Keatah

It's been fun watching it evolve over the past 20+ years. Pretty much this. There are two Gold Standards for the VCS, IMHO. The original early model VCS consoles themselves like the H6 or L6. And modern-day emulation via Stella. Ohh there's one in there. MMmmHmm. It's in there. MMhhmm.. AND I'M GONNA FIND IT!!

As alluded to earlier we're big boys now and don't furiously pirate stuff like we did after school and all that. Besides there's a ton of stuff out there, several lifetimes in fact, to enjoy. So if something isn't made easily available most of us just forget about it an play something that is. As far as all this online cartridge stuff, and NFT, and Q-Code paper cartridges goes, it's interesting. Even amusing. But I don't think it catches my fancy. Despite all the cleverness and futurism surrounding it all it seems meh. It certainly doesn't ignite my imagination like the original hardware did back in the day. I do enjoy the Harmony/ARM games though. It *IS* something I imagined back in the day. An "intelligent" ROM that could change its data output in realtime. To conduct and orchestrate the VCS internals in far more complex ways than a standard static program in a ROM could ever hope. Didn't know what to call it back then or explain it much beyond what I just said. Harmony/ARM has been around long enough now to consider it a true upgrade to the VCS. It's part of the 2600 infrastructure. And I don't see it as an accelerator (70MHz) at all. So. I'm going to play VCS either on original hardware or through simulation of that hardware via Stella.

The results of the logic gates are represented in the FPGA as truth tables. It isn't the exact circuit replication. Far from it. Just the functionality as seen on paper. When I want speed on a classic system I turn to emulation. I can have a 1GHz 6502 in Applewin on an i9. 500MHz on an older i5/i7. A beautiful thing to render 3D spirographs, lissajous spirals, bessels, and ripples in realtime with Applesoft BASIC. Things we only imagined as kids. Absolutely right. This incongruity arises at many points on many systems. While I'm all for speed and such, too much simply changes your original rig into something too far removed from what it was. I like classic systems for what they were. This state of affairs is common with accelerators. Even in the Apple II. The accel cards of the day took over and ignored the main memory and cpu. They just slowed down to interface with the expansion cards and other existing peripherals. It really isn't the original console doing any work anymore.

..and digital hoarders hate collections because of the sprawling mess a physical collection can become. There are! Made several 3-ring binders dedicated to certain favorite programs and program groups. Something that looks nice on a shelf. Something to go through the ritual of inserting a cartridge-like box into a machine. Something to provide physicality. And real printed-on-paper manuals & reference cards. As for which way it has to be. Well. That doesn't matter! It can be any damned well way you desire.

I did! Truth be told however I liked seeing them in action in the Chess Challengers from Fidelity. No vintage processor is truly bad except for the Pentium IV - that's one I hate and despise to the nth degree.

..and a sweet machine it is!

Reminds me of fighter jets and special planes like the SR-71. They look flightworthy in the museum. But under the skin they've been irreparably chopped and sliced. The main structural parts, no matter how repaired, outside of prohibitively expensive total replacement, would never be able to bear the same stresses and loads. I'm fairly certain the remaining space shuttles had their real engines removed prior to display. So as to recover the hardware for use in the disposable SLS. Yes. I had lovely delusions of grandeur about having Jobs and Woz visit my awesome Apple II collection years ago! Had a whole shelf of games and boxes of hardware and spare parts for the future. I don't think any of them gave a shit.. I like telling the story of classic games through document scans, images, photos, and hands-on play via emulation. It can be done at a pace works for everyone.

I suppose it would depend on the intended mode of demonstration. If you're demonstrating how a motherboard layout looked when it rolled off the assembly line. Then nothing but 100% authentic (or authentic-looking) parts would do. They may not have to work. But they better look 100% real down to the shape of the solder and glossy markings or laser-etched markings on the chips. If you are preserving and demonstrating the functionality of a device, then it may not matter what it looks like on the inside. As long as it functions like the original and conveys the meaning and aura then FPGA could replace some parts. I consider my emulation rig in the latter category. An Intel NUC or Shuttle XPC certainly don't look like a VCS on the inside. But they play VCS games reasonably well. Perhaps well enough to illustrate what it was like to be playing in 1977. Granted the boxes, cartridges, and maybe the same controllers aren't there. Neither is the experience of inserting a cart and reading the instructions identical. Also missing is the sound of the silver slide switches. But the essence of the game is there. And in that way it's definitely more than passable.

I once spoke with someone that was maintaining computers for a museum and the issue of batteries came up. I was horrified to see some boards with those leaky vartabombs and even super old coin cells. They refused to change them out. They cited authenticity. And, get this, authenticity of its future destiny. They said if it's destined to corrode in that area then that is what MUST take place. We won't interrupt the aging process.

That's simple solid advice.

Not sure I'm impressed or anything. It's like regular watercooling for a PC.

This is a good CP/M board. Is it a revision K? If so, even better.

Re-capping is a necessary activity in vintage electronics. Things made of certain plastics and capacitors with electrolytes will degrade over time and that simply must be addressed. It's not a big deal. If authenticity is important, like I said earlier, then put the old parts in a baggie and tape it to the inside of the device or something. The only practical reason to keep the old parts (or not replace them) is for photo ops and documenting revisions and manufacturing issues. That sort of thing. One other thing of concern are Flash ROMs, EPROMS, and EEPROMS. Those have a short life compared to ROMs and PROMS. Charge dissipation and insulation breakdown being the culprits. Now.. Silicon parts like transistors and logic/cpu chips, and resistors, and ceramic capacitors, are projected to have a life of over 100-200 years. Masked ROMS and diode arrays likely even longer, as long as the materials hold up. And recent longevity testing shows even this to be conservative.

A setup doesn't always have to be aesthetically pleasing - unless that's something specific you're trying to achieve. BITD I had consoles piled on top consoles and cartridges and boxes strewn everywhere. Complete opposite of what I got going today.

You mean as in the anti-bloat software crowd. You know as well as I that emulators have nothing to do with this upcoming release.

Well at least this isn't looking like million dollar production. Like that adventure game that lurched out of a kickstarter and fell flat - that's something we just don't want.

I suppose so. I didn't really take note how lousy the Z80 was when directly compared to a 6502. ..In the MHz department.. What would those instructions be?

There were CP/M cards going up to 7 or 8 MHz IIRC.

The extent of my programming experience with the AMD was through Applesoft. I doubt it however, because, the 2901 was a module, 1 part of many, of a complete microprocessor made from several ICs. The 9511/2 are complete solutions on a chip needing only glue logic. Right. And no one really used the powerful 4MHz (and faster) Z-80's on the CP/M cards for anything other than CP/M. The 6809 fared little better. There were 68000 boards almost exclusively used in data acquisition. ZipGS accelerator cards were popular for a while and selling for near $1000 on ebay not long ago. They've fallen off the map these days it seems. I assume that faster/different processors changed the essence of the II series too much.

Yes. And mold can transfer from one disk to the next, or leave enough behind on the head to where it fucks up the next disk. Promise you that. So after trying to read a non-readable disk (especially one starting to shed the dried lube coating, binders, and oxides) a head cleaning is required. No way around it unless you want to start damaging the next disk. As a matter of fact, I'm doing head cleanings inbetween most (but not all) disks now. Not extensive runs or anything, just a few seconds of alcohol/silicone/water mix on a head cleaning disk. Enough to wipe away the shedding material. It's not the like carefree days of the 80's and swapping disks by the boxfulls during 2am warez sessions. This is just how some old disks need to be handled. Most are now over 40 years age!

Still have my California Computer Systems 7781 ALU board, uses the AMD 9511 chip. Very little commercial software recognized the board, if any. But the documentation was good and many scientific graphing applications were written as needed. Not much of that material survives today. It integrated rather well with Applesoft BASIC straight away. Those would be bit-slice processors. Tempest used 4x 2901 to construct a 16-bit machine. Replicating those chips' functions in fpga should be simple enough. I mean MiSTer simulates micros like the Amiga and Mac and even a 486 system. And mame has been doing atari mathbox for over 20 years now.

Agree. Any misstep by non-IBM compatibles was enough to resign them to also-ran status. And anything "Z-80" in the mid-80's was long in the tooth. With the exception of Apple. Apple's products were very well polished and functional. Yes. Standards made the PC standard. And to fulfill the promise of interconnectivity (in its infancy with BBSes) standards had to be developed or allowed to evolve. This was painfully evident when transitioning from say a Vic-20 to C64 to Amiga. Or migrating 8-bit anything to 16-bit anything. Well, you couldn't. You had to manually redo everything. Re-write everything. By not pushing state-of-the-art performance limits, the PC afforded stability. A necessary quality for those standards to emerge and stabilize. Another thing is that the few custom chips Intel made, like the DMA & memory map controllers or keyboard/interrupt controllers were so numerous and omnipresent they were treated like generic off-the-shelf TTL logic.

Bad caps in a power supply can cause other parts to blow apart, like transistors and monolithic regulators. For authenticity, just keep the old parts and make a repair log.