Finally brought a Falcon back home...

[ChrisM]

Having stupidly sold my original Falcon roughly 20 years ago (which I had bought to take to college with me in '93, replacing my Mega STe), I finally re-acquired a beautiful example of one: 14 meg of RAM and a Best 4gig CF card replacing the original hard drive already installed.

 

I'm eager to get "Bad Mood" up and running on it, but was curious if anyone had anything particularly fun recommendations for things they've done with their Falcons or ways which they regularly use them.  Would love to hear anything the hive mind here has to offer!

 

(And is it wrong that what I really wanted 27 years ago was the never-to-be Microbox Facon040?  Ah well...)

 

 

[MasterMotorola]

A TT030 user here and just wanted to say congratulations on being reunited with such a sweet machine.  One of the first things I did with my TT was play DOOM.

 

The Microbox would have been a great computer.

[TGB1718]

7 hours ago, ChrisM said:

I finally re-acquired a beautiful example of one: 14 meg of RAM and a Best 4gig

All I can say is "I'm green with envy" ?

 

Nice one.

[ChrisM]

10 hours ago, MasterMotorola said:

A TT030 user here and just wanted to say congratulations on being reunited with such a sweet machine.  One of the first things I did with my TT was play DOOM.

 

The Microbox would have been a great computer.

 

I was hemming and hawing between picking up a TT (which I've always wanted) or go back to the Falcon.  Pure nostalgia won out, as I have never actually used a TT - only saw them at a few computer shows/user group meets.  I love that form factor so much.  But I pulled my old Mega STe out of storage and it will have to suffice to scratch that itch for now.  Amazingly, my Mega STe, having sat unloved and forlorn in a plastic bin in a storage facility for the last 20+ years booted up like a champ!  Need to spend some time cleaning her up, though.

 

How well does DOOM run on the TT?  Do you have a monitor that supports that massive monochrome mode?

 

I have to admit it's been an absolute blast reacquainting myself with the platform.  I had forgotten so many of the little things: how chunky the mouse is and clicky the mouse buttons are; the awful mushiness of that ST keyboard; the very real struggle of reaching the mouse/joystick ports and getting just the right angle.  But what has really tickled me is how GEM still works just fine.  GUIs have really changed so very little over the years.  And how much fun is it to be able to simply flip the "off" switch to turn off the computer?  Or to just copy a program over, no "install" required?

 

A simpler time.  Lots to still love!

 

Edited November 11, 2020 by ChrisM

[leech]

47 minutes ago, ChrisM said:

 

I was hemming and hawing between picking up a TT (which I've always wanted) or go back to the Falcon.  Pure nostalgia won out, as I have never actually used a TT - only saw them at a few computer shows/user group meets.  I love that form factor so much.  But I pulled my old Mega STe out of storage and it will have to suffice to scratch that itch for now.  Amazingly, my Mega STe, having sat unloved and forlorn in a plastic bin in a storage facility for the last 20+ years booted up like a champ!  Need to spend some time cleaning her up, though.

 

How well does DOOM run on the TT?  Do you have a monitor that supports that massive monochrome mode?

 

I have to admit it's been an absolute blast reacquainting myself with the platform.  I had forgotten so many of the little things: how chunky the mouse is and clicky the mouse buttons are; the awful mushiness of that ST keyboard; the very real struggle of reaching the mouse/joystick ports and getting just the right angle.  But what has really tickled me is how GEM still works just fine.  GUIs have really changed so very little over the years.  And how much fun is it to be able to simply flip the "off" switch to turn off the computer?  Or to just copy a program over, no "install" required?

 

A simpler time.  Lots to still love!

 

To get the 1280x960 it's better to get a monitor that will handle that resolution and get the ECL adapter for it, because finding the 19" monochrome ECL monitors isn't exactly easy.  Then again I have been wanting to start writing and that may actually be an AWESOME set up to write on...

[oracle_jedi]

21 hours ago, ChrisM said:

I'm eager to get "Bad Mood" up and running on it, but was curious if anyone had anything particularly fun recommendations for things they've done with their Falcons or ways which they regularly use them.  Would love to hear anything the hive mind here has to offer!

 

 

The Falcon is an interesting machine, which never reached it full potential, being killed off after just about a year on the market from memory.

 

As you know, Bad Mood is very remarkable.  A smooth-ish frame rate and music - it puts the Jag version to shame.  But beyond that its slim pickings.  Many interesting projects never made it beyond the prototype stage.  There's an interesting Rayman port "Willie's Adventures" which from memory only plays one or two levels, and Reminiscence which is the Flashback game but it needs an accelerator.  I like to play Impulse X and Downfall, two Jag games that were hard to find, and Orion released several Falcon games including Elansar which is beautiful.   

 

Crown of Creation 3D was the must-have game BITD - the Battlesphere of the Falcon - but I don't ever recall seeing a dump of it.  Apparently the disk protection was something insane.  There were some guys over on the Atari-Forum site trying to use a Kyroflux to break it, but I havn't checked in for a while to see if they were successful.  D-Bug, Klaz, PP and others have done an amazing job of hacking or modding most ST games to run on the Falcon without the need for the Backwards tool.

 

So I probably mostly use it for playing ST games at better frame rates such as Frontier, which instead of the slide show that it is on an ST, delivers an actually playable game on the Falcon.

 

I did get a CT60e accelerator, and Centurion now makes a power board that sits inside the case and works with the CT60.  This winter I plan to do that upgrade, and a Falcon 060.  I already have the replacement case badge. 

 

And what will I do with a 060 powered Falcon with 256MB RAM?    Play Frontier of course!

 

 

 

 

[TheNameOfTheGame]

1 hour ago, oracle_jedi said:

 

I did get a CT60e accelerator, and Centurion now makes a power board that sits inside the case and works with the CT60.  This winter I plan to do that upgrade, and a Falcon 060.  I already have the replacement case badge. 

 

And what will I do with a 060 powered Falcon with 256MB RAM?    Play Frontier of course!

 

 

 

 

Can you link to info on the power board?  I must have missed it.

[oracle_jedi]

30 minutes ago, TheNameOfTheGame said:

Can you link to info on the power board?  I must have missed it.

 

https://centuriontech.eu/product/ct60psu/

 

 

[calimero]

Here is my list for video that I will record at some point...

 

Falcon yt video

• winamp
• Whimp visuals
• Mplayer videos
• Doom. Midi module
• Quake player
• Vocoder
• Realtime audio fx
• Recording, playing audio
• Full 16bit mode image:
• DTP Calamus
• Image editing
• hires 1024x768 res. (Flex res.)
• Vectors
• Papyrus with DB
• OCR, scanner
• Fractals (suggest video yt)
• MOD play (4ch, 8ch, 128ch)