Forum Discussion
The good ole days
My first computer was the Texas Instruments ti99/4a. I chose it over the Commodore vic20, because it seemed to have better sound and graphics, and at the time there was more children's educational sof...
BirdDog wrote:"Good old days"? Lol, online experience was more like using a teletype machine and high end graphics was a game of pong. Some things are nostalgic but not necessarily good, I like advancement.
Actually I thought the graphics were pretty good, very klunky to program ( hexadecimal code ) , but good. Of course it seems like everything in your youth looks better the older you get. :>)>
Well, I like some advancements. A pet peeve of mine, is the use by MS of robber-baron tactics worthy of Standard Oil to take over the whole computer world. That's one of the reasons I switched to Linux.
Even if I had an old machine setting in front of me right now I think I'd get bored with it pretty quickly.
I wish I still had that creaky old ti99/4a, it's probably considered an antique now. I've read that hobbiests are even working on a version of Linux for it,
You can probably get an emulator somewhere. I have one for my C64 and occasionally play some of the old games:
MarkJFine wrote:You can probably get an emulator somewhere. I have one for my C64 and occasionally play some of the old games:
I bet it's a blast playing those games on the C64. I wish I still had mine. I love my Raspberry Pi and the games I play on it. Though I only have about two dozen at present, there are thousands out there. Some of them I haven't played in well over 30 years.
The best part is playing them on my MacBook using a regular controller. The emulator transposes either of the stick and fire buttons to emulate an old joystick. Unfrtunately, they also emulate how inaccurate/unreliable they were.
That's one of the things I like about RetroPie on the Raspberry Pi. You can use just about any controller you like, and it automatically converts the old control inputs to what you have, and if you don't like their conversion you can change it. I mainly use an SNES like controller, as the latest games I have are SNES games. A lot of people use PS3 type controllers. I have both wired and Bluetooth, with the latter being my favorite, as I'm not tied to the machine by a cable. Still, the controller that came with the case I got is very similar to the original SNES controllers, both in feel and build quality. It only came with one, and you couldn't buy a second one, but a couple of months ago they started selling them separately. Much better than the "2 for $14.99" junk, of which I have a set. :p
