cognitivegears

joined 1 year ago
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Will do, I just got the greaseweazel, power supply and microcontroller I just need to find a compatible drive (and figure out how to actually use greaseweazel lol.) Of all the retro things I have, I can't believe I don't have a working 3.5" drive lol.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Very nice work! Do you happen to have a link to where you found this? An archive of old stickers would be fantastic to hold onto.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

undefined> up in the 70’s & 80’s. My first computer experience was the Atari Pong console, but my first real love was the Commodore 64. I would buy up all of the C64 magazines I could, especially if they had the game code article where you could type in the machine code to make a game. Machine code. I don’t think I ever saw a BASIC game article; it was always machine code. I would spend days trying to get that code typed in correctly to play the game, and I’d usually be disappointed in it.

The first real game I became obsessed with was Telengard, a BASIC game I bought on C64 cassette that was a basic dungeon crawler kind of like the old mini computer game DND. I spent months figuring out how the game worked … and then I spent months figuring out how the BASIC code worked and how to tweak it to give me a ton more treasure. I had tapes and tapes of

I got to meet Nybbles and Bytes at a VCF Mid-West conference! She was super nice. She suggested that I get a Commodore 128 DCR, which has proved to be really hard to find. Still looking though. I recommend her videos to anyone looking to learn more about Commodore programming.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ah got you, I actually have one for my MiSTer - using it with real vintage hardware sounds amazing though. The prices of the real MT32's are such that I can't really justify getting one (well, until I find one at a good deal anyway :) ) Having a MT32-PI is nearly as good for a lot of cases though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Like many on here, Zork was my first adventure game, and King's Quest 1 my first graphical adventure game. Interestingly, growing up I really only played the Infocom and Sierra games, the LucasArts games somehow completely escaped me unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Also check out shopgoodwill.com - it takes a while to find good searches (for this I like "vintage computer") but there are often systems and parts on there. Right now I don't see a 486 (though there often is) but I do see an Aptiva, XT clone, a couple of 386 laptops etc. You can also sometimes find parts, like if you do a search for "graphics card", though you'll have to go through the results yourself to find a good VLB card. Another good search for components is to go to the Computer Components category and search for "vintage".

Prices are all over the place, just depends if someone ends up bidding against you. Even when that happens I don't mind quite as much on there though since I figure at least the money is going to charity.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I saw this! If I didn’t have too many projects already that one would have convinced me to pick up his 6502 bread board project

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I hope you do another post just on that Roland MT-32 - I’m still looking for one of those myself they were absolutely amazing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This has come up a lot in the past, and the best I’ve been able to come up with is that what is “retro” varies with every retro enthusiast. A couple of definitions that I’ve heard:

  1. Retro is the computers you used as a kid. Leaves just about everything as “retro” to someone, but probably the best definition I’ve found anyway
  2. Any computer simple enough to be completely understood by an enthusiast. Older computers that came with full schematics fit into this category, and helps define the appeal of retro computers. It does leave out a lot of systems that younger generations would consider “retro” though.
  3. Some specific year cutoff (say 1990 or something.) Definitely the least flexible definition and one that I’m not a huge fan of.
  4. Based on architecture. 16-bit and older, or everything before the IBM PC etc. Again this isn’t a very flexible definition either, but has been used in the past by some (including by VCF-MW, though this has changed)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I’m pretty new to Lemmy, but I would love to be considered for a moderator here. I’m also happy to reach out to the other mods as well if you’d like. I’d love to see this grow as an alternative to Reddit!

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