I was thinking the AtariST line, which i was a HUGE fan of, even tho this was Amiga territory.  Never was a gamer.  8Bit Atari ( again, computers not console ), i thought were competitive, at lest most of the time, they had a few screw ups ( everyone did back then ). 

BUT.. the Jaguar from what i remember was pretty impressive for its day. Just poor, nearly non-existent marketing.

Tue Nov 04 2025 19:51:51 UTC from darknetuser

2025-11-02 22:50 from Nurb432
I did mess with it a bit. Mostly 'emulation' of Z80 cp/m
however, not the Atari scene, and never was really into
gaming.  ( i am one of those who sort of think the line is
blurred here, its sort of emulation of hardware, but its sort of
not.. )

But honestly I got bored quickly as if i really wanted to do
that, it was easier on a 'real' machine, and went back to what
FPGAs are meant to be for us hobbyists: experimentation and
proof of concept, since its hard to justify the cost of taping
out a chip just for a hobby..

Early Atari machines were very meh. If you were a kid you were much better playing with sticks and stones than playing Atari consoles.

Games started getting up to speed with the 3rd generation. And I say the ZX Spectrum looks like a cool platform. You can still find modern frameworks to code for the original Spectrum machines.

I do agree with the lack of games, ( tho Myst was an option ) but its their fault as due to the nearly non-existent marketing no one wanted to make anything for it.  But the hardware, was ahead of its time. I actually had one for perhaps 30 years..  i bought it.. use it about a week. "eh im bored'  and shelved it until a few years ago when i gave it to a collector at the office. Sure, trying to compare it to today, its garbage, but not in 'its day'. It just got a bad rap.  Sort of like one of my cars that i have, it was just fine but due to FUD marketing by competition it was perceived as trash, when it really wasn't.

Had a few games, CD drive, external memory card.. extra controllers. Original box...

Even today tho i can still see Skylar talking..   lol 

Wed Nov 05 2025 14:26:07 UTC from darknetuser

BUT.. the Jaguar from what i remember was pretty impressive for
its day. Just poor, nearly non-existent marketing.

The Jaguar is widely regarded as crap these days, and I mean by actual retro fans who think every old piece of technology is fun. I don't think I ever saw good games for it and I don't think many had good performance.

Ya, they were some talented folks. 

Thu Nov 06 2025 17:57:20 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

Early Atari machines were very meh. If you were a kid you were much
better playing with sticks and stones than playing Atari consoles.

Atari VCS (2600) games looked like crap ... and yet, years later, now that I know how those games were actually implemented (racing the beam, no frame buffer) I am quite impressed at what they were able to accomplish with such outrageously limited hardware.

Sort of funny.

Cleaning up my old storage drive last weekend, wiped out 1000s of roms for Atari, Commodore.. etc.    'why waste the space'

Sat Nov 08 2025 19:28:39 UTC from darknetuser

Also I have a very complete Atari ROM collection which includes lots of stuff from the Atari 8bit computers.

While true in theory, and tho im not really too involved in the scene now now, im still filling drives with AI model training data before the plug is pulled on us digital-serfs and we go underground.   Every TB counts.

A couple id like to have, they are in the PB range, so out of reach for me.  

And don't be too sad about my ROM/software purge, i really don't believe i had anything that isn't already 'out there'.  Be more sad of the hardware purge i did perhaps 10 years ago.  Over 100 retro machines. out the door.  Everything from a radio shack micro color, to a Kayroro and osborne, to a TRS80 md2 with printer and disk drives, apple 6100 and original mac laptop, a M100... a C16 and Plus4, a QL and 2 or 3 2068s.. bag of HP calculators and a couple of their pocket computers.  Couple 8 bit and 16 bit Ataris..   Oh and a Mattel aquarius, which few people have ever seen in the wild.   A sparcstation 10...  A few had their original boxes even.    Tons more ( im sure literally since some were so big . lol ).     All given away to people, none to the trash or sold off. Gifts      I did keep the shelves tho, repurposed them for tools. 

Only things i kept was a PX-8 and a now dead newton ( i think dead think. i need to try again doing a hard reset sometime ) .  And a T1000 in its box. but gave that away a few weeks ago.

Couple years ago guy at work gave me a 1200xl. ( i forget exactly when now, but not too long ago ) I didn't want it, but he was so proud of it and happy to offer it to me, i didn't want to say no.  But its gone now too, it left with the T1000.

Sat Nov 08 2025 22:50:49 UTC from darknetuser

 It barely takes any room.

Sun Nov 02 2025 22:22:32 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

I seem to recall having said "I wish PD were here, he knows this stuff" more than once.

I wish you could *heart* posts on Citadel still. :) I know you hate that idea, because it is FB/X social media BS. 

Anyhow... I'm here. I'm rusty. I'm f'kin around with an Apollo Computers V4 stand alone Amiga clone FPGA device right now - it is toasted. Block read errors and just acting like Jack Nicholson in one flew over the cockoo's nest after he gets fixed. I'll try to log in sober tomorrow and tell more about it - but for now - if you want Amiga emulation in FPGA - get a MiSTer - not a V4. The V4 is far more powerful - but super unstable. I ate $120 in CF cards this week trying to flash and upgrade it to the latest cores. Ouch.