rpiguy9907

Looks very much like a rebadged Focus Pro keyboard.

30 years later the C128 finally pays off for gaming! I know there were a few that used the borders trick, but nothing this impressive.

It is super impressive. It is an exact copy of Super Mario, which was released 5 years after the C64 on a dedicated game machine with more sprites, more colors, more tiles, more sound channels, and a 70% faster processor. If you run this on a C128 it uses the 2mhz borders trick and you get no slowdowns.

Some of the early arcade ports like Mario Bros and PopEye are very good. Qbert and Frogger were also excellent on the C64. This s a good starting place for you: https://www.lemon64.com/games/votes_list.php

Ironically, in the early days DOS was simple but price was the barrier. By the time PC prices came down enough for home users, DOS had grown very complex and there was a usability barrier. DOS was incredibly simple until the 286 came along and suddenly memory management became a thing. There was hardly anything for the home user to configure, didn't really need to fiddle with config.sys or AUTOEXEC.BAT (in fact I believe these weren't even in the early versions of DOS). TSRs and drivers didn't really become necessary until the second half of the 80s. Early disk games auto-booted or required very simple commands to start.

What continent are you on? I normally dont part with CIAs but I will sell you one at a low price since youve stuck with this C64 instead of recycling it.

Thx too far for me!

Near Lebanon?

My parents over the years had accumulated savings bonds given to me by various relatives and turned them over to me when I turned 18. Being the responsible *cough* young person that I was, I immediately went out and bought a Pentium 75. The sysop of my favorite local BBS ran a 486DX/100 and was super jealous. I felt like a rich kid for once. It came with 8mb of RAM and I wanted 16mb for the upcoming Windows 95, so I scoured computer shopper for the cheapest memory. Fun times.

Thanks!

I am not actually a newb to the IIGS, Ive owned and used one for years BUT Ive never tried programming on it and I finally have some time to look into it and have a couple of questions: I presume the BASIC in ROM is identical to AppleSoft BASIC in other Apple IIs (no support for added memory, etc.)? But it will still work in fast mode right? Could be fun to try some slow BASIC games on a system a little faster than the other Apple IIs. What are my other options for BASIC? Are any of the options mostly Microsoft compatible? Thank you for any tips!

They are currently in a that odd, in-between state. Rare enough to be somewhat collectable, but not enough enthusiasts to make it really valuable. They usually sit on eBay between $100-300. Given how little software was every written for it, I think that is pretty fair. Since there is no larger retro-community around them you have to depend on manuals and old documents to figure out its workings. Luckily quite a few great resources were uploaded to Archive.org https://archive.org/details/apf_imagination_machine Happy reading!

Cool machine!

All early 128 motherboards have the wire off the z80 from the factory. None of the switch wires connect to the z80 as far as I can tell. I had the same thought though some kind of clock switch or an NTSC/PAL switch if such a mod existed.

No one to my knowledge had verified whether the RGB is converted to monochrome or if the colors are output to s-video. Monochrome would be easier of course, but color is not that difficult.