JamesD

There were actually a lot of companies that had great adventure games. Some were just specific to individual machines though. The Magnetic Scrolls made several really good adventures... not sure how many machines they supported though. http://www.if-legends.org/~msmemorial/lega...es.htm/pawn.htm

If you are talking music MP3s then you need to deal with 16 bit audio data. A MIPS CPU handles 16 bit numbers in register where the 6502 does not so you'd need a higher MHz 6502 to deal with an MP3. A 65816 would be a little better but still doesn't have as many registers as a MIPS. 40Mhz may not even be enough if the MIPS has to be that fast.

The voltage converter will be cheaper than a power supply... but once you pay shipping from Europe for the weight of a power supply you can buy one. With shipping quotes over 40 pounds on every machine I've inquired about it's definitely something to consider. You will need a PAL converter or to use RGB output. I don't think rubber key models had RGB out. Not sure about the 128. Seems to me the +2 does. I don't know what monitors would work with it though since I've never tried it. It would probably need a multi-sync that could handle the scan rate. Most of the converter boxes I've looked at were considerably more expensive than the one linked above. I'd want to hear what someone's results were before trying it.

An 8 bit could probably do it but you would need: 1. A large enough storage device to hold the mp3 file 2. A file system that can handle files that large 3. A lot of RAM 4. A 40(?)Mhz or greater CPU... or it wouldn't sound like music We all know #1 has been done. I know of one guy that has 64MBs of RAM in a machine so that's possible. And with FPGAs #4 *is* possible. It's that #2 that I think would be the problem. You'd need to write a new DOS or OS to deal with files into the megabytes.

If you are worried about it running hot you could add a 3.1 volt zener diode to convert it to 9v. See this thread for info: http://www.epanorama.net/phpBB2/viewtopic....8fe6c5c4aa73051 (it talks about a car's 12v but the same should apply)

This might work: http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.js...rentPage=search

You need to replace the power supply with a US equivalent. Pretty easy since it's external. You could try starting at Radio Shack. Search their site for AC-to-DC Power Adapter and look for a 1.5 - 2 amp 9v or 12v supply. Supposedly the Speccy says 9v but the supply is actually 12v. If it has a changable plug and polarity that certainly won't hurt either. I have a gray +2 but haven't tried to hook it up yet. It's the first model with a "normal" keyboard and is mostly compatible. The black +2 doesn't work with as much older software and pre-128K models don't have the RAM or sound chip. But only the black +2 and +3 have a floppy controller. The most important reason I bought the grey model was I got it cheap. I think it was about $20 shipped... but the seller had listed it wrong so don't expect that kind of deal.

The "unofficial" Zaxxon for the Coco3 was pretty good. It was by the same author that made the "official" one for the standard Coco 1&2. It was called Z89 (for Zaxxon '89 I assume).

A lot of people use M.E.S.S. but some people still run the old DOS Coco3 emulator. I think there are links on http://coco3.com/

The MBC-550 was just a PC clone. I can't find a special version listed for it anywhere but that page so it might just be the PC version.

Eeewwww! I think the Tandy Coco version had all 4 boards as well and game play was ok. The game really wasn't made for analog joysticks though. <edit> Scratch that. The game I'm thinking of wasn't an officially licensed version and had different screens.

I found a disk image with Coco Time Bandit. PM your email address.

All I can find at the moment is the cassette image. I'll have to see if I can find it on one of the compilation disks. At one time I actually started working on cracking the coco version but after figuring out 3 or more different loaders that followed each other I finally said the heck with it. I was using a BASIC disassembler at the time so it was kinda tough.

Sadly the Coco version was for the older 1/2 graphics. The Coco 3 could have equaled the Atari ST version but it was never updated. I think I have the disk image around here somewhere.

I have several Apples and their clones. 1 Apple II+ 1 Apple IIe 2 Apple IIc Pluses 1 Apple IIgs 1 Laser 128 1 Franklin Ace 1000 1 Apple III Funny thing about the Franklin... it's DOS was actually faster than Apple's was. In the process of engineering a compatible DOS from scratch they found faster ways of doing things. I think the format was something like 30% faster. The Franklin also has a pretty nice keyboard. The Laser 128 was a nice looking machine and the later ones had a 4MHz mode.

At least the Ti box looked cool... even if the cable connection occasionally had issues just like the old TRS-80 Model I and it's expansion interface. Sadly it was really big, heavy and expensive. But, look at their earlier expansion boxes and you had a square flat box on the right of the computer for disk, RAM or RS-232. Not quite so attractive. But then look at other machines. The Tandy Coco multi-pack interface... horrid looking. (and I had one) NEC TREK / PC-6001's expansion box... only slightly better than the multi-pack. Amiga 500 and it's hard drive looked kinda odd and you needed a wide desk. Some of the C64 add ons like it's voice synthesizer or RAM expansions weren't exactly pretty. The Exedy Sorcerer... it had an external box with drives and monitor if I remember right. Not ugly but I didn't think it was cool. To this day I still think the success of the Apple II line had to do with 2 things. Slots and hi-res color graphics. The colors may have been artifacts but they were there. The screen memory map was horrid but people didn't seem to care because if you programmed in Applesoft or just bought software you didn't have to worry about it.

Sorry, I have to disagree here. The 800 didn't have large glowing red, blue, green and yellow buttons or large sliders.And it didn't make noises like a teletype when it was "computing." And it didn't have Majel Barrett's voice. Exactly!

Sorry, I have to disagree here. The 800 didn't have large glowing red, blue, green and yellow buttons or large sliders.

Imagine that. I'm not sure I found my old gray coco to be beautiful but I sure liked it better than the white colored versions. There were definitely better looking machines out there. Especially when you plug in an expansion interface and a bunch of cards.

There were a lot of computers you could say that about. Sadly, few companies listened to what people wanted and built what would sell cheap.

I loved Time Bandit on the Coco. I've never played any other version but it was sort of Tutankham meets Time Pilot.

So you are just marking the slot as empty and then search from the start for the first empty slot? You might already be doing this but... If you want to reduce the search time for an empty slot, keep an index to the first empty slot. When you free an item you just test to see if it's index is less than the first free item pointer and if so, set the first item pointer to it. When you fill a slot you look for the next open slot. If the index is larger than the inventory size then the inventory is full. This *should* save a little cpu time but at the cost of larger code.

Zaxxon was one of the most widely ported titles at the time. It was one of a handful of officially licensed titles for the Tandy Coco... not a bad port either. It was also on the Spectrum but I hope it played better than it looked. I loved the arcade game but I sucked at it.

There was a thread on that just a few weeks back. http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=101009

I do think the XL styling was nice but I'm not sure I'd say it was the best looking 8 bit. I think I like the 600XL best for it's size. The EX series looks kinda bland and I really don't care for the feel of the keyboard. And I have 2 130XEs.