Keatah

MAME was nostalgic back in the 1990's precisely because it allowed us to play arcade games we would never again (and still don't) see in an arcade today. It seemingly came out of nowhere. Long after we had disbanded our school gangs. Long after after the arcade establishments began replacing vectors with rasters. Just in time to save us from the onslaught of those dumb-ass fighting games. We never needed more than the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat series. Arguably Primal Rage I and II. Yet they proliferated across the scene like an airborne virus. Playing all the arcade games we did as kids would require travel to many different locations. Some way across town. Others inter-state. Playing one after another is impossible without a StarTrek style transporter. Today some 25+ years later MAME is nostalgic again, in a slightly different way. This time it would be nostalgic for the times of rediscovering that those games are coming home for a 2nd round. And while it is not the exact precise 80's arcade experience - it's better in many ways. The convenience and reliability being the advantages. The choice of food and music and other environmental accoutrements completely customizable. No longer would I need to slip'n'slide my way through a snowstorm or have fear of getting blown away in Tornado Alley in order to get to the arcade. Not to mention begging for rides as a 12-year old. Or having to BMX 3 miles one way. No sir! Today it's game time and tea time combined into one afternoon. Anytime. Anywhere.

Altirra is a key software component in my childhood dream of building an all-in-one "James Bond suitcase". The goal being to play all the videogames of the 70's and 80's with one piece of hardware. Back then it would have been prohibitively expensive. If at all technologically possible. Today the necessary parts and hardware are commonplace hobbyist material. And it's all portable.

It is! But on the other-hand it affords great versatility if you're willing to learn how it works.

I completely can't download this game.

Ooof that orange inverse is hard to read..

They have not. Been following the project since 1996 and the hierarchical levels of config files and prioritization remains as lousy as ever.

Love the ongoing work with this emulator. Like I say I don't pretend to understand 50% of it. But all of the pieces seem to come together for a great user experience. Especially all the menu/customization options.

Most all of my computing in the 80's was done on the Apple II, gaming, word processing, bbs'ing, print shopp'ing, programming, all that! (And Amiga for some graphics..) But emulating stuff wasn't in there - unless you count CP/M with a Z-80 card.. The Apple II just wasn't powerful enough. Sure I had stints with the Atari 400/800, C64, and other micros. But I could really only pay full attention to one machine. Two absolute tops. I recall my first try at emulating something was running 8088 PC software on the 68000 Amiga. It was a lousy failure-filled experience. First I got thrown out of the computer store for trying to make a copy of the Amiga Transformer. And later when I *did* get a copy I couldn't get the fuck'n thing to work for a long while. And when I did, it sucked and ran like 500 kHz something or other. I think I got MS-DOS to boot and that was it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emulation_on_the_Amiga#Amiga_Transformer I wouldn't revisit emulation till I got a hold of Microsoft Arcade and 2600 Activision ActionPacks. MSArcade wasn't really an emulator, but Windows 3.1 rewrites of BattleZone, Tempest, MissileCommand, Centipede, and Asteroids. In any case I was slapphappy to have it. And the ActionPacks taught me about ROMZ as we discoverlearned that there were multiple parts to this puzzle, executable and game-data. It was thrilling to get a rom from another game like Combat or Outlaw to run. Not everything ran, and I had to learn about bankswitching to match up roms that would work. Then PCAE, Z26, MAME, DASARCADE, SPARCADE, COLEMDOS, and more, came along. And the scene took off. That's true. At the time we didn't think anything of it. Newsgroups and newsletters. That was all for exotic professional programmers. Educators and professors working in BIG science labs like in the beginning of 2010: Odyssey Two. Absolutely not for us arcade junkies and school dropouts! That's right. I didn't think about CPU power & emulators together in one thought train. I was just happy to afford a 486, and then a Pentium II/III. Just happy to have seen the scene explode as it did. Wasn't concerned about CPU power for emulators till well into 2015. In today's state of affairs most emulators can fit inside the L2/L3 caches. Or the upcoming on-board HBM. Theoretically of course.

Are you in setup-mode? Left difficulty switch.. https://archive.org/details/Video_Chess_1978_Atari/page/n3/mode/2up

What makes it even more magical is that emulation came on the scene in the mid-1990's. That was a time sufficiently distant from the late 1970's and early 1980's. 15-20 years distant. Time enough to build nostalgia and a longing for games you thought you'd never ever ever see again. Games lost to time. The early arcade stuff. The first console stuff. All of it was beginning to show up on the PC. And PC was making great technological strides. Except for Pentium 4, what a lousy processor! There were several years where each month saw a significant amount of material being added. Even on a weekly basis sometime. While the pace has slowed today. Refinement and versatility popularity are on the upswing. Everybody respects emulation now, both software and fpga simulation alike. And software emulators are gaining new features with ever-increasing attention to detail like wide-gamut HDR rendering - thanks to Windows 10 and continued evolution of the ubiquitous i-series microprocessors. Having been at the forefront of emulation's early days was almost as exciting at bringing home the VCS from Venture or Turn-Style. Typical 1970's department stores for those not in the know.. And subsequently acquiring and exploring new cartridges. Almost.

Emulation's key strengths remain versatility, reliability, and convenience. Through those qualities it has gained widespread acceptance. With pervasive presence, everyone is either using it in some form or developing or curating. Thus there's always something new to discover and re-discover.

What were those older formats?

Don't recall anyone ever hooking a DISK II to a MAC. Nor do I recall any MAC having a 6502 onboard for that purpose. MAC has been 3.5" from the start.

Been a charter member of ebay since back in the day when MAME was a new thing. I only filed a few complaints for stuff that never arrived (seller never shipped) or stuff packaged so bad it couldn't survive the ride to the post office. Always gave the seller time and a heads-up there was a problem. Most of them give the run-around saying a refund is on the way. Or they simply stop communicating. Always been impressed with how easy it was/is to get a refund once ebay gets involved. Takes a little time, go through the process and waiting periods, but they always sided with me.

I hated that and was surprised they'd do such a move on what was supposed to be a cutting-edge graphics computer. After getting duped (as kids) by the 5200 being an 8-bit computer in disguise we latched on to looking for things like that. From then on we looked to see if our purchases could properly be expanded and not pigeonholed into one product line. For a while this extended all the way down to cables and controllers. The 80186 was hugely popular in custom test instruments, controllers, and other industrial stuff. It failed in the consumer arena because it was not software compatible with the 8088/8086. Something to do with the memory layout IIRC. Anyways.. The consumer sphere thought it not a mainstream processor by any means. And by being semi-custom it didn't have enough design flexibility for consumer products. Sometimes it's best to have things broken down into more granular modules & chips rather than all-in-one solutions.

As a kid I was always dumbfounded as to why it had to have its own CPU. And despite that it ran so much slower than Apple's Disk II. The Disk II was cost-cutting in an elegant way. Not too many products are like that. It only cost $100 - $125 to make them. And they sold them initially at around $500. A cash cow 2BSHUR. The drive is slick because the console's 6502 becomes part of the drive when you need to access it. It sets the stage for the timing and therefore nothing else takes place during read/write. I have a patched firmware in the //e that allows for a real backspace/delete as we know it today. I seem to recall some WP software that did similar.

Dunno if there'd be any problem. Would need to study the datasheet. I don't recall Apple ever using them on the //e. And I never heard of anyone re-flashing them.

Anyone ever try 28cXX & 28XX EEPROMS in a //e? These would be for the enhancement roms and peripheral card roms.

The CFFA3000 is/was the gold standard for flash-storage on the Apple II. No longer in production, and stupid high prices on ebay. Beginning at $400 and ending around $600-$1000. Check here for yet another alternative. https://www.bigmessowires.com/floppy-emu/

Clock maybe? And that enhancement kit. Should be able to find the roms for $12 and 65c02 for $3-$10 on ebay. But beware of remarked CPUs. Run APPLE //e diagnostics to test the 65c02. And it should run cold. Or go to reactive micro to get all 4 chips and a sticker for $25 in one go. Less chance of remarked and low quality crap from RM. Or you can burn your own roms. The files are readily available. Joystick and paddles, too, but they're stupid expensive on ebay and I don't recommend buying those from there.

Yes. $25 is a fair price.

Seems that at time goes on, soldering will become more and more of a necessary skill in this hobby. Same with basic electronics knowledge and DMM use. Especially if you're messing with 45 year old hardware. It wouldn't cost much to get a basic tool kit and some junk boards to practice on. And if you get the hang of it and like it, get more professional-grade tools. A trick I learned early on is understanding surface tension and how fluids flow. You're kinda doing the same thing with soldering.