Nebulon

And as I found out from a guy doing maintenance on a streetlight control box, a lot of major cities were using 6800 CPUs to control their traffic light systems. He told me that he regularly dialed into the system to update the traffic light schedules using a Radio Shack Color Computer (giving priority to certain road networks during rush hour, etc...). This was in the late 1990s.

The RAP-10 is listed as having high-end distortion issues. And while the Turtle Beach card passed their hardware tests, its software wasn't up to the task of muti-track audio. Meanwhile the Falcon could use Cubase Audio (an app that wouldn't appear on the PC for another three years. I'm really not aware of anything in 1993 (or even prior to 1996) that could do multi-track audio sampling on the PC (other than perhaps the IQS system and I have no idea where a person would purchase that from).

Coming from an early 1980s perspective, arcades in general definitely did change. The dark labyrinth of games disappeared for the most part. It's been mentioned numerous time -- including in this thread. Of course, the quality of games is a major factor. Still though, the layout, look, and 'feel' of arcades deserves consideration.

Oh yeah, in answer to the O.P.'s question, arcades died at the end of 1985 (well, for me anyway). Gauntlet was the last "hurrah" of the first video game mega-wave. Later on, Gauntlet II, R-Type, and Contra gave me some hope. Then the arcades stumbled and fell on their collective faces again, briefly reaching to grab the kitchen sink with cool games like Starblade, Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, Virtua Fighter, and Ridge Racer. And then it threw up and passed out. And now here we are today!

How in the hell?!?!

Now THIS is what I'm talking about. More levels for the classic arcade games. No messing around with updating the graphics and sound -- just more screens to work through. Simple and totally awesome!

I notice that in this video, Greg Berlin mentions that the Amiga 4000 power supply is just a PC AT power supply. So I wonder if a person managed to just get ahold of the same size of power supply from the Commodore PC line... perhaps that would work as-is? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW-v0nub8lE

You're most welcome. The other issue was that a lot of early home computers were displaying graphics in such a way that artifacting was hard to avoid (and even encouraged in the case of image displays): http://www.coco3.com/community/2009/02/256-color-mode-composite-mode-artifacting/ >>"With the fixed timing, pixels that are smaller than one color clock, appear as color information to the TV. On the old CoCo, in 256 pixel mode, that’s how the red and blue colors appear. Even pixels are one color, odd pixels are another one. Two together are white. Two unset together are black. The safe area on a CoCo 2 is smaller than that area on the CoCo3, when the 320 pixel mode is used. With fixed color timing, there are only so many pixels that can be resolved, WITHOUT color artifacts. On the CoCo 3, this happens to be 160 pixels. ANYTHING drawn to the screen smaller than this, will be represented as color information, given the color burst is left turned on."<<

If it just reverts back to the sun-altered color again then this whole Retrobrighting thing is a bit terrifying. Is there a way to tell whether or not something has been retrobrighted if no one tells you?

All I want is AmigaDOS 2.1, 3.0, and 3.1 patched so that they don't freak out when a hard drive fills to 100%. That and maybe a way to shut down an error requester in one go rather than having to click [Cancel] a million times.

This is a big kettle of fish. People have spent decades working on ways to deal with issues regarding the display of text on composite monitors and TV screens. Things like appropriate resolutions, interlace considerations, next-neighbor color selection, proximity of display objects or pixels, anti-aliasing, and even avoiding certain colors that the NTSC standard doesn't like. This also gets into GenLocking. More information can be found here (there are a lot of tricks involved in getting text to look even somewhat decent on a classic interlaced tube TV): http://www.interactivetvweb.org/content/crash-course-designing-tv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_artifact_colors https://archive.org/stream/AmigaWorld_Tech_Journal_Volume_2_Number_1_1992-02_IDG_Communications_US#page/n5/mode/2up https://books.google.ca/books?id=L5vcAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA178&lpg=PA178&dq=avoiding+color+artifacting+on+computer+text+tv&source=bl&ots=BlYqPoh-Kn&sig=lJ49dl_kMD7Zh8m3daq0NURUP1Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjoiPHNqJDTAhWN8oMKHQmEDq0Q6AEINzAF#v=onepage&q=avoiding%20color%20artifacting%20on%20computer%20text%20tv&f=false

As if ! AtariMax is an excellent product and totally relevant today. It also has one of the best and most refined interfaces I've seen for an image to cartridge system. It works brilliantly on both the original Atari 800 as well as the Atari 800XL.

I think that was actually a happy accident. The arcade machines were multi-processing machines at the time and included special graphics & sound hardware as well as more ROM and RAM than pretty much any home consumer could afford. It just worked out well for Atari that there became this sort of "play the variant of the arcade game at home and then run to the arcade to play the original amped-up version." Putting it into perspective, it would be like arcade game manufacturers building arcade machines with triple the processing power and RAM as what's available to home users. I suppose in today's world, arcade machines like that would get stolen and re-purposed within the first week of being in the arcades. Even when Daytona USA hit the arcades, the unit cost was $20,000.00 (that's roughly $40,000.00 today). Imagine the home gaming rig you could put together for that kind of coin. The later arcade racers were around $10,000.00 (likely due to both the drop in technology prices and the unwillingness of arcade game manufacturers to sink so much money into the build cost of each unit).

It's because you like the pretty colors. I'm the same way... easily distracted by glowy lights. Problem is, back then the machines that could crank out the colors were usually not great for text displays and the machines with sharp text typically were awful in the color palette department. Because of the monitor technology at the time, the two were pretty much mutually exclusive. The Atari ST line illustrates this well in that you end up with two monitors in order to work in both worlds (one lower resolution color monitor and a high-resolution monochrome monitor).

Has anyone tried using a 1.2MB disk drive in a Color Computer 2 disk drive enclosure? I'm wondering if this will work or not, since I'm pretty sure the 360K PC disk drives will work on a CoCo in these enclosures (if memory serves). I've got a Panasonic JU-475-4 1.2MB that I was hoping to use on the CoCo (assuming the drive would act like a low-density drive in that context). https://amaus.net/static/S100/panasonic/diskette/panasonic%20JU-475%205inch%20floppy%20diskette%20drive.pdf

I'm glad you mentioned that since I picked it up a while back. And though I like military shooters, the idea that it goes all surreal is definitely a motivator for me to hurry up and load that puppy. So far it's been sitting on a stack -- awaiting its turn.

I like the beige one.

Run Stardust on it!! Eeeet's weeeekeeeed!

That's likely what it was. I think I only waited about 10 seconds.

Spent more time with the Apple IIe lately, and my opinions on the matter are pretty much the same (leaning a bit more in the Apple's favor now though): Graphics - C64 Sound - C64 Price - C64 Durability - Apple IIe Expandability - Apple IIe Performance - For gaming it's the C64. For general use and business it's the Apple IIe. BASIC Programming - Apple IIe Gaming Library - Almost a tie. C64 edges the Apple out. Business Library - Apple IIe Keyboard - Apple IIe Open-Architecture - Apple IIe Design / Appearance - Apple II is nicer-looking than the breadbox but not as nice as the C64c. Best over all? Can't say. Both are good. It's a shame that the traces to the disk drive got cut by accident on the C64. The drive speed's always been an issue with me.

Imagine how food-encrusted a machine like this would have been after a few years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_316#/media/File:Kitchen_computer_ad.jpg

The CoCo can do lowercase -- with the right software (the VIP desktop series). Problem is, not many people seemed to know about it. The Color Computer was an unusual platform. Intended to be a farm terminal, then considered to be a potential successor to the Model series, re-marketed as an entry-level machine -- yet containing a relatively powerful CPU with a ton of expansion options, fast drive access speeds, and the option to run a multitasking operation system. Very strange. Neat, yet strange. Certainly a platform that didn't know where it belonged.

Sometimes it's just a timing thing. Music might run faster than intended by the programmers or sampled instruments might clash a bit. PAL does have the advantage of more on-screen real-estate for the games that make use of it. You've got a 1200, so you don't need to worry about being locked to one standard or the other.

I did run the self test. It seemed pleased with itself. However, I followed that with the CTRL OpenApple Reset combo, so maybe that wasn't a good idea. I'll try just CTRL Reset and see what happens. Just how long can an Apple retain fragments of data in RAM when the powered off?

You know, I was just thinking that when I looked at the on-screen message. I was like "ProDOS? WTF?! I didn't think there was a DOS ROM in an Apple II". The only cards that I know of being in there are just an 80 column/RAM card and the disk drive controller. This is pretty freaky alright!