Hatta

What about the PC version?

The chinese replacement pin connectors are of iffy quality. They can overly tight, making it hard to insert and remove games, and are sometimes so tight they angle when you depress the cart and fail to work. Try to refurbish your original first. Boiling and baking will be less destructive than bending the pins, so do that first. For cleaning carts, isopropyl alcohol is OK, but a real electronics cleaner will have a non-polar solvent that can solubilize material alcohol won't. Best option is Caig deoxit, but Radio Shack still carries some "TV tuner cleaner" that works well too. Even contact cleaner from the auto parts store is a good option. Try cleaning a cart with isopropanol until it's squeaky clean, then clean it with contact cleaner. You'll see the difference. If that's not enough, a pencil eraser can physically remove tarnish from the pins. Yes, the lockout chip should generally be disabled. There are no downsides to the operation, and it's very easy. Snip one leg of one chip and you're done. However, this only prevents the "blinkies". If the screen is blinking when the NES is on, you can expect clipping the chip to help. If it's a solid color, or displays garbage, it's not the chip.

Video referenced Nethack. Surprisingly legit for a Buzzfed video.

I have one of these too. Unfortunately it's PS/2 and doesn't support the original proprietary Tandy keyboard protocol, so I can't use it on my 1000TX. FYI, these are rebadged Fujitsu FKB4700. The keys are quieter than a Model M, but still provide lots of tactile feedback. I'd still give the Model M the edge. What I can use on my 1000TX is my Northgate Omnikey. This keyboard uses authentic Alpine switches, and has dipswitches to select the interface protocol. XT, AT, Tandy, Amiga, and AT&T systems are supported. I'm probably never going to have an Amiga 2000, or a AT&T 6300, but that's good to know anyway. It even supports Dvorak layout, not that I'm likely to use that either.

Screw that, I'm taking it all with me.

That would be up the butt, Bob.

It's not bragging, it's complaining. I wish I could get a great image on a light TV.

Your DOS floppies are easy to image with your 386 and RAWRITE. Your Apple floppies would be easy with a working II and ADTPro. You can't dump an Apple disk with a PC, since the drives are physically incompatible. Apple drives are GCR, PC drives are MFM. CoCo uses MFM, but the filesystem format is incompatible with PC. I don't know whether RAWRITE will be able to image these(probably not), but it's worth a shot.

"Fantasy" is is shorthand for "Tolkien inspired". I agree, some sci-fi roguelikes would be welcome.

What's an SGM?

That's a good detailed article. I'll defend Nethack a bit. All of his complaints seem to be features to me. Interface, I got used to it quickly and it seems natural to me. I was able to do everything by muscle memory. Feedback, this is a deliberate design decision. The player should be puzzled by unknown objects. It's why they randomize potions, spells, rings, etc in the first place. That's the meat of the game, figuring out what things actually do. Using those items to descend and get the amulet is secondary to inventory management, and staying alive long enough to discover the items you need. I think his main problem was judging Nethack after a "couple of hours". Most of his annoyances are actually fun challenges, once you realize they can be dealt with in creative ways that make sense in the game universe. I also wouldn't recommend playing "unspoiled". Dylan O'Donnell's spoilers should really be considered documentation. It's still a huge undertaking to ascend when you know how the game universe is supposed to work. For Angband, I really have to agree with his complaints about non-persistent levels. Not only is "stair scumming" a ridiculous metagaming strategy, but it also simplifies the game a lot if you only ever care about the level you are on. In Nethack, if I know that there's an altar on the level 2 floors above me, that's going to radically change my priorities. If there's a herd of lecrotta's by the stairs on the next floor, and I'm not leveled up enough to take them on, that's a serious problem that requires creativity to solve.* If the floors change every time you go back, it would make the game a lot less interesting. Angband seems like it might be worth playing, especially since I'm not playing Nethack anymore. But I'd encourage anyone who likes roguelikes to spend some real time with Nethack, it's incrediby deep and balanced. *e.g. If you have a wand of digging or a pick axe, you can dig down to quickly skip the level. Or if you have a wand of teleport. Or a scroll of scare monster. If you don't have any of these, or they're unidentified, you have to get more creative. Maybe find a leprechaun to eat to gain the teleportitis condition. You might hunt down a cockatrice and petrify it. You might even be able to eek out a win if you hit and run back upstairs to heal.

It's not that the 6809 isn't documented, it's that there aren't sites like 6502.org or visual6502.org for the 6809. The information is out there for the 6809, just less accessible.

That's the great thing about Nethack. It's the pinnacle of its genre. It was created well after Roguelikes were invented, was developed intensely for over a decade, and is essentially complete. There are no outstanding balance issues. There's little that could be added or taken away, and the roguelikes since Nethack have mostly tried to innovate rather than improve on the formula perfected by Nethack.

Nethack. Spent 4 years playing it off and on. Finally ascended an Archaeologist after about 150k turns. Started a new game, got almost all of an ascension kit put together. Then I realized I had climbed that mountain, and didn't really need to again. Haven't played since. What do other roguelikes have that Nethack doesn't?

If you want to zap your hard disk entirely, use Auto Installer Deluxe. It's just a few button presses to get back to a virgin state. That's a full format Does CoinOps really need an "install guide"? Copy it over to your hard disk and run it like any other xbox software.

One day I'll get one of those unicomps with the clit mouse. I can't think of anything better.

Where do you get the female multi-out connectors? They're not any sort of standard, is someone making these still?

I put a new stick in my N64 controller... at least 3 years ago, and it works and feels great. If the new ones are similar or better, you should be happy with it. I'd love to get a Hori pad, but at $50+, I'll just refurbish a first party pad for less than $15.

What you are looking for is a wifi bridge. Since you're already working with ethernet, buy the same device you would for modern equipment. A cheap router with openwrt/tomato is an excellent choice, but they make dedicated bridge devices too if you're not up to configuring your own.

You can find the replacement sticks on ebay for less than $10 shipped.

Right. As far as legacy goes, if you want to use an ISA card, or if you want to write 360K floppies, you need a PIII or lower. If you want to do anything modern, well P4s have terrible performance per watt. No lose if this thing gets recycled.

They sell refurbished analog sticks. They're a drop in replacment for the worn sticks, but inside they work more like a gamecube analog stick. So they're a lot less likely to wear out. The action on them is slightly different, which you may notice if you're a huge N64 buff. But for anyone else, these are an absolute must.

There's nothing a Dell P4 can do that a Core 2 Duo can't do cooler and quieter. And if you want it for legacy applications, a PIII is a much better choice. I bet it's got a weirdo motherboard that doesn't take standard cases and power supplies too.

Do you really need a Windows machine to use the HXC? They claim their software is open source and runs on OSX and Linux too.