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Fort Apocalypse

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Posts posted by Fort Apocalypse

  1. Posted

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

    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. :D 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: :D

     

    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)

  3. Posted

    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

  6. Posted

    I think i'll pass on the mame thing myself. One thing i might do is try it on the xbox tho. How do i go about that?

     

    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.

  7. Posted · Edited by Fort Apocalypse

    I think i'll pass on the mame thing myself. One thing i might do is try it on the xbox tho. How do i go about that?

     

    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/

  10. Posted

    Exactly how many times do I need to point out that those sales figures are wrong. The TRS-80 Color Computer was Tandy's top seller for almost it's entire life and the CoCo 3 wasn't even introduced until 1986 and it sold until 1991. According to that they sold exactly 0 of them. Clearly they weren't included at all.

     

    The Ti was one of the sales leaders for a brief while. It sold poorly at first and probably only sold well once the price plummeted and was soon discontinued. Still, it should have had a significant blip for a year or two.

     

    Timex Sinclair was a top seller for 1 year... and then Timex promptly died. The first machine to sell 1 million in a single year and they aren't even mentioned. I guess that might account for the other peak in 1982.

     

    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.

  13. Posted

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

    * At the end of 1982 the TI-99/4A is the number one home computer in America, with approximately 35% of the market share, and producing 150,000 consoles a month.

    * In February 1983, in order to remain competative, TI again cut the price to dealers, and the cost of a TI-99/4A dropped to about $150.

    * In June 1983, TI released the cheaper beige plastic version of the TI-99/4A, and again had to cut the price, to less than $100. They are now selling computers for less than it costs to manufacture them! As a result, TI experienced a second-quarter loss of $100 million.

  14. Posted

    So this chart is "sales" and not "market share" right? Is it worldwide?

     

    I can understand how a bunch of computers would fall into the "other" category, but the Apple II isn't even listed separately? Sure they were expensive for home use but schools snapped them up!

     

    Amazing that the Amiga only outsold the C64, and just barely, in the early 90s, and they both held a small but measurable share until the mid-90s.

     

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

  16. Posted · Edited by Fort Apocalypse

    What does the term "PC" have to do with any of this?

     

    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.

     

    When you buy a PC you can install any operating system

     

    Not then. Like I said when it first came out there was pretty much only DOS. (First IBM then Microsoft, right? I forget.)

     

    Also what about the worldwide scale ?

     

    Those aren't my stats. Look at the bottom of the page to get more info on where he got those numbers.

     

    Where is Nintendo, Hudson, NEC, Sega, and other companies/coperations in all of this?

     

    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.

     

    Again since this is general gaming. How does this have to do with videogames?

     

    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.

  18. Posted · Edited by Fort Apocalypse

    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.

    post-7602-1232395387_thumb.png

    post-7602-1232395427_thumb.png

  19. Posted

    What do you all think? Is having separate game graphics in different colors enough to call a game color? I am open to thoughts. Funny that "color" graphics preceded processor based arcades. Man would I love to have one of those machines.

     

    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.

  22. Posted · Edited by Fort Apocalypse

    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

    Title: Re: Has anyone ever figured out the Joshua OS from Ultracade?

    Post by: davidrfoley on November 25, 2008, 11:55:07 AM

    First of all, I don't care if you crack it or not. I sold UltraCade Technologies over two years ago and have not been involved in the system ever since. It's a dead product. Global VR discontinued the UltraCade and Arcade Legends product lines. They renamed it to Global Arcade Classics, but then they laid off the team and did not renew a bunch of the licenses. I no longer have any involvement with the product or its technology. Just so you have the facts straight, here is a quick overview of the history. I built a 6502 emulator project in college, and that became the basis of some classic emulation projects that I was working on in the late 80's and early 90's. My first product was a joust emulator that ran on the Sega Genesis. We then built a Joust game for the PC, and a network playable version of Joust called NetJoust. During this time, I had a programmer from Australia that worked with me, Mark Morris. In 1998, I sold HyperWare to Quantum3D and joined there as the VP of Engineering. I was chartered with increasing the company's involvement in the arcade industry. We first set out to enhance the PC product line to supply other vendors with an Intel based platform. We built and patented the Quicksilver II system and then the Graphite system. We built 3dFX based video cards for the arcade industry as well as custom I/O cards. We supplied companies including Sega, Atari & Midway with systems. I was also given the green light on my pet project, the emulation multi-game system. At the time, I contacted Mark Morris who had partnered with countryman Adrian Thewlis. They had started a company called Sapphire Operating Systems building a small, purpose built OS for embedded applications on the Intel platform. I originally contracted them to build the game as they both had experience in the console market and had a fast loading OS that seemed like a good solution for coin-op. The first product iteration was called Lucky 8, and ran on the Sapphire OS. This product was only demonstrated, but never shipped. Mark and Adrian parted ways, and Adrian started a new company called Joshua Technology, and the OS became the Joshua OS. Over the years we contracted with Adrian to work on enhancing the OS to add new features and hired him as well to do contract programming on the UltraCade product. The OS was very purpose built, and only had the most essential of features in order to keep it small and fast. It supported several iterations of the Intel chipset family, including the 810, 815 and later the 845. Adrian did some work with the Via chipsets, but we could never get the technical information needed to fully support it. He also did some work wiht a few other graphics chips. Besides the UltraCade platform, which ran solely on the Joshua Operating System, Adrian also was contracted by a company that was doing a visual device that was fitted to tanks for spotting land mines. The indeed used the Joshua OS and originally used Graphite computers in testing. This product was deployed by the US Military and Adrian even went into the field to see it implemented.

     

    Good luck cracking it. You won't get any technical information from me or Adrian but you won't get any legal ramifications from me as I don't have any interest in the product, however, you are violating the DMCA by cracking it, so Adiran could come down on the forums if he were paying attention as he is the owner of the OS, I merely licensed it from him.

     

    Finally, as for me using alias' in the forums, everyone knows that to be untrue. I've always been here, and used my real name. Even when the storm of misinformation about MAME went on, I didn't hide under an alias. Yes, I watch the forums, and when I want to post, I post under my real name.

     

    Title: Re: Has anyone ever figured out the Joshua OS from Ultracade?

    Post by: davidrfoley on November 25, 2008, 06:09:14 PM

    Well, regardless of my ownership of UltraCade, giving out proprietary information about the OS would violate NDA's that I have signed.

     

    It's really simple though. If your goal is to have a fast loading OS for a system, go grab an open source DOS. Joshua is in many ways just like DOS in functionality and performance. The OS was built with a very narrow field of hardware and applications to support, so it isn't hampered by loads of drivers and the kernel can be very efficient. I'm willing to bet if you took FreeDOS or an equivalent, and setup a MAME machine, you'd find that the performance of Joshua could easily be matched.

     

    If you are looking for a wide base of hardware support, there are some scaled back versions of Linux that can be loaded from BOOT ROM's and they can get fairly quick in loading too. The boot time is very cool and appealing, and will always be compromised in the name of hardware compatibility.

  23. Posted · Edited by Fort Apocalypse

    Just curious for those that did bB development before in Crimson Editor and who now used/tried Visual bB- has it significantly decreased the amount of time to get what you want done?

     

    Have there been any notable advances in bB over the past year? Just curious since I've been out of it for a while. (Sorry that I got so much help from Michael and everyone, and left so much undone, btw.)

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