IBM Portable PC

[blastermaster]

Juts got one of these suckers for $2. Pretty cool machine. Anyway i was wondering how hard it is to find games for these on floppy, besides ebay, and anything fun you can do with em. I last time i played with one i was 9. And i am also looking for a game called castle, it was one of the most fun games i ever played as a kid, and i really want it back!

 

Thanks!

 

~jon

[guitarmas]

I remember having one. It was an 8088 with a mono screen. 2 5 1/4's and no hd. It was great.

[supercat]

I remember having one.  It was an 8088 with a mono screen.  2 5 1/4's and no hd.  It was great. 

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Would have been much nicer if they'd fed the monitor off a luminance-only signal instead of the absolutely horrid composite color signal output by the CGA. I wonder why IBM even bothered with color-modulating the composite output in video mode 3, given that the colorburst timing is wrong so colors come out as ugly striped monochrome anyway.

[blastermaster]

I am REALLY looking for a game called "key to the castle", i just found out the real name to it. So if anyone has it on 5 1/4 floppy that they can spare i would love a copy. I would pay a fair amount...alos anyone have anyother ibm info for me?

 

Thanks

 

~Jon

[Flojomojo]

Is this it?

[Great Hierophant]

The IBM PC Portable contains a full IBM PC XT motherboard (First BIOS, First Motherboard) and a good power supply. It is a very nice machine.

 

Would have been much nicer if they'd fed the monitor off a luminance-only signal instead of the absolutely horrid composite color signal output by the CGA. I wonder why IBM even bothered with color-modulating the composite output in video mode 3, given that the colorburst timing is wrong so colors come out as ugly striped monochrome anyway.

 

I guess that IBM wanted a color 80-column text mode for everybody. Any CGA graphics on a composite color monitor won't look very good unless properly tweaked. Some games do use it, after all.

[supercat]

I guess that IBM wanted a color 80-column text mode for everybody.  Any CGA graphics on a composite color monitor won't look very good unless properly tweaked.  Some games do use it, after all.

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The 80-column text mode doesn't give a composite color signal. It gives a nasty stripey black and white signal. If the chromaburst actually appeared in the right spot, it might actually be useful but as it is it's worse than useless.

 

The only program I've seen that looks better on a composite monitor in hardware mode 3 than hardware mode 2 is a game called "Round 42". That particular game sets the border color to yellow, and the yellow border kinda sorta works as a pseudo-colorburst. Otherwise, everything looks better in mode 2 whether it uses color (which then appears as greyscale) or not.

 

The only games I've seen that look good on a composite color monitor are those that use a 'tweaked' mode 6. Ironically, the 640x200 mode is the only mode that can produce a decent color display on a composite monitor, and yet it's the only mode that doesn't provide the option to enable colorburst.