Keatah

Not really. Don't be fooled by "software emulator". Stella is rather advanced with a heritage going back 25+ years. Being strictly software so to speak, it continues to be expanded and updated as time goes on. I'm firmly in the software emulator camp for many reasons. SE has become more accurate and versatile in the past few years. And SE runs on all kinds of hardware that's available anywhere and everywhere.

The 70's and 80's styles rigs should have a rounded CRT. Especially anything monochrome. But there were a few terminals and the Model II that looked good with glarescreen/filter covering the CRT. If done right I suppose it would look ok. And if the LCD is IPS, then you get a residual glow too. Which is nice. I tried Star Raiders on a $1300 gaming IPS monitor and it was simply spectacular and gorgeous all around. Had some artifacting and blooming, 10% scanlines, and saturated colors. Looked even more retro when I set the phosphor to that blue'ish tint - but then it was monochrome. I generally only do real hardware for Apple II and vintage 486 & PIII era PCs. I've gotten away from repairing other systems because of the time and aging parts. More than just 1 or 2 parts are now being needed to restore a vintage system. I generally won't take apart a working system. But I will part out or strip down something that I feel needs more than an hour or two on the bench to get running. And most TRS-80 Model II and III units fall into this category. And that helps create a parts market for other hobbyists! It's all easy stuff, but tedious stuff. And I don't like tedium much at the present time.

Doom's world seems so much bigger on the PC. Expansive. Seemingly never ending because of the add-on episodes and missions. After all, Doom is native to the PC and that's where it's gonna shine.

Fair enough. Because that's what I was expecting - a high fidelity arcade port.

That's it! I knew it all along!

Do you play ZDoom? https://www.zdoom.org/index

Apple II 80-column text is barely readable through RF. But the text is perfectly readable over composite.

BITD I had VCS, Intellivision, and Odyssey2 as my first cartridge consoles. Played them all about 40/40/20 respectively. Enjoyed the Odysssey for what it was. We were way too young to appreciate the engineering features and tradeoffs that were present in these old consoles. But we tried. Our childish engineering analysis consisted of cracking open a given console and checking to see how many big(40), medium(24-28), small(14-18), and tiny(8) chips there were. We'd count the number of chips and the number of pins and plug it into this elaborate BASIC program which gave us a ranking of how smart the console was. A relative ranking if multiple consoles were evaluated at once. I only disliked the cart boxes. Had too many "!" in the descriptions. And the artwork was loud with the same color scheme from box to box. Whereas Intv and VCS boxes were color coded and it was easy to find the "red box" for Space Battle or Combat. Same applied to the cartridge labels. O2 had a place in our electronic gaming experiences. And we loved its futuristic look.

For the nostalgia, true enough. For the practicality and space-savings, not a chance. I was reading through some Atari 8-bit hardware threads and learning about how some folks add more and more hardware to their rig till it stops working. That's not for me anymore. I've done Apple II emulation on R-Pi. Not my first choice, Windows is. Because of familiarity and drag'n'drop capabilities.

Absolutely. Rightsizing and downsizing and tailoring a collection to one's taste is becoming more and more prevalent among people who've had the stuff for ages. Especially stuff that has remain unused for years. I know that if I ever start selling any Apple II material it'll be non-stop till it's reduced to what I had as a kid in the 70's & 80's. After all, some of it hasn't been used in years. Decades.

I have to second this. And not just the keyboard. There's so many other aspects that make original Doom "Doom". OPL-3 FM synthesizer sounds. Disk-access icon. Additional wads and mods. VGA'ish graphics. Not forgetting the freshness of a new genre of games.

In the 70's and 80's we always dreamed of having sharper and just plain'ol better video out from our consoles & computers. But we rarely spent effort to achieve that. VGA and S-Video and Composite displays/televisions were available then but not so much the modifications and converters to complete the interface. Not even the simple 1-transistor VCS composite converter. We were happy with RF. And that's what the games were designed for. Mods as we know them today came about from the necessity to move toward modern displays - which increasingly lack the classic inputs. And it was this slow evolution throughout the 2010s that drove the popularity of mods. The necessity to play and not the improved image quality is what's behind everything ranging from the 1-transistor mod through the FrameMeister through the latest open-source converter. --- For those of you wanting consistent sub-millimeter pixel-perfect accuracy worthy of microscopic examination, there's nothing better than a software emulator running on an HDMI display. Without filters You can see your game in all its blocky ugliness. And more. We wanted that back in the day. Not so much today. At the other end of the spectrum most emulators today allow for tuning and flavouring of their outputs. Replicating subtle 20% scanlines, NTSC fringing and artifacting, blurring and blooming, distortion filters, CRT-masking, achieving beautiful color saturation and contrast.. All in a day's work for the best emulators. Not to mention the upcoming HDR option already in some emulators. Not to blow your eyes out with mega-saturation or brightness, but to give the best possible contrast & saturation across a consoles entire palette and final CRT output. And it is this way (through a GPU outputting to VGA or HDMI) that I found the perfect display. Adjustable to look like vintage RF or any standard thereafter. So for most things NES/SNES and earlier I prefer RF. Or the RF look through emulation.

Gyruss on the NES. The ships look nothing like the Arcade. And they don't even have rotational capability. It's a reimagined rewrite at best.

Documentation update/correction. The data isn't stored in the stella.pro file anymore is it?

Not exactly. There's always going to be a desktop and windows and a mouse in, well, windows.. I prefer this setup for extra amenities of some emulators like Applewin, Winuae, and Altirra & Stella. Kinda grew up that way from the late 1990's. It does, minus the initial prep of the SDcard and controller setup. Why not watch some youtube vids to see it in action!

MiSTer is certainly easier than R-Pi. And I can recommend it. And Windows is 100% easier than anything else, so I recommend that too. The Intel NUCs I've been giving to others have gotten nothing but praise. Super reliable - familiarity of Windows - tiny - unobtrusive. And the new 11th Gen models are better than ever. Though the 7th Gen models continue to remain quite viable. The "crappy" 630HD graphics is surprisingly adept at video decoding and shader operations. More than enough for MAME. And an 8th Gen i7 pulls thousands of FPS in Altirra or Stella, so.. As far as I'm concerned Linux is too hard and too techy for home users that need to adjust and configure things.

Earth Friend Mission and F-14 Tomcat. Both are vector graphic flight simulator styled games.

I didn't bother with those, as they're bus/slot connected. Beyond my programming experience. But the serial (aluminum ingot) Hayes SmartModems can be connected to some emulators.

The 500/560/600 series you mean? --- I just got a HP2225C, its as vintage an inkjet you can get. Parallel, dip switches, manual for IBM PC, with a section on Apple II. Love it!

And mysterious. Feeding in audio frequencies from those RadioShack project kits and makeshift antennas was how I conducted my own make-believe SETI project back in the day. That modems work in the audio range was key. But I didn't understand it all till 81' - 82'. Still have my D.C. Hayes MicroModem II and AppleCat II (with all accessories). Love the colorful discrete parts on both pieces of the MMII.