8BitGuy1
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Update for October
🕑 Added 2017-10-18 02:07:22 +0000 UTC You may not be seeing another video the rest of this month, so rather than leave you hanging, I thought I'd give you an idea what is going on.First of all, I'm getting ready to leave for Portland in 2 days for the Retro Gaming Expo. I hope to see some of you there. So that's going to eat up some of my video production time. I spent most of today working on my presentation for Saturday.
I have some neat products I'm going to be reviewing soon, but the videos have been put on hold because I'm going to be selling the products on my web store, so I decided I would wait to finish the videos until I have the products available for sale. I'll tell you about a few of these products, because I'm excited about them!
First one is an Ad-Lib card with an official YM3812 chip that plugs into the parallel port of an MS-DOS computer. It was designed by Serge Defever in Belgium. He sent me a test kit, which I had to assemble. I was skeptical that it would work with any existing DOS games. There is a little TSR program you need to run before hand, which captures and re-directs all of the Ad-Lib commands out the parallel port. However, to my surprise it works perfectly on about 90% of the games I've tried. Most of the ones it doesn't work on are games that use 386 enhanced mode like Duke Nukem 3D, or Doom. Anyway, this is a great product because it finally gives a sound option for these 386 and 486 laptop computers that is actually compatible with most games. So I look forward to showing you that! I ordered 40 of them from him for my store, and they should be here next week.
Another product I'm working on is my own game, Planet X2 for the Commodore 64. It's a real-time-strategy for the C64, the only of its kind to my knowledge. It's very close to completion and I've already got boxes ordered, manuals ordered, floppy disk labels ordered. I just need to finish up the code, then start mass-copying of disks and get ready to start shipping. Pictured above are a couple of examples of the game box. I hope to have it finished in less than a month and ready for sale before Christmas. (not that it's likely to be a hit Christmas gift, it's just a coincidence in timing, actually) And I'll be featuring a full video on the development of this game.
I will soon be featuring a 6502 prototype computer that is made by Jason Putnam. It runs Applesoft BASIC at the moment, but he's looking to get Commodore BASIC running on it as well. It's going to be a really neat hobby computer. I got the prototype in yesterday but it's a kit so I will need to assemble it. I will also be selling these in my store. Expect to see a video on this in a few weeks.
So, anyway, the point is, I've been working on all of these projects concurrently while trying to make videos for my channel too. And so it's been slowing me down a bit. But most of this is going to come to fruition next month, so things should pick back up on the channel.
I started a video yesterday on the Nyko Wormcam for the Gameboy Advance... but to be honest the product is so horrible, I am thinking about not even finishing the video and just starting a new project.
Everyone is waiting on the Commodore 64 video, which is next on the list of my Commodore history series. However, the VIC-20 video took 2 weeks to make, I suspect the C64 will be the same. So I don't even plan to start that one until November. Many people have been asking which machines I plan to cover. This is the plan for the Commodore history series:
-Commodore PET (Already done)
-Commodore VIC-20 (Already done)
-Commodore 64 / SX64 / Ultimax / 64GS / Educator 64
-Commodore 264/364/Plus/4/C16/C116
-Commodore 128 / 128D
-Commodore Amiga 500/1000/2000
-Commodore Disk Drives and clones
So that's what you have to look forward to in that series. And, obviously, there will be many unrelated videos showing up in between these. I'm also in the early stages of scripting documentaries for the following machines, which you'll probably see next year:
-Laser 128 / XT (big surprise)
-Vtech I.Q.
-Tandy 1000 series
-Atari 400/800/800XL/600/1200/130XE
-Atari ST
-Tandy Color Computer 1/2/3
-TRS-80 model 1/2/3/4/4p
-ZX80/ZX81/Timex Sinclair 1000
-Apple II/IIe/IIc/IIc+/IIgs
-Macintosh LC/LC2/LC3
So, anyway, that's the plan. By the way, some people were asking why I'm giving all of these Commodore machines their own documentary and not, for example, separate documentaries for each Atari or Amiga, etc. The reason is that the Commodore machines are all more or less incompatible with each other and have different hardware. But an Amiga 500 and 1000 for example, or an Atari 400 and 800XL all essentially run the same software. They are the same platform. So these documentaries are meant to cover specific platforms. It just so happens that Commodore had a habit of creating new 8-Bit platforms. But don't worry, I'll be sure to cover each machine a little bit inside the main documentary.
Anyway, that's all for now! Thank you again for your support!
Comments
I hadn't considered that. However, it still makes me wonder about their overall mentality. I've worked for people who felt that anyone thinking different than them must be wrong. From the little research I've done that might have been a factor.
The 8-Bit Guy
I am planning to build the computer very soon. As for Commodore. My understanding is they lost the engineers responsible for chips like the SID and VIC-2. They weren't willing to find or pay somebody enough to create successors. They were rolling in the dough at that point, so I don't think the realized how quickly they were falling behind.
I for one am very interested in the hobby computer kit. As a kid I always wanted to make my own computer! Any thoughts on why Commodore kept "recycling" their technologies? I always thought it was because the leadership was still thinking in terms of selling specific chips instead of machines, but that's just an armchair MBA talking.
Naoki Saito
That 6502 hobby computer looks interesting to me as Im designing my own Z80 based system for gaming/general computing and would love to see how theirs works. Not even sure of the full specs but it making it with both a cartridge and SD slot so programming is realitively easy since conversion is done on a controller chip which also feeds the Z80 a built in bios at boot so updating core code is an easy process. So looking forward to that video!
Jim Leonard
Getting these kinds of insights is a great perq of being a Patron -- thanks very much! One quick note: As you craft your store page for the LPT OPL2 device, be sure to stress that it really does require a 386 or higher, because the TSR that makes it work uses DPMI hooks provided by a 386 memory manager such as EMM386 or QEMM. The device *cannot* work on 286 or 8088 systems as a result (unless you patch every game you want to run with the device).
Kaz Redclaw
The Atari 130xe is the first computer I owned myself. (Though not the first I used. My mother's job had an old Mac that I dabbled with first.) I only owned the 130xe (x2) and an Atari XEGS though, and a dot matrix printer (using a serial to parallel converter,) a tape drive, and a couple of Indus floppy drives (Single-sided double-density.) I can't find the Indus drives anywhere, but I still have the broken 130xe.
Seán Byrne
I look forward to the Atari 800XL/130XE, both which I owned along with a tape drive, Atari 5.25" floppy drive and 4-colour plotter printer. In my final years (mid 1990s), my brother helped upgrade the Atari 800XL to 256KB with a DIY kit that included soldering/wiring and also upgraded the floppy drive to double density, which increased the capacity to 180KB per side.
The 8-Bit Guy
It's called the OPL2LPT but it is not available for sale anywhere yet. It's a brand-new product. It will be available from my website in a week or two as a build-it-yourself kit. I will be assembling some and offering pre-built kits a week or so later.
The 8-Bit Guy
Well, if you know where I can get one without paying $20,000... :-)
The 8-Bit Guy
Anders Jensen will be handing the shipping for European countries (He's located in Norway) and I will be shipping to USA and the rest of the world.
The 8-Bit Guy
It is only going to be sold as a boxed set, at least at first. However, a digital download will be included with each copy sold.
I'll see you at the Expo!
Thanks for the Commodore videos.
Do what you gotta do. We'll be here when you come back.
David what is the name of that Adlib paralell card thing? I've been in sound card MSDOS driver hell trying to make my sound work on my vintage laptops :( that would be so helpful!
Awesome content you have there! :) I still hope for a video on the MSX system one day :) i know it's not very famous in the US but it was a success in europe and sud america and man you're an international star :P Also it was the first attempt at standardizing home computers, much like VHS for home video. And there was microsoft involved. There's a good story in there for an episode :P
Marc Burkhardt
I'm missing the Commodore 65 in your list ;-)
Boris Matešin
So many good videos incoming - can't wait to sit back, relax and watch the entire lot! As for Planet X2, I'm pretty much ready to preorder right now! Any chance you'd team up with someone like Pond Software to make it easier to distribute for us EU viewers?
Arthur Strutzenberg
So far every one of your videos has been awesome as heck (and I also appreciate when you also show when things don't exactly go according to plan). Also: is Planet X2 going to be distributed as a downloadable image as well (for those of us who do not have the physical hardware, and would need to run this in an emulator)?
