Arcade heaven!

[CoupeKing]

If you grew up around an Atari, Omega 500, Commodore 64, or even had some of Nintendo's Game & Watch (handheld Donkey Kong etc), chances are that you would have spent or wasted plenty of hours in front of one of these machines back in the day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVgOaGUHHp0



Nerds review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjTlQBsjp-g

I don't think they have much in the way of Pinball or tabletop's, but here's their full list if you're interested:
http://www.gallopingghostarcade.com/games-list/

Now I feel like a sunny boy, 80's four n twenty and a proper Wagon Wheel.

[Dalonian]

I built myself a RetroPie machine using a Raspberry Pi 3. Runs all the retro games on your TV. And fits in the palm of your hand. It's awesome.

[marty351]

+1 for pong!

[.:4:.]

I'm not even that old and I remember putting a cassette tape in the commodore 64. We even had 2 joy sticks. The 64 got sidelined for a IBM 256 and whilst I don't really remember it ran windows 3.1. That may be the 356 that replaced it, but to start windows you had to type the dos comand. It was something like c:/dos/win/run. I don't miss that.

[GO FURTHER]

Reminds me of the Musée Mécanique, one of the world's largest privately owned collection of over 200 coin-operated antique arcade and pinball machines in their original working condition. You can play them too!

I visited the place a few years ago which is located on the famous Pier 45 in San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf.

Well worth visting if you go to California, and a great way to spend a few hours.

[commodorenutt]

Originally Posted by .:4:.

I'm not even that old and I remember putting a cassette tape in the commodore 64. We even had 2 joy sticks. The 64 got sidelined for a IBM 256 and whilst I don't really remember it ran windows 3.1. That may be the 356 that replaced it, but to start windows you had to type the dos comand. It was something like c:/dos/win/run. I don't miss that.

The first PC (clone) I had only ran DOS (it was prior to windows).
You had to know your commands, or have a simple menu program like Xtree.

The # 1 pirate command: copy a: *.* b: (when you had 2 floppy drives).
Copy protection? What protection?

I still wonder how I ever thought a 10Mb hard drive was big. It held the equivalent of 25-30x 5.25" floppies! I made a slide hammer with the splindle out of that drive - because it was a double-height drive, the spindle was a cylinder of steel around 100mm high x 40mm diameter, with a 10mm hole down the guts. Nice & solid.

The turbo button on them was interesting - it actually worked in reverse (ie with turbo on it ran at its rated speed, and when turbo was off it slowed it down. Was a good cheat mode for games that relied on the processor clock speed, and slowed down as well.

Do you remember the early "rubber cup" modems for the old dial phones?



I bought the little Sega genesis classic thing a while back - never realised how woesful the graphics on Alex Kidd were.... and Sonic isn't much better.

I still own a Super Nintendo & dozens of games, buried somewhere in the garage, so I bought the mini when it came out a few months back. Mario Kart brings back some memories!

[.:4:.]

3 years back I did a job for transit for nsw. It was the rail network. In the corner there was an old school computer. So I showed my apprentice a 4.5 inch floppy. His mates thought I was a creep.

[GO FURTHER]

Originally Posted by .:4:.

I'm not even that old and I remember putting a cassette tape in the commodore 64. We even had 2 joy sticks. The 64 got sidelined for a IBM 256 and whilst I don't really remember it ran windows 3.1. That may be the 356 that replaced it, but to start windows you had to type the dos comand. It was something like c:/dos/win/run. I don't miss that.

My very first computer was a Sinclair ZX81, a home computer produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Scotland by Timex Corporation I bought in 1981.

Had 64Kb of ram, a thermal printer and had to write and store DOS programs on cassette.



I wanted it to be "portable" so turned it into my first "Laptop".
Built it into a wooden hinged box with suitcase handle with a black & white TV, separate keyboard, mounted cassette player and thermal printer then covered it in Laminex.

Me back in 1981 with the first home built laptop with built in printer.

[commodorenutt]

With a bit more effort you could have had an Afro!

[marty351]

Nerd alert!

Just noticed the key. Was that for security?

[GO FURTHER]

Originally Posted by commodorenutt

With a bit more effort you could have had an Afro!

With a bit less effort I could have taken up Steve Job's offer on Apple shares and be a Billionaire today.

[GO FURTHER]

Originally Posted by marty351

Nerd alert!

Just noticed the key. Was that for security?

Yep... Before the days of "keyless entry"... Had to protect all that DOS porn.

[marty351]

I had some porn on my c64. B+w pixelated, just had to hide the disk.

[redxm]

Originally Posted by GO FURTHER

My very first computer was a Sinclair ZX81, a home computer produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Scotland by Timex Corporation I bought in 1981.

Had 64Kb of ram, a thermal printer and had to write and store DOS programs on cassette.

You must have had the memory expansion pack. In standard form they were 1K. And yep you could actually play a game with that piddly memory. I wrote a racecar game for it.

[GO FURTHER]

Originally Posted by redxm

You must have had the memory expansion pack. In standard form they were 1K. And yep you could actually play a game with that piddly memory. I wrote a racecar game for it.

Yes... And from memory the expansion pack cost as much as the computer.

[Ross 1]

Wife picked up an Atari a while back, still working great.

[redxm]

Looking back it was pretty cool getting onboard with early computers. School had Apple IIE and later the first mac. Did a lot of work on Microbees as well. At home had a VZ300 that I built a speech synthesiser and a parallel port controlled lego robot. Later on played with the ZX81 for a a bit of fun.

[Mercury Bullet]

Originally Posted by marty351

+1 for pong!

Lol I still have my pong machine.
Can't use it though, I need an old tv that accepted the ribbon aerial cable.

Still have my Olivetti m28. The original IBM clone.

Had porn on the c64 too. Program was called ****er.
Guess the ending........

[.:4:.]

Originally Posted by Mercury Bullet

Lol I still have my pong machine.
Can't use it though, I need an old tv that accepted the ribbon aerial cable.

Still have my Olivetti m28. The original IBM clone.

Had porn on the c64 too. Program was called ****er.
Guess the ending........

You remind me of the original leasure suite Larry.

[marty351]

I was too young to know the ending, until

[.:4:.]

Originally Posted by marty351

I was too young to know the ending, until

Untill you worked out the right comand?

[marty351]

Command+alt+del.

[.:4:.]

Isn't it control alt delete?

[.:4:.]

Anyhow I think my favourite game on 3.5 inch floppy was street rod 2. It was the cracked version that used rude words. I was never the best on mulholand drive.

[solarite_guy]

This is a cool thread. I had a commodore 128 with 5.5" floppy and dot matrix printer. As a gaming machine i had a copy of castle wolfenstein.

My brother in law had a had a piano moving company and commodore 64 wanted to use it for his business to log and calculate estimates and also connect piano sellers with buyers. Having been a piano mover myself for another outfit during my university years I was aware of what was needed and wrote a program in commodore basic for him.

About this time my Ti SR 71 scientific programmable calculator was on its last legs so I converted all my engine algorithms I had developed to date over to the c128. Then wrote my first engine modeling program. It could give to a list of instantaneous piston velocity for ever 1/10th of degree of crankshaft rotation for any crank stroke, rod length and rpm combination.

It is kind of funny, it had a Fast mode that could be called in basic. When called the mother board would make a high pitched hum. It ran through the instantaneous piston velocity program more than a a couple minutes faster that way.

Then the company I worked for got one of the first IBM PCs. It had the earlier 8088 intel processor. The 8086 came out later. The trailing 8 stood for 8 bit data fetches. The 6 was short for 16 bit data fetches, which made a noticeable difference in cpu intensive performance. I was allowed to take it home for a week and converted my piston velocity program to IBM basic. The 8088 was a full minute slower than the commodore in fast mode. I was surprised.

We actually developed a military hospital program on a system that booted from one 8" floppy and then used a second 8" floppy for operations. The program ran the hospital patient registration, admission, disposition and tracking functions. It was used as a test system at an Air Force base in Alaska.

We've come a long way.

[roKWiz]

The closest I ever came to computer games was "Helicopter Rescue" at Village Grand Prix complex, Prospect.

[Rallye Sport]

We found a 'relic' deli a few years back that still had the pinnie's and games out the back, still at 20c a go! There was a language college nearby and the place used to be packed at smoko and lunch times.

[ford71V8]

I learnt how to write BASIC on this thing before I got the C64
The Dick Smith Wizzard!

[Jastel]

Originally Posted by GO FURTHER

Reminds me of the Musée Mécanique, one of the world's largest privately owned collection of over 200 coin-operated antique arcade and pinball machines in their original working condition. You can play them too!

I visited the place a few years ago which is located on the famous Pier 45 in San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf.

Well worth visting if you go to California, and a great way to spend a few hours.

image

image

image

There is a better one with more games in Las Vegas...have been to both.

Still got the multiballs going...though I thought I used to be better at Donkey Kong and Galaga!

[Kieron]

Originally Posted by commodorenutt

The first PC (clone) I had only ran DOS (it was prior to windows).
You had to know your commands, or have a simple menu program like Xtree.

The # 1 pirate command: copy a: *.* b: (when you had 2 floppy drives).
Copy protection? What protection?

Amazingly, copy protection was around back then. One cheeky way allowed you to freely copy the game with 'copy' but, the original disk was created with certain track/sectors left un-formatted and when the app was run, it would check the disk for the un-formatted disk sectors. This also tripped up bit copiers that copied by track/sector. Not to be outdone, we disassembled the code and found the segment that did the checking and 'jumped' it in a Galaxians clone game I had.

Another was even trickier, same as above but it had self re-writing code after you ran the game. ie, dissasemble the code direct from disk find the section that checked for bad sectors and jump it, but another piece of code writes the checking code when the games was in memory, gave up hacking after that!!

I still wonder how I ever thought a 10Mb hard drive was big. It held the equivalent of 25-30x 5.25" floppies! I made a slide hammer with the splindle out of that drive - because it was a double-height drive, the spindle was a cylinder of steel around 100mm high x 40mm diameter, with a 10mm hole down the guts. Nice & solid.

The turbo button on them was interesting - it actually worked in reverse (ie with turbo on it ran at its rated speed, and when turbo was off it slowed it down. Was a good cheat mode for games that relied on the processor clock speed, and slowed down as well.

Yep, the original IBM PC ran at 4.77mhz, turbo off switched the PC back to 4.77mhz. The early games worked at 4.77 and had 'timers' to get around the turbo mode speeding up the game, Microsoft Flight Simulator was once such game, a game commonly used to test 'clones' compatibility!!

Do you remember the early "rubber cup" modems for the old dial phones?

Acoustic couplers. First modem I bought was a 300baud job, $199 from Dick Smith back when they sold the TRS-80 clone - System80.


Anyone have a Vic20 or Atari 400/800?

A friend of mine (Todd Hooper) wrote many games for the Vic20, got the Vic 20 as payment from a local computer dealer who sold them onto Imagineering for distribution.

Back in the mid 80's, I Worked with the guy (Gareth Smith) who wrote the Atari game 'Shaft Raider', this game got worldwide distribution and his payment was an Atari 1200 and a printer (same computer dealer as above), he didn't care though, was studying engineering at the time and wrote it for fun.

Todd and I started writing games in assembler for the then new Hitachi MB6890, called 'Peach', dubbed an Apple IIe done right and was crowned computer of the year by APC magazine. Unfortunately, it was a big flop sales wise ($2K back in 84'ish) so the games stopped - first one was a clone of the arcade side scroller 'Moon Patrol'.

Ahh, the good ole days...