Quoting: EikeNothing compared to the "chewing gum" keyboard of the Sinclair (ZX 81 or Spectrum, not sure anymore)...!

The original Spectrum had the “dead flesh” board. Later versions had an improved one with plastic keycaps. I believe Sir Clive actually held patents on rubber-sprung keyboards, and gathered massive licencing fees from the likes of Dell in the '90s. His own company's efforts, being early, were pretty awful though.

The ZX81... oh, dear. It was a keycap-less membrane, marketed as “touch sensitive”. I guess if you “touched” it with a hammer...

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Quoting: GuestSteam clients get the exclusivity of the Linux version, it seems DRM-free players are supposed to be happy with Windows support only, cf. the itch.io store page [External Link].

The Steam version is DRM-free. I just checked. In fact, if anything, it seems to run slightly better without Steam in the background.

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Quoting: wvstolzingas far as I can remember, the original keyboards on those devices were pretty awful, with thick springs under each key (*not* buckling spring style, just a straight spring that the keycap bounces on) with ridiculously long 'action', and no real sense of feedback.

Eh, they were okay compared to the competition at the time. I mean, you wouldn't expect a cheap home computer built to a price to have a keyboard as good as a much higher-priced IBM PC built for daily 9-5 use by professional typists. If you compare them to cheap modern rubber-dome boards - which is more realistic - they're really not bad.

Quoting: slaapliedjeBut then the c64 is one of those that I didn't grow up with and wondered why they only have two arrow keys with modifiers to go the opposite direction... it's terrible. I grew up with the Atari 8bit, which had proper arrow keys :P

I didn't have one either, but I'm told by people who did that they got used to it and the use of the Shift key became second-nature. The Sinclair Spectrum had linear cursor keys which attracted a lot of criticism at the time, but they were actually very similar to the Vim-like HJKL layout that's so popular these days. It's all about what you're used to.

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It's kind of cute, but you can tell something's “off” a mile away. I wouldn't be quite as harsh as Nanobang, but “kitsch” is a better description than “retro”. The Checkmate A1500 [External Link], inspired by the good-looking Amiga 3000, is a more sensible choice (although personally, I'd rather have a 4000T [External Link]; the guy behind the Checkmate says he went for the 3000 because it's so hard to get any kind of desktop case these days).

If we're going early '80s Commodore though, I'd rather have one that looked like a CBM-II [External Link] or 610.

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Quoting: elmapulfree is still expensive considering the crap emulator its bundled with.
hell i saw windows users complaining about the performance of that thing with an geforce 1070 , and i dont know if they fixed it already if they provide an crap support like that for windows users, imagine on linux.
get the rom and play elsewhere, free is still expensive considering you will need an expensive machine to use their emulator.

I don't know... I kind of like it. I mean, it's not the most featureful emulator in the world, and it's ridiculously bloated, but the whole “virtual bedroom” thing is a bit of fun, and it's not going to be too intimidating for casual users. Performance seems fine here on my 960.

All that said, I still think a non-proprietary emulator is a better bet for features and performance. But for non-technically-minded fans of the Megadrive who just want a quick nostalgia hit through Steam (or a console), it could have been worse.

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Well, I'm still pretty pleased with my 960. Mind you I got it for free, which gives it an infinite price/performance ratio. Beat that! :grin:

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Quoting: RFSharpeAs someone who bought a used Commodore 64 in December 1985 ($300) and still has the original "Programmer's Reference Guide" (400+ pages)

Maybe other British kids of the '80s can help me with this... I don't think the C64 came with the PRG over here. I certainly remember leafing through friends' Commodore manuals and thinking they weren't a patch on Steven Vickers's excellent Sinclair books, but having read the PRG since, it's actually not bad. I've also a vague recollection of one of my mates buying a copy.

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As someone who was around in '84, the first thing that jumped out of the screen at me was the proportionally-spaced font. Luxury! :grin:

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Can't say I've ever found writing ISOs to USB much of a hardship (heck, I still like to keep a copy of SystemRescueCD handy... on CD; you never know when it might turn out to be your only option), but anything that makes life easier is always welcome.

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Hey, that looks pretty good. I'll have to see if I can pick up a copy... for my PS3, because there's no way my machine's emulating it at 60fps.

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