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Dutch legend has been running his campsite since 1986 using an Atari ST:
If there's one thing YouTuber Viktor Bart likes, it's retro computers: his channel is dedicated to videos about building old machines, their functions, cool oddities, and just generally the joy of these beige things. Even Mr. Bart, however, was surprised by what he found in Koningsbosch, in the Dutch province of Limburg: a campsite that's been run since 1986 on an Atari ST.
[Ed note: Is there anybody here who has an Atari ST? Please share your experience in the comments.
I bought its predecessor, an Atari 800, in 1980. Even got an expansion cartridge to boost memory from the on-board 8 KB RAM. Yes, I spent countless hours playing Star Raiders. It was not as capable as the Atari ST, but it was a fun system that booted up instantly!]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Spamalope on Sunday October 03 2021, @06:28PM (11 children)
Lots of hacked hardware is available for the Atari ST. I'm using a Joystick->USB mouse adapter. The original mouse tails were poor quality and I just got the adapter when my last good one failed.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday October 03 2021, @06:44PM (10 children)
I'm sure there are a lot of nice new "hacks" available for it just like there is for the various Commodore machines, early Apple machines and the Speccy. In some regard it's almost funny that a lot of them have better (and more powerful) hardware in them then the actual machine but I guess that is besides the point.
I stopped doing mechanical harddrives for the old machines and went with various SCSI2SD or IDE2SD solutions. They are fast, fairly cheap to build etc. The main issue I have with them is that it doesn't appear that SD cards are really designed for being used as harddrives or harddrives in such settings cause they have a horrific failure rate so it becomes a bit insecure in that regard. But then if it fails you just get another SD card and stick it in there and things are fine again (if you kept backups of all your data and such).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ncc74656 on Sunday October 03 2021, @08:16PM (9 children)
Case in point: the VidHD is an HDMI adapter for the Apple II. It's an Orange Pi Zero running on a carrier board (with a second ARM-compatible microcontroller and level shifters to go between 5V and 3.3V) that sits in an Apple II slot, monitoring the bus for accesses to soft switches and the various chunks of memory that hold the text and graphics screen contents. All Apple II and IIGS video modes get redrawn in 1080p, with various options for rendering colors in the 8-bit modes: monochrome, NTSC, IIGS RGB (which was slightly different from NTSC), and possibly some other options that don't come to mind right now.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Sunday October 03 2021, @08:54PM (8 children)
I would say that the Raspberry in one for or another seem to be a core component of most of these little hacks. Be it to fix the video or to increase processing power or to create "fake" harddrives etc. They are wonderful in that regard in that they are small and cheap and fairly easy to work with. The various HDMI adapter and so are common I would say for all the 8-bit and 16-bit machines now. Some of it has to do with crisper images but a lot of it also has to do with just finding a monitor to connect it to that works since new televisions and monitors doesn't always want to sync to various old graphic signals. After all it's not like they are really offering up HD quality graphics or anything. But you can get "pixel perfect" images etc. Which is nice.
This works with RGB2HDMI for most of the old Amigas.
https://github.com/c0pperdragon/Amiga-Digital-Video [github.com]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 04 2021, @04:15PM (7 children)
The Raspberry Pi is a great example of why one shouldn't hold on to museum/junk pile pieces of technology anymore. Unless, you're really just collecting the tech. As opposed to, I might want to use X program / play X game in the future. You are much better of emulating / using better, newer hardware, that doesn't use the same amount of power and produce as much heat as a heater.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday October 04 2021, @04:49PM (6 children)
If it was just about that then yes there are usually always things that are better from that point of view, if the emulation is proper etc. Sometimes there are differences.
That said a large part of the old hardware is nostalgia and quite frankly the Pi doesn't induce nostalgic feelings when using, at least not in me. That said I am aware that it might be a bit of hypocrisy involved in getting then various kits to "enhance the experience" so to speak instead of sitting there say inserting floppies or playing tapes instead of just pushing a button and skipping the whole load time that was the previous norm. But it's super convenient to have like a cartridge with an SD card in it that can more or less contain every piece of software ever written for the platform in question etc.
In some regard it's kind of messed up cause the machine can now do things it couldn't when it was current or do things that was very much out of my reach (money and access vise) back in the day.
So yes a lot of it is nostalgia, other things (for me) is that I like the old machine cause in some regard I can actually follow what is happening and that I know the machine. The newer and more modern it gets the less connected I feel to hardware.
I see it as my dad has his vintage car(s), he likes them. He can work on it and fix all the things etc. He can take it out for a ride when he likes etc. He has a new car to, electric and everything. But he still keeps the Thunderbird around.
I like to have my old computer, I can fix it and do things with it. Inducing warm fuzzy feelz (or sometimes massive levels of annoyance). Something running MAME, UAE or Vice or whatever emulation you want to run doesn't do.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 04 2021, @05:08PM (5 children)
My wife likes to curb stomp my warm fuzzy feelings about old technology, that I am never going to use. Also, something like a Raspberry Pi is massively superior in performance, headache reduction, etc. than original hardware.
Most of the nostalgia for me was the software. I like not having to lug around 15 inch monitors that weigh 50 pounds. Unfortunately, there is no Raspberry Pi like x86/x86-64 device, at least not in that price range. I'm not interested in paying $200-$300 for a system that can't play modern games.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday October 04 2021, @05:45PM (2 children)
Ah you upgraded to far. Girlfriend (or fiance or whatever) thinks all I do is cute and charming (or so I pretend), I fear that the wife upgrade will change all that.
I'm not monitor nostalgic, I don't care for CRT in that regard. I don't miss like having that 50kg of tube on my desk. That said I have fond feelz about for monochrome monitors (monochrome orange > monochrome green > monochrome black/white).
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 04 2021, @09:01PM (1 child)
Fiance is when you ask them to marry you and they say yes. In the event that's not happened and there's no wedding planned, still a girlfriend.
Though, in some places (most places?), if you've been living together for X period of time, it's called a "Common Law Marriage". In which case, you may as well be married.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 04 2021, @09:06PM
Apparently a woman is called a Fiancée, while a man is a Fiancé. Pronounced the same, but written different. I probably learned that at some point and promptly forgot.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by ncc74656 on Monday October 04 2021, @08:20PM (1 child)
There's the Rock Pi X, with an Atom x5-Z8300. With 4 GB RAM, prices start at $65. (1 and 2 GB RAM configurations are also available.) The most expensive configuration is still under $100. I have one running as a Kodi box that (unlike the Raspberry Pi) can play video in a web browser. This makes sites like Rumble and Odysee usable on it, where a Raspberry Pi can only play YouTube, and only with the YouTube plugin for Kodi.
As for "modern games," wouldn't you just use any run-of-the-mill PC for those? Shoehorning them into running on an SBC seems pointless.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 04 2021, @08:58PM
Ah, that was in reference to a $200-$300 computer.
The only Rock Pi X in stock that I could see was some random Amazon vendor for $126. E-bay wasn't much better, either. Whereas I can get a $55 Pi 4 4GB shipped from the USA.
This is what I was thinking of when I was thinking x86/x86-64 Single Board Computer. https://shop.udoo.org/en/bolt-boards/ [udoo.org]
Which kind of stretches that definition a bit as the RAM is sold separately, but uses standard RAM sticks.
I did eventually find this thing, though: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07N298F2B/ [amazon.com]
Too bad, you have to wire your own power supply and/or buy a breakout board to do so. Which is partly why I've never given it too much thought. I do have a soldering iron now, though.
Something like the UDOO Bolt would be awesome, but again, it's a $300-$400 computer. The go-to example Rock Pi X, I've never actually seen in stock or at the Pi4 price level.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"