Koopa64

Dunking on the amico, too funny

Video Game Crash of '83 isn't the correct term at all. It was the Atari Bubble Burst. (because arcades, home computers and markets outside the USA were doing fine at that time)

Shouldn't Oregon Trail be older? The very first version of Oregon Trail was in 1971 for the HP 2100 minicomputer, the end user interface was a teleprinter. That was several years before the first Apple II version. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oregon_Trail_(1971_video_game)

Now that is a cool project, a brand new 2600 compatible PCB. Also neat to have it be upgraded to a 6502 processor for extra addressing, like the 7800. I guess if one were just wanting the CPU and not add support for the MARIA chip, perhaps the result would instead be a sort of Super 2600.

I made this, feel free to use it

Alkali is the simplest of the correct choices.

Call me pedantic, but that is an alkaline battery, not acidic. It's completely incorrect to say "use vinegar to neutralize the battery acid" in this scenario. The only major kind of acidic battery is the typical car battery which is never used for electronics as far as I know.

Ok, so how do you get games loaded into WHDLoad? Do you go online with your A4000D and get ADF files that way? If one has nothing Amiga related besides an old Amiga, starting completely from scratch, you absolutely need a way to access an Amiga drive, Windows and Mac have nothing to deal with Fast File System and so on, that's where UAE is required. @remowilliams: Yes, it's convenient when finally set up... not convenient when starting from scratch.

I fail to see how WHDLoad is more convenient when to load games into your Workbench drive, you either need another Amiga already set up (preferably with internet access) or a virtual Amiga using UAE on a PC or Mac. If UAE is required, it ends up feeling really pointless doing all that work for the real Amiga when the virtual one is right there. A Gotek floppy adapter sounds great, just put ADF files on a USB drive. Seems like hardly any games need Workbench to be loaded first anyway.

Is any of this actually necessary for old Amiga games? From what I've seen, most games only want 1MB RAM of some variety or another, mainly Chip RAM. Can one get by with a 512KB trapdoor ram board and play most retail games from the 80s?

If the PC in question can natively run MS-DOS and display CGA graphics, then it should still count as an IBM PC clone. There are still some PCs from the 2010s that can do that, even ones with EFI and UEFI. I would assume compatibility with MS-DOS and CGA has gone downhill as of late though. As for how MS-DOS is loaded, the media used shouldn't be a huge factor I feel. MS-DOS can be put onto a bootable USB stick or put right on the internal boot drive, that should count no differently from a floppy disk. Someone here said PC literally means "personal computer" and should apply to anything, not just IBM PC systems. I hard disagree with that, PC = IBM PC is so ingrained in our culture and society, you can't just say PC without immediately having to clarify further. It feels so very, very wrong to call a Mac or Amiga or C64 a "PC". "IBM PC" is a very specific brand of computer. The real generic term would be home computer.

Going by that description, even Super Pitfall for NES sounds better. You can stop and explore at your own pace at the very least...

All should work but the only one with the least amount of noise and ripple will be the square, heavy one, which is a linear PSU. The small, thin and lightweight ones are switching PSUs, they'll work but might introduce noticeable noise in the video and audio.

I've never played a ZX Spectrum, but I've seen tons of videos of its BASIC and many games. However, I have played a ton of Atari 2600. Just going by games and specifications, I can confidently say the ZX Spectrum looks better overall. I mean, is it really even a fair comparison when most ZX Spectrums had 48K RAM and the Atari 2600 had 128 bytes of RAM and at most a 4K ROM cartridge, without bank switching? A more even comparison would be the ZX81 with 1K RAM and monochrome graphics. I've come to realize that, I think the ZX80 / 81 / Spectrum could definitely be thought of as the British Atari 2600. How? Well, the Sinclair ZX systems were super cost competitive (like the 2600 in its later years) and had massive sales so everyone had one. Like the 2600, the Sinclairs are very limited compared to other competing systems. However, the Sinclairs were better because they had a keyboard, had BASIC, could be programmed in machine language and ultimately were a coding teaching tool as much as a games console. In the UK, bedroom coding was huge. The 2600 was only a game console, you couldn't really learn to code on it. (yes I know there was the Basic Programming cartridge but that was too limited to be useful, same for the CompuMate keyboard add-on)

People who vote for the 32X and Virtual Boy don’t know what “worst console” truly is as monstrous as the Aquarius looks, the game.com is arguably worse. It has less excuse to be so bad. Then there’s stuff like the Action Max and the Hyperscan.

This is of course assuming the TG16 was previously successful enough to even have a port of Street Fighter 2 make it to American shores. Let's pretend Mortal Kombat 1 was in the cards for the TG16 and would have been uncensored like the Genesis version. Could a blockbuster game like this have helped?

This is wrong. Sony had a development studio called Sony Imagesoft, they released quite a few SNES and Sega CD games before the launch of the PS1. Sony Imagesoft was rolled into Sony Computer Entertainment.

That's funny.

I've found that laptops that can boot from the PCMCIA / PC card slot are extremely rare. One for sure is the Toshiba Portege R100. Maybe a few old Thinkpads could do it as well but for sure the 600 can't. Maybe you'd find this page useful? https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Old_ThinkPad_Niches

All of mine had a gigantic heat sink with fan, the prototypical P4 desktop box experience. Granted, all those years ago when I actually used a P4 desktop as a main driver PC, the thermal compound I had was poor, but still these computers would burn right through thermal compound, resulting in an air pocket which made the cooling worse. This was consistent though and always with a P4 computer. I never had cooling issues with earlier or later Intel or even AMD systems, only with the wretched Pentium 4. Who thought it was a good idea to put a P4 in a laptop anyway? I used to have a Dell Latitude P4 laptop, it would sound like a jet engine and be burning hot to the touch if you even dared try to play a decent game on it. P4 computers are a rare situation where I'm happy to see them get sent for e-waste recycling, good riddance. When I see a P4 nowadays, all I can think is, "Atari and Commodore died for this?".

When I say Pentium 4, I am referring to the old ones that used Socket 478, but honestly the LGA 775 ones are not much better. Anyway, take any average Pentium 4, it will be met or exceeded in performance by a Pentium III AND will run much cooler. I really don't like CPUs that run crazy hot and the Pentium 4 is pretty much the brown standard for space heater processors, followed closely by the later Pentium D and the PowerPC G5 series. All that adds up to a wretched processor that runs hot and has poor performance, especially compared to what was available at the same time. The best use I can think of for a P4 desktop or laptop is permanently setting the clock speed really, really low and plugging in a parallel port sound card like a Covox clone or an Adlib clone, relegating the former space heater to low speed MS-DOS tasks to avoid the space heater situation. Remember, heat kills electronics. Man, even a Pentium M runs circles around the Pentium 4 and D, let alone a Core Duo or Core 2 Duo which are just light years ahead, it's not even a fair contest at that point.

I think I will emulate and explore the A8 library that way, then decide if I want to sink some money into an actual A8 computer.

They are definitely still terrible in my mind.

Hmm, any particular 7800 homebrew and indie games you like or can recommend? That's a very impressive assortment of computers, I guess the Amstrad really is your favorite.

Hmm, good to know, thanks. I got an SD2IEC and a Kung Fu Flash so I think I'm pretty well covered for the C64. I take it one would need a 7800 flash cart that has a Pokey chip in it?