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Everything posted by potatohead
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Computers and the videogame crash of the 80's.
potatohead replied to Keatah's topic in Classic Computing Discussion
Just having an Internet in general. What I mean though, is people growing up, since roughly '10, for some earlier, will have grown up very differently. Yeah, the big die off is a ways off. But, the story telling is happening now. I've a 4 year old granddaughter. So many things are different. It's a lot of fun, and I'm showing her some older things. She LOVES VHS, for example. "Papa, it gave it back to me, do I tell it thanks?" (and she does) -
Computers and the videogame crash of the 80's.
potatohead replied to Keatah's topic in Classic Computing Discussion
Yes, the early era was colorful and distinctive. Fun ride! I think we are headed toward another one, frankly. Apple is moving to their own silicon. Some big players are making custom CPU's maximized for given tasks. ARM devices everywhere. Now, the down side is open vs closed computing. That's going to come up again right soon, and already is. Just booting a machine is already an issue, and it's going to get worse. Custom silicon will prove to be effective at further reducing power while maximizing task efficiency and performance too. For a taste of the old era, people can explore micro-controllers. Some are quite advanced, yet remain fairly accessible in the way our favorite machines were. It's a pretty fun scene right now, and people are making games even! Some of those are new, many are ports, and others are emulation type deals. We may soon see a simpler computer rise out of all that. Capable, in the fun way, but not so much the way many of us use PC's and mobile today. The nice thing, should that happen, is a smaller ecosystem not on the update treadmill. Ordinary people can get skill and then actually get stuff done because the investment in time will endure long enough for it all to pay off. As for blame... maybe. Everyone made mistakes, and or bad calls. How could they not, given the times? Frankly, it was all set to go boom! Set piece in my view looking back. Just having general connectivity changed things in crazy ways! Many of us are the last people to live and work sans Internet. It's really different now. I do find it interesting how retro continues to attract younger people. They, just like us, want to play, understand, game in simple ways, make shit. It's cool. Maybe our favorite era will always be cool, like a moment in time popular to explore. -
Computers and the videogame crash of the 80's.
potatohead replied to Keatah's topic in Classic Computing Discussion
Yeah, but it was less difficult and more efficient overall than banking in smaller address spaces. Yeah, I did not actually buy into a PC, other than the $20 POS I got going with, until the 386. Felt the same way. -
Computers and the videogame crash of the 80's.
potatohead replied to Keatah's topic in Classic Computing Discussion
The one thing which stood out on the PC for me was RAM and big CPU address space. Even the original ones, which were pretty slow by other 8 bit computing standards, could take a lot of RAM and that matters a lot on bigger tasks. Back in the day we would have fun with a CoCo or Atari, Apple, whatever, beating the PC at a variety of things. But, the moment it became something like, "Hey, let's repaginate that book", or "Let's put the entire operations budget into Lotus", maybe even, "Hey, let's develop a CNC program for that mill", RAM is all that mattered. The rest is nice to have, but totally secondary. That observation has stuck with me over the years and has held true. If you have a choice? Max out RAM, then CPU, then storage capacity and speed, then other stuff as makes sense. The only exception is tasks that will bury the RAM no matter what. Then you gotta move storage speed up above CPU for an optimal experience and time to task complete or iterate. Some Apple 2 users had megabytes installed. Boot it, and let it grind away loading up all that RAM, then go do whatever it is quickly. Battery back that RAM for a repeat experience that's even quicker. A PC, equipped with a lot of RAM was slow, but not that slow when it comes to those larger data type tasks. CAD is something I made a career out of, and back then being able to load a system and actually process a respectable drawing took either a ton of RAM or a ton of TIME. Or it just wasn't possible too, depending. A larger address space and similar amounts of RAM tells a tale. At the time, an Apple spent more time managing 64K than the PC did eating cycles for no good reason. 'nuff said, the path was clear the day I saw that dynamic. Figured they would clean up the cycles, and they did. Intel knew something a lot of companies didn't, and that was the cycle count was not going to be all that important given increased CPU speed coming. Many of our favorite machines ran in short clocks, hitting RAM fast. That's what makes the magic happen. All that BS the 8086 and 8088 did was sloooooow. But, the '286 clocked well above RAM. Remember wait states? Yeah. And suddenly all that BS, caches, and other advanced things mattered a whole lot. Intel knew it, designed for it, and with the IBM deal learned they could literally turn math into heat and the better the cooling system, the faster it goes. ARM, by the way, is headed down that same path, but did spend a lot more time on efficiency. The Intel game has topped out. Will be interesting to see where ARM type philosophy goes. Might get us farther. Arm + custom chips? I think definitely will. And custom silicon is coming around again. Just watch. The big players are already doing it. The moment the PC dropped, the scope of mini computing and micro computing overlapped, and it all got much bigger very quickly. Graphics, sound, all that stuff lagged of course. It was just getting bigger address spaces and storage to match that really took things forward, IMHO. LOL, and my first PC was a $20 Amstrad POS. But what did it have? RAM and storage. Enough for me to make thousands and get some real machines. 20Mb Hard Card, 8088, CGA, later an 8087, and boom. I could do big CAD. Sloooooooly. But I could do it for a $20 spot. That's what the PC really did and how it changed things. Ordinary people could get into bigger tasks, and they did. And it didn't take long for getting into bigger tasks to be cheap. No stopping that train. And it's fine. I enjoy the distinctive machines and always have, always will. Started getting real work done on an Apple, because RAM and storage. Continued getting real work done on a PC. Was gonna happen that way no matter what, IMHO. Because real work always trumps having fun. (unless you can have fun at work, which is what I often did. WOLF3D, DOOM, Serious Sam, many others all played on higher end "work" machines, which I later brought home when they got cheap, or I had an opportunity.) Really, for me the only exception was SGI. I ended up with those at home because of the work I did. AWESOME. Sure wish we had got a taste of what they were doing in the home somehow, and earlier. Those of us lucky enough to get a taste of that were gaming in 3D, yelling at one another, giving the bird over webcams in the early 90's... Super $$$$$$$ though. -
Do you consider text adventures as video games?
potatohead replied to bluejay's topic in Classic Computing Discussion
http://monsterfeet.com/grue/ You guys know about this right? Two well known retro computing podcasters decide to play all the Infocom games. Recommended -
Do you consider text adventures as video games?
potatohead replied to bluejay's topic in Classic Computing Discussion
Yes. They were among the first I played. At the time we had the VCS and some graphical computer games. The text adventure fit right in. Most of my peers, and myself all thought they were amazing. Today, if I had time I would definitely want to revisit some of the classics and add sounds. Keep it something one reads, but let sound augment theatre of the mind. But yeah. There is video and there is a game. Video game. -
Computers and the videogame crash of the 80's.
potatohead replied to Keatah's topic in Classic Computing Discussion
Well, do notice I didn't speak to iPhones being bad or better or worse. I did speak to Android on great hardware and all it can do and wonder how people get into trouble on their Android phones. I run the crap out of Android and have for years with remarkably few issues. What I tend to talk about is just how much people can do on mobile these days rather than what sucks or does not. Android on the higher end Samsung hardware definitely doesn't suck. I retro game on mine when I am in the mood. Can even do that from a real 3.5" floppy. -
Computers and the videogame crash of the 80's.
potatohead replied to Keatah's topic in Classic Computing Discussion
Re CoCo 3 256 colors Well, if one plugs their CoCo3 into an NTSC composite monitor, it will do 160, 200+ in 256 colors, nice 1 byte per pixel. With a 6809, spiffy auto increment, decrement modes, blasting pixels is fast. Abuse the stack, and it's even faster. And before anyone says "those aren't real colors", they are as real as anything produced on the wildly successful 8 bit Apple line. Too bad that didn't see more use like CGA 16 color mode did. -
Computers and the videogame crash of the 80's.
potatohead replied to Keatah's topic in Classic Computing Discussion
Re: Phones I live Samsung and Android. I never did fully understand why people have so much trouble with their android phones. Seriously, I have not had trouble. At all for pretty much a decade since I got my Note 4 phone. Currently I am using a note of and can do almost everything I do on my laptop on this phone. Remote conference Content create illustrations, videos, etc... Email other comms Write programs Run programs Terminal Nav and all standard phone things Content edit audio, photo, annotate -
What's expensive to people? Real machines keep creeping up. And it seems to me the best experience requires a disk emulator device of some kind so people can load up an SD card, or USB thumb drive with stuff they find on the Internet, and so they can save their own work and share, right? Controllers Would that be the minimum? I always start there so I can play some games, run various environments people put together, write some programs, tinker some, get a feel for the machine. When I setup on my CoCo3, I paid about $250 to get going with an SD interface, joystick, computer, cassette. Got a little lucky on my Apple platinum, it was like $100 and had Super Serial, Disk drive, controller card, 80 column / 128k. I added a CFFA, $150 and more recently a FastChip '816 (the 16 bit CPU is just for my own assembly language fun and didn't cost anything extra), and that was $150, but it's a sweet setup now. So, $250 and $350 for good gear, tested, etc... I need to get an SIO interface for my Atari gear. Didn't really pay much for it and I've had it a while. 400, because it looks cool, and can just do "Star Raiders" and an 800XL. If I were to buy a machine, it looks like $150 to $200? And that's not scrounging prices. That's "I want to jam on a C64" and buy it setup, tested, and kind of ready to go prices. What are people paying for an Apple, with some SD card interface, joystick? Same for Atari, C64, etc...?? Honestly, I think if one isn't willing to drop a few hundred bucks, perhaps over a bit of time to score something that's going to deliver, maybe one of those FPGA setups makes more sense. Here's one I've been seeing. Thinking about getting one myself: https://www.retrorgb.com/mister.html There is getting going, doing something on a TV or monitor, and then over time, there is a real fun setup that costs more and takes a little time, but ideally is worth enjoying. It's hard to say what should be a first retro computer. A whole lot depends on what people want to do, or what they may be familiar with, and so forth. One thing I would add is getting a CRT can be attractive to some people. If they want a more robust retro experience, now's the time! They are getting costly fast, and the high end ones already are. But, it's still possible to score pretty good CRT televisions from "side of the road", which I just did. Need to clean it up and calibrate it, but hey! Freebie! ...to, a pro, re-capped job costing a few hundred bucks. When I retro compute or game, I really like the CRT.
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Computers and the videogame crash of the 80's.
potatohead replied to Keatah's topic in Classic Computing Discussion
Well better is not the same as influential. If we move to a better discussion, yeah. The PC was better. On many of my computers there are no drive letters. Just saying. In fact, that is most of them today. Had not thought about it recently. All part of another era creeping up upon us. As for Prodos and DOS... 1.0 was pretty lousy. Prodos was better in many ways. MS DOS improved nicely enough though. But it was rough early on. Actually looking at an IBM effort on its own? Micro channel did not do so well, did it? -
Computers and the videogame crash of the 80's.
potatohead replied to Keatah's topic in Classic Computing Discussion
Oh I don't know about all that. Like I said, what would the IBM PC have looked like had there not already been a PC to derive a PC from? That's what the Apple machine was. Bet you a cookie, more than a few IBM'ers had Apple machines, or used them. At the time, both experiences were remarkably similar. Turn on a PC with nothing else, and you get BASIC, and a cassette I/O for storage. Turn on an Apple, and you get BASIC and a cassette I/O for storage. Boot a floppy on a PC, and you get DOS and or some application running. Boot a floppy on an Apple, and you get DOS and or some application running. Both came with a speaker, lol Etc... There were Apple clones. There were PC clones. The IBM machine didn't really offer anything new. Had the Apple 2 not been a thing, the IBM effort may look quite different, and who is to say it would have ended up how it did? Yeah, a lot ended up derived from that. No argument there. And no worries. Just subtract the Apple 2, leaving the TRS-80 and the PET, and what would IBM have done? It's an interesting thought to me, and I think it speaks strongly to the influence discussion. One could argue that overall design approach is just logical and would have happened generally. That's entirely fair too. I disagree about the Apple 1. It's sort of there, but not really useful in the general sense. Having lived through those times, I frankly see the software as the more primary influence and driver behind what drives modern computing today. What IBM did looks like a straightforward, and conservative offering well aligned with what was already successful. The decision to do it on Intel with Microsoft had a huge impact too. And modern computing is diverging again too, has been for a while now. It's going to be interesting in a decade or two to come back and revisit a topic like this and talk about ARM vs Intel, the PC and non PC / tablet / touch / voice / wearable computing. We've hit some limits, similar to those in play back in 8 bit times. In the next decade, we are going to see more custom hardware again, or until we get a new means of general production that can reach new clock speeds, or something. Who knows? Until that happens, it's all going to start diverging in subtle ways. Little bits of custom silicon here. Security, networking, graphics, user interface, I/O maybe. Frankly, I'm hoping it shakes up some and we get another colorful era to enjoy. -
Computers and the videogame crash of the 80's.
potatohead replied to Keatah's topic in Classic Computing Discussion
I am not sure about a hard card back then, but SCSI controllers were made and PRODOS supported hard disks. I've used those back in the day. Never owned one myself though. Edit: Today? Yeah, you can put a hard disk into an Apple 2 Nobody does it anymore, using solid state media instead. My Apple has a CFFA 3000 card, and has a few hard disks on tap via Compact Flash, and if I want, I can drop disk images, floppy, hard disk, onto a USB thumb drive, plug it in, boot and go. Here's a good one: https://archive.org/details/TotalReplay 4AM is converting a ton of Apple gaming software for use on PRODOS hard disks. It's a lot of fun right now, still in development, but totally good to go as is. Some graphics cards were also produced, but saw niche uses. That's my musing above. Had Apple themselves actually produced one, things may be different. Audio cards were produced too. Mockingboards. Outside what you asked for, there were a TON of add on cards for the Apple 2. Midi, data acquisition cards, printers, accelerators, serial, parallel, modem, hardware controllers of all kinds... And you could get coprocessors! Z80 CP/M cards saw a lot of use. People running WordStar and other business apps. I did some of that early on, though my current machine doesn't have one. I don't care right now. But the 6809, 68000, Z80, others were available on cards to do specialized tasks, or for cross development. The Apple was often used to develop for other machines too. One could add a lot of inexpensive, reasonably fast storage and RAM and build an interface for whatever it was onto a card and go. Starpath developed for the Supercharger on one. Many 8 bit developers had one and would cross compile for other machines. It's really the PC before the PC, in my view. -
Computers and the videogame crash of the 80's.
potatohead replied to Keatah's topic in Classic Computing Discussion
I often wonder what the IBM PC would have looked like without the Apple 2 out there and successful. Frankly, I always saw the PC as the business Apple 2. Back in the early days, a well equipped Apple 2 was just as serious as the PC was, and due to an insane amount of software, totally capable. Look at an Apple mainboard: Now look at an early PC mainboard: I think that's the 5150. If we want to talk influence, seems to me the Apple 2 punches solid for it's weight class, doesn't it? Apple 2 computers pretty much defined what a "PC" actually was. To me, there were a couple significant differences: The 6502 was solid 8 bit, and the video system was part of the base configuration. On the PC, the initial CPU was 16 bit where it counts: Memory addressing And the video system was an option. I often wonder what would have happened had Apple put another video option on a card early on. The options that did get built in and expanded were just good enough anyway. That's part of why the machines had the long life they did. But, just a bit more and things may have turned out differently. Most likely outcome would have been an even longer life, and another round of software, given color high density text and an output that could drive better than TV displays. The 16 bit 65816 would have been an obvious choice for more than the gs. LOL, I have one in my //e anyway, clocks up to 14, maybe 16Mhz, I can't remember off hand right now. -
Computers and the videogame crash of the 80's.
potatohead replied to Keatah's topic in Classic Computing Discussion
Re: ColecoVision In my neck of the woods, a few people got 'em. And having a legit Donkey Kong was a big deal. Impressed a lot of people, but I must say the moment the NES hit? Boom! They were everywhere within a year. If you ask me, the Coleco machine had a lot going for it. Controllers, and enough graphics power to make some compelling games. Was a definite upgrade to the systems prior, but it was not quite there. To me, seeing the NES and things coming, and what computers were doing? It seemed high end, but last of an earlier generation more than it seemed forward looking. That's just one subjective take. And marketing had a YUGE influence on all that. The NES was the start of something, and it was big, they had those gaming events, etc... How things were marketed had just as big of an impact as any technical decisions did. IMHO, the "add on computer" was seen as a dubious move by a lot of people, and it was easy to get lumped into the toy computer bucket. The Aquarius, Tomy, Adam, others were all kind of little islands. Thinking back, people were like, either get a computer, or get a game system. I know that's how most of my circle of people felt about it. The good stuff was happening elsewhere. Game systems played games. Computers could do that, and actually do computing. A lot of people who got an NES also got a C64 too. Right about that time, computing split. As others have mentioned, people began taking work home, others were starting up work (that's me taking contracts and delivering programs, or info, graphics) at home. -
Computers and the videogame crash of the 80's.
potatohead replied to Keatah's topic in Classic Computing Discussion
Really @JamesD said that, but I'm not gonna fight the forum spiffy quote system right now. Seriously! That decision was a very poor one in hindsight. The Tandy scene, maybe Coco 3 in particular, would have looked very different. That little machine is very powerful. Deserved much better software than it generally saw. -
Computers and the videogame crash of the 80's.
potatohead replied to Keatah's topic in Classic Computing Discussion
My experience was similar. Got my own Apple in the 80's, and used it regularly through about 93. It actually was the first machine I put on the Internet via a dialup ISP offering shell accounts and a pick up service for moving big downloads without using the sloooow modem. I used my Apple for a number of things: Writing and documentation was the top use. Communications. Developing manufacturing related BASIC programs. Mostly these computed hard to derive things used in various layout and CNC related tasks. Got started on a G-code backplotter for a machine I used a lot and just never finished. Should have I would still have that one, but a forced move a bit later on caused me a lot of grief. In the process most of my gear got stolen. So, no Apple, until about '10. I loved the + and //e Decided to get a Platinum and I'm glad I did. Really like that one, and we've got great hardware options happening these days. A FastChip with 65816 was a great buy. Always wanted to do some programming on the //e with an '816, so I got that there for the next time I'm feeling it. Add in Serial, CFFA, and a disk drive, and it's set to rock! I use it for writing and when I need a terminal every once in a while for electronics related projects. Need to see whether any terminal software can go really fast with the FastChip running. That can wait too, but will be kind of interesting. And it's my goto if I want to knock out some retro programming. So many years later, it's still kind of a workstation. If I had to, I could do quite a lot on it. And being able to plug in a USB thumb drive, do stuff, hop to a laptop and extract the info is kick ass. Huge tech gap closed very reasonably. -
"Get Lamp" documentary talks a little about that. The whole package is what they were selling. And that makes a fair amount of sense.
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INFOCOM had the advantage of a user base who really valued the games. They were pirated a lot, but they sold a lot too. The experience, feelies and box was something more people would pay for.
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Excellent! I saw "pick up only" and was thinking I had to go on a drive. That machine needs some love. Show 'n tell when you get it done please.