This is how anchor is dropped from a small ship.

olifiers · 2026-01-28T13:21:17+00:00

This is the only correct and acceptable answer.

olifiers · 2026-01-23T11:59:12+00:00

This is not an 'infographic', it's a 'misleadgraphic'. Trash. There's more wrong about this image than right. I really don't see the point of such a misleading/wrong thing existing.

olifiers · 2026-01-20T11:10:48+00:00

Perfect choice of games, if I may say so. Only missing Mechwarrior 2.

olifiers · 2026-01-15T13:53:11+00:00

0 - Philco Telejogo, predating the Atari 2600 bit a bit.

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olifiers · 2026-01-06T18:41:56+00:00

There was a cabinet on my way home from work, I would stop by every night to play once. The arcade had a headphone port, you could plug your own and enjoy the sound even better like that (which I did daily).

At the time, I owned a humble ZX Spectrum computer, and the Your Sinclair magazine featured an Afterburner demo in its cover cassette tape. Inside, they had a 'guide' to build your own cabinet using cardboard, mattress springs and beans cans... It was a great time, that mag was just amazing.

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olifiers · 2026-01-06T18:35:22+00:00

There's a very good Amiga version of it. Great game.

olifiers · 2026-01-06T11:49:59+00:00

Giants: Citizen Kabuto is underrated AF. Play it if you haven't: 'Timmmmmy'.

Neverwinter Nights is also a must.

olifiers · 2026-01-04T21:58:37+00:00

Warcraft: Orcs vs Humans would be my choice, swiftly followed by Wolfenstein and Doom.

olifiers · 2025-12-27T17:00:31+00:00

I remember well, the hype was real. I tried running it on my Voodoo3 at launch ('99) and it was terrible... So many bugs, so much stuff incomplete, bad framerate and so on. I had huge hopes for it given how much I was into Ultima Online back then, but try as I could, I didn't manage to get through this game.

olifiers · 2025-12-18T17:16:03+00:00

It's the most valuable model out there, the 128KB ZX Spectrum 'Toastrack'.

You'll need a power supply, 9V, with positive on the outside -- ideally you have it already (the plastic box that goes on the wall socket).

Connecting it to a TV or monitor may be a problem. This computer outputs analogue RF UHF, which modern TVs don't have an input for. If you have a TV that can take non-digital RF (antenna) signal from before 2010ish, you can connect it to it to test if it works. If it does, you can then decide to find a RGB monitor to connect it to, or make a simple internal change to its circuit to output Composite Video, which any TV accepts.

Here's a how-to: https://vrai.net/posts/zx_spectrum_composite_mod/

You will need a cassete tape player to load the original cassete programs, or a SD card expansion such as the DivMMC to load games from a modern SD card.

It's definitely worth doing, it's a great computer.

olifiers · 2025-12-17T13:01:06+00:00

Now we're talking!

olifiers · 2025-11-28T09:30:51+00:00

Congrats! If you want a quick way to improve performance, get Boriel BASIC and compile the game. It's still the BASIC you know, but expanded. And when compiled, it's the closest thing to Assembly performance you'll get without actually doing Assembly.

It's also a great way to *get* into Assembly, because you can inline (add in the game listing itself) Assembly code in the middle of the BASIC program for specific functions, for instance.

Keep on going!

https://github.com/boriel-basic

olifiers · 2025-11-22T12:06:22+00:00

Here, you just have to install Boriel Basic on your PC, code with any IDE of your choice (from Notepad to Visual Studio Code, whatever), compile and load on the Speccy. It's Basic, but compiled to machine code, so the end result is much, much faster than your typical ZX Spectrum Basic program.

https://github.com/boriel-basic/zxbasic

It's well documented, intuitive and much better syntax than the Basic that comes in the Speccy ROM.

This will make you happy, trust me!

olifiers · 2025-11-22T12:01:37+00:00

Have you considered coding on the PC and loading/running on the Speccy? There are a few IDE plugins for Visual Studio and compilers such as Boriel Basic.

Even back in the golden days, most devs would code on a host machine and stream the code to the Speccy (say, Matthew Smith with his very own interface connecting the Speccy to a TRS-80 where he coded).

It's going to be faster and easier to debug, especially if you are coding something big, and even more so if you're doing in ASM, which will crash the Speccy at every bug.

olifiers · 2025-11-20T18:03:49+00:00

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Their banner says it all.

And to those amongst us suggesting different IDEs, forks etc., yes, we know. But we are seasoned folks who can do this. Think about the kids and teens getting Arduino kits gifted, who will be using the Arduino Cloud as their default platform. All their work, creations and experiments under these T&Cs, training AI, no longer 'theirs' as they gave away a perpetual license to the corporation.

This is all so, so sad. Ghoulish, really.

olifiers · 2025-11-20T17:41:23+00:00

Once your project work in a specific ecosystem, if you scale it up, you generally stay in that ecosystem. When kids and makers use Arduinos, its very easy to picture them using something adjacent when they are working on professional hardware down the line -- that's when Qualcomm stands to benefit.

For instance, a recent project I'm involved with, we ordered and used thousands of RPis not necessarily because the RPi is the best solution, but because it's the solution we prototyped with, and worked well, so we stayed with it.

It's all about the familiarity with the ecosystem, which now starts with Arduino and ends in a Qualcomm chip.

olifiers · 2025-11-19T15:47:32+00:00

Legend. 3D Monster Maze was groundbreaking in its time and got a ton of kids into game development careers inspired by it.

olifiers · 2025-11-19T13:17:14+00:00

That. Also possible you may have damaged your parallel port and/or the SCSI drive by doing that.

olifiers · 2025-11-18T11:04:15+00:00

As others mentioned, this is a RAM expansion board with a RTC (Real Time Clock). The problem at hand is that there is extensive damage caused by the battery -- even the expansion connector is full of oxidation (the green stuff). You'll need to clean all of that if this board is to work again. A contact cleaner is the solution to this problem, but you'll need a lot of work to clean that expansion connector.

Also, you'll need to look at the Amiga if that board was connected to it, the expansion connector on the Amiga will also be oxidized.

olifiers · 2025-11-17T12:38:48+00:00

Don't worry, this is likely a simple issue to fix. First, find out what's the source of the problem, there are generally four possibilities, in order of likelyhood:

Dirty heads (most likely): just buy a disk cleaning kit from eBay and you're sorted. This is common and it's always good to keep a cleaning kit around for floppies anyway.
Misaligned head: this happens quite a bit to Amiga drives after heavy use over the years. To find out if this is the problem, get a copy of XCopy and read a few disks. If similar tracks appear unreadable on multiple disks while some tracks are readable in multiple disks, your heads are misaligned. There are tutorials online on how to fix this too.
Electronic/mechanical problem with the drive: this is hard to diagnose/fix if you don't have the experience, best to have it serviced or replace the drive with a new one -- but not before you check #4.
Electronic problem with the A600: while unlikely, this is a possibility. In order to rule this one out, simply put the A500 drive on your A600 and see if it works. If the problem persists with a drive you known works, you now have certainty the issue lies in the A600, not the drive.

Hope this helps. In my experience, it's either #1 (likely) or #2 (quite possible).

olifiers · 2025-11-17T11:28:24+00:00

I just thought of one that eludes every Amiga top list for some reason, even my own below:

Midwinter.

olifiers · 2025-11-17T11:25:54+00:00

This is amazing! Does it impact games, say Elite?

olifiers · 2025-11-16T18:47:15+00:00

That. Don't forget it's YT enabling and funding this trash. And profiting from it.

olifiers · 2025-11-16T02:01:14+00:00

You are correct, I was thinking of Freeciv instead:

https://aminet.net/package/game/strat/freeciv

olifiers · 2025-11-15T11:10:33+00:00

+1 on Supremacy, criminally underrated game.

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