Old Computer Appreciation Thread

Zering

@Folly Haha thanks for saying that, I suppose you're right, although it's hard to compare to the amount of great stuff that you figure out!

@adambegood The Marathon games are hard, they play much like Doom but you can only save and restore health at specific points which are very rare and scattered in levels so labyrinthine you feel like you're playing Wizardry 1. The first one is fairly well balanced, but the second one is insulting in that regard. There's also no music in the second one, which makes it fairly dry.
On the other hand they are fascinating games, somewhere between Doom and System Shock, and I'd say they were probably an influence for Half-Life.

Edit : I've updated the first post to cover @Folly's find with Marathon, and I've updated the DOS section with a method to launch games from ES using .sh and .conf files.

Likewise, if you guys are interested in 'free' games on the Pi, I'd suggest you install uqm, a source port of Star Control II that takes the best of both the PC and 3DO versions and allows you to customize it entirely. The game comes loaded with the module. Great stuff.

Folly

@zering

Nice job, adding al the information.
It's really a goldmine ! ^^

I read that you inplemented the text "sudo terminal".
As far as I can see it, all the files for marathon community editions can be created as the user pi .
It seems there is no need to create them as root and use the "sudo" command or the "sudo terminal".
For making the .sh file executable, you can do that too as the user pi.
So you can remove the word "sudo", as for as I know.

Zering

@folly but you do need to get into the terminal to make the .sh file executable don't you?

Folly

@zering

Yes indeed, you have to do that, but just as the user pi.
So you can just say open the "terminal" instead of open the "sudo terminal".
So it should look like this, in the terminal :

pi@raspberrypi:~ $

"sudo" is always used in front of a command if you want to do things as root user (administrator).

If you say open the "sudo terminal", you open the "sudo terminal" with the command "su".
Then it looks like this after the login :

root@raspberrypi:~ $

Then you don't have to use the "sudo" command in front of the commands.
All the commands are then executed as super user / root.

Perhaps a bit difficult, do you understand ?

Zering

@folly Not difficult at all, you've explained it well. I understand.

I'll edit now.

Zering

I've been looking into some systems that are readily available on RetroPie Setup but we haven't discussed yet.

Any suggestions of games for the Atari 8 bit computers, the Atari ST, the Dragon 32, the TI99 and TRS80?

Folly

@zering

I have got a message from mitu via Github.

It seems mitu has added some of my suggestions in the PC8800 docs.
You can read our conversation about the pull request here :
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Docs/pull/41

If you have some time, can you take a look at this also ?

Folly

@zering said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

I've been looking into some systems that are readily available on RetroPie Setup but we haven't discussed yet.

Any suggestions of games for the Atari 8 bit computers, the Atari ST, the Dragon 32, the TI99 and TRS80?

Atari St, that was also a nice computer.
I hpoe to check games in a week or so.

Zering

@folly I read through the conversation and it's great that some of your contributions were implemented! However I was curious to know why you chose to close the pull request?
There's a lot more we could implement, you've done absolute tons of work on the PC88.

Folly

@zering said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@folly I read through the conversation and it's great that some of your contributions were implemented! However I was curious to know why you chose to close the pull request?

Well, everything seems so simple in github.
But really I was lost in how to keep the fork in sync with the master branche and how to implement the changes that are advised to make.
Basically, I was thinking I could do this, but I found it too difficult to do.
Damn, I still have to quite a lot to learn ;-)

There's a lot more we could implement, you've done absolute tons of work on the PC88.

I think I can do the suggestions now on the closed pull request.
This way I hope they can be implemented.
I think It's best to do just 1 at a time.

AdamBeGood

@zering said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

I've been looking into some systems that are readily available on RetroPie Setup but we haven't discussed yet.

Any suggestions of games for the Atari 8 bit computers, the Atari ST, the Dragon 32, the TI99 and TRS80?

Atari ST is the only one I am familiar with, and almost everything on that was available (and mostly better) on the Amiga.

Found this thread with exclusive games though: https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=37111

and this one about ST versions that were better than their Amiga equivalents: http://forum.classicamiga.com/forum/showthread.php/1072-Atari-ST-games-that-outshone-the-Amiga

Zering

@AdamBeGood That's disappointing about the Atari ST! Thanks for the links.
Found out today you can seriously boost performance for FM Towns by increasing the CPU overclock in the RetroArch menu. I'm running Raiden Densetsu and Tatsujin Ou at full speed with almost no choppiness. Raiden Densetsu is incredibly addictive.

Folly

@zering

I had a look again at the PC8800 docs.
I couldn't find changes in the original docs.

So I looked at the pull requests, @mitu has the changes, he made, in his fork of the RetroPie-docs here :
https://github.com/cmitu/RetroPie-Docs/blob/master/docs/PC-8800.md

So we have to look at this doc.

I had a fast look, it looks quite good already.

AdamBeGood

@folly said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@zering

I had a look again at the PC8800 docs.
I couldn't find changes in the original docs.

So I looked at the pull requests, @mitu has the changes, he made, in his fork of the RetroPie-docs here :
https://github.com/cmitu/RetroPie-Docs/blob/master/docs/PC-8800.md

So we have to look at this doc.

I had a fast look, it looks quite good already.

That looks good to me! So much better than it used to be...

Folly

@adambegood

Well, I have to look at it a bit better.
And I have to install it all again, because I am working already a month on a new install.
So it can take a while.
But indeed looks pretty improved. :-)

Zering

@folly I've just seen this and it looks excellent! I'm glad we spent so much time trying to figure out this core now ^^

@mitu It should be noted in the docs that standalone quasi88 is not included with RetroPie-Setup on the RPi4 and that it requires manual compiling.

mitu

@zering said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@mitu It should be noted in the docs that standalone quasi88 is not included with RetroPie-Setup on the RPi4 and that it requires manual compiling.

Does it work on a Pi4 ? The reason is disabled is that it uses SDL1, which is not compatible with DRM/KMS.

Zering

@mitu I haven't tested myself but I seem to recall that @Folly and @AdamBeGood had managed to compile it to play some games (Refight) that did not run on the libretro core.
It's in this thread, I'll see if I can find it.

@mitu I think it was post 633.

mitu

@zering said in Old Computer Appreciation Thread:

@mitu I think it was post 633.

Thanks for the dig up.
I don't think Quasi88 will be enabled for the PI4, as far as I remember the issue was that it wasn't full screen due to using SDL1 and so lr-quasi88 is the best choice for the Pi4.

Zering

@mitu That's right, as I recall that was the issue. However given that quasi88 runs games that lr-quasi88 doesn't, wouldn't that qualify it to be reincluded?