Retro Systems you'd like to own

I’m going to go continue work on the offline ide in a moment, but meanwhile a bit lighter topic:

What retro computer/console systems would you like to own and why?

For me, I’ve never used and am lusting after:

  1. Acorn Archimedes

I’d love to do ARM assembly on one of these

  1. Sony MSX HitBit

The hottest computer ever made and I’m not talking about temperature. Wow, just wow.

and this one too, Sharp X68000:

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Coleco Vision

  • because the games looked incredibly near to the coin-up versions.

Vectrex

  • the only one of its kind
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Yes. Seconded.

I would say Apple 2e, but my dad went down to Colorado Springs a couple of weeks ago and got one. We’re waiting for this USB adapter board so we don’t have to hoard floppy disks.

For now, the most “retro” system I can program is the Pokitto, which isn’t 100% “retro.” :stuck_out_tongue:

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While I’m weighing up my options and/or researching some of the older computers (I’m fairly ignorant to anything from the 20th century that didn’t plug into a television), I’d like to mention I have a semi-working ZX Spectrum clone. Doesn’t seem to like many TVs though, I don’t know if that’s because UHF was a terrible connector, whether it’s faulty or whether the TVs I’m using are just so old their UHF ports aren’t working right.

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I’d like to find a Commodore 64 to do a mod to though of older systems I’d like to find an Apple g4 cube or some other one that can run early versions of OS X so I can have os 9 to play some games I miss like caeser iii ( I cannot figure out how to use dosbox atm on my pocket chip to play it :disappointed:) honestly a g3 PowerBook would work if I could find one cheap enough it’s just that cube, so sexy.

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  1. I’d like to have a Tutorvision (a version of the Intellivision with extra graphics ram). Only 1-2 have prototypes have been found by collectors:

  1. Also, a “Super Cassette Vision” which was a rival of the Nintendo NES (or Famicom):

  1. And also a PC Engine SuperGraphx, which had twice the graphics capacity of the original PC Engine:

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I had a Vectrex. My friends all thought it was neat that you didn’t have to plug it into the TV.

But I want a PDP-1, which ran what is believed to be the first computer video game: https://youtu.be/nkFXIN2b_9Y

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A friend of mine once had a mega-PC

That was kinda cool.

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I knew about the PDP, but I just watched this video. I had NO idea how advanced PDP-1 was. Polyphonic sound, runtime hw debugger, lightpen… in 1959! Just amazing stuff.

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I have a sudden urge to write an oscilloscope simulator…

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I want to replicate that phosphor effect

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To do that ‘left behind’ effect on a regular computer (i.e. something more powerful than the Pokitto) I reckon you could just have several buffers and then overlay them with an alpha value proportional to their age (or something like that). Naturally you’d cycle through them so there’s a constant amount of memory involved. I think a similar technique is somtimes used for motion blur in modern video games.

I guess the sort of dotty/spray effect could be by colouring with a sort of ‘spray’ texture instead of just drawing a regular line. Not sure about the ‘bloom’ though, that would probably need some fancy shader.

I doubt anyone’s written a paper called “a study of the luminescent qualities of phosphor-based oscilliscopes” or whatever such an obscure topic would be called :P.

Well, this escalated fast!

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@catsfolly That Tutorvision is the Farrah Fawcett of consoles. Lovely color scheme.

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I think as a first pass I would load up the pallete with different shades of white and then draw the older lines in lighter and lighter colors before finally deleting them …

Got to … resist … the … urge to write … oscilloscope… graphics mode … for Pokitto … argh!

(transforms into hideous monster, runs away into the darkness, cackling maniacally)

no seriously, gonna continue with offline tools now

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I think this video would fit nicely into this thread, seeing where the discussion ended up

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IIRC, the PDP-1 only simulated polyphonic sound by switching between notes fast enough that humans can’t tell the difference. I may not RC, as I couldn’t find any real evidence. Even dug out my copy of “Unplayed by human hands” to check the liner notes, which was where I thought I saw it, but nada.

I actually prefer to own an xbox x :stuck_out_tongue: than a retro system. I enjoyed a lot my atari 800xe, c64 and famicom clone during my school time but I think nostalgia is overrated

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