buying a vintage mac for RPGs/gaming

I remember the Ishar and Zork series from the Amiga. I played Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego. If I remember correctly it randomized each playthrough.

I know you are playing on mac, but for Amiga I like the hall of light to browse through and find new games. As many games were on many platforms it might be of use to you (very complete, with screenshots, etc.)
http://hol.abime.net/1701
http://hol.abime.net/2670
 
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I remember the Ishar and Zork series from the Amiga. I played Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego. If I remember correctly it randomized each playthrough.

I know you are playing on mac, but for Amiga I like the hall of light to browse through and find new games. As many games were on many platforms it might be of use to you (very complete, with screenshots, etc.)
http://hol.abime.net/1701
http://hol.abime.net/2670

thanks! I am going to dig thru the amiga libraries sometime, too. may even buy one of those, too! haha, ya never know...

but yeah, ms-dos, amiga, there's quite a few libraries i have yet to really dig through, but right now my focus is mac. yes some of those famous games have been released on multiple platforms. a lot of what i want, the older stuff, hasn't been. so i'm excited to dig deeply on the mac garden and find the good stuff. :)
 
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hey @txa1265;, eMac 800mhz vs. iMac 800mhz - what's your opinion? from what i understand the emac is noisy, imac is quiet, but emac has that sweet CRT display which is stroking me in the right way. what say you?
 
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Oddly enough, I was revisiting the Zork games just a few months ago. They are still great, I had a blast with them!

for sure! i love those old text adventures. Mac has a ton of them, especially from 1985-1990. then the ones with graphics are just unmatched, even today, IMO. can't wait. :)
 
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hey @txa1265;, eMac 800mhz vs. iMac 800mhz - what's your opinion? from what i understand the emac is noisy, imac is quiet, but emac has that sweet CRT display which is stroking me in the right way. what say you?

I have preferred LCD over CRT since ... well, since the Powerbook 170c in 1991! :D. So I never looked at a CRT as 'sweet', but rather as something that would be loud and hot and burn in and so on.

A 20ish year old CRT is a concern for me - not sure how they last through the years. (certainly we had tube-TV's that lasted close to 30 years in our house). Just a thought on that one.

Finally - I think that the iMac had a better GeForce graphics card than the eMac if I recall correctly.
 
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I have preferred LCD over CRT since … well, since the Powerbook 170c in 1991! :D. So I never looked at a CRT as 'sweet', but rather as something that would be loud and hot and burn in and so on.

A 20ish year old CRT is a concern for me - not sure how they last through the years. (certainly we had tube-TV's that lasted close to 30 years in our house). Just a thought on that one.

Finally - I think that the iMac had a better GeForce graphics card than the eMac if I recall correctly.

thanks, bro. I have heard CRTs have better colors and are better for vintage games than LCD, but i hear u and see where you're coming from.

actually the eMac has the better graphics card, the Radeon ATI 7500 vs. GeforceMX 4 i believe. I saw the benchmarks and although the geforce has directx 8.0 and is a bit newer, the 7500 is a bit more powerful overall. ah well, shouldn't make a huge difference. i guess I'll stick with the iMac...thanks! :party:
 
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thanks, bro. I have heard CRTs have better colors and are better for vintage games than LCD, but i hear u and see where you're coming from.

actually the eMac has the better graphics card, the Radeon ATI 7500 vs. GeforceMX 4 i believe. I saw the benchmarks and although the geforce has directx 8.0 and is a bit newer, the 7500 is a bit more powerful overall. ah well, shouldn't make a huge difference. i guess I'll stick with the iMac…thanks! :party:

Cool - looks like those two were pretty close in general in terms of specs and performance, so either way you'll do well!
 
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Cool - looks like those two were pretty close in general in terms of specs and performance, so either way you'll do well!

agreed! and the imac is actually silent, whereas the emac is very loud. nice bonus for the imac. :)
 
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update time. :)

so, the Imac fell through, literally, when the seller tried to get it out of his warehouse apparently it fell and broke. so, there's that. i was actually lucky and someone on a mac forum offered me an even better vintage Mac, a Dual 1ghz Quicksilver (QS2002) G4. I am getting that shipped to me and also bought a Dell 1703FP LCD screen which is sync-to-green enabled. :) Not quite the CRT I was looking for but a very nice display nonetheless. I'm not sure what specs the tower has, will determine that in the coming days but I may need to upgrade the RAM to 2GB, and probably the graphics card as well, to a whopping Geforce4 Ti, :p . Should be lots of fun once it's done! Oh, and putting a 500gb SSD in it, for a little extra speediness. :)
 
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Is it even possible to connect an SSD to it? That Mac doesn’t have a SATA interface, it only has an ATA66 interface, or perhaps SCSI even. Finding a decent working hard disk with the required parallel interface will already be something.
 
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Is it even possible to connect an SSD to it? That Mac doesn’t have a SATA interface, it only has an ATA66 interface, or perhaps SCSI even. Finding a decent working hard disk with the required parallel interface will already be something.

yep, it's possible with a sata to ide converter. many of the mac enthusiasts do what i'm doing so i've learned from them. :)
 
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Not sure, if the OS is not aware of SSDs they might degrade faster (no trim support, too much caching, etc). Although on such an old system not much data will be written.
 
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Not sure, if the OS is not aware of SSDs they might degrade faster (no trim support, too much caching, etc). Although on such an old system not much data will be written.

Hmm. The only apps that take up space are OS X apps, and most of my stuff will be OS 9. But in terms of degrading faster, i haven't heard anything about that, and almost all the Mac enthusiasts I know have outfitted the vintage Macs with SSDs.
 
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yep, it's possible with a sata to ide converter. many of the mac enthusiasts do what i'm doing so i've learned from them. :)
Oh right, that would work.
But the IDE interface of that system is still limited to 66 MB/s and SATA hard disks offer at least twice that speed when writing, more when reading, so there is no real speed benefit on this system when using an SSD. There are other benefits like noise and heat obviously, but for the cost of an SSD you can also get a much larger hard disk.
 
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Yesterday, I watched a video that made me think of this thread, except that it was about a vintage PET (2001) that The 8-Bit Guy inserted into a Commodore 64 case :lol: Not bad at all.

Actually, it was a modern printed board compatible with a vintage PET 2001N-32.
 
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Not sure, if the OS is not aware of SSDs they might degrade faster (no trim support, too much caching, etc). Although on such an old system not much data will be written.
Normally there is already a specific controller in the SSD itself, to take into account pre-erasing, correction of the frequent read errors, defective locations, rotation when writing, …
 
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The SSD is pretty standard for Mac upgrades as I mentioned. I don't know the exact specifics, though. But anyway...

I'm also adding an Airport Extreme card, which is the Apple's early wi-fi card, and an Apple Basestation so it can actually work. Also wiring a laser monochrome printer through the ethernet port, so i can print game manuals and stuff. :)

What else. 500gb SSD, 1.5gb RAM (3 sticks of 512mb pc-133 sdram), the tower has a custom 128mb graphics card, which is saweet, as the G4s that can run Mac OS 9 generally come with a 64mb video card. The 128mb card was custom made by the owner of it, and is a big upgrade. The monitor will connect via DVI-D connection, a digital connection.

Also getting the Apple Pro speakers of the era. Will transfer files via CD-RW from my Windows 10 PC to the Mac's "2x Superdrive". Can't wait! :)

If u guys have any questions feel free to ask. I've done quite a bit of research lately and had a lot of help from friends to figure everything out so far. It wasn't hard but at times tricky, for sure. Ask away. :)
 
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well, the mac is built and will be here in 2 days. :) Can't wait!
 
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the final specs are:

Dual 1ghz G4 processors
1.5gb RAM
160gb SSD
PCI wireless card
custom 128mb graphics card (slightly better and comparable to geforce4 ti)
15" HP f1503 monitor + 15" dell e157fp monitor (will only choose 1, the DVI port will be converted to hdmi to then record with my game capture device on my windows 10 pc)
logitech z533 2.1 speakers with subwoofer
apple a1048 keyboard
logitech trackball mouse + regular logitech mouse

sweet. :)

i'm going to buy a color laserjet printer to print manuals and stuff. and a cd burner usb drive for my windows 10 pc with a bunch of old--school cd/rws.

and that's about it. i get it in 2 days.
 
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