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PCjs Machines

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Re: PCjs Machines

#21

Post by vunderba »

drivers99 wrote: post #13

I have my IBM PC set up (to go through a Peter Norton assembly language book again) but I got a file read error for the first time recently on the 20 MB (Seagate ST-225) hard drive and parity errors from the RAM (again). I have chips (pretty cheap, industry standard chips) I can swap out to fix it hopefully. Anyway, I could just be emulating it instead (lol). Cool, they have Exploring the IBM PC. It was a bootable di…

I have a couple of enthusiast friends who use CompactFlash-to-IDE adapters, and that’s one of the upgrades that almost makes it worth it. You still get the full retro experience (well except for the actuator arm seeking sounds), but on the plus side you don’t have to worry about failing magnetic hard drives.

Also this looks pretty neat as well

https://picoide.com

Re: PCjs Machines

#22

Post by drivers99 »

vunderba wrote: post #21
drivers99 wrote: post #13

I have my IBM PC set up (to go through a Peter Norton assembly language book again) but I got a file read error for the first time recently on the 20 MB (Seagate ST-225) hard drive and parity errors from the RAM (again). I have chips (pretty cheap, industry standard chips) I can swap out to fix it hopefully. Anyway, I could just be emulating it instead (lol). Cool, they have Exploring the IBM PC. It was a bootable di…

I have a couple of enthusiast friends who use CompactFlash-to-IDE adapters, and that’s one of the upgrades that almost makes it worth it. You still get the full retro experience (well except for the actuator arm seeking sounds), but on the plus side you don’t have to worry about failing magnetic hard drives. Also this looks pretty neat as well https://picoide.com

Well, this computer is too old for IDE (but see below). :) Looks like it's something called MFM, driven by an entire expansion card that hooks up to the hard drive. But I get what you mean. My oldest tower is running Windows 2000 (since it has a serial port on the motherboard, it comes in handy... for transferring files to/from the IBM PC.) and that has IDE so I could use that for MS-DOS as well (and would be able to run 90s DOS games etc), I'm sure, but with a ~20 year jump in technology (or about half way between the original IBM PC and today).

Interestingly, https://www.lo-tech.co.uk/wiki/Lo-tech_8-bit_IDE_Adapter_rev... or better yet https://www.lo-tech.co.uk/wiki/Lo-tech_ISA_CompactFlash_Adap... looks like it would work if needed, and then using a CF to IDE adapter like you mentioned.

Re: PCjs Machines

#23

Post by glhaynes »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #18
CharlesW wrote: post #3

I know I could've done this at any time, but I cannot wait to sit my kids down in front of full-screen Oregon Trail and King's Quest experiences.

Oregon Trail held up well but, man, Kings Quest is brutal with the killing you and having to start over.

As a kid who hadn't seen anything else, the mechanic of "save early, save often" made perfect sense to me (and I've always wished I had a similar mechanism IRL!), just as I imagine it did to the Sierra authors. And in fact I think there's a lot to like about it -- it's not "good game design", but imo it does provide stakes and a sense of danger in a way that the Lucasarts/etc stuff doesn't. But, yeah, a kid who's had more than passing experience with modern games certainly might not see it that way!

Re: PCjs Machines

#24

Post by TacticalCoder »

drivers99 wrote: post #13

I have my IBM PC set up (to go through a Peter Norton assembly language book again) but I got a file read error for the first time recently on the 20 MB (Seagate ST-225) hard drive and parity errors from the RAM (again). I have chips (pretty cheap, industry standard chips) I can swap out to fix it hopefully. Anyway, I could just be emulating it instead (lol). Cool, they have Exploring the IBM PC. It was a bootable di…

> Anyway, I could just be emulating it instead (lol).

Yeah I'm wondering about that too. I'd say there's something special about using the real thing: have the old hardware working.

Ideally in a 100% real time-capsule mode: say a Commodore Amiga back then didn't have a "Vampire 8000 GTX Turbo 16-valves" accelerator. My machines are all pristine time capsules, not polluted by modernity.

But as you wrote: at some point something fails. And what do you do then?

I understand the appeal of "fake IDE disks" and "fake floppy drives" etc. but if it's to use stuff emulating part of the real thing, why not just use an emulator emulating the entire real thing?

It's not a criticism: for example I've got a real vintage arcade cab and more often than not the "PCB" that's plugged in is not a vintage PCB (even though I've got several of those) but a Raspberry Pi with a Pi2JAMMA adapter. And once a game is launched, you can't tell the difference: it's basically cycle-perfect emulation.

Something something about the ship of theseus and all that.

Re: PCjs Machines

#25

Post by Krssst »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #17
mk_stjames wrote: post #16

I just did something neat- I tried out the install of Windows 3.1, which has a version of Visual Basic installed. I created a small program in Visual Basic, with a window and some buttons to press, and then saved the program as an .exe (remember how easy this used to be! you could make your program and then just... save the executable out of VB! No compiler knowledge needed!) I then saved this .exe to a disk image, a…

Odds are good that EXE you made will run on 32-bit Windows 10, too.

Can run on modern 64-bit windows too with otvdm: https://github.com/otya128/winevdm

Re: PCjs Machines

#26

Post by danvayn »

You'll want to turn down your speakers for a few of these. I did not find any volume knob in time for Dune II to finish booting, unfortunately.

Re: PCjs Machines

#27

Post by mk_stjames »

Krssst wrote: post #25
EvanAnderson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odds are good that EXE you made will run on 32-bit Windows 10, too.

Can run on modern 64-bit windows too with otvdm: https://github.com/otya128/winevdm

Yes, just tried this, and my little exe ran on a Windows 10 64 bit machine just fine.

Which means I just built a demo of a tiny 16 bit windows GUI applet, using emulated VB in Win 3.1 in a browser and got it to run on modern Windows in a shorter amount of time than it would have likely taken me to get the same type of demo up and running natively in Windows 10 today.

Re: PCjs Machines

#28

Post by ssl-3 »

drivers99 wrote: post #22
vunderba wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a couple of enthusiast friends who use CompactFlash-to-IDE adapters, and that’s one of the upgrades that almost makes it worth it. You still get the full retro experience (well except for the actuator arm seeking sounds), but on the plus side you don’t have to worry about failing magnetic hard drives. Also this looks pretty neat as well https://picoide.com

Well, this computer is too old for IDE (but see below). :) Looks like it's something called MFM, driven by an entire expansion card that hooks up to the hard drive. But I get what you mean. My oldest tower is running Windows 2000 (since it has a serial port on the motherboard, it comes in handy... for transferring files to/from the IBM PC.) and that has IDE so I could use that for MS-DOS as well (and would be able to…

My first PC had an ST-225, and I'd like to confirm that it is indeed MFM. (I miss the gronky startup sounds from that thing.)

If you want to modernize the storage for that old PC, then Lo-tech is probably a good choice. They've got a wonderful all-in-one card that includes a mounting bracket, fits into an 8-bit ISA slot, and accepts a CF card directly: https://texelec.com/product/lo-tech-xt-cf-lite-rev-2/

File transfer can be done a number of different ways, including serial ports (USB to RS-232 adapters generally work fine), floppies (USB 3.5" floppy drives are awesome and cheap), and: Networking.

Around the turn of the century, I briefly had an already-old XT machine that had no hard drive, but it did have 10BASE2 Ethernet and Hercules-compatible graphics built into the motherboard.

It was a fun little adventure to get it online with my then-modern LAN and I did a number of unlikely things with it (including a graphical web browser), but the most practical thing it did was connect to a Samba share on my Linux box. It worked great. Old 8-bit network cards are not particularly expensive.

It all depends on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go. :)

Re: PCjs Machines

#29

Post by vunderba »

glhaynes wrote: post #23
EvanAnderson wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oregon Trail held up well but, man, Kings Quest is brutal with the killing you and having to start over.

As a kid who hadn't seen anything else, the mechanic of "save early, save often" made perfect sense to me (and I've always wished I had a similar mechanism IRL!), just as I imagine it did to the Sierra authors. And in fact I think there's a lot to like about it -- it's not "good game design", but imo it does provide stakes and a sense of danger in a way that the Lucasarts/etc stuff doesn't. But, yeah, a kid who's had…

I’d probably add “Save Early, Save Often, Save Multiple.” because there are so many ways to accidentally softlock yourself making the game totally unwinnable without realizing it until hours later.

There’s a reason most of us as kids started out with descriptive save names like `INNKEEP.SAV` and `BUYSLED.SAV`, and then halfway through the playthrough it's just `1.SAV`, `2.SAV`, `3.SAV`, etc. :)

Re: PCjs Machines

#30

Post by drivers99 »

ssl-3 wrote: post #28
drivers99 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this computer is too old for IDE (but see below). :) Looks like it's something called MFM, driven by an entire expansion card that hooks up to the hard drive. But I get what you mean. My oldest tower is running Windows 2000 (since it has a serial port on the motherboard, it comes in handy... for transferring files to/from the IBM PC.) and that has IDE so I could use that for MS-DOS as well (and would be able to…

My first PC had an ST-225, and I'd like to confirm that it is indeed MFM. (I miss the gronky startup sounds from that thing.) If you want to modernize the storage for that old PC, then Lo-tech is probably a good choice. They've got a wonderful all-in-one card that includes a mounting bracket, fits into an 8-bit ISA slot, and accepts a CF card directly: https://texelec.com/product/lo-tech-xt-cf-lite-rev-2/ File transf…

All good points. One caveat is that this PC only has a full height 5.25" (double sided, double density, 360K) floppy drive. When I got a 486 (Gateway 2000) in 1993, I had them add a 5.25" (as drive B:) to it so I could still at least read floppies from the PC.
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