Fort Apocalypse

Glad you are doing well!

There was an update in one of the threads. Basically Curt just had heart surgery and is recovering. In a week or two (we hope and pray he gets well that quickly) he said he would work on getting the joysticks out to everyone as soon as he got home. I'm not speaking for anyone, but best case scenario, I'm guessing shipments should arrive in February- but I don't know. At this point, we're just hoping that Curt does well. He has done a lot for our community and is a friend to many here at AA.

http://www.ditii.com/2009/01/24/apple-ii-t...0-mac-turns-25/

Funny that you mention laserdisc, but leave out all the other optical media like CD and DVD. Not to mention the PSP, which is probably the only handheld system using a laser. Also, if I'm not mistaken, LD's and CD's both use infrared lasers, outside of the visible spectrum (Though still very much capable of damaging your eye!) --Zero Doh! I'm so stuck in the 80s and thinking of arcade games like Dragon's Lair, Mach 3, etc. I have no idea why I said that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Laserdisc_video_games To try to make up for it, here's all I could find quickly: Per http://www.gamingdump.com/consoleevolution.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console I guess there were quite a few consoles using lasers: CD: TurboGrafx 16 (1989) (optional CD add-on), SEGA Mega Drive (1988)/Genesis (1989) (optional CD add-on), 3DO (1993), Atari Saturn (1994), Neo Geo CD (1994), Playstation (1995) ("The PlayStation was the eventual result of a breakdown of a business partnership plan between Sony and Nintendo to create a CD add-on for the SNES."[1]) GD-ROM: Sega Dreamcast (1999) CD/DVD: Sony Playstation 2 (2000), Xbox (2002) GameCube Optical Disc: GameCube (2001) DVD, CD and HD DVD: Xbox 360 (2005) Wii Optical Disc, GameCube Game Disc: Wii (2006) BD-ROM (Blu-ray Disc Rom), DVD-ROM, CD-ROM, Super Audio CD: Playstation 3 (2006)

Who will take over Microsoft Flight Simulator development now that ACES Studios was dropped? http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2339520,00.asp

carmel shared info on Altirra: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=137995 Altirra is an emulator for the Atari 8-bit series of home computers, including the 800, 800XL, and 130XE versions. Because modern computers are so much faster than the original 1.79MHz machine, a nearly complete emulation of the hardware is provided and thus the emulator can run a large amount of the software available for the platform. http://virtualdub.org/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=230 http://www.virtualdub.org/downloads/Altirra-1.0.zip http://www.virtualdub.org/downloads/Altirra-1.0-src.zip

(removed post. oops.)

Were there any handheld or console games other than laserdisc games that employed use of a laser (not counting laser tag)?

Getting MAME to run on Xbox is much more difficult I think. I don't have an xbox, and know very little about it, but from what I just read: * mameox is an old sourceforge project (4 yrs old) * mame-x got pulled down from mame site because it was built with illegal/unlicensed xbox compiler? * MamedOx Platinum is the newest version of mameox but I didn't find it (but didn't look hard. might be a torrent) XBMC seems related- it is like a media-center (this is not mine, but I google'd it and found this): * http://217.118.215.116/ (I don't know whether that is legal or not, so if it isn't legal, don't do it) * more info on XBMC for other OSs: http://xbmc.org/ I'd also repost your question of how to get it working on xbox with step-by-step instructions on emulation forum at AA. There should be a lot more folks there that can help.

Getting MAME to run on Xbox is much more difficult I think. I don't have an xbox, and know very little about it, but from what I just read: * mameox is an old sourceforge project (4 yrs old) * mame-x got pulled down from mame site because it was built with illegal/unlicensed xbox compiler? * MamedOx Platinum is the newest version of mameox but I didn't find it (but didn't look hard. might be a torrent) XBMC seems related- it is like a media-center (this is not mine, but I google'd it and found this): * http://217.118.215.116/ (I don't know whether that is legal or not, so if it isn't legal, don't do it) * more info on XBMC for other OSs: http://xbmc.org/

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=91575

Are you racist or just stupid? He's just looking for attention. He didn't get enough love as a child.

Sorry. I'm a coco fan, even though really just the original coco (coco1/grey case ). I know that some numbers are missing in the stats, and I didn't mean to mislead anyone by linking to his summary and the graphs. Is there a better source that summarizes all personal computer sales from 1975-2005 (or similar)? I am guessing that there is enough truth in the report above to be of use, but it definitely isn't complete. But, I still found it interesting, especially the bit about the C64.

(Rolling across carpet, thud- toestops hit cabinet.)

I just looked again and it appears the stats are worldwide: "Table 1.1 US and Worldwide Computers-in-Use Growth". Note this info is 3-4 years old, but was new to me.

According to http://oldcomputers.net/ti994a.html:

The numbers in the spreadsheet on left are sales in 1,000's of units, to right is market share in %.

Yeah, I was surprised at that as well. I think maybe it fell into "other" in the chart, which was a significant chunk.

Some brief PC history. The IBM PC came out August 12, 1981. Soon after a whole bunch of different companies were selling "clones" (IBM PC compatible computers). When the PC first came out, there was no Windows and there was no Linux. There was eventually OS/2 and probably some other stuff that I'm not remembering, but the primary thing was DOS. Not then. Like I said when it first came out there was pretty much only DOS. (First IBM then Microsoft, right? I forget.) Those aren't my stats. Look at the bottom of the page to get more info on where he got those numbers. Pick up some books on PC and game console history and do some research. The stats I shared are about old computers, not game consoles. Sorry to disappoint you. I didn't even write it. Just passing on the info. Well, it is Classic Gaming General and since gaming on old computers is considered classic gaming also, I thought I'd share this info on old computers here. Granted this could have gone in another area about Computers and Science, but this information is geared toward classic computers and AA doesn't have a classic computers section, so I usually post classic computers stuff here. If you think there should be a separate area for classic computers, ask Albert. I think it would be a good idea.

http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/?p=9404

TRS-80.org reports sales stats from 1977-1980, focusing on TRS-80, Apple II, and Atari 400/800: * http://www.trs-80.org/was-the-trs-80-once-...lling-computer/ Possibly even more interesting is the table of stats he based this on from jeremyreimer.com along with Jeremy's graphs, and the info at the bottom: * http://www.jeremyreimer.com/total_share.html I never realized how sharp a dive the C64 took in the mid-80s. It had more momentum than the IBM PC.

I'm definitely not an expert, but I'd say if it emitted at least two colors of light that weren't just shades of the same color, didn't require use of a screen filter or colored glass, then it was a "color" game. However, some might consider *any* color to be a color game. Typically "color" screens from what I remember were understood to be comprised of at least 3 colors like Magenta/Green/Cyan which roughly corresponded to RGB.

Man, that is a great question. * Ms. Pacman is just a classic that everyone in the family and everyone who visited would play, so that would probably be it. * Star Wars is another good one. * Asteroids is fun in a bar. * Tron, Gorf, Joust, Frogger, Time Pilot, Gyruss... just too many decide!

Hey, Jeff! One thing that would help in Visual bB would be to be able to change the font to be a fixed width font (or at least by default). It is nice to be able to see the playfield that way, even though there is the GUI editor. TIA!

I was just guessing at it. It turns out that that was just the tip of the iceberg in my understanding of those machines though. I found a good story here: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?...e;topic=86245.0