VOGONS


Reply 40 of 144, by Tertz

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tikoellner wrote:

Example: Amibay lists PC offers as "other" while there are separate departments for most other stuff.

Amiga was mostly actual in 1980s when PCs were not so good for games, - befor VGA+SB times and cheaper parts like from Taiwan, somewhere in 1989-1992. So Amiga fans, which created that site, have not much nostalgy effect and interest to it. That "other stuff", I suppose, similarly is from 80s or have strong link to it.

Example 2: I grew tired explaining why I keep an old 486 in my room or buy any parts for it. And that's the question I do always face. If it was Amiga there would be no such questions asked (well, probably).

They would. Ones don't know what it is, others don't know where the emulation is worse, some don't understand the interest to old games on that platform.

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Reply 42 of 144, by Jo22

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Scali wrote:
You're missing the point I guess. Yes, there were only a few types of Amiga. But the excitement was in the Amiga as a platform. […]
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Jo22 wrote:

And how were other popular platforms more exciting ? Please explain.
If I'm not mistaken, the Macs, Ataris and Amigas were all mouse grey, of rather simple design (case) and had similar internals.

You're missing the point I guess.
Yes, there were only a few types of Amiga. But the excitement was in the Amiga as a platform. It could do things that no other platform could.
So you have to compare Amiga to everything else out there. You'd get colourful animations, great stereo music, multitasking etc, while people on PCs were still in textmode with a monochrome screen, and a PC beeper.
Owning an Amiga gave you the feeling that you were part of something new and great. Looking at people trying to play games on PCs was hilarious and sad at the same time. And then if you look at the price tag it was even more hilarious and sad. Those people paid 3 or 4 times more money for their PC, and it couldn't do half the things an Amiga did.

I suppose similar things could be said about Mac and Atari ST.
Mac being the first popular system with a GUI, and bringing things like WYSIWYG and desktop publishing to the masses. It took many years for PCs to catch up.
And Atari ST, while not as technically advanced as the Amiga, was still generally a better gaming machine than a PC. And Atari was the platform of choice for CuBase, because of its integrated MIDI ports.

So these machines did things that no generic PC could do. That's what made them special and exciting. PCs weren't exciting, because they weren't capable of much.

Thank you very much for the explanation, Scali.
Please forgive my ignorance, but there are some things I still don't understand.
Why did Amiga and Atari users make such a fuss about x86 emulators if they didn't like PCs at all ?
I've seen a lot of reviews about them in my old 80s magazines (i collect them)..
Like, PC Ditto for example. This one was available as pure software emulation and as card. Or the Commodore A2088T.
And why are/were some Amiga users still so uhm "agressive" against other users/platforms ?
Where does all this emphatic refusal come from ? When I got my first Amiga500 a few years ago, I was quite happy!
Happy to have a computer which this cool tracker format came from and my old magazines wrote about (I love Amiga MODs ^^).
I repaired it, cleaned it and got myself an original copy of Workbench 1.x. Until this point I was very, every happy.
Then I watched youtube because I was curious about games and stuff.. I expected to see amazing videos about nice, joyful people and their Amigas.
But instead, I've got a lot of PC vs Amiga videos with unfair comparisons (Amiga OCS vs CGA). Why, just why ? 🙁
I've grown up with a z80 computer and a 286 PC but never felt like this - even though I had a reason to be jealous.
Of course me and my friends also had different opinions. For example, I had a SNES and one of them a Sega Genesis.
We debated about which one was better or had better games and such, but we never insulted each others because of this.
So were are the happy users gone ? People who demonstrate an awesome Deluxe Paint tutorial or an old man running an astronomy
software on his Amiga, while talking about the moon and the stars ? And were are videos about these awesome mandelbrot
programs the Amiga had ? This were among the things I was looking forward to..

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In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 43 of 144, by candle_86

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For me anything pre Pentium is boring, I didn't use a 486 my first computer was a Pentium 133. That and the golden age was 97-04 honestly.

Reply 44 of 144, by Scali

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Jo22 wrote:

Why did Amiga and Atari users make such a fuss about x86 emulators if they didn't like PCs at all ?

PCs were business machines. So if you wanted to run the popular business software of the early 80s (or at least import/export documents), you needed compatibility with x86 and MS-DOS.

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Reply 45 of 144, by Logistics

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My response to this thread is really a combination of several previous responses. Amiga and Commodore systems are, in a sense, like consoles in that they do not differ all that much--not as much as "PC's" do, which are generally an amalgam of parts, which also requires that you KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING! PC's are not user-friendly the way a console is. This is why many people go Apple instead of PC or in the case of phones, instead of Android.

But as far as old PC's in general are concerned: take my trade for example--I restore old cars, and while many people will generally respect an old, restored car from a historical stand-point, most people don't see the point of owning an old car, but this is generally due to ignorance. An old car can have all the creature comforts a new car has if customized, but they have no interest in the "experience" of old things, like shifting a hydro-matic tranny manually from 1st to 2nd, and then letting the car shift automatically for the rest of the drive or push-button transmissions in old Chryslers. 😁

Reply 46 of 144, by James-F

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candle_86 wrote:

For me anything pre Pentium is boring, I didn't use a 486 my first computer was a Pentium 133. That and the golden age was 97-04 honestly.

Same here, I'm an '86 model too.
Pentium 133 was our first PC and I knew every micron of it; it has been formatted like bazillion times in my learning stages. 😎
Doon, Duke3D, Mortal Kombat 2,3, Warcarft 1,2, POP2, GTA, Carmageddon, Heroes 2, and many other later DOS games.
Then came Windows and games like Commandos and GTA2, quality stuff.

The late 90s was my retro era, hence the PC at the signature.
It'll rust before I'm sell it, I tell you! 🤣


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Reply 47 of 144, by Tertz

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Errius wrote:

The arrival of Doom in 1993 was a major event.

The major event was when PC have become the main home computer in USA and Western Europe. As latest, to 1992 the situation was such.

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Reply 48 of 144, by tikoellner

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So there was plenty of time for 1992+ generations to culture nostalgia for PC systems. I don't have to much interest in 80s gaming, and building pre 386 system would be some oddity in my case.

I don't believe that in early 90s Amigas and Ataris had any advantages over regular PCs, apart from their accessibility due to much lower cost.

Maybe the clue is that the retro-gaming community is just the still dominated by older guys, born somewhere in 70s or 80s - and they are usually those who by their wallets dictate the trends in this hobby.

I think we still need to differentiate two things:

- General public opinion - which, being ignorant by nature, has equally negative attitude towards all the platforms (including modern platforms) - they call gamers "nolifes" and/or "neckbeards" without making any differentiation,
- Opinion within gaming community, or rather across gaming communities (as there is no single community) - this is what we should generally discuss in this thread, as discussing the previous aspect seems pointless by definition.

Reply 49 of 144, by Tertz

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tikoellner wrote:

So there was plenty of time for 1992+ generations to culture nostalgia for PC systems.

1990+, as starting from this year were released in quantity VGA+SB games which looked and sounded not worse than on other popular computers, and were made specifically for PC (some of them were later ported to other platforms and not always without losses).
The PC games domination era lasted up to 2005, when major developers have switched to consoles, while PC mostly have gotten technologically outdated ports. There were only some later interesting exclusive for computers, like Stalker, Civilization, Crysis, part of B-class stuff, etc.

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Reply 50 of 144, by willow

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Errius wrote:

The arrival of Doom in 1993 was a major event. PC gaming before Doom was sad.

Even if pc had lots of games before 1990 (I started to play on PC in 1987), pcgaming has really started in 1990 when wing commander has proved that pc was more powerfull than amiga (vga 256 colors on pc against 32 colors on amiga, 3d games playable, 486 more powerfull than amiga 68xxx) . Between wing commander and doom, pc was lovely with lots of good games and superior version
Before wing commander, pc was less powerfull and less attractive (ega, cga, less than 16 colors, no sound card, only bip with pc speaker etc) even if I discovered lots of very good games on PC (sim city, lombard rac rally, civilization 1, drakkhen, loom, operation stealth, prince of persia etc).

Reply 51 of 144, by Errius

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486 more powerfull than amiga 68xxx

Why didn't Commodore upgrade Amiga CPUs to keep pace? Was there some fundamental superiority to the 8088/8086 over the 68000?

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 52 of 144, by willow

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Errius wrote:

486 more powerfull than amiga 68xxx

Why didn't Commodore upgrade Amiga CPUs to keep pace? Was there some fundamental superiority to the 8088/8086 over the 68000?

It's due to very bad commercial decisions by commodore (owners of amiga inc). If you read french, there is a very long article describing all that

http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_histoire_1980.php
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_histoire_1982.php
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_histoire_1983.php
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_histoire_1984.php
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_histoire_1985.php
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_histoire_1986.php
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_histoire_1987.php
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_histoire_1988.php
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_histoire_1989.php
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_histoire_1990.php
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_histoire_1991.php
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_histoire_1992.php
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_histoire_1993.php
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_histoire_1994.php
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_histoire_1995.php
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_histoire_1996.php
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_histoire_1997.php
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_histoire_1998.php
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_histoire_1999.php
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/amiga_histoire_2000.php

It's maybe possible to find similary articles in english.

http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/ and http://arstechnica.com/series/history-of-the-amiga/ but I don't know if the articles are also detailed.

Reply 53 of 144, by Scali

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Errius wrote:

486 more powerfull than amiga 68xxx

Why didn't Commodore upgrade Amiga CPUs to keep pace? Was there some fundamental superiority to the 8088/8086 over the 68000?

There were two problems here:
1) The Amiga was a more complex system than a PC, and was designed to have the CPU run in sync with the rest of the hardware.
A different CPU would break a lot of software.
Commodore did provide Amigas with faster CPUs though, and third-party CPU upgrade boards were also available.

2) There's the issue of cost. PCs operated in different market segments, so it was easier to build PCs with very high-end CPUs. There would be enough interest from people who wanted the fastest possible workstations/servers to make it worthwhile. Eventually, as the technology became cheaper, it would trickle down into the mainstream. Although Commodore did release some 'high-end' Amigas with faster CPUs (Amiga 2500, 3000, 4000), and even with their own Amiga UNIX on it (aka AMIX), these were not very successful. One big reason is that they were not PCs, and could not run the same software as PCs.

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Reply 54 of 144, by Arctic

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Logistics wrote:

My response to this thread is really a combination of several previous responses. Amiga and Commodore systems are, in a sense, like consoles in that they do not differ all that much--not as much as "PC's" do, which are generally an amalgam of parts, which also requires that you KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING! PC's are not user-friendly the way a console is. This is why many people go Apple instead of PC or in the case of phones, instead of Android.

But as far as old PC's in general are concerned: take my trade for example--I restore old cars, and while many people will generally respect an old, restored car from a historical stand-point, most people don't see the point of owning an old car, but this is generally due to ignorance. An old car can have all the creature comforts a new car has if customized, but they have no interest in the "experience" of old things, like shifting a hydro-matic tranny manually from 1st to 2nd, and then letting the car shift automatically for the rest of the drive or push-button transmissions in old Chryslers. 😁

Well, I guess most people rather have the chance to get rear-ended in something that has a better crash rating than a ford studebaker 😁

I had similiar experiences.
When I told people in the early 90s, that I use an Atari ST they responded:

"OH!! That old videogame console!? We had one of those!!"

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Reply 55 of 144, by Logistics

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Arctic wrote:

Well, I guess most people rather have the chance to get rear-ended in something that has a better crash rating than a ford studebaker 😁

If something like a Studebaker was rear-ended by another Studebaker, then that could be very bad for both drivers. But hit that Studebaker with something like a 2013 Impala, and the modern Chevy is going to get totaled. Crash-ratings are based on hitting similar cars or solid, unmovable objects. The old Studebaker is going to be the solid, unmovable object for the modern Impala.

Edit: I used to have an Atari 1200ST--miss it so much!

Reply 56 of 144, by notsofossil

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I'm always saddened by the complete lack of respect vintage PCs get, particularly the DOS kind. Now, I may not be so hardcore that I have old beige AT systems lying around, but I did make an Micro ATX Socket 7 PC which is still seriously old by now, good for quite a few DOS uses.

That said, I have great respect for DOS-era hardware, early Windows 9x/NT too. In many ways, ATX hasn't changed much over the years. I understand completely why AT is not popular, but ATX is very easy to get into if you know even a little bit of modern ATX.

My overall point though is unlike over in game console communities where emulation is a dirty word because real hardware is where it's at, even around here at times, people recommend DOSBox like it's no big deal, which is still emulation. Why is this a problem?

Because ever since we've had software emulation, it has never been truly 100% accurate. Even today, the best console and PC emulators cannot be perfectly transistor-for-transistor accurate. Why? Because that level of emulation would be so slow that even monster PCs of today would be worse than a slideshow.

Check out the DICE emulator:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/dice/

And read this article:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accurac … nes-emulator/1/

I love this one quote from it:

"Take the case of DICE, the digital integrated circuit emulator. Here is an emulator that works at the transistor level for absolutely perfect recreation of the very first video games ever created. To run Pong at about 5-10fps, DICE requires a 3GHz processor. Yes, you read that right: no computer processor at this time that can run Pong at the circuit level at full speed. It's not that DICE is a slow program; indeed, it is very well optimized. It's that there is enormous overhead to simulating every last transitor propagation delay."

Now think about our favorite emulators like DOSBox. Those are far more advanced than Pong, which didn't even have a CPU. What we need to realize is every software emulator is essentially an approximation. They are just barely cohesive enough to look like they're completely identical to what they're emulating, but they're actually not. Even if DOSBox works "flawlessly", as a fan of electronic hardware, I am bothered by replacing my hardware with what is basically a software hackjob.

In the case of Virtual Machines, I despise them because they are always slower than a real PC, they either don't support any good hardware (Virtual PC, VMWare Player) or are too slow to be usable (VirtualBox) or are impossible to figure out (Bochs) and they are a pain in the ass to setup and get working, not to mention they're even more fragile than a real PC. It's incredibly easy to lose a virtual HDD image to corruption or accidents, not so with a real HDD or equivalent.

Another reason I use years/decades old PC hardware regularly is because they're cheap, easy to get parts for, not harsh on the local landfill and aren't wasteful. What annoys the hell out of me is seeing people using overpriced and overpowered PCs for tasks that could be easily done on far cheaper and far more efficient hardware. Are we really such a first world country (USA/Canada) that we throw away perfectly good older PC hardware because new is where it's at? Even though it's a pain in the ass messing with software emulation and hacks just to enjoy our favorite games and programs from yesteryear? It blows my mind.

Enjoy your PCs the right way, go real hardware. Until we see emulators of CPU-based systems reach transistor-level accuracy, I will stick to real hardware.

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Reply 57 of 144, by Scali

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notsofossil wrote:

I'm always saddened by the complete lack of respect vintage PCs get, particularly the DOS kind.

For me it's a difficult story.
I mean, I grew up with C64 and Amigas mainly, and some PC clones on the side. I never considered them good or interesting machines, but there they were.
But now I make demos for those PCs. Not because I think they're good machines, but because they throw up limits that are interesting to try and overcome.

notsofossil wrote:

Because ever since we've had software emulation, it has never been truly 100% accurate. Even today, the best console and PC emulators cannot be perfectly transistor-for-transistor accurate.

I don't need transistor-for-transistor accuracy (I don't think anyone does, all you need is for the emulator to cover any externally observable effects of these transistors). But I'd settle for functionally accurate (it'd be a good start if it could run 8088 MPH).
With C64 and Amiga emulators, I pretty much get that. With PCs, not at all. It's very dangerous to try and develop software in DOSBox and assume it will work on real hardware. Most of the time it won't.

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Reply 58 of 144, by Darkman

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the general population will think any old electronics or game systems are boring (Ive seen the "but its so old" reaction before)

then take that minority of the population and take out the console crowd , and youre left with computer fans in general (includes Amiga/Atari ST/C64 etc).

then take that minority within the minority and pick out just the PC fans, and you end up with a fairly small amount of people.

of course none of these groups are distinct, one can like consoles and computers as I do , but alot of the console crowd generally avoids PCs just because of how different they are to consoles (nowadays the gap is much smaller given the nature of the modern consoles, but back then they were very different)

Reply 59 of 144, by NamelessPlayer

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For me, it depends on how old we're talking.

1980s IBM PC-compatibles, for instance, don't hold a lot of my interest simply because the Amiga, X68000, FM Towns, etc. were just flat-out superior systems for the decade, and their gaming library shows.

1990s PCs ushered in things like VGA, Sound Blaster and the Gravis Ultrasound, full-fledged Thrustmaster and CH Products HOTAS + pedal controls, desktop VR at home (VFX1/i-glasses! VPC/CyberMaxx), and later on in the decade, 3D acceleration and Aureal A3D. Suddenly, the PC was the go-to computer for gaming, though I do note several '90s PC titles getting enhanced Mac ports earlier in the decade, stuff like Super Wing Commander, X-Wing/TIE Fighter, System Shock, etc. Toward the end, though, it was very much all about a PC with the right parts if you wanted a gaming machine.

Incidentally, it's the Win9x-era stuff that also emulates terribly today. Current PC virtualization software has piss-poor support for hardware-accelerated graphics under Win98SE, let alone sound, and that's what necessitated one of my computer builds.

Meanwhile, I actually managed to surprise some neighbors over the years simply because they had all this old Mac stuff stashed away, usually complete with books and boxes and everything, with systems ranging from an old Mac IIcx to a Power Mac 6500 to an indigo iMac G3 350 and loads of software and accessories to match, and I actually showed some interest in all of it. It was something new to learn retrocomputing-wise, and now I've dusted off that 6500 and have been getting to work on setting it up as a retrogaming system with a few upgrades. Should run most games better than SheepShaver would, at any rate.