4 ms·

I love retrocomputing. It completely flips the idea of "outdated consoles" on its head. Instead of being less valuable because there are better options, they ar

I love retrocomputing. It completely flips the idea of "outdated consoles" on its head. Instead of being less valuable because there are better options, they are instead a forever-immutable computer for developers to target. The produced consoles will last many more years (I have an N64 still kicking running new ROM hacks on an Everdrive). And even if every bit of hardware becomes defunct, the emulators will live on preserving that architecture in an immutable state forever. I used to think "what's the point of creating new software for old consoles" but once I reframed them this way, I find them as or more exciting that writing software for modern hardware.

kls0e 2y ago
excellent, did you try SM64 - Through the Ages? Great custom level design.
- whateveracct 2y ago
  It's on my list :) I kinda wanna replay SM64 first for a comparison. I replayed Majora recently but insisted on replaying OoT first for similar reasons. EDIT: idk now thinking about it again, I think I'll just play it. I want something pure and fun to play. Sadly it doesn't play on original N64 but alas. I can always use my Steam Deck :D
paulryanrogers 2y ago
Hardware does fail over time, apparently due to stuff like leaky capacitors. Enthusiasts and repair shops can keep a few alive for a while, and shops like PCBWay may produce replacement parts. That said, I think your point about emulators is very on point because they facilitate experiencing these long after hardware becomes impractical. And folks can try a huge variety of games without a lot of travel or shipping. I'm also curious to try some FPGA solutions, especially if they can support save states.
- whateveracct 2y ago
  re: FPGA, the Analog Pocket with an Everdrive also works great. I use it to play GB/GBC/GBA games on my TV via its dock. Sadly, those don't support sleep and stuff but that's worth it.
  - wolrah 2y ago
    Why bother with an Everdrive on an Analogue Pocket? Mine has only seen a cartridge once, just because my partner happened to have an old GB game she wanted to see if her save had survived on, otherwise it runs entirely off SD.
    - whateveracct 2y ago
      I guess it's mostly because I already had it? That's a good point though.
      - wolrah 2y ago
        Not a bad reason, especially if you have saves on it. I'm sure there's a way to transfer them and make it work but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't perfectly straightforward so I can totally see not finding it worth the effort. I never had a Game Boy, back in the day I was the kid tethered to the power cord with his Game Gear. I almost bought the adapter, but then I realized none of my games had saves so I had no reason to want to use the real carts.
        hollandheese 2y ago
        The save transfer is very simple. You just copy them to the correct folder.
    - deergomoo 2y ago
      I already had a GBA Everdrive but I picked a GB/C one up because for about a year after release, the FPGA cores didn't support the display emulation features of the Pocket, which is a good chunk of the reason I bought mine. I believe they are now all fully supported though. The Pocket's sleep doesn't really work with flash carts either, so arguably the core + SD card route is now the better option, though I still own my AGS-101 model SP and GB micro, and it's cool to play on those still sometimes.
- ethagnawl 2y ago
  There are also companies like Analogue who are producing high quality clones which will keep gamers (mostly) happy for at least another generation.
  - jchw 2y ago
    Analogue makes FPGA-based emulators. These are pretty cool because they can eliminate a number of downsides with software game console emulation while still retaining some of the upsides, and versus pure hardware clones, they can be updated and patched, either to fix bugs or add new targets. Another bonus of FPGAs is that they're accessible to hobbyists. I don't know what the current preferred solution is but a while ago people were buying DE10 Nano boards for running MiSTer, which could support a large variety of cores.
    - alexjplant 2y ago
      MiSTER is going strong and the recent release of the excellent-but-confusingly-named MiSTER Pi [1] board has brought the cost of entry down considerably. After I do some more SD card shuffling and verify game compatibility I plan on selling my N64 and Saturn and using OEM controllers with my MiSTER Pi. Unfortunately the Altera Cyclone FPGA in it doesn't have the horsepower to run anything beyond fifth-gen systems so a new platform would be required for the Dreamcast, Gamecube, and PS2. The common refrain from FPGA enthusiasts regarding these systems is that because the hardware has many more layers of abstraction they're less dependent on cycle-accurate timing than older consoles so the juice might not be worth the squeeze as far as building HDL cores for them is concerned. [1] https://retroremake.co/pages/store https://retroremake.co/pages/store
      - robinsonb5 2y ago
        > they're less dependent on cycle-accurate timing than older consoles > so the juice might not be worth the squeeze as far as building HDL > cores for them is concerned. There's also the question of the huge amount of engineering effort required to recreate the more advanced platforms. The Replay2 board should provide both a much more capable FPGA and loads of RAM bandwidth to go with it. (Finishing touches are apparently being made to the prototype board layout, and production is slated for the Spring) And for anyone who thought FPGA gaming was a new phenomenon, work on the original Minimig FPGA recreation of the Amiga started in January 2005 - 20 years ago!
- jchw 2y ago
  In my experience relatively few of the components on old computers and game consoles are particularly failure prone and most of them can have a future contingency plan: - Electrolytic capacitors can be replaced relatively easily. Some people are replacing them with solid state capacitors to try to improve reliability and avoid corrosion from leaked electrolyte. - Batteries likewise can be replaced easily, and you can usually fit a socket in there if there isn't already one. - Damaged traces on PCBs (usually caused by leaky capacitors or batteries) can often be patched. It is definitely not the easiest work, but if patching a few traces is all that's needed to get something back into working order, then it's probably worth it. - Some of the old AC-DC transformer blocks are dying or horribly inefficient anyways. Most of them are outside of the machine and can be replaced with readily available modern equivalents, so this one is extremely easy. For old computers, ATX supplies are easy to adapt to pre-ATX standards and even some different machines entirely since they provide some of the most commonly-needed voltage rails (some new supplies lack -12V but it will be listed on the PSU specs either way). There's even very small form factor ATX supplies using GaN based transformers that can fit pretty much anywhere. - CD-ROM lasers are definitely starting to wear down, but there's quite a lot of optical drive emulators available nowadays for a variety of machines, with more showing up every year. As long as small-order PCB manufacturers remain around, it will probably remain viable to make more of these ODEs. - Likewise, floppy disks and their drives can fail for a variety of reasons, but floppy drive emulators are at the point of reasonable maturity and can support a lot of machines, too. I'm sure there's some weird standards where emulation may be spotty (thinking of NEC) but for typical Macs, PCs and Commodore computers I imagine most of the ground is covered already. It is true that a lot of hardware is failing and some of it is not so easily replaced, but honestly, I think if we wanted to, we could keep a good amount of the retro hardware working for possibly hundreds of years longer. The real question is if enough people will deem it worth their time and money to do so. But then again, I suppose it's not much different in that regard from vintage automobiles. There will always be a place for emulation, probably a much larger one at that. Not only does emulation give a very nice long-term solution to keeping software libraries accessible, they offer plenty of advantages over actually using old hardware, and it's obviously a lot more accessible. P.S.: to whoever does eventually come into possession of the machines I worked on next, I apologize for my soldering. In fairness, some of these old boards are stubborn even with a ton of flux.
aidenn0 2y ago
The DC will be around for a long time, but games won't be played from optical discs much longer. It used a format that was double the density of the yellow-book standard, and when my drive failed, it was much cheaper to replace it with a flash-based option than to buy a replacement drive.
- pezezin 2y ago
  Yes, optical drives tend to fail. A couple of days ago I tried to play with my old Gamecube that had been in storage for at least 10 years, and surprise, it doesn't read the disks anymore. On the other hand, a few months ago I bought a Saturn and despite being much older, it works flawlessly. That thing was built like a tank...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- pipes 2y ago
  I've got one of those, bought and installed it a few years ago. Unfortunately it doesn't work with all games. Maybe that has been fixed, but was very annoying to find that hydro thunder didn't work!
  - farmerbb 2y ago
    If you're using an HDMI converter then that's most likely your reason for Hydro Thunder not working. Hydro Thunder notoriously doesn't work well with VGA output (HDMI converters for the Dreamcast usually convert the VGA signal)
    - TapamN 2y ago
      I figured out how to fix Hydro Thunder's compatibility issues last year (it would very briefly change the pixel clock). You can either use a Codebreaker code to fix the game if you're running from a real disc, or if you use an ODE, you can patch the disc image. https://www.dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=16508&start=80#p175410 https://www.dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=165...
gxd 2y ago
Completely agree and I'll go a bit further. I see old consoles and computers as the only VMs that will last. In 500 years, assuming we all survive, I believe it's more likely that code targeting the NES will be runnable than code targeting today's browsers, .NET or the JVM. The reason is that while these competing VMs are well documented, they are extremely complex and code targeting them tend to rely on idiosyncrasies of current operating systems, browsers and even hardware. Also, the retro hardware itself is the ultimate documentation. You can look at every chip using (nowadays) accessible equipment and create an absolutely perfect replica in software or FPGA. VM documentation, however, can contain inaccuracies. My speculative fiction statement of the day is that only software targeting relatively simple architectures will stand the test of time.
- jebarker 2y ago
  Not to mention that so much more modern software will fail due to requiring network connectivity to non-existent services
- Klonoar 2y ago
  Isn't this general idea what the 100 Rabbits people theorize? i.e with uxn and all that
  - gxd 2y ago
    I had never heard of it, so I went to find out more. Yes, I think it's the same philosophy. Very cool project. Unfortunately, it seems that they went against the project's very principle by inventing a new language, new VM and toolchain instead of simply targeting one of the existing platforms. I can see why they wanted to build an abstraction layer, so their code is portable across different classic (and modern) platforms, but this is one more case of https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/. It would have been totally okay if they had said "The future of software is creating applications targeting the Amiga 1000", or anything else from the 80s-90s, which I'll arbitrarily define as "simple enough to accurately emulate forever".
    - entaloneralie 2y ago
cyanydeez 2y ago
Also reminds us that line goes up is often more a perceptual FOMO than real technical milestones.
griomnib 2y ago
The people who mod retro machines into more “modern” formats are pretty wild on the hardware side as well. This nut job decided to make a portable PS4: https://youtu.be/bJSLscnFd_M https://youtu.be/bJSLscnFd_M
alexjplant 2y ago
From my limited understanding the Dreamcast also has one of the simplest architectures of that generation (since Sega learned from the monstrosity that was the Saturn) which I would think would make it a good target for homebrew. The GPU was also an early PowerVR design so maybe contemporary mobile GPU expertise can be leveraged instead of trying to target the Gamecube or PS2's proprietary architectures. Of course the OG XBox is probably simpler to port a PC game to since it basically _was_ a PC so it doesn't really count in this discussion.

kls0e 2y ago

excellent, did you try SM64 - Through the Ages? Great custom level design.

whateveracct 2y ago
It's on my list :) I kinda wanna replay SM64 first for a comparison. I replayed Majora recently but insisted on replaying OoT first for similar reasons. EDIT: idk now thinking about it again, I think I'll just play it. I want something pure and fun to play. Sadly it doesn't play on original N64 but alas. I can always use my Steam Deck :D

paulryanrogers 2y ago

Hardware does fail over time, apparently due to stuff like leaky capacitors. Enthusiasts and repair shops can keep a few alive for a while, and shops like PCBWay may produce replacement parts. That said, I think your point about emulators is very on point because they facilitate experiencing these long after hardware becomes impractical. And folks can try a huge variety of games without a lot of travel or shipping. I'm also curious to try some FPGA solutions, especially if they can support save states.

whateveracct 2y ago
re: FPGA, the Analog Pocket with an Everdrive also works great. I use it to play GB/GBC/GBA games on my TV via its dock. Sadly, those don't support sleep and stuff but that's worth it.
- wolrah 2y ago
  Why bother with an Everdrive on an Analogue Pocket? Mine has only seen a cartridge once, just because my partner happened to have an old GB game she wanted to see if her save had survived on, otherwise it runs entirely off SD.
  - whateveracct 2y ago
    I guess it's mostly because I already had it? That's a good point though.
    - wolrah 2y ago
      Not a bad reason, especially if you have saves on it. I'm sure there's a way to transfer them and make it work but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't perfectly straightforward so I can totally see not finding it worth the effort. I never had a Game Boy, back in the day I was the kid tethered to the power cord with his Game Gear. I almost bought the adapter, but then I realized none of my games had saves so I had no reason to want to use the real carts.
      - hollandheese 2y ago
        The save transfer is very simple. You just copy them to the correct folder.
  - deergomoo 2y ago
    I already had a GBA Everdrive but I picked a GB/C one up because for about a year after release, the FPGA cores didn't support the display emulation features of the Pocket, which is a good chunk of the reason I bought mine. I believe they are now all fully supported though. The Pocket's sleep doesn't really work with flash carts either, so arguably the core + SD card route is now the better option, though I still own my AGS-101 model SP and GB micro, and it's cool to play on those still sometimes.
ethagnawl 2y ago
There are also companies like Analogue who are producing high quality clones which will keep gamers (mostly) happy for at least another generation.
- jchw 2y ago
  Analogue makes FPGA-based emulators. These are pretty cool because they can eliminate a number of downsides with software game console emulation while still retaining some of the upsides, and versus pure hardware clones, they can be updated and patched, either to fix bugs or add new targets. Another bonus of FPGAs is that they're accessible to hobbyists. I don't know what the current preferred solution is but a while ago people were buying DE10 Nano boards for running MiSTer, which could support a large variety of cores.
  - alexjplant 2y ago
    MiSTER is going strong and the recent release of the excellent-but-confusingly-named MiSTER Pi [1] board has brought the cost of entry down considerably. After I do some more SD card shuffling and verify game compatibility I plan on selling my N64 and Saturn and using OEM controllers with my MiSTER Pi. Unfortunately the Altera Cyclone FPGA in it doesn't have the horsepower to run anything beyond fifth-gen systems so a new platform would be required for the Dreamcast, Gamecube, and PS2. The common refrain from FPGA enthusiasts regarding these systems is that because the hardware has many more layers of abstraction they're less dependent on cycle-accurate timing than older consoles so the juice might not be worth the squeeze as far as building HDL cores for them is concerned. [1] https://retroremake.co/pages/store https://retroremake.co/pages/store
    - robinsonb5 2y ago
      > they're less dependent on cycle-accurate timing than older consoles > so the juice might not be worth the squeeze as far as building HDL > cores for them is concerned. There's also the question of the huge amount of engineering effort required to recreate the more advanced platforms. The Replay2 board should provide both a much more capable FPGA and loads of RAM bandwidth to go with it. (Finishing touches are apparently being made to the prototype board layout, and production is slated for the Spring) And for anyone who thought FPGA gaming was a new phenomenon, work on the original Minimig FPGA recreation of the Amiga started in January 2005 - 20 years ago!
jchw 2y ago
In my experience relatively few of the components on old computers and game consoles are particularly failure prone and most of them can have a future contingency plan: - Electrolytic capacitors can be replaced relatively easily. Some people are replacing them with solid state capacitors to try to improve reliability and avoid corrosion from leaked electrolyte. - Batteries likewise can be replaced easily, and you can usually fit a socket in there if there isn't already one. - Damaged traces on PCBs (usually caused by leaky capacitors or batteries) can often be patched. It is definitely not the easiest work, but if patching a few traces is all that's needed to get something back into working order, then it's probably worth it. - Some of the old AC-DC transformer blocks are dying or horribly inefficient anyways. Most of them are outside of the machine and can be replaced with readily available modern equivalents, so this one is extremely easy. For old computers, ATX supplies are easy to adapt to pre-ATX standards and even some different machines entirely since they provide some of the most commonly-needed voltage rails (some new supplies lack -12V but it will be listed on the PSU specs either way). There's even very small form factor ATX supplies using GaN based transformers that can fit pretty much anywhere. - CD-ROM lasers are definitely starting to wear down, but there's quite a lot of optical drive emulators available nowadays for a variety of machines, with more showing up every year. As long as small-order PCB manufacturers remain around, it will probably remain viable to make more of these ODEs. - Likewise, floppy disks and their drives can fail for a variety of reasons, but floppy drive emulators are at the point of reasonable maturity and can support a lot of machines, too. I'm sure there's some weird standards where emulation may be spotty (thinking of NEC) but for typical Macs, PCs and Commodore computers I imagine most of the ground is covered already. It is true that a lot of hardware is failing and some of it is not so easily replaced, but honestly, I think if we wanted to, we could keep a good amount of the retro hardware working for possibly hundreds of years longer. The real question is if enough people will deem it worth their time and money to do so. But then again, I suppose it's not much different in that regard from vintage automobiles. There will always be a place for emulation, probably a much larger one at that. Not only does emulation give a very nice long-term solution to keeping software libraries accessible, they offer plenty of advantages over actually using old hardware, and it's obviously a lot more accessible. P.S.: to whoever does eventually come into possession of the machines I worked on next, I apologize for my soldering. In fairness, some of these old boards are stubborn even with a ton of flux.

aidenn0 2y ago

The DC will be around for a long time, but games won't be played from optical discs much longer. It used a format that was double the density of the yellow-book standard, and when my drive failed, it was much cheaper to replace it with a flash-based option than to buy a replacement drive.

pezezin 2y ago
Yes, optical drives tend to fail. A couple of days ago I tried to play with my old Gamecube that had been in storage for at least 10 years, and surprise, it doesn't read the disks anymore. On the other hand, a few months ago I bought a Saturn and despite being much older, it works flawlessly. That thing was built like a tank...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
pipes 2y ago
I've got one of those, bought and installed it a few years ago. Unfortunately it doesn't work with all games. Maybe that has been fixed, but was very annoying to find that hydro thunder didn't work!
- farmerbb 2y ago
  If you're using an HDMI converter then that's most likely your reason for Hydro Thunder not working. Hydro Thunder notoriously doesn't work well with VGA output (HDMI converters for the Dreamcast usually convert the VGA signal)
  - TapamN 2y ago
    I figured out how to fix Hydro Thunder's compatibility issues last year (it would very briefly change the pixel clock). You can either use a Codebreaker code to fix the game if you're running from a real disc, or if you use an ODE, you can patch the disc image. https://www.dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=16508&start=80#p175410 https://www.dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=165...

gxd 2y ago

Completely agree and I'll go a bit further. I see old consoles and computers as the only VMs that will last. In 500 years, assuming we all survive, I believe it's more likely that code targeting the NES will be runnable than code targeting today's browsers, .NET or the JVM. The reason is that while these competing VMs are well documented, they are extremely complex and code targeting them tend to rely on idiosyncrasies of current operating systems, browsers and even hardware. Also, the retro hardware itself is the ultimate documentation. You can look at every chip using (nowadays) accessible equipment and create an absolutely perfect replica in software or FPGA. VM documentation, however, can contain inaccuracies. My speculative fiction statement of the day is that only software targeting relatively simple architectures will stand the test of time.

jebarker 2y ago
Not to mention that so much more modern software will fail due to requiring network connectivity to non-existent services
Klonoar 2y ago
Isn't this general idea what the 100 Rabbits people theorize? i.e with uxn and all that
- gxd 2y ago
  I had never heard of it, so I went to find out more. Yes, I think it's the same philosophy. Very cool project. Unfortunately, it seems that they went against the project's very principle by inventing a new language, new VM and toolchain instead of simply targeting one of the existing platforms. I can see why they wanted to build an abstraction layer, so their code is portable across different classic (and modern) platforms, but this is one more case of https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/. It would have been totally okay if they had said "The future of software is creating applications targeting the Amiga 1000", or anything else from the 80s-90s, which I'll arbitrarily define as "simple enough to accurately emulate forever".
  - entaloneralie 2y ago

cyanydeez 2y ago

Also reminds us that line goes up is often more a perceptual FOMO than real technical milestones.

griomnib 2y ago

The people who mod retro machines into more “modern” formats are pretty wild on the hardware side as well. This nut job decided to make a portable PS4: https://youtu.be/bJSLscnFd_M https://youtu.be/bJSLscnFd_M

alexjplant 2y ago

From my limited understanding the Dreamcast also has one of the simplest architectures of that generation (since Sega learned from the monstrosity that was the Saturn) which I would think would make it a good target for homebrew. The GPU was also an early PowerVR design so maybe contemporary mobile GPU expertise can be leveraged instead of trying to target the Gamecube or PS2's proprietary architectures. Of course the OG XBox is probably simpler to port a PC game to since it basically _was_ a PC so it doesn't really count in this discussion.