Hatta

You all make me ashamed to be a gamer. Good on GDC. Speaking of whiny ass pansies, there's an awful lot of whining in this thread. There's nothing "free love" about implied threats to your employment as an incentive to sex. And the radical feminists you think are prudish are freakier and more partnered than any centrist I know.

Have you tried reflowing the solder on l14?

So don't use BASIC. Interpreted languages are always slower.

A 386 Tandy is too fast for the XT era games. Try playing Paratrooper on that. You need at least 3 systems if you want to stay on vintage hardware. An XT class machine (I use a Tandy 1000TX), a 386 for Wing Commander, etc(I use a Tandy 2500sx), and a Pentium II or III on a 440BX motherboard for protected mode games and early Windows.

Yes, and buy them while you can. JVC sold Taiyo Yuden to CMC last year. CMC has always made crap. Unfortunately, since hard drives are so big and cheap and internet so fast nobody burns CDs anymore. A smaller market means there's less incentive to make quality stuff. And since modern readers are so robust, they can get by with crappy media. I think the future for disc based systems are solid state loaders. e.g. http://3do-renovation.ru/USB_Host_for_FZ10.htm

Disk imaging is pretty well supported under MacOS. All you really need is a disk with zterm, Disk Copy, and ResEdit, and you can just send images over serial and mount them as if they were real floppies. The trick is creating that disk if you don't already have the software.

I've got to downsize, so I'm selling off my TRS-80 stuff. I'd do it piecemeal or as a lot, whatever works. I'm just going to list what I have for now, pictures on request. Computers TRS-80 Model 3 with manual TRS-80 Model 4 TRS-80 Model 1 with PSU TRS-80 Coco 2 26-3026 with 32k mod TRS-80 MC-10 Accessories TRS-80 Mini-Disk 26-1161 TRS-80 Mini-Disk 26-1164 TRS-80 Color Computer Color Computer Mini-Disk 26-3023 TRS-80 Color Computer Color Computer Mini-Disk 26-3022 TRS-80 Color Computer Controller 26-3022 TRS-80 Modem I 26-1172 DCM-6 Direct Connect Modem 26-1393 Joysticks x2 26-3008 CCR-81 Computer Cassette Recorder 26-1028 no cables. TP-10 Thermal Printer 26-1261 Books Getting Started with Color Basic (coco2) Going Ahead with Extended Color Basic (coco2) Basic Computer Games Vol 2 (TRS-80) I can provide a copy of LDOS 5.3.1. I don't think I have much software otherwise. I'll throw the books in to whoever buys the appropriate computer. I feel like $500 is about right for this lot, but any interest is appreciated. Everything is located in Omaha Nebraska. Local pickup encouraged. Buyer would have to pay shipping.

We're talking about a 90s PC. Pentium 3 is more than sufficient to play any 90s game. I played SiN and Swat 3 on my P2 just a couple years back.

No Starflight?

I'm going to have to boot my 98SE box into pure dos and see. I could have sworn I played a bunch of 3dfx DOS games on that machine in pure DOS mode with the onboard GM. But if your memory is more recent, you're probably right. I network my retro machines and highly recommend it. Just keep everything behind a firewall and you're fine. Got my 98 machine loading up windows shares from a Linux box running Samba, got my Tandy running an FTP server from the mTCP suite. Beats sneakernet by miles.

Should work. See if you can replicate it with other games that use the same mode. Ask at Vogons for better info, some of the devs hang out there.

That's overselling it a little bit. It does have GM, but it's not as nice as an MT32 or DB50XG. Better than Adlib, but you still want a real synth. IIRC, the GM is accessible in pure DOS but I think I had to install the driver in Windows. It's been a while. Have you ever seen Jazz Jackrabbit running on real hardware? The smooth scrolling is unmatched by anything, even today. Have you ever seen Unreal on real 3dfx hardware? It's beautiful in a way that wrappers are not. Have you ever heard wavetable sound on a real synth? Try hooking that up to your VM. You can take your Sunday drive in any vehicle you want. But the classic car you rebuilt in your garage is always going to be special.

I'm doing a stats demo next month and looking for a fun dataset to play with. I'd love to have a .csv that has anything to do with classic gaming. Something like a line for every console, with a column for release date, number sold, number of games on the system. Any similar dataset would be useful.

It's not very active, sadly. And the 128K is really limited. If you actually want to use a compact mac for fun stuff, get an SE/30.

Are there games on the PET?

Why do I research prices? Just makes me think I should sell mine. Which I don't want to do. So now I just feel bad about not selling it.

Listed means nothing. Looks like the actual selling prices are $75-$150.

While Wine works, there are native apps that work well for almost every console. They're in the Software Center too, for the most part. Mednafen is a multi-emulator that supports most popular consoles and a few obscure ones. MAME and MESS are just MAME and MESS. Atari800 is for 8-bit and 5200 emulation. jzIntv is for Intellivision, bee is for colecovision, but I don't think they're in the repositories. You can download them from their websites. Installation and use require only basic computer literacy. You really should learn the console. The CLI is superior to the GUI in the same way language is superior to pointing and grunting. Not only is the CLI more powerful, but once you know it it's faster and easier.

Mandolin.

North & South

Stack Overflow has content management systems web forums don't. Wouldn't it be great for there to be one canonical thread for one question, instead of answering the same one over and over? Remember when we had FAQs? Wasn't that so much more convenient to refer to instead of having to search inside forums cluttered with chit-chat? Stack Overflow is more like that than a web forum. It's a fantastic idea actually, and you guys should try it out before dismissing it as unnecessary.

Damned right. The internet would be a better place if we all went back to USENET and IRC.

Generally they always used the same game manual, and dropped in a sheet with technical notes for getting the game running on your platform.

This is great writing.

That mouse card is a bus mouse card, not a PS/2 card. You'll have to buy a bus mouse for it. That video card is one of the best 2D video cards for DOS. Lucky score. Fast memory throughput means smooth scrolling. You really want to hang around Vintage Computer Forums and VOGONS to get up to date on out of date PC stuff.