- Hmm, seems like it would be hit and miss. There was no real way to reset from the cart port, so when one hit the button, you would just start running the other game ROM!
I bet some amazing glitches were possible!
By glitches, I mean things like the double shot in space invaders when powered up with reset held down.
So many games depended on a given CPU state. Random starting them would be very interesting.
Finally, some may not work properly depending on their banking scheme and where the rando start happened.
...or am I misunderstanding how it worked?
- Oh so close!
They could have put two buttons where the one is. Having one duplicated on top of the stick and the other one as the trigger would have been ideal.
Love having a paddle on board, but it is kind of tiny. Imagine playing KABOOM on it! Lol
That said, nice to see the effort!
Personally, I would love to have seen an analog mode like the Apple 2 and some other machines.
Choplifter is one game example where two buttons and analog controls are so sweet! Many Atari games would be improved with an analog option.
I know the 5200 had that, but the implementation was tough.
This could be better.
Maybe next rev!
- Other little things, differences.
NT file handling was different and still is!
On a Linux box today, and on an IRIX machine back in the day, you can run a program and then in another window delete the executable, and the program continues running just fine.
On Windows that executable is locked, needed by processes.
It took a ton of work to get windows to the point where one does not have to reboot all the time...
The power behind this difference is significant!
One time I was training on a high end solid modeler and I upgraded the class installation. Well, one user was on the old version, logged in.
When I started the next class, one computer was on the old revision, and the files were literally gone! I took a quick look at the IRIX system stats and the file cache was huge! It maintained everything for those processes without missing a beat.
When I logged that session off there was a pause, a ton of resources freed up and that student was running current on their next program start! Amazing.
Another time I was having to push a movie out the door and I had a batch render go bad. Did the math and was doomed.
Well, I used the X window system to install software all over the place on a ton of machines, many with active users who did not even know. This was done on the sophisticated IRIX software package manager that could even pause an install to allow another removal to free space and continue among many other awesome tasks. Look up swmgr one day. I did all this in the late 90s.
I pushed out the renders, set the process priority to below the users so they would not be impacted and basically used every machine in the building for many hours to get the dang movie done. Mooching every resource I could all from my desk upstairs.
Some of those machines were so buried the sysadmin came to me wondering what the hell ate up all the resources. I told him I was pissed and getting shit done and he laughed saying basically he was glad he was not on the receiving end and carried on.
I was able to do a full cleanup, left no trace, no user impacted despite me removing large parts of some of their systems that day and putting them back before too much happened.
Windows was no match at the time. Not sure it is today, but that use case is no longer a thing.
Today it is much better, but some of the really powerful things in UNIX are mostly there today in windows land. Still the better tools always are in UNIX. (Linux and BSD today)
UNIX machines running the X window system enjoy multi user graphical computing too. Nothing else does this today.
An example:
I can run an app on one machine, from files shared from another one, window manager on another one, fonts from another one, the user display being served by yet another one all seamless to that user who would have just clicked on a start program icon.
Those machines do not even have to be running the same operating system. Back then I used a mix of IRIX, Solaris and Linux just to show off running high end CAD in that crazy way.
Or, I can put a few displays on one powerful machine, set them all up with keyboards and mice and have many users logged into one machine. The SGI ONYX deskside had this option.
Other crazy things, like me launching an app on my box to be displayed on yours where you interact with it as if it were local. Pushing expensive software to another user, basically running on my machine using their display and HID proved very useful. VNC can do it as long as one does not want to use their machine too. Or Terminal Server is a big kludge along with Citrix... kludge. Nice ones, but still!
Win NT 3.5.1 was lined up to be that capable, but it all ended with NT 4 where it really is a single user graphical display to this day. A co worker actually remoted an X-window application on NT 3.5.1, running the Exceed X window server Unix style. I was impressed.
Today I largely don't care because far too many people only experienced the single user way meaning they had no idea what was possible and so today it is all forgotten.
And we have web browsers that can fill in many of these ideas well enough to work.
So I am on Win 10 or MacOS a lot of the time and it works well enough.
But damn! The 90's headed into the early 00's were an amazing time! The OS wars were in full swing and computing on UNIX was awesome, and on SGI seemingly 5 years or more in the future!
- Ohh, because Windows was pretty much single user machine. Even NT. Imagine that up to Win2003, Filesystem Cache is not really shared. Every user logged in into system have its own FileSystem cache view (with rights cached in). Imaging how inefficient it is :). Except that, for single user experience, its very solid OS. I still use Win2003 actually.
- NT 3.5.1 was excellent OS. NT 4 was also an excellent OS, but they did move the graphics system into ring 0.
This did a few good things, and IMHO, some bad ones.
The good was a foundation for a much more efficient graphics experience that was easier to achieve. Many believe the 3.5.1 way, with graphics in Ring 1 was just as capable, but just a bit more difficult to make shine.
PC gaming really wanted the ease of XP with the better kernel in NT.
The bad thing was the inability to theme and customize the window manager, desktop and other features like we could do with the X window system at the time.
My NT 3.5.1 system was customized and it rocked! Wish I had some screenshots...
NT 4 was basically the win 98 GUI and ... meh. It worked well, but was no fun.
Accelerated 3D cards were becoming a thing. NVidia along with others made great cards that could run games, and nVidia supported full OpenGL, which had the higher precision found in the UNIX world, and on Sgi IRIX hardware in particular.
People could pay $5 to $10k for an NT PC and do things that cost $20k and up on SGI, and do them often more quickly.
But it would crash, and being in ring 0 meant crashing the whole box hard. Was kind of an ugly time.
And money talks! People put up with the crap, Intel produced multi processor and then multi core machines that NT was able to handle.
End of one era (IRIX, Solaris, others) and the beginning if another one, (Linux, NT, eventually MacOS)
- It is pretty great. My experience with retro in general is the people seem to be pretty high quality. Nice when that happens.
- Your site is classy and compelling. New to me. Imma going to go dig in. Thanks for mentioning it.
- One of us from the heartland! Greets from Oregon.
It is hard to find time for me too. I go in phases. When I find time, I use it. And one thing I learned is get your gear when an opportunity comes up. It may never again.
Happened with my Apple. I had snagged cards I wanted, then ended up with a machine.
- That is a cool old Brick! I just got one running Win 3.11. Toshiba something or other.
The Nicad battery still works!
- Probably by now, but it is such a rare beast.
Is there one running somewhere maybe? Super interesting hardware for sure.
- No worries and you are welcome, but our mutual friend bmonkey probably has us all beat!
- More
Joysticks work when they have rubber suction cups and you stick them to the desk.
Otherwise regular D-pad controllers are supremely more useable.
But, yeah fatigue did hit.
Agreed on the D-pad. First time I played an NES I was sold!
One of my favorite things about the VCS was all the controllers! Only Indy 500 used the driving ones, which is a shame. Another driving game or two seems like a great home brew project...
I took to that idea and made a button board for Asteroids. It was fun, but the game limits were too low. Then I found the STARPATH asteroids. The official version was changed enough to not be Asteroids. But, there was a great port that basically had the arcade feel and it had much better action and far higher limits. Was basically a sort of 160 ish x 192 ish bitmap game. The interleaved graphics were funky, and all part of the special charm in that machine. Jay Miner and team intended something far less great, and ended up with something far more!
And that has proven generally true of software driven video systems: C64, Atari 8 bit, Amiga, Coco 3 (to a lesser degree), PC CGA...
Where the CPU was coupled to graphics chips designed loosely, pure magic ended up the result. Literally almost every year, someone somewhere managed to squeeze a bit more out of those machines. The whole Demoscene essentially drove innovation in that way and still is!
Modern devices, like the Parallax Propeller being software driven ended up capable of more in the same way. It is really cool.
I also made analog sticks for my Atari 8 bit computer and created some simple projects that used it.
And the two button Apple style analog sticks always were great for me. Playing Robotron on the Apple, or PC for that matter as both were bitmap Atarisoft ports, was fun! One button rotated the firing, the other triggered it, basically creating a game variation on the usual two stick design the game shipped with.
I remember it because the guy who owned the Atari was talking about the Newsweek article covering the Jonestown tragedy with my dad while we played.
The sound, colors, way the paddle moved... it was intense!
Same for me. I can recall everything about that moment. Where I was, who, what the game looked and sounded like...
Anyone ever create anything that could take advantage of 8 paddles on the 400 and 800 machines? Or 4 analog sticks? Sure seems like a home brew opportunity of some kind.