Nebulon

Oh man, I friggin' love Time Pilot '84. The first one is of course great too. Definitely no complaints here.

Joust 2. I couldn't believe my eyes (and ears) when I first tried that one. What a disappointment. It was clear that a totally different team cooked up that half-baked mess.

I have an Amiga 4000/040 and I've never taken it onto the web before (just old-skool BBS systems). What would I do to get it surfing websites?

You're most welcome. I hope it helps. And I totally understand what you're saying about trying to map the buttons to match the original arcade layout. I'm now using three PCs with different interfaces attached in a feeble attempt to do just that. One computer uses a trackball and the keyboard together in an attempt to properly run Star Trek: The Strategic Operations Simulator. I had no choice but to get that one right, since my brother is a pro at that game and if I didn't map things correctly, he'd tell me about it.

I tried to do this once, but I can't program my way out of a wet paper bag. It would be soooo awesome if there was a level editor hack for the arcade version of Mr. Do. I'm thinking of something really simple. Just start by selecting a screen-fill of a certain pattern and color. Then use the joystick to subtract the stuff you don't want on screen (almost like an eraser tool in a paint program). Set the number of baddies. Place the apples, cherries, and start position for the player. and that's about it. Player 1 button = Previous menu item Player 2 button = Next menu item Fire button = Select/confirm Joystick for placement Both Player 1 and Player 2 = Hide menu. Menu would include: - Save level - Load level into editor (and level select with up-down for previous/next item and left-right for previous/next page list of levels) - Select fill color and pattern - Select item (apple, cherry, earth, Mr. Do character) - Input number of enemies to be spawned from the center of the screen. I wouldn't want any extra features or power-ups or anything like that. Just what the arcade includes, since it's fun the way it is.

Well, I can tell you what I've been doing -- and it seems to work great. I purchased a MaxFlash 8Mbit re-writable cartridge and the MaxFlash programmer cartridge. You need to specify both when ordering, since the programmer cartridge doesn't come with the blank 8Mbit cartridge. I think the total worked out to around $85.00. Anyway, I installed the included software and hooked it up to the USB port on my Windows XP machine (the software is awesome, by the way). In the software, you just right-click a slot to place a game on a list. The list is what you'll see on the Atari computer when you plug the cartridge into it. 8Mbit is enough to hold around 20 to 40 Atari 8-bit games. You just use the joystick to select the game you want to play and press the joystick button to run it. If you want to make a different compilation, just plug the blank cartridge into the MaxFlash programmer cartridge and then into the PC's USB port and choose the Erase option. There are two main file types that the cartridge will recognize. They are .ATR and .XEX. When you search around on the web for disk images for the Atari 8-bit machines, these are the two most popular file formats. Note: Not all of them will run successfully. However, most will. The only thing I've yet to figure out on the MaxFlash cartridge is how to run a 2-disk game. Perhaps it isn't possible to switch to disk 2 using this system? As for Windows XP -- MS support is only an issue if you want to use it for web-browsing and need to keep it patched for possible future exploits (holes through which creepy crawlies can get through). If you're just using it as an off-line machine with a fixed set of software from today or earlier, you can keep that XP machine running for as many years as you like.

I know that on my X-Arcade unit, there are 3 or 4 user-programmable 'slots' and a switch at the back for selecting the one you want to use. It's a bit tricky, because when you switch from one to another you need to press a button. For the dual-stick X-Arcade unit, I press the button to turn the red light off, set the switch to the position I want, and then press the button again. When the red light is on, you're ready to play. You can test out your results by loading Notepad (or some other text editor). You'll see the keyboard letters appear when you move the stick or press the buttons. To simplify things, I grouped games into types. So for all the top-down shooters, I assigned their keyboard keys to: W = Up A = Left S = Down D = Right , = Button 2 . = Button 1 / = Button 3 Then I went to the X-Arcade and programmed those keys into it and saved it to switch position 1. Now I know that if I want to play a top-down or side-scrolling shooter, I just make sure the switch is set to the first position. This same configuration could also work for games that don't use as many buttons like Mr. Do, Galaga, Joust, Gauntlet, .... If it was Galaga, you'd just ignore Up, Down, Button 2, and Button 3. It would be the same switch position though. Next I made a map for Robotron and Black Widow: W,A,S,D for the left hand. I,J,K,L for the right hand. Then I programmed that into switch position 2. etc...

I ran this on my Windows 8, and it helped a lot: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2026719/review-classic-shell-brings-the-start-menu-to-windows-8-for-free.html My classic computer is better than today's modern machines because it doesn't use the word 'Charms' to describe components of its operating system.

That's exactly the sensation that I got from it. It feels too crowded. The cool mock-up that Defender_2600 did sure shows how wicked it would look in 160x192 mode.

I'm guessing you already have this... but just in case: http://pdf.textfiles.com/manuals/ARCADE/K-R/Moon%20Patrol%20[Drawing%20Set]%20[English].pdf I don't know the solution to this. I can say that I'm having a similar problem with a TRON arcade machine. In my case though, it appears to be a ballast in the light assembly that's blowing the fuse out.

People keep going on and on about the original Amiga OS (v1.2 and 1.3) and how slow/glitch it is. I think more people ought to really try any version from 2.0 on. There was vast improvement. I used 2.x and 3.x for ages and put incredible demands on them. They performed brilliantly on 68030 and 68040 machines. And in answer to the original topic, the more I look at the block diagrams of the A8 and Amiga machines, the more similarities I see. As for the successor question. I generally like to follow the designers around. Design evolution makes a lot more sense when you follow the careers of key people in each industry.

I agree with you. However, there's definitely still a place for quick top-20 command lists for various platforms to give people a running start. Not all the OEM manuals that came with the machines were all that great -- like the old DOS 3 manuals or the AmigaDOS manuals. Many of them lack real examples or use custom methods of listing commands in a way that can be confusing for new users. e.g. the over-abundance of parentheses. Then there are the systems that have hundreds (or even thousands) of command/switch combinations. Not everyone has the time to delve into them and then figure out by trial, error, and experience what the essentials are (especially when trying to tackle numerous platforms). To this day, I still try to approach things the way children do, in that I like to jump in and try out the interface, try some commands that others have recommended, and then look things up as I need to. Even industry professionals that use extremely complex software only really use about 20% of the commands on a regular basis. The rest of the functions are things they'll look up if they need to. I'm speaking both from experience and paraphrasing other established power-users. That being said, I should mention that different people learn faster in different ways. So if there are people out there that prefer to read the entire manual first, then great. I'm glad it works for them. I eventually do read manuals cover to cover, but not until I've tried the software first.

Ah yes, The Interbank Incident. Now there's a game I want to go back and finish.

I totally agree. I'd like to know more about load and save for both disk and tape on the C64, since I'm pretty new to that machine from a user standpoint.

Does anyone know when I can find a newer version of the David Keil Color Computer IIII emulator? I see that version 1.22 is listed on his site, but that's from way back in 2001 and doesn't support sound outside of Windows 95/98. It looks like a newer version was available in 2004?

Which CoCo III games require 512K?

Does anyone have any leads on the 1989 Electrocoin arcade version of Mr. Do that was reported as having 99 levels? https://archive.org/stream/computer-video-games-magazine-087/CVG087_Jan_1989#page/n126/mode/1up Is the (possibly unfinished) code out there somewhere in the ether?

Here's another list of Color Computer games: http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/coco/Disks/Games/

This emulator is amazingly accurate. Sound is a bit scratchy, but the rest is rock solid -- right down to disk operations. You can even create new diskettes, add and delete files to and from them, and copy between real and virtual diskettes. I've successfully run this on Windows 98se, 2000, and XP. So you could write a program on the Color Computer, save it to virtual diskette on your PC hard drive, and then copy your programs to a real Color Computer diskette (if you have access to a 5.25" DS/DD PC drive). Or you could copy the files to a real Color Computer using drive wire or some other cable transfer utility. http://www.classiccmp.org/cpmarchives/trs80/mirrors/www.discover-net.net/~dmkeil/coco/index.htm F5 - configure the virtual Color Computer (swap joysticks from left to right port, invert colors, etc...) F4 - add cartridge (for disk drive support, add the virtual disk controller cartridge) F9 - From here you can place a virtual diskette in the drive. F10 - reset the virtual Color Computer There are two version of the emulator. One emulates the Color Computer 2 and the other emulates the Color Computer 3.

Since some of us collectors are now getting a chance to use computing platforms that we didn't really get much hands-on exposure to way back when, it would be nice if there were "top 20 commands" guides for the various retro-computers. These are great ways to distill the information you'd normally see in a book, down to a page or two. Examples include: http://www.blitter.com/~nebulous/coco.html http://www.blitter.com/~nebulous/amiga.html http://www.blitter.com/~nebulous/msdos.html http://www.oldsoftware.com/Commtips.html (a bit wordy, but still cool) Does anyone have or know of anything like this for other machines? Atari, Apple II, Vic 20, NEC PC-88, TI-99/4A, TRS-80 Model series, Commodore PET, Adam, MSX, etc...

Aw man! Someone totally needs to do a sci-fi movie with people walking around talking on cell phones with little Atari logos on them. That would be soooo cool.

That would be awesome. XP is actually a pretty good O/S, so to optimize it like that would be very cool. And if it included multi-core optimization as well, then it could beat Win7 at its own game. I recall back in the day, some programmers in Germany re-did Windows 98 in assembly language and managed to squeeze it down to six 3.5" DS/HD floppy disks. They did it to prove a point. It didn't include all the driver support and stuff like that, but was impressive nonetheless.

You're most welcome. https://archive.org/ has lots of stuff too, including ZZap!64, Byte, and a ton of other classics.

Yeah, Gravitar is brutally hard. I absolutely LOVE the game though. Apparently the later planets are invisible. As if it wasn't tough enough already

Here's something of interest for the retrogamers out there: https://archive.org/stream/starlog_magazine-071/071#page/n25/mode/2up I also recommend the magazines Electronic Games, JoyStik, and Electronic Fun: http://www.digitpress.com/library/magazines/ Has anyone else spotted cool articles on video games from the late 1970s and early 1980s?