Yes it is for the Apple II initially. I was wondering about play testing. I could setup a virtual machine with the emulator running and the current game so it would be easier to control updates. I could then invite testers into the VM with everything ready to go...
@@RetroGingerPod It was a thing. Any "More X!" would prompt someone else to call out "More cowbell!". Do a RU-vid search for "More cowbell", it was a Saturday Night Live skit.
I have done 80 levels of the 100 I want for the release so getting close. Got cover art and the booklet written. Tried a test with a plastic box but it is rather bulky so I am going to see if I can use a cardboard box and print on that. I want to keep costs down so I can ship the game as cheaply as possible but still have that fresh boxed game feeling! :)
I've always been fascinated with video game development and have made several mods and even contributed some 3D models to a couple of games that were released on Steam but I have always struggled with the programming aspect despite many attempts. I was reasonably proficient with Basic back when I had my Oric 1, after many hours of typing in magazine listings I picked up a few things but I never really progressed beyond that level, it's been an endless source of frustration for me over the years. So I have a lot of respect for anyone who has mastered the art, I'm also a little envious if I'm being honest.
I wish I could make 3D models. I have tried but came up with against a singular lack of talent! Its great fun and I have also worked on some stuff on Steam but it does take so much time. I do want to release some stuff on Oric, in tape format. That is for a future project! (add it to the list!)
It is in a global market place near you! :) The keyboard is super broken, works electronically but the case is massively cracked so I have not listed this also.
I'd completely forgotten about AGP ports .. when graphics cards had their own interface - certainly dates the motherboard to a particular era! I'd love to know where you find all these old bits of tech - FB marketplace or your garage?
Oh gosh.. I've got a rubber key spectrum and wouldn't want to part with it (although I love the look and form factor of the plus .. might have to get myself one. Or a 128.. you've got me looking at eBay now...) Do the plus 2 & 3 count as Sinclair Spectra given they were made by Amstrad..? I'd imagine the clickety keyboard was similar to that if the CPC464 😁 Great fix!
lol. I didn't mention Amstrad. I know some of the engineers transferred across but your right from a purist perspective. If you can find a 128 that would be amazing. Good luck since they are super rare... Lets not mention the Sam Coupe... But then who has the cash for that?
I love all that. I remember upgrading my Atari ST one Christmas day, with my dad, taking over the kitchen with wires everywhere. It's kind of cool and scary at the same time. Your really expensive machine with its guts out going for surgery and the fear it won't work afterwards.. It's a thrill
I remember other kids taking the piss out of my Oric for the bad keyboard... These were Spectrum owners... Your having a laugh! That and the ZX81 were terrible... charming.. but terrible!
Really? I have to try that, sounds great and how incitive. The BBC was so well designed, so much expansion. If it had an expansion bus like the Apple II it could have lasted even longer
You really need a diode and a resistor on that battery pack, otherwisethe master will try to charge those AA batteries, which wont end well Also hold R down at poweron to do a cmos reset
You have said ch. And co. Multiple times its co. Lang 12 Co. Is just short gor configure you can also use conf. If you like however many characters required to distinguish thr comand followed by a . You want a 120ohm resistor and a diode on the battery pack also
So there are 21 cells X 1.2V = 25.2v But looking online that would be fortune to directly replace. I like your idea a lot, do you mean using 7 X 3.7v cells with a management board added?
You could rescue the planet's electrical appliances with that PC SCSI is the only format you can replace firmware on IC's that are on the PCB It's amazing if they coded the hardwear and IC's to transfer through tape it would have been more convenient and alot of things would still be working. So many electrical appliances fail because IC's and eproms fail due to a simple bad capacitor. They really should have called SCSI capacitor killers 🤣 It goes to show how sneaky they where why didn't just make all storage drives IDE
I have a Fostex D1624 mk2 rare as a hens tooth and the display went dead hasn't leaked and most probably eproms with fimware did find burnt out ferrite smd beads the thing is so over engineered. i just seen the first version on ebay i backed out on bidding at £52 it sold for £53 Done myself a favor i will never consider anything with a florescent display
Mate! Missing out by £1 has happened to me SO many times its annoying. I hear you, they look amazing when they are fresh but are such a pain when they fade... Just not robust enough long term
I've had some success in trimming down the end of the ribbon on a ZX81 where the conductor is exposed, without making it too short to fit - not sure if that works on a QL though.
Ah! Yeah I never thought of that, drilling that out might have been easier... I have ordered some caps and will try a re-cap to bring it back to life... Fingers crossed
I think the original version is the one with the silver label, that's the version I had and I got it soon after release. This was another of my favourite games for the system.
@@RetroGingerPod It's not so hard once you get used to it, timing is everything, pick your shots rather than firing indiscriminately especially on the second level with the green fuzzy guys. Try not to shoot them when they are close to the ground and don't worry about getting the one that drops to the floor when they split in two, just get out of the way. Things get trickier on the 4th level but you didn't get too far into that one so I won't spoil it.
I've not seen this one before, it looks like fun - I was always partial to a bit of missile command, although I preferred the arcade game with the trackball controller. I did have a version of missile command on the Oric , it came on a tape with 2 other games, one was a space invaders clone the other was a kind of turret shooter where you were placed in the middle of a crossroads and you had to rotate to shoot incoming enemies. You could play each game individually or there was a mode that cycled between the different games, the problem was that it was a real pain to load so I never got to play it very often, which was a pity because it was quite fun to play.
Nice! Can you remember what that was called? Sounds good. I guess a games compilation? There were never as many compilations of single release games on the Oric as there was for the Spectrum that had dozens of multi-packs... (Yes I was jealous of these over-gamed Speccy folks!)
@@RetroGingerPod I had to do a bit of searching but I found it, it was called Delta 4, apparently it had 4 games not 3 the other game was called Cosmic Guerillas which I have no memory of, the turret shooter was called Crossfire. On some rom sites I think it's referred to as Delta Force 4, it was released by Nectarine software.
I used to have a programmable joystick interface for the Oric that I used to use with a Quickshot 2 stick, I can't remember the name of the brand now but it worked really well, it made many of the games so much better to play.
Holy crap! Thats a great idea! I like the sound of that. How did that stick work? Was it plugged inline with the keyboard connector? I had a joystick controller for my Oric years ago that went into the printer port, that used to interfere with the sound! Also not many games supported it, but it did come with a little machine code routine you could type into Basic and then get the stick controls out.
@@RetroGingerPod The interface I had must have plugged into the expansion port at the back of the machine as I don't remember having any audio issues associated with using the printer port, then the stick plugged into that, but I can't remember how it was programmed. I just know I could set it up to play most of my games, I remember specifically asking for a programmable one because not many games supported joysticks natively. EDIT: I'm really trying to remember how it worked , I know the setup was quite simple and didn't require code or anything, my best guess is that it had a switch that put it into programming mode then when pressing a joystick direction in conjunction with a key it would bind the direction to that key, or something like that. EDIT 2 : OK, so after more hunting around I came across an image of an advert for the Protek Programmable Joystick Interface, this is ringing some serious bells, I'm pretty sure this was the one I had.
That was fun to watch.. kinda frantic (and noisy!) It was also really helpful to see that loading screen, because while I was working on my ESP32-based tape emulator I saw that a couple of times and wondered if something had gone awry.. great to know that it's benign (and probably something else I was doing wrong!)
I used to play this for literally hours as a kid. I used to be doing something else while waiting for its moves - usually playing a Fighting Fantasy book.
When measuring the filament voltage, if you choose AC you need to put your probes on each filament end, if using DC on your multimeter you need to put the negative probe onto the chassis and the positive probe to one of the filament ends, it's usually around 30 volts DC.
@@PeterMilanovski the 30v is not across the filament, that is the offset voltage from ground. The VFD needs around 30v to work. Look at the datasheet to the chip driving the VFD, most I seen has split supply rails of +/-16v.
@@Ozzy3333333 ohhhh ok, sorry... When I was reading this thread it sounded like someone was saying that the heater needs that much... The heater element usually needs around 6V AC and you then need around -31V for the rest... I have quite a few equipment that has VFD displays and some of them are not as bright as they used to be, which explains why I was here! I went around looking at all my VFD displays with my thermal camera.... Can't believe that I didn't think of doing this ages ago and I saw some interesting results..... The hottest display was on my Panasonic VHS which always shows the time regardless of whether it's on or off! The heating filament is always on if the VCR is plugged in and turned on! My pioneer DVD/HDD recorders VFD display is cooler but a lot dimmer! My Sony ES amplifier, it's filament can be seen glowing red faintly, I have owned it since new and it has always done that, it's display is beginning to fade also, I have had it since 1997.... So far, from what I have gathered from what I have seen.... Some VFD displays can benefit from heating up the filament, but you have to make sure that it's getting the correct voltage for the filament and the control voltage which is usually -31V..... Or whatever it may be going by the service manual.... Those are the 3 different things that must be done to make sure that the VFD display will work properly.... Just doing one and not the others is not the correct way..... There are vacuum tubes from the 1920's that are still functioning properly today..... If it was made well, and something else doesn't destroy it, it's going to last a lifetime! That's my take on this matter so far....
What on Earth would the program be doing to run for five hours? It's only got 40-odd K to play with - I did a crude "AI" program at Uni in Haskell to play a recursive-algorithm Reversi program back in the early 1990s so I do kind of have a handle on the algorithm they would use - surely keeping track of all the many moves ahead it would have to look to make that sort of time frame worthwhile would blow right through the memory? Sounds like a gimmick to me and the program is probably no different in the top level than say level 2 or 3.
Woop woop! I was hoping for that sea of green 🙌🏻 Also: I think the Dragon has the loudest keyboard of any old home computer 😀 Time for some Cuthbert Goes Walkabout 😀
Great to see you got it going - seems these are pretty robust things! The switch will just need contact cleaner - the Speccy +2/+3 reset switches go the same way, if they double bounce the computer crashes and won't reset, a squirt of cleaner sorts them out. I think it's because there are multiple poles, and if one shorts and the other doesn't it puts the whole bus out.
Yes it was a result for sure. I reckon your right about the switch, it is likely a jolt of cleaner might fix it. I will try that first for sure before removing it! Seems to be fixed solid.
@@RetroGingerPod If you use cleaner with built in lubricant (Servisol video 40 for example) it should free up quickly, else if it's knackered a bit of 3 in 1 may help. WD40 maybe but that can cause more harm than it solves. I was told that 4116 memory definitely always fries when - 5v isn't applied and was wincing during the last video, but tbh I've never tested the theory as breaking good chips doesn't sound like a good idea to me 😂
The Dragon is screaming NONONONONONONONONONONO! I personally would go over the power supply first and see if you get life out of it. If that pops, no harm. If it works, you know you're getting the proper voltages. But you ABSOLUTELY know more than I do about that unit. I guess Radio Shack sold those in the US? Good video. I know you'll get it going. Thanks.
I think the power board from the Dragon came back from a parallel universe when there was an apocalypse! I might use some of the bits to build a new one, perhaps only the heatsink but that would feel nice...
Without knowing anything about Dragons, I do know that there are many DRAM-chips that require -5 volts, so perhaps look up the chips that is in this machine and check if they are the type requiring -5v
The Dragon 32 has 4116 memory doesn't it? You may have fried it without the -5v and 4116 certainly won't work without it. Cheap to replace though. The random colour looks very much like what my LCD TV does when the composite signal is poor (they always are on these I believe) and the set misinterprets the signal as SECAM! I guess a good replacement power supply for one of these would be a Pico ATX? That or three switching supplies (the Meanwell style ones in metal boxes), two 5v and one 12v, common ground but with one of the 5v ones wired in reverse so the 5v is wired to the ground of the others, if you see what I mean. TBH though looking at the size of that thing you might be able to shoehorn an old full ATX supply in there, and that would be my choice if they fit (without the case) as I have a pile of old 200w ones collecting dust (and rust) in the shed...
