ask because the OP itself talks about emulation, if it's still not cool then of course I don't want you linking
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Jun 28, 2016 21:16
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She's been able to get it to run! Thanks a lot for a clear recommendation of emulator and list of files needed  .
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Jun 28, 2016 23:16
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I'll probably set up a blog soon to talk about old hardware and other things I'm thinking about and doing. This is in an attempt to learn to be less chaotic both in my writing and in general. (My german teacher in highschool once told my mother that I am both chaotic and out of control, that really stuck with me) I also have lots of time currently because there's very little work. I'd be happy if I can link that thing here if anyone is interested. I'll probably start it off with the reason my K6 died because looking at the problem I have the feeling that might happen a lot with Mainboards of that particular vintage. I'm making this post to hold myself to my word to do that thing and not just get distracted by something else.
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Jun 29, 2016 02:16
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Well I'd certainly read it and live vicariously through your collection
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Jun 30, 2016 02:00
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Police Automaton posted:(My german teacher in highschool once told my mother that I am both chaotic and out of control, that really stuck with me) I'm not sure if my definition of "chaotic" includes "writes novel-like dissertations on a specific, extraordinarily technical topic." Germans may just have a really high bar for what they consider "orderly."
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Jun 30, 2016 14:13
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Shlomo Palestein posted:I'm not sure if my definition of "chaotic" includes "writes novel-like dissertations on a specific, extraordinarily technical topic." Germans may just have a really high bar for what they consider "orderly." Okay, this has nothing to do with old computers or games or whatever so just very short now but it was mostly my terrible handwriting. I'm left handed and my elementary school teacher back then decided this just won't do and I was forced to learn writing with my right hand. (He also went with us to church every Tuesday morning, and yes, this was a public school, so you can see these were very different times) We also still learned cursive in school (I heard kids these days don't anymore everywhere) so of course my handwriting was utterly unreadable. First she tried to encourage better handwriting, this of course did nothing then she would start to punish bad handwriting and would get incredibly frustrated because having bad handwriting then was just something that'd was akin to tyieping liek dis today. So eventually as kids do I got defiant and wouldn't even try anymore and it turned into this entire silly war about my handwriting. Funny thing though, otherwise we got along just fine. Later on I got drafted into the army (we still had an conscription then for all able german males because "red menace") and that's where I started using my left hand again and it's like a huge blockage in my head lifted, I got a lot less clumsy. (I was very clumsy then) Now I can write unreadable with both! (but well, it doesn't matter anymore because computers and that's how we are back to topic) Edit: Oh missed the important point, so essentially it was a joke buried in a truth. Also I'm sometimes really bad at organizing 
Police Automaton fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Jun 30, 2016 |
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Jun 30, 2016 15:12
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Police Automaton posted:Edit: Oh missed the important point, so essentially it was a joke buried in a truth. Also I'm sometimes really bad at organizing No worries, dude. I've heard horror stories of lefties being forced to write "properly" by nuns and such. As a proud lefty, I applaud your fighting the good fight. I would have 100% behaved the same way.
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Jul 1, 2016 19:41
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I have a ROM 03 IIGS coming to me, nothing in it at all. I already have an ADB keyboard and mouse (the IIGS specific model even) and external 800k floppy drive, but no RGB monitor. I'm mainly going to use it for IIGS specific stuff as I have a IIe, is it true that the composite out doesn't work for this and I need an RGB monitor? I have a trisync NEC monitor that I use with my X68K, would I be able to just build an adapter and have this work? Also what's a reasonable amount of memory for a setup that I only want to use for "period correct" games and apps (don't want to attempt any modern tasks), and what's the most cost effective way to expand the IIGS memory (or would I even need to for a ROM 03)?
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Jul 1, 2016 21:58
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Shlomo Palestein posted:No worries, dude. I've heard horror stories of lefties being forced to write "properly" by nuns and such. Nuns? I was being forced to write with my right hand by regular primary school teachers as recently as 1982. On topic: Hewson Consultants just launched a Kickstarter for their first game release in over 20 years. If it looks sort of familiar, that's because it's an updated reworking of Uridium.
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Jul 1, 2016 22:40
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https://youtu.be/1P6kZiZKbGo this guy is a lucky motherfucker. Like how is it even possible? Also next week I might have a clever effort post about solving my pre Thresh illumination days control scheme issues. It depends on if I want to spend a few bucks to have the best solutions. There are many but Shadowcaster deserves the best!
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Jul 1, 2016 23:42
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d0s posted:I have a ROM 03 IIGS coming to me, nothing in it at all. I already have an ADB keyboard and mouse (the IIGS specific model even) and external 800k floppy drive, but no RGB monitor. I'm mainly going to use it for IIGS specific stuff as I have a IIe, is it true that the composite out doesn't work for this and I need an RGB monitor? I have a trisync NEC monitor that I use with my X68K, would I be able to just build an adapter and have this work? Also what's a reasonable amount of memory for a setup that I only want to use for "period correct" games and apps (don't want to attempt any modern tasks), and what's the most cost effective way to expand the IIGS memory (or would I even need to for a ROM 03)? Some IIGS specific stuff looks just fine on composite, some of it looks horrible, much like trying to do later IBM PC games through composite out. I'm not sure on the specifics for converting to that NEC monitor, but there are definitely IIGS to VGA and IIGS to component adapters and schematic projects to follow, so presumably you should also be able to manage that. If you want to play some of the best IIGS stuff, you're going to want to have at least 2 MB of ram, plus having a lot of RAM is nice anyway for loading things to RAM disk. I'd reccomend with going with this for 4 MB: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-IIgs-...kwAAOSw1h5XQfK7 (about $50, isn't a huge board because it uses more modern chips) or this for 8 MB: http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-GGLABS-RAMGS-8-Apple-IIgs-8MB-memory-expansion-8M-RAM-/401053959389?hash=item5d60adc4dd:g:DOYAAOSwKtVWvB52 (like $240, but you're not going to get a tested vintage one for less money, and this is again more reliable because of newer design and not using a fuckton of old chips). 8 MB on the expansion board plus 256 KB to 1 MB of internal RAM (depending on your precise base IIGS) is of course the most RAM the system can have. I wouldn't recommend going less than 4 MB just because you're not really going to save money going for less than 4 MB with that new card. And of course there's always the consideration to get an IDE card with a CF card installed to make a hard drive for it, like this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-IIe-I...EkAAOSwDk5T4RJu Very nice for using IIGS specific software.
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Jul 1, 2016 23:49
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fishmech posted:Some IIGS specific stuff looks just fine on composite, some of it looks horrible, much like trying to do later IBM PC games through composite out. I'm not sure on the specifics for converting to that NEC monitor, but there are definitely IIGS to VGA and IIGS to component adapters and schematic projects to follow, so presumably you should also be able to manage that. That 4MB board seems like the way to go, unless there's a lot of stuff that requires 8MB? It seems like that would have been a huge amount for the time and not much would really take advantage of it, am I wrong? I do see that the 8MB board is available in kit form from the same seller for $179 and even if it was the same price I'd get the kit anyway because I like building poo poo, but that's still way more than I want to spend unless 8MB is kinda indispensable. I will probably get that CF card device eventually since I want to use GS/OS and not deal with disk swapping, but the price makes it something for the future, for now I'm just gonna use ADTPro to get a bunch of games on disks. Thanks for the recommendations! e: I assume that since the IIGS coming to me is a ROM 03 it has 1MB of RAM on the mainboard, is this correct? I know for a fact there are no expansion cards at all in it.
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Jul 2, 2016 00:26
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d0s posted:That 4MB board seems like the way to go, unless there's a lot of stuff that requires 8MB? It seems like that would have been a huge amount for the time and not much would really take advantage of it, am I wrong? I do see that the 8MB board is available in kit form from the same seller for $179 and even if it was the same price I'd get the kit anyway because I like building poo poo, but that's still way more than I want to spend unless 8MB is kinda indispensable. I will probably get that CF card device eventually since I want to use GS/OS and not deal with disk swapping, but the price makes it something for the future, for now I'm just gonna use ADTPro to get a bunch of games on disks. Thanks for the recommendations! 8 MB of RAM becomes useful if you start using very late stage stuff for the system, especially if you want to use late stage stuff and a RAM disk at the same time. Officially Apple only supported up to 4 MB of expansion RAM plus 1 MB of onboard RAM while they were making it, so everything Apple made can run in that total of 5 MB of RAM, but later things could totally take advantage of the 8 MB total if you wanted (as-is, the ROM 03 and 01 are only coded to address 8 MB of RAM, so some of the expansion card goes wasted if its 8 MB if you don't have a modified ROM installed which goes to the system architecture's max of 14 MB of addressable RAM). It should probably have 1 MB of RAM on the motherboard if it actually shipped with ROM 03. But ROM 03 was available as an upgrade for older ROM 0 and ROM 01 systems so it could easily have just the 256 KB onboard. But there's no need to worry about that since you'll be getting extra RAM, ad thus have more than enough to run the GS/OS (as you probably know, it functions like Mac OS of the same time period except in color) with games running inside that. Also I'll note that since you love building stuff, there's a french dude who released schematics on how to build an IDE hard drive adapter for all Apple II computers, using completely off-the-shelf parts: http://s.guillard.free.fr/Apple2IDE/Apple2IDE.htm Though it has some issues handling faster/newer IDE devices.
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Jul 2, 2016 01:08
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Shlomo Palestein posted:No worries, dude. I've heard horror stories of lefties being forced to write "properly" by nuns and such. As a proud lefty, I applaud your fighting the good fight. I would have 100% behaved the same way. This was my experience as a kid in a private school until my mom found out what they were doing (she's a lefty too and was not happy with the teacher) Had to learn cutting right handed though because they refused to get me scissors.
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Jul 2, 2016 02:02
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d0s posted:I have a ROM 03 IIGS coming to me, nothing in it at all. I already have an ADB keyboard and mouse (the IIGS specific model even) and external 800k floppy drive, but no RGB monitor. I'm mainly going to use it for IIGS specific stuff as I have a IIe, is it true that the composite out doesn't work for this and I need an RGB monitor? I have a trisync NEC monitor that I use with my X68K, would I be able to just build an adapter and have this work? Also what's a reasonable amount of memory for a setup that I only want to use for "period correct" games and apps (don't want to attempt any modern tasks), and what's the most cost effective way to expand the IIGS memory (or would I even need to for a ROM 03)? If your NEC multisync monitor uses a VGA connection, you might be able to build an adapter for the IIGS with the pin-matching at: http://apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/faqs/Csa2MONITOR.html#015 That FAQ suggests that composite might work, but it might not play well with certain IIGS modes, and it will probably look junky. It appears the IIGS uses a horizontal sync rate of 15.7 Khz and analog RGB, so it may be compatible with most PVMs, too, if you have a way to adapt the IIGS video to BNC or that Sony 25-pin CMPTR connector.
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Jul 4, 2016 02:45
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Kthulhu5000 posted:If your NEC multisync monitor uses a VGA connection, you might be able to build an adapter for the IIGS with the pin-matching at: My monitor is a NEC Multisync II (re-branded by Packard Bell, I practically stole it on ebay due to this) so this is perfect. Thank you!
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Jul 4, 2016 02:55
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flyboi posted:Had to learn cutting right handed though because they refused to get me scissors. Good - left-handed scissors are awful. I don't have a single problem using normal scissors in my left hand so I'm not sure why you use them right-handed. One thing I'd like to get left-handed would be playing cards, because they don't seem handed when you look at them.
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Jul 4, 2016 04:18
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I really don't like all that "ergonomic" stuff regarding input devices because it's always made for right-handed people. Always was a big problem with good joysticks, now it doesn't really matter anymore as I don't really play games that require joysticks anymore. I got an interesting machine from a neighbor today. (I kind of have a reputation and people bring me their old computer crap, which honestly is not always good) It's an HP thin client from the early 00s, one of those network-booting office computers. Interesting thing about it is that it has a Transmeta TM5800 Crusoe CPU. It's not quite like one of those VIA and NS/AMD Geode CPUs/SoCs that were around that time and you'd find in embedded, low power things everywhere (ARM wasn't quite there yet) because it's not actually an x86 CPU. It's a 128-Bit-VLIW-CPU that emulates the x86 instruction set (including MMX) through software. It's an interesting approach because it enabled the designers to make the CPU a lot simpler, cut down on the transistor cost and with that, you guessed it, the heat output and power requirements. Theoretically it would also be possible for this CPU to emulate other architectures, even have instruction sets added via software. (This didn't ever happen though) I remember this CPU because around '00 the Amiga scene was in an uproar because PPC didn't really go anywhere for the Amiga and Jim Collas talked about a new Amiga with such a Transmeta CPU and QNX. Oh, also Linus Torvalds was involved in it's development. (the CPU, not the Amiga) I don't remember the entire story but you can google it, there's tons of info about this, and I even remember reading on the internet about someone reverse-engineering how exactly the CPU and it's software worked. Transmeta isn't around in the CPU market anymore and they folded pretty quick, because at the end of the day this whole approach was just another low-powered x86 the world didn't really need all that much. Wikipedia states the CPU I have here measures up to a P3 running at 500 Mhz approx. but somehow I doubt it. The Thin Client also has an ATI Radeon 7000M graphics chip (not to be confused with the HD 7000 of recently) so *a bit* better than the integrated solutions you'd usually find in these systems. It also has a VIA chipset with integrated AC97 audio that according to Datasheet and drivers can also do sound in DOS, (SB compatible) which is quite rare. It also has a PCI slot that even with a very small riser card would stop you from closing the case, so I think maybe the mainboard was also used in a different case/machine. Power consumption is about 14W when it's working. Not too shabby, could do for a nice, fanless Win9x machine, if there are drivers. Even if the CPU is a bit exotic they're not rare or anything, over here you can pick one up for about 10 bucks on eBay including shipping used. (HP ThinClient t5710) I'll probably steal the 256 MB DOM Module it has for my A1200 and put something else into it.
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Jul 4, 2016 22:39
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Police Automaton posted:Transmeta CPU and QNX. I remember in I want to say 2001, I had a full QNX environment on a bootable floppy disk which was pretty amazing for the time. I used it with PCs in high school to get on IRC and things like that. Thinking back that was really interesting technology e: of course I also had a small linux or BSD (forget which) on a floppy with the same sort of stuff on it like any computer nerd of that time, but QNX was a completely graphical environment that (iirc) looked modern even by today's standards. It wasn't a stripped down TWM-like thing but what felt like a fully featured GUI OS e2: wow, found screenshots of it http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html d0s fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Jul 5, 2016 |
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Jul 5, 2016 05:11
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Got my thing in the mail Looks like a real ROM 3 board  I don't have my keyboard, mouse, or 3.5" drive here (trying to have them shipped to me), so I can only hook it up to my TV via composite and boot the few 5 1/4" floppies I have around, but not interact with anything. Something I noticed is text-based software has white text on a black background+black border:   But software with graphics has the typical IIGS blue border:   From messing with emulators I know you can set these border/background colors and assumed the previous owner set them to black, but when I do this in an emulator I don't see blue borders anywhere, it honors the change no matter what. I also removed the battery and nothing changed, so I assume the black&white thing is something to do with me using a composite monitor, maybe to make stuff easier to read? Anyway I am super hype to make this a complete system, I love the idea of a 16bit Apple competitor to the Amiga/Atari ST style of computers even though I know it's library doesn't come close to those systems. d0s fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Jul 6, 2016 |
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Jul 6, 2016 03:10
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Pick up Zany Golf, it's _amazing_ on IIgs. The music in particular is stellar.
mod sassinator fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Jul 6, 2016 |
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Jul 6, 2016 04:39
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mod sassinator posted:Pick up Zany Golf, it's _amazing_ on IIgs. The music in particular is the stellar. Yeah that's actually one of the games that made me want the system, it's very cool
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Jul 6, 2016 05:51
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http://wargamedork.blogspot.com/2016/07/retrocomputing-why-bother-shadowcaster.html My effort post is finally done. Hands don't like trying to control a game with a right handed mouse and the numeric keypad which is.. also on the right? Well thanks to a little inspiration from Kthulhu5000 and my own ingenuity, I have solved many problems we can have, and might help some of yall discover a few ideas for yourself! Emulation solves yet another problem as many games did this kind of terrible control nonsense.
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Jul 6, 2016 07:33
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I am firmly convinced that `nav/cursor control keys on the right and 10-key on the even more right' is a by-product of a time without mice. Realistically, if not completely detachable (and ideally separate segments even from one another) they at the very least belong on the left. My mouse is falling off my drat desk these days. Yes, I know you have separate ten-key there, that's rad, but by all rights the middle part should be separate too. Of course the future is touch so the next generation won't even get to feel discrete keys happening anymore 
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Jul 6, 2016 09:51
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Sir Unimaginative posted:I am firmly convinced that `nav/cursor control keys on the right and 10-key on the even more right' is a by-product of a time without mice. Realistically, if not completely detachable (and ideally separate segments even from one another) they at the very least belong on the left. My mouse is falling off my drat desk these days. Yes, I know you have separate ten-key there, that's rad, but by all rights the middle part should be separate too. That would be handy but our computers are mostly based off of typewriters and no amount of screaming about Dvorak or something is gonna change it. And honestly having done numeric data entry for 2 years even if it was 18 years ago my hand is used to it. For number entry. Not for video games. It feels wrong to move in games with the right hand now, even discounting the mouse issue. For emulators when I can't be arsed to set up a controller I still use Wasd to move and arrow keys become action buttons. But as I have said in the thread some of these designers had no loving clue how to design a gameplay interface. Or even how to setup game installs. Or even realize systems might get faster and your game needs some kind of preset game speed. poo poo, a lot of Pal Amiga games got ported to the Genesis and became nearly unplayable as they were running a good 12% or more faster! This is the kind of stuff emulation can handle that a lot of the purists seem to forget about. Also like say finding an Avenue 3 pad for a PC Engine versus just mapping Select to a button on your controller of choice. Or not having to find drivers and software for Gravis Gamepads or CH Flightsticks. Or the Ultima fandom's never ending quest to keep these games as up to date and playable as possible because we see what EA did with the IP... 
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Jul 6, 2016 23:15
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