Post worst retro computers
The Apple III
>lets take everything that was good about the Apple II line and fuck it up
>hey, Steve Jobs says cooling fans are too noisy, let's just cast the base of the computer out of thick metal to act as a heatsink
>well shit that didn't work at all! Plugs pop out of their sockets due to heat expansion
>try lifting it and dropping it and see if the impact makes chips and boards reconnect again
They eventually fixed the worst problems, but JESUS
The problem with Steve Jobs is that he always believed computers should be turnkey appliances similar to a microwave or a toaster. He was even against putting expansion slots in the Apple II.
>>3136734
What an asshole.
>>3136734
There's nothing inherently wrong with that attitude. Computers are very important tools and everyone should have access to them without needing specialized knowledge or training. And conversely, computers wouldn't be as important as they are if they weren't easy for everyone to use.
Were there any games for the Apple III? It seems like a pure business machine
>>3137028
According to one site there were like 4 games.
Even for collectors it is crap.
>>3137028
It was pretty short lived I think
>>3136734
>against putting expansion slots in the Apple II.
And when Apple released the Macintosh it lacked expansion ports.
Hi.
Contributan
>>3137772
>it erases tapes when you turn it on
fantastic design
>>3136482
>>3137792
Why do you hate rubber keys?
>>3137792
most overrated computer ever, possibly
it's pretty much an oversized calculator in terms of capabilities
>>3137792
Yeah, I don't get why people like this either. There's only 5 good games for it, and the graphics suck ass
>>3137876
It was much cheaper than any of its competitors so a good number of people had it, and nostalgia forbids them from ever regretting their stinginess.
>>3137768
What's wrong with the Atari ST?
I stole one of these from a pile of unused computers at middle school. Maybe I was being punished for stealing school property.
You might have a similar-looking Mac, but most of the 5x00 computers are fine, it's just the 5200 and 6200 that are pieces of shit.
http://lowendmac.com/2014/power-mac-and-performa-x200-road-apples/
>>3137792
I wanted to like the Spectrum, because two developers I idolize made a bunch of games for it. But I just can't do it. Even Rare's games would be considered awful on a real game console.
>>3138151
Gee, just play with savestates, underwurlde is still totally playable that way.
>>3138103
Was it cheaper than the ZX81?
>>3137876
Well, the Spectrum sucked balls to play games, but it was a relatively cheap and interesting device to learn programming back in the day. Note that in my country the C64 had almost no presence, otherwise I'd have preferred that, knowing what I know now.
For gaming, it was shit. Consoles already had presence and were so much better, they weren't even in the same league. I don't even think I played more than 10 minutes total of Spectrum games, they looked ugly and had clumsy controls, so never quite bothered. Checking videos and hearing from other people, my impressions of it seemed quite right.
In other words, it was more of an education machine than a gaming machine, so it had some merits on that field.
>>3138171
No, but it had color graphics and actual gaming capabilities while costing far less than the C64 or Amstrad.
>>3138185
>No, but it had color graphics and actual gaming capabilities
just barely, that is
>>3138171
Nope. It cost around 50 pounds more, 75 if you include the ZX81's price cut.
What was IBM thinking?
>>3138304
i cant believe that they decided to make every port proprietary
Atari ST, Apple II, IBM.
>>3137781
Was that intentional?
>>3138637
nope, it just shoots out EM waves for whatever reason when you turn it on, so all magnetic storage, even if it's not in the computer, can get erased
>>3138432
I thought the Apple II was generally well liked?
>>3138643
That seems like the kind of monumental design-flaw that should have been caught in testing. Like, that's on the level of designing a gun that reliably suffers out of battery detonations.
Did they get sued for this? Because it seems like they would face some kind of class action lawsuit because thousands of man-hours being EM'd away.
>>3138709
>Did they get sued for this? Because it seems like they would face some kind of class action lawsuit because thousands of man-hours being EM'd away.
not really because no one really bought the computer
and people probably heard about that flaw
I used one of my friend's Atari ST back then and thought it was pretty cool. Not Amiga cool, but decent. Why all the hate?
Heck, the ST ports were usually better than their PC counterparts.
If you want to talk about shit computer, I had an Amstrad CPC 6128. Subpar for its time, but damn cheaper than the others.
>>3137768
In a time where all the cool kids (me included) had an Amiga, i visited this creepy kid with a goddamn Atari. First and last Atari i ever saw. Never went there again. Goddamn weirdo.
>>3138771
The ST is a mediocre computer for it's time, the only redeeming quality is those damn MIDI ports.
Atari ST was just the 16-bit Sinclair Spectrum, only without the Speccy's level of popularity or software support.
It has only frame buffer graphics and the original 520ST had just single sided floppies. In short, as cheap and limited as possible.
Great way to show off your new PowerPC 603 CPU, Apple.
>>3139373
>using PowerPCs
>>3138643
Aren't there laws against this kind of thing?
>>3138820
Hence why you still saw music producers using them well into the late 90s. Even Fatboy Slim used/uses one I think.
>>3138206
>ZX-81
>1K RAM
That's kind of amazing.
>>3138180
>Note that in my country
Spain right? I know the Spectrum had an unusual popularity there.
My first computer was a Spectrum +3 where I learned BASIC, yeah. Looking back most of the games I had for it were crappy but I still appreciate the machine.
>>3139468
>rubber keys
>infrared connection
Horrible to use and you can't place it where you want.
>>3139474
That's correct, Anon. I am not entire sure *why* it was that way, though. I think it had something to do with magazines and word-of-mouth as well as price compared to other computers. I don't recall ever seeing things like TV ads like other computers had in the US or other parts of Europe, though.
If any historians know of any more solid reasons, I am totally curious about why Spain had more of a following for the Spectrum and the CPC Amstrad than the C64 or such until the advent of the "modern" PC and consoles.
>>3139818
I heard Spain gave tax breaks to foreign computer companies who catered for the Spanish language but I don't know why Sinclair/Amstrad took them up on it while Commodore, etc, didn't.
>>3138213
Consoles had cheaper hardware but the games were astronomically more expensive and piracy is usually much more difficult, something that can be seen to this day.
>>3138853
If you got the monochrome monitor it made for a great Macintosh alternative, but with color it was just a poor man's Amiga with the bonus of MIDI.
>I am totally curious about why Spain had more of a following for the Spectrum and the CPC Amstrad than the C64 or such until the advent of the "modern" PC and consoles.
Spain had a tax on computers with low memory and required the support of Spanish letters (i.e. à, è, ì, òù, and ñ, maybe «») Sinclair designed the 128K Spectrum around this while Commodore shrugged it off.
I think this genuinely takes the cake for the worst keyboard of all time. Looking for the spacebar? It's a tiny key over in the bottom left. What the fuck.
>>3140028
>Had games released on it that also had come out on Intellivision
>The games were worse on this than the Intellivision versions
Holy shit
>>3137768
Looks damn sexy though. Not as sexy as 65xe/130xe, that's just pure sex, but much sexier than anything Commodore.
>>3139815
Only the 5200 and 6200 models were bad. They perform much slower than their CPU would suggest, thanks to a crippled system bus architecture.
>>3138148
My mom worked at my elementary school and got me two 5260/120s when they auctioned them off. They were some of the worst Macs ever made, but damn if I didn't learn a lot from them. I work in Mac IT now and I think it's probably because of those damn things.
>>3136482
Agat. A russian Apple II clone that couldn't do anything Apple II could.
Played Xonix and Tetris tho.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agat_(computer)
I had one.
>>3140028
The Spectrum 16/48 wasn't much better.
>>3138839
>Atari ST was just the 16-bit Sinclair Spectrum, only without the Speccy's level of popularity or software support.
I thought almost all the Amiga games were also on the Atari ST.
These are the 8 bit home computer (not counting Japanese):
ZX Spectrum, Atari 800XL, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC.
Did I miss any?
These are the 16 bit home computers (not counting Japanese):
Atari ST, Amiga, Acorn Archimedes, IBM PC, Mac.
Did I miss any?
Surely Atari ST is a better gaming machine than IBM PC and Mac.
And didn't Acorn machine have smaller software library?
>>3141926
>Surely Atari ST is a better gaming machine than IBM PC and Mac
It's not. A PC with EGA and an Adlib card does everything an Atari ST does except for MIDI.
>>3141926
desu the only good 8 bits were ZX Spectrum +2/+3 and C64. Only good 16 bits were Mac, Amiga and PC. With PC being last.
>And didn't Acorn machine have smaller software library?
Probably. Same thing with the 8bits. Acorn never made real inroads and it held them back massively.
>atari st is a better gaming machine than IBM PC and Mac
I prefer the Mac purely because of its compact design.
>>3141926
What about the Apple II, Commodore PET, VIC-20, and TRS-80.
>>3141940
He's a Yurosemen.
>>3141938
>ZX Spectrum
>good
Only good 8-bits were the Apple II, Atari 800XL, and C64.
>>3141940
Commodore PET was text only wasn't it?
Apple 2 was never popular in Europe, VIC-20 was succeeded by C64 and TRS-80 wasn't popular in Europe.
>>3141952
And the Spectrum, Amstrad, and Atari ST weren't relevant in America. Tiddy-boom.
>>3141952
>Apple 2 was never popular in Europe
Is it my fault the things can't display color on a PAL TV?
>>3141956
Uh...did they even sell the first two in North America at all? I don't think they did.
>>3141962
They did briefly sell a US model Spectrum in 1983 when it first came out, but the video game crash ensured that it went unnoticed and it was soon withdrawn from sale. In fact they had an MSX model here in 83 as well but same thing.
>>3141964
You're probably talking about the TS-2068. Actually this thing was not entirely compatible with the ZX Spectrum.
>>3137768
I have one of those, got it for free.
I would really rather have an Amiga. Still some decent games. The bubble bobble port is freaking solid.
Actually the Atari 8-bits kept going in Europe during the late 80s when they'd become irrelevant in the US, mostly as a low cost home computer for playing cassette games.
After 85, the only relevant 8-bits in the US were the C64 and Apple II and the latter was mostly riding off the school market.
>>3141971
Or well, technically I have the 1040ST, so it doesn't suck AS much, since I can read double-sided floppies.
>>3141964
>In fact they had an MSX model here in 83 as well but same thing
That would be the Yamaha CX5M which was really designed more as a music composition tool than a home computer, although it's otherwise fully compatible with the MSX1 standard.
>>3141926
Acorn Archimedes was 32 bit.
Our home computer scene was mostly about loading dungeon crawlers off of incredibly slow floppies. Rather different from Yuroshmups with arpeggio music.
Computer games here were also most of the time professionally-made and didn't feel like some crud a high school kid banged out in BASIC and dumped to a cassette as was usually the case in Europe. Microprose and Origin had a very high level of craftsmanship compared to the multitude of terrible Spectrum cassette games.
>>3142004
IDk about you but I always found Microprose's war sims very dry and a little too realistic for my taste. Good video games by definition need a little bit of campiness to them.
>>3142012
Some of their games like Pirates! are a little more silly.
"Pirates! was about [swashbuckler movies], not the historical period."
-- Sid Meier
>>3142018
We had Pirates! over here in Britain; anyone could get Microprose games for their Atari ST or Amiga. Just not the C64 version because no disk drives.
In fact later on in the 90s, Microprose farmed out all Amiga development to their UK subsidiary. Also X-COM was created by a British dev (Mythos Games) so bollocks to all the Americans who say we only made fart wave music shovelware.
Not sure if it qualifies though. Specs wise it wasn't half bad.
>>3142035
GTA and Tomb Raider were British and Rare obviously was British.
The main point of criticism are tapes as a storage medium which the rest of the world had abandoned by 85.
>>3142049
However, those games were much later on in the 90s and not the 80s era stuff we're discussing. Also even if you look at British Amiga games, most of them were shovelware like James Pond that were just poor imitations of Jap console stuff.
>>3141989
There were at least two SpectraVideo MSX models released in the US too.
Those quickly disappeared, unfortunately.
>>3142035
>Also X-COM was created by a British dev (Mythos Games)
Well, it was and then it wasn't. Actually the Gollop brothers used Microprose's studios and dev tools which were significantly better than anything they had at Mythos.
>>3142049
The biggest difference with GTA and Tomb Raider is that they were original ideas.
The Amiga days were also over by then. Shovelware went down.
>>3142068
X-COM was an original idea and that was back in Amiga times, actually the game it was based on (Laser Squad) is nothing like the usual fart wave shmups from that era.
All this proves is that it took Europe 10 years to catch up to the US and Japan for game development.
>>3142078
Ok that was an exception and it just proves that any business is going to have 10% innovators and 90% imitators.
>>3142083
Since when did Japan ever do anything interesting with PC games? Almost all of them are CRPGs, adventures, and dating sims. Up through the early 90s at least, the vast majority of PC gaming innovation came from America.
>>3142092
Japan was the Mecca of console games, the US was the Mecca of computer games in the 80s-early 90s. Only by the Windows 9x era did Europe catch up to us.
>>3142104
This is what Americans actually believe.
From which country do games like Ultima Underworld come from again?
>>3142117
Rubbish. I'll even admit most of our games in the 80s were awful shovelware. I had a Spectrum as a boy and after I saw a NES running, realised just how bad most home computer games were.
>>3142092
Under which category does Sokoban fall? That's from 82.
Simulations were a huge field on Japanese computers as well.
Various popular console games were in fact ports or sequels of computer games.
>>3142128
>console games
>good
Enjoy your two add ons, lacks of useful software and shovelware
this one was also pretty bad
Can you play Cannon Fodder on it? Y/N
>Y
Good PC
>N
Pure shit
>>3142336
What about pre-90's PCs?
>>3142318
From what I've heard it was pretty OK for the time
>>3142639
Yeah but so expensive that it never achieved much relevance. Not much software either and the OS apparently struggled.
Original plans were for Apple to replace the Apple II and III with a next-generation family of computers based around the 68000 CPU, the Mac being the home/educational line and the Lisa the professional line. Their plans went awry firstly because Steve Jobs had other ideas for the Mac, secondly because the Lisa was grossly expensive and unable to achieve any impact. Also the two lines were totally incompatible with each other despite the same CPU and a very similar OS. In April 1985, after 18,000 were sold, Apple terminated the Lisa name and rebranded the computer as the Macintosh XL and it continued to be sold under this badge until being replaced by the Mac II line in 1987. Aside from its high price, the Lisa was not provided with adequate documentation or development tools, also software devs were reluctant to support a computer line they were convinced would sell poorly.
Apple originally developed a proprietary floppy drive known as the Twiggy drive for the Lisa which stored 860k per disk, but proved more trouble than it was worth and was quickly replaced by standard 3.5" floppies. All production Lisas had 3.5" drives and only prototypes used the Twiggy drives.
Officially, Lisa was an abbreviation for "Local Integrated Software Architecture", but it's also rumored that the computer was named after some Apple technician's daughter.
>>3142338
Im 28 and dont remember the old macintosh I used. Had a big ass floppy drive back when floppys were floppy. I assume that's the 80s, but I couldn't tell you the bad ones.
Have a Tandy instead, which I got to use a lot.
>>3142779
Here
>>3142702
This post actually made me look up twiggy drives and I found this.
Looks real familiar to me. I supoose my first experience with a PC was the Lisa.
>>3142039
Ahaha, wow what the hell is this thing? That integrated stick is adorable.
>>3137768
I respectfully disagree. While it's claim to fame was never going to be office applications, games, or graphic design it definitely found a home in many a pro music producer's studios throughout the 80's and early 90's.
>>3143298
An obscure British 8-bit that crashed like Flight 473. Cost more than a CPC 464 and that thing came with a monitor and tape deck.
Although it was apparently popular in Hungary.
>>3142148
This post is dumb, you're dumb, stop posting your dumb posts.
C64 was kind of a pile of shit though ƒam.
It had some great games but this is more of the mark of good programming and design than a capable platform. There are good C64 games DESPITE the C64.
On the other end of the spectrum, the IIgs. Best retrocomputer.
>>3137792
Come now.
It was a heap of shit power wise, but the low price point and ingenuity of programmers made it worthwhile.
It wasn't a powerful computer, but a cheap glorified calculator got SOMETHING with BASIC into British kid's hands.
>>3137792
Shitting on a Spectrum for being limited is like shitting on a Raspberry Pi for being limited. It was the cheapest color computer in the world, what else did you want?
The Amiga 600 probably deserves a mention for being a complete fuck up in terms of what they set out to do, and what they actually did.
>goal: make a simplified Amiga with no numpad to lower production costs enabling commodore to sell it at a lower price point than the A500+
>end result: replace the A500+ with a system which is about $50 more expensive to produce, harder to expand, but still lacks a numpad.
>>3145647
>On the other end of the spectrum, the IIgs. Best retrocomputer.
The Spectrum is worse than both.
With the C64 you have to consider its time of release and price.
>worst keyboard of all time
>>3145956
But it looks so futuristic!
>>3137805
Would you want to type on the sort of keys used for pocket calculators?
>>3138146
It's basically a piss poor Amiga with nothing going for it.
>>3146978
Besides being a lot cheaper.
>>3142702
I believe it was named after Steve's daughter and the acronym is a backronym.
>>3142779
>Macintosh
>5 1/4" Drive
Nope.
>>3142787
Wrong again, homie. Stop making our age bracket look stupid.
>>3145956
keyboard kinda reminds me of this
