My second computer

I haven't forgotten my blog (I can't believe its almost three months since my last message). I've simply been too busy to even answer emails so writing a blog was not possible. Believe it or not, I'm writing this first on a paper because I don't have time to write it at home. Of course I'll have to type all this to computer but I hope it will take less time than typing while thinking what to write.

This is a good time to write about my second computer. I had to sell my Trifunic XT and 8-bit Nintendo but instead of buying a new computer, I bought little used SNES! I don't remember where I got the money for the Commodore 286 (I never sold the SNES) but I bought it quite soon after the SNES.

I remember the Commodore specs very well but I do not remember the model, and no, I sadly don't have any picture of this computer either.

The specs were:

• 286 12 MHz
• 1 MB RAM
• Integrated Paradise VGA (PVGA1A)
• 40 MB Quantum ProDrive 40AT
• 3,5" and 5,25" HD Floppy Drives

I've always regretted that I gave away all my 5,25" floppies with Trifunic XT. 5,25" floppies eventually proved to be more reliable. No wonder since less data is stored on a larger area. And I like the look, fell and sound of 5,25" floppies more than 3,5" disks.

What about monitor? That was greyscale IBM VGA. There is a small story behind it. I bought the Commodore from a small store selling new and used computers. On the same street there was another store like it. It was called Visiotek. Over the years many small computer stores born and died but Visiotek remained longer than any of the other stores I used to visit. Visiotek was never the cheapest but it had largest amount of used computers and items. Even as late as 2002 I bought a nice 486 system from there (that became what is now my gaming 486). Three years later you couldn't get anything older than Pentium 2 or 3 from there (it is very surprising that they even sold 486 systems as late as 2002). Maybe internet with cheap online stores, auction sites etc was too much but it was sad to see Visiotek wither away.

But back to the greyscale IBM VGA. It cost 400 Finnish Mark and I think so did the Commodore (very close anyway). I carried them to bus station that was nearby. First I carried the Commodore on a bag over a short distance and then the monitor (and so on).

I suppose I'm one of the few that has used greyscale VGA monitor for gaming. My cousin once asked why since my previous computer had color display (CGA). The greyscale VGA is without a doubt an improvement over the CGA. There are only a handful of games where I missed the CGA colors and those games mostly were CGA only games with well selected colors. Greyscale VGA allowed me to play all those EGA and VGA games I always wanted.

There are limitations with greyscale VGA. VGA can display 256 colors simultaneously. Each color has 6 bits for red, green and blue each, so full palette is 18 bits or 262,144 colors. But greyscale VGA monitor has only one beam, not three. So it can only display 64 (6 bits) shades of gray (black and white included). VGA BIOS is wise. It detects (or should detect, at least it can be forced by software) greyscale monitor and enables algorithm called greyscale summing. It is a technique for making sure that monitor displays as many different shades as possible, or more properly makes sure completely different colors are not displayed as same gray.

Many games do not use BIOS for setting colors (they write directly to VGA registers) and it causes a problem. For example some shades of red and blue turn out to be the same dark grey when greyscale summing is not used. Many Sierra games have driver for greyscale VGA monitors and it does the summing. Graphics look much better when the greyscale driver is used.

I didn't have the greyscale VGA for long. It was replaced with IBM Color VGA. Externally it looked identical to the greyscale VGA monitor. I'll tell more about it in my next blog entry and also about my first sound card.

My first computer

I'd like to tell something about my first computer. I don't have any pictures from it and I can't remember was is year 1990 or 1991 when I got it (I was 10 or 11 years old then). More likely 1990 because I think I got NES as Christmas present on 1989 (I was hoping for a computer).

My first computer was quite generic XT clone build in AT clone case used by many PC XT/AT clones. Brand of my first computer was Trifunic and it was assembled in Finland.

I remember the specs very well. I learned a lot with and from this computer. Monitor was IBM 5153 CGA display. I can't remember was the keyboard IBM as well but I do remember it was 84-key XT keyboard. Trifunic didn't come with mouse but I got one later.

Other specs were:

• 8 MHz Turbo Board with NEC V20 processor
• 640 kiB RAM
• 100 % compatible CGA clone adapter
• Seagate ST-225 20 MB MFM hard drive
• 720k 3.5” Floppy Drive
• 360k 5.25” Floppy Drive
• Multi I/O card of some sort (it did have serial port to plug the mouse in)

As you might have guessed by now, system like that bought in 1990 must mean it was previously owned and it was. Nobody had slower PC and I couldn't play many of the games my friends did. I always wanted new computer back then but now I'm glad what I got. It made possible for me to start from XT systems and feel the progress of PC hardware and games from the beginning.

Friends dad did some work with computers and through him I got the Trifunic. At their place I saw a PC for the very first time. I don't know it's specs other that it was also XT clone. It had amber display that looked so amazing.

Before I got the Trifunic I was told it had color display, and it did. CGA is able to display 4 colors in graphics modes. We were at my friends place to test the computer for the first time (my friends dad must have installed DOS and some games in it). Digger was the very first game we tried on it and it looked and worked great. King's Quest III was the second game we tried and it appeared black and white! What a disappointment. There was key combination to switch to color mode but that was even more disappointment. King's Quest III looked so much better in amber display, not to mention in real color display.

About the same time my friends dad got 386sx system with VGA. No need to guess where we played all the games after school.

I didn't know back then but Sierra's AGI games support CGA composite output. I'm sure I had one in my Trifunic but even if I had known it, I wouldn’t have anything to plug it in. European PAL televisions back then didn't support NTSC and even if they would have, I had black and white TV for the NES. RGB Output in AGI games were always black and white or 4 color mode with quite awful palette so I used the B&W mode. Later SCI games from Sierra had much better CGA RGB color support.

And those I mostly played on my Trifunic; every Sierra game that run on it. It didn't matter that the copy of KQ3 had disk 2 missing or Larry 3 was corrupted so that it always froze when entering bamboo forest. Or that I only knew one phone number from Larry 2 (3425, can't forget it) so it took a while to get in the game.

Other games I played were Lucasfilms Indy 3 (I'm one of the few who thinks Last Crusade is better game than Fate of Atlantis but Atlantis didn't work on my Trifunic, of course), Monkey Island and Zak McKracken.

Then I really spend many hours on Prince of Persia (one of the best games ever), SimCity and Ducktales. Again it didn't matter how slow they were as long as they supported CGA.

If a game worked slow back then it didn't mean slow frame rate like today. When game was slow, the character was moving slower that it supposed to. In my opinion that is better alternative than slow frame rate (actually the frame rate was slow as well but it feels completely different on 2D games than on 3D games).

I wanted to let you know how my PC gaming started because that certainly affects what I consider to be “best” retro gaming XT system.