Nebulon

I'm actually finding quite a few games on the Atari ST that -- to my knowledge -- weren't released on the Amiga. Official releases of games like Missile Command, Moon Patrol, and Asteroids. Oids, of course. And a variety of arcade clones that are unique to the ST (like Kid Kong). And yes, there are also some that were released for both systems that seem to run a bit better on the ST (Death Sword Barbarian and Time Bandit for instance). I imagine those are typically games that were originally written for the ST and then ported to the Amiga... games that just relied on the 68000 and not much else. The experience of using an Atari ST or STe is (for me) quite a different experience than using an Amiga.

I've heard of people transferring files back and forth using ZMODEM. Of course, this assumes that your PC has a serial port. There's also something called GhostLink. I plan to try out both methods in a couple of months from now. https://www.jamesfmackenzie.com/2016/02/06/use-rs232-serial-cable-and-ghostlink-to-transfer-files-from-pc-to-st/

FloImg seems to work well for .ST files : https://www.atariuptodate.de/en/4137/floimg http://atari.8bitchip.info/floimgd.php

Well, there's 14 GB worth located here: https://archive.org/details/Atari_ST_TOSEC_2012_04_23

Ah yes. I recall the day I went out and purchased an 8087 for my amazing Comtex Turbo XT (a PC with a convenient flip-open case). The redraw times in CAD were crazy-fast after installing it.

The GPU hogging the bus in the Amiga is an option. You can switch it to an interrupt mode instead and let the CPU take bus cycles and still run software. It's up to the programmer. That and the Blitter and 68000 are cycle-interleaved. https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1985-12_201502/BYTE-1985-11_Vol%2010-12_Graphics_Hardware#page/n189/mode/2up

Which reminds me, I still want to try to get better at Blitz BASIC. The results some people have been able to get from that language are pretty amazing. Like the nifty OCS version of Defender on this page: http://www.blitter.com/~nebulous/amiga-games01.html In other news, I tried running Mac OS 7.5 on the Amiga 4000/040 recently. An interesting experiment, but not terribly practical from what I can tell so far.

I loaded up LightWave 3D v 3.5 a few times in the last while to see how far I could push organic modeling with it. It's actually surprisingly capable. As for rendering though, it's awfully slow by today's standards. Still though, it's fun to see what can be done with such an old 3D app. Other than that, I sometimes use the Amiga 4000 and the DSS8+ as a real-time audio effects module. There's something trippy about the delay-reverb on that thing.

Well, in case you change your mind, you can always get an Amiga 500 for cheap. E.g.) - Amiga 500 - Extra 512K RAM - 8372A Blitter (easy to replace the old one with this and then you'll have the choice of NTSC or PAL) - Commodore 1084 monitor (or Magnavox 8CM515). Both monitors work in NTSC/PAL 60/50Hz. - Commodore Amiga power supply for whatever region you're in (both the 50 and 60Hz versions will work on any A500). - Actual Amiga mouse or one of the adapters on ebay that let you use PC optical mice on Amiga computers. As for emulation, it's okay for some stuff. I still find it a bit choppy at times. Tip: If you get a real Amiga, make sure you don't plug anything into the serial or parallel ports while it's powered on.

I was just about to recommend that exact same book! That's one of the best PC hardware books that I've encountered over the years.

Discovering that not only are the graphics and sounds in the C64 version of Satan's Hollow nearly identical to the arcade machine, so is the timing -- to the point where launching a shot on the second screen as the music ends is just as effective at colliding with the baddie as on the arcade machine. Talk about attention to detail on the part of the programmer.

Here's a what-if scenario. What if the new capacitors that you purchase are not as robust as the ones already in the machine. Based on the leaky capacitor fiasco in the 1990s, that's always a possibility... On that note, I have a Commodore 1942 monitor that probably needs its capacitors replaced (the screen 'jumps' from time to time). If anyone has any tips on re-capping those monitors, I'm all ears.

Cosmic Cruncher Chess Donkey Kong -- all VIC-20

Tried it out today. Holy smokes, it really is almost arcade-perfect. Very impressive!

https://youtu.be/h4rU9BjLOE0?t=1447

Is there a currently-working link for this? Looks intriguing.

So in RS-DOS when I type DIR 3 or DRIVE 3 (for example) that's not enough? Do you mean that something has to be done on the server side over and above inserting a virtual diskette?

Oh my goodness, what's this? "we believe the CoCo also has a good future, even though it may share some of it's "high end" buyers with the Tandy 1000." -- Tandy Executive Ed Juge. And this is in reference to the Color Computer 2. As we know, the Color Computer 3 narrowed the gap even more. Yes, the 1000 series was a bit long-in-the-tooth by the time the Color Computer 3 hit the market, but I recall the concern at the Radio Shack retail level about people opting to play their Quest games on a CoCo 3 instead of a (still available) Tandy 1000 machine. Would you rather sell a $500.00 machine or a $1000.00 machine? So I don't find the idea of concern regarding overlap between the platforms at a head-office level to be surprising.

Oh really? "There is a real 256 color mode in there. I was hoping someone would discover it. It’s a real byte level pixel, 320×200 mode. It uses a yyyyyrgb format, 5 bits of intensity, 3 bits of color. The mode is rather complicated to get to and did not work reliably on the first run of GIME chips and its been too long, I don’t remember the sequence anymore and I got overruled by Roach on the disclosure of the mode because it was too much competition with the 1000. It’s really the last secret in the Color Computer 3."

Pac-Man Qix Pole Position All on the Atari 400.

So I'm using a Cloud-9 RGB cable on a 512K Color Computer 3 with a Commodore 1080 monitor and some of the colors are missing. Has anyone else had similar problems? A good example is King's Quest IV on the screen with the stone house belonging to the big hairy dude. That's to the south one screen and over to the east a few more screens. In my case, the darker shade of grey on the stone is not there, the darker red on the logs is missing, the darker green trim around the grass is gone, and the darker shade of blue for the background trees is missing. If I switch to composite, it looks fine. And if I use the original Tandy RGB cable it also looks fine with all colors displayed properly.

I was thinking of the Grumpy Cat meme at the time: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Grumpy-Cat-Fleece-Throw-Blanket/dp/B00O2JLKW2 To be more clear, the Color Computer 3 was competing more with the Commodore 128. Both start with 128K are expandable to 512K and both systems address the 80-column issue in their own ways. At the end of the day though, the Tandy Color Computer line is really its own 'thing'. Pretty different from the other systems of its time. However, after seeing the Sierra games on the Color Computer 3, I can see why Tandy was afraid that it might steal sales from the Tandy 1000 line of computers.

I'm using DriveWire 3 on a 512K Color Computer 3 and drive 0 works fine. However, if I put a virtual RS-DOS diskette into drives 1, 2, or 3, they pull up a blank directory. For some reason I can only read and load from disks in the first virtual drive. Anyone else run into this issue?

No.

Lots of Tandy Color Computer and peripheral info here: http://os9projects.com/CD_Archive/TUTORIAL/COCO/LITTLEWONDER/Cocobook-TLW2.pdf