#early PC compatibles

[mingos-commodoreblog]

Clock Signal 2024-05-27 - A latency-hating emulator of: the Acorn Electron and Archimedes, Amstrad CPC, Apple II/II+/IIe and early Macintosh, Atari 2600 and ST, ColecoVision, Enterprise 64/128, Commodore Vic-20 and Amiga, MSX 1/2, Oric 1/Atmos, early PC compatibles, Sega Master System, Sinclair ZX80/81 and ZX Spectrum

[simmattically]

Ur 1st PC

I wanted to create something nostalgic that ties into the cozy vibes of the holiday season, so here's Ur 1st PC — a vintage-style computer inspired by the early 2000s. 🎄💾

🔗 Get it for free on my Patreon!

Here are the details:

• 5 swatches • §850 • Base game compatible • Easily searchable in the Buy catalog by typing “SimMattically”

I hope this throwback piece brings a little extra charm to your Sims’ homes this season! 🎄✨

[b3crew]

EARLY ACCESS REVIEW | "Kill It With Fire 2" | B3crew.com

Kill It With Fire 2 does plenty of things right as a follow-up. The missions are great, and playing with your friends easily makes the experience more fun.

[simmerkate]

Breakfast Foods

Give your Sims’ kitchens and dining spaces a cozy, realistic touch with this decor-only breakfast set! Whether your Sims are early risers or brunch lovers, this set brings delicious variety to the table.

✨ Features:

✅ 6 Detailed Breakfast Items – A mix of sweet and savory dishes for diverse meal settings. ✅ High-Quality Textures – Realistic food textures to enhance your game’s aesthetic. ✅ Perfect for Storytelling & Screenshots – Make your Sims’ breakfast scenes more immersive! ✅ Base Game Compatible – No packs required! ✅ Decor-Only – These items are purely decorative and do not function as edible food. These are High Poly Items so please be careful if using low end pcs.

🍽️ Included Items:

🥪 Sandwiches – Classic sandwiches loaded with cheese, veggies, and protein. 🍩 Sweet Toast Set – Chocolate raspberry and peanut butter banana toast for a treat. 🍳 Egg & Toast Plate – Soft-boiled eggs on creamy toast, seasoned to perfection. 💛  Breakfast  Plate – Adorable heart-shaped pancakes, eggs, sausage, and fruit. 🥒 Cucumber Cheese Bagels – A fresh and light bagel with cream cheese and cucumbers.

Perfect for kitchen clutter, café builds, or cozy breakfast scenes! 🌿

📥 Download on Early Access Now! (Public April 3rd) Patreon (xx) ad-free

[byruit]

Apricot XEN (1985) 🍑

Released in October 1985 and developed by Apricot Computers, the XEN series was designed to compete directly with the IBM PC-AT.

The Apricot XEN series included three main versions: XEN FD, XEN HD, XEN WS.

The Apricot XEN was powered by the Intel 80286 processor, depending on the model, the XEN came with either 512 KB or 1 MB of RAM.

The XEN FD model featured two 720 KB floppy disk drives, while the XEN HD included a 20 MB hard disk drive. The XEN WS, a workstation model, did not include disk drives.

It ran Microsoft Windows 1.0, showcasing early graphical user interface capabilities. The XEN was capable of controlling up to 16 stations, making it suitable for business environments.

Despite its innovative design and advanced features, the Apricot XEN faced challenges due to its lack of IBM compatibility.

[oldschoolfrp]

Denizen Miniatures created several ranges of true 25mm fantasy figures in the 1980s, including adventurers, dwarves, and the Legion of the Damned -- the latter seemed to have normal human bodies but skull faces a la Skeletor. Most were compatible in size to their Ral Partha counterparts. There also was a nice line of 25mm sci-fi figures, comparable to other small 25s like GZG's Stargrunt or Grenadier/WEG's Star Wars miniatures.

I used one of their dwarves as my PC miniature during a long AD&D campaign in the late 80s. Some of their sculpts looked better than others in the raw metal, but most were well detailed and came alive when painted. The examples here from their website show the relatively muted natural hues typical of many manufacturers' catalog painters in the 70s and early 80s.

Their old site is still up at http://denizenminiatures.co.uk though the fantasy range is not currently available. The sci-fi range apparently is being put back in production in original true 25mm and upscaled 28mm versions.

[commodorez]

Tell us, why do you think Commodore failed?

Hoooooo boy... take this with a grain of salt, but here's how I see things based on my incomplete knowledge of the history. I need to do more research on this front, read a few of the books from folks who were there, but here goes nothing:

So, during the calculator wars of the early/mid 1970s, Texas Instruments was knocking competitors out of the game left and right by charging through the nose for the chips they sold. Commodore was one of their customers, and was nearly put out of business as a result. Jack Tramiel's solution was to buy MOS Technologies, effectively putting an end to CBM's reliance on TI's semiconductors because they could suddenly produce their own for much of their big ticket items.

Fast forward to 1981, and Commodore's VIC-20 is in a price war with Texas Instruments' TI-99/4A home computer. Jack kept lowering the price, and TI kept having to do the same to compete, so they were selling at a loss -- against a wildly popular home computer at the time. Jack, ever-vindictive in his motives (business is war, as he liked to say), cut the price of the VIC-20 at a CES show, which killed TI as a competitor in that segment in the market, but he did so at great cost to Commodore.

The way he cut the prices on the VIC also included peripherals, which the various vendors relied on to make their profits. They charged back those losses to Commodore. The result tipped the balance to diminish Jack's position in the company, and Irving Gould ousted him. Jack jumped ship with his sons and went to go work for Atari, selling the ST series machines, which would go on to compete with the Commodore Amiga series.

The problem was that Jack was the big force behind giving the company direction, especially when guiding advertising. The C64 sold itself, which was a blessing and a curse. It meant Commodore never really had to try all that hard to make good ads for it, so when they had to work harder to push later products, they kinda sucked at it. This really hurt the Amiga out of the gate, because nobody knew how to sell this golden child they just acquired, meaning it took many years to find its legs in the market.

Weird side projects continued to build up, and company focus was lost. Engineers churned out some amazing products, but without a guiding force at the top steering the company, and advertising dropping the ball in selling the powerful machines they were creating, the company was already in a slow death spiral. The IBM PC compatibles had already taken hold of much of the market, and were continuing to chip away at Commodore's market share, which wasn't helped by Jack himself fighting the company he founded on the side of Atari. The ST and the Amiga were fighting for the scraps left behind by IBM's juggernaut platform.

Commodore was a dead man walking from the moment Jack just had to get revenge on TI for trying to screw him out of the market in the 70s. It's just that nobody knew what the repercussions would be when he did that...

[anim-ttrpgs]

Some History of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

Brandon and I have played a lot of TTRPGs, from nearly every edition of Dungeons & Dragons to half-finished playtests of things you’ve never heard of. Our history with TTRPGs is a love story, but one pockmarked with frustration. We found ourselves enjoying D&D 3.5’s vast character creation options, but wishing it focused more on  grounded characters and historically informed combat; being drawn in by Call of Cthulhu’s horror and existential dread, but disappointed in its investigation mechanics for actually getting the investigators to those moments of horrifying revelation; being intrigued by Monster of the Week’s juxtaposition of both normal and supernatural PCs (for horror and/or comedy), but finding its lack of character options and reliance on genre tropes a hindrance; being unable to find anything that would be good for a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. inspired TTRPG campaign. We eventually found the OSR movement and AD&D1e and 2e to be far closer to what we wanted on the medieval fantasy front, but we still had nothing on the modern horror or urban fantasy front, and Shadowrun is… Shadowrun.

So, with around 20 years of TTRPG experience between us, we set out to make the game we wanted a reality.

The story of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy’s creation really starts in late 2021, when Brandon asked me to help playtest a very early rough draft of an investigative horror game he thought up. Living isolated, impoverished, and unable to find work in England at the time, I readily agreed. Noticing that the game didn’t have a combat system and desperate to set my mind to something constructive in between tedious job applications, I offered to write a combat system for it. I soon had to use the last of my money to move back home to Louisiana where I eventually did find work despite a variety of health issues, and continued to work on Eureka as a system for our personal use.

As 2023 drew near, it became clear that my current job wasn’t going to be a permanent career, and I needed a fall back plan. Work towards making Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy a professional release began in earnest, with Brandon and I founding A.N.I.M. a few months later. It was initially set to go to Kickstarter in April of 2023, then May, then June, but each time we realized it just wasn’t ready. No one had ever heard of us, and we wanted to break into an industry and customer base increasingly financially hostile to any TTRPG that wasn’t D&D5e compatible. We needed to build an audience, and build a greater appreciation for independent and small-budget TTRPGs within the community at large.

Thanks to some assistance from one of the team members from Tuesday Knight Games (makers of Motherhship), the first beta copies went public in September of 2023 to a splash of instant (relative) success, and the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club was founded on Discord two months later, a community dedicated to buying, playing, and analyzing less well-known TTRPGs - which includes almost everything except Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.

Ash became friends with us through the book club, and after offering an increasing amount of assistance, joined the team proper in January of 2024, adding much needed copy-editing skills as well as another 15 years cumulative TTRPG experience.

The Kickstarter campaign for Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy launched on April 10th, 2024, was fully funded within 3 hours, and by the end of the campaign had reached a total of $15,455, 486% of the goal. That is where we are at now, working every day to put the finishing touches on the game and complete the stretch goals to the best of our ability before our tentative deadline of January 2025.

This is a far more ambitious project than a super-small team like ours should have attempted for our debut game, but with a mix of talent, luck, skill, and a whole lot of help, we have somehow managed to pull it off. We think the resulting game is a deep, robust, professional-quality TTRPG that provides a one-stop shop and extensive toolbox for any investigative or mystery game you’d like to run. A dark and moody noir, a classical British whodunnit, the lighthearted sleuthing hijinks of Scooby-Doo, Eureka does it all.  (You can also get the latest PDF for FREE for a limited time by joining the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club!)

Elegantly designed and thoroughly playtested, Eureka represents the culmination of three years of near-daily work from our team, as well as a lot of our own money. If you’re just now reading this and learning about Eureka for the first time, you missed the crowdfunding window unfortunately, but our Kickstarter page is still the best place to learn more about what Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy actually is, as that is where we have all the fancy art assets, the animated trailer, links to video reviews by podcasts and youtubers, and where we post regular updates on the status of our progress finishing the game and getting it ready for final release.

Beta Copies through the Patreon

If you want more than just status updates, going forward you can download regularly updated playable beta versions of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy and it’s adventure modules by subscribing to our Patreon at the $5 tier or higher. Subscribing to our patreon also grants you access to our patreon discord server where you can talk to us directly and offer valuable feedback on our progress and projects.

The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club

If you would like to meet the A.N.I.M. team and even have a chance to play Eureka with us, you can join the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club discord server. It’s also just a great place to talk and discuss TTRPGs, so there is no schedule obligation, but the main purpose of it is to nominate, vote on, then read, discuss, and play different indie TTRPGs. We put playgroups together based on scheduling compatibility, so it’s all extremely flexible. This is a free discord server, separate from our patreon exclusive one. https://discord.gg/7jdP8FBPes

Other Stuff

We also have a ko-fi and merchandise if you just wanna give us more money for any reason.

[the-weeping-dawn]

My Personal Wyll Mod List

Because he might be Larian's least favourite Origin Character, but at least someone gives him love. And this one needs sections (note: this is made by someone who only plays on PC, doesn't know if there's a console version and please remember to read descriptions and instructions.)

Cosmetics

Okay, there are a lot of options for Wyll restyling (and good ones at that!) but this is the list of mods I personally use! At it's core it changes his hair and starting equipment with add-ons for skin textures, camp oufit, Duke Ravengard...

And has compatability patches with many of the other major Wyll rework mods though Wyll's Devil form sadly seems to be a little spotty still so I'm less keen to sugest it until I try it in game again since I'm seeing some say it's back to good (Also the portrait add-on)

(Also Wyll's Devil Form could be here, I just need to confirm it being functional in patch 7 to give a larger rec. I do in spirit though)

Wyll's Bloodstone Eye

It has a few other options, but just makes the eye out of bloodstone as stated in dialouge.

THE DIALOUGE AND SCENE CHANGES TIME

I know Larian said they finally fixed the 'You got something to say' and 'Well Met' issue but I'll belive that when I'm paid to play without mods and see it myself since they've said they've fixed his greetings many times, and the 'Well Met' one as the only time it was any different.

....Changes dialouge forcing me to be harsher to him than I'd ever went to be.

He already has such a slow burn with no act 1 scene at all...Must there be a persuasion roll....

This one literally just changes a camera angle.

SOMETIMES SCENES EXIST THAT JUST END UP IN THE VOID BECAUSE OF BUGS THIS IS ONE OF THEM! Let Wyll be his fanboy self. He's so excited when he hears Jaheria even mention Minsc!

This is a whole additional scene. I think the first fanmade scene once that was possible.

[bivht]

Moon Sign in the Persona Charts Observations

-

Idk why but I’m obsessed with looking at moon signs. The moon sign traits are always the most noticeable to me

🎒People that have that look-at-me factor may have Leo moon in the moon pc or venus pc. If in Moon pc, they can attract attention just by breathing. With Venus pc it’s more like they have to be interacting, talking with another person for people to notice them. Because Venus is about relations. Both stand out in center positions.

🎒If someone’s moon sign is the same as your mercury sign in the moon/mercury/venus/mars pc, they understand each other quite well. The moon will appreciate the mercury’s way of expressing themselves and the mercury finds the moon familial and is comfortable around them. I have a lot of friends with this compatibility.

🎒If two people have the same moon sign in the mercury pc, they seem like a couple sorry. Their way of thinking is so similar. These are the people that can look at each other and know what the other one is thinking without saying anything. Their bond transcends the limitations of speech.

🎒Virgo moon in the mercury pc have to be the most respectful, grateful, polite people I’ve ever met. They’re good at handling and navigating through situations in a professional environment because they’re unbiased and “right place right time” appropriate sort of people. They have strong boundaries with their personal details and with physical contact and can be slow to trust people. They have a sort of perfect look to them. Not necessarily their appearance but more like their self expression. I notice a lot of them tend to be on the slimmer side. They tend to eat until comfortably full rather than stuffed. They don’t bite more than they can chew and don’t make promises they can’t keep. 10/10 respectable people.

🎒Trust an earth moon in the mercury pc/moon pc to give an honest review. They avoid using emotive words like “best” and “most” and instead take time to analyze the pros and cons whilst being respectful. They’re not gullible, not dramatic but realistic and true skeptics.

🎒Aries moon in the mercury pc/mars pc are so hot!!

🎒Not an astrology observation but people who lack these letters in their name—-> b,k,t,e,n,w,h,q,z are terrible at math for some reason. Or just very slow to learn math concepts. Even if you have one of these letters in your name, it has to be prominent, meaning: first letter, second letter, first vowel, last letter. This is more of an assumption so please let me know if it resonates.

🎒People with an abundance of air moons in the moon/mercury/venus/mars pc stare at people a LOT

🎒Air moons in mercury pc make for stimulating conversation, gossip, but are kind of detached. I wouldn’t go for deep convos with them unless they also have Fire and Water too.

🎒Earth moon in mercury pc = that friend that never lets anyone in their house

(but they’ve been to your house countless times)

🎒Virgo moon in mercury pc is another level of private especially when it comes to relationships. I swear more than scorpio moons. Most other moons will tell you who they have a crush on early. Virgo moon could be secretly pining for so long and then you find out they’ve already confessed to their crush whom you didn’t even know about and been together for a month. They also don’t like to talk about relationship problems with anyone other than their partner and don’t like people—>strangers/acquaintances asking about their relationship so yeah respect their boundaries.

🎒Sagittarius moon in mercury pc like to tease and provoke their partner. Sometimes they may like to make their partner jealous and they also get jealous easily. They know how to have fun, enjoy life and a big, hearty meal!! Big biters. They are definitely foodies haha. They can have adorably chubby cheeks bc they eat a lot unless they have fast metabolism. They pull funny faces. Lowkey the opposite of virgo moon.

🎒Taurus moon in mercury pc is also a foodie but the difference is they take time to appreciate each bite whereas sag just stuffs their face lmao a little too self rewarding but at least they’re having a good time

🎒Taurus, Sag, Cancer = ultimate foodies

🎒Most earth moons in mercury pc are so grateful, humble and down to earth especially virgo. Sag and pisces in mercury pc can come off as ‘out of touch’ as these signs are less comfortable in mercury (I forgot the word for it). I can imagine rich kids with sag/pisces moon in merc pc being insufferable yikes.

🎒Gemini moon in mercury pc is eccentric but in a charming way?

🎒Pisces moon in mercury pc are so “wrong time wrong place” people, it’s weirdly hilarious. They’re either the embodiment of TMI or so mysterious you hardly know anything about them

🎒Fire moons in the moon pc are so entertaining. They’re delivery is always hilarious bc they’re so dramatic and passionate. People are attracted to them like moths to a flame

🎒Scorpio moon in mercury pc and Aries moon in mars pc are scary as. Don’t want to be on their bad side. Scorpio anger is more of a silent, fatal, death stare whereas Aries is explosive, fuming anger. They’re fiercely loyal and protective of their loved ones but the down side is they can be biased; defending the person in the wrong sometimes

🎒Moon signs in the same element get along really well I.e. capricorns get along with virgo and taurus. Aries get along with Leo and sag. For example, same-element-moons in the mercury pc can be completely different people but understand each other so well. In mars pc, they have similar energy and hype each other up, they’re each other’s personal hype man lol

🎒I feel like signs with the same modality attract each other. For example sag moon and virgo moon in mercury pc (modality: mutable) both have such different beliefs and values yet they appreciate traits in the other that they lack and get along well as friends. For example virgo is professional and stoic, and sag is funny but their bond is built on mutual respect rather than similarities between each other. And also, one of my virgo moon in merc pc friend likes a lot of celebrities with sag moon in merc pc (can’t remember who, my bad).

🎒Gemini moons in moon pc think through their emotions rather than feel. They overanalyse social interactions more often than not

🎒Sometimes sag in mercury pc can be ungrateful. They always want more, more, more without showing gratitude, for example with food especially. Sometimes they need to sit back and smell the roses.

🎒Aquarius moon in the moon pc is really detached. Throw in a bit of Pisces and it’s just a whole unstable mess. In extreme cases, narcissism/serial killers/psychotism. I can imagine because at their worst, pisces is delusional, and aquarius has the ability to detach from any emotion including empathy.

🎒Aries moon in moon pc have self respect. They never say anything to belittle themselves. They’re honest and don’t appreciate pity and so they talk about their hardships in a normal tone (not a pitiful one). They’re also arguably the most hardworking people out there and you’ll never be bored around them once you get to know them.

🎒Capricorn moons have impeccable patience and they’re really so caring, parental like

🎒Capricorn/scorpio moon in Jupiter pc is so subtly powerful, I love them

🎒Scorpio moon in venus pc’s intense stare >>>>>>>>>>>>>

🎒Libra moon’s habit of copying their partners habits, speech patterns, fashion and interests is so cute. Matching couple outfits/bracelets etc. are their jam

🎒Cancer/Pisces moon in mars pc can get teary eyed when someone raises their voice at them. They’re also very comfortable to be around

🎒Libra moon in the mars pc is so chill like they just don’t give a shit

🎒Capricorn moon in the mars pc is really good at this ——-> 😐

stone faced hot mfs

🎒Leo moons are sooo funny especially moon/mars/jupiter pc

🎒Fire moons in the mars pc are a whole load of fun and dramatic

🎒Aries moon in mercury pc is really resilient and they rarely give up on their goals. Sag moon in mercury pc on the other hand just sometimes can’t be bothered. The most important thing for them is to have fun and be entertained. Leo is kind of a bit of both.

🎒Pisces moon in the moon pc like to vent to people and play the blame game before taking action and solving whatever problem. They’re also healing to be around and very empathetic.

🎒Taurus moon and gemini moon in moon pc get along quite well

🎒Virgo moons can be so naggy but it’s how they show their love

🎒Virgo moon in mercury/venus pc is the type to immediately wash their dishes after eating. Sag moon in mercury pc is the type to leave uncleaned dishes on the dining table after eating, then eat more in the middle of the night and so adding more dirty dishes to the table overnight and then the stack of dirty dishes continue to go neglected for a few days or even longer. They’d make for an interesting horrible roommate duo.

Also thank you so much for 700 followers!! I love you guys ❤️ Enjoy this post.

[beekeeperspicnic]

hi! i’m sorry if this question has been answered already or if it’s way too early in release to be asking, but i’d love to play the beekeeper’s picnic and was wondering if you have plans to release it on another platform? i only have a mac in terms of computers unfortunately, though i do also have a switch and ps4 if either of those are more likely than mac compatibility. worst case scenario i might be able to borrow my sister’s laptop to play, but i figured i might as well ask you first lol.

thanks and also congratulations on the release!!!

I'm definitely planning a Mac release! It's my priority now that the PC/Linux version is out, and I'm hoping it'll release in a few months.

I'm tentatively looking into a Switch release, but that'll probably be further in the future!

[alainbm]

Sleep Naked Mod

Update 1.15.0 Beta

1. The mod is compatible with the latest update of The Sims 4 (PC: 1.109.207.1020 / Mac: 1.109.207.1220) so there shouldn't be any issues.

2. Some codes got a minor update.

As always, if you encounter any bugs, don't hesitate to reach out. Your feedback helps make this mod even better!

***

DOWNLOAD BETA

(Early Access on October 17th. Public Access on October 31st)

***

[team-seraphic-official]

Thank you so much for supporting us as we create ExtraColonist! We are now officially the largest IWATEX mod and just hit 400 members on our Discord so there is an exciting reveal attached... Helios silhouettes!

Our patreons voted on what to reveal, and they wanted to see a teaser for our future crash-landed characters. Do note that there will be 5 main Helios, but only 4 are complete- that's how early you guys got us here! What do you think their augments and personalities are?

and don't worry, progress will be moving smoothly and faster than our first year from now on! We have a clear workflow and thorough mod loader created during this first year.

So let's see what we've been working on since we founded...

April 2024 to March 2025

Art

39 cutscenes

13 backgrounds

78 cards made

50 full character sprites made (multiple expressions each)

18 map sprites drawn and animated

125 emotes

9 character redesigns

4 characters discarded

7 sol accessories

19 celestial tier artworks

72 cards coded in

3 music tracks made

78 memes (internal)

Main menu extended background and logo change

Designed website and reveals template

2 trailers

Writing

Writing fully complete for the first 3 game years

Lore expansions

Full character outlines and documentations

All heart events outlined

New endings conceptualized

Alterations to existing events

Year 1 artbook

Coding

Custom gear capability

Pronouns can change with life stage

Childhood friend mechanic

Full compatibility with other mods

Death capability

Custom music capability for specified events and seasons

Characters can spawn in expeditions

Custom collectables

Custom pets

Pet aging mechanic

Custom map spots per season

Main menu revamp- scrolling capability and new images

Animated map sprites

Lowered memory usage

Load recources at start of game + custom loading scene

Expanded upon dating capability

Custom endings and backgrounds capability and in gallery

Custom credits

Character can optionally age past 20 capability

Disable mods without uninstall (patreon request)

Indicate which mods are active on savefiles

Most remaining exoloader removed and replaced

Complete codebase refactor error reporting and better performance

Custom locations

All vanilla characters, cards, locations, collectables, and jobs overwritten

Collectables scroll bar implimented

Seasonal background changes

Non-windows capability

Sol sprite editing

Random number within range exoscript extension

63 cards coded in

All year 10 characters coded in

Year 10 fully coded with 11 started

BUGS FIXED

Overridden characters stop becoming a woman

Fixed week not being found in saves

Fix for spaghetti characters on slower PC

Fixed animation speed on slower PC

Prevent invalid songs from breaking code

Fixed anne not showing up

Fixed some invalid peri choices & sprites

Fixed wrong use of quotations being used in dialogue

Other

Seraphic LLC registered

400 Discord members

510 unique mod downloads

36 nexus endorsements

[andmaybegayer]

Hello. So what's the deal with computer chips? Let's say, for example, that I wanted to build a brand new Sega Genesis. Ignoring firmware and software, what's stopping me from dissecting their proprietary chips and reverse-engineering them to make new ones? It's just electric connections and such inside, isn't it? If I match the pin ins and outs, shouldn't it be easy? So why don't people do it?

The answer is that people totally used to do this, there's several examples of chips being cloned and used to build compatible third-party hardware, the most famous two examples being famiclones/NESclones and Intel 808X clones.

AMD is now a major processor manufacturer, but they took off in the 70's by reverse-engineering Intel's 8080 processor. Eventually they were called in to officially produce additional 8086 chips under license to meet burgeoning demand for IBM PC's, but that was almost a decade later if I remember correctly.

There were a ton of other 808X clones, like the Soviet-made pin-compatible K1810VM86. Almost anyone with a chip fab was cloning Intel chips back in the 80's, a lot of it was in the grey area of reverse engineering the chips.

Companies kept cloning Intel processors well into the 386 days, but eventually the processors got too complicated to easily clone, and so only companies who licensed designs could make them, slowly reducing the field down to Intel, AMD, and Via, who still exist! Via's CPU division currently works on the Zhaoxin x86_64 processors as part of the ongoing attempts to homebrew a Chinese-only x86 processor.

I wrote about NES clones a while ago, in less detail, so here's that if you want to read it:

Early famiclones worked by essentially reverse-engineering or otherwise cloning the individual chips inside an NES/famicom, and just reconstructing a compatible device from there. Those usually lacked any of the DRM lockout chips built into the original NES, and were often very deeply strange, with integrated clones of official peripherals like the keyboard and mouse simply hardwired directly into the system.

These were sold all over the world, but mostly in developing economies or behind the Iron Curtain where official Nintendo stuff was harder to find. I had a Golden China brand Famiclone growing up, which was a common famiclone brand around South Africa.

Eventually the cost of chip fabbing came down and all those individual chips from the NES were crammed onto one cheap piece of silicon and mass produced for pennies each, the NES-on-a-chip. With this you could turn anything into an NES, and now you could buy a handheld console that ran pirated NES game for twenty dollars in a corner store. In 2002. Lots of edutainment mini-PC's for children were powered by these, although now those are losing out to Linux (and now Android) powered tablets a la Leapfrog.

Nintendo's patents on their hardware designs expired throughout the early 2000's and so now the hardware design was legally above board, even if the pirated games weren't. You can still find companies making systems that rely on these NES chips, and there are still software houses specializing in novel NES games.

Why doesn't this really happen anymore? Well, mostly CPU's and their accoutrements are too complicated. Companies still regularly clone their competitors simpler chips all the time, and I actually don't know if Genesis clones exist, it's only a Motorola 68000k, but absolutely no one is cloning a modern Intel or AMD processor.

The die of a Motorola 68000 (1979)

A classic Intel 8080 is basically the kind of chip you learn about in entry level electrical engineering, a box with logic gates that may be complicated, but pretty straightforwardly fetches things from memory, decodes, executes, and stores. A modern processor is a magic pinball machine that does things backwards and out of order if it'll get you even a little speedup, as Mickens puts it in The Slow Winter:

I think that it used to be fun to be a hardware architect. Anything that you invented would be amazing, and the laws of physics were actively trying to help you succeed. Your friend would say, “I wish that we could predict branches more accurately,” and you’d think, “maybe we can leverage three bits of state per branch to implement a simple saturating counter,” and you’d laugh and declare that such a stupid scheme would never work, but then you’d test it and it would be 94% accurate, and the branches would wake up the next morning and read their newspapers and the headlines would say OUR WORLD HAS BEEN SET ON FIRE. You’d give your buddy a high-five and go celebrate at the bar, and then you’d think, “I wonder if we can make branch predictors even more accurate,” and the next day you’d start XOR’ing the branch’s PC address with a shift register containing the branch’s recent branching history, because in those days, you could XOR anything with anything and get something useful, and you test the new branch predictor, and now you’re up to 96% accuracy, and the branches call you on the phone and say OK, WE GET IT, YOU DO NOT LIKE BRANCHES, but the phone call goes to your voicemail because you’re too busy driving the speed boats and wearing the monocles that you purchased after your promotion at work. You go to work hung-over, and you realize that, during a drunken conference call, you told your boss that your processor has 32 registers when it only has 8, but then you realize THAT YOU CAN TOTALLY LIE ABOUT THE NUMBER OF PHYSICAL REGISTERS, and you invent a crazy hardware mapping scheme from virtual registers to physical ones, and at this point, you start seducing the spouses of the compiler team, because it’s pretty clear that compilers are a thing of the past, and the next generation of processors will run English-level pseudocode directly.

Die shot of a Ryzen 5 2600 core complex (2019)

Nowadays to meet performance parity you can't just be pin-compatible and run at the right frequency, you have to really do a ton of internal logical optimization that is extremely opaque to the reverse engineer. As mentioned, Via is making the Zhaoxin stuff, they are licensed, they have access to all the documentation needed to make an x86_64 processor, and their performance is still barely half of what Intel and AMD can do.

Companies still frequently clone each others simpler chips, charge controllers, sensor filters, etc. but the big stuff is just too complicated.

[mingos-commodoreblog]

Clock Signal 2025-02-26 - A latency-hating emulator of: the Acorn Electron and Archimedes, Amstrad CPC, Apple II/II+/IIe and early Macintosh, Atari 2600 and ST, ColecoVision, Enterprise 64/128, Commodore Vic-20 and Amiga, MSX 1/2, Oric 1/Atmos, early PC compatibles, Sega Master System, Sinclair ZX80/81 and ZX Spectrum.

[pspkisser]

⚙️ This laptop was saved from obsolescence! [10 mins of read]

Hello!! i am making this post here to raise awareness for PC and laptop upgrades, and how it should motivate you to do that same thing to preserve yours for longer or to give it the power you need! this will feature my history with mine, as well as the steps i took to be able to make him breathe life better! this is the story of his journey, and how it went to this current day.

his name is samuel, he is an asus fx570u and i bought him back in september of 2018 after i turned 13! he was brand new during that time and priced at 800 euros, offering only 6 gb of memory and an HDD as his specs. however he does have an 8th gen core i5 as his cpu and a geforce 1050 ti for his gpu. for something marketed as a gaming pc, it's pretty low and it wouldn't allow him to run fast enough, especially for highly demanding software and causing some compatibility issues. it wasn't severe, but as i was stuck with an hdd, that meant operating systems would run pretty slow on it, also leading to long software loading times. this is made worse by the fact that its bundled system, windows 10, isn't designed to work efficiently on hdd in the first place, but at least that means i have my hands on a windows key to be able to use some windows exclusive programs..

i mainly used him to be able to use advanced video editing software and customize the games i have on it for my own taste, because back then i loved making youtube videos and it was a passion i've had for years until i've partially retired from it. i rarely bought games on it and instead opted for free-to-plays, and overall had a good time with him.

unfortunately within only 3 months, his HDD broke down and i sent him to technicians for them to replace it with another one. it was a minor accident i've had but it formatted all my data, even though it didn't matter much since i uploaded most of it to the internet. i just had to be gentle with him by trying to not moving him around too much to stop that issue from persisting... but it was still low-end in terms of system performance. i finally used him for 1 year straight before moving on to a tower pc, feeling tired about his slowness and believing i couldn't do much about it.

i used that other (unnamed) pc for almost a year, starting from 2020! they seemed to work better since it had windows 7, but embarrassingly enough that version itself stopped receiving official security updates months before i started using it, even though i was careful while accessing the internet with it. its performances were also low, but didn't really matter much since i didn't take so much advantage from the power of samuel. suddenly, i had the foolish idea of installing windows 8.1 on the latter to try to deal with the performance issues on 10, but it led to even more compatibility issues since the drivers i used were meant to be for 10 only. only by early 2021, i got win10 back on him and started using him again to get more power again.

so the low-end performance persisted for very long. back then i never knew how to upgrade pcs, so i was only used to replacing devices with others which wasn't cost-efficient. after realizing i used windows for well over 10 years, i had the idea of switching to a mac and as a result, for xmas 2021 i got myself a cute yellow silicon imac, who goes by the name of sarah! but switching to macos posed new serious challenges, such as getting used to the lack of windows compatibility and the missing features that i was used to for a long time. most of the creativity i did with her was drawings with firealpaca and krita, and cgi with blender, which wasn't really much. still, she is pretty glossy and also powerful for many of the tasks i'm performing with her. originally i also intended to sell samuel, but that never happened (i low regret that decision so much i swear).

in late 2022, samuel's performance apparently had had a big hit... he now takes approximately 20 seconds to open any program and it seemed to me like something was wrong with him. at that time i also gained interest in linux since it's a libre OS capable of much more flexibility, essentially allowing it to revive old PCs. i finally decided to get linux mint to work on him via a dual boot with win11 (what was i thinking when i "upgraded" him from 10?). the performance seemed a little better from then, but programs still took very long to open. for that reason, he had often been collecting dust as he finally became unusable.

finally we've reached 2023. this is the year i decided to take on tearing down devices to learn how to examine problems inside of them. after checking samuel's performance again, i noticed that his HDD was having extremely low writing and reading speeds compared to my tower, which made me feel disappointed. but that's when i finally decided i could be able to replace his hard disk with an ssd, a new generation which is more durable, faster, quieter and energy-efficient...

but i still had a good wait until it was possible. suddenly with my money, i found an ssd which only costed €30, and it made me happy that this would be a quick way of healing up samuel! so i rushed to get it, and finally opened him to prepare everything... unfortunately, his keyboard has to be lifted up in the process, and there are flex cables connected between it and the motherboard. but taking out the hard disk thankfully only requires a few steps; removing some screws, then inserting the SSD inside of it. after that i quickly put linux mint back into him. SO SPLENDID...

for only the price of a high budget indie game, now he can open programs very fast, close to how fast sarah can do, and just about any task works perfectly well on him with way less bugs! thanks to that fast upgrade he's become viable for daily drives again, even though i don't have other desks suitable for pcs which makes me less motivated to use him. really wish id be able to since the architecture he has (x64) means he has a lot more software he's able to handle natively...

but then, i hadn't upgraded his ram. i said before that he only had 6 gb of it, and that meant he could only work with a few programs before becoming bloated. and as i like doing power tasks on him, that obviously causes problems. so one day, i went to a pc part store out of curiosity, and became shocked when i found small ram carts that could be compatible with my laptop. after some talk with the seller, i bought 2 ddr4 carts each containing 8 gb and clocked at 2666 mhz, more than double of what i used to have. after that it was time to take on a challenge to be able to insert them myself.

when the seller asked me if i needed assistance to have the carts inserted into my laptop, i giggled internally because of my past stories with learning how to open devices and trying to troubleshoot or modify them internally. i obviously declined it which saved me money, but also meant i had to do it all myself. after an hour of painful manipulations which required me to take out the entire motherboard from samuel, while that next step was also difficult i was finally able to insert the carts into it, before placing all his components back into place. and after such a long time of waiting...

i've finally done it!

Samuel is feeling very well right now!! despite his cpu and gpu dating from over 5 years, now he can do even more tasks at a time, while also being able to read them faster, a massive improvement compared to when it was stuck with an hdd and only 6 gb of ram. i'm guessing those low specs were for the purpose of saving manufacturing costs, but until you'd find use for the components that you'd remove, they'd end up becoming waste. and with a free os like linux mint, it adds up to an even more optimized experience than windows 10, which comes with so many unwanted stuff and can't be customized very well.

have you had a similar story to mine? did that pose you challenges? i took over 40 minutes to write this entire piece of text, but it should at least be very well detailed! on the best case scenario i hope it would inspire others to do some research on upgrading PCs to preserve their lives and especially save costs. Thank you for reading the entirety of it, don't hesitate reblogging it if you think it would interest your own audience! peace for all of you 💙