4 ms·

I have so much admiration for the people who keep old platforms alive. I tinker with a Commodore 64 (a real one) now and then, and I'm just blown away by the co

I have so much admiration for the people who keep old platforms alive. I tinker with a Commodore 64 (a real one) now and then, and I'm just blown away by the community that still exists around it. People still write new software, build new hardware (I have a MSSIAH synth/MIDI interface cartridge and it's a blast to play with), make new demos and intros, discover new graphics modes and sound techniques, etc. The landscape is pretty well mapped out, but people still manage to find new ways to look at it every now and then. I've always wanted an Apple IIgs, because it had a built-in FM synth that was really powerful for the time (I have a fascination with electronic music and equipment from that era, which is why I have the C64 and MSSIAH, as well as a Gameboy with LSDJ). Maybe now is a good time to start looking around for one. This is a fantastic story...I want to play with it, just because.

nsxwolf 10y ago
The Apple IIgs is still cheap to acquire and fun to own, so I recommend picking one up.
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  I'm currently living in an RV, so my space is very limited. I'd have to get rid of something in order to make room for it! If I buy some land and put a tiny house and studio on it, I'll definitely pick one up. There's a bunch of old hardware I'd love to have, but it's definitely a hobby for someone with some extra space (and also extra time, which I also don't have a lot of lately).
rsync 10y ago
"I tinker with a Commodore 64 (a real one) now and then, and I'm just blown away by the community that still exists around it." I am curious - is there an analog in the c64 world to this new ProDOS 2.4 release ? That is to say, have enthusiasts reworked and re-released the built-in c64 firmware or otherwise reworked the OS ?
- vidarh 10y ago
  The C64 firmware was mapped out in detail when the C64 was in its heyday - you had books published with full commented disassembly. And because the C64 had the full 64K RAM, but used bank switching to overlay the ROMs, there were tons of "OS upgrades" that simply mirrored the ROM into the underlying RAM, made various modifications, and bank switched the ROMs out. So yes there was, but most of hit happened 20-30 years ago already. There were tons of commercial expansions based on this method, such as Simons' BASIC, and the far more ambitious Lightning/White Lightning, which I believe started as a Forth system, and was ported to other platforms too, but also came in a BASIC version. On the C64 - I don't know how different e.g. the Spectrum version was - it allowed multitasking up to 3 or 4 BASIC programs + sprite animation, and offered a lot of extensions for graphics and sound. Many of these extensions led to equivalent ones written by enthusiasts or published with source in various books. E.g. a number of the books available here [1] have such extensions in them. Later you got things like GEOS that provided a fully windowed user interface with word processor, spreadsheet, ide's etc. GEOS only really worked decently if you got a hard drive or RAM expansion, though, both of which were rare. The most common "OS rework" on the C64, though, were freezer cartridges. So named because they had a "freeze" button that would jump into the code on the cartridge without touching anything in main memory, and let you mess around with it, and then restore the original state or dump everything to disk. Which made things like copying games fairly trivial most of the time, but also allowed for things like semi-automated "trainers" (you'd freeze, enable an option, go back into a game, lose a life, freeze again, and the cartridge would scan memory looking for memory locations that were likely locations of life counters, and scan for code that modified them). There were a bunch of them, with Action Replay and The Final Cartridge being the most popular brands. Action Replay VI being the last one or the C64, but there are Action Replay cartridges and even PC expansion cards for a bunch of other platforms. The Final Cartridge ironically was also released in multiple version, with The Final Cartridge III also including a windowed user interface (which did not end up getting used much, as only very rudimentary software was included and hardly any third party software supported it). In terms of contemporary stuff, there's the C64 version of Contiki [2] at least, and I'm sure there's more. [1] http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/books.htm http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/books.htm [2] https://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Contiki https://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Contiki
- 10y ago
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
LSDJ is fantastic. It really is the software for composing chiptunes. And it's so cheap! Of course, the hardware will cost you ~$100 (GB, GBC, or GBASP, flashcart, and flasher). So there's that.
camiller 10y ago
If my old Apple //e wasn't 650 miles away in dad's attic I'd be dragging it out tonight to try this... Well, I'd probably have to figure out how to get it on a 5.25 floppy first.
mwcampbell 10y ago
If you're interested in the sound synthesis capabilities of the Apple IIGS, you should skip the emulators and go straight to the real thing if you can. It appears that most emulators don't do a good job of emulating the Ensoniq chip. Check out this demonstration of a few emulators compared to a real IIGS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y10Wn0JVnXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y10Wn0JVnXk

nsxwolf 10y ago

The Apple IIgs is still cheap to acquire and fun to own, so I recommend picking one up.

SwellJoe 10y ago
I'm currently living in an RV, so my space is very limited. I'd have to get rid of something in order to make room for it! If I buy some land and put a tiny house and studio on it, I'll definitely pick one up. There's a bunch of old hardware I'd love to have, but it's definitely a hobby for someone with some extra space (and also extra time, which I also don't have a lot of lately).

rsync 10y ago

"I tinker with a Commodore 64 (a real one) now and then, and I'm just blown away by the community that still exists around it." I am curious - is there an analog in the c64 world to this new ProDOS 2.4 release ? That is to say, have enthusiasts reworked and re-released the built-in c64 firmware or otherwise reworked the OS ?

vidarh 10y ago
The C64 firmware was mapped out in detail when the C64 was in its heyday - you had books published with full commented disassembly. And because the C64 had the full 64K RAM, but used bank switching to overlay the ROMs, there were tons of "OS upgrades" that simply mirrored the ROM into the underlying RAM, made various modifications, and bank switched the ROMs out. So yes there was, but most of hit happened 20-30 years ago already. There were tons of commercial expansions based on this method, such as Simons' BASIC, and the far more ambitious Lightning/White Lightning, which I believe started as a Forth system, and was ported to other platforms too, but also came in a BASIC version. On the C64 - I don't know how different e.g. the Spectrum version was - it allowed multitasking up to 3 or 4 BASIC programs + sprite animation, and offered a lot of extensions for graphics and sound. Many of these extensions led to equivalent ones written by enthusiasts or published with source in various books. E.g. a number of the books available here [1] have such extensions in them. Later you got things like GEOS that provided a fully windowed user interface with word processor, spreadsheet, ide's etc. GEOS only really worked decently if you got a hard drive or RAM expansion, though, both of which were rare. The most common "OS rework" on the C64, though, were freezer cartridges. So named because they had a "freeze" button that would jump into the code on the cartridge without touching anything in main memory, and let you mess around with it, and then restore the original state or dump everything to disk. Which made things like copying games fairly trivial most of the time, but also allowed for things like semi-automated "trainers" (you'd freeze, enable an option, go back into a game, lose a life, freeze again, and the cartridge would scan memory looking for memory locations that were likely locations of life counters, and scan for code that modified them). There were a bunch of them, with Action Replay and The Final Cartridge being the most popular brands. Action Replay VI being the last one or the C64, but there are Action Replay cartridges and even PC expansion cards for a bunch of other platforms. The Final Cartridge ironically was also released in multiple version, with The Final Cartridge III also including a windowed user interface (which did not end up getting used much, as only very rudimentary software was included and hardly any third party software supported it). In terms of contemporary stuff, there's the C64 version of Contiki [2] at least, and I'm sure there's more. [1] http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/books.htm http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/books.htm [2] https://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Contiki https://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Contiki
10y ago

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

LSDJ is fantastic. It really is the software for composing chiptunes. And it's so cheap! Of course, the hardware will cost you ~$100 (GB, GBC, or GBASP, flashcart, and flasher). So there's that.

camiller 10y ago

If my old Apple //e wasn't 650 miles away in dad's attic I'd be dragging it out tonight to try this... Well, I'd probably have to figure out how to get it on a 5.25 floppy first.

mwcampbell 10y ago

If you're interested in the sound synthesis capabilities of the Apple IIGS, you should skip the emulators and go straight to the real thing if you can. It appears that most emulators don't do a good job of emulating the Ensoniq chip. Check out this demonstration of a few emulators compared to a real IIGS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y10Wn0JVnXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y10Wn0JVnXk