Load "Retrocomputer Gaming Thread",8,1.exe

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ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

I asked this in the FPS thread yesterday, but I figure the audience here might have a better idea:

ExcessBLarg! posted:

For whatever reason this weekend I went down the rabbit hole of checking out all the different (DOS) versions of Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny that exist out in the wild, since apparently every publisher id Software worked with published their own builds. ... Multiple SoD CD releases use a disc-based copy protection method where the ISO filesystem is split across two data tracks. See this Redump entry. Does anyone know what name(s) this protection went under?

After encountering this, I thought about it a bit and realized you would have multiple data tracks on a CD if it was multisession. Of course, I haven't burned a multisession CD in over twenty years and haven't burned any CDs in a decade, so I'm scraping up bits of past knowledge here.

What I remember though is that when you burn a data CD but leave it "open", and go back and burn a second session, it writes a second data track with the ISO filesystem referencing blocks from the first track for files that are otherwise unmodified. It then writes a new table of contents that essentially invalidates/replaces the original one. When reading the CD, the CD-ROM driver recognizes both data tracks and--does something, maybe logically combines them into a contiguous sector space?--and the CD just works. But then, years later if I run bchunk on a .bin/.cue rip of it, that's going to extract filesystem from the two tracks separately and won't mount properly. Which is probably why I should be using a CD-ROM emulator and not half-assing it. I was able to get it to work by brute forcing it with iat, but it's a strange curiosity.

Anyways, I suspect these professionally-mastered CDs aren't actually multisession, but they still have split data tracks and so I assume behave the same way. What's not clear to me is whether this is an explicit attempt at copy protection (from what, Easy CD or something?), or if they were mastered this way for other reasons. According to Redump, I have a bunch of these Formgen-published CDs sitting in shoeboxes in the basement and a CD-ROM drive in the closet, so I suppose I could take a look to figure it all out.

ExcessBLarg! fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Apr 27, 2021

# ¿ Apr 27, 2021 14:50

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 07:16

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

Apple II joysticks were two button analog so you don't want to use a digital/microswitched joystick like fight/arcade sticks even though they look similar.

Honestly I think you're fine with something like a 360 game pad, but if you don't want to use that maybe a cheap flight stick?

# ¿ Jun 13, 2021 17:31

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

Yeah it's kind of a weird question. Traditional audio cassettes were never intended for music to begin with, let alone data storage. DAT meanwhile was used for both audio and data storage since the 80s but you didn't see them on home computers because DAT was never promoted as a consumer format due to piracy concerns.

The whole point of audio cassette storage wasn't to achieve data density but to be as cheap as possible, both in terms of using readily available consumer hardware and making the modulation easy to do on a 6502 or equivalent.

ExcessBLarg! fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Sep 26, 2021

# ¿ Sep 26, 2021 14:16

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

Martytoof posted:

Unrelated to MIDI discussion above, does anyone know of an OS9 app to make a tool-independent binary image of a floppy disk?

DiskCopy I assume. Mind you, I haven't used it in over 15 years, but it's worth the effort to boot up an emulator with a clean Mac OS install to make sure you can virtual mount a dumped disk in the emulator before dumping your entire archive this way.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2021 16:23

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

If you're playing them on say, an Apple II, isn't load time still CPU limited even with a floppy emulator? Seems like optimization would be a win even if someone isn't using a physical disk.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2021 15:04

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

Yes, games in the 80s didn't use arrow keys* on micros because they were universally badly placed, if present at all. Games in the late 90s switched to WASD. So it was actually a relatively-brief period where people used arrow keys for PC games.

* I don't know about XT/CGA-era DOS ports, I suppose AT/EGA-era ones did.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2022 16:02

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

That's an interesting find.

Intel engineering samples give me nightmares. Modern ones are inevitably buggy as hell and very much not supported. All those microcode updates released in the wake of spectre and meltdown? Nope!

But maybe the old stuff isn't as bad? If it works, it works I guess.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2022 17:51

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

With all the buzz around the A500 Mini, I've been looking at the C64 Mini again. I remember when it came out, but the North American release was delayed a bit and I never followed up. I see it's available on Amazon for $40 and while that's not the cheapest it's ever been it seems like a reasonable price.

Is the C64 Mini worth picking up? Or is there something horribly wrong with it that I shouldn't waste my time?

# ¿ Mar 31, 2022 01:25

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

Well the cheapest I can find one of those is $180, which is far more than I'm interested in spending.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2022 13:07

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

famiclone posted:

Besides Wordstar, I don�t really know a killer app to run on a Z80 Apple II.

I remember reading about those Z80 CP/M cards back in the early 90s but never saw one.

I'd assume there's some propriety business software that ran on CP/M that predated the IBM PC, that you'd want to run on Apple hardware in the mid 80s, for some reason. Also unicorns are real.

# ¿ May 31, 2022 03:20

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

Boldor posted:

I still have and use a 486; this is my current way of moving files to and from my more modern computer. (Greaseweazle or KryoFlux don't actually work with a 486, I think.)

Null-modem cable and ZMODEM?

# ¿ Jun 9, 2022 21:01

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

Are you all saying I shouldn't toss my ImageWriter II just yet? Might need to print some more banners.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2023 17:38

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

Who had all these 386es lying around with 4 MB of RAM?

# ¿ May 15, 2023 15:44

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

I mean for contemporary machines of the early 90s:

4 MB of memory was expensive.
Most programs, certainly DOS games, ran in real mode and required 639 free of 640 kB conventional memory, but rarely required XMS or otherwise. DOOM was one of the first that ran in protected mode and actually required 4 MB (something that was difficult to actually achieve on systems with only 4 MB of RAM at the time).
Maybe you had QEMM or something that could use extended memory to free up UMBs but we're taking 384 kB of additional memory at most, and running v8086 mode was dog slow on a 386.
Windows 3.0/3.1 could take advantage of extended memory (and as we now know, HIMEM.SYS was actually pretty efficient at it), but Windows didn't really take off in popularity until 486es were well established.

So like, what were all the Richy McRiches doing with 386/25s and 4 MB of RAM? Really large spreadsheets, slowly?

ExcessBLarg! fucked around with this message at 21:24 on May 15, 2023

# ¿ May 15, 2023 21:21

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

So DOOM was funny. Moderately-spec'd PCs in 1993 were either a 486/25 or 486/33 with 4 MB of RAM. DOOM was one of the earlier games that ran in 32-bit protected mode with a DOS extender, and it was actually quite flexible about the memory configuration of the system if you had enough memory. The problem was that DOOM required 4 MB of RAM, and most computers at the time were configured with QEMM or EMM386 to provide as much conventional memory (lower 640 kB) as possible, and the additional RAM used by the memory manager itself was often enough that DOOM wouldn't start.

The solution was to create a boot disk (or under MS-DOS 6, a boot menu) with a bare-bones CONFIG.SYS configuration so that DOOM could vacuum up all of RAM for its own use. Of course, you'd still want to load the mouse driver, otherwise you might spend the next 30 years thinking DOS DOOM supported keyboards only.

On machines with 8 MB of RAM this wasn't an issue, and hell DOOM even ran fine under Windows 95 if you had 16 MB.

# ¿ May 16, 2023 16:14

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

Dr. Quarex posted:

What kind of pure maniac was playing DOOM with a mouse?

I remember turning with a mouse felt pretty good, but moving forward felt really bad.

# ¿ May 16, 2023 16:37

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

3D Megadoodoo posted:

e: I looked into it and it just hibernates the OS/2 session to HDD and runs PC-DOS.

Huh, that's an interesting solution.

Also, anyone shipping anything "PC compatible" in 1994 made sure as poo poo that DOOM would run on it. That was the litmus test.

3D Megadoodoo posted:

Running a DOS game in a virtual machine or whatever VDM is sounds like a bad idea anyway. Or, as Dijkstra put it, "virtual machines are a fake idea".

I'd dare say most DOS usage in the early 90s was actually though a VDM. Even with MS-DOS, EMM386 was a protected mode kernel that ran a single instance of DOS in v8086 mode, using memory paging to provide UMB or even EMS support so that you could both run your (conventional) memory hungry DOS games while having drivers for all your peripherals loaded.

And while compatibility was generally good, you could run into issues with QEMM, EMM386, etc. Microsoft really QAed the poo poo out of the Windows 95 VDM which is why Windows sometimes ran DOS better than DOS if you had the memory to do it.

Protected mode games don't necessarily run under the EMM kernel though. Either the protected-mode kernel provides DPMI services (which again, Windows 95 was a really good DPMI host), or for something like EMM386 games would use VCPI to wrestle away control and run their own DPMI kernel.

3D Megadoodoo posted:

It's a better DOS than DOS,

I thought PC-DOS was mostly a white label version of MS-DOS, but I guess they started differentiating after MS-DOS 6 came out.

I ran DR-DOS 7 on my retro PC in the aughts and liked that well enough. I think it had a legitimate claim to being a "better DOS than (MS-)DOS" though I ran it about a decade out from its contemporary usage. These days I'd just assume run FreeDOS.

ExcessBLarg! fucked around with this message at 14:37 on May 17, 2023

# ¿ May 17, 2023 14:32

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

wolrah posted:

I like the idea of original hardware on paper, but I also really like modern displays, modern input devices, modern storage media, etc. It gets expensive when every additional platform means a new set of adapters, DIYing, and sometimes even hardware modifications to make the original hardware operate as close as possible to the idealized version my nostalgia remembers. I don't want to be dealing with floppy disks, waiting on old hard disks, have to juggle installed games, etc. even while I do want to push that chunky AT power button.

I was thinking about this last night. I appreciate real hardware, and even hardware mods, but I also think that emulation makes old platforms accessible in ways that they'd otherwise be completely out of reach for folks.

Example: My first computer was an Apple IIGS. I still have it, and everything for it, in original boxes no less. But I've also not acquired anything "new" for it since replacing the ADB keyboard in 1993.

Back in the mid-00s I setup the KEGS emulator with an emulated hard disk and was able to download software I had no means of acquiring 18 years earlier. One of the things I did was download Asimov and GS Shrink IT, and--borrowing a classic Mac (which I've since kept in my possession)--I was able to make a new GS/OS system disk with both of those tools installed. From there I was able to dump all 100+ Apple II disks I had, that I can now use in an emulator, and it's great because these disks contain the very first programs I've wrote. Instead of being some long-lost relic they're just there along with a copy of KEGS that I can boot at any time. And now, in a moment of existential crisis I've realized it's been just as long (18 years) since I dumped those disks, as it was between when I first got the IIGS and when I dumped them.

I mean, I've thought about getting a CFFA3000 over the years, but it wouldn't be that useful without a TransWarp GS and I don't know if anyone is making one of those now.

# ¿ Jun 28, 2023 19:27

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

3D Megadoodoo posted:

America is the only country in the world that managed to have a god drat computer video game crash. Those things everyone likes and wants to buy and play. Lmao. But also lol.

The video game crash of '83 wasn't that "people stopped buying games". It was an oversupply of product in the market and poor sales forecasting that resulted in retailers holding the bag because they couldn't move enough. People were still buying games--plenty of them, actually--they were just coming out of the $5 bargain bin and so nobody was making money on them. Lots of folks vacuumed up decent collections of VCS/2600, 5200, etc., games because they were Steam-sale level cheap.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2023 17:42

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

Coffee Jones posted:

I guess the ability to play back tracker (scream tracker, impulse tracker) software was too cpu intensive? Always wondered why PC games tended not to use those, and why they were so prevalent on Amiga.

The Paula could hardware mix four 8-bit PCM channels which is what tracker formats typically targeted. The functionality was also available in all Amiga models so there was no reason not to use it. Conversely, the Amiga didn't have any hardware FM-synth support.

In contrast, a Sound Blaster Pro could support 8-bit mono or stereo samples, but I don't think it had the capability for playback with independent-channel sample rates. So yes, module trackers on PCs did software mixing which could be somewhat expensive depending on the mixing quality. Now, most PC demos of the era did support software-mixing on Sound Blasters and still pull off impressive CPU effects, so that alone wasn't really a barrier.

What really established the "PC sound" was the early prevalence of cards featuring OPL FM-synth chips, like the AdLib (FM-only), SoundBlaster (Pro) (FM plus mono (stereo) PCM), and their clones. So a combination of AdLib music and PC speaker or PCM audio for sound effects was a good fit, and the prevalence of their early cards served as a "common denominator" for the PC even after more advanced cards with wavetable features were available (Gravis UltraSound, Sound Blaster AWE32, etc.).

Coffee Jones posted:

I guess, by the time they could have trackers in game, cpus were at the point where they could play back mp3s and mix spatial audio and not affect framerate

Software decoding MP3 audio was actually significantly more CPU intensive than even a good PCM software mixer. A 486 would straight-up struggle playing back MP3s, let alone do so during gameplay. Pentiums could do better, but it wasn't really into the Pentium II era that you could do MP3 playback in the background while doing other useful work.

What really happened is that a lot of game music transitioned to Red Book CD audio once CD-ROM drives were prevalent, since music playback there could be done "for free".

Coffee Jones posted:

To a 2000�s kid 386/486 DOS ecosystem is Quite Alien. Maybe not as weird as an 8 bit micro, but you�re still left fiddling with real vs EMS vs XMS memory configs.

PCs are weird. Historically they're something of a continuum since there was always some compatibility between past generations of the architecture and "current" (i.e., 8086 and CGA/EGA compatibility on 386/VGA, 486/SVGA compatibility on Pentium-era machines, Win32 compatibility on Vista, etc.). But in my mind there's a few distinct eras of PC technology based on hardware trends at the time, usually followed by pretty significant leaps immediately after:

PC XTs (and 8088 clones) with CGA graphics and PC speaker sound.
386/486 DOS (S)VGA with AdLib/SoundBlaster.
Pentium Windows 9x with early graphics accelerators.
DirectX with programmable GPUs (current era).

ExcessBLarg! fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Jul 1, 2023

# ¿ Jul 1, 2023 16:14

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

lobsterminator posted:

I'm a huge tracker music aficionado and also like to make tracker music, but I prefer adlib music for my DOS games. It has that unique sound.

One of my favorite early-90s PCs demos is Renaissance's Amnesia which took specific advantage of the Sound Blaster by having 9-channel OPL audio for the melody and using PCM samples for percussion. It came out just before the release of the Gravis UltraSound, which while not especially popular in the general market, did solidify module tracker audio within the PC demoscene.

lobsterminator posted:

I had (and still have) a GUS Max. It was the ultimate tracker card. It loaded samples into its own memory and played mods without using barely any CPU power. It also had a built in interpolation so it removed the jagginess from sounds like you hear in that Final Fantasy also. Best sound card ever <3

The GF1 was a good chip for the time, but mixing quality was dependent on the number of simultaneous channels in use.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2023 16:19

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

Shadow Hog posted:

Personally I'd split that last bullet point up a bit more;

Yeah, sure. There's also an argument for splitting out the PC AT (286)/EGA era from the XT/CGA but they "feel" pretty similar to me overall.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2023 16:51

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 07:16

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

You Am I posted:

Old computers, hey?

Skid Row Debugged It.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2023 15:57

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Retro Games > Load "Retrocomputer Gaming Thread",8,1.exe