Retrocomputing Stack Exchange
Retrocomputing Stack Exchange

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1500 questions
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3 answers

Do all VGA cards implicitly support CGA and EGA?

Practically speaking, if I buy an ISA VGA card, will it implicitly support CGA and EGA games?
Sydius
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6 answers

Limiting factor on sprite sizes

Early consoles and home computers that were optimized for games, tended to provide sprites. From a game programmer's viewpoint, these were good to have. Of course, one always wanted more and larger sprites, suggesting that it bumped up against some…
rwallace
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Did any microcomputers back in the day accelerate standard-cassette performance

Many commonplace cassette recorders in the 1970s and 1980s were capable of reading or writing two tracks at once (stereo). While that wasn't universal (portable cassette recorders were often monaural, and probably used a single-coil record/playback…
supercat
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3 answers

Do you need to allocate memory before you use it in MS-DOS?

In modern operating systems (for example: Windows), you can't access a memory location before you allocate that memory location to your program (or else a segmentation fault will occur). I am wondering, do you need to also allocate memory before you…
user6989
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Unable to install Colonization in DOSBox

I'm attempting to install Sid Meyer's Colonization in DOSBox from the original floppies, and it gives me the error message "You have specified a drive that doesn't physically exist!" when I try to run "install.exe". I'm running DOSBox 0.74 on 64-bit…
Mark
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1 answer

Any difference between a VIC-1541 and a C64-1541?

I have both a beige VIC-20 styled VIC-1541 disk drive and the later brown C64 1541 drive. Is there a difference between them (besides how they look)?
Thraka
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How did DoubleDOS work?

Back in the MS-DOS days, there was a program DoubleDOS that you could run that would split your machine in half and multitask two separate DOS programs. While it didn't particularly work well for games (as far as I remember), it was popular for…
bjb
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3 answers

How did the IBM PC handle multiple physical devices serving memory at the same physical address?

I'm trying to figure out how the IBM 5150 PC handled the case where multiple physical devices (memory chips) were mapped to the same address within the 8088's physical address space. The closest I've been able to find is in the August 1981 IBM 5150…
user
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Can a retro-computer be a useful way to learn computer-architecture fundamentals?

I've been reading about the fundamentals of computer architecture, but I think I could get a better grasp of the basics if I could could have an actual device to play with. I had considered building a 2- or 4-bit device on a breadboard with…
EJ Mak
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How did XBAND modems transmit game state?

The XBAND Video Game Modem and Network allowed owners of Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo game systems to play head-to-head over a phone line in 1994, before "twitch" gaming over the Internet was feasible. How was this accomplished?
fadden
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How fast was ARPANET?

I've heard that the first time a message was sent through it was "lo" since the SDS 940 crashed before the full message of "login" was able to be sent through. However, I have been unable to find how fast a message was transmitted through it. Does…
jay
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Atari 2600 paddle controllers slow, jittery

I recently picked up a pair of Atari 2600 paddle controllers for use with my Atari Flashback 6. The Amazon store said in the product description that they had been "tested." However, they are barely responsive, and when they do respond control is…
Aaron
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Cloning circuit boards for antique computers?

Would it be feasible to create direct clones of obsolete and increasingly hard-to-find motherboards and controller boards for vintage computers? Most of the early 1980s technology was either single side or double sided printed circuit boards, so…
Dale Mahalko
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How much space did the 68000 registers take up?

The Motorola 68000 has 16 (somewhat) general-purpose registers of 32 bits each, a generous complement by the standards of its day. I would expect these to take a significant fraction of the die area. (If they didn't, there would be little reason for…
rwallace
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Is an X Window System older than release 10 available online?

I'm looking for any copy of the X Window System older than release 10. The oldest on x.org is X10R3. Bob Scheifler doesn't have anything. Jim Gettys may have something, but has yet to retrieve it from an old hard disk. Keith Packard doesn't have…
Lars Brinkhoff
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