Re: Why is Amiga so popular with retro community ?

Posted on 2019-05-24, 08:42

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by NamelessPlayer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I would've figured that hardware polyphony still would've been a limiting factor then, considering it was used as a selling point for sound cards well into the Windows age, with the X-Fi cards boasting 128 simultaneous playback channels and all, but perhaps I overestimate the CPU overhead of …

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Re: CF to IDE compatibility

Posted on 2019-05-19, 06:43

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by NamelessPlayer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

CompactFlash cards, especially microdrives of the sort you'd find in an iPod mini or Palm LifeDrive, work pretty good in my experience, albeit with some quirks. -The adapter can sometimes make adding a slave device to the same IDE cable a pain, even though there's only one slot soldered on. There's …

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Re: Why is Amiga so popular with retro community ?

Posted on 2019-05-19, 03:57

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by NamelessPlayer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've heard about developers basically bit-banging PWM out of the PC speaker to play samples in some earlier games, though it's not CPU-efficient at all to do so and still sounds worse compared to how the Mac does it (also software-based and basically done in the blanking period between display …

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Re: Why is Amiga so popular with retro community ?

Posted on 2019-05-18, 07:37

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by NamelessPlayer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Towns was meant to compete with NEC mostly. It failed miserably though, and became mostly a school multimedia device. FM Towns VS X68000. Is an interesting one, Towns had better CPU and CD-ROM. But X68000 has better graphics and sound hardware. Oh, and X68000 Lemmings has 2 player mode with dual …

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Re: Why is Amiga so popular with retro community ?

Posted on 2019-05-16, 23:34

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by NamelessPlayer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'd say the turning point might've been closer to 1990. Well, there were good PC games in 1990, but not good enough to justify purchase of a PC just for gaming. And in 1991, there was Lemmings - a great game, originally made for Amiga, only later ported to PC, with certain features lacking. But in …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2019-05-13, 05:34

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by NamelessPlayer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've had a busy few weeks with this Amiga 4000 I've been working on, especially now that it's officially mine and not just being borrowed for recap/repair work. -Half the reason I didn't use it so much before was that two of Paula's audio channels - the second and third columns in Protracker - just …

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Re: Why is Amiga so popular with retro community ?

Posted on 2019-05-13, 05:08

by

by NamelessPlayer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I personally started looking into the Amiga about a decade ago, when I suddenly heard about it having the best versions of computer games from the '80s, preemptive multi-tasking that PCs didn't have until 1995 and Macs didn't have until 2000 (thank the Copland fiasco for that), and generally being …

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Re: What affordable keyboard for retro gaming?

Posted on 2018-12-01, 09:10

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by NamelessPlayer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A suitably vintage (read: beige) board with NKRO (because it uses capacitive switching) would be a BTC 5339, should you happen to find any in local thrift stores; I found two. Problem is, they have really mushy keys if you get the ones with springs instead of buckling sleeves. Can't stand it all …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2018-09-22, 04:06

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by NamelessPlayer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The local makerspace just had this Titanium PowerBook G4 lying around that I sure didn't see before. Bottom panel was loose and missing all of its screws, and I couldn't find an AC adapter. Figured I'd take it home to test it, knowing my iBook G4 charger would work. Turns out it runs just fine. 667 …

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What were the historical prices on high-end GPUs?

Posted on 2018-08-23, 02:00

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by NamelessPlayer

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I can't help but ask the title question in the wake of today's egregiously-priced GeForce RTX 20x0 cards ($1200 for an RTX 2080 Ti where a Titan X would've been, only for the Titan V to go all the way to $3,000), the sudden spike in resale prices on old 3dfx cards, and people paying $600+ for …

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Re: Apple Power Macintosh 7300 video

Posted on 2018-08-23, 01:48

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by NamelessPlayer

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

The onboard video is still decent. the radeon 7000 is quite a bit overkill. If it's anything like the Power Mac 6500's integrated graphics, it's probably good for nothing but 2D and would warrant a Voodoo2 or flashed Voodoo3 PCI to complement it. Normally, I wouldn't say that the Radeon 7000 is …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2018-08-05, 08:06

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by NamelessPlayer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I decided to dig up my Voodoo2 card and chuck it into the Power Mac 9600 to see if it'd perform appreciably better in Unreal Tournament than the Rage 128 does, mostly because UT with the RAVE renderer has this awful banding in the GUI that I don't see with other renderers. It does... but only by a …

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Re: What would it take to fully rebuild a motherboard from scratch?

Posted on 2018-07-27, 08:42

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by NamelessPlayer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is reminding me of those Amiga 4000 motherboard reverse-engineering projects, which have now borne fruit in terms of a digital schematic for the Revision B board as well as attempts at building new replacement boards like the A4000+. Getting to that point took like $5,000 in donations just to …

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Re: Anyone still use ball mice?

Posted on 2018-07-26, 06:05

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by NamelessPlayer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have an Icemat, in its rebranded Steelseries Experience I-2 form. Wouldn't use anything else for a modern mouse, but god help you if any hard dirt or grit gets between the mouse and the glass surface, because the scraping noise will drive you nuts. Shame that Icemat/I-2s are so stupid expensive …

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Re: Best replacement for Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitors ?

Posted on 2018-07-26, 05:51

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by NamelessPlayer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I remember some heated debate on this particular topic, particularly with John "Chucky" Hertell calling out everyone who suggested replacing the SMD electrolytic caps on Amiga 600/1200/4000/CD32 boards with solid-state ones, pointing out that ceramics will scorch the board and outright short on …

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Re: What games Required a Geforce2 ?

Posted on 2018-07-26, 05:35

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by NamelessPlayer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

NOLF2 and BF1942 were the two big T&L- requiring ones in 2002 (can't run without it), and together for the performance minimum, a Geforce2 fits that bill, even if we're going into the GeforceFX/Radeon9700 era by that point..... Can't speak for the former, but BF1942 showed huge gains on an old …

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Re: Please help identify this PC joystick

Posted on 2018-07-18, 05:36

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by NamelessPlayer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Those Suncom F-15 sticks are good stuff, nice gimbal. The only problems are that they use linear slide pots that aren't too easy to find replacements for (and make adapting to Hall effect sensors a total pain), the lower-end sticks (Hawk and SFS) don't have two functioning hat switches like they …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2018-07-18, 03:37

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by NamelessPlayer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I actually bought these back on Saturday, but got sidetracked with some other stuff since then... https://s8.postimg.cc/xdstfvc45/retrocomputing_haul_7-14-2018.jpg -GeForce 7800 GS AGP (thinking of Mac-flashing this one once I've got a big enough ROM to solder on and benching it in my main MDD G4, …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2018-07-13, 03:21

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by NamelessPlayer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Met up with that one friend of mine again to take a look at another Amiga 4000: https://s8.postimg.cc/szy2fpbzp/Amiga_4000_side_by_side.jpg This one had 16 MB of properly functioning Fast RAM SIMMs, a GVP Impact A2000-HC+8 up top with 2 MB worth of SIMMs for Zorro II space Fast RAM, and a Video …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2018-07-12, 03:25

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by NamelessPlayer

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It regulates everything starting with the CPU down. PAL and NTSC units have different CPU speeds, just like the C64. CPU speed is affected on base 68000 systems (A1000, A500, A2000, A600), but I don't see my A4000's A3640 CPU board budging one iota from 25 MHz on switching modes - in part because …

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