Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Police Automaton
Mar 17, 2009
"You are standing in a thread. Someone has made an insightful post."
LOOK AT insightful post
"It's a pretty good post."
HATE post
"I don't understand"
SHIT ON post
"You shit on the post. Why."
I've used the arrow keys for the longest time for most games (left hand on the mouse, right hand on the keyboard, so no problems there) until I started wondering why I don't use the Keypad instead. it even has more keys right there! Was a complete game-changer (ha!) for me. No idea why I never thought of it all these years. All these recent console conversion games do not respect their own offered remapping always and everywhere though, which in my opinion is one of the worst and laziest mistakes developers make, ever.

d0s posted:

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

KolibriOS is something similar now, everything's written in Assembler and it's pretty fast even on old machines. It does need at least a Pentium though, has a monolithic kernel and is a bit picky on which hardware it will run with all the features. I remember having a Pentium around and using it as router/firewall with a full Linux on a floppy disk. The more popular Linux distributions around these days in the ways they are put together are many things but not lightweight. You can still get that lightweight experience but you will really have to dig for the right software. Linux makes for a bad Windows, people are just not getting that. The *BSDs fare better regarding philosophy IMHO.


Kinda jealous regarding this machine, looks well built and would probably be fun to screw around in, but I already have so much electronics junk. :(

-

I've poked around a bit more in that Thinclient, it's an interesting machine. When the "Code Morphing" software (which reserves 16 MB of the System's RAM for itself which then stays completely inaccessible from the OS) encounters specific x86 code repeatedly it will not re-decode into the CPUs native but run it from that cache which then happens *quite a bit* faster. It does some kind of voltage/frequency scaling depending on load, like modern CPUs do, too. With FreeDOS (Couldn't get Win98 installed easily on the 256 MB Flash drive, and while the thing can boot off USB sticks it's all kinda wonky, network boot would be the canon usage for this but I was too lazy to set that up) and fdapm you can slow down the CPU pretty neatly and consistently. Something about the CPU freaks that popular, russian-made system speed test tool out, and if it doesn't just freeze the system it pegs the CPU at the speed of a 133 Mhz Pentium which just isn't right seeing how software I tried out runs on it. No idea what happens there. Memory limit for the CPU is 512 MB.

The VIA software doesn't allow me to activate the legacy sound support for DOS, it claims I need to toggle a SB legacy setting in the BIOS first. Of course, the BIOS is very stripped down as BIOSes of such OEM things often are and that setting doesn't exist. I had no luck in editing the BIOS as all the common tools for such stuff refused to load it which I think has something to do with that "code morphing software". I'm a bit anxious to screw up the BIOS and brick the machine as it's not sitting in a PLCC chip (which would be appropriate for that vintage) I could just plop into my Programmer, but is a VSOP-Package which would be a bit of a bitch to reflash with what I have here. On the upside I have the ~200 page datasheet of the chipset and with assembler and poking around a little maybe I can find a way to activate legacy mode, whatever that even really means. Interestingly enough the chipset has a gameport with UART midi interface (which isn't wired out on this machine) but *maybe* it could be retrofitted. The chipset has no FM-Synth block but emulates it via software synthesizer TSR in DOS. No idea how that sounds or how well it would work.

That was just playing around a little. :shrug: Of course with all the cool x86 hardware and graphics/sound etc. cards you can get relatively cheap to run older games on this thing doesn't seem particularly interesting, but it is very small (the mainboard is only about 17x17 cm) and sits inside a small metal box inside a more fashionable plastic case and it also uses very little power. It's also completely fanless, that's always nice. It's also not so crazily overpowered (in fact, for it's time it was very underpowered) for old games to the point of you asking yourself why you'd use such a machine. It's a pity I don't exactly need it as I have a weak spot for such small computers, but I guess besides DOS/Win9x you can't do much with it you couldn't do better and even more energy-efficiently otherwise, this is the age of ARM, after all. When I come around to set up a Blog and get my work/hobbyroom back (family visiting right now and I converted it into a bedroom) I'll certainly poke around in it more.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Dr. Quarex
Apr 18, 2003

I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA
Oh dude. This is so exciting. We have definitely talked about this before, I think in this thread, and definitely in previous "talk about old computer stuff" threads:


A short article, but with lots of other links to continue the rabbit-hole-diving.

d0s
Jun 28, 2004

has anyone restored that prodigy 3D maze game, I spent countless hours playing that stupid thing on our 286

e: yes they have! :toot: http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/171

e2: drat it requires IE but doesn't work with the latest IE

d0s fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Jul 9, 2016

Drastic Actions
Apr 7, 2009

FUCK YOU!
GET PUMPED!
Nap Ghost

d0s posted:

has anyone restored that prodigy 3D maze game, I spent countless hours playing that stupid thing on our 286

e: yes they have! :toot: http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/171

e2: drat it requires IE but doesn't work with the latest IE

If you hit F12 and go into the Emulation tab, you can set it to render the page as IE5, which should work. Not sure if it works with popups though, which I think it uses.

flyboi
Oct 13, 2005

agg stop posting
College Slice
And the guy who made it died so better setup a vm to play it. Mad maze was the poo poo

Police Automaton
Mar 17, 2009
"You are standing in a thread. Someone has made an insightful post."
LOOK AT insightful post
"It's a pretty good post."
HATE post
"I don't understand"
SHIT ON post
"You shit on the post. Why."

Dr. Quarex posted:

Oh dude. This is so exciting. We have definitely talked about this before, I think in this thread, and definitely in previous "talk about old computer stuff" threads:


A short article, but with lots of other links to continue the rabbit-hole-diving.

Somehow, I've never heard of this and it's very fascinating especially considering how ill-suited the platform is in just about every way you can imagine. It's also interesting for me because I always imagined an MMO in that adventure-game 2D room-based style, (is there an official name for this? I haven't got the slightest idea) There I go and thought I had an original thought, I guess. :v:

Another thing that's probably old news to everyone else and I somehow completely missed, but I read that R.R. Martin uses a DOS-based PC and WordPerfect 4.0 to write. (I've neither seen a single Episode of Game of Thrones nor read the books, so I wasn't particularly up on his work and how he does it) I wonder what the exact circumstances of that machine are. But at any rate it's exactly what I always say, when a tool works, it works. No need to replace it for the sake of replacing it.

Kthulhu5000
Jul 25, 2006

by R. Guyovich

Police Automaton posted:

Somehow, I've never heard of this and it's very fascinating especially considering how ill-suited the platform is in just about every way you can imagine. It's also interesting for me because I always imagined an MMO in that adventure-game 2D room-based style, (is there an official name for this? I haven't got the slightest idea) There I go and thought I had an original thought, I guess. :v:

Another thing that's probably old news to everyone else and I somehow completely missed, but I read that R.R. Martin uses a DOS-based PC and WordPerfect 4.0 to write. (I've neither seen a single Episode of Game of Thrones nor read the books, so I wasn't particularly up on his work and how he does it) I wonder what the exact circumstances of that machine are. But at any rate it's exactly what I always say, when a tool works, it works. No need to replace it for the sake of replacing it.

He uses Wordstar 4.0, apparently, according to this interview on Conan O' Brien's talk show. Apparently, it's due to it not being feature-rich or having spell check and the like. And that makes a lot of sense; a professional wordsmith undoubtedly develops a work flow, and things like having to move a mouse, dialog boxes popping up willy-nilly, and your main window losing focus interrupt that. And if it's a DOS-era program, it also is likely to have more of a keyboard driven interface, which can be great for workflow, too.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong
What I've heard is that he actually used to just use current software for the times (which was up to like Word 97 or something by the end), but then he read that some author he respected insisted on Wordstar for DOS, so he decided to use it too.

d0s
Jun 28, 2004

Kthulhu5000 posted:

Apparently, it's due to it not being feature-rich or having spell check and the like.

This is weird because I always thought wordstar was like the most powerful and complex product of it's kind, like it was the pro-est word processor or whatever

e: didn't stephen king use a really old mac for a long time? I seem to remember reading something by him where he talks about using a really ancient mac laptop or something for all his writing

d0s fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Jul 10, 2016

flyboi
Oct 13, 2005

agg stop posting
College Slice
I would imagine it's an ebbe-flow kind of deal where he is super used to it. Personally I used word perfect 5.1 up until office 2000 just because I had used it for so long I knew how the program functioned and it was much easier to deal with kerning versus trying to find out what word was doing.

Dr. Quarex
Apr 18, 2003

I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

flyboi posted:

I would imagine it's an ebbe-flow kind of deal where he is super used to it. Personally I used word perfect 5.1 up until office 2000 just because I had used it for so long I knew how the program functioned and it was much easier to deal with kerning versus trying to find out what word was doing.
I definitely only used Office/Word/WORKS when I was at school in high school; I was still using DOS-based editors until college, by which point I was starting to get the sense that everyone thought I was an unfrozen caveman. I actually stopped using WordPerfect because I felt like QEdit was the greatest piece of software ever invented; also good lord, and I was using a version of QEdit from what, like 1993, almost decade later, since they changed the name in 1995? What was wrong with me?

Pretty great program though.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

d0s posted:

This is weird because I always thought wordstar was like the most powerful and complex product of it's kind, like it was the pro-est word processor or whatever

e: didn't stephen king use a really old mac for a long time? I seem to remember reading something by him where he talks about using a really ancient mac laptop or something for all his writing

Yes, WordStar was a very advanced word processor for its time.

If I'm remembering right, the reason he used a particular old Mac laptop for a very long time, was simply that it had very good battery life while just running Microsoft Word (which is what he prefers to use). So he just kept using it for as long as he could get new batteries, because he could just go get comfortable somewhere and not worry about a power output.

Pikestaff
Feb 17, 2013

Came here to bark at you




Oh man. My keyboarding classes in high school were done with WordPerfect and I fell in love with Reveal Codes. I haven't used WP in yeeeeaaars but sometimes I still wish for that feature when using whatever other program I'm using at the time (currently Scrivener mostly.)

d0s
Jun 28, 2004

I also grew up with wordperfect, which until we got Prodigy was the only thing on our IBM PS/2 Model 60 that used the clunky mouse (the cursor was just the ASCII block thing). I was using Mac LCs and stuff in school & felt like my parents were technological cave people

e: but looking back since they kept that computer until 1996 or so it helped me have a good understanding of how to use a computer without the abstraction of a GUI, which made moving on to learning UNIX and stuff feel natural, which I guess is a valuable skill in this century

d0s fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Jul 10, 2016

Police Automaton
Mar 17, 2009
"You are standing in a thread. Someone has made an insightful post."
LOOK AT insightful post
"It's a pretty good post."
HATE post
"I don't understand"
SHIT ON post
"You shit on the post. Why."
DOS felt like kind of a step back in my pre-linux days, especially coming from the Amiga. Also the memory management. Oh god, the memory management. (Even though to be entirely fair AmigaOS had also it's problems there, especially if it ran for a while and it was good practice to reboot often) I ended up liking DOS though because of it's non-GUI and simple, straightforward nature and that also was exactly what ended up drawing me to the *nixes later on. Of course, if you liked playing games there really wasn't a way around MS/Windows. Still really isn't, honestly.

Now, the memory stuff of DOS isn't even that bad compared to the complexity of modern systems, especially with access to many good rather modern DOS programs these days. If you spend a bit of time and are inclined enough to read some documentation, it's usually pretty easy to get that tasty conventional memory.

There was this tool for DOS (PRISM) where you could change the 16 colors (if you had VGA) to a very wide and arbitrary variety of colors you could pick in a color picker, so you could get everything all neon and/or pastel colored and stuff. You could also change the default ROM Font. You could really pimp your DOS experience long before that was a widespread thing with Linux and console emulators. I think there was something similar for EGA to get access to the full palette, but don't quote me on it.

What was a massive pain in the rear end with DOS were some games doing non-standard things and Hardware sometimes really only being 80% or 90% compatible. Was enough to pull your teeth out. Especially everything regarding VESA was always a minefield because the Cards BIOSes were broken so often there, quite ironically, as that was supposed to standardize stuff. I had such a "VESA experience" recently with that small IBM PS2/E I have. It has onboard XGA-2 video which isn't VESA compatible. IBM did deliver a TSR to add VESA compatibility but you would get completely screwed up colors in VESA apps which basically makes them unusable. Google gave me nothing except some very old postings complaining of the same problem. Playing around on the computer I noticed that the colors in VESA modes changed depending on which programs were running before. I especially noticed it when I ran Deluxe Paint in MCGA 256 color mode. This gave me an idea.

I ran DosBox here on my PC, started one of these VESA games and took a screenshot with the internal DosBox screenshot function. (that was important, as it would also put the entire color palette the game is using into the screeenshot) I copied the picture then to the IBM and loaded it up in DPaint. I then quit DPaint and ran the app, and sure enough, the colors were right now. (except for the first 16 that'd get reset to the DOS defaults) Apparently the VESA TSR somehow doesn't let the programs set the color palette by themselves. There's probably some easy fix or workaround but I have no idea of the inner workings here, not exactly my field. I also don't feel like spending the time. Still interesting.

I also ran into a Problem with VESA on that HP Thinclient. VESA modes work fine there, as long as you only use the keyboard. As soon as you just touch the mouse slightly, the computer freezes. I remember I had this very problem many years ago on an old PC of mine but I cannot for the life of me remember what the cause was or how I fixed it.

Not everything was better back then.

legooolas
Jul 30, 2004

Police Automaton posted:

I also ran into a Problem with VESA on that HP Thinclient. VESA modes work fine there, as long as you only use the keyboard. As soon as you just touch the mouse slightly, the computer freezes. I remember I had this very problem many years ago on an old PC of mine but I cannot for the life of me remember what the cause was or how I fixed it.

Not everything was better back then.

IRQ clash? That was one of the more unpleasant problems back then.

Shadow Hog
Feb 23, 2014

Avatar by Jon Davies

Police Automaton posted:

There was this tool for DOS (PRISM) where you could change the 16 colors (if you had VGA) to a very wide and arbitrary variety of colors you could pick in a color picker, so you could get everything all neon and/or pastel colored and stuff. You could also change the default ROM Font. You could really pimp your DOS experience long before that was a widespread thing with Linux and console emulators. I think there was something similar for EGA to get access to the full palette, but don't quote me on it.
That would be fascinating, since, as far as I've ever known, to change the stock 16 colors of EGA to any other subset of the total 64, you had to run your program in 640x350 mode, which was only really useful for static screens - not enough RAM available to do smooth Keen-style scrolling. The 16 CGA colors were your lot for 320x200 EGA, end-of.

Although apparently some CGA cards added off-spec functionality to change the colors in 320x200 mode as well, which is how Rambo III managed it - though Rambo III also has VGA, so you'd probably just use that in this day and age.

Police Automaton
Mar 17, 2009
"You are standing in a thread. Someone has made an insightful post."
LOOK AT insightful post
"It's a pretty good post."
HATE post
"I don't understand"
SHIT ON post
"You shit on the post. Why."

legooolas posted:

IRQ clash? That was one of the more unpleasant problems back then.

Might be, no idea. VESA was broken so often. I'd like to get this up and running properly in DOS as I find the idea of such a small-form factor and low-power x86 Machine very attractive but it might not even be possible for various reasons. I wonder how the Win9x performance is

Shadow Hog posted:

That would be fascinating, since, as far as I've ever known, to change the stock 16 colors of EGA to any other subset of the total 64, you had to run your program in 640x350 mode, which was only really useful for static screens - not enough RAM available to do smooth Keen-style scrolling. The 16 CGA colors were your lot for 320x200 EGA, end-of.

Yes for games, this restriction in low-res modes was for compatibility for CGA (or rather CGA screens). I think 640x350 was the default for DOS text mode on EGA. (Also you could always switch modes and text-based apps usually respected it, which meant more screen real-estate, cool on modern chips which could do a really high-res DOS fast) Especially in later years when EGA cards came as highly integrated one- or two-chip solutions (very contrary to these early IBM Behemoth-cards) they often had some additional extras, like additional screen modes. For example Genoas "SuperEGA", which was 800x600. (I have one of these. Needed special drivers for some apps to support these screen modes) These cards also had more RAM. This isn't limited to EGA cards, VGA cards with different graphics chips had their plethora of modes which might or might mean something entirely different on another card, too. This XGA-2 chip on the IBM is no exception. The only standard around that time was that there were no standards. Home computers were superior there, they had one basic feature set every one of these computers had. With the clones and their hardware, who knew what they could or couldn't do? The program I talked about is named CHGCOLOR, but there should be others. The color/resolution limitation is also meaningless to a VGA card which means you could probably set the colors in EGA games on most if not all of them. I wonder how DosBox handles this.

EDIT:

Here's an example what insanity that stuff was:

http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/videomodes.txt

As you can imagine, all of this is also great to trip modern LCD screens up.

Police Automaton fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Jul 12, 2016

d0s
Jun 28, 2004

It's (almost) complete!



Managed to find an Apple RGB monitor and I'm really glad I did, this thing has a nicer picture than my trisync NEC and actually matches the system. I got a pack of 50 recycled but guaranteed to work 800k disks for $20 from floppydisk.com and have been using ADTPro to transfer stuff over. I have one of those 4mb RAM boards coming from Germany, and am saving up for one of those CF IDE adapters.

The Kraft KC30 joystick was an awesome find, I got it on ebay for $13 from a guy who had it listed as a "serial joystick", it looks huge but it's really comfortable to hand hold because button 2(1) is on the back, all 3 top buttons are all button 1(0):



I'm really enjoying the few games I've played so far, standouts are Zany Golf, Task Force (game in picture), Tunnels of Armageddon, Arkanoid. Not a big fan of the Thexder/Silpheed ports, these games feel off as hell compared to playing on a 386. I'm in the process of moving and I can't wait to be done so I can set up a proper desk for this thing, for now I have to haul everything on my bed to use it which is super annoying.

Floppy load times on this system suck hard, make Amiga look quick. Apart from that I fuckin love it, super jealous of anyone who grew up with one of these, it's like an 80's american kid computer nerd's dream if that makes sense

e: does task force ever have any enemies who aren't black holy poo poo lmao

d0s fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Jul 15, 2016

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong
Those floppy disk speeds are why RAM disking and CF hard drives are so popular on the thing. Still, it's not the slowest floppy drives that were around, and it's faster than the drives that were in the earliest Macs.

And it may just be confirmation bias, but it always seemed that things loaded faster off the disk once you'd already booted into the GS/OS, so give that a try sometime.

d0s
Jun 28, 2004

fishmech posted:

Those floppy disk speeds are why RAM disking and CF hard drives are so popular on the thing. Still, it's not the slowest floppy drives that were around, and it's faster than the drives that were in the earliest Macs.

And it may just be confirmation bias, but it always seemed that things loaded faster off the disk once you'd already booted into the GS/OS, so give that a try sometime.

Yeah I think I'm just used to regular Apple II 5 1/4" floppy speeds which are like absurdly fast compared to say, C64 so it's weird to see a member of the Apple II series dragging it's feet on disk access but there's also a lot more data being pushed around and probably more complex things being done with that data so it makes sense.

I have two questions for IIGS people:

1. I have come across disk images for games I want to play like this one that are 1.5mb: http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/space-fox and obv. won't fit on an 800k disk, what exactly do I do with them?

2. This game is the normal size but the only one I've come across so far that works in my emulator but doesn't work on the real machine (both emu and machine are 1MB ROM 3): http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/space-shark When I try to look at it in GS/OS it's an empty disk. Any ideas/does it work on your machines? I've tried several disks in case of a bad disk, with no luck.

d0s fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Jul 16, 2016

Kthulhu5000
Jul 25, 2006

by R. Guyovich
From http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/faq/#question4

Q. How do I use 2image archives on my IIGS?

Once you’ve figured out a way of getting data between your IIGS to your Mac or PC you can convert 2image archives to 3.5” disks on the IIGS using the programs ‘DiskMaker’ - $5 shareware, and ‘Asimov’ - Freeware. If you want to create 2image archives for use with emulators from your IIGS, Asimov can also create 2image archives and so can ‘ImageMaker’ - $5 shareware.

Links to the programs are in the link above.

d0s
Jun 28, 2004

Kthulhu5000 posted:

From http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/faq/#question4

Q. How do I use 2image archives on my IIGS?

Once you’ve figured out a way of getting data between your IIGS to your Mac or PC you can convert 2image archives to 3.5” disks on the IIGS using the programs ‘DiskMaker’ - $5 shareware, and ‘Asimov’ - Freeware. If you want to create 2image archives for use with emulators from your IIGS, Asimov can also create 2image archives and so can ‘ImageMaker’ - $5 shareware.

Links to the programs are in the link above.

All the disk images are 2mg and I've been using them fine using ADTPro to make real floppies, but most of them are the standard size to fit on a single 800k floppy, and most two floppy games are split onto two floppies as normal. This particular image is twice the size of a normal floppy but is one single disk image file, and the original game is a two floppy game going by it's manual. I'm just wondering what the deal is with this particular image in other words, not with 2mg files in general.

Kthulhu5000
Jul 25, 2006

by R. Guyovich

d0s posted:

All the disk images are 2mg and I've been using them fine using ADTPro to make real floppies, but most of them are the standard size to fit on a single 800k floppy, and most two floppy games are split onto two floppies as normal. This particular image is twice the size of a normal floppy but is one single disk image file, and the original game is a two floppy game going by it's manual. I'm just wondering what the deal is with this particular image in other words, not with 2mg files in general.

Looking at the manual, and then at the file structure of the image in the KEGS emulator, it appears that this disk image matches what would happen if you did the hard drive installation mentioned in the manual. So maybe whoever created it did so in that form, to make it easy to use with emulators. Of course, this makes it more difficult to use with actual hardware...

If you have a Windows system, it appears that you might be able to use software like CiderPress to create blank disk images, open up the Spacefox 2Image file, and recreate the floppy file structure onto the blank images (it appears the songs are on one dedicated disk, and everything else is on another). You could then send the .po disk images through ADTPro (it appears that format is not only compatible, but preferable) and cross your fingers that they'll work that way.

d0s
Jun 28, 2004

Kthulhu5000 posted:

Looking at the manual, and then at the file structure of the image in the KEGS emulator, it appears that this disk image matches what would happen if you did the hard drive installation mentioned in the manual. So maybe whoever created it did so in that form, to make it easy to use with emulators. Of course, this makes it more difficult to use with actual hardware...

If you have a Windows system, it appears that you might be able to use software like CiderPress to create blank disk images, open up the Spacefox 2Image file, and recreate the floppy file structure onto the blank images (it appears the songs are on one dedicated disk, and everything else is on another). You could then send the .po disk images through ADTPro (it appears that format is not only compatible, but preferable) and cross your fingers that they'll work that way.

Unfortunately when I try to look at the spacefox image in cider press it crashes, and when I try to copy stuff to my virtual disk from a iigs emulator running gs/os I get errors saying the spacefox disk may be damaged and other weird problems. Not really a big deal doesn't seem like a particularly amazing game anyway

Kthulhu5000
Jul 25, 2006

by R. Guyovich

d0s posted:

Unfortunately when I try to look at the spacefox image in cider press it crashes, and when I try to copy stuff to my virtual disk from a iigs emulator running gs/os I get errors saying the spacefox disk may be damaged and other weird problems. Not really a big deal doesn't seem like a particularly amazing game anyway

I got it open in CiderPress and tried some stuff, but yeah, it appears that between the file structure and/or disk errors, it's not going to be a simple thing to get working on an actual IIGS.

Kamrat
Nov 27, 2012

Thanks for playing Alone in the dark 2.

Now please fuck off
What's the best way of emulating a windows 98 system? Is it virtualbox?

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

Kamrat posted:

What's the best way of emulating a windows 98 system? Is it virtualbox?

Any modern virtual machine program that does x86 architecture, besides DOSBOX because it goes so low-level that it will be quite slow. They all do about the same job, it doesn't really require something special, so go with the one that has the UI you like the most. All the major ones have Win 9x drivers available from either the developer or from third parties.

Kamrat
Nov 27, 2012

Thanks for playing Alone in the dark 2.

Now please fuck off
Ah okay, I'll try virtualbox if that's the case, Thanks. :)

Police Automaton
Mar 17, 2009
"You are standing in a thread. Someone has made an insightful post."
LOOK AT insightful post
"It's a pretty good post."
HATE post
"I don't understand"
SHIT ON post
"You shit on the post. Why."
I'm currently down to the last boxes I had in storage and never sorted through in many years, (finally cleaned up, threw away so much crap) I found all my "PC-CD" era games, Stuff like Wing Commander 3, Rebel Assault and things like Baldurs Gate, Bioforge, Arcanum, the earlier Fallouts, I-War, Outcast etc.. all Originals. I have no idea what to do with it. Some of them are quite used so I don't even think I should give them away for free so I'll probably throw them all away. Kinda hurts, especially considering what I paid for all that crap once. I found three game boxes that are still in good conditon tho: System Shock 2, Alpha Centauri and Inferno (EDIT: Oh! Also Duke Nukem 3D) I might not throw these away.

Also found a boatload of gameport joysticks, a Walkman with a cassette of unknown contents and a Strike Commander poster. "Strike really flies with an Intel 486DX2"

Police Automaton fucked around with this message at 08:42 on Jul 21, 2016

Dr. Quarex
Apr 18, 2003

I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA
I also have a Strike Commander poster with, from what I recall, very similar wording. It must have come out of Computer Gaming World or something, as though I was excited for the game I certainly would never have bought anything for it, particularly as I thought it was vaporware until a few years back when people were talking about it here.

Did...did anyone actually play Strike Commander?

GutBomb
Jun 15, 2005

Dude?
Donate that stuff to a thrift shop. Please don't throw it out.

Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

Dr. Quarex posted:

I also have a Strike Commander poster with, from what I recall, very similar wording. It must have come out of Computer Gaming World or something, as though I was excited for the game I certainly would never have bought anything for it, particularly as I thought it was vaporware until a few years back when people were talking about it here.

Did...did anyone actually play Strike Commander?

I didn't own it, but it definitely existed.

wafflemoose
Apr 10, 2009

d0s posted:

It's (almost) complete!



Managed to find an Apple RGB monitor and I'm really glad I did, this thing has a nicer picture than my trisync NEC and actually matches the system. I got a pack of 50 recycled but guaranteed to work 800k disks for $20 from floppydisk.com and have been using ADTPro to transfer stuff over. I have one of those 4mb RAM boards coming from Germany, and am saving up for one of those CF IDE adapters.

The Kraft KC30 joystick was an awesome find, I got it on ebay for $13 from a guy who had it listed as a "serial joystick", it looks huge but it's really comfortable to hand hold because button 2(1) is on the back, all 3 top buttons are all button 1(0):



I'm really enjoying the few games I've played so far, standouts are Zany Golf, Task Force (game in picture), Tunnels of Armageddon, Arkanoid. Not a big fan of the Thexder/Silpheed ports, these games feel off as hell compared to playing on a 386. I'm in the process of moving and I can't wait to be done so I can set up a proper desk for this thing, for now I have to haul everything on my bed to use it which is super annoying.

Floppy load times on this system suck hard, make Amiga look quick. Apart from that I fuckin love it, super jealous of anyone who grew up with one of these, it's like an 80's american kid computer nerd's dream if that makes sense

e: does task force ever have any enemies who aren't black holy poo poo lmao

I still miss my Apple IIGS. I used that thing until high school in the late 90s, when the monitor finally crapped out and my parents foolishly yard saled it. When I wasn't spending my youth playing Super Nintendo and N64 games I would spend hours playing the Bard's Tale games, Road War 2000, Tetris, Tazz Times in Tonetown, the various weird edutainment games, or dicking around with the Print Shop and Paintworks. Good times. :allears:

Police Automaton
Mar 17, 2009
"You are standing in a thread. Someone has made an insightful post."
LOOK AT insightful post
"It's a pretty good post."
HATE post
"I don't understand"
SHIT ON post
"You shit on the post. Why."
I should have more posters, I got them from the video game store I often went to back then and hang out, but I have no idea where they ended up, haven't seen them. (yet)

Problem with giving that stuff away is that most of it is incomplete, there are no boxes anymore and sometimes even no manuals. Also I did not take good care of this stuff. It really is kind of a pity.

I played Strike Commander. If I remember correctly (and I might not, it was a long time ago) it was quite good, it had Privateer-esque cutscenes regarding the graphic style. You were the head of a mercenary group operating from the middle east which was flying F16s. (and later on more modern planes) Just like in Wing Commander manner it was possible to lose airplanes or missions without an instant game over. You were paid for the missions you finished successfully and I remember that the gameplay twist was that ordnance was quite expensive, so it made you think about how and if you wanted to use them, whereas military flight simulators usually let you piss away millions in ordnance without ever even mentioning it. You also had a limited supply of F16s and if you ran out it was game over. I don't remember if you could buy new ones. I also think jets getting heavily damaged counted a loss or at least costed money to fix, but don't quote me on it, I might mix that up with something else. It was as much a flight sim as GTA 5 is one though, the focus was clearly arcarde-y action and yes, eye-candy. That was back then when Chris Roberts still made video games.

The better question is, did anyone play Inferno?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhGpt76J9ts

I'm pretty sure the CD cutscenes had animations and also had speech. I remember really liking the visuals of the actual 3D parts, (the cutscenes were hella weird) it was also pretty freeform with it's directors cut mode where pretty much everything you did in the game had some effect on the outcome. You could also enter installations and some of the big capital ships, fly around in them descent-style and either protect or destroy them from the inside. The manual had a comic explaining the game world somewhat.

http://www.giantbomb.com/inferno-the-odyssey-continues/3030-16951/

Fil5000
Jun 23, 2003

HOLD ON GUYS I'M POSTING ABOUT INTERNET ROBOTS
Inferno was the sequel to EPIC I think, but I only played the demo. It was very pretty for it's day and felt huge.

d0s
Jun 28, 2004

oh my god the IIGS version of paperboy is so wretched, it feels like it was coded by a child

d0s
Jun 28, 2004

a few days ago I found an Apple II game I've wanted for a very long time, probably a personal grail, it just arrived



it's sealed and in really really good shape



the text on the back is hilarious



oh no what's gonna happen to the resale value :qq:



you're finally free



:toot:



I really love this game, it's kinda like fantavision's grandpa in that you have to strategically set off explosions and chain them. you move around a space invaders like turret and hold the fire button to send up a missile, release the button when it's near enemies to explode them. this game got ported to the japanese MSX by compile and is probably better known there but this is the original

edit: this actually brings to mind something I've been wondering about, what's the best way to store floppy disks to preserve what's on them? I keep mine in those floppy storage boxes, is there any worry that having them near each other will screw with the data? I know they're going to fail eventually but I would like for them to work for the ~50 years probably left in my life

d0s fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Jul 21, 2016

Gromit
Aug 15, 2000

I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!
Back in the early to mid 80s a school friend had a game for the Apple 2 that I've never been able to find, so maybe someone here will remember it? You played a spider and drew web on the screen trying to catch flies and caterpillers. Single screen, top-down - I think you basically surrounded the enemies with your web to eat them. The big thing that stands out in my memory is that when you cleared a level the game would write these congratulatory words in huge cursive letters across the screen. The only word I remember is "Spiffy".

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

d0s
Jun 28, 2004

Gromit posted:

Back in the early to mid 80s a school friend had a game for the Apple 2 that I've never been able to find, so maybe someone here will remember it? You played a spider and drew web on the screen trying to catch flies and caterpillers. Single screen, top-down - I think you basically surrounded the enemies with your web to eat them. The big thing that stands out in my memory is that when you cleared a level the game would write these congratulatory words in huge cursive letters across the screen. The only word I remember is "Spiffy".

Laser Silk, fun game imo

edit: it doesn't do the "spiffy" thing so maybe not

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply