Working with ST-506 Interface MFM Hard Drives

If you have an IBM PC, XT or compatible of similar vintage, historically accurate options for mass storage can be a bit tricky to work with.  No XT-IDE, compact flash or Disk on Modules were available during the first decade after the release of the IBM PC.  Drives were huge but storage capacity was small by today's standards.  Still, if you want to go 100% Oldskool PC, you should use a vintage drive.  Even a vintage hard drive is far superior to being relegated to floppies.

The first hard drive interface in the PC compatible world came with the IBM PC/XT.  The XT included a "fixed disk drive" controller designed by Xebec.  The controller used an interface called the ST-506 after Seagate ST-506 hard drive.  The ST-506 was a 5MB drive and used a two-cable interface.  The IBM original controller only officially supported one type of hard drive in its first two iterations, the ST-412.  The ST-412 functioned like the ST-506 but had a 10MB capacity.

Later, Seagate released the ST-225, a 20MB hard drive that could be found in late model XTs and perhaps the IBM PC XT/286.  IBM released a final revision of its fixed disk controller to support this drive.

MFM drives can take up a full-height 5.25" drive bay.  These bays are seldom found outside the original IBM PC, XT and XT/286.  The ST-412 is a full-height drive, the ST-225 is a half-height drive.

The RetroUSB AVS - A Potentially Worthy FPGA NES HDMI-Output Clone

This year, bunnyboy (Brian Parker) of retroUSB.com is going to release his long-awaited (if you are a NintendoAge forum member) AVS.  The AVS is a clone of the NES done within the programmable logic of an FPGA.  It comes in a NES-front loader influenced case, has a front loading 72-pin connector (no push down tray) and a top loading 60-pin connector for NES and Famicom games, respectively.  It only outputs HDMI at a 720p resolution.

The FPGA is a hardware recreation of the internals of the NES, namely the 2A03 CPU and the 2C02 PPU, the RAM and the glue logic required for a functioning NES.  An FPGA is a large, programmable surface mounted chip which allows the programmer to define the logic elements on the chip.  In this case, the programmer is attempting to model the CPU and PPU chips to perform an identical function to the logic contained in the discrete, through-hole chips Nintendo used.  Fortunately, these chips have been decapsulated and their dies have been imaged at very high resolution.  How they work on the hardware level is reasonably well-known, although there are some minor variations between the various revisions of each chip.

IBM's CGA Hardware Explained

The IBM Color/Graphics Card has been widely seen as a poor attempt at a video adapter.  Released with the IBM PC back in 1981, it was not particularly impressive by the standards of its day. Limited colors and no sprites did not make it very attractive for games.  However, when you look at the hardware and what it could do, it becomes more impressive.  Even though the card is a full length card, it was built from off the shelf logic chips, memory and video controller.  Looking at the hardware also helps one understand the limitations of the device.

The BIOS Modes

Mode 00h - 40x25 B&W
Mode 01h - 40x25 Color
Mode 02h - 80x25 B&W
Mode 03h - 80x25 Color
Mode 04h - 320x200 Color
Mode 05h - 320x200 B&W
Mode 06h - 640x200 B&W

On an RGBI monitor, the identical Color/B&W modes have no distinction except in Modes 04 and 05.  On a color composite monitor or TV set, color modes enable the color burst and b&w modes disable the color burst.  The IBM PC defaults to the 40x25 or 80x25 B&W modes depending on how you set a dipswitch.  Text, especially 80-column text, is much more difficult to read on a composite color display.

The CGA card has 16KB of RAM.  A full screen of 40-column text required 2KB of memory, allowing for 8 separate pages.  A full screen of 80 column memory required 4KB of memory, allowing for 4 separate pages.  Graphics modes took up all the 16KB of memory.  In order to really put the CGA card to work, one has to go deeper and look beyond the BIOS and what could be done by accessing its registers directly.

Metro ED500 DataVac - A Verse Review

The Metro ED500 DataVac 500-Watt 120 volt 0.75-HP Electric Blower Duster :

It will blow quite strong,
It will blow rather long,
Enjoy someday the money you will save,
No cans burying you into an early grave,
With nifty attachments to spare,
Away will fly the dust and hair,
Computers and gadgets clean up swell,
But it heats up like hell, and "burnt rubber" fairly conveys its smell.

Worth the Loading Times? - Famicom Disk System to Cartridge Conversions Worth Playing

The Famicom Disk System may offer games that saved to disk and enhanced music and sound effects, but it came at a cost.  The disks can fail, the drives' belts can snap and the disk system introduced loading times to the Famicom platform.  With devices like the FDSStick, the first two issues have been eliminated but the last issue remains.  Here I am going to list all Famicom disk system games with a later port to NES or Famicom cartridge and determine whether the extra features (if any) are worth the drawback of putting up with loading times.

First, here is the list of games :

FDS Title / NES Tile (if Different)	What Is Saved?	FDS Audio Sound Effects	FDS Audio Music	Disk Sides
Akumajō Dracula / Castlevania	3 Games	N	N	2
Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa (Unreleased for NES)	Does not Save	N	Y	2
Bubble Bobble	Highest Level	N	N	2
Dr. Chaos	3 Games	N	N	2
Dracula II: Noroi no Fūin / Castlevania II: Simon's Quest	3 Games	N	Y	2
Exciting Basketball / Double Dribble	Does not Save	Y	Y	2
Final Command: Akai Yōsai / Jackal	Does not Save	N	N	2
Green Beret / Rush 'n Attack	Does not Save	N	N	2
Gun.Smoke	Does not Save	N	N	2
Gyruss	Does not Save	N	Y	2
Hao-kun no Fushigi na Tabi / Mystery Quest	3 Games	Y	Y	2
Hikari Shinwa: Palthena no Kagami / Kid Icarus	3 Games	Y	Y	2
Ice Hockey	Does not Save	N	N	1
Karate Champ	Does not Save	N	N	2
Konami Ice Hockey / Blades of Steel	Does not Save	N	N	2
Zelda no Densetsu / The Legend of Zelda	3 Games	Y	Y	2
Metroid	3 Games	Y	Y	2
Moero Twinbee: Cinnamon Hakase wo Sukue! / Stinger	Does not Save	N	N	2
Nazo no Kabe: Block Kuzushi / Crackout	3 Games	N	N	2
Pro Wrestling: Famicom Wrestling Association	Does not Save	N	N	1
Roger Rabbit / The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle	Does not Save	N	N	2
Section Z	3 Games	N	N	2
The Legend of Zelda 2: Link no Bōken / Zelda II: The Adventure of Link	3 Games	Y	Y	2
Tobidase Daisakusen / 3-D Battles of the World Runner	Does not Save	N	Y	2
Volleyball	Does not Save	N	N	1
Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic / Super Mario Bros. 2	Worlds Beaten by Each Character	Y	Y	2
Zanac	Does not Save	N	N	1

Bold means that there is in-game Famicom Disk System Expansion Audio music, which is rare.  

Recommendations for Two Player Simultaneous Non-sport NES Games

The NES has quite a few good two player games.  When you have a friend over and want to play the NES, it would be nice to have a good game or two ready.  However, two player alternating games are not much fun when you are watching the other person play all the time.  Not all two-player simultaneous games are great either.  Here I am going to give my recommendations for good two player simultaneous NES games.  Since I am not a big sports fan, I am excluding those games.

Archon

Archon is like Battle Chess without the strict chess rules.  It is a port of the Atari 8-bit game.  Each player gets a nearly mirror image set of "pieces" to use, one side representing the Light and the other side representing the Dark.  When a piece enters the square of an opposing piece, the players control the pieces in an arena and fight to the death.  You can win the game by controlling all five squares or by killing the enemy wizard/sorceress.  The various pieces have different strengths and weaknesses.  Some pieces have a melee attack, some have a ranged attack and some have a touch attack.  The color of the board and some of the squares shifts between light and dark, giving the favored side an advantage.  The wizard and sorceror have some one-time use magical spells.  As a one player game, the AI is exploitable and cheap, but two players can have a lot of fun with this game.  The game is easy to pick up and play and there is plenty of strategy to be employed.

Balloon Fight

Balloon Fight is essentially Nintendo's clone of Joust.  The object of the game is to break your opponents' balloons by landing above them.  Then you have to kick them off the platform, otherwise they will inflate another balloon.  You have to dodge lightning sparks and the computer enemies.  Be careful, you can break your friend's balloons just as easily as you can an enemy's.  It's pretty simple, but the late Satoru Iwata's classic really captures the spirit of Joust.  The control is easy to grasp yet hard to master, like all good Joust ports.  Its even better than the official Joust NES port.

Sierra's Short-Lived Tandy Color Computer Support

In 1980 Radio Shack released its budget line of computers with the Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer.  Originally priced for $399.00 for the base model, it came with a 6809 CPU running at .894MHz, 4K of RAM and could display only upper case characters.  It could be expanded to 16KB, then 32KB and finally 64KB.  It had a built-in BASIC, a cartridge slot, two joysticks and a 53-key keyboard.  Its most often used graphics mode was a 256x192 artifact mode capable of four primary colors (black, white, blue and orange). It used single sided, double density 5.25" drives that held 156,672 bytes per side for user data using Radio Shack DOS.  Its sound hardware was a 6-bit DAC and it had a serial port and a cassette port.  The Color Computer 2 was essentially the same machine with a better keyboard and more easily expandable RAM.  Later CoCo 2s supported lower case text characters, unofficially.  Both of these early CoCos were essentially limited to 64KB of RAM.

In many ways, the CoCo 1 and 2 reminds one of the Apple II+.  Both machines really had a widespread maximum of 64KB of RAM.  They used 8-bit processors running at speeds close to each other.  Both machines can produce low resolution direct colors but really show detailed color images with NTSC composite artifact colors. If you subtract the purple/green combination from the Apple II, the graphics of a CoCo and an Apple can look very, very similar.  Both machines had somewhat limited (pre-IBM layout) keyboards and did not support lowercase characters officially.  Both came with ports for analog joysticks and cassette storage.  The sound hardware for each machine was rather crude and neglected.  Disk storage was only slightly better on the CoCo.

The CoCo 3 was a much more significant upgrade.  It came with double the CPU speed, 128KB of RAM and could be officially expanded to 512KB of RAM.  There were four extra keys on the keyboard.  It had new RGB-based graphics modes which could support 16 out of 64 pure colors and supported several higher resolutions in 2 colors (640x192), 4 colors (320x192 and 640x192) and 16 colors (320x192).

Nuby Game Light - Best Contemporary Light Source for the Game Boy

The Nuby Light alongside the Game Boy

The Game Boy was better than its competitors in many ways, more compact, longer battery life, better sound (against Game Gear), more buttons (against Game Gear), higher resolution (against Lynx), lower price, first to market, superior pack-in game.  Otherwise, the screen was its achilles heel : poor contrast, four color monochrome, difficulty in displaying fast moving objects and non back-lit.

Today we have mods that can fix most of the Game Boy's screen problems.  Backlight kits can be installed and the contrast issues can be dramatically improved with a bivert mod.  However, these innovations were not available during the monochrome Game Boy's official lifespan (1989-2003).  You had to put up with the screen, and the best you could do was either buy a light peripheral or play your games on the non-portable Super Game Boy.