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CaptainBreakout

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Posts posted by CaptainBreakout

  2. Posted

    I work at a small grocery store and do their sign art... I drew this sketch at work today for our upcoming December promotional chalkboard.

     

    Since we're all caught up in the Secret Santa spirit, I thought I'd better share it. This thread was definitely on my mind since tracking numbers are a-flyin!

    post-31593-0-98784200-1543475104_thumb.png

    • Like 8

  3. Posted · Edited by CaptainBreakout

    I'm good. I just have to wrap everything and ship. I was thinking of using priority mail international flat rate. Does anyone know if it's cheaper to use weight and a custom box to go overseas via USPS, or is it better to just use flat rate?

     

    Can anyone recommend another carrier?

     

  5. Posted · Edited by CaptainBreakout

    Ah-HA!!!! Had a breakthrough last night on the perfect (maybe?) gift. I almost shot out of bed at 1am with a "Eureka"!

     

    Good thing I didn't. Takes an hour to get the kids back to sleep.

     

    Hehe... There's a certain satisfaction knowing yer giving the right thing to someone, right?

    • Like 2

  6. Posted · Edited by CaptainBreakout

    If this device had hardware emulation for Gravis Ultrasound, Roland Sound Canvas, and perhaps a Voodoo card, I would be rather interested, but that would also depend on whether I could hack into it.

     

    Another feature that might actually win me over would be built in support for deathmath for Doom/wolf3d/heretic/quake. Two hdmi outputs would be required.

     

    And while I'm dreaming, why not null modem / IPX support for Flying Carpet, Command and Conquer, Hi-Octaine, Dungeon Keeper, Descent, and Death Rally?

     

    Something like that, and a nice GUI, would definitely shift it to something I'd rather buy than build.

  7. Posted · Edited by CaptainBreakout

    Just to weigh in, I thought I should offer some memories of the time...which 16-bit community to get into and be a part of was a big question for both me and my parents. I was about 12 or so.

     

    We looked at all the options. Amiga had the nicest screen shots on the boxes, but we didn't know anyone else with one. Atari was already a has-been word. Both of these were relatively cheap options, but it bothered us there was no backwards compatiblity (Amiga wouldnt touch a C64 program, and Atari same thing with 400/800 software). To us, it looked like those companies weren't interested in supporting their user base for the long term.

     

    PC was the one that looked the most 'serious'... And probably would be the best choice for a bunch of reasons... But fell short for us with at least two... It was VERY expensive, and unless you bought several cards and hardware (all also very expensive) and shelled out for the fastest CPU and memory you could afford... You were stuck with something underwhelming, and couldn't keep up with the newest stuff in the boxes at the software store. Plus there was a myriad of graphic, sound, and memory standards that seemed to go in different directions for compatibility.

     

    Also, the PC was a bear to learn how to use. MS-Dos was cryptic to say the least. The whole thing, even with "clones" (which added to the platform uncertainty and forced one into another camp) was all very expensive.

     

    My family went with the Apple IIgs. Backward compatibility and standard competitive features lead the choice. What worked against it was the price tag. Still expensive like the PC, but you supposedly got everything in one shot with no questions about whether your particular hardware choice was going to be abandoned or not. I seem to remember it was something like $1,850 (which equates to about 3.5 billion in today's currency). It suffered from the usual Apple price snob factor... Meaning it was roughly 3-5 times what it really could cost, but back then the product loyalty wasn't at the fervor of today... Also thanks to Apple Corp having a split personality between their venerable and education-community standard Apple II line head to head with their own slick-as-(black&white)silk Macintosh line.

     

    Anyway the price tag and half-assed company support naturally cut its market share down significantly. I was one of the many IIgs users who would get excited about practically ANYTHING announced for the platform, software developers being so understandably reluctant to enter the market given the relatively small user base.

     

    Oh, and the CPU was underpowered. Apple made the choice to NEVER offer faster CPU models... Which should indicate Apple's desire to doom the model to failure all along. I mean, what other computer company has ever done that?

     

    A good indicator to 3rd party developers to stay off the platform, right?

     

    It's odd that 3rd party developers took it upon themselves to actually develope the hardware and take the platform into their own hands... Transwarp and Zipchip come to mind.

     

    My family and I stayed die-hard IIgs fans long into its twilight. Big Red Computer Club had lots of weird mostly unfinished demos and games available, which we would order every few months. We watched the magazines that supported the IIgs die off one by one.

     

    Eventually we got a compaq 486. By then the PC hardware configuration was mostly standardized.

     

    What can you take away? At the time, unless you were rich and crazy, you could only get behind one platform. There were plusses and minuses. A major factor was who you knew who also had your platform. There was no internet, as we know it. Platforms didn't talk to each other until the very end. One could find great games and software on any of them, or at least learn how to enjoy them.

     

    My favs on the IIgs were Silpheed, Rastan, Gnarly Golf, The Immortal, Crystal Quest and several more. I also managed to do the layout and publish my middle school "newspaper" on Publish-it! - making me very l33t at the time and king of the 8th grade computer science class.

     

    Did that make the IIgs the best? Um... Well, I thought so then anyway. Stats be damned.

     

    Still, when I saw Star Control 2 on my friend's 386, I was ready to pitch the whole rig just for a shot to play that game at my house (Xenocide didn't cut it). Allegiances can change suddenly.

    • Like 1

  9. Posted · Edited by CaptainBreakout

    What a write up! I have to admit, the specifics for what modems did what in my meatspace has gotten a bit blurry since the time.

     

    After returning from a computer show, the big take-home highlight was a 2400 baud modem for the IIgs. I don't recall details like model numbers. But I do remember hours with Delphi, GEnie, and early encounters with AOL.

     

    Was there an Apple II version of AOL or am I imaginging things?

     

    I remember GSOS 6 looking promising again... For a minute. Lots of neat things like online MOD music, some nifty demos from FTA and Brutal Deluxe, and shareware from Brian Greenstone and a few others. Good times.

     

    I'm surprised I don't remember my hardware setup. I haven't given much thought to the primordial world of pre-pc online um... "Internet". It seemed so chaotic and fleeting. I do remember one had to be careful that one never dial up during "prime hours" or you faced outrageous per minute charges. Parents would shut down yer ops.

    • Like 1

  12. Posted

    I use a light sixer... And it runs everything... Almost.

     

    There is a compatibility with River Raid II (and possibly a few other very late Activision-ish games) that got me stuck.

     

    It was discussed in the thread below...

    http://atariage.com/forums/topic/275905-help-me-fix-a-flaky-river-raid-ii/

     

    I did the mod linked in the thread. Happy to say that it worked, and I've experienced no adverse results with any other games thus far. That includes a Supercharger, many unusual games, and lots of homebrews.

     

    So I'd say if you have a 6-switch and you do this mod you are pretty much 100%. Fat red label Atari brand carts need to be massaged into the slot, but that's the only gripe I have.

  13. Posted

    You have more patience than me. I'd try to scan+OCR them, and then EXEC them to get the program loaded. :P

    Hehe... Glad I can save you some heartbreak there. Tried that... Due to Compute's choice of typeface, all the OCR attempts had... Err... Issues. I mean, they'd work for 99% of the text in terms of accuracy, but that last 1% was enough to drive me crazy...

     

    For example... The ('s would sometimes come in as C's, the 5's as S's and the worst was 8's would show up as 3's (usually in a POKE or DATA statements). Spaces and carriage returns all had to be manually fixed. : And ; would be randomly wrong. Also D's, O's and 0's would mix up six ways from Sunday. Wouldn't be so bad if only there was consistency, but well, no.

     

    All is all, debugging the result was as time consuming as typing it in straight, but way more cerebral. I did do it this way a couple of times tho- with Caves of Ice and most of Spiders.

     

    Hex entires with OCR? Forget it. Attempts at doing this with Canyon Runner almost killed me. My dance with sorting 8's 0's and D's could get me a heavy perscription. (Dramatic? Sure! Really frustrating? Also sure!)

     

    Anyways, I got a much faster method I developed. If anyone wants to know my technique, just PM me. I'm almost out of Apple II type-in material that's still lost, but there's still some for other platforms.

  14. Posted

    ... anyway, back to Compute!

     

    Just got Vulcan Mines typed-in. Confusing as crazy. Game seems to work.

     

    In these days where we spend more time to type-in (tech-support, install, bugfix, take yer pick) a game then actually play it, this is not a surprise that I didn't actually have a few minutes to figure it out.

     

    I plan to make something that will let us launch the game, or edit levels. Plus have instructions. Working on it. Haven't typed in the level editor yet.

  16. Posted

    Wow... these Nibble articles are intense.

     

    So I pieced together a working copy of Formula Nibble... thanks to the archive from Nibble Magazine itself and the pointer from Polymorph.

     

    Little did I realize most of the basic files are actually MAKE files... of sorts. (In the December 1986 directory of NIB29A.DSK... to save you some time if you want to join me in this rabbit hole). They generate the tracks, tables and graphics when you run them, and then save all those files on the disk. The main game program needs to have all these support files on the disk before it will run properly.

     

    Neat!

     

    Does anyone have this actual magazine in hard copy, or Mike Harvey's DVD set? It would be cool to add a title screen from the graphics in the magazine and make it a bootable DSK file, I think.

    • Like 1

  20. Posted

    Vol 7 No12 just in case thats more important than the date. :)

    I'll look for it tonight if I have time. I love mysteries like this.

     

    It must have worked for me at one time, or I wouldn't have added it to my emulator menu. I have vague memories of a red dot moving on the rim of the steering wheel that was supposed to indicate your direction.

     

    Anyway, thanks ill check for that issue.

  21. Posted

    Yeah... just as an update, I was able to dig around in a save-state IMG file from ApplePC and view the basic file. Something is really buggy in there. I transferred the basic file to a DOS 3.3 disk image, but after looking at it it seems all the BIN support files are missing. This is quickly turning into a complicated situation.

     

    If I can't find the source dsk from whereever this came from, it might be time to start over, if we can find a copy of that issue of Nibble.

     

    I do have a bunch of .SHK archives of various issues of Nibble that contain all the programs, so if we're lucky we can find it in one of those if we can pin-point the issue it appeared in.

  22. Posted

    Speaking of type ins, and I know this one isn't a compute job, but did anyone ever get Formula Nibble to run? I can recall getting hold of the magazine just for this, and typing.... typing.....still typing...typing..... and the result.... crash and burn to monitor. We retyped that one a few times just in case to no avail.

     

    A

     

    Interesting. I actually have that game in my emulator menu. I figured I can just post it here for you, but I tried running it and found out the zip archive is corrupt. I extracted the dsk anyway but the game bugged out, but got to the point of showing the f-1 car and steering wheel.

     

    It also said "typed in in 2005". It very well could be something I did and completely forgot about it.

     

    Weird that the file is corrupt. It's also corrupt in all my backup folders, so it must have happened a long time ago. I'm searching through the archives to see if I can find a work disk of it from back then.

     

    Do you know what issue of Nibble this game was published in? That might help.

  23. Posted

    It's a nice vindicating feeling that these things are now collectible and valuable. Certainly makes the time I spent rummaging through boxes of loose computer cards at liquidation specialty stores feel worthwhile.

     

    The nice part about these is it tickles a very specific geekery reward when you get them to work. The music on them sounds amazing. It's the same rewarding payback of fixing a pinball game or getting an old game console or computer to work. Or even comparable to the first ride of a restored motocycle, or catching a fish with a refurbished rod and reel. I wonder if there's a name for this specific kind of payback.

     

    So yeah, makes sense the cost of them is ballooning.

     

    Hmm... amongst the rarer cards I have is a boxed Roland PCIMCIA sound canvas card. Ok Google... what's the model name... SCP-55 (thank you google... didn't even have to hit Enter). Also got breakout cables and instructions, and the box too I think. You think this is worth anything, given that it's a laptop card?

  25. Posted

     

    Just to tempt you, here's my restaurant-review like legend for ISA (not PCI) sound card makes (with wavetable):

     

    $$$$$ = Roland/Yamaha

    $$$$ = Turtle Beach/Mediatrix/Advanced Gravis

    $$$ = Ensoniq (not Opus or Vivo)/Guillemot

    $$ = Creative Labs AWE32 (non-PNP) or AWE64 Gold

    $ = "No name" Crystal/Admos/ESS-based cards

     

    Hmm interesting!

     

    It surprises me that Turtle Beach is right up there with Gravis. They weren't even on my radar.

     

    What would you rate a pro audio spectrum, original Adlib/Adlib gold, or Diamond Monster Sound w/daughterboard (even tho that last one is a PCI). How about 1st Gen Sound Blaster?

     

    GUS Extreme has to be 5x$. Only model I've never seen.

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