Retrocomputing / Retrogaming

[Slime_Punk]

I figured I'd start a thread for interesting retro gadgets, computers, clone machines, emulations and other stuff related to retrocomputing and retrogaming because it's just way too much fun. If anyone else is into this kind of thing, please feel free to share your projects, videos you've found, or pretty much anything related to either one!

(These two are from my "Can't afford that, but definitely want that" list!)

 

[Misery]

I'm very much into retro games, so I've got tons of stuff like this.

Recently I've been trying some romhacks, like this one:

I found that a lot of JRPGs from back then have a ton of different romhacks, which up the difficulty a lot. I'd avoided the genre for a long time since traditionally they're WAY too easy, but those hacks fix that. This is really darned difficult now (as I'd always wished it was). As it is that screenshot is a "moments before disaster" sort, got mangled by... whatever that is. Alters the story, too, very first thing that happens is that the twins and Cecil die, and things get loopy from there. I'm quite enjoying it... or at least I was, until the emulator decided to abruptly refuse to launch. I cant figure out why.

As for other retro gaming stuff, I have "The Archive", AKA roms of every arcade game ever made before... 2006, I think it is. Modern arcade games do nothing for me (usually being little more than token eaters that give you like 3 minutes to play and that's it) so the archive is mostly about golden age arcade games.

Also, stuff like this:

Big fan of the old Atari 2600, so that's in the archive too. A lot of really obscure games in there that I like.

And there's this:

Takes a moment to get going, that video, but that whole thing is really amazing. Stuff like that is one of the reasons I got into VR in the first place.

I could talk about this stuff all day.

 

[Raggamuffin]

I only really play older games these days.

Phantasy Star Universe (Clementine) is my go to these days. PSU originally came out on 360, PS2 and PC in 2005.

I don't play many hours per week, but it's a nice easy game to play. Controller compatible, hack and slash MMO with a decent size community for a private server.

Ed

 

[Shamar]

I figured I'd start a thread for interesting retro gadgets, computers, clone machines, emulations and other stuff related to retrocomputing and retrogaming because it's just way too much fun. If anyone else is into this kind of thing, please feel free to share your projects, videos you've found, or pretty much anything related to either one!

(These two are from my "Can't afford that, but definitely want that" list!)

I've worked with the PDP8/PDP11 computers. 32 K (not G, not M) of memory, 1.333 MHz clock speed, input was via punched paper tape or direct bit entry using registers, and about the size of a refrigerator.

My first computer was a Commodore 64, actually quite an upgrade. I still have it.

 

[Lil]

Hiya all. This is a bit of a stretch from retro computing but there is a connection. I dabble in electronic music and I was after a novel sound source to incorporate into a music track. Well, what could be more retro than to build the source using 50 years old technology from the bits and pieces in my workshop junk box? Top picture is the result...the output is a waveform full of harmonics. It is perfect for further processing in my software, hopefully to result in musical notes. Using current technology this could have been done in one small section of a single tiny chip. But it was fun. It brought back happy memories and made me realize how far technology has advanced in my lifetime.

The bottom pic is the glowing valve (tube) with the lights out. It brought back happy memories of radio sets of the time that were full of these devices...they seemed magical.

Some of my stuff here:

https://soundcloud.com/ipomea1

 

[Outdated]

My first computer was a Commodore 64, actually quite an upgrade. I still have it.

I was jealous of the C64, I had a second hand TRS80 and couldn't afford more.

 

[Lil]

I still have my TRS80 stored somewhere! It was an American import and so needed a 110 Volt mains supply. I had to get a transformer to use it on our 240 Volt mains. Later, I added a 1k memory chip so it could display lower as well as upper case text. Also, I modified an old teleprinter to interface with it. Happy days!

 

[Outdated]

I still have my TRS80 stored somewhere!

I bought mine second hand from a Ham Radio operator who was buying a shiny new C64, so it came with everything I needed.

Back in the days when Pirate Software meant photocopied sheets of A4.

 

[Lil]

It sounds like we are of a similar age!

I can remember efforts to load software from cassette tape, it usually worked after a few tries., lol!

I'm a typical Aspergers nerd and have enjoyed lots of techy hobbies. After computers it was Ham radio and I still have my license, GW4AUD. Then back to computing with Windows. I learned to code and started a second career in software. Latest hobby is electronic music.

 

[Outdated]

It sounds like we are of a similar age!

I'm a 1965 model.

My formal education ended as soon as I was 16 and legally allowed to leave but I was always an A grade student in every subject. Freak memory, never had to study anything, read it once and know it. I was always in to maths and science and all the new changes in technology were fascinating back then.

I bought a computer simply because I was curious and wanted to know how they worked. That didn't last very long though. I was only 19, I started working a second job, got a new girlfriend, bought my first V8, etc. I forgot all about computers again until 1995, now I'm a bit of a geek.

 

[Lil]

I'm a 1965 model.

My formal education ended as soon as I was 16 and legally allowed to leave but I was always an A grade student in every subject. Freak memory, never had to study anything, read it once and know it. I was always in to maths and science and all the new changes in technology were fascinating back then.

I bought a computer simply because I was curious and wanted to know how they worked. That didn't last very long though. I was only 19, I started working a second job, got a new girlfriend, bought my first V8, etc. I forgot all about computers again until 1995, now I'm a bit of a geek.

Oh...I'm 20 years older than you!

But I still have an insatiable curiosity about everything, especially science/tech and never stop learning. My once photographic memory isn't quite so sharp nowadays, though. Like you I went through a 'phase' but for me it was motorcycles and hanging around biker pubs with dubious characters.

 

[Outdated]

Like you I went through a 'phase' but for me it was motorcycles and hanging around biker pubs with dubious characters.

For me it was cars and beaches. Waterfront pubs and surfing.

 

[tkcartoonist]

I'm trying to figure out how to work with an Atari ST emulator. I want to find some MIDI software and see if I can make a song down the road like a producer from 1987.

 

[Outdated]

I'm trying to figure out how to work with an Atari ST emulator. I want to find some MIDI software and see if I can make a song down the road like a producer from 1987.

Something like this might be of interest to you. The very first emulator in the list also has a midi emulator.

What Is The Best Atari ST Emulator? - How To Retro

The Best Atari ST Emulators are still considered to be either Hatari or Steem. There is mixed opinion as to which is the best for Atari ST Emulation, but I

www.howtoretro.com

 

[tkcartoonist]

Something like this might be of interest to you. The very first emulator in the list also has a midi emulator.

What Is The Best Atari ST Emulator? - How To Retro

The Best Atari ST Emulators are still considered to be either Hatari or Steem. There is mixed opinion as to which is the best for Atari ST Emulation, but I

www.howtoretro.com

I've got Hatari running FreeTOS on it currently. It's finding a suitable MIDI program that I'm still looking for. I'll give that link a look.

 

[Outdated]

I've got Hatari running FreeTOS on it currently. It's finding a suitable MIDI program that I'm still looking for. I'll give that link a look.

I'm only interested in the technical computing side of things, I have no musical abilities at all.

You can use an external midi device as well. Back in the 90s a lot of my friends were musicians and one of them used to play a lot of popular cover songs. He played guitar and sang, and he was accompanied by another guitarist and a keyboard player. He used to also have a laptop plugged in to the amp playing the backing tracks. Mostly just percussion.

He used to strip the backing tracks from commercial CDs. It's alright, I can talk about this freely because he's dead now. I can't remember the name of the software he was using back then but it required 2 midi devices, The internal one in the laptop's internal sound card, and for a second midi device he plugged in his Yamaha keyboard.

Then when he put a CD in (original cda format tracks) he was able to separate all the individual tracks of the music and delete the tracks he didn't want. So he could knock out all the guitars keyboards and vocals, then save the remaining tracks as an mp3.

 

[Princess Viola]

I've been into retrogaming since I was a kid and discovered the wonders of emulators and ROMs - ironically I discovered emulators because I wanted to play what was then a current game (huge fan of Pokémon as a kid, asked to get a Game Boy Advance and a copy of either Pokémon Ruby or Sapphire for my 7th birthday in 2003, didn't get it. Asked again for Christmas, didn't get it then either. Cue some time in early 2004, ended up discovering a GBA emulator (was probably Visual Boy Advance cuz I think that was like the main emulator at the time) and a website full of ROMs and I just downloaded the games and played them on my computer).

Anyways that lead to me soon discovering emulators for older systems too like the NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, etc. and just downloading them and downloading ROMs to play on them. Of course, my computer at the time wasn't that good so I wouldn't be surprised if these games ran like crap but I was 7 years old and didn't know any better. I didn't even have a controller at the time and literally was playing them with my keyboard (and all these years later, I still have some of the keyboard controls memorized not gonna lie).

But I mean considering that outside of this, the only games I could play (outside of like Flash games on the internet) were the 5 or 6 Nintendo 64 games I had, it's pretty easy to see why retrogaming basically became an obsession of mine. I basically had hundreds and hundreds of games I could play now (although I'm pretty sure as a kid with dial-up, I only downloaded games I 100% knew about and wanted to play - sure the file size of these games might've been small, but that download time added up on a 56k connection)

Heck when I was like 9 years old I got a plug and play Intellivision at school (it makes sense how I got that at school, honest) and I was obsessed with playing that. Didn't even care I was playing games from the early 80s, they were fun. (Now if only it had been one of those plug and plays that tried to look like the actual console - it wasn't a bootleg, it was fully licensed by whoever owned the Intellivision brand at the time but it was just like a 'generic game controller that you plugged into your TV' and not one of the at least cool-looking plug and plays that look like the system)

Nowadays I still mostly stick with consoles and MS-DOS emulation, but I have dabbled in Commodore 64 and various other computer emulation at times. I just haven't really had the time to fully dive-deep into that kind of stuff, despite my fascination with retro computers.

(One of these days I'll get that Windows 98 gaming PC I got hooked up to see if it works still tbh. Get a late 90s PC gaming setup made for it. Already got nearly all the components for it just lying around)

 

[Outdated]

(One of these days I'll get that Windows 98 gaming PC I got hooked up to see if it works still tbh. Get a late 90s PC gaming setup made for it. Already got nearly all the components for it just lying around)

I still have a few favourite games from this era and have dabbled with emulating an old PC but I never found anything that really worked well for me. These days I can play a lot of them under Wine but it would be nice to find a decent emulator one day.

 

[Slime_Punk]

I still have a few favourite games from this era and have dabbled with emulating an old PC but I never found anything that really worked well for me. These days I can play a lot of them under Wine but it would be nice to find a decent emulator one day.

PCem

pcem-emulator.co.uk

Have you tried this? Supposedly it has made pretty much everything playable now. Virtualbox was cool and everything, but apparently this one actually allows for all the games.

 

[Outdated]

PCem

pcem-emulator.co.uk

Have you tried this? Supposedly it has made pretty much everything playable now. Dosbox was cool and everything, but apparently this one actually allows for all the games

Thanks for looking out for me. I've tried it but still didn't have a great deal of joy, the hard part is finding the firmware so that it can emulate graphics cards, etc. It was a while ago that I tried it though, maybe that's improved now. It really is a good emulation solution, it's just a matter of finding the firmware for it.