Model Recommendations for Each Platform

[Family Computer]

I am interested in getting more knowledge about retro computers. I was hoping we could get some model recommendations for each type of computer, and I can update this first post with all the findings.

Maybe something like: Minimum Recommended, Overall Recommendation, and Rare/Overkill Recommendation

Anyway I will list some platforms and add the information in here...



Amiga

Apple II

Atari 8-BIT

Atari ST

Commodore 64

FM Towns

Macintosh Classic

MSX

PC8801

X68000

[AB Positive]

Amiga:

Ideally you want an a1200 with a decent hard drive and some FastRAM which allows you to use the wonders of "WHDLoad" - a way to play disk images right off the hard drive. No swapping 13 disks for Scumm games!

Barring that, if one is like me and can only find an a500, 2MB FastRAM, 1MB chip and an external hard drive should do most of the heavy lifting. If you can find an accelerator too you're golden.



Atari 8-bit

This one kind of comes down to preference. However you get there though you want a SIO port and at least 64K of ram.

The sleek and slim 600XL can be modded up to 64K with three solder wires and a couple 4464 ram chips - easily found for around $2-3 bucks a chip.

800XL is a wider model compared to the 600XL, has a few extra ports and 64K standard. This model is considered to have the best keyboard compared to the XE series. Very easy to mod up to 1MB RAM, RGB video, etc...

65XE - a 64K machine in a smaller form factor, and looks much like an Atari ST. Pretty easy to mod but might want to consider replacing the keyboard.

130XE - 128K in the XE series and can be modded to the moon. Still - might want to replace that keyboard...


I personally like an 600 or 800 XL series, but you definitely want a SIO2PC solution so you can use software to load disk images right to the computer. Very cool.

[Soviet Conscript]

Amiga - like AB said your best bet is probibly the 1200 solely because with WHDload you can pretty much play any Amiga game includeing the AGA stuff it also has a pcmcia slot for wireless internet.

you will get by just fine though with a A500 and 1meg ram. most games were made for this setup

C64 - well, there basicly all the same. there were only a few games that were made for the C128 and nothing that was stellar.

i prefer the C64c, its the c64 i grew up with. most people dislike its look since it lost that iconic breadbox form factor. i beleive they are identical though as far as specs and compatibility

Apple II - my vote goes to the Apple IIgs. vitually 100% compatible with all the older apple II software and it plays its own apple IIgs games. very solid and easy to upgrade computer.

macintosh - mac SE/30 it has a b/w monitor but very fast and expandible

[kedawa]

I'm not sure, but I think the C64c may be slightly inferior to the C64 because it uses a cheaper version of the audio chip, or it isn't socketed, or something like that. It uses different versions of the SID, VIC, and I/O chips, at any rate.

[Arkhan]

Amiga: An A4000 fully tricked out since it will do anything you want ever. If you are poor (*cough* smart *cough*), an A1200 properly equipped with harddisk, OS3.9, and ram expansion is equally capable. WHDLoad = <3 from there on out. The A4000 suurreeeee is sexy though.

Apple II: The IIGS, like Soviet said. There is no need for anything else!

Atari 8-BIT: 800XL is pretty much the good one IMHO. Its sturdy, has a nice feel, and is expandable.

Atari ST: ew!

Commodore 64: A C128 w/ two 1571 drives will give you full range over everything Commodore related. This includes the extra RAM to have SID music in the Ultima games. Plus, the design of it is better than the breadbin, and the 1571s look and work better than a 1541.

FM Towns: Isn't there just the one model?

Macintosh Classic: Frig. I can't even remember. How classic do you mean by classic? The all in one clunkerboxes?

MSX: If you can't find an Panasonic MSX Turbo R FS-A1GT cheap, you want either a Philips NMS8250 (European) or a Sony HB-F1XD/XDJ/XDJ II/XV (Japanese)/Sanyo Wavy PHC70FD. These will play the widest range of games. The Euro models require an MSX-MUSIC or MSX-AUDIO cartridge to have FM sound.

PC8801: Get a PC9800 instead!

X68000: The X68030 model. Its got the fastest CPU and RAM, and looks cool as hell.

I'm not sure, but I think the C64c may be slightly inferior to the C64 because it uses a cheaper version of the audio chip, or it isn't socketed, or something like that. It uses different versions of the SID, VIC, and I/O chips, at any rate.

It has an 8580 SID instead of a 6581 SID, which has some changes (fixes) that make digitized sfx from the 6581 era sound quiet.

Its actually better than the regular breadbin in general though.

[Jorpho]

Didn't the IIGS have a non-standard serial port? Rather challenging to get anything done with an Apple II without a serial port, no?

[Ed Oscuro]

X68000

X68000: The X68030 model. Its got the fastest CPU and RAM, and looks cool as hell.

I'm not aware of any gaming software that makes use of it. The XVI with regular 5.25" floppies is all most people will need: 2MB RAM at the least, 10 / 16 MHz switch for faster software. There are some games that would definitely have benefited from the higher specs of the 68030 and more RAM, like Gunship I believe, or Geograph Seal, or whatever other games were out there. The choppy nature of these games seems inherent, and you shouldn't be able to boost the resolution.

Myself...hmm, I have a Pro (desktop format, expandable), disassembled X68000 Ace HD (black) with busted monitor, and an XVI.

As Blue Lander also said recently, a lot of the X68000 software consists of arcade ports. Not a lot of original software, though it has the legendary Akumajo Dracula from '93 and Nemesis '90 Kai. It may be best just to go for arcade PCBs if one is looking for specific games that got arcade releases, depending on the price of the PCB. You'd probably save some money, on the whole, going with X68000 given how ubiquitous and cheap some ports of specialized arcade games are, i.e. Space Harrier or Thunder Blade; of course controllers are usable across many different games, games like Pac-Land have their own dedicated controller but you shouldn't have to use them and it's still a money and especially savings over arcade setups. Konami games tend to be more expensive, but so are the PCBs.

Funny story: After paying out the nose for the XVI, my source then comes up with an X68030 in like condition. Of course he probably had no idea it was coming, so...

FM Towns:
There's a whole ton of configurations to choose from here.

FM Towns Marty 1 & 2: I'm told the difference is just cosmetic. Used as a home console. Might not be compatible with all software; reportedly you may need a floppy drive for some games.

FM Towns Car Marty: Used for a GPS system, but can be pressed into service as a close analogue to a Marty. Can be used on a regular television with a special cable. Has ports on the back for floppy and keyboard (mouse as well I think). Seems overhyped due to its supposed rarity without promising new features. I like the form factor though (integrated carrying handle!).

FM Towns II - seems more like a complete hardware rev, i.e. more powerful processor and so on. Mine seems to be a small '95-era Macintosh-form slim "monitor pedal" desktop, and a monitor to match that. Others include a "classic Mac" all-in-one form factor machine with integrated monitor. Should be compatible with everything of note. I haven't started testing / playing my software on that system though.

Note: I have seen TV tuners for both X68000 and FM Towns. They may have some use for playing on a television.

Keep in mind that the FM Towns series is also home to a lot of arcade ports, so if that is your focus Blue Lander's notes about the uselessness of such a system applies again with MAME and superguns around. After the enthusiasm wears off, what do you have that you can't get elsewhere? The system shines with RPGs and adventure games though - not the H-game material the system is infamous for, but ports of famous games from Lucasarts, Origin Systems, and some others. It's got the best version of Loom, some Ultima games with CD voice acting (!) and other fun stuff. Ultima Underworld (I think both of them) adds a FPS element. Not too shabby, but it seems only sellers who don't know what they have will let these titles go cheaply.

Many of the arcade ports run better on original hardware. Hishou Zame (Flying Shark or Sky Shark) has amazingly bad video modes on a TV. Raiden (as Raiden Densetsu) is squeezed into a smaller space than normal. You've got craptastic CD music in most games that's either arcade plus echo, or "enhanced:" hardly beyond the quality of an X68000 with Roland synthesizer plugged in, and usually far worse than arcade original (although I think that Blandia fares pretty well on FM Towns). On the other hand, awesome music remixes seem to be the only saving grace for Galaxy Force II. Still, the music was worth the entry fee IMO.

I still love the FM Towns games in general - nicest game artwork available outside of game flyers and the original game cabinets, for instance. It has a fairly beefy CPU as well; Ving, CRI, and whoever was putting out Taito ports seemed to put a good amount of resources into programming for this system, and they also should've had a little extra over the 68000 to play with.

Mac Classic
So many models to choose from - find games first, then think about a model. If it's a non-Apple II-line game, you should be able to make do with the '95-era Macintosh Performas or similar running System 7.6.1, which is about the time they switched to the PPC. I have about three or four Macs from that era. For Macintosh IIc (maybe up to IIe?) there is also the system-on-a-chip that plugs into the Processor Direct Slot on some systems. I don't have one of those, unfortunately.

[Volcanon]

For macs -

OS6 - Mac IIfx
OS7 - Early powermacs or a quadra
OS9 - The G3 iMacs are really good machines and dirt cheap. Otherwise the G3 towers.

[Volcanon]

The iMacs have also got USB, so you can use modern printers and memory sticks.

Getting data on-off a mac without a cdrom is a turbo pain in the butt. Do you really want to mess with floppies? Those buggers failed constantly.

[ubikuberalles]

I'll just touch on a few:

Atari 8-bit: Can't go wrong with the 800XL.
Atari ST - I prefer the 1040 STE although I'm not familiar with all the ST models.
Apple II - I like the Apple IIgs the best.

[Flack]

Here's my own two cents on a Commodore 64/128 setup. I'm not the authority on the matter, this is just my opinion.

Need: Computer, Monitor, Floppy Disk Drive, Joystick.
Highly Recommended: Fast Load Cartridge, second disk drive.
Unnecessary: Cassette Drive (Datasette), Modem, Printer.

Computer: I'll narrow it down to 4 machines: C64 (the original bread box), C64c (the white version), C128, and the portable (luggable) SX-64. The C64 bread box and the C64c are essentially the same machine. All peripherals are interchangable. There are slight internal differences in sound chips and trust me, I have a hard time hearing them. Unless you have both machines side by side you probably wouldn't know and it's even less likely that you'll care. The C128 is 100% backwards compatible, plus it can run 128 software. I believe there are around two dozen C128-specific games, and since there are something like 20,000 C64 games, it's really not a big deal for me. Some people like the shape of the 128 more but I've yet to find a used one with all of its keys (not sure why that was such a problem). Then there's the SX-64 which is good if space is a concern, although you'll be doing everything on a 7" screen.

Disk Drive: There were a lot of 3rd party disk drives released for the Commodore and I don't think any of them are 100% compatible. You really want a 1541 or a 1571. 1571s are built slightly different and, as a result, don't have the alignment problems the 1541s did. If you plan on copying many disks you'll want two drives, and to hook up two 1571s you flip a dip switch and to hook up two 1541s you have to disassemble the drive and cut solder traces.

Joystick: Any Atari 2600 compatible stick will work, including a Sega Genesis pad.

Monitor: Any Composite monitor will work. Commodore monitors have fantastic pictures, but you can run it into your flat screen TV, too.

Fast Load Cartridge: (Short Version) Commodore drives are slow. Fast Load cartridges make them go about 7x faster. My favorite is Epyx's FastLoad, but there are dozens to choose from. Some of the other models add other features like freezing games, editing memory, etc. All of them add shortened disk commands; for example, instead of having to type LOAD "PAC-MAN" ,8,1, with fastLoad you can just type %P*. Instead of having to type LOAD "$" ,8 and then LIST to get a disk's directory, you can simply type $. Much easier for new people to learn and it'll save you a lot of typing.

As for the unnecessary stuff, the Commodore Cassette drive is even slower than the floppy drive. Some games came with turbo loaders that sped things along but I don't think any of them were as fast as a simple disk drive with a FastLoad cart. The C64/128 has a cartridge port so between that and a disk drive, a Datasette is pointless. Unless you're really hardcore you won't need a modem or a printer, either.

Ideal Setup:

Computer: C64/C64c/C128/SX64
Drive: 1571, then 1541
Monitor: Any
Accessories: Joystick, FastLoad Cart

---

Two additional suggestions for "power users".

The first is JiffyDOS. JiffyDOS is a DOS replacement for the Commodore that involves burning eproms and soldering and installing chips and all kinds of fun. It's better and faster and probably not worth the money or effort for someone just getting into the Commodore. I know several people here have it installed. I don't and I get by just fine. If you get a Commodore setup and in five years find its OS limiting, you might look into JiffyDOS.

The other is a 1541 Ultimate, which I do own. It's a "disk drive" that uses SD cards for storage and reads/writes D64 images (the format used by most Commodore emulators). It has definitely replaced the x1541 family of cables as the quickest and easiest way to convert real disks to virtual disk images (and back). It's also awesome for downloading D64 disk images and playing them on a real 64. They're expensive ($200? More?), but I don't know anyone who bought one who regrets it. Again, if you're just getting into the 64 it's overkill, but I can hardly see owning a 64 setup these days without one, especially if you are converting disks back and forth.

[Jorpho]

What about a modded C64 DTV?

[Flack]

What about a modded C64 DTV?

I would put it far down my list of "model recommendations". From what I understand approximately 25% of games don't work, plus there's a lot of work involved in making the system. I'd consider it a novelty more than a serious system, and certainly wouldn't use one as my primary system. That being said I wouldn't mind having one someday just to play with the new 256 color mode.