smeezekitty wrote:

Been thrift shopping again today! Found a Schneider/Amstrad GT65 green monochrome monitor (FINALLY!!!) and two serial mice.

Great picture

Thanks. Here's a high-res version to use as desktop wallpaper: http://i.imgur.com/qvenKzB.jpg
The phosphors in this screen are very fast and much more blue-ish compared to the slow, deep green IBM 5151. I think with a 45-column Fixedsys font it would look exactly like a RobCo terminal from Fallout 3 😉

RacoonRider wrote:

jwt27 wrote:

And uh, I got my sister into retro computing too now... She just bought a complete Amiga 1200 with monitor, CD drives, several floppy drives (both 5.25 and 3.5), optical mouse, scanner, joystick, and a truckload of CD's, floppy's, manuals, magazines, VHS tapes and who knows what more 😳

OMG that's impossible 😁

Yeah that's hard to believe, isn't it? 🤣
Says she bought it primarily for all the graphics programs like Deluxe Paint, and to play the original versions of Amiga games like Lemmings and Lotus.
We've been digging through the boxes and found some PC stuff too, like a 5.25 inch drive cleaner and a pack of DS/DD floppies, both brand new. Most of the written 5.25 floppies are either bootable MS-DOS 3.20, 3.21, 3.3 or 5.0 or contain various boring programs like Wordperfect and other office stuff. Found three different LPT adapters with jack plugs too which I believe are Covox speech things. Not sure why anyone would want use that with an Amiga...

The Amiga is a pretty cool machine, but really weird to get used to if you've never used one before (like us). It's also hard to imagine how TV resolutions were deemed good enough to use with computers back then. Looking at the 50Hz screen for more than a few minutes, combined with the (loud!!) 15kHz flyback whine is a great recipe for instant headache.

^ kudos on the A1200 purchase .
Playing games on the 1200 is very easy and can be done from the workbench , there is a tool called WHDLOAD (www.whdload.de) that converts booter floppy games. All you need is some fastram for the machine, there are 100eur accelerators made in 2014 that offer 64/128MB of ram, more than you need and with a nice speed boost. amigakit.com/vesalia.de/amibay.com are your friends on that 😉
there is a also a scandoubler that makes the A1200 output dvi/hdmi...

keropi wrote:

Playing games on the 1200 is very easy and can be done from the workbench , there is a tool called whdload

To be honest, you need to solve a lot of issues that would happily use the Amiga, playing games from workbench:
- fastram or 020/030 accelerator to be able use whdload and forget about loading games from floppy (from 150 eur for modern accelerator)
- scandoubler, to be able use modern monitors (about 150 eur)
- ide2cf adapter and CF, instead of harddrive, fast and silent hdd (10-20 eur)
- ps2 mouse adapter (after decade using optical mouse you can't satisfied using mechanical mouse anymore) (10 eur)
- pcmcia network on pcmcia to CF - a way to transfer files to amiga (10-20 eur)

^ you just described the "classic pimped A1200 setup" 🤣 🤣 🤣

Assuming though that you have jwt27's setup as he described it all you need is fastram and a storage device.
Everything else can be omitted in order to save money until you decide you want to pimp the setup: use the 15khz monitor and winuae to setup your new hdd and transfer files. Expanding amigas is an expensive hobby 🤣

jwt27 wrote:

The Amiga is a pretty cool machine, but really weird to get used to if you've never used one before (like us).

Fab machines, still missed. Also still have the 1080 monitor doing service in the Playstation corner. But specifically here's a nice link a friend just sent me, covering FPS on the Amiga.

Doomed: The Embers of Amiga FPS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv6aJRGpz_A

That floppy cable, it hurts

^ avoid direct eye contact.

keropi wrote:

Expanding amigas is an expensive hobby :lol:

Yes, i know: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=aut … 2%2F&edit-text=

^ ah you went PPC... nice job!

soviet conscript wrote:

it looks the same and does the same thing but the m919 cache stick is specifically for that 486 motherboard any other cache stick like the ones you have for Pentium machines can damage the m919 if used in it. thats why its kind of valuable and sought after. the sticks you have are far more common and were for Pentium machines and I think a lot of 90's macs used them to. I don't know how much a generic COAST module goes for but i'm guessing not a ton.

Thanks for clarifying. I was just curious and thought others could use to know too, so asked here instead of PM.

According to my knowledge, emulating a MT-32 is a tricky thing, because one allows (via sysex messages) to upload new sounds to […]
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According to my knowledge, emulating a MT-32 is a tricky thing, because one allows (via sysex messages) to upload new sounds to MT-32 memory, thus giving it a new, different sounding, and quite a few games used this feature (notably from Sierra, Dynamix, Lucasarts)
And no devices that are compatible on hardware level with MT-32 can understand these sysex data.
Besides, devices that claimed MT-32 compatibility sometimes employed a complete MT-32 sound banks (like Roland Sound Canvas), but sometimes, they just changed sequence its own sound banks, to match MT-32 sounds sequence.
That's why a lot of games, that were designed for MT-32 (and came with their own sounds) sounds odd on other sound devices.

We've Been SLAPPed

easy_john wrote:

To be honest, you need to solve a lot of issues that would happily use the Amiga, playing games from workbench: - fastram or 020 […]
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keropi wrote:

Playing games on the 1200 is very easy and can be done from the workbench , there is a tool called whdload

To be honest, you need to solve a lot of issues that would happily use the Amiga, playing games from workbench:
- fastram or 020/030 accelerator to be able use whdload and forget about loading games from floppy (from 150 eur for modern accelerator)
- scandoubler, to be able use modern monitors (about 150 eur)
- ide2cf adapter and CF, instead of harddrive, fast and silent hdd (10-20 eur)
- ps2 mouse adapter (after decade using optical mouse you can't satisfied using mechanical mouse anymore) (10 eur)
- pcmcia network on pcmcia to CF - a way to transfer files to amiga (10-20 eur)

Accelerators are overrated, way less necessary in an A1200 than in, say, the Apple IIgs. A trapdoor RAM card of 4MB or more is more than enough to play all the classic games using WHDLoad.

A scandoubler is handy if you don't have a good RGBs monitor. C= 1084s and Sony PVMs can be had cheaply, work natively, and give the authentic experience. If you're just going to play your system upscaled on a big screen, you may as well use an emulator.

Everything else I agree with, but they are cheap to do, so why not.

NB: Not that I wouldn't take an accelerator if I could get one! I just mean they're not necessary to have fun with the A1200. You can play Cannon Fodder, Alien Breed, Lotus 2+3, Chaos Engine, etc etc etc, all from WHDLoad, with just a 4MB trapdoor RAM card.

^ yes true. all you need is some fastram for whdload to work. All amiga games (except later 3d ones - that are crap on the amiga anyway) are designed to work with either an 68000 +1MB ram (OCS/ECS games) or the onboard 020 +2MB ram that the A1200 has (AGA games). CPU-wise you are set 😉

In case someone wonders you need the extra ram for use with whdload , the floppy->hdd conversion has it's requirements. A whdload game behaves like a native workbench application (the equivalent of a native windows games) , you start it from the gui and when you quit it you are back at the gui in the state you left it. The original games were floppy booters.

Nowdays there is the 100eur ACA1220 with 128MB of ram and a 16 or 25mhz (IIRC) 020. It makes the machine more enjoyable. Plus a 4/8MB fastram expansion hovers at the ~50eur range, imho it does not worth it.

-

some more random eBay pick ups this week...

Another Audigy...

ATI X1300 PCI-e video card...

GeForce 9500GT...

Another Extron Crosspoint switcher...this one has no audio switching capability, but I had to get it...for only $9, can't go wrong...

A couple new in box PIII 800 CPUs...

An ATI all in wonder 9600 PRO (this is my second boxed one I own now). I used this card in my main rig setup (s478 Gigabyte 8KNXP and ASUS P4C800) for over 7 years before moving on to a Core 2 Duo just 3 years ago and it never let me down. I do prefer NVidia for the most part, but I have a soft spot for this card...

yet another KVM switch...I'm going to have to quit buying these things...space is becoming a premium

picked up this 6800GS PCI-e, just because I already had one and wanted to maybe try them out in an SLI setup one day, but they are kind of useless since I have much faster cards for my Core 2 Duo setup. Do these cards offer better compatibility with certain games? What's it good for since I can't use it for Win98?

Hmm, looking at that KVM switch, makes me realize I need to get a nice switch for all my systems. Especially if I want to try to use the same monitor and keyboard for a lot of systems. 🤣

ReeseRiverson wrote:

Hmm, looking at that KVM switch, makes me realize I need to get a nice switch for all my systems. Especially if I want to try to use the same monitor and keyboard for a lot of systems. 🤣

Yes, they come in very handy...it's nice to have everything connected, so you don't have to mess around with switching cables all the time.

I find a lot of the KVM switches I get now for a lot of time for less than $10 at a local recycler. They are very expensive new and for a while it was hard for me to find any at a reasonable price.

One of the reasons I have so many now is because I can get them for so cheap now, but also it's because I am always looking for one that does not degrade the quality of the image too much.

As you may know, if you are looking for KVM's, keep in mind that many have a limit of the resolution you can feed through it. Some KVMs I have only allow up to 160x768 or 1600x1200 and some will allow up to 2048x1536 resolutions, (which is the most I would ever need for my modern systems).

retrofanatic wrote:

picked up this 6800GS PCI-e, just because I already had one and wanted to maybe try them out in an SLI setup one day, but they are kind of useless since I have much faster cards for my Core 2 Duo setup. Do these cards offer better compatibility with certain games? What's it good for since I can't use it for Win98?
<snip picture>

The 6000 line of cards are fully compatible with Win98se, For the AGP versions.. but not the PCI-Express versions (no PCI-Express based systems ever released chipset drivers for Win98 that I'm aware of).

retrofanatic wrote:

An ATI all in wonder 9600 PRO (this is my second boxed one I own now). I used this card in my main rig setup (s478 Gigabyte 8KNXP and ASUS P4C800) for over 7 years before moving on to a Core 2 Duo just 3 years ago and it never let me down. I do prefer NVidia for the most part, but I have a soft spot for this card...

$_57 (12).JPG

No fan? My little 9600 XT had a fan!