There should be plenty around (unused) for people who still need them for a decade if not more. When were 5.25" DD disks discontinued? You can still find them cheap on ebay from time to time. I have never used a 8" floppy disk but they are still available. ----- Original Message ----- From: "joe lobocki" <jlobocki at gmail.com> To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 7:00 AM Subject: the beginning of the end for floppies

Perhaps someone (no I'm *not* volunteering!) should look in to documenting how floppy discs are made? I have a general idea, but how they actually make and coat the media should be preserved for future generations now, before it gets forgotten. For example, how do they attach the metal slider with that tiny spring inside? In 10 (or 20) years that sort of information would probably be lost or very hard to find.

On 29 Apr 2010 at 22:19, Andrew Burton wrote: I ascribe the decline in floppy media at least in part to a similar decline in consumer video tape, mostly VHS. ISTR that 360K 5.25" floppies use approximately the same coating formulation and thickness as VHS tape. Instead of cutting the substrate into long strips, you cut it into round "cookies'. --Chuck

The "beginning of the end" for floppies happened a long time ago.

But, like B&W photographic print paper, it is possible to still find some with enough searching. There don't seem to be any local sources for film for my still and movie cameras, other than 35mm color.

On Wed, 28 Apr 2010, Jim MacKenzie wrote: 8x10 sheet film 5x7 sheet 4x5 sheet 4x5 plates Polaroid 55 3.25x4.25 sheet 2.25x3.25 sheet 6x9cm sheet 9x12cm sheet 220 roll 120 roll 35mm Tessina (need some empties to reload) 16mm Minolta (need empties) 16mm cine REGULAR 8mm cine (actually 16mm with additional perf) 9.5mm Minox and a few arcane formats that I no longer use,

are almost all available, with more searching than is worth the effort. There USED TO BE some "good" photo stores around here.

I predict availability of "almost disposable" cost flash drives. OMG, will AOHell start mailing media again?

8" flppies where already gone and replaced by 5.25", when I got my fingers on a computer for the first time. --

from a Schlumberger wafer tester. What was sent were hard-sector (32

From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at xxxxx.com> Some years ago I came across an 8" Norsk Data floppy. The analyze software called it a IBM 374x, but the data I read was gibberish. A closer look showed that track 0 was indeed like a 3741. One file was present. OK so far. It then showed, that this 1 file was formatted as a normal MS-DOS directory. I managed to dump this directory to a DOS formatted floppy, and voila, the data was saved.

Is it possible that cylinder 3 was marked as defective and replaced by cylinder 9? Or perhaps the frist few cyliders were used to contain the operating system, the uyser data started later and the sectors for that were numbered from 0.

I think I bought my last floppy drive about 15 years ago. It was a name-brand (Teac) and I bought the service manual too. Never had any problems with it...

My first floppy drive was a 5.25" one ()on a TRS-80 Model 1). This has not stopped me from obtaing 8" drives since then :-)

I acutally wonder if they bother to align such drives at the factory, the price makes me wonder if they can, and tests on a couple of such drives indicate they're not aligned properly...

a=20 The basic procedure is the same for all drives. You conenc the drive to some device that will let you move the heads to a given cylinder (either the machine the drive works with running a suisable program that talks to the disk cotnroller, or a special floppy drive exerciser). You monitor the output of the read amplifier (notmally using a 'scope). And you put in a special 'catseye' alignment disk. Then you step to the right cylinder and look at the read signal. It should have 2 lobes Yiu loosen the head positioner moutings nad moce the positioner until the 2 lobes have the smae amplitude. Clamp up the positioner moutings and you're done Now for the problems. The first is getting the alignment disk. They are not commn (particularly the 3" one), they are not cheap, and they can't be copied (for obvious reasons). The second is that uou normally need a 'scope. And you need to find where to connect this 'scope to the drive electronics (the signals you need are the output of the index sensor as a trigger and the differential outputs of the read amplidier). FInally moving the positioner may be non-trivial. It's a delicate adjustment, some manufacturers made speical tookls to make it easier -- but it's possible to manange without them. There was a produict called the 'microtest' that did away with the need for a 'scope. It was a microcotnroller + ADC that linked ot a PC [1] serial port. You connected the drive as drive B: o nthe PC (with adapters for 8" drives, etc), and ran the suppleid software. You selected the drive type from a menu, it showed you where to connec the test clips coming from the ADC box, and then you put an alignment disk in the drive. You could see how far off-alignment it was on the PC screen and adjust appropriately. [[1] The minimum spec was 256K RAM and a serial port. And any display adapter, even MDA. The problem with the microtest is that (a) it only works for drives that it knows about (which means not many modern ones..) and (b) the instrument is not common. I was given one, and I use it for my older drives. but for the modern drives I have to us a 'scope. Actually the bigest problem is finding the testpoints. On old drives, with simple chips (733s, 592s, etc) in the read chain it's pretty easy to spot them. If you have the service manual (again more likely for older drives) they will be shown. Most modern drives do have said testpoints, if only as solder blobs on the PCB, but it can be a pian to work out which poits to use. They are rarely marked. I would certianly use an anti-static bag! I don't worry about doing it if I have the right size alignment disk and have some idea of the testpoints. For example when I was cleaning up an HP9836CU I didn't worry about totally stripping the floppy drives (losing the alignment)[2] because realigning them was not going to be a problem. As I mentioned, when I bought my last floppy drive 15 years ago, I also bought the service manual, wghich of course shows the testpoints. [2] Althought I did scratch amarks on various parts of the drive, I also seeked the heads to drive 0 using an exerciser and measured the clearance between the head carriage and the end stop with a feeler gauge. And I put things back ion the same positiones. This is not accurate enough to do away with the need for a proper alignment but it meant that I could at least find the right cylinder on the alignment disk :-) I've come across some more modern drives that would not reliably read disks formatted on my PC. I found what I think were the read amplifier outputs and looked at hte catseye pattern with a 'scope. It was wildly out (one lobe much larger than the other). Of course I might bave been using the wrong TPs (say with a filter circuit in one side only), but I moved the positioner to eqalise the lobes and the drive worked reliably after that. I think it ws just badly aligned. Contrary to what it says in most manuals, I have never had any problems cleanin the heads on any type of floppy drive uisng a cotton bud dipped in propan-2-ol. You have to be careful not to distort the gimbal spring for the upper head, but it's quite easy to avoid doing this. Do you have any particular makes nad models of drives in mind? If we can track doewn service manuals it would help... -tony

I assume these are HD ones (1.44MByte for a silly definition of megabyte). What about DD ones (720K on a PC?). I have exactly one machine that used HD 3.5" dissk and many that use the DD type. I am finding them hard to obtain now... 5 Yes, but can you find Elcassettes anywhere? Or Philips N1500 video cassettes? -tony

Tony, I suffer from the same problem (as an example, the HP 16500 Logic Analyzer mainframe) but I think that at this stage, it is better to use a floppy emulator (there are a pair of good free projects on the net) than use diskettes IF you have PROFESSIONAL USE of your equipment.

It's around. Good photo stores still sell it (although there are fewer and fewer such stores). There are also plenty of mail-order establishments who sell it.

Kodak even announced a new Super-8 movie film earlier this month.

What annoys me about the floppy disk situation is that floppies remain the only really inexpensive and easily reusable medium out there. CD- and

2010/4/28 Evan Koblentz <evan at snarc.net>: > >> Well, as of yesterday, Sony is planning to stop production of floppy >> disks. Apparently, other companies will still make them, but I'm sure

>> only a matter of time.... >> >>

Like when Apple stopped including a floppy drive in iMacs (remember all the screaming in PC quarters about how they were still important?) Personally, in the past 8 years, I've only used floppies at work for BIOS upgrades. Prior to that, it was for Linux and Win98 installs where I couldn't boot a CD-ROM directly.

There are at least two DIY versions on the web.

And no one, that I'm aware of, claims to be able to handle copy- protection emulation.

I have to laugh when people use the term "GCR" as if it were a standard. My response is usually "whose GCR?".

Personally (and professionally), I'm less concerned about emulating floppies than retrieving data from them and allowing people to move on. The world in general seems to have been pretty successful in weaning itself away from 556 BPI 7-track 1/2" tape, after all.

There is a lot of data still residing on obsolete and obsolescent media. The great part is that once the world migrates from one obsolete medium, there's always another to be declared obsolete. So when will mechanical hard drives be on the chopping block? If you think about it, they're really a backward technology, with moving parts and hungry power consumption.

I had a potential customer who wanted to replace an old AMD multibus floppy controller board with a modern version that would support high- density 3.5' floppies, needed to boot his system, but not otherwise used to hold working data, I tried to point out to him that it would be far simpler to employ an EEPROM with the needed data. He would have none of it. He also specified that all parts had to be through-hole and socketed.

Q.v. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/why-steve-jobs-hat es-flash.html

From a personal retrospective, this desktop PC that I'm sitting in

Liam, thank you very much for the blog article. If we will become a cloud-oriented computing society, there will certainly be profound social consequences.

- Sony makes one of the greatest videogame devices of all times. PS1

a huge success, PS2 IS a huge success (it still sells by the truckloads in Brazil) and PS3 will be a huge success for years to come. Believe me.

Of a modern console - I still think the Dreamcast was the best for its time, Sega pulled the plug too early - it was a wonderful machine, great (and fun!) games, tons of expansion and peripherals.

Two games that really stand out: Soulcalibur (OMG!) and Space Race (buttloads of fun!)

Of a modern console - I still think the Dreamcast was the best for its time, Sega pulled the plug too early - it was a wonderful machine, great (and fun!) games, tons of expansion and peripherals. Curt

From: "Alexandre Souza - Listas" <pu1bzz.listas at gmail.com> At one time, Atari Pong was THE greatest videogame device. Will Sony still have that honor in, say 2200 AD? 5000 AD? "All Times" is a pretty broad category.

From: dkelvey at hotmail.com To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Disk for Canon Cat Date: Mon, 3 May 2010 21:35:52 -0700 Hi Chuck Al Kossow mentioned that you may have worked with the Canon Cat's disk format. I think it is some form of GCR but not sure. Have you had any experience with it? I have a Canon Cat but I have no idea what it puts onto the disk. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ The New Busy is not the too busy. Combine all your e-mail accounts with Hotmail. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?tile=multiaccount&ocid=P…

You are right, nothing can pass NES and SNES :) But I do love the PS lineup :) And BTW, Dreamcast will never die :D

The Saturn was hard to program, however. As I recall the polygons were based on quadrilaterals, not triangles, which made porting and modeling more troublesome regardless of its rendering advantages. And the CPU was sloooooooow.

> > > Even the Sega Saturn was better than the PS1, though it was not as > > > popular. > > > > The Saturn was hard to program, however. As I recall the polygons were > > based on quadrilaterals, not triangles, which made porting and

> > more troublesome regardless of its rendering advantages. And the CPU

Sorry, CPUs, plural. *They* were slooooooow.

On 5/3/2010 4:46 PM, Andrew Burton wrote: > > They weren't that slow, 27Mhz compared to the PS2's 33Mhz. Polygon-wise,

The PS2 has 293MHz CPUs, not 33MHz. Did you mean the PS1?

> Saturn maxed out at 500,000 per second, compared to the PS2's 750,000

PS1 could do 180,000 per second and PS2 could do 66,000,000 per second so I'm really confused what console you're comparing the Saturn to :-)

Since when has the master clock frequency been a useful measure of procesor speed?

On 5/4/2010 2:06 PM, Tony Duell wrote: When what you're comparing is orders of magnitude faster. You can argue

that CISC != RISC or that one CPU is totally different than another, but when I say your 16MHz processor is slower than my 2933MHz processor, it's a useful measure.

On 5 May 2010 at 21:02, Tony Duell wrote: Reminds me of one of the comments by the 6809 development team when criticized over the low 1MHz clock. One stated that if they had

known that clock rates were that important, they would have brought it out with a waveguide clock input.

On 5/5/2010 3:02 PM, Tony Duell wrote: Laws of physics disagree with you for sufficiently high orders of magnitude.

We already have. I compared a 16MHz processor to a 2933MHz processor. Master clock rate is impossible to ignore. -- Jim Leonard

But at some point, we'll be paying more attention to the "number" of CPUs on the chip and less to the clock that they run on.

On 5/5/2010 3:02 PM, Tony Duell wrote: Laws of physics disagree with you for sufficiently high orders of magnitude.

On Thu, 6 May 2010, Tony Duell wrote: . . . and, of course, at a higher level, any benchmark becomes a software issue. ?It is easy to "prove" that a 4MHz Z80 is faster than a 4GHz Pentium, just by setting a task, and stipulating that the task must be accomplished using software that was/is commercially available.

Except that there has never been a CPU built to run over 1GHz where a given operation takes 256 cycles to execute.

If you're comparing 1982 processors to 1982 processors, then yes, we could have a spirited discussion about 6809 vs. 6502 vs. z80 vs. 8086 vs. 68000. But this is 2010.

On 5/7/2010 2:49 PM, Tony Duell wrote: My 5150 has a master clock of 14.318Mhz; by your logic it is a 14Mhz processor. Come on.

Actually, almost all modern x86 systems have a 14.31818MHz master clock. It's usually first multiplied up by a PLL chip (e.g. PI6C104), then further multiplied by an on-chip PLL in the CPU. So all x86 systems since the PII are 14.31818MHz systems?

On 9 May 2010 at 18:05, Tony Duell wrote: You can poke and prod all you want, but I believe that you won't find a pin on a Pentium 2GHz x86 with a 2GHz waveform on it. Just goes to

show you how meaningless clock speed is.

On 5/10/10 2:43 PM, Tony Duell wrote: 5340?

On 05/10/2010 11:43 AM, Tony Duell wrote: The x86 processors from Intel and AMD contain an internal PLL which multiplies the external clock to produce an internal clock for the processor pipeline.

On 05/10/2010 11:43 AM, Tony Duell wrote: The x86 processors from Intel and AMD contain an internal PLL which multiplies the external clock to produce an internal clock for the processor pipeline. Most of the CPU core is running on that core clock. (In the case of the Pentium 4 and derived processors, some of it actually operates at twice the core clock.) Instructions take a variable number of cycles to execute, but there are multiple instructions "in flight" at any given time. The average number of instructions executed per clock cycle is greater than one.

Ah, another myth to bust. Intel did not come up with hyperthreading. It was developed by researchers at the University of Washington in collaboration with DEC, and would have shipped in the 21464. (I took Computer Architecture from one of those researchers.) It attempts to take advantage of thread-level parallelism, as instruction-level parallelism (leveraged by superscalar architectures) still leaves a fair amount of 'dawdle time' for the chip's functional units. Modern multilevel memory architectures are pretty good at keeping processors fed -- Ian

Running HPL on a modern x86 processor tends to disagree with you (though on the recent 6+ core chips, memory wait can be significant if you're pushing all the cores).

I would say most of the wait is still 'dumb' I/O to process the windows user interface.

On 05/10/2010 11:43 AM, Tony Duell wrote: The x86 processors from Intel and AMD contain an internal PLL which multiplies the external clock to produce an internal clock for the processor pipeline. Most of the CPU core is running on that core

clock. (In the case of the Pentium 4 and derived processors, some of it actually operates at twice the core clock.) Instructions take a

How do I know what's inside a 7400 NAND? Maybe it's a bunch of hobbits pushing cranks!

C'mon, Tony, you aren't this dense. Pat

OK, so if I buy a 2GHz PC, what signal is that 2GHz describing? And how does it relate to signals I can measure?

For those of us that don't know any better (I'm a little wiser now, having

worked with the Motorola 68000 CPU) . It's a bit like the days when games consoles had 16-bit, 32-bit etc. stamped on their beautiful plastic case. It

On 5/6/2010 12:41 PM, Tony Duell wrote: 16-bit. Until the day I die. I thought it was proper practice to note a CPU based on the size of it's internal registers and/or the number of bits that can be changed in a single operation. Is someone seriously challenging that the IBM PC 5150 wasn't a 16-bit computer?

On 5/7/2010 12:34 AM, Dave McGuire wrote: Well, the 8080 can't do a 16-bit by 16-bit multiply to get a 32-bit product, so that's an obvious difference.

So, therefore, we all agree that the 8080 is NOT a 32-bit processor!

Who are the "learned"?

Are the registers 16 bit registers that can be split into two 8 bit? or are they pairs of 8 bit registers that can be used together for 16 bit values? Is the size of the data bus irrelevant? (There have been people who maintain that THAT is the measure of the processor!) The software of an 8088 looks like 16 bit; the hardware of an 8088 looks an awful lot like 8 bit. There are people who consider the 8088 to be an 8-bit and consider the 8086 to be 15 bit, in spite of their "similarities".

What do you consider 80386 to be?

how about the 80386-SX? It's hardware seems similar to 80286; what is THAT?

What the hell is a "Celeron"? or a "Dragonball"? or an "Atom"?

We do not control the industry, nor the lexicography of it.

EXACTLY. The chip is referred to by a single numeric measure, yet there is very little agreement on what should be measured. "Everybody who knows anything will measure it the way that I do!"

On Fri, 7 May 2010, Dave McGuire wrote: Do you really think that we can successfully correct the meaning of "hackers"? There are a few too many passengers who ought to be cargo or jettisoned, steering things.

Do you really think that we can successfully correct the meaning of "hackers"?

Andrew Burton wrote: If you're talking about the long scale vs. short scale debate, it has nothing to do with being misinformed. It has more to do with "C-O-L-O-R" vs. "C-O-L-O-U-R".

So if someone in the US orders a billion <insert item here> from a company in the UK, how many of the item should they expect to receive?! Is that why orders are given in numbers and not words, and why cheques have both?

Aside from disparaging others' definitions, does anybody have a decent definition? Are the registers 16 bit registers that can be split into two 8 bit? or are they pairs of 8 bit registers that can be used together for 16 bit values?

Is the size of the data bus irrelevant?

The software of an 8088 looks like 16 bit; the hardware of an 8088 looks an awful lot like 8 bit. There are people who consider the 8088 to be an 8-bit and consider the 8086 to be 15 bit, in spite of their "similarities".

What do you consider 80386 to be? how about the 80386-SX? It's hardware seems similar to 80286; what is THAT?

What the hell is a "Celeron"? or a "Dragonball"? or an "Atom"?

CDC 6000 PPU: 18-bit

They're wrong :-). The "size" of the CPU is defined by the size of the internal registers. I am astonished there is actual discussion debating this.

32-bit. It can process 32 bits in a single operation and deposit the results into a 32-bit register. Again, I'm astonished there is any debate at all.

eZ80: 24-bit

On 5/8/2010 1:43 PM, Dave McGuire wrote: I guess not! But I reserve the right to smack anyone with a large salmon caught describing an 80386sx as a 16-bit processor.

I guess not! But I reserve the right to smack anyone with a large salmon caught describing an 80386sx as a 16-bit processor.

Ah, so a Z80 is a 16 bit processor (IX, IY, SP and PC are all 16 bits, and there is no documented way to use half of them (Yes I do know about some of the undocumented ways)). Conversely I could claim that those who calim the 8088 is a 16 bit processor have never wire-wrapped the data bus connections to one, and found there are only 8 to wire up.

Now, what are the definitions of "microcomputer", "minicomputer", "mainframe"?

On May 9, 2010, at 12:59 PM, Tony Duell wrote: Good one. But most supercomputers are a good bit smaller than most mainframes.

On 9 May 2010 at 17:59, Tony Duell wrote: Even in the "classic" supercomputer sense, I don't think you could fit inside of an ETA-10, nor could you stand the temperature, even with your warmest overcoat on.

Of course, most medium-end display adapters would qualify as supercomputers. Tony definitely wouldn't fit into one of those.

--Chuck

And if has a lose screw - its lap top. :)

And if has a lose screw - its lap top. :)

Are you speaking from experience? :)

On 5/6/2010 12:41 PM, Tony Duell wrote: 16-bit. Until the day I die. I thought it was proper practice to note a CPU based on the size of it's internal registers and/or the number of bits that can be changed in a single operation.

Is someone seriously challenging that the IBM PC 5150 wasn't a 16-bit computer?

On 5/7/2010 2:54 PM, Tony Duell wrote: Then I'll clarify it to be the size of the accumulator.

You're a hardware guy :)

It means we can never come to agreement on the subject. You're a hardware guy, so naturally you consider the bit-ness of a CPU to be the size of the data bus. I'm a software guy, so I consider the bit-ness to be the size of the registers (ALU for the anal among us).

Hey, thats not as bad as the definition of processor size = external data bus width, with that definition, an microcontroller would be a 0 bit machine...

I've heard this said about the SC/MP before, but the data sheet shows an 8-bit parallel ALU. Do you have any docuemtnation which claims it's bit-serial?

If you take the ALU size, then the P850 becomes an 8-bit machine (everybody considers it to be 16 bits, which is the logical size to a proggrammer). And what size is the HP9830? The ALU in there is bit-serial form binary operations and 4 bits wide for BCD operations.

As I hope we've all seen by now, you often can't quote a single 'bit count' for a machine that's applicable in all cases.

-tony

On 5/8/2010 3:06 PM, Tony Duell wrote: It means we can never come to agreement on the subject. You're a hardware guy, so naturally you consider the bit-ness of a CPU to be the size of the data bus. I'm a software guy, so I consider the bit-ness to be the size of the registers (ALU for the anal among us). So never the twain shall meet, I guess.

from 4 memory locations in one go, and then transfer them to the CPU on 4

-----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk- bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tony Duell Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2010 10:42 AM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Greatest videogame device (was Re: An option - Re: thebeginningof having aka 'marketroids' ? games case. It That;s another meaningless number in a lot of cases. Is the Philips P850 8 bit (width of the ALU and most intenral data paths) or 16 bit (how it appears to the machine code programmer -- an 'add' instruction adds 2 16 bits numbers, and uses the ALU twice, onve for each byte). Is the IBM PC 8 bit (width of the data bus) or 16 bit?

I love to look at games from the END of a console's life, as they show some of the true programming wit and magic that comes with being able to amass console knowledge for 5+ years. For example: - The God of War series for PS2 show a nearly full framerate with reflections, water, and (seemingly) detailed geometry - Because the Genesis was based on a 7.16MHz 68000, some 3-d computer games were ported over (LHX attack chopper, some Wolf3d clones, etc.) The Jaguar, even though I just finished dumping on it, had a truly 3-d textured world engine to be used in an upcoming dragon-fighting simulator, but sadly the Jag was discontinued before the game was finished. Name and company escape me but I saw it demonstrated at CGE2003. World Circuit was another unreleased 3-d driving game until Telegames republished it, which is probably the best released example of what the Jag could actually do (gouraud shaded polys and texture mapping at a decent framerate).

Once you understand the TIA even just remotely - its a damned fun console to code on, the Atari 2600 is still being pushed well past its envelope even today, if you check out the programming section on the forums at atariage.com - there is a constant run of new games being done. If you want to check out a truly INCREDIBLE new Atari 2600 game - check out Dungeon - I never thought a game like that could be done on the Atari 2600.

The thing that put people off was (excluding the popularity of the SNES and Megadrive/Genesis) that it was an unknown product with no big name game -

Not to mention that damn controller, who needs 30 odd buttons on a controller! Todays controllers have about 8 buttons, plus a d-pad and 2 analogue sticks.

Did you get the CD unit for it? I believe it sat in the cartridge slot of the Jaguar, so you could play CD-based games.

Jag controller had a d-pad, three action buttons, and 12 "numeric" buttons for a total of 16 core elements. PS3 controller has two sticks, a dpad, four buttons action buttons, four shoulder buttons, a "click" rocker on each stick, and tilt/orientation sensing for a total of 15 core elements -- seems like the PS3 controller caught up to the jag controller...

That's a shame. How about the Tempest game? I believe that started off on the Jaguar and various versions (e.g. Tempest 2000) were released several years later.

> Even the Sega Saturn was better than the PS1, though it was not as

The Saturn was hard to program, however. As I recall the polygons were based on quadrilaterals, not triangles, which made porting and modeling more troublesome regardless of its rendering advantages. And the CPU was sloooooooow.

Sega clearly did much better with the Dreamcast, but I think there was a lot of developer bad blood after the Saturn (both for technical and marketing reasons).

PS3.? It looks like PS3 is gaining on the Xbox, and I suspect that most of the Xbox 360 sales at this point are from people who need to replace their broken Xbox, anyways. :)

Yeah, but the Wii is essentially a fad.

Alot of gamers I know bought it, and then either let it sit gathering dust, have passed it on to relatives, or have sold it. Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of Nintendo (no Wii yet, far to busy and have no space for it in my bedroom).

There is a difference between classic games like say pacman that people still like to play today, and gimmicks like motion controls (Wii controller) that get old after a period of time.

If people still use the Wii in 10 years it will be because of the games being fun, not because of the controller.

I still fire up my Playstation 1 even with the dated graphics because the games are fun, same with my C64. How many people bother with the 3DO these days after the CDROM gimmick got old?

There is a difference between classic games like say pacman that people still like to play today, and gimmicks like motion controls (Wii controller) that get old after a period of time.

If people still use the Wii in 10 years it will be because of the games being fun, not because of the controller.

I still fire up my Playstation 1 even with the dated graphics because the games are fun, same with my C64. How many people bother with the 3DO these days after the CDROM gimmick got old?

The 3DO is the most expensive (and crummy) home console ever. :)

I think some of the designers of it came from Amiga.

I'll take your 3DO and raise you one Neo-Geo. With comparative release targets ($600-$700 range), unlike the 3DO however the price of Neo-Geo games were $200 on up, easily putting it in the most expensive console range.

I'll take your 3DO and raise you one Neo-Geo. With comparative release targets ($600-$700 range), unlike the 3DO however the price of Neo-Geo games were $200 on up, easily putting it in the most expensive console range. Marty On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 4:53 PM, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote: > On Tue, 4 May 2010, geoffrey oltmans wrote: >> The 3DO is the most expensive (and crummy) home console ever. :) > > Are you claiming that it is NOT the Greatest videogame device? :-) > > > > > >

Those were gimmicks, too, in their day - we used to spend quite a bit of effort to adapt Atari joysticks to PET User Ports (one is easy, two joysticks takes a bit of effort because there are five switches and eight primary bits - mostly folks used diodes, but I think there was

----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave McGuire" <mcguire at neurotica.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2010 4:59 PM Subject: Re: Greatest videogame device (was Re: An option - Re: thebeginningof the end for floppies) There is a difference between classic games like say pacman that people still like to play today, and gimmicks like motion controls (Wii

that get old after a period of time. If people still use the Wii in 10 years it will be because of the games being fun, not because of the controller. I still fire up my Playstation 1 even with the dated graphics because the games are fun, same with my C64. How many people bother with the 3DO these days after the CDROM gimmick got old?

----- Original Message ----- From: "Patrick Finnegan" <pat at computer-refuge.org> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 4:12 PM Subject: Re: Greatest videogame device (was Re: An option - Re: the beginningof the end for floppies) Yeah, but the Wii is essentially a fad. Alot of gamers I know bought it, and then either let it sit gathering dust, have passed it on to relatives, or have sold it. Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of Nintendo (no Wii yet, far to busy and have no space for it in my bedroom).

I disagree. There are loads of great games on Xbox (Gears Of War and Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare are both amazing), and XBox Live is vastly superior to Sony's PSN (Playstation Network) which has download issues (lack of bandwidth) from what I hear. Rare's titles are also excellent, though usually targetted at kids. Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

I reckon one could argue persuasively that no other single machine had such an influence.

Yes, the Spectrum was a great machine. I had the 128K +2 model. Gameswise I had a mixture of homebrew stuff (M. Batty and &e7 (Andy Severn)) spring to mind, but most of the big games I bought were arcade ports. Soundwise, it had a unique music style which I still love today and the few games that seemed to have digitized sound effects showed what could be done with the sound chip. In a similar vein that Robocop Vs. Terminator showed that the Megadrive/Genesis could produce decent quality (digitized) speech compared to what most games had (poor quality speech which was often just mumbling something you struggled to understand). You do have to get used to the controllers for each machine, but today's controllers have come a long way. Racing games are excellent when played with a steering wheel or a controller (usually with the trigger buttons as break and accelerate, and one analogue stick for steering). Many first-person games use two analogue sticks for movement (one for the direction you face and the other for your movement), leaving the other buttons for special moves and weapon select.