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A $200 mini-laptop with a Intel 8088 chip and 640KB

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Re: A $200 mini-laptop with a Intel 8088 chip and 640KB

#191

Post by ianai »

phone8675309 wrote: post #173
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty helped hide the fact that you were paying $50 in 1980s money for a game that took approximately an hour to beat. If you could beat it . But I suspect the more common gameplay loop was the one I and my friends encountered: you put the game in, played for 20-35 minutes, got a Game Over. If you were really motivated maybe you tried again and got to Stage 4 instead of Stage 3, but at some point said, screw…

Much of this design also feels like a hangover from the arcade days where you wanted players to die cheap deaths so they plugged more quarters into the machine.

I think all of those games were offered as arcade boxes. Plus you have to figure the audience then was in that sort of mindset. Very good point. My 4-5 year old self can relax at last.

Re: A $200 mini-laptop with a Intel 8088 chip and 640KB

#192

Post by jamesgeck0 »

NovaDudely wrote: post #115
wang_li wrote: post #7

As a nerd of a certain age I’ve been deeply attracted to retro computing. Even going so far as to place bids on 30 year old Atari STs on eBay since that was a computer I had in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. But in recent days, through the use of modern emulators I’ve dabbled in these retro systems and I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re just bad. They are fine for the enjoyment of certain games and reliving or just…

It always stuck with me when announcing the Virtual Console on Wii U that Satoru Iwata said it perfectly "It can be fun to relive your childhood but just for a little while". It is fun to look back but we tend to forgive a lot of things that kind of sucked. It is like how some people who live through Hurricanes and then a decade later speak about how fun it was coming together even though it was just horrible. Memori…

That Iwata quote kind of rubs me the wrong way, especially with Nintendo and Sony releasing extremely flawed emulators in the past. On top of games designed for CRT TVs often not looking as good on modern screens, we have emulators introducing low FPS and jerkiness (Sony PSone Classic) or making games look worse by rendering certain scenes without fog (Switch Online N64). With commercial emulation of early 3D consoles especially, you often just aren't getting an accurate representation of what the games were actually like.

(Although credit where credit is due, Nintendo's recent Game Boy Advance releases ship in one of most accurate GBA emulators around.)

Re: A $200 mini-laptop with a Intel 8088 chip and 640KB

#193

Post by jamesgeck0 »

lloeki wrote: post #124
okasaki wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that didn't suck that we threw away was 4:3 screens though. And chunky plastic builds with easily user-replaceable parts. And nice full 7 row keyboards that felt good to type on. And rounded laptop edges so it doesn't kill your wrists. And ports, lots of ports.

> 4:3 screens The 16:9 craze drives me mad: it's jack of all trades master of none, compromise every other way. Maybe nice to watch TV shows, not really good to watch movies, not tall enough for a single screen, not wide enough to 50:50 split left/right (each side is too narrow). Putting two side by side makes you face the bezels, and constant-tilt your head either left or right when you focus. Three side by side is…

16:10 is the widely available sweet spot. That small bit of extra height makes a world of difference.

The 3:2 displays available on Surface tablet devices are also great, although my Surface Go is a tad small for more than one window at a time.

Re: A $200 mini-laptop with a Intel 8088 chip and 640KB

#194

Post by jamesgeck0 »

nine_k wrote: post #158
okasaki wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that didn't suck that we threw away was 4:3 screens though. And chunky plastic builds with easily user-replaceable parts. And nice full 7 row keyboards that felt good to type on. And rounded laptop edges so it doesn't kill your wrists. And ports, lots of ports.

There an easy fix for the sharp edges on laptops: don't buy macbooks. Nearly any desktop has user-replaceable parts, and so do many laptops. Laptops get to be compact and lightweight, so they are very tight internally. An Amiga wasn't too easily portable, to say nothing of an Amstrad. Keyboard quality differed drastically: an Amiga or a Yamaha MSX had nice keys, but good luck typing on a Spectrum ZX.

The repairability depends on the laptop. Framework is the obvious choice if you want a lot of control over the device hardware, but I was pleasantly surprised at how many user-serviceable parts were in my HP Aero 13. Battery, m.2 storage, RAM, wifi card, input devices, screen, speakers, webcam, etc.

Re: A $200 mini-laptop with a Intel 8088 chip and 640KB

#195

Post by ngcc_hk »

CydeWeys wrote: post #184
argiopetech wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, as a born and raised Floridian, hurricanes are always fun before (laughing as people panic buy, watching the track, wondering if it will turn at the last moment or unexpectedly linger on top of you), during (admiring the wind/rain, wondering if we'll have to run the generator this year), and after (marvelling at the damage, having a good excuse to run the chainsaw, wondering when we can stop runn…

They're fun right up until you lose your house, or someone you know dies.

It could be just a stage of denial as in the 5 stages.

Or it could go deeper and as the world around us always change, by event we cannot determine and affect us totally … like say death and we have several possible path

Subject - actively deal with it - actively not deal with it - inactively deal with it - inactively not deal with it

Ignore us as subject - let others deal with it - …

Many religions and life philosophies are around this for, well, death.

Re: A $200 mini-laptop with a Intel 8088 chip and 640KB

#196

Post by splitstud »

argiopetech wrote: post #157
NovaDudely wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always stuck with me when announcing the Virtual Console on Wii U that Satoru Iwata said it perfectly "It can be fun to relive your childhood but just for a little while". It is fun to look back but we tend to forgive a lot of things that kind of sucked. It is like how some people who live through Hurricanes and then a decade later speak about how fun it was coming together even though it was just horrible. Memori…

For what it's worth, as a born and raised Floridian, hurricanes are always fun before (laughing as people panic buy, watching the track, wondering if it will turn at the last moment or unexpectedly linger on top of you), during (admiring the wind/rain, wondering if we'll have to run the generator this year), and after (marvelling at the damage, having a good excuse to run the chainsaw, wondering when we can stop runn…

[dead]

Re: A $200 mini-laptop with a Intel 8088 chip and 640KB

#198

Post by zajio1am »

hypercube33 wrote: post #79
kitsunesoba wrote: post #38

A "real hardware" approach to retrocomputing like displayed here appeals to me because it much better captures parts of the experience lost to emulation. Things like insanely low latency thanks to there not being a fractal spiral of hardware and software abstractions sitting between everything. It's much more simple, and you can feel that. That said I'd also like to see some modern advancements brought in… for exampl…

One thing I'd love to see is a Pentium III class machine with a lot of cache and ram with a pcie SSD in pocket size. I feel like those machines were held back by hard drives of their day.

Asus Eee 901?

Re: A $200 mini-laptop with a Intel 8088 chip and 640KB

#199

Post by karmakaze »

I had an Ambra 486sx (IBM line) laptop that was so small and great. Seemed so ahead of its time, a netbook before it became a category. Google "Ambra laptop" shows a picture of an SN8660C which looks like what I had. Played Doom just fine on it. Even had the external dock that took PC/XT/AT expansion cards.

Just now I thought 8MB is still enough to be useful, then I checked myself MB not GB.

Re: A $200 mini-laptop with a Intel 8088 chip and 640KB

#200

Post by Andys »

okasaki wrote: post #112
inconceivable wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nearly all of the old stuff just sucked. there's a reason we threw it all away (for the most part) and have turned to emulation. the new low power SoC systems with actual connectivity are much more interesting... probably why they can barely keep the stuff in stock. as a bonus, they can run emulation just fine. old, and new, in one package.

One thing that didn't suck that we threw away was 4:3 screens though. And chunky plastic builds with easily user-replaceable parts. And nice full 7 row keyboards that felt good to type on. And rounded laptop edges so it doesn't kill your wrists. And ports, lots of ports.

Have been enjoying Lenovo's rolling out of 16:10 displays, it isn't 4:3 but it is still better than 16:9
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