In the "CPU SPEED?" thread, Ron wrote on Sun, 25 May 2003 08:32

Oh, and the Commodore floppy drive (1541) had 8k of its own internal memory, and its own CPU. Many games for the C64 had copy protection systems that relied on 'encrypting' all tracks on the floppy, except the directory track, which contained a decoder program. Once the decoder program was loaded into the floppy drives RAM/CPU and ran there, it could then read the rest of the floppy, which could contain hidden 'burned' spots that the copy protection would check for, causing the drive head to bang against its stop. Nasty sound, and potentially damaging to the drive itself. Showing my age here...

Yeah, but weren't the games just far more wonderful back in them days? My first computer was a Commodore 64, and well do I remember the 1541 floppy drive, the really annoying copy-protection, and the endless piles of piracy software (also pirated). "Hmmm, even Doctor Hacker IV didn't copy it - I don't know where to go from here - wait, did we try Quick Hacker VII yet? Smasher II & III? Darn."

It wasn't that I was too cheap to buy the software - being single, living in military barracks and having no bills to pay, there was no other more preferable way to spend my paycheck. It was more a matter of not being able to find the game for sale anywhere. I bought EVERY game I seen hit the shelves, and for a time, they were ALL good. I remember many occasions never getting up from the computer except as briefly as possible to eat or go to the bathroom, going 3 days without any sleep (stone cold sober), because I couldn't leave the new game I'd just gotten. "Microprose Pirates!" was one of those. Awesome. "Microprose Pirates! Gold" for the IBM, on the other hand, wasn't.

I don't recall any lousy games back then - only the occasional brand new game disk that would never run on YOUR machine, but might run on your friends machine on maybe 1 out of 7 attempts. Or vice versa. It was just a matter of patience...

(Wh

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zoid wrote on Sun, 25 May 2003 15:16

Yeah, but weren't the games just far more wonderful back in them days? My first computer was a Commodore 64, and well do I remember the 1541 floppy drive, the really annoying copy-protection, and the endless piles of piracy software (also pirated). "Hmmm, even Doctor Hacker IV didn't copy it - I don't know where to go from here - wait, did we try Quick Hacker VII yet? Smasher II & III? Darn."

Ah! I guess you never tried Super Snapshot IV
A wonderful cartdridge. You loaded up the game, whatever copy protection it was, then when the game was running correctly, you pushed a little button on the Super Snapshot IV cartridge to freeze memory, and allow a dump of memory to a fresh floppy disk.

Later, when you wanted to play the game again, you could use the cartridge to *turbo load* the memory image from that floppy.

Before that, it was the days of loading games from tape for the C64. Ugh... The better games had turbo loaders that would flash all those colors on screen as they loaded faster than normal. And trying to copy such games by dubbing tape A to tape B in a duel tape deck.. trying to tweak treble/bass to see if could make a successful copy.

Then Commodore's printer, I don't remember the model number, but it didn't have true decending characters, like 'j' 'y' the tails of those letters couldn't go below the line. The printer daisy chained into the floppy drive.

And the rich friends that had 2 floppy drives, daisy chained together, or had a C64c, or that weird portable C64 with the 5 inch color screen.

sys 49152
sys 32768
peek/poke oh and those weird/wonderful pokes/peeks that allowed you to 'hide' your basic program so your friends couldn't look at the source code!

Quote:

I bought EVERY game I seen hit the shelves, and for a time, they were ALL good. I remember many occasions never getting up from the computer except as briefly as possible to eat or go to the bathroom, going 3 days without any sleep (stone cold

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Ron wrote on Sun, 25 May 2003 15:46

Btw, you can play C64 games NOW on your PC, using an emulator. There are several excellent free C64 emulators for the PC available, and several C64 websites that you can download disk images to run using the emulators.

Well, that won't do me any good. Long ago I gave away my Commodore 64 (still working!) and the HUGE collection of games (99% retail boxed) that I had for it. It's probably just as well though. The truth is, the nostalgic memories are probably much better than the games, in reality.

I've even gotten rid of a truckload of DOS and the earlier Windows games that were just too difficult to get running satisfactorily on Windows XP. A pity, I really loved some of them. Master of Orion, for instance. I couldn't get that to work at all on my newest computer, but I loved that game so much I couldn't stand to get rid of it even if it's now useless. So it sits on my software shelf, amidst all the playable games that I have. It's earned a place of honor there, I guess.

I think one of the reason Stars is still so popular even though it's so old is simply because it still works without a hitch, regardless of your OS. No hassles even with Windows XP. And another thing - I don't thing Stars has ever crashed once. NEVER.
A toast to Jeff McBride.

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Bless me father for I have aged...It has been several years since my last confession....

I still own my Apple //e...alas it does not go...I assume the 50 odd disks I have for it are still good.

I maintain a working 486dx100 with dos 6.2/win95 dual boot.
(with tcp/ip networking for both )

I am currently up to the crypt in Bards Tale 2 and my monk no longer wears armor

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[Updated on: Mon, 26 May 2003 04:12]

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Quote:

Btw, you can play C64 games NOW on your PC, using an emulator. There are several excellent free C64 emulators for the PC available, and several C64 websites that you can download disk images to run using the emulators.

Just one point of curiosity. How come on a 600+ MHz system the emulated program runs slower and more sluggish than on a 64K 1MHz machine? Is this some sort of punishment for old people?

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And then there was the most exciting game of all. The forerunner to all the big bytes to come. Before Commodore and PacMan and Centipede and Asteroids and Defender. The first big dive into the digital world. PONG! Daddy would put little Ronnie in his lap and turn the little black dial, and someone else would turn the other little black dial. And the white ball on the TV would bounce left, right, left, right, diagonal, right, left, diagonal... on an on... and the two little white lines would move up and down on either side following the dials to deflect the ball in the other direction. Pong, pong, pong, the ball would bounce. I think they didn't called it ping pong because the ball just went pong, pong, pong... and it probably would have violated some copyright somewhere. I can't help but wonder that Microsoft wasn't flashing subliminal pictures of windows ads even then in between... pong...pong...windows...pong...pong...assimilate you...pong...pong... And in the morning just before leaving for work your wife would walk into the kitchen... pong...pong...pong...and hand you your lunch and a kiss. And you walk to your car and fire up the monster lead spitting fuel sucking fume emitting old junker and head off to work... pong... pong... pong... No wonder we were so much happier then.

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BlueTurbit wrote on Mon, 26 May 2003 18:26

Quote: Btw, you can play C64 games NOW on your PC, using an emulator. There are several excellent free C64 emulators for the PC available, and several C64 websites that you can download disk images to run using the emulators. Just one point of curiosity. How come on a 600+ MHz system the emulated program runs slower and more sluggish than on a 64K 1MHz machine? Is this some sort of punishment for old people?

Thats because its *emulating hardware*, and because a 600Mhz system *is* slow

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BlueTurbit wrote on Mon, 26 May 2003 19:08

PONG! Daddy would put little Ronnie in his lap and turn the little black dial, and someone else would turn the other little black dial. And the white ball on the TV would bounce left, right, left, right, diagonal, right, left, diagonal... on an on... and the two little white lines would move up and down on either side following the dials to deflect the ball in the other direction.

Hey! I remember that! It wasn't Dad though, saw it at a friend's house, their dad was a doctor. They had another one that had 8 or 16 different games, of which my favorite was tanks. 2 people driving tanks around the screen, in a simple maze, shooting big black square bullets at each other.

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Ron wrote on Mon, 26 May 2003 20:16

Thats because its *emulating hardware*, and because a 600Mhz system *is* slow

I remember when my Atari ST with a great deal of soldering had a PC emulator card installed. It didn't run 600 times slower with the emulator engaged.
Buh! Explanificate yourself. 600 is slow for what? I don't type any faster than I did 5 years ago. I don't play Stars! any faster than I did 5 years ago. I don't read any faster than I did 5 years ago. I don't make music any faster than I did 5 years ago. I don't hear or see or walk or talk any faster than I did 5 years ago. I can't think of anything I use that needs to be five times faster than it was 5 years ago. Except maybe my tax refund checks. Me thinks this speed hype is more pure marketing strategy than the majority of home user needs. Overkill. Like the lemmings many consumers follow the leader over the cliff with no real purpose other than to follow without reason. It would be like we were all being sold cars that run 800 Miles per hour when the speed limit is 70. The only one that really benefits are the fat bellies of the ones who make and sell these systems in the majority of cases. Very few people actually need a system faster than what they already have for a long time to come. The difference between win95, win98, and the new win versions isn't that great to justify the extra cost. And some versions even make older hardware and favorite programs obsolete. So now not only do they sell new operating system, but new hardware and software is required in many cases. Puh! The lemmings are multiplying faster than mice.
What, you want free music faster? Get a radio. Start a band. Get a talented girfriend. You want faster better games? Buy a PlayStation or something similar.
You want to hear music and Stars! at the same time. Turn the radio on. Turn a CD player on. You want stereo? Get two girlfriends and have them sit on both sides. If you are really cool you can hum in three part harmony. With a dog or cat whining in the b

[Updated on: Mon, 26 May 2003 23:57]

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I'm planning on getting a newer system for this fall when I move into college housing (free t3!) at least a 1-gig setup... but I miss my 8088, it would be useful still... or my old 486 that languishes in my sister's basement, I should fix it up and have a dedicated IRC machine.

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BlueTurbit wrote on Mon, 26 May 2003 20:55

The difference between win95, win98, and the new win versions isn't that great to justify the extra cost. And some versions even make older hardware and favorite programs obsolete.

Everquest made me do it! First everything was okay, and I got hooked.

Then they said, "Hey, lookie here! We just made all kinds of improvements, but now you need at least 512 megs of RAM, and a faster processor will help a lot, too. Of course, you could continue playing with 256 megs of RAM and your old processor, if you disable all the cool stuff, and turn down your clip plane until you can't see anything more than 10 steps ahead of you. And it'll run slower, still. If you don't mind spending 10 minutes trying to turn around to fight the monster that came up and attacked you from behind, stick with what you have."

So, I need a new processor, and more RAM. I don't know much about computers but someone who does says "Look, Windows 98 doesn't know what to do with anything over 256 megs of RAM, so it just ignores it. You want more than 256 megs, you gotta upgrade your OS."

So, I dropped a grand on hardware and Win XP, put it together, and here we are. I don't play Everquest as much anymore, and sometimes I miss those old games. But Everquest beats the heck outta Pong.

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First PC I "owned" ... Tandy. Weren't no place fer no stinkin' hard drive!

1st computer I "programmed" PDP-11, back when the PC had just come out and all my instructors were all telling me, "Why are you wasting your time playing with those things? You'll be doing all your work on these real computers."

But all that was after my 30th b'day.

Now, I sit around and watch email float by, nudging them in their proper direction when they get a bit confused. Yeah, I miss the "good, ol' days". Everything was new and exciting, and you had respect simply because you knew the difference between a bit and a byte, and one person was the IT department.

Awwww. Now I done gone and got my bathrobe all drippy ...

The Crusader

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zoid wrote on Sun, 25 May 2003 15:16

My first computer was a Commodore 64, and well do I remember the 1541 floppy drive, the really annoying copy-protection, and the endless piles of piracy software (also pirated). "Hmmm, even Doctor Hacker IV didn't copy it - I don't know where to go from here - wait, did we try Quick Hacker VII yet? Smasher II & III? Darn."

Nibbler ROCKED. I could copy anything with that. I got my C64 off a freind of my step father. Came with two floppies - I was in heaven. Learned peeks and pokes and BASIC off that thing. When I got mono, the little time I was awake, I discovered BBSs on my 300 baud modem.

Best games were Imperium Galactum (got me into Stars!), Rollerball (I think that was the name - had to put the steel ball into the circle to score, but you could use it to knock the other players down, too), and (the two gun turrets on hills - can't remember the name. A tree leaf would stop the shell! It was awesome.)

Jeff

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jchoyt wrote on Thu, 05 June 2003 12:35

Nibbler ROCKED. I could copy anything with that.

Yeah, I had that one too! But I don't remember any of them being able to copy everything.

jchoyt wrote on Thu, 05 June 2003 12:35

Best games were Imperium Galactum (got me into Stars!)

ME TOO! An Army buddy of mine (actually he was my tank commander in Germany) had Imperium Galactum for his Atari. I loved that game so much! For years afterward I was looking for that game for the C64, and later for the PC, but never found it. I began buying every space genre game I could find hoping to find something similar to Imperium Galactum, never succeeding until I stumbled across the shareware version of Stars (2.6a, I believe). Finally, I had found the game that made me forget all about Imperium Galactum. I wasted no time in registering Stars.

BTW, those old games of Imperium Galactum played on that aged Atari computer is where I got the name "Zoid". The aforementioned buddy of mine used to name the computer players for Imperium Galactum "Blastus Maximus" and "Zoid". We learned to fear the Zoid. "Avoid the Zoid" was our motto. The Zoid player always gave us such hell that we replaced him with the "Noid", and I adopted the name "Zoid" forever after that.

Now, if I could only live up to the name!

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-sigh- Nostalgia just ain't what it used to be...

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Coyote wrote on Fri, 06 June 2003 00:15

-sigh- Nostalgia just ain't what it used to be...

Well, we could go back to the days when a fun day was when I found a semi-straight stick to play with all day long.

Somehow it would seem to be rather silly to go back that far on a forum like this. Nevertheless ...

I remember Sunday afternoons sitting under the shade tree at my grandparents' house, fanning ourselves and drinking lemonade or iced tea, talking about whatever was current news at the time and waiting until time for the Sunday evening sermon. I remember home-made ice cream. I remember summer afternoons when the prominent smell was sun-baked dust and the prominent sound was the crunch of automobile tires on gravel roads and, occasionally, the clatter of electric fans. I remember long walks down to the stream in the bottom of the holler (valley to you Yanks) where the air temperature was a good 10 degrees cooler than on the ridgetop, but it felt 40 degrees cooler, so that you would actually get chill bumps in the middle of August. Instant messaging was sticking your head out the door and hollering at the neighbors. Fast food was a left-over bisquit from breakfast with an onion freshly-pulled from the garden, or a newly-ripened tomato. When reception was good, we would watch Abbot and Costello on the television with a bowl of popcorn popped in Crisco in a stainless-steel pot. Stuff was made of metal, cloth, and wood. The new wonder material was Formica and Asian industry consisted of bamboo and rice (in our provencial minds). People did math in their heads and made contracts with a handshake, and if you spilled your coffee in your lap you didn't sue someone over it, you got laughed at for being clumsy.

Is that the nostalia you were looking for?

Respectfully,
The Crusader

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Crusader wrote on Fri, 06 June 2003 09:49

Somehow it would seem to be rather silly to go back that far on a forum like this. Nevertheless ...

Urgh.... Nostalgia just seems so foreign to me. I suppose it's just youth, but I don't see why one should spend time in the past when so much is happening now and will happen in the near future. I feel glad I live today rather than 40 years ago, I have no understanding of life of 40 years ago, and I guess this is why films like Far From Heaven (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0297884) are so difficult for me to access.

Alex.

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djhakase wrote on Fri, 06 June 2003 09:25

Urgh.... Nostalgia just seems so foreign to me. Alex.

Yes sir, I agree. When I was younger, I did not have the time nor the inclination to reminisce about anything. I was too busy doing stuff! Even up through my early 40's, I hardly ever sat around talking about the old days.

It is quite clearly your youth. Nothing wrong with that! Nothing wrong with you not enjoying my trip down memory lane either. I ain't real fond of the fact that I'm getting to the age that those memories are starting to come in clearer than yesterday's.

What was I talking about?

The Crusader

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Awwwww! C'mon Turbit. Don't forget the entertainment value derived from watching the youngsters make our mistakes. Old men have to have some enjoyment out of life.

The Crusader

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