Moving onto Home computers

[msimplay]

I think one of the reasons for the focus on home consoles is that there are so damn many home computers from the 70s and 80s. Ataris, Apples, Commodores, Colecos, Sinclairs, Tandys, Amstrads, Texas Instruments, etc., etc.. It really boggles the mind, especially when you consider today that there's really only one architecture anyone uses anymore.

I tried to resist getting into computer collecting for quite a while for that reason. Then I saw an Apple IIgs for cheap on craigslist. I ended up spending more on DSDD disks for the thing than I did the entire computer.

Even so while there are many home computers I think it would be best to just start on the most popular ones first and then move onto the more obscure ones later same as with the consoles

I had / have an article about the Amiga in the pipeline but sort have had little time to devote to it. Maybe I should get around to finishing it and getting it shaped into a Racketboy article.

Ivo.

Yeah I'd love to read about the Amiga as I always wanted one but I just couldn't afford one. I remember one kid at school he used to have an Amiga and he was literally always on about how good it is and talking about games I didn't even know about at the time.

[Xonticus]

how about DOS and WINDOWS.
Every one played those right?

YES. Incredibly so. While I was playing with my Atari 2600, I was playing adventure games and other stuff on my QDos pc from Radioshack mailorder. Anyone remember the BBS systems? Who needed the internet then?

I may only be 22 and have grew up on the cusp of everything, I still was exposed to all of that good stuff as a small kid and was navigating DOS before I went to Kindergarten.

[Dakinggamer87]

I grew up as well around everything as well for computers and consoles. I used DOS and Windows too!!

[t0yrobo]

I was almost exclusively a pc gamer for a very long time (except for a few months with a nes). And as much as I loved my old 486 and all the old games for it, I think it'd be really hard to put to together a best of type list. There's just so damn many games, between the very popular and very obscure there was an obscene amount of good games released for pcs back in those days.

Doing roundups for amiga, c64, zxspeccy, atari st and all those computers would likely be a little easier, and seeing all the comparisons between different versions of games would be fun too.

I think I'd most like to see an emulation guide for spectrum and c64. I've always had a bit of a hard time with those, the different keyboard layout on the spectrum always messes me up and I've yet to find one for sale in the us.

[fast]

There have been talks about a pc article for a long time, but t0yrobo hit the nail on the head. It is just so vast that even when broken up in five year gaps and stopping at 2000 the list will be huge. I mean think about it. How many excellent PC games came out between mid 1995 and 2000?

Half-Life (and its mods)
Warcraft, Warcraft 2, Starcraft
Quake 1-3 (and mods)
Ages of Empires 1&2
Civilization 2
Aliens vs Predator Gold
Diablo 1&2
Fantasy General
Might and Magic 6-8
Mechwarrior 2&3
Ultima Online
Everquest
Ok Ill stop there - I mean look at those, you could do a series of articles on Half-Life or Quake 2 mods alone. It will require a very large time sink, tons of research, community involvement, and probably still be belittled by digg...

[msimplay]

Recently I been getting into Spectrum with the Spectaculator emulator. It was kind of before my time but I'm checking out what players were into during that time. I seperated the games into years and folders, I watched a documentary on Spectrum and made a list of notable titles for that year and downloaded instructions cassette inlays etc.
I also downloaded the top 100 games according to Your Sinclair and placed them in the previous folders

I'm actually loving the world of spectrum I'm reading reviews for each game and seeing what I think for each notable game. The graphics compared to our days games or even my generation Snes / Megadrive games they look pretty bad. However when you compare first generation Spectrum to the end of the Spectrum's life cycles games you can see that they really had a great time with Spectrum.

What I realised is while the graphics aren't too good the games actually play very well and also for the time the graphics were great considering the competition. The games on the rival computers were in color however lacked the detail the Spectrum games had. I noticed that the games actually looked a lot like they were in the arcades except the lack of colour :p

I have to say though as a final note finding out about the Spectrum is very different to finding out about consoles due to the shear volume of games available for it and also for some reason the fact that it was released in 1982 and me being born in 1982 meant that I kinda skipped the Spectrum generation because my first console was a Gameboy near the end of the Spectrums life cycle and the only other contact I had with games until that time was at a friends house

[noiseredux]

that's awesome man. I got into Spec stuff for a while in 07 when I had my NDS and the Speccy EMU. There's tons of amazing software on there. Jeez, I miss my DS.

What was the documentary you watched?

[riseup]

good topic. didn't read it all yet but wanted to say retro computers make me.. excited (down there)





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh0g73JvFbo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY2gK1MPgh8 commodore 64 (cheapest, most abundant retro computer)..$10-40.. monitor might be hard to find though

atari st

remember demo's!?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ych7zPsRWE8
if you saw this in those days you'd piss yourself from amazement!!!

msx


i love them all! i want them....badly


need to take a cold shower

[gravitone]

I started with some home computer stuff. Particulary focussing on the 1990's with the later great dos games and windows 95/98 stuff that is out there.
The real problem is building a decent system that is capable of playing most games without a hitch. For a good basis I used a gigabyte super socket 7 motherboard with Alladin V chipset. It fits AMD, intel pentium, and Cyrix processors. Right now im running a AMD k6-3+ at 400mhz. Still have to see at what speed I can get it running with some overclocking. I added a spare 40gb IDE drive I had lying around, 256mb 133mhz SDRAM, and for now, a geforce 4mx, and 2x voodoo2 in SLI. My gravis ultrasound is on its way as well. All I need now is a soundblaster card for dos (awe64 gold/soundblaster 16) and a vortex2 PCI card for windows games that support A3D 2.0. I also bought a roland MT-32 for the earlier dos games. Almost all the adventure games by sierra and lucasarts support. Im still shoping around for a soundcanvas daughterboard or external module for all the games that support general midi music. All those soundcards are the biggest issue with personal computers since things changed so much over the years. Its nearly impossible to create a pc that plays all games correctly with the best sound and music available at the time. I might actually build two rigs eventually but I just dont have the space right now. Good thing is that all these parts that cost a fortune back then cost next to nothing nowadays, although some parts are getting hard to get. Videocards can also be a nightmare as compatability with all the needed videomodes was pretty much unheard off. Crappy nvidia MX cards at least have half decent VESA 2.0 support. A 1.44mb floppydrive is obviously mandatory with older hardware, although so far I have managed with my trusty USB stick. Also just in are two microsoft sidewinder gamepads which can be daisy chained for some good old plaforming and what not. Still have my eye out for the sidewinder 3d pro, which in my oppinion, is the greatest stick around back then to play things like conflict freespace and outcast (one of my all time favourite games).


Hope this give some insight of what is required when undertaking such a daunting task as building the ultimate retro(ish) PC.

[msimplay]

Yeah I had the same problem a few years ago I was just testing out DOS stuff and generally PC versions of console classics on PS1 and Sega Saturn.

My experience was same as yours nearly, sound cards were a pain but I managed to get a hold of a Soundblaster with good backwards compatibility it was an onboard one on a Tiny Pentium 3 500mhz PC. I tried out with a Pentium 400mhz but I found it to be really slow for the internet but the extra 100mhz made it bearable for me. Also the 128mb of ram seemed really slow so I put in another sdram module and got it to 256mb and things started to run smoothly.

I messed around with graphics cards too, Riva TNT was good all rounder in 2d / 3d , Voodoo 2 in SLI was good for 3d but 2d seemed to lack. Virtua Fighter 2 the 3d character models looked a lot better than on the Riva TNT however the RIVA TNT had support hi res 2d backgrounds. Also I think Riva TNT seemed to have the better driver support in comparison to the Voodoo cards but thing is a lot of games in those days supported the Voodoo range of cards.
Although I have to say Riva TNT 2 trumps them both.

I think it's difficult to get the balance between performance and compatibility because some games could have done with a better processor for better performance but that would lose compatibility with older games.

Also the whole Windows 98 thing, man we have it good these days

Hmm I think your Retro PC is probably the best I've heard about good job . The other problem you are going to have is drivers its an annoyance to say the least. I personally hope DOSBOX gets better as gaming on PC in those days was a pain compared to console gaming at the time.