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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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..

Thu Oct 30 2025 20:54:16 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

Interesting to see you guys talking about MiSTer and MiSTerPi. I don't remember anyone here being very into Retro emulation when I stopped coming around here last. 

Interesting to see you guys talking about MiSTer and MiSTerPi. I don't remember anyone here being very into Retro emulation when I stopped coming around here last. 

*insert image of RPI on fire in a dumpster here*     

lol 

Pi CM5 All the way !

What's your experience with the Pi 5 so far, myte?  Does their new I/O chip bring the Pi up to comparable speed with other ARM boards on the market?

Ewww.  So many better options out there than RPI products. 

Mon Feb 03 2025 11:51:22 UTC from myte Subject: Pi

Pi CM5 All the way !

Mon Jan 20 2025 21:15:05 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

Is the MISTer Pi an FPGA based solution like its predecessor, or does it really emulate all those gates in software?

It uses the same FPGA as the DE10 Nano. It uses fewer layers of circuit boards though. It works with the same cores as the original MISTer.

I didnt real real close, but my guess it would be a FPGA hat, but of lesser power then the Mister, so i suspect its a bit of both now.

Mon Jan 20 2025 21:15:05 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

Sorry for the post necro but the MISTer Pi looks like an affordable
alternative to the DE10 Nano based MISTer. It lists for about $180 USD

No need to apologize, every new member of our community adds something valuable.

Is the MISTer Pi an FPGA based solution like its predecessor, or does it really emulate all those gates in software?

Most retro fans i know have moved on from FPGA to just regular emulation.  While technically FPGA is more 'accurate' since its basically hardware ( i know, its a bit fuzzy ), but emulation software is close enough for most people.

The real hardcore, do neither and find the real thing and bring it back to life.

Wed Sep 04 2019 04:48:08 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

If you want to relive your old classic retro machines - I can't recommend MiST, MiSTer and other FPGA platforms enough as the saner alternative to trying to keep 34+ year old machines alive and running.

Sorry for the post necro but the MISTer Pi looks like an affordable alternative to the DE10 Nano based MISTer. It lists for about $180 USD complete and for the MiniMig core, not all circuit boards are needed. If I weren't trying to conserve funds, I'd preorder for the next available batch. I've still got a stock A1200 and an A500 that I never use due to FS-UAE on my Linux box replacing them.

Also, my G4 Mac Mini running registered MorphOS costed about the same as the MISTer Pi and I program it about as much as the other Amiga-likes. After seeing how powerful the Flutter framework is I'm tempted to make a spinoff for AmigaE but that's for another discussion.

Anyone want to buy a pager? i have a few in a box, no batteries. Cheap, free shipping.

lol 

i think of games as more user-interactive than a 'movie'. 

But yes, some game aspects would be play ( no pun.. hell, sure, a pun )

I know it cant be done with current tech, but it would be cool if you could be immersive in the film. and move around the scenes. 

I guess when movies are 100% AI and not just green screen-CGI, it might be doable. 

Tue Nov 14 2023 09:24:48 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

And that's really the bottom line: 3D is a novelty, and it seems to have a natural tendency to remain a novelty. It doesn't appear to have enough appeal to be a fundamental advance in motion picture presentation, like sound and color both were.

I know you didnt ask me, but  my theater experience was Tron Legacy.

Tried a couple others on my headset: Toy story 1, Solo ( the star wars thing...  no idea of the actual content just watched to see the 3D ), and one of the avengers movies, i think it was the first one, infinity war and several demo files i picked up. Oh and of course Legacy again, since i missed it totally on the big screen and wanted to see what i missed..  seemed to be nothing really as the 2D version was about the same really.  A friend of mine liked 3D porno. Honestly didnt care for at any of that, seemed silly to me.

And of course i had a 3D client for OpenSIm, which has since vanished, to my frustration. and a few google cardboard demo apps which uses the gyroscope and accelerometer to move you around in-world. Good way to lose your balance an fall out of an office chair  :)  One you could walk down the hall, and it tracked motion into the 'scene'. 

Oh, and the AR thing that used a cube with what looked almost like QR codes on all 6 sides, so it could identify them and their position as it moved.... ( "merge cube" ) To me, that was neat. The cube would vanish and it woudl be replaced with an 'object' that you could move around and such. ( like a museum bust, for example, or a game piece ). Seen tables like that too, sort of like the chess board on starwars.. where the table was a design it could 'hide' with a fake object.  AR had a lot of promise with stuff like that.  May still with these new AR glasses that keep coming out ( not bulky headsets ), donno

I think it *could* if done well. But the few movies i saw were mostly a gimmick. Even tho i cant watch it on big screen without my head exploding from pain,  i was able on my phone-based VR headset, so i did see a few of them.  Sure, 'interesting' but they didnt 'use' it.   Now, for 3D architecture design walk thru, or CAD work and such, ( anyone here remember VMRL ? ) it was great. But movies, it was 'well, ok', and i could see that it had promise, but no follow thru.

Oh, and might have mentioned it before, but i have a slight case lazy eye, but not one you can see, its the signal that is delayed, just enough. Which im sure helps contribute to my almost constant migraines. So my depth perception, while there, is not the same as most people. As a kid i hated paying ball. "hey, the ball, catch it"  look up, see a ball, one eye washes out from the light, then it hits my face )  When i was a little kid my parents got me a view-master. I had no idea at the time what it as for, i looked. saw 2 images of the road runner and the coyote, sort of 'up in the air'. "um, ok, thanks..." and put it away. Flash forward to when i was about 15 or so, and i learned what it was all about  in history class ( i think.. might have been art class. ) and figured out how to merge the images and see it in 3D.. was the coolest thing i have ever seen :)  Went down and bought a bunch at the toy store that same day.  So when VR headsets came out, i was thrilled to death. Just to see it a non-st

Sun Nov 12 2023 09:24:36 EST from zelgomer

I actually think it just doesn't bring that much value.

Ah, figured by then it was digital too.  

But i rarely do theaters, so dont follow it much.. ( as mentioned.. )

Sat Nov 11 2023 18:15:15 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

IMAX is film, and film can be polarized. 

I could be wrong but i thought that is how the one movie i saw worked. I do know they were passive polarized glasses, and it was only one screen.  It was an imax theater, so donno what was going on in the back end. perhaps 2 projectors? i donno, us serfs dont get to look behind the curtain, so to speak.

Sat Nov 11 2023 12:56:18 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

(It was easier with film, since you can polarize one side vertically and the other horizontally, but that isn't possible with video [yet?].)

Once upon a time there were standards.. but no one honors them anymore. ( back to your greed statement.  gotta have walled gardens )

Sat Nov 11 2023 12:56:18 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

 someone like SMPTE or VESA could call out a set of standards for 3D video, 

Ah, that was after this as some people in our group had their own.  As it was also my last movie,  i never got to see the slow roll back to make a buck. ( actually now that i think of it.. was the first in at least a decade and last movie of any kind in a theater for me. Never was a fan of the 'big screen', being glued to a chair for 2 hours, and sitting so close to random humans ) 

Mon Nov 06 2023 13:24:13 EST from darknetuser

Then they started selling you the googles alongisde the ticket, without giving you an option to save a few bucks by using googles you already owned instead.

Or the problem with a lot of 3D capable TVs being 3-4x moar expensive than their 2D counterparts.  Then the problem with "passive goggles" where different manufacturers put the polarization in different directions for Left and Right, so you couldn't use one passive goggles for a different brand of TV.  Oh, and then the "active goggles" which were even moar proprietary, in some cases they were model-specific!

Gee, I wonder why 3D never caught on.

Mon Nov 06 2023 12:33:05 EST from darknetuser

I thought the reason why 3d didn't take over movies is because theatres got greedy and wanted to charge you for googles even if you brought your own.

The one 3D movie i went to see at the local imax, Tron legacy ( that i regret.. i basically missed the movie due to the instant migraine during the opening credits ) they used polarized glasses of some sort. You got to keep them afterwards.  Just recently ran across them and tossed them. 

Mon Nov 06 2023 12:33:05 EST from darknetuser

I thought the reason why 3d didn't take over movies is because theatres got greedy and wanted to charge you for googles even if you brought your own.

Was cleaning yesterday ran across my 3D headset ( that works with a phone for the display ) 

Had so much promise.   but no. fizzled out. 

I assume in moderation it would be fine.

I have lazy eye, and ironically i can actually see 3D in these things and not get headaches.  Went to a 3D imax once. I made it 1/2 thru the opening credits and i thought my head was going to explode. i kept avoiding it but when tron 2 came out, i just had to risk it.   

i have 2 phone headsets. they are cool. not perfect but cool.  One has a removable face plate so it can do AR too. Some of the 3D walk thru things are neat.  OpenSim was too, until the developer stopped work on the client and then pulled it from the store

aside from the obvious 3D movies you can watch, you can watch 2D movies and its like a 50" screen

I thought porn adopted VR first? 

Tue Nov 01 2022 06:40:16 AM EDT from darknetuser

Some friends of mine work at a startup. Their star product is a program that generates network maps and then displays them as a pretty graphic. They have a department working on a VR interface so they can show the generated maps to management as a pretty VR world.

It is funny, but not a practical use of resources at this point IMO.

As a friend of mine always says, you will know when a technology is ready for mass adoption when it becomes practical and actually useful for the porn industry.

Which is too bad, there was a lot of potential there. 

It also works for people that work in CAD ( like designing houses, neighborhoods ) and people who like 'games' like opensim, and a few other industries too.

And hey battlezone in true 3D would be cool.. 

Sat Oct 29 2022 02:15:05 PM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

3D movies appear to have come and gone.

Not me.

I do have a headset that you shove a phone into.  its fun to play with, and neat to watch 3D movies.

Sat Oct 29 2022 11:49:59 AM EDT from BLADE-RUNNER

SO... who's getting a Meta headset ?

Yeah. There has been a recent jump in interest in retro platforms across the board - and lots of "makers" are putting out really cool devices that connect new stuff with the old stuff. 

Tue Sep 29 2020 09:21:30 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

What's probably really cool is that the parts and tooling required to interface with old computers are dirt cheap now.

Mon Sep 16 2019 10:01:16 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

The ones I've seen emulate a floppy drive using an SD Card, and have buttons to activate any of hundreds of floppy images stored on the card as the disk actually inserted in the drive. Then you can put the SD Card into a modern computer to load software onto it.

I don't think it emulates a full USB stack.

Actually, a USB thumb drive. I've got one in my Amiga 500, and otherwise, it works exactly as Ig describes. Pop the thumb drive into my PC, download disk image files (amiga .adf files) then pop the thumb drive into the Amiga, enter the setup software, put the .adf images into "slots", then I can scroll through the .adf files in their slots and they mount on the Amiga and are seen as floppy disks in a floppy drive. 

Because it wouldn't exist?

Nope...those are tools for the Home Handyman room.

I've heard that joke tons of times.  I still laugh at it each time.