Keatah
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Posts posted by Keatah
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There was a time when I used to have high affinity for vintage physical media and had a sprawling display that got thoroughly out of control. Cartridges, disks, tapes, printouts. You name it. But not anymore. Having a collection in playable format means wear and tear on the media, the original labels.. And then there's time keeping it organized and clean and presentable. Too much busywork. Wasted wayyyy too much time on that.
I don't really display any sort of media. Not in the traditional sense. I keep backups in one of those plastic Husky toolboxes from Home Depot now. Cheap, effective, hard to lose. And still impressive when you open it up to update it. Or just to look at it.
There's many ways you can "glorify" your favorites. Something to add physicality and presence. Like making a 3-ring binder to hold laminated reference cards, keyboard guide-cards (think SpaceShuttle overlays), and logsheets of backups. You can make themed labels for hot-swap 3.5" SSD, or CF or SD. There's unlimited pre-made folders & holders for SD Flash media and HDDs. Even store your modern media in a tabernacle shrine with a sanctuary lamp. If that's your gig. Me? I prefer the Husky toolbox under the sectional!
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3 hours ago, hizzy said:Here is a photo of my RF feed. I'm pretty happy with this until an FPGA Atari comes out or until I hook up stella to my TV
How would you go about doing that? Would you plan on using a SFF Win10 PC? It's what I'm doing, and I dialed in the right amount of NTSC "fuzzies" and color saturation for a great CRT look.
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It's certainly worked well for me over the years. Decades even - because contemporary emulation as we know it got stated in earnest in the mid-1990's. It's easy to take the convenience and reliability and consistency for granted. And its fun setting everything up.
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By men of strong convictions.
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LPT1 FTW!
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3 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:Last I looked, Commodore 128's were going for ~$1000.00 here in AU as it's an issue of supply vs demand. Hence the reason I can't stand retro 'hoarders' - They're essentially creating a supply issue hogging more machines than they can realistically use. There's one guy constantly showing off photo's on Reddit of his house with Amiga's and various Commodore machines stacked uncaringly on top of one another literally up the walls and he gloats about the fact that he refuses to sell any of them and he refuses to modify them, he won't even remove the leaking Varta NiCads.
There's reasons for this. Its a long topic so maybe I'll get into it later if feel like it.
And it's not a big deal about the Vartabombs. There's museum curators that do the very same thing.
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Seems Atari did a lot of repackaging of tech they developed in the late 70's. And it didn't really matter if the 5200 was the same (or not) as the home computers. The software looked the same. And it was "common knowledge" that it was a stripped down 400. And that's all us kids needed to know.
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Goddammned BEAUTIFUL! Sold for over 1500!
They used to sell for under 100 bucks, complete but minus box. But this one WITH a rotted box pulled $$$.
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Not my auction, but it's interesting to watch these things. BITD they were going the cost of scrap material.
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Documentation is terribly underrepresented these days. So any quality effort on this front, for any system, is important and welcome! Cannot emphasize that enough without resorting to cheap measures like color bolded italicized text in weird fonts.
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On 3/6/2021 at 10:25 AM, gespy said:Please let me know what you think about it.
Love little shitbox projects like this. They're artful adaptation of new tech to old tech. Also like the color Atari logo at startup - much better than the modern monochrome metro crap so prevalent today.
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4 hours ago, TwoShedsWilson said:I'm also considering 3D printing a scaled-down 7800 cartridge port to complete the look, but I would need to see if there is room inside to do that or not.
Maybe the scale would work out just right and a microSD card could fit in it? Just a thought about making it functional. Didn't watch the video yet. Don't know if Pi Zero interfaces to SD.
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From a consumer's perspective the console wasn't necessary anymore. Its time had come and gone. PCs were gathering momentum. Other consoles were imminent.
1 hour ago, zzip said:My point is more that Tramiel-era Atari dragged their feet in getting new video game technology, milking existing designs way past their shelf-life.
Indeed. Even us potsmoking teens back then could see their products were "old man" stuff.
1 hour ago, zzip said:Warner was doing R&D and had several prototypes. The Amiga chips were potentially going to be used in a future game console, but they were also approached by Nintendo and GCC with designs for them to market. So Warner had their pick of state of the art future tech. It's less important whether it was designed in-house or not, but whether they have something current. Tramiel Atari wasn't doing that until it was far too late.
I thought the future of the Amiga "idea" would have been brighter and even more influential (for the common end-user) had it gone that way. The Amiga found a niche for video production, but not without expensive add ons - incomprehensible genlocks and time base correctors. Not to mention the stratospherically priced toaster. All of which didn't really work on the "home computer" version. The 500.
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13 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said:Anyway, there's no point in caring about whether or not someone has / wants full sets or just partial ones. It's solely down to their interests, which really can't impinge on whatever anyone else is doing in this case.
Yes. I try to remember to be cognizant of that. And still continue to fail. Some day..
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I don't do mods. I don't like mods. I don't condone mods. But to each their own. If I'm gaming on a modern LCD style display I demand that my console & hardware create signals that match my display.
I'm the most ardent believer that the circuitry which generates the image and signals should be matched to the output display. And for the early cartridge systems that means RF. It's what they were engineered for.
Not a fan of sticking in a $10 mod that will only partially and incorrectly match the characteristics of a vintage console to what a modern-day display expects. Especially, as just mentioned, when the games don't conform to any strict standard. Scanlines, timings, that sort of thing.
When that situation arises I'm all for taking a completely different route by using a powerful i7 or i9 with an accurate emulator. For those that don't like emulation, ya'll can save a buck or two and get a MiSTer for FPGA simulation.
Either way you're now working entirely in the digital domain, with matching display inputs. A good emulator will handle scanline and timing issues with minimal or no adjustment from you. It will also let you explore "vintage" RF characteristics. Often to good effect if you don't max it out.
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Speaking from a seasoned vantage point I clearly vote for matching display technologies. This means RF and CRTs for the early consoles. Completely agree with the unwanted artifacts & changes which usually accompany modding. I say this not from a purist standpoint, but from practical experience flavored with a little bit of "how it was meant to be".
It is at that time I wholeheartedly switch to (and recommend) software emulation. Here with SE we're synthesizing an image from the ground up. An image designed to work over DP & HDMI connections and look great on the newest technologies. Straight away.
Bonus time! Everything remains in the digital domain up to the instant the display paints a pixel. This allows for a bevy of unique adjustment options, up front so you don't need to play with the display's controls. You get to explore "vintage flavorings" like NTSC artifacting, bleeding, blurring, scanlines, fringing, phosphor types, and more!
IMHO it's the best way to experience VCS, or Intellivision, or Colecovision games on that new 110" QuantumDot display.
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Well hell! I might as well say I was right there besides Rudolf Heinrich Baer himself!
I got into this stuff early and had plenty of Pong, Sports, Shooting, and Tank "fixed-function" systems. I was only behind in that I didn't get an early Channel-F. First cartridge-based system I owned was the introductory Heavy Sixer VCS from Atari. It was so new that the smell of California dust was fresh upon opening!
Starting there and through the 80's I was up-to-date on getting all the popular consoles and home computers. If it was "home" something or other I had it. Eventually it became untenable. Cost. Space. Time. Many factors. Not the least was supporting bad teenage habits.
And of course paralleling all that were the actual arcades themselves. Loads of fun. In many ways. What made it 2x fun was that Pin Pan Alley was right next to Data Domain. Go play at the arcade and wrap up the afternoon with a saunter through the computer store.
Data Domain was cool. Hobbyshop-like atmosphere. Counters in the center. Periphery walls adorned with racks of bagged software. What we didn't know at the time was how the computer shops of the day created contrast against the arcades. Here were these stores selling $2,000 and up computers that couldn't come close to any arcade game in terms of technical fidelity. And we longed for the day when we could play a real arcade at home. It would happen but not till the 1990's.
MAME and emulation came on the scene. And being at that forefront was just as exciting and thrilling as playing what we had in the 70's. Different, however, because this time it was about nostalgia and seeing stuff we thought we'd never see again.
The late 90's was exciting with MAME because it was like collecting cartridges. Every couple weeks a new release came out, supporting more and more games. And focus was naturally on the early simpler games. Think 1988 and prior. And a mad scramble ensued to collect the necessary files to make it all come together.
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23 hours ago, ∞ Vince ∞ said:OP what are you intending to do, get a mame Bartop? You could put all your favourites on there and like most people I personally have not got round to 'weeding' the crap titles out of my collections.
Indeed.
Sometimes the question is to weed or grow. Either trim and cull a large collection of everything down till only your favorites remain. Or grow your collection, adding favorites as you encounter them or recall them.
Having started in the pre-golden days of emulation there weren't large collections, so I tend to build up and add as time progresses.
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7 hours ago, zzip said:It might have depended on the year, I remember late 80s, our Electronics Boutique absolutely refused to return or exchange games for a different title if it was opened. You could exchange it for a different copy of the same game, and that was it.
My friend bought a PC game that just refused to work with his Tandy 1000, so he wanted a different game. EB didn't care. Eventually we figured out that we could exchange the game for a sealed copy, then come back when different employees were working, and exchange the sealed copy for a different game. It worked!
Ha! Indeed. This worked for a long time. Some stored deployed countermeasures against it. They would open the game in the store for you.
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Have you disabled interpolation?
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Cool..
8 hours ago, 5-11under said:...but I've discovered that for older systems, I prefer big, square, clear pixels, without than any sort of raster effects.
I used to prefer things that way from the early 1990's (had no choice then) to about 2010. After that I went heavy on the effects. And in 2016 I toned everything down to subtleties and 10-20 percent of maximum. And that's where I stand today, just a touch of vintage. Like as if we had an uber-quality futuristic pro monitor in the 70's or 80's.
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I lost interest in the 5200 almost immediately. I had a lot of the games already on the 400/800 and didn't need them in a different format.
I instead put more effort into Colecovision. Each game was different and had great arcade connections.
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Pulled out my "Consumer's Guide to Personal Computing and Microcomputers (c) 1978. And the Apple II bare motherboard form is listed right along with single board hobby computers and microprocessor trainers. Described in the same way. Exhibiting the same features.
Elsewhere in the guide, the traditional form of the Apple II as we're accustomed to is described as a computer in a cabinet. And nowhere does it mention "home computer". It's about a year too early for the term to have become widely accepted.
In both descriptions emphasis seems placed on memory capacities, form factors, and especially I/O connectors for keyboard, cassette, and video. Video output was still rather new back then. They said the Apple II had a dedicated section on the motherboard which was useful for generating signals for a modulator/TV or monitor.
These are the kinds of books I wished we had in school, and not stories about fake men performing equally fake herculean tasks. Greek mythology. No kid is interested in that crap.
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Glad I wasn't in the market for it, woulda been a flunky on that day. And would have had to borrow into next month's allowance. Not that I hadn't overspent before, we all have.
OTH as part of rounding out my Apple II stuff I purchased an official Apple published manual for a bit under $10. Just days ago the same book had sold for $60.
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What did you buy today?.........
in Show Us Your Collection!
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The basic specifications are about right. I've built many a rig similarly spec'd and everyone was happy with the performance.
If anyone is into tiny PCs I found the current Topaz and Panther Canyon Intel NUCs to be respectable. You can use an eGPU if necessary. Or go straight to Ghost Canyon for RTX class gaming the size of a bookshelf speaker.
Another one of those is likely to be my next purchase.