Dripfree
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Posts posted by Dripfree
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Always hated the looks of this one-it was the first business system that I used in the workplace, ladies & gentlemen-I give you the Olivetti M20.
I just arrived that little bit too late too use the TRS80 model 2's that sat in a corner gathering dust.
That just looks like a toy to me. Like a fake computer looking thing that just teaches kids to spell or something.
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Oh that game. If I could get back all the hours I spent playing Goldeneye. I would have a lot more free time that I would probably use playing me some Goldeneye.
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I guess the only real difference is that now, the prices are up there. If I can get a great NES title mint for about 5 bucks, I'm laughing! Doesn't happen often though...this latest find was kinda like one of those dreams you have (well, at least I have em, lol) where you're in some old shop, store, school, whatever, and you're digging around a room and SHIT there's a BOX OF OLD-ASS VIDEO GAMES, complete in boxes!...can't tell you how many times I've had those dreams over the decades
I guess the folks down the road (waaaay down the road) will have something to look forward to, as I'm sure my treasures will end up in some kinda thrift store once I've checked out
Yea I have those dreams too..... Part of me feels like maybe I should worry about that. When I check out I don't care what happens too all my treasures as long as the individual collections stay together. Although I probably have thousands of things I kind of see it as having about 20 things.... By that I mean each collection is a single entity. I have my NES collection, my Atari computer collection, my Atari 2600 collection and so on. You can break them up into individual collections when I'm gone, but I'll be tossing and turning in my grave if they get torn apart piece by piece. Whenever I get a new piece I put it in it's spot usually alphabetically with its brothers and sisters. Thats actually my favorite part of this hobby. Whenever I do that little voice in my head says something like "Your with your family now, and you will never be alone again"....... And after reading what I just wrote, I now think I probably should seek help!
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Well I finally got some working floppies. Wow it was quite the project figuring this all out. I just used trial and error. I finally found that I first have to record the floppy once normally and then rewrite the same floppy over it again but this time using the double step option. Not sure why I got to do it that way but it works. TI99-PC says the double step option is for drives that don't support single density. I thought my drive was single density. Its an Epson SD 600. Maybe the SD stands for something else in this situation. Maybe its something completely different but when I record with this method it seems to work every time so I'm happy.
And as a side note I'm really impressed with the TI port of Kaboom. It's the first working disk I made and graphically it's pretty spot on.
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isnt 4 tracks side A and B in stereo?
I think it would be fine
I never thought of it like that. Makes sense though. I'm not all that savvy when it comes to cassettes though. I'm kinda from the cd generation. My experience with cassettes is mostly making mix tapes off the radio and now old computers. I did have a Tascam 4 track recorder in high school. It was for music recording. It could record 4 individual tracks at the same time and then you could mix it down to a standard cassette and control all the levels. If I remember right it recorded at a higher speed then normal. I always thought it was to preserve quality, I figured it would use more horizontal space on the tape since the vertical space was shrunk due to the extra tracks... I never learned much of the technical stuff back then cuz I was more concerned with becoming a rock star. The sound quality was great on that thing if I still had it I'd probably be hooking it up to my TI right now.
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I do the same thing, but with an early Pentium. What's funny is I have two laptops from this time period, and the older, slower one doesn't work for this purpose. The one that does work, if anyone's wondering, is a Compaq LTE 5300. Really anything from the LTE 5000 series would work, I guess. I'll also specify that this is with the cheapest/easiest X1541 cable. The one that doesn't work is a Toshiba Satellite 400CDT.
I used to use a Toshiba 200cds for file transfer to my 800xl. I picked it up for $5 at a thrift store. I've since found a better option and I'm probably gona toss the old guy. The battery doesn't charge and the screen is all washed out. I wanted to mess around with different OS's but you need an external floppy. I had some neat ideas for that thing but turns out it just wasn't practical.
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"The thrill of the hunt!" I use that phrase all the time to describe my collecting. I rarely buy from Ebay, the hunt is so much more fun. It's a little hard to say if I'm saving money this way cuz I'd have to factor in the gas I spend driving around. But when you find that perfect thing in the wild it's a much better feeling, and story then winning a bid on Ebay. I have almost begun to believe that you can will the things your looking for into reality. It is getting more and more rare to find these things at a steal of a deal. Too many thrift stores are getting Ebay savvy these days and things are priced way to high it almost makes me want to give up on the hunt. Then there is that day when your driving into work and you see a Vectrex in someone front yard for $15 and it's all worth it.
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So I picked up this little guy from my local thrift store that raises money for for the blind.
It's cassette recorder for the blind. It's really sweet actually. Fist of all it's very tactile it's made to feel out the controls. It's even got an exposed nub on the tape wheel so you can feel which direction the tape is moving while fast forwarding or rewinding. It also has an indexing button that records a tone when you hit it. The tone can be heard when rewinding to let you know where to stop. Coolest thing of all is that it records and plays standard cassettes in 4 tracks. This is because it was made to play books on tape and my assumption is that it allowed you to get to different points in the book without too much moving around on the tape. It made me think that this track and indexing would be very convenient for saving programs. I just did an experiment recording a "Hello World" program with my TI 99/4A across all 4 tracks at the same point on the tape. I was a little surprised that it worked. I know that this is not such a great idea for storage because it's a non standard format and if this machine breaks the tapes wont work on anything other machine. My question is why did this never become a standard? It seems like it would have made life a lot easier back in the old cassette days.
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So I'm hoping for a little more help from someone experienced in the ti99-pc software. I've been playing with TI99-PC all day and I'm not having much success. I've made multiple disks but cant get any to load on my TI. All the games I have downloaded are in the V9T9.dsk format. Some are extended basic games while other are assembly games. TI99-PC has the option for V9T9 files so I of course I use that. It makes the disk and I can do a catalog and see the files on there. When I put the disk in my PEB I try to load with disk manager 1000. No matter what disk I use I get a long beep a blue screen and a crash. I've also tried loading the extended basic games from extended basic using old command. I just get I/O errors. I can catalog the disk within disk manager 1000 and see all the files on the disk but I cant seem to run them. My thought is that I see TI99-PC copy's the files as DS SD. I think that disk format is coded into the V9T9 file. I am using the stock original drive in my PEB which I believe only supports SS disks. I also may have no clue what I'm talking about. I'm learning as I go here so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance
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This may be old news to some. The video is a few years old, and even I first stumbled across it about two years ago. Anyway its pretty freaking awesome and since I haven't seen it hear yet I thought I'd post it.
There is actually a bunch of these and some may be better. More drives and different songs, but this is my favorite.
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Thanks for the link. Unfortunately the download link doesn't work on that page but after a bunch of searching I found a working mirror. I did get it on my Compaq but haven't had the time to really play around with it, but it looks like it is exactly what I need.
I'm sure the link posted is probably a better option... but if you don't want to waste burning CDs and copying back and forth, one way that you can copy files is through "NULL MODEM" cable... basically, it's a serial cable that connects to the serial port on either machine, and it flips the receive / transmit wires. This allows you to use something like ProComm Plus or Telemate (from the old BBS days) and you can transmit files back and forth.
If both computers have a 16550 UART, it'll come over at 128kbps.
I did consider doing something like that but for now I'm gona just use some dollar store cd's. This is kinda just a temporary work around till I get a 3.25" inch drive for TI.
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So a while back I bought a 5.25 floppy drive to copy old floppies. I found out my PC was to new and the BIOS couldn't work with it. The other day I rescued a Compaq Deskpro 2000 from the curb and I stuck the drive in there. I popped in an old Lotus 1 2 3 disk and the thing works. Now I want to start copying some 99/4a roms onto some floppies but I'm not sure how to go about it. What software will I use for this? Do I want to use an emulator? This thing is running Win 98 and has no USB or ethernet so im probably going to have to burn cd's to bring files to it so I want to get this right without burning coasters. I'm hoping someone experienced with this can point me in the right direction. Thanks.
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The Dreamcast has an Atari 2600 emulator while the Atari 2600 does not have a Dreamcast emulator:
http://dcemulation.org/?title=Emulators
They are both cheap enough that you could probably pick up both. Im sure you can find a 2600 at a thrift shop for next to nothing.
What he said.
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I'll be picking up the game for sure but I already pulled the trigger on this guy.
Wish I could afford another though.
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Are you sure it's a color tv you hooked it up too? Just kidding I'm not gona be much help to ya but I can say something probably is broke. It will probably be a pretty easy fix, but finding the source of the problem may be harder then the solution. I had a similar problem with my 2600 and used a very silly non scientific way to discover the source of the problem. I took it apart, hooked it up, and turned it on. I then just started poking at stuff with my bare hands. Yea pretty smart hey? I found a wire that when I played with it the color came back. So I resoldered the connection and presto the color came back. You probably wont be so lucky but no guts no glory. Just don't electrocute yourself or fry you O2 all together. Or just wait till someone who knows what he's talking about responds to you I'm a moron.
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Actually almost forgot about a very funny story from my last trip to Radio Shack that may also explain the downfall.
I go in looking for a couple of caps, resistors, and diodes. It was actually for my SIO2PC project I think about a year and a half ago. The whole time I'm looking around two employees are behind the register farting around on they're phones. When I go to check out he looks at the parts I'm buying and says, "hey! you like some kinda genius or something". I laugh and say "something like that". He goes to his buddy and says, "hey man this is our guy!". He then explains to me how they were just reading a story about how astronomers believe they discovered a planet made completely out of GOLD! So he tells me that if I design and build the space ship he will be the pilot and his buddy will be the navigator, oh and Shawntell, apparently a girl who works in the morning will come along to be our "hoe" during the trip. I told them I'd stop back in with some plans. That is one of the Radio Shacks that now has a for rent sign in the front window.
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If they go online only I really hope they continue the trend of having exactly what you need out of stock. Call the new company "Outtafruit"
So true. I would stop in occasionally just to get some simple switch or something. I would be willing to pay 10 times the online price just to have it right away and it never failed they would be out of exactly what I needed. Or I would just dig randomly through the drawers and sometimes find a switch which was empty where it should be in with the diodes or something. The employees never knew a thing about the electronics components, Which is why the drawers were always a mess, which is why they could never order correctly, which is why they were always out of stuff. I did ride my bike up to a local radio shack as a child and that place got me started in electronic projects. Now every time I swing by one it seems there is a for rent sign in the window. Good Riddance for about the last 10 years that place only disappointed me.
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Hey I thought I remembered reading a thread on this way back but cant seem to find it now. I was wondering if there is a place to buy replacement labels for the coleco vision console. The big one for the front and the little one for the top in front of the cartridge slot. I was given this thing about 10 years ago and the labels were peeling when I got it. I glued them down but the metallic nature of these labels left them wavy and odd looking. And I think they were actually applied slightly off center in the factory cuz they're just not on there quite right. The console works and looks perfect other then the labels so it would be great to get this thing mint. The thick metallic nature of these labels probably make them hard to reproduce properly so maybe they don't exist but I thought I'd check.
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I agree, with you on the original daisy-chain system, but when they switched to the P-Box (pictured below) I thought it was a thing of beauty. It also made it so-much easier to expand, just remove the top, slide in another card and you were 'good to go". I might add that these things a quite well-built too. Many of those early computers looked and felt like they were built very cheaply, not so with the TI.
I do agree that the PEB by it self is very nice looking. Since I finally got one my TI has been getting a real workout. I just wish it matched at least one of the computer models. I think they were going for something right in between both models so it would look somewhat decent with either. It's almost like they took all the colors for both models and put them in a blender. It's kinda like a greyish beige with a slightly metallic shine. I do have a little ocd streak in me and it makes very happy to see my 800xl, 1050, and 1010 all having the same color scheme. Same is true with my C64 and all of its attachments. I just wish my TI could satisfy my ocd in the same way.
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So I thought I'd give this guy a bump with another old computer that I figure will probably upset quite a few people. I know cuz I saw it a couple times in the sexy computer thread. Let me start by saying I love this computer. It is probably tied for the most used computer in my house. However the looks.... I just don't get it. So here ya go.
Sorry guys but I just don't like the steel. It looks out of place with everything else I own. It's prone to scratching and dents and it even likes to peel off. The thing that really gets me is that the more you add on to it the worse it gets. The sidecar system was pretty hideous and impractical and the PEB doesn't match either. It doesn't even match the beige model. Maybe they wanted to make something in between the two? But it looks odd no matter which model you have. Lets not forget the fire hose you got to find a way to hide that thing. At the end of the day I choose to have my beige model be my working unit while my steel one is more of a boxed back up. I have been considering trying to swap out the guts so my beige model can play atarisoft games.
Anyway I hope no one gets too offended I know how much this machine is loved. Just know I love both of mine I just don't think they look so great most of all when compared to the other computers in my collection.
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I always thought it was kinda like putting one of those cheesy tips on your exhaust pipe. Just a little custom touch thats that says "Hey look its not stock anymore". It's also simple enough for a novice to do themselves.
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Thanks for the info. I'm an avid 3d's player and I was actually unaware of this. I like to own real carts and never spend much time on the E Shop, which is probably why I haven't seen these titles. I will be sure to check them out now. I've actually been sitting on an E Shop card my mom got me for Christmas.
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I recently bought a USB hard drive from a thrift store that was obviously some ones back up for images and video's also plenty of text documents that I never even looked at. I hooked it up and let my curiosity take over for about two minutes and then I got an incredibly creepy feeling building up in my gut. I knew that looking at these things was incredibly immoral to say the least so I erased it. But I'm shocked at the ignorance of someone who would just donate something like this. I think its the facebook generation everyone just puts there whole life on the net anyway so whats the difference in handing over a hard drive with your whole life on it.
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Since I'm more player than collector, I have grown to frown on NIB and have gone full bore after really great condition CIB stuff. And not even because of what the guy in the video discovered, but now that's a factor too. NIB prices for anything remotely old are just outrageous anymore. Open it, play it, keep it in great condition and take care of it I say.
Agreed. I need to play what I own. There was an NIB Coleco Adam at a local shop here. It was out of my price range anyway but if it was in the high end of my range I would still have to pass on it. I am able to respect the idea of NIB enough where if I had something like that I wouldn't open it. But because I wouldn't open it I would also never buy it. For some people NIB is their thing I can respect that, but it's not my thing.
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N64 AV Cable
in Classic Console Discussion
Posted
I thought that was the cable the n64 came with? I was pretty sure I had to buy a mad cats RF back in the day to make my n64 work on the tv I had. Maybe thats my Dreamcast I'm thinking of. Anyway the sweet thing about that cable is that it works on SNES and Game Cube too.