Keatah

When emulators first got CRT & NTSC effects I sucked it all up and tended to go full throttle. Who can blame me? It was a novelty. Today I use them gently and sparingly, like fine spices. Effects & filters add ambiance and flavor. Some I don't use at all, like geometrical distortions. A perfectly proportioned image is something I wanted since B/W TVs were a thing.

How so? There's gotta be "something".. What is it?

Why not? It's present-day commodity technology. Because there is no need to make it bigger and more expensive than it is. You can always commission someone to aggregate the parts, assemble it all into a turn-key box for you.

There's mostly no flicker, with the exception of the cursor. Think about that for a minute. 32 chess pieces, every type of piece is distinct, identifiable and none of them flickers. The cursor flickers, but that's okay; cursors are supposed to flicker. This is impressive and practical though easy to see how it was done. I truly love how each piece is readily identifiable. No one piece looks like the other and that means no distractions trying to figure out what's what. I would like to see a text menu and many many more chess options and games and variations. Nothing need be done with the game board. It. Just. Works.

So very true because there is no fantasy, no abstraction, lesser creativity.

Pretty certain that most Apple II+ units will have at least a Revision-1 motherboard.

A huge mishmash from my journal. Unfortunately the best of times with modems (for us) revolved around the Hayes MicroModem II. It was a vehicle of imagination and discovery. There's some 'Cat stuff in here. But it's mostly utilitarian.

Working fine. So is the download page http://forums.xgecu.com/viewthread.php?tid=20&page=1&extra=#pid23

Got to thinking if I would ever build or buy another vintage DOS gaming system. The answer to both is maybe, but not likely. Emulation and virtualization on modern hardware is very good and continually improving. But maintaining my 486 and Pentium III would be a definite yes. These are machines already built. The familiarity factor is high. The cache of spare parts a respectable size. Including some lesser and greater versions of those spare parts. The PC architecture and precise experience we had in the 90's was varied. As is emulation today today. Stuff is not 100% exact and true to the form of yesteryear. But then neither was going from system to system back then. Many different flavors. What is consistent is the software. It still creates the moods and atmospheres we had. It still operates the same way.

Have a thermal printing calculator that uses high voltage to spark against aluminum powdered paper. A 9v battery will also short and spark against it.

I'm too lazy. Anyone care to briefly highlight the differences between Epson MX and Epson FX?

Today it's almost a masochistic act. There are millions of possible configurations. And god-like knowledge of limitations of components of the era is seemingly required. It's a lot to take in at one time. But over the years everything you learn fits together nicely. Having hands-on experience from back in the day is valuable. As is reading those "Upgrading and Repairing PCs - XX'th Edition by Scott Mueller & published by QUE" bibles. It be like what are the 5 differences between 3 and 9 chip 30-pin SIMMs? The first point is power consumption. The other 4 points are timing related. You won't find that information anywhere else but in a databook, if they're generous to dedicate a few pages to it. Most don't. And to make matters more difficult you're likely going to be using used parts from ebay. When something isn't right, is it inherently incompatible? Or is it faulty? That interesting. Because I say if that level of replication is needed, then equal attention would also be required to recreate the vintage environment and "aura of the day". That's going to be even harder because so much non-computer stuff needs attention. Size and shape of your room The weather The foods you ate Familial status Political environment Wants and desires of the day ..and likely so much more! That sameness throughout a product line is cause for stagnation. It's why those platforms didn't survive, whereas the PC kept growing and expanding. DOSBox and PCEM (and other virtualization & emulation tools) are indeed important tools in getting that old software running. Especially on the latest i9 systems. DOSBox itself is almost old enough to be vintage itself. I personally like the more accurate timing in PCEM however. And I wish both had a faster development pace.

An amusing point of contention.. All those zealots and loudmouths complaining about purity.. FPGA simulation and Software Emulation are equally fake and no more real than a 3rd party remake. So complaining about a front-end? Liken it to a 1st world problem!

What a contrast in styling!

In the years prior to me getting my own 486 I had messed around with various 8088 through 486SX models here and there. Just casually enough to develop a layman's familiarity. Not really getting into ecosphere too much. It was simply out of my price range. I had blown too much on the Amiga - trying to make it fit into my work style. Ultimately it was a dead end. It was now the Spring of 1992 give or take, in the Northern Hemisphere. Seeing the constant progress of PC tech was bunching my panties but good. There was all this cool astronomy stuff like for charting the stars, predicting planetary motions, and eclipses, and other stellar phenomena. And of course fractals. That a computer chip (an arbitrary CPU) could "understand" natural things was impressive and intriguing. Endlessly fascinating. Especially with the likes of Dance Of the Planets and Fractint. Both simulacra and models of nature. I started the process of coalescing (in my mind) what kind of PC I could afford. At that instant in time, around May of 92 I started reading came across this Byte article. It explained about Intel's new 486 clock doubled chips. You could use slower cost-effective memory with a fast internal core speed. And it had 8KB of cache AND a floating point unit too! It was like magic and I stopped bouncing back'n'forth between a 386 and 486. I kinda liked the look of the Gateway 2000 stark-white case. So I began pricing it. It was almost affordable and in a few months I would have saved enough. In the months ahead the priced dropped slightly and I would collect literature about contemporary hardware expansions of the day, and a few Gateway catalogs. Cirrus Logic brochures, Sound Blaster brochures, Western Digital brochures. And more! I would read them daily, just like I did when I was getting in the Apple II years earlier. Meanwhile discovering new software I couldn't wait to try out and actually use. When I got around to ordering it in October of 1992 the guy at Gateway made me feel like a million bucks when he went through the choices of hardware I could get. And then even more like two million bucks when he helped me pick out some Microsoft software (Word 2.0a) to be installed especially for me! And it was a free bonus! To be installed into Windows 3.1. Just for me. I was in the big leagues now. This came with a manual 400 pages thick. This was just too cool for school! Especially the school that threw me out of the computer lab. I could do real word processing again, unlike the endless frustration I was experiencing on the Amiga as I attempted to upgrade from Apple II. I never got rid of the Apple II, still have it all. Believe it or not, gaming had next to no influence on my PC purchase. It was driven by the want to get a good word processor and some hi-resolution graphics, along with the sciencey stuff. Games were nowhere to be found in the decision. I would discover and purchase some at the computer stores and stuff but PC gaming only became real when I got Doom. And I happened to have the hardware for it. There was no envy looking over my shoulder to see what configurations others had. If I saw lesser configurations we'd try and optimize as best we could. If I saw more advanced rigs, we'd try and optimize what I had and learn about the new machines. It was the early heydays all over again. This time commercialized to high heaven with multiple department stores like Comp-USA dedicated to selling PC stuff all over the place. There was no escape! I would go on to lust after the PentiumPro and eventually got a Pentium II 266. And upgraded from time to time since. I never made good on building the fantasy P-Pro machine even though I have most all the parts. I upgraded the 486 periodically with things like: Promise EIDE MAX ISA IDE interface for 2 more drives Snappy Digitizer 2nd Parallel port 540MB WD HDD Sound Blaster 16 w/ASP chip and 2x CD-ROM Wave Blaster MIDI daughtercard 14,400 baud internal modem Memory to 16MB via a semi-proprietary memory board hosting 8 additional 30-pin SIMMS STB Evolution ISA VGA 1MB board w/Cirrus Logic 5422 chipset Iomega Zip Drive HP 550 DeskJet printer CH 2-axis joystick 1.6 GB WD HDD Gravis Gamepad Small and slow CPU fan 64K -> 256K cache XT-IDE CF interface card and BIOS The original SIMMS are still present. Kept the old smaller cache chips. The original 200MB HDD is present as is the MIO-400K MultiFunction interface card. It originally came with MS-DOS 5.0. I've since upgraded to 6.22 and DoubleSpace. Thought about undoing the compression. Windows 3.1 remains. But I can stealth-boot Windows95 from the third HDD data/utility drive. All 3 HDDs are still present, with original period software installs. Have all the documentation for both hardware and software. Just two years ago I ran extensive diagnostics, conducted some minor repairs, and gave it a thorough cleaning. Have all the original documentation. The CrystalScan monitor needs recapping (when I have time). Have the original mouse and AnyKey keyboard. And spares of hard to find parts. Also imaged the EPROMS, FlashRoms, and drives. It's a keeper! https://archive.org/details/eu_BYTE-1992-05_OCR/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/eu_BYTE-1992-05_OCR/page/n181/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/eu_BYTE-1992-08_OCR/page/n53/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/eu_BYTE-1992-08_OCR/page/n54/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/eu_BYTE-1992-08_OCR/page/n57/mode/1up http://web.archive.org/web/20210116080952/https://arcscience.com/dance-of-the-planets/#display3

How about both? Or default to whatever is aesthetically pleasing?

Filesize shouldn't be an issue these days. Not in the days of 14,000,000,000,000 byte HDDs and more - costing $200 or less. I've seen 40MB scans of entire magazines, like Creative Computing. And they are essentially unreadable. Way way overcompressed. And these do a disservice to the community as they discourage anyone from making proper scans. Because, well, they're already done! Same thing with incomplete and partial (on purpose) scans.

That's what I was kinda asking. How much life is left in the current board? And how much resynthesizing of the cores will need to be done with a move to more capable hardware. With SoftwareEmulation it's usually nothing. With FPGA its usually a complete redo.

The worst kind is when you're endlessly sorting files, discover some new secret game or something found nowhere else. Then wake up and can't remember what it was. Or remember that it was only a dream. 2x worse is seeing the source code and not being able to transcribe it to the real world.

In this hobby I've been on all three sides. Less is more, more is less, and moderation is middle. More is less is depressing and costly. The stuff just keeps piling up. Even requiring a GPS just to navigate the map of your mind. It pulls at you from every direction - never letting you enjoy any one thing to make or relive the good times. Moderation is middle is a mix between happiness and frustration. Sometimes endless drifting and cycling through material. Always fighting and and balancing what you have with what you want with what to throw out. Fatiguing and tiresome. Potentially costly. And always annoying. Less is more is most rewarding and a happy place to be. You are permitted to work on a project to completion. Every meal is a banquet. Every purchase is well thought out. Even guilt-free. Software and games takes on new meaning as glut & excess is nowhere to be found.

The HeavySixer is the original console and brings a lot of ambient nostalgia with it. Technically it may produce a better RF signal with nicely saturated colors. And there was really minimal or no cost-cutting on it. My next choice is a LightSixer. Some design aesthetics of that model make up for it being the 2nd model and "not the original". The circuitry is similar. And the DB-9 connectors seem a little more accessible as opposed to being recessed like on the HS. Both HS and LS have the switches on the front. That is a key aspect and visual signature of what the VCS is. What the console stands for. Makes it easy to determine what game difficulty you're playing, "a" of "b". Both are also two boards. There's not enough connectors between them, just the ribbon cable, to make a two board design less reliable that a single board like in the Vader and all variants thereafter. In fact the two-board design is less prone to transmitting physical shock and vibration to the main PCB. The switches are more isolated. And of course there's the thicker Aluminum RF shield instead of that flimsy sheetmetal crap. The thick shield doesn't rust and doesn't need to be soldered/desoldered to work on. There's more minutiae but I'll leave it to others to discuss.

I have a general question about MiSTer's headroom. How much is there? I mean how complex of a system do we think it can handle? This is most likely based on the amount of gates and what the cores are using.

Good to see another MiSTer setup in action. I'm way way behind in setting up mine. Hopefully I can do something this summer. My plan is to build it into one of my SoftwareEmulation PCs, thus having the best of both worlds in one box. The PC is of a SmallFormFactor style, so that makes it much more challenging in fitting stuff in there. I definitely don't want a monster-size box consuming the entire living room and spilling out into the kitchen and garage!! Part of the fun I had early on with SE was the curation part. Picking and reliving the arcade classics that were truly thought to be long gone and forgotten. It was like playing Zaxxon for the last time in the early 80's and simply not seeing it anywhere else. Then all of a sudden MAME burst onto the scene and, well, here we are! MiSTer is but an extension of that state of affairs.