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nielsm posted:Anyone have experience with the "Gotek" floppy emulators? I've heard similar stories of issues with those units and I've wondered if it's not a firmware issue. I know 8-bit Guy had a tough time getting his working properly. I know this might not be an option due to the premium, but Lotharek's are significantly better quality emulators and have worked in everything I've used them for, including weirdo Japanese formats.
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Jul 27, 2017 20:26
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Charles Get-Out posted:I've heard similar stories of issues with those units and I've wondered if it's not a firmware issue. I know 8-bit Guy had a tough time getting his working properly. Apparently the developer of those emulators Lotharek sells also has a replacement firmware for the Gotek hardware, which would seem to be much more flexible. They sell that firmware for €10, but you still also need the equipment to flash it yourself. Apart from the additional cost and the flashing equipment, it also appears you can't read the original firmware out of the device, so once you start flashing there's no going back. Flashing it just seems to require a simple serial connection, maybe I can hack up something that can work from my Epia board, I think it has a serial port header. If so I'll give it a shot. http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/index.html#download (search on the page for Gotek to find the right section) There's also another replacement firmware that works for Amiga images instead: https://cortexamigafloppydrive.wordpress.com/
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Jul 27, 2017 21:26
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Solution to gotek problems is get a Lotharek, super happy with mine
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Jul 28, 2017 04:14
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I’ve got a Cortex in my A2000 I’ve had no problems with 
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Jul 28, 2017 08:10
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This isn't retro yet, but have there been any Vista and later games that don't really run well on current hardware yet? I'm talking like games that still run fine on say a classic C2Q Q6600 CPU and GeForce 8600 GPU but wouldn't properly run with a recent i7 and a GTX 1060. I'm just kind of pondering on whether it'd be the worth the effort to build a Core 2 Quad system like that now while parts are still widespread and really cheap in preparation for a time when there's games that really want something like that to run on.
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Jul 30, 2017 03:55
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fishmech posted:This isn't retro yet, but have there been any Vista and later games that don't really run well on current hardware yet? I'm talking like games that still run fine on say a classic C2Q Q6600 CPU and GeForce 8600 GPU but wouldn't properly run with a recent i7 and a GTX 1060. Wait yes I can, it took me like five hours to get Fallout 3 running on my Windows 10 machine because some combination of Games For Windows Live leftover elements in the installation and Windows 10 not recognizing the game as installed (from Steam anyway) meant I was in for a bad time. Grand Theft Auto IV also failed pretty hard at first though I was able to get that working; come to think of it, Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City also ran like garbage even on the Windows 7 machine I first tried them on, but Rockstar is apparently a particular outlier when it comes to not caring about their games working on PCs that come out after the game's release. So the point is...yeah, quite possibly worth it already, let alone in a few years.
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Jul 30, 2017 05:31
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Got a PM from a local goon today, he had a pile of old computer stuff that he got from his in laws, and needed it gone. Here's a list of what I got: - Atari 800 XL with two floppy disk drives, tape drive and thermal printer, as well as a ton of games on cartridge, floppies and tape. - Commodore 64 (the later design, not the bread box) with an OG 1541 floppy drive and about 20 original games in boxes. - Amiga 2000 with about 6 mods on it, including being able to switch between different ROM versions and a weird external SCSI 21MB 3.5" magnetic optical floppy drive. And a gently caress load of games, including about 30 in original boxes and and bags and disk boxes full of magazine demo disks and pirated games. - Commodore 1084 monitor, but from the look of it I think it's faulty. The Atari and Amiga I offloaded to a friend, as he is a big Amiga fanatic and has been looking for an Atari computer for years, as the 8 bit Ataris weren't popular in Australia compared to the C64 and Apple ][. The Atari still works, managed to get it running at my friend's place on his old CRT TV
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Jul 30, 2017 09:35
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Dr. Quarex posted:Grand Theft Auto IV also failed pretty hard at first though I was able to get that working; come to think of it, Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City also ran like garbage even on the Windows 7 machine I first tried them on, but Rockstar is apparently a particular outlier when it comes to not caring about their games working on PCs that come out after the game's release. It's more that they're spectacularly bad programmers than that they don't care. Every Rockstar game is held together by duct tape and prayers, which is why they always have completely hilarious glitches.
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Jul 30, 2017 09:51
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I don't think it's worth it hoarding those parts, there are so many of these computers around, way more than let's say C64s and A500s and even these are *relatively* cheap and easy to get 30 years later. (meaning yes, they're expensive for what they are but buying one won't really break anyone's bank either) I'd be more worried about earlier PCs failing eventually because there are tons of EPROMs and programmable logic in them nobody knows/backed up the contents of. I'd go with some later generation low-spec, low-power SoC instead. They're cheap, easy to get and powerful. (for that old stuff) They also come in ITX measurements and you can stick them in some tiny case that won't use much room. -- If you have lots of old computer systems with varying formats and don't mind the additional effort it might be worth it getting a Kryoflux and just write disks of every format on your desktop PC for your classic machines. I have a Lotharek drive in my A2000 and it's great but also pretty expensive for what it is when I bought it. (no idea if they got cheaper so disregard if they did) Especially in the case of the A2000 the drive is also a bit too narrow and it just doesn't look that good.
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Jul 30, 2017 10:12
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My friend fired up the A2000 today. The power supply went pop. He's got another A2000 at his home, he's going to check the power supply in his working one against the one I got on the weekend to see what's blown in it. Surprisingly the A1084 monitor works, even though we both thought it was going to blow up because the power switch on it was broken.
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Aug 1, 2017 12:43
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Could be a few things, in these old power supplies (in general, not only the A2000) the net filter can sometimes pop, this can even happen when the computer is turned off but connected to power. Usually this is accompanied by a quite horrid stench and a bit of smoke, it doesn't affect operation directly though. (although it's not safe to operate the computer like that) Another very typical thing is a capacitor shorting out which can take other parts with it. These power supplies are very simple and almost always repairable by somebody experienced, don't throw them away. All these old power supplies are often on their last legs, it's not only the Amigas. Replacing the net filter and all capacitors is almost always a good idea. In the W. Germany-made A2000 power supplies the filter is integrated into the mains adapter itself, there is a fitting replacement part I can look up if it comes up. The part is riveted usually though so it needs to be drilled out. I've replaced mine a while ago. Replacing the old power switch is also a good idea, Marquardt has a dual pole rocker switch that fits exactly in the cutout of the A2000s supply. If you replace switch, net filter and the capacitors you basically have a new power supply if there's nothing else wrong.
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Aug 1, 2017 19:01
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nielsm posted:Anyone have experience with the "Gotek" floppy emulators? The bundled software that comes with it is allegedly crap. There's a much better alternative that is produced by a 3rd party. Phil's computer lab has a review of the gotek and links to the software: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taFP1J_lZBI&t=1s
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Aug 2, 2017 12:10
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Squish posted:The bundled software that comes with it is allegedly crap. There's a much better alternative that is produced by a 3rd party. Phil's computer lab has a review of the gotek and links to the software: That's the software for setting up and loading the USB stick from a "source" (modern) computer, not the firmware running on the device's microcontroller. My problem is some incompatibility between the device and the old hardware I've hooked it up to. E.g. if I load a Windows NT boot diskette image onto the USB, stick the USB into the emulator, and try to boot my retro machine from it, it will very soon give me read errors and fail to boot. And formatting an emulated diskette always gives me a random number of bad sectors.
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Aug 2, 2017 14:15
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Just for reference, the non-breadbox Commodore 64 is the 64C.
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Aug 2, 2017 16:49
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We over here also called them the C64 II with which I caused confusion in this very thread once.
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Aug 2, 2017 19:25
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nielsm posted:That's the software for setting up and loading the USB stick from a "source" (modern) computer, not the firmware running on the device's microcontroller. Fair enough. It's possible that you got a dodgy gotek, but trying a different cable would definitely be a first step - and do you have a real floppy drive to test with? I have a gotek that's worked just fine as a direct swap out for a real floppy, although I've only so far used it on one PC. Also make sure nothing else in the target PC is using IRQ 6. I *think* it's IRQ 6 anyway...
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Aug 4, 2017 08:29
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Nothing in a stock system uses IRQ 6 other than the FDC. If you have any I/O expansion cards (parallel, serial...) it’s possible they’re jumpered to IRQ 6. FDCs are 3F0h/IRQ 6/DMA 2.
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Aug 4, 2017 08:38
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SheepShaver has decided that it doesn't want to work any more. I did some Googling, and the general consensus is that it's a very moody emulator and will only work when it drat well feels like working due to the way it does memory stuff. Pretty frustrating.
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Aug 4, 2017 10:02
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So I've been wanting to get into Amiga emulation, and I've noticed that FS-UAE has an option for WHD load games Should they eliminate the disk swapping and load times of the games, or not all?
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Aug 7, 2017 03:26
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Yeah, they’re games that are cracked to run off an HD and in a pseudo-VM instead of from disks. Some games have compatibility issues or specifically need PAL/NTSC hardware (usually described in their README file) so you’ll still need to get the disks if something doesn’t work. It’s a headache on my NTSC A2000 but at least Lemmings ECS works perfectly so
Luigi Thirty fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Aug 7, 2017 |
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Aug 7, 2017 09:05
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Thanks One more thing: can anyone recommend any good platformers for the Amiga? I know the quality of them won't be as good as the consoles, but I'm interested in hearing what's usually regarded as good for the platform
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Aug 8, 2017 11:26
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Willo567 posted:Thanks Zool and Zool 2 are pretty good. I recall having a fun time with Robocod as well. Turrican and Turrican 2 are also worth a look.
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Aug 8, 2017 11:30
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Willo567 posted:One more thing: can anyone recommend any good platformers for the Amiga? I know the quality of them won't be as good as the consoles, but I'm interested in hearing what's usually regarded as good for the platform Base Jumpers Yo! Joe Soccer Kid Arabian Nights Bubba 'n' Stix
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Aug 8, 2017 11:41
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Superfrog
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Aug 8, 2017 13:37
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Finally, Alfred Chicken's time has come
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Aug 8, 2017 14:16
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Some others: The Blues Brothers Chuck Rock Fire & Ice Flood Magic Pockets Rick Dangerous Titus the Fox The Amiga also had good ports of Bubble Bobble, The New Zealand Story, Rainbow Islands and Rodland.
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Aug 8, 2017 17:22
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Two Owls posted:Finally, Alfred Chicken's time has come Shadow Hog fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Aug 8, 2017 |
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Aug 8, 2017 18:28
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Shadow Hog posted:Help him find his girlfriend! Help him find the watering cans - that's a clue, kids, the watering cans! I want this as my answering machine message
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Aug 8, 2017 19:35
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The Amiga has a great port of the Star Wars arcade game. I love how instead of just capturing the voice output from a cabinet, they obviously just recorded the voice lines from a videotape of the movie. You can hear the music in the background. 
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Aug 8, 2017 20:50
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Got some C64 stuff today. And a bitter taste in my mouth as the dude has ripped me off pretty hard, as he left the original pricing on most of the items he sent me. Arsehole.
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Aug 10, 2017 10:27
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Dave Angel posted:The Amiga also had good ports of Bubble Bobble, I have this vague memory that the Amiga version doesn't have the correct codes displayed if you are such a serious player that you want to get all the secret stuff. But the base game itself was fine. As for good platformers, I'd include Gods, but that's a weird game where you're better off watching a playthrough where someone else knows about all the secrets. Lionheart, The Lost Vikings (puzzle platformer though), and Nebulus I recall as being pretty cool.
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Aug 11, 2017 00:14
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Serious answer: Odyssey is the official Last Good Amiga Game, and the only example of anything approaching a Metroidvania I can think of for the system.
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Aug 11, 2017 00:46
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Gromit posted:As for good platformers, I'd include Gods, but that's a weird game where you're better off watching a playthrough where someone else knows about all the secrets. Oh, we're including multiplatforms? And not mentioning Fury of the Furries? <  >
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Aug 11, 2017 02:54
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IIRC The Lost Vikings was originally a SNES game, anyway. ...but its best soundtrack was on the Genesis, surprisingly, where Matt Furniss gave it more punch than it had on the other platforms. Who knew?
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Aug 11, 2017 06:41
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The Kins posted:SheepShaver has decided that it doesn't want to work any more. That particular error has something to do with the emulator wanting to directly map emulated memory to a specific hardware memory on the host. In order to avoid it, you're supposed to restart the computer, load as few things as possible and hopefully that particular memory space will be free. It's a baffling requirement and I don't understand why it's not translated silently by the emulator to an alternative available address like any other emulator would do.
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Aug 11, 2017 10:51
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GRINDCORE MEGGIDO posted:Superfrog Everything about that game was perfect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKeNuZLH_Yg
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Aug 12, 2017 18:37
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^^ cool game! Also another world, I forgot that one.
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Aug 12, 2017 18:49
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I wouldn't describe that as a platform game. Action puzzler?
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Aug 12, 2017 22:34
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Gromit posted:I wouldn't describe that as a platform game. Action puzzler? That's true. I played a lot of Amiga games, but the only platformer that stuck with me was superfrog. I think Zool wasn't bad either. The chaos engine was one of my favourite games for it, in a different genre of games totally.
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Aug 12, 2017 23:13
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J-Ro posted:Everything about that game was perfect. Allister Brimble did a full remake of the Superfrog score a couple of years back, if you're interested. (You are interested, buy this album already.)
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Aug 13, 2017 00:18
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