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Which Should I Setup: Vic-20, Mac Plus, or PCjr?


Tempest

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Tape/disk wise, I'd venture to guess most all of the greatest of the great are on that Megacart. Can't wait to get mine. He's building it right now. As far as the TI carts go... those cassette tape storage solutions work real well...

 

post-13896-126435140404_thumb.jpg

 

 

Here's a site that lists what looks to be complete collections on tape and cart:

 

http://www.commodore...20/index-t.html

Edited by save2600
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1. Is it worth getting a disk drive for the Vic-20? I know where I can get one, but how many games came on disk? Are most of them on the Megacart?

2. Is it worth keeping a tape drive hooked up to the Vic? Are most of the best ones on the Megacart?

 

1) A C64 compatible 1541 will work fine with the Vic. The 1540 was released for it specifically but you'll be hard pressed to find one, and then it'll cost you. To date, I've only discovered one commercial game released on disk. There is also the recent 32K release "Realms of Quest 3" which is disk only too.

 

2) The Megacart has all known cartridge dumps and a smattering of popular/good tape games on it. Certainly there are plenty more good games available not on it. The only problem generally is tracking originals down... having a disk drive with extracted PRGs written to disk would probably be a better solution.

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Tempest, if it was me, I'd setup the Mac. But you could have guessed that! :)

 

If you need games or software I have just about everything made for it. Also, System 6.0.8 is what you want to run on that system.

Why 6.0.8? I thought after 6.0.3 they were all specific machine releases.

 

Yeah I'd love to get some classic mac software for it.

 

Tempest

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Tempest, if it was me, I'd setup the Mac. But you could have guessed that! :)

 

If you need games or software I have just about everything made for it. Also, System 6.0.8 is what you want to run on that system.

Why 6.0.8? I thought after 6.0.3 they were all specific machine releases.

 

Yeah I'd love to get some classic mac software for it.

 

Tempest

 

That's probably, mostly true, but it's also very likely that there were other bug fixes in System 6's 3-4 year run. I'm sure I could dig up some more detailed information if need be, but the biggest reason to run 6.0.8 is that there is no practical reason NOT to (other than not having it). There is no benefit to running an older version.

 

I hope you have a big hard drive for that Plus! ;) The worst part about my archive is that it's not sorted by machine and OS compatibility (a massive undertaking)... but, that's half the fun! :D

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I hope you have a great time with the Plus! I love those old compact Macs, and have fond memories of playing text adventures, puzzle games like The Fool's Errand (which is now freeware AFAIK), and various arcade and platform titles. I think it can also be a fine machine for word processing, and surprisingly quick (the SE/30 even more so) if you have the right program/use the right version. (And it runs silently if you boot it from floppy, which can be nice.)

 

This page may also have some helpful links; the University of Michigan link in particular has a lot of good stuff. I think you can load pretty much anything onto the machine if you have a serial cable and another Mac that has a serial port.

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I was playing around withe Vic-20 multicart last night. There are some nice games on the Vic! I was really impressed by the Vic version of Donkey Kong. It's no Atari 8-bit, but it's still a great version. Two questions though:

 

1. Is it worth getting a disk drive for the Vic-20? I know where I can get one, but how many games came on disk? Are most of them on the Megacart?

2. Is it worth keeping a tape drive hooked up to the Vic? Are most of the best ones on the Megacart?

 

Tempest

 

Forget the disk drive.

 

Get a uIEC device from Jim Brain and mount it inside the 1530 cassette drive. I have mine mounted under the smoked door of the unit, so when I press eject the unit lifts to allow me to replace the SD card. The power is provided from the cassette cable and the whole unit matches the VIC perfectly.

 

Combined with the MegaCart you'll have the ultimate VIC set up.

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Glad you're enjoying the Vic-20 as well. I would have voted for that, or for both the Vic and the Mac. The MegaCart has so many good games on it that will keep you busy for a long time, but once you've exhausted that, and you're ready for more, get GameBase Vic 2.0 and browse through those, putting games on 1541 disks as you like (if you have the means to do so).

 

The Vic-20 is really a fantastic, underrated machine for arcade-type games especially. Yeah, it's not as capable as the C64, but the games for it have a different feel that's still fun to experience.

 

EDIT: oh yeah, I like oracle_jedi's solution. That'll cost you maybe a little more than a 1541->PC cable, but will save you more than that in frustration and time. Slick idea... I have a few tape drives lying around, I may just have to do something similar to that!

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Glad you were able to hook at least two of the three up Tempest.

We are going to be looking for a new house soon and I am specifically going to be keeping my eyes on the perfect spot for my Man-Cave that will include a spot for every system/computer I own. Not sure why but most of all, I've had a recent craving to hook up my old VIC-20 and C-64 and rediscover the games I haven't played in years and years. I still have all my original carts, tapes and disks!! Really looking forward to firing them up, and hoping they still work after all this time.

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I hope you have a great time with the Plus! I love those old compact Macs, and have fond memories of playing text adventures, puzzle games like The Fool's Errand (which is now freeware AFAIK), and various arcade and platform titles. I think it can also be a fine machine for word processing, and surprisingly quick (the SE/30 even more so) if you have the right program/use the right version. (And it runs silently if you boot it from floppy, which can be nice.)

 

This page may also have some helpful links; the University of Michigan link in particular has a lot of good stuff. I think you can load pretty much anything onto the machine if you have a serial cable and another Mac that has a serial port.

 

Sure, you *could* use a serial cable... if you want to play games tomorrow after a good, long, nights sleep! :P

 

If you want to play games today, SCSI is much faster. Especially, with the Plus because if you're using a hard drive it's already external, so you just check your SCSI ID's and connect the drive to another Mac and copy what you want.

 

Personally, I use an external Zip drive on the Mac I'm working on and a beige Power Mac G3 with an internal Zip drive. I also added USB and Firewire to the PM G3.

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I think it's a 20 Meg HD as it's called Macintosh 20 on the screen (it's a 3rd party drive). I have a bigger one, but I use that with my IIgs. The games aren't that large are they? If so I'll just swap them out as needed I guess.

 

Tempest

 

We won't have a problem filling that. :)

 

I have 2 GB compressed of classic games alone. Granted good number of them won't run on the Plus. If you had a Quadra on the other hand...

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A C64 compatible 1541 will work fine with the Vic. The 1540 was released for it specifically but you'll be hard pressed to find one, and then it'll cost you.

I have a VIC-1541 that's color coordinated for my VIC 20

post-3056-126443735573_thumb.jpg

 

Forget the disk drive. Get a uIEC device from Jim Brain and mount it inside the 1530 cassette drive.

Agreed, the uIEC is the way to go - though mine's hooked up to my 128. I haven't mounted it in anything yet, the cassette drive's a good idea. .

Edited by SpiceWare
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Sure, you *could* use a serial cable... if you want to play games tomorrow after a good, long, nights sleep! :P

 

If you want to play games today, SCSI is much faster. Especially, with the Plus because if you're using a hard drive it's already external, so you just check your SCSI ID's and connect the drive to another Mac and copy what you want.

 

Personally, I use an external Zip drive on the Mac I'm working on and a beige Power Mac G3 with an internal Zip drive. I also added USB and Firewire to the PM G3.

Ha! Well, point taken. I was just remembering the method I used with my old PowerBook 1400cs, which had no Ethernet card and for which I had no SCSI adapter. Even so, it was useful to write emails and work on various projects when I was on the road. When I got home, I'd just plug in the serial cable (my main computer was also a beige G3 at the time) and copy over whatever I needed.

 

Of course SCSI is much faster, but when it's not feasible the serial cable will work, though it's very slow indeed. Still, I don't think it'd take more than an hour or two to fill up a 20MB HD that way.

 

The link I posted earlier might be useful in figuring out which games will run on the Plus. I think Dutil's Jack, which I found surprisingly addictive, should work.

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If you had a Quadra on the other hand...

I've got a G4 Cube in the basement. A bit faster than a Quadra, but it'll run OS 9 in classic mode (have X on it now).

 

Tempest

 

Hard to say how much of what I have will run on which systems. There is surely a lot of software that won't run on the Cube with MacOS 9... and possibly quite a bit that will. I mentioned a Quadra (950 is my favorite, but it's MASSIVE!) just as an educated guess that it may be the "sweet" spot for the most compatibility with my archive. Without a doubt, I have nearly everything that will run on the Plus.

 

The Cube would make an adequate repository for a software archive. You would have to transfer software to the Plus via CD-ROM, as you mentioned earlier. A system with SCSI and a big HD would be ideal though.

 

Sure, you *could* use a serial cable... if you want to play games tomorrow after a good, long, nights sleep! :P

 

If you want to play games today, SCSI is much faster. Especially, with the Plus because if you're using a hard drive it's already external, so you just check your SCSI ID's and connect the drive to another Mac and copy what you want.

 

Personally, I use an external Zip drive on the Mac I'm working on and a beige Power Mac G3 with an internal Zip drive. I also added USB and Firewire to the PM G3.

Ha! Well, point taken. I was just remembering the method I used with my old PowerBook 1400cs, which had no Ethernet card and for which I had no SCSI adapter. Even so, it was useful to write emails and work on various projects when I was on the road. When I got home, I'd just plug in the serial cable (my main computer was also a beige G3 at the time) and copy over whatever I needed.

 

Of course SCSI is much faster, but when it's not feasible the serial cable will work, though it's very slow indeed. Still, I don't think it'd take more than an hour or two to fill up a 20MB HD that way.

 

The link I posted earlier might be useful in figuring out which games will run on the Plus. I think Dutil's Jack, which I found surprisingly addictive, should work.

 

Well, at the time I wasn't sure how big the HD was. Still, with SCSI, it would only take a couple minutes, instead of a couple hours. :)

 

I have fond (and not so fond) memories of those PowerBook SCSI adapters! :D I used to have a pretty extensive localtalk network setup several years ago, complete with MacIP router, and probably a dozen PhoneNet adapters!

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Of course three of the games I was dying to play have broken links on that page:

 

Wizardry I

Might and Magic I

Dark Castle

 

Sigh. Anyone know where I can find the 68K Mac version of these?

 

Tempest

 

Check your Atari Proto's email. ;)

 

I'm still working on Wizardry... it's possible I have it, but it's in an archived file with a bunch of other games, so I can't search for it's name. I have the Apple II version though! :)

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Hmm... I thought I posted this last night but now I don't see it.

 

How do I burn a CD so it can be read by the Mac Plus? I tried it on my Powerbook G4 using Toast Titanium (as a Mac Only CD) at the slowest speed it would allow (4x I think) and it didn't seem to work. I tried it again using Nero on my PC and burning it using one of the ISO options (9660 I think) and it didn't work either. What's the best way to do this?

 

Tempest

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Hmm... I thought I posted this last night but now I don't see it.

 

How do I burn a CD so it can be read by the Mac Plus? I tried it on my Powerbook G4 using Toast Titanium (as a Mac Only CD) at the slowest speed it would allow (4x I think) and it didn't seem to work. I tried it again using Nero on my PC and burning it using one of the ISO options (9660 I think) and it didn't work either. What's the best way to do this?

 

Tempest

 

Make sure in Toast that you are burning the disc using HFS not HFS+.

 

If you are burning from nero using 9660, make sure the 9660 extension is installed on the Mac.

 

One big problem is that some of the older CD drives don't play nice with burned discs.

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Hmm... I thought I posted this last night but now I don't see it.

 

How do I burn a CD so it can be read by the Mac Plus? I tried it on my Powerbook G4 using Toast Titanium (as a Mac Only CD) at the slowest speed it would allow (4x I think) and it didn't seem to work. I tried it again using Nero on my PC and burning it using one of the ISO options (9660 I think) and it didn't work either. What's the best way to do this?

 

Tempest

 

Make sure in Toast that you are burning the disc using HFS not HFS+.

 

If you are burning from nero using 9660, make sure the 9660 extension is installed on the Mac.

 

One big problem is that some of the older CD drives don't play nice with burned discs.

This drive does (I have another 150 that doesn't for some reason) as I used it on my Apple IIgs for this very same purpose. I'm not sure if 9660 is installed on the Mac, probably not.

 

How do I check if it's doing HFS or HFS+ in Toast? The only options I see are Mac and Mac/PC.

 

Tempest

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Something just occurred to me. How hard would it be to use a ZIP drive on my Mac Plus? I have a G4 Cube that I could hook it up to and get the ZIP Disk ready. I assume you just need to format it using the right version of the driver and make sure that the driver is on the disk itself?

 

Tempest

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Something just occurred to me. How hard would it be to use a ZIP drive on my Mac Plus? I have a G4 Cube that I could hook it up to and get the ZIP Disk ready. I assume you just need to format it using the right version of the driver and make sure that the driver is on the disk itself?

 

Tempest

 

Do you have both SCSI & USB Zip drives? If so then it should be pretty easy. This is how I transfer files personally... except I use IDE drives instead of USB on the "modern" system.

 

What I usually do on the vintage system is put the Iomega guest program on an 800k floppy. That will allow you to install the driver for this session without rebooting.

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Actually the more I think about it, my ZIP drive is for parallel ports. So no dice. I need to get the CD working. I don't need special drivers for a Apple CD drive do I?

 

Oh and how do I tell if Toast is writing in HFS or HFS+? That might be my problem.

 

Tempest

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