jmetal88

I'd say that's true. They're tremendously active on the Color Computer mailing list, but that's really the only place I ever see any discussion going on.

I haven't left modern gaming completely behind, but I don't have any of the newer consoles. I end up buying new games that I really, really want to play on my PC, but it's limited to maybe a couple of new games a year. I have 12 games in my Steam profile currently, and some of them I only got because they were free.

Ah, cool. My AMD K6 build has a Diamond Multimedia Pro 16 card installed. It's an OPTI-929 chipset with (IIRC) an OPL-3 on board. Natively, it's a Windows Sound System card, but it has a Sound Blaster Pro compatibility mode.

Originally, all I owned out of anything listed there was a Tandy Color Computer 2. I did have a PC clone as well, though. I should note that this was in the '90s, though. Rather late compared to when these machines actually came out. The Color Computer 2 was the only one I paid for myself as I got my grandpa to sell me one of his (he had two for some reason) for $10.

What size is that monitor? It looks huge, but I can't tell if it is or if it's just that the computer isn't as wide as I was expecting. It reminds me, though, I need to bring that 17" Samsung Syncmaster monitor I got at the flea market a few years ago up from my parents' house sometime (I actually meant to do that when I visited a few days ago but forgot about it). But then again, I'm running out of space for CRTs, so maybe I should just let it sit until I either move to a bigger place or can afford to rent a storage unit. Though I'd swap out the 16:10 LCD I'm currently using on my AMD K6 build for a 4:3 LCD without a second thought if I ever ran across one here in town.

I saw a YouTube video recently where a kid (young teens maybe?) decided to try out MS-DOS 6.22. He actually went to the trouble to get a paper manual for it to try and re-create a first-timer's experience authentically. He learned how to create, delete, and change directories from the manual, as well as how to run EDIT, but he gave up on the manual when he was looking for the TYPE command and couldn't remember its name, and went straight to Google to figure it out. I'm pretty sure most kids wouldn't even get that far, so yeah, kids these days really would be lost without the Internet.

Well, I've been doing more testing with my 'legacy interface' box, and it's become pretty apparent that, due to the three floppy drives I have installed, DOS and Linux are pretty much my only options. I can also go with Windows 95 prior to the addition of FAT32 support (because whatever additions came along with FAT32 support cause the GUI to fail to boot with more than two floppy drives installed), but it seems to have some stability issues with the only working graphics drivers I can still find for this setup (they work, but the settings panels cause errors). But I kind of also want a really fast Windows 98 box to run bleem! on (for nostalgic purposes, since bleem! is the way I first played Playstation games, before I bought my first game console). And obviously Windows 98 doesn't work with three floppy drives like I have on this box. So maybe I'll try to go full DOS on this machine soon (Linux supports the hardware better, but is slow enough that I'd still want a CPU upgrade if I stuck with it -- it's fine with DOS, but the graphics card and USB controller might be overkill) and just build another box for running Windows 98. EDIT: Oh wait! I forgot, I have an old Soyo Dragon motherboard back home (at my parents' house). Can't remember the model number off the top of my head, but the KT600 is the closest I can get based off a Google search for what I can remember about the board. One of my friends gave it to me when I was considering building my first system because it had become too outdated for him (it was AGP and he decided he wanted a PCI Express machine), and unfortunately, I ended up never using it and left it in its box because two years later when I finally started my build I also wanted to build a PCI Express machine. From what I can find about the board (or the similar board if I didn't manage to pick the right model number in my search) it supports Windows 98 and processors in the 1-to-2GHz range. That would be awesome for a bleem! box, although since I never bought anything to go along with it I'll have to find a decent CPU, GPU and some compatible memory for it. I'm pretty sure neither my friend nor I never used it for anything, especially since the voltage level warning sticker was still in place over the AGP socket last time I checked.

I actually do still have the old graphics card that was in my family's PC in the '90s, but I can't use it because it used the VESA extended bus, and I no longer have a working motherboard with the VESA extended connector. Also, I took the EPROM out of the card to test an old programmer I got my hands on and I think I misplaced it somewhere, so... oops. I'm currently using an ATI Rage LT Pro based PCI card in my 'legacy interface' build. ATI only officially provides Windows 98 drivers for it, but at one time I had found drivers that worked as far back as Windows 3.1 (although I think they were for an older version of the card and perhaps didn't provide full support, but since they provided 1024x768 and a reasonable number of colors, they worked well enough for me). EDIT: I'm pretty sure the VESA card is a Diamond Stealth 64 DRAM. Looks like the VESA version is kind of expensive but someone has a few of the PCI version on eBay for really cheap. Maybe I should go ahead and buy the PCI version, since I could actually use it. Then again, I'm not sure if it would give me any benefits over my current card.

For my word processing uses, unfortunately I have to use Microsoft Office, preferably Office 2007 or later. In my class work I have to do a lot of recording data sets with Excel and generating meaningful plots to include in Word. If all my reports were turned in on paper, I suppose I could use any software I wanted, but it seems like I always have at least one professor that requires them to be submitted online or e-mailed in .DOCX format. You know, I really should get my 'legacy interface' build set up with a comfortable DOS operating environment. Right now it's dual-booting DOS and Linux (though Linux is mainly just for comfortable networking access and imaging floppies remotely) but it's not really usable for much except the aforementioned floppy imaging. I've got a nice Diamond sound card in there that would be great for DOS games, but I need to get some speakers for it.

Yeah, that's something to consider. Oh, I just noticed one seller on that site still has a few of the solid color GBC form factor versions for only $26. That's actually cheap enough for me to consider. The more expensive one seems to be more expensive because it uses translucent plastic. EDIT: Nevermind, I just found a translucent blue one for $24. That's really, really tempting.

Here you go. Looks like they're $2 off currently, so you could get one for $18. http://www.aliexpress.com/item/GS-Game-console-with-backlit-handheld-game-player-16bit-games-classical-games-for-children-KONG-FENG/1169271210.html

I've been considering the same thing for a while. I finally convinced myself to put my GP2X Wiz up on eBay today and will likely follow with my Dingoo A320 soon afterward. I'm hoping the sale of both of them will net me enough for a GCW Zero, which could functionally replace both systems. I'm thinking of eventually selling a lot of the games I never play as well. I mean there are a few I've played once and decided they were awful, but they're still in my collection for some reason, and then there are a bunch that I don't hate but still never really have a desire to play. And I could really use the space and extra money it would give me.

Just looked up the GB Boy 'cause I've never heard of it before. I noticed they're selling three versions. The most expensive seems to be around $50, and uses the GBC form factor with a color screen. The least expensive seems to be around $15 and is a monochrome version of the same. Then at around $20 you have a GBA SP type form factor with a color screen, but it only plays GBC cartridges. I kinda wonder what makes the GBC form factor with the color screen so much pricier than the GBA SP form factor with the color screen?

I finally picked one up yesterday. I also compared direct composite versus composite via conversion to S-Video. Interestingly enough, I also found the picture to be sharper via conversion, but I also found that there is a lot more dot crawl in the video via conversion. Still, using conversion to S-Video is the only way I'll be able to avoid plugging and unplugging cables at the back of my TV (since the S-Video input always overrides the composite input even when there's no signal) so I'll use the converter and put up with the dot crawl. My TV also doesn't have front inputs, so putting the switch somewhere more accessible will also help me out.

I never got into Game Boy Advance (I was into my 'alternative handheld' phase at the time and bought a GP32 instead), but to make playing Game Boy Color games more enjoyable, I took the front light out of an AGS-001 and put it in front of the Game Boy Color's screen. The result is here: http://imgur.com/a/lRKke

My copy of Sonic Adventure 2 somehow had a bit of the label side of the disc, including part of the data layer, flake off. I'm not sure what caused the damage, but it would always freeze while loading the first level because of it. I ended up burning a CD-R to get through the first level, and now I have a save on my memory card that I can use to play other levels on the actual disc.

When I was a kid I used to go around telling people that our Maine Coon cat was purple. She wasn't, of course. She was more a brownish-grey, but in my little kid mind, that translated to purple.

I e-mailed the guy not long ago, and he was still selling both the NanoPEB and the CF7+. Just send an e-mail to the address at the bottom of this page and ask: http://webpages.charter.net/nanopeb/

I missed this post, I guess. Standard practice is to short the wiper terminal to one of the two ends to effectively turn it into a variable resistor. Which end you short to just depends on which direction you want to turn the knob. Feel free to get out a multimeter and experiment!

I'm tempted to modify one of my broken full-height one-sided CoCo disk drives to fit two half-height floppies. Heck, I just had a thought that, since the floppy controller I installed in my 'legacy interface' PC has a connector that supports two external drives, maybe I could somehow make it CoCo *and* PC compatible. But then again, I think the PC controller still needs a twist in the cable between the two drives (and I'm aware that the CoCo doesn't do that, favoring selection jumpers or pulled pins on the cable) so maybe that's a bad idea unless I can expose the connectors for both drives and hook them up as if they're individual units.

I'd love to get my hands on an XT clone again. The first computer my dad brought home for me from the office (because it was obsolete equipment they'd never use again) was a CompuAdd 810 with an amber phosphor monitor. My favorite things to do on that were to play Wheel of Fortune and attempt programming in GW-BASIC. I even had a rudimentary text adventure written by 1st or 2nd grade, although when I rediscovered the code later on it was a lot less impressive than I remembered (it was only like 6 screens long and there was no text parsing so you navigated by pressing numbers). For now, though, my PCjr's doing a fairly good job at keeping me satisfied with that era of computing, albeit with a low-resolution color monitor. Incidentally, PCjrs can often be found cheaply or for free if you look on forums instead of looking on eBay. There seem to be plenty of people who just want to get rid of them, so long as they're going to someone who will use them.

I was wrong regarding this post. My adapters were NOT for SMS controllers, but for 3-button Genesis controllers. They don't work at all with my SMS controllers. I'm still not sure whether the second button is doing anything as the only two-button game I have is Pole Position II, and I'm not sure whether I'm actually causing the car to brake by pressing the second button or if I'm just imagining it slowing down faster because I'm holding a button down.

I made simple adapters to use my SMS controllers on my 7800 a while back. I was thinking I got them to work with two buttons, but now that I think of it, I'm not sure I actually have any real two-button games, so I don't know if I got real two-button support out of it or if I just got both buttons pulling down the same line.

I've got a Socket 7 board with half the slots PCI, half the slots ISA, and on board USB (in fact, one of the two USB chipsets that were supported in the final version of Windows 95, which is an interesting if not very useful experience). It supports up to the AMD K6-II processor range. Model is Biostar M5ATA. Natively, it'll run up to about 266MHz, although it can be modded to support a K6-III at up to around 500MHz, I think. It's fairly quick on Win 98 as is, but it would really fly if I did the mod.

Alright, finally got one off eBay that wasn't too rich for me. Cost me around $43 total, so $13 more than I wanted to spend here, but still quite a bit less than the $60 I was seeing at the time I posted this. Also, I did check the local stores, but they unfortunately have crazy markups on the more popular or rare games and wanted about $80 for this one.