Nebulon Posted December 7, 2018 Share Posted December 7, 2018 (edited) After selling and doing tech work on PCs for ages (and really hating them), I had to admit they were finally good when the Pentium Pro showed up. Between that and the DEC Alpha, that was the moment in history where I was really impressed by the ratio of processing speed to price. And there's documentation out there to suggest that the Pentium Pro and Pentium II/III are related to the DEC Alpha. But that's another story.... https://www.wired.com/1997/10/intel-dec-settle-alpha-chip-dispute/ https://www.hpcwire.com/1997/05/16/dec-sues-intel-alleges-architecture-patent-infringement/ https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1998/0323/6106042a.html#7b7a441ae07d https://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/14/business/suit-by-digital-says-intel-stole-pentium-design.html https://money.cnn.com/1997/10/27/deals/settle/ Edited December 7, 2018 by Nebulon 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damosan Posted December 8, 2018 Share Posted December 8, 2018 Has anyone said emulation? When I got my ST back in the mid 80s it wasn't long before I had a Magic Sac and PC-Ditto. Having one machine able to run three different systems worth of software was amazing to me back then - not to mention very helpful at times. Modems, in general, are a close number two for me. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zonie Posted December 10, 2018 Share Posted December 10, 2018 After selling and doing tech work on PCs for ages (and really hating them), I had to admit they were finally good when the Pentium Pro showed up. Between that and the DEC Alpha, that was the moment in history where I was really impressed by the ratio of processing speed to price. And there's documentation out there to suggest that the Pentium Pro and Pentium II/III are related to the DEC Alpha. But that's another story.... https://www.wired.com/1997/10/intel-dec-settle-alpha-chip-dispute/ Heh. Fab17 state of the art? It's gone now. https://www.hpcwire.com/1997/05/16/dec-sues-intel-alleges-architecture-patent-infringement/ https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1998/0323/6106042a.html#7b7a441ae07d https://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/14/business/suit-by-digital-says-intel-stole-pentium-design.html https://money.cnn.com/1997/10/27/deals/settle/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted December 10, 2018 Share Posted December 10, 2018 Several things fit the bill hereMulti-tasking OS. OS-9's ability to run multiple programs at once on the 6809 seemed like the greatest idea ever. Oddly enough, I never bought OS-9 because I was in college and didn't have the money. A couple years later I got an Amiga.Multi-pass dot matrix printers. The Citizen I had printed really nice text.USB. I specially ordered a motherboard with everything but video, and sound on board (serial, parallel, IDE, USB...) .The dealer liked it so much he started building most of his machines with that board. (DFI I believe, they switched to doing OEM only stuff after a couple years)A faster, simpler, less bulky alternative to the old serial and parallel ports/cables that have been around since... the 60s(?) seemed like a great idea. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamchevy Posted December 10, 2018 Share Posted December 10, 2018 The first time I saw a Vector monitor. The first one I ever saw in person was on a Vectrex. Or maybe it’s the first one I remember seeing. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted December 10, 2018 Share Posted December 10, 2018 The first time I saw a Vector monitor. The first one I ever saw in person was on a Vectrex. Or maybe it’s the first one I remember seeing. You hadn't seen Asteroids or Battlezone? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamchevy Posted December 10, 2018 Share Posted December 10, 2018 (edited) You hadn't seen Asteroids or Battlezone?Nope. They didn’t have any Vector games in the Arcade I frequented in the mall in the late 90s. I think they had a Pacman , but I never played it. I was only interested in San Francisco Rush, Tekken 3, Street Fighter 2 Turbo, and Killer Instinct. I occasionally played Gauntlet Legends with my 4 friends. Oh, and Sega Rally GT. Which was a whole dollar to play. What a Rip off. Edited December 10, 2018 by adamchevy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nebulon Posted December 11, 2018 Share Posted December 11, 2018 Nope. They didn’t have any Vector games in the Arcade I frequented in the mall in the late 90s. I think they had a Pacman , but I never played it. I was only interested in San Francisco Rush, Tekken 3, Street Fighter 2 Turbo, and Killer Instinct. I occasionally played Gauntlet Legends with my 4 friends. Oh, and Sega Rally GT. Which was a whole dollar to play. What a Rip off. My goodness. I'm guessing you've see color vector coin-ops in-person since? If not, you owe it to yourself to get an up-close look at an operational Major Havoc, Star Wars, Space Duel, or Gravitar cabinet. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted December 12, 2018 Share Posted December 12, 2018 I guess vector games were replaced long before the late 90s. Gotta fill the arcades with coin eating beat-em-ups to make money.Pretty sure that contributed to the death of arcades. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted December 12, 2018 Author Share Posted December 12, 2018 I made an honest-to-gods effort to like beat'em ups. I even almost started believing I was "culturally deficient" because I couldn't understand their popularity or the need for arcade owners to load up on them. Vector games had a certain futuristic aura about them. I liked that. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted December 12, 2018 Share Posted December 12, 2018 Not always being able to relate to the masses is a good thing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted December 12, 2018 Share Posted December 12, 2018 It wasn't about the masses, it was about $$. A lot of people probably stopped going to arcades when games they liked disappeared. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polyex Posted December 12, 2018 Share Posted December 12, 2018 M.A.M.E. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted December 13, 2018 Author Share Posted December 13, 2018 It's weird. I always wanted to stop going to the arcades after 1983'ish or thereabouts. I knew I was spending allowance money at alarming rates. And despite me having tons of videogames at home I still went - in pursuit of better sound and graphics. A lot of the times it was more about the advancing tech that drew me to those joints in the first place. How did all that stuff work? There must be supercomputers inside those cabinets! It was even fun to write short 2-page sci-fi stories about it all. ..which all sort of leads into the Pentium II Processor. I had of course naturally known about the Pentium Pro and got hard up to build a PPro machine. But never could afford it in it's prime, by the time I had enough $$$ together I just bought into the P2 as a matter of practicality. It was amazing to have a processor that could execute instructions before they were called for by a program. Out of Order Execution / Speculative Execution. It was like some kind of strange magic. How did it know how to do that? And if it knew, why not just go with the flow and not even bother accessing memory. Questions questions questions, and no real understanding.. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_me Posted December 13, 2018 Share Posted December 13, 2018 The windows "start" menu. Microsoft use to frustrate me with the windows/nt 3.x interface of icons and windows. I was quite happy to have all programs organised in a menu. Finally, microsoft did something right. I have to say the first time I fired up the world wide web in the mid 1990s was a bit of a wow moment. Not so much when I got email in 1988; who was I going to send email to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rpiguy9907 Posted December 14, 2018 Share Posted December 14, 2018 When I got a computer with more cache than my C64 had RAM I was pretty stunned. Also, the first time I saw a 3D game on my brother's OG PlayStation I was pretty stunned. Today of course it looks blocky, over textured, and under-filtered, but back then it was incredible what a 33mhz PS1 could do compared to my 75mhz P75 desktop. Within a couple of years the PC got decent 3D graphics cards and have reigned pretty much supreme ever since, if you have the money, but there was a couple years with the PS1 and N64 where consoles could do things PCs generally could not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxdrive Posted December 16, 2018 Share Posted December 16, 2018 For me it is any type of media that stores a lot of data from Zip disk to even usb drives or sad cards I remember being amazed how much data could be stored on a Zip disk I could store MAME roms and still have space considering before all I had were floppy drives. The other tech was CD burners being able to put music from my computer and make a cd was so awesome Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamchevy Posted December 17, 2018 Share Posted December 17, 2018 I made an honest-to-gods effort to like beat'em ups. I even almost started believing I was "culturally deficient" because I couldn't understand their popularity or the need for arcade owners to load up on them. Vector games had a certain futuristic aura about them. I liked that. You could fill an Arcade up with the great Vector arcade games and pinball games of the 70s and early eighties and I think your arcade would be a hit with today’s kids. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted December 17, 2018 Author Share Posted December 17, 2018 Arcade Jason on youtube has a whole basement full of vector cabs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schizophretard Posted December 17, 2018 Share Posted December 17, 2018 My memory from day care of seeing an Atari 400 that a kid brought is the first thing that comes to mind. I think the NES was already out and only knew of the VCS at the time. So, I thought I was looking at a new console from Atari and thought PAC-MAN looked amazing on it. Since I was looking at it from child eyes I don't think I was thinking of it as a computer. Well, not a serious one anyway. More like a video game console that was also an all-in-one with things like the Speak & Spell and other electronic toys. I just kind of had a feeling like,"Yes! This is the thing that Santa is getting all the kids this year! It will be able to play any video game imaginable and I will be able to talk to video game cartoons!" 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+davidcalgary29 Posted December 19, 2018 Share Posted December 19, 2018 SainT’s SD cart with McWill screen = SuperLynx. Seriously, it’s like a completely different (better! I know!) system. The combo is worth every “ooh!” in Klax. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boxpressed Posted December 19, 2018 Share Posted December 19, 2018 The Erasermate! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cuda_man Posted December 29, 2018 Share Posted December 29, 2018 Rendition Verite 2. Almost every sim racer had one, as most of the Papyrus sims exclusively supported it for 3d graphics. I knew after firing up classics like NASCAR Racing 2 and SODA Off Road that PC gaming would never be the same! Aureal 3D sound. Like the Rendition, Papyrus sims also supported A3D. With a 5:1 speaker system, being able to hear a car on your quarter panel was amazing! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamchevy Posted January 1, 2019 Share Posted January 1, 2019 (edited) The first time I installed and ran windows on an SSD Drive. I could not believe how much faster it was to install windows, and how snappy the operating system functioned. It was like magic. I was also amazed at how expensive they were. Now they are dirt cheap in comparison. Edited January 1, 2019 by adamchevy 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nebulon Posted January 3, 2019 Share Posted January 3, 2019 My memory from day care of seeing an Atari 400 that a kid brought is the first thing that comes to mind. I think the NES was already out and only knew of the VCS at the time. So, I thought I was looking at a new console from Atari and thought PAC-MAN looked amazing on it. Since I was looking at it from child eyes I don't think I was thinking of it as a computer. Well, not a serious one anyway. More like a video game console that was also an all-in-one with things like the Speak & Spell and other electronic toys. I just kind of had a feeling like,"Yes! This is the thing that Santa is getting all the kids this year! It will be able to play any video game imaginable and I will be able to talk to video game cartoons!" Now imagine seeing Pac-Man on the Atari 400 back in 1982. Mind blown! And to think the 400 was already over two years old by that time... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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