19rsn007 Posted April 18, 2016 Share Posted April 18, 2016 So normally I'm not into buying old pc stuff, but I couldn't resist this bargain.It was offered as NOT WORKING, so the price was low. After picking it up and arriving at home, I took a look at it and the first thing I noticed was the HD floppy in drive B (the drives are DD, so that won't work and even if the HD floppy is formatted as DD, it's unreliable as sh*t) The other floppy (the dos boot floppy) didn't have any label on it so I couldn't tell if it was a hd or dd floppy.I decided to just make a new boot floppy on a known good dd flop I had, but I had to find a way to get the drives from the sharp working in an old desktop pc.I managed to do that and make a new floppy and the sharp booted that nicely. But then a new problem came to light....the thing was unstable, crashed randomly and gave all kinds of errors. So more troubleshooting !!Last night I tested the DRAM (4464 = 64x4) and found 5 bad chips. The sharp is playing along nicely now, but with less ram.I am gonna replace the bad ram chips sooner or later so the ram is maxed out again. Almost 31 years of age, but the sharp pc-7000 is still up and running! Intel 8086 POWERRRRRRRRRRR!!! 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CatPix Posted April 18, 2016 Share Posted April 18, 2016 Nice Beast! I have a Zenith Data System ZWL in my collection - the "first one with an hard drive in" apparently (but the drive or controller card is dead). Those early AT PC are nice IMO, they deserve some more love. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
19rsn007 Posted April 18, 2016 Author Share Posted April 18, 2016 (edited) Well be honest cat.... Looking at these gaming-wise compared to the other things around in that day (commodore 64 and atari 8bit) these things sucked!! C64 had: SID-chip with 3 voices 16 Colors on screen Redefinable Characterset Sprites Raster Interrupts Video Paging Atari 8-bit had: Pokey chip with 4 audio channels up to 256 colors on screen Sprites Raster Interrupts Video Paging IBM PC had 1 Channel Beeper (PC Speaker) 4 Colors (and they were butt ugly ) fixed charset in CGA controller No Sprites No Raster Interrupts no video paging So technically the IBM (compatible) pc didn't stand a chance. In my honest opinion, looking at a game that goes back to my childhood.... Gremlins by Atari.I grew up playing the C64 version very often.... I loved that game and I loved the tune coming out of the SID. A few years ago I finally got to play it on my Atari 800XL, and I must say it's pretty good, but the music coming out of the Pokey isn't as good to the ear compared to the SID version. Graphics were comparable to the commodore version and gameplay is likewise. The PC version is like the same game, but feels sluggish, looks aweful and the sound (1 channel beeper....remember).....MEH Same goes for Boudlerdash. The C64, Atari, Colecovision are good. The music almost sounds identical on all platforms. The PC version......the titlescreen music coming out of that beeper is EAR RAPING!! , The 4 color bright blue white and pink....MEH! but the gameplay is ok. I think you get my point The above statement is the main reason the PC didn't get much love until EGA and VGA came into play. The 80888MOPH demo they released last year does some really cool tricks to break with these thoughts, but isn't even compatible with all CGA controllers and some controllers even loose sync at certain points in the demo. But even though I am totally flaming the IBM-XT (and clones), I love this sharp and I just had to buy it (considering the price I got it for and the fact that 9 out of 10 times when I buy some broken stuff I can fix it ) Edited April 18, 2016 by 19rsn007 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted April 18, 2016 Share Posted April 18, 2016 (edited) well lets not forget gaming is not the only thing a computer can do, commie's and atari's dont do 80 column text, they dont have 16 bit cpu's, commies especially are hard to add ram to, hard to add hard drives to, and they dont network well it was somewhat common to take a PC even as early as the original 5051, string some dumb terminals off it and run an entire office off of it, and those people couldnt care less how it ran pac-man its two totally different markets, atari's and commies were consoles you could do occasional work on, pc's and apples were just the opposite nice box btw Edited April 18, 2016 by Osgeld Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CatPix Posted April 18, 2016 Share Posted April 18, 2016 Well be honest cat.... I think you get my point I totally get it... and yet... If we all wanted the best, we'd all want a C64 or an Atari 8 bits, yet there is much love for the ZX Spectrum, the "BASIC machines" like the Laser 128, Oric Atmis, the MO5 in France, etc... I feel like that lack of love for the IBM XT is kinda akin to the dislike of the Playstation up until recently, because "it killed the gaming" or some BS. And I think it's unfair. I'm not aiming those at you precisely, just more in general. It's as if gaming on DOS simply didn't existed or was worthless before the VGA and Sound Blaster era. Which isn't true, and is a bit unfair. I mean, it's 2016, it's about time to bury the war axe. Atari and Commodore are long goners, and even IBM is really mostly a relic of the past that live on their client fidelity more than anything. What was last IBM contribution to the PC standard? The PS/2? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
19rsn007 Posted April 18, 2016 Author Share Posted April 18, 2016 Good point OS! pc's were mostly business machine back in the day. A C64 could do 80 colums (both in soft and with hardware add-on btw) the Atari could do 80 columns with the XEP80. @Cat when it comes to gaming, I don't think any system killed the gaming! Users kill things, not systems..... IMHO 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CatPix Posted April 18, 2016 Share Posted April 18, 2016 Yep of course, but ask more die-hard Sega fan what caused Sega's demise and you'll get "It's all evul Sony and their Playsattion that killed gaming and make noobs goig nto console and killing Sega's fabulous arcade blahblahblah". and while it's not that hot in the computer gaming, in between the Amstrad versus C64 or Vs Spectrum, and the ST versus Amiga war, I often catch some glimpse of hate for the PC that ended Amiga. But whatever. If you get interested more into CGA games with that machine, then it's all good and fair. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted April 18, 2016 Share Posted April 18, 2016 Yep of course, but ask more die-hard Sega fan what caused Sega's demise and you'll get Sega acting retarded btw I am a die hard sega fan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
19rsn007 Posted April 19, 2016 Author Share Posted April 19, 2016 Sony didn't kill sega....sega killed sega with the dreamcast. Not with the games (there are some real classics on the DC) but the fact that they were using the easy breakable GD-ROM format instead of dvd's killed it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CatPix Posted April 19, 2016 Share Posted April 19, 2016 Sega killed themselves with the 32X and Saturn. The GD-ROM ease of copy probably didn't helped, but as the CEO of Sega Europe stated "we simply didn't had enough money to promote the Dreamcast". Anyway, Just mean to say that it's nice to see the XT receiving some attention. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted April 19, 2016 Share Posted April 19, 2016 Looking at these gaming-wise compared to the other things around in that day (commodore 64 and atari 8bit) these things sucked!! C64 had: SID-chip with 3 voices 16 Colors on screen Redefinable Characterset Sprites Raster Interrupts Video Paging Atari 8-bit had: Pokey chip with 4 audio channels up to 256 colors on screen Sprites Raster Interrupts Video Paging IBM PC had 1 Channel Beeper (PC Speaker) 4 Colors (and they were butt ugly ) fixed charset in CGA controller No Sprites No Raster Interrupts no video paging And today the PC comes with thousands of voices, millions of sprites, and billions of colors!!!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted April 19, 2016 Share Posted April 19, 2016 I distinctly recall going over to friend's houses in the mid-1980's and their fat-ass fathers would have a PC. And none of us kids could touch it. And all they seemed to be doing was playing with command-line shit and zipping and unzipping things. Always! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted April 19, 2016 Share Posted April 19, 2016 I believe the success of the PC came from several things: 1- Professional advertising. Not happy campy game stuff. 2- Extra high quality build, all metal and minimal high-impact plastics. 3- Solid, stable, open architecture. 4- Backed by a solid company with heritage and history. It's a shame that millions of IBM 51xx systems (and their successors) were recycled for want of the shit they sell today. I can see my Apple 2 material, and my 486 & Pentium III machines lasting for another 50 years. But anything purchased today - lucky to get 3 years! Take a look at the advertisements to see what I mean! http://www.oldcomputers.net/ibm5150.html ftp://ftp.oldskool.org/pub/ibm5150.net/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted April 19, 2016 Share Posted April 19, 2016 (edited) I dunno about your P3, commodity PC's made out of tinfoil and luck were already in full force, and most P3 machines had really chinsey motherboards which suffered from bad caps, the ones that survive are either on their last leg, or a fluke of someone picking quality components Edited April 19, 2016 by Osgeld Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted April 20, 2016 Share Posted April 20, 2016 I do.. Because I assembled it myself from respectable parts. I recapped the motherboard preemptively and collected a few key spare items for the future. I should replace the dvd drive which is a chintzy hand me down from 2 prior machines, however. It's the only tinfoil component in there. We shall see! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted April 20, 2016 Share Posted April 20, 2016 should have said P3's in general not YOUR p3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.