Retro PC general thread

The Osborne had many tragic flaws.

>ugly as sin
>puny floppy storage (90k per disk)
>postage stamp screen
>build quality was not that good--the floppy drives were particularly unreliable

Personally I'd rather have a IIe. There's no real reason to take a II+ over a IIe.

>much less common
>older, less reliable PCB
>IC socket joystick connector
>cannot normally do lowercase letters
>cannot use DHGR

Can't run ProDOS without some hacking.

The II+ did however have a Repeat key which was removed from the IIe and replaced by a software key repeat. The Repeat key might come in handy in allowing you to play Decathlon without destroying your keyboard.

mobygames.com/game/computer-baseball/screenshots

One of the earliest computer baseball sims, originally released by SSI for the Apple II in 1981. Other ports followed over the next several years.

mobygames.com/game/amiga/computer-baseball/screenshots/gameShotId,897139/

>written in Amiga BASIC

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One of our first family computers was a 486SX PCPartner

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Someone up there must have really hated Amiga owners, I swear.

Is that bad?

I see your OCC1 and raise you my OCC4

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As soon as I can find an ultra64 board...
Prepare for Halo 1 for N64

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Amiga BASIC was such a piece of crap that it stopped being included with WorkBench once the A500 came out; only A1000s ever had it.

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Go boot up Earl Weaver Baseball if you want a real baseball sim on the Amiga.

The PSU works on yours? What type is it Sony or Nidec?

Mine unfortunately has is dead, but it has the Nidec PSU so it's typical that they die.

Sony, works fine

Until I can get all the other stuff it needs it will rest in the pile

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Oh man I want one of these soooo bad.

Sony ones are far more reliable long term (in fact I don't think one was documented yet to have a failed Sony PSU) the only issue with them is that their fans don't kick on until it gets very hot in the system, which people made mods to manually control this.

As for the dev board, food luck finding one. They are not easy to come by and typically go for stupid sums. That said I know a few people in the community that might have a couple of them including one who had a stack of them they got from a game dev awhile back.

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>90k per disk

>10 print "hello world"
>20 got- DISK FULL

could not spot any obvious difference in the images

The JPG is a good 80% smaller. Hogging Hiro's server space with unnecessarily large images isn't very nice, you know. :^)

Osborne used MPI drive mechanisms and added their own custom controller board. The soldering quality on the controllers was poor and they also used a combo data/power cable which was prone to overheating. The decision to use single density floppies was for cost reasons; it had the trusty WD1771 floppy controller chip. Osborne later offered double density controller upgrades.

This guy installed a Gotek in his, although I don't know if he has the original controller or the DD upgrade. If it's not upgraded, you're still only going to have 90k disks; a Gotek won't help you with that. I don't know what upgrading the controller would entail either; if you could just slap a WD1791 in place of the 1771 or if there's other modifications that have to be done.

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The gotek looks good in it

Probably because it blends into the Osborne's case better than on some other machines where it looks kind of awkward.

I didn't even know that a Gotek would work in a portable CP/M.

Anything with the Shugart standard 34 pin floppy connector should work. Note that some Goteks don't have the jumper blocks to set the drive number, which is not an issue in a PC, but can be in non-PCs like the Osborne unless you plan to use it as Drive 1. Also in the case of the Osborne, it would be necessarily to split the power lines off from the data lines on the controller because there's no separate power connectors for the drives.

mobygames.com/game/apple2/president-elect/screenshots

Simulate presidential elections from 1960 up to 1984, and they did an update in 88. The game is mostly focused on stats and there's no Jow Forumsshit in here in case you were wondering.

Admittedly it would be more entertaining if Jow Forums made the game.

>Less reliable
The iie is like 90% impossible to find custom chips, the ii+ uses regular TTL chips for all the logic and is much easier to repair

The II+ board has over 100 ICs on it, it's really big, fragile, and generates a lot of heat. Also it used tri-voltage 4116 DRAMs which tend to die from overheating. It's pretty rare for anything in a IIe to fail except sometimes the RAM because Apple used a lot of shitty Micron 4164 chips.

>Axe body spray

Although that's not really a big deal unless you wanted to run late versions of AppleWorks or something. Since if you collected Apple II stuff, it would probably be to run games on, not reminisce about doing your term paper in a college dorm in 1986.

A lot of Apple IIs were used with Microsoft's CP/M card which added a Z80 and also included a specially modded version of MBASIC with graphics commands for the Apple II.

Hard Drive question for the thread:

I bought one of those IDE to SD card chips for an old Win95 machine but the BIOS is shitty at detecting it. Whats the cheapest IDE harddrive I can find? Most on ebay are like $20-30 bucks. Are certain sizes cheaper than others? I honestly dont need more than like 8GB tops

Maybe look into XTIDE

IDE to CF makes more sense
CF talks same proto after all

>crystal clear YM2149 sound
>comfy slower gameplay (faster if 3D...sometimes)
>those F keys
I love the ST

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These cocksuckers also had floppy drives with a combo power/data cable that have a high mortality rate.

Actually the early units had GSI drives, the MPI units came later. Those GSI drives had a nasty habit of the head going past track 0 and getting stuck.

...

Reminds me of that one spammer who's been on Jow Forums since like 2012 or something complaining about his PS/2's busted floppy.

Die tripfag.

That poor thing deserved better than to have someone display the word "Twitter" on its screen.

I guess i could try it. i didnt buy one initially because I didnt own any CF but own plenty of SD cards

will do

>XTIDE Universal BIOS makes it possible to use modern large ATA hard disks or Compact Flash cards on old PC's. You can then enjoy quiet or noiseless drives with more capacity than you'll ever need for old computers. XTIDE Universal BIOS can be used on any IBM PC, XT, AT or 100% compatible system.

the problem is the original HD with that win9x machine is toast, i actually dont have any other ide hdds handy at the moment. if i cant find one ill just buy a ide>cf and card from ebay

I would kill for that gateway2k case.
Also, nice Indy.

aesthetic. Can't beat late 80s to mid 90s

>general
why do we need another general?

Please DO NOT post your family photos on Jow Forums!

Is that a Dimension 4800? I had one of those. Terrible computer, but still use the monitor it came with to this day.

So what kind of monitor should I get for a retro machine if I can't obtain a CRT?

I could get a non-widescreen LCD, those are still easily available with VGA inputs, but they're almost all 1280x1024, instead of 1280x960. 12x9 has the convenient property that it scales perfectly to 640x480. Alternatively, get a widescreen 1920x1200, also still available, and letterbox it to 1600x1200, which is an even multiple of 800x600. Problem is its hard to find out how a given monitor works with aspect ratio - it wouldn't surprise me at all if many are either "expand the image to fit the screen, fuck the aspect ratio" or "display it 1:1, even if that means its a postage stamp in the middle of the screen".

a CRT

There aren't any showing up on craigslist in my town (or anywhere nearby), and the thrift stores don't sell them anymore. Goodwill actually had a sign up with the elctronics that they no longer accept CRT monitors and TVs for donation, and told people to take them to the local recycling place.

find an older office building in the suburbs walk in and ask if you can buy one. I guarantee most older shops have a couple lying around in an IT closet

oh wow im such a nerd XD amiga btw

put heatsinks on the 4116 ICs

Which version and why are you using Word Perfect?

hnnng

>shitty thread almost dead
>still have to bump it with useless post

Or, you know, just get a IIe which shows up on Ebay in droves and be able to use a whole bunch of hardware and software the II+ can't use.

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...

Fuck off summerkid
Jow Forums is for adults, come back in 6 years and livestream your suicide

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nice post :)

>Hockney print
>red phone
>hueg ass printer

my nutbladder desu!

Those wretched hard sectored floppies. Damn them to hell.

>>>/VG/
Generals are not allowed here.

What's the problem?

Not him but
>Read error. (R)etry, (F)ail, (A)bort?: R
>Read error. (R)etry, (F)ail, (A)bort?: R
>Read error. (R)etry, (F)ail, (A)bort?: R
>Read error. (R)etry, (F)ail, (A)bort?: R
>Read error. (R)etry, (F)ail, (A)bort?: R
>Success.

Not at all. You're way, way off. Hard sectored disks had physical holes punched in the disk hub to mark the sectors. They required special floppies with the correct number of sector holes and these disks were always much less common than soft sector disks, today almost unobtainium.

Also hard sectored controllers will not work with a 3.5" drive nor an HxC or anything like that.

So just what does this thing do? Anything cool?

It's pretty much of a business computer; there's really not any games if that's what you're asking other than CP/M versions of Infocom text adventures.

You'd have to get a soft sector S100 controller.

I have one of these. Still need to write the pipmodem software so I can get it online

I've been trying to run a Windows 98 machine for the last two or so months and all I can say about it.

Damn this system is shit. I can't believe I used it for five years. Constant crashes for no reason, driver hell everywhere, USB "support" that does not work correctly.

I am on the verge of switching to XP.

>Still need to write the pipmodem software so I can get it online

In Z80 assembly language no less.

Very much so. Then you could use an HxC with it. Of course you may have to rewrite your OS software, but that's ok. DIY was a major component of the S100/CP/M world.

Is there any gold nuggets or even lost Atlantis to be found in old computers? There's a computer junkyard in my city, but I'm a newbie at identifying custom hardware and custom software.
Is there such a thing as super rare cache chips and memory cards?

I've been trying to find a VT-120-era terminal for use as a front-door "guestbook" machine for ages. No luck yet unless I want something that doesn't work or has no keyboard.

There is such a thing as, potentially, rare and undumped software, especially in the realm of edutainment for systems used heavily in schools such as the Apple II.

not retro

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Education software sometimes isn't as well-preserved as it could be because pirate/cracker groups often didn't upload it to BBSes. The reason being that pirate groups who had educational titles were often ridiculed in the community.