Category: Computers/Tech/Games

1581 Reasons

Although I used a Commodore 64 as my primary computer for several years in the 1980s, I didn’t own all that much hardware for it. Two floppy drives, a printer, a modem and a joystick were just about all needed to keep myself entertained for more than half a decade. People occasionally ask me if I ever owned a hard drive for my Commodore 64. I didn’t, but not because I didn’t want one. The most popular hard drive for the Commodore 64 was the Lt. Kernal, which held 10MB and cost $1,000. It would have been nice to store… (read more)

RobOHara

A Little Trove of Disks

Many years ago when I began collecting vintage computer hardware, every acquisition got me excited. Each new computer, floppy drive, and box of assorted peripherals that came into the house made me absolutely giddy. But after you’ve tested, cleaned, and aligned your hundredth floppy drive, and installed additional shelving in your garage to hold all those old CRT monitors you might need someday, the elation of “yet another” old piece of hardware begins to wane. What never gets old for me, however, is digging through other people’s software collections. A year or two ago I acquired a(nother) complete Commodore system… (read more)

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Apple II: Back in Business!

Just over six months ago, my Apple IIe blew up. The smoke was impressive; the smell, even more so. As I mentioned in my post from last year, and as you can see in the following picture, I paid $1.98 for this particular Apple IIe computer. The most frequently suggested solution I received was to replace the failed vintage power supply with a modern one, which runs $100. I simply couldn’t justify spending $100 to repair a computer I spent less than $2 on, so I began looking for alternative solutions. Jimmy, a co-worker who reads my blog and listens… (read more)

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Revisiting the Arkadia Retrocade

While working on my end-of-2016 post earlier this week I realized I had not visited Arkadia Retrocade this year. This injustice will not stand, I said to myself. Wednesday morning, I hopped in my car and made the four-hour drive to Fayetteville, Arkansas. I’ve written and podcasted about the place before (and even sold them some of my arcade cabinets), but in case you missed it, Arkadia Retrocade is a retro-style arcade where customers pay a fee to enter, and all games are free to play. They aren’t the only arcade operating with this business model, but they’re the last… (read more)

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Revisiting RetroPie

I’ve seen a lot of articles over the past month (most recently this one on Ars Technica) suggesting that people who can’t find one of those new NES Classic systems in stores should build their own using a Raspberry Pi. I even mentioned the Raspberry Pi as an alternative to a real NES back in September in my Guide to (Many) NES Alternatives article. Since then I’ve had several people ask me how difficult and time consuming it is to get a Raspberry Pi emulation system up and running from scratch. Today, I decided to build one from scratch. For… (read more)

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A Guide to (Many) NES Alternatives

Big Lots is already consolidating their Halloween shelves to make room for incoming Christmas-themed items. (Yes, in September.) One hot item for retrogamers this holiday season will be Nintendo’s official NES Classic Edition, a miniature version of the classic Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) that comes with 30 games built-in and goes on sale on November 11, 2016.. If the last video game system you owned was an original NES, you may not be familiar with all the ways you can play those old NES games, which vary greatly in both quality and price. In this post I’ll be discussing all… (read more)

RobOHara

Releasing an Apple IIe’s Magic Smoke

On July 21, 2016, Ancient Legends was released for Apple II home computers. The game is similar in design to classic role playing games from the 1980s like Ultima and Bard’s Tale, and I was greatly looking forward to trying it out on my vintage Apple IIe computer. A few years ago I purchased a CFFA3000 card for my Apple II. The CFFA3000 card allows owners to play Apple II disk images stored on a USB stick. I paid approximately $200 (including the additional remote and shipping) for my CFFA3000, and $1.48 for the computer at a thrift store. I’m… (read more)

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300 Keyboards

I’ve scanned in 99% of my old photographs, but every now and then I run across one that slipped through the cracks. This is one of those. I’ve told this story before, but right around the year 2000, a co-worker of mine and I attended a local auction for a computer store that was going out of business. At the auction there were large cardboard boxes full of computer keyboards. The opening bid was crazy — something like $20 per box. My friend Don and I chuckled at the price and stopped paying attention. The auctioneer tried restarting the auction… (read more)

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Wii-P-R

Over the holiday weekend Susan and I stopped by a thrift store, where I ran across this disgustingly dirty Nintendo Wii for $20. Usually when I find a cheap Wii for sale it means the optical (DVD) drive has died, but I had other plans for one so I decided to take a gamble. The bundle had a power supply, Wiibar, and video cable, but no Wiimotes. Ten minutes later after a quick coating of Fantastik, we were in business. With everything connected (and a borrowed Wiimote from the other Wii) I fired it up with my fingers crossed. So,… (read more)

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Did someone just play a perfect game of Donkey Kong?

Earlier this week, (geeky) news outlets reported that Wes Copeland has achieved a “perfect” game of Donkey Kong with a score of 1,218,000. While the truth of the matter is a bit more complicated than that, it is true that we are not likely to see a higher score on Donkey Kong any time soon. If you’re into classic arcade games, you probably know that Donkey Kong has what is known as a “kill screen” — a point where the game simply crashes. Several other classic 8-bit arcade games (including Pac-Man and Dig Dug) also have kill screens, typically the… (read more)

RobOHara