Unfortunately it looks like - judging by the comments on the video for it - the llama was made by one person who has done one production run and further production is not promised
@@duncanstyles133 I hope they do! The retro scene could always do with more ways to easily get into playing old games. Plus, this uses ATX power not AT, so you don't have to find a reliable 30-40 year old power supply.
Your vid here played right after the latest LGR where you made an audio appearance. One of the last things he said was dongle then the first thing you mention here is dongle. Perfect! 😂
Weirdly enough when I saw him tweet it I had sent him a DM about both doing dongles in the same week and didn't know I was actually in the episode - very briefly! (Dave)
As a 55 year old gamer who's been playing games from the start (C64), I don't think we as the older generation give enough applause to the newer games like Fortnite. When I started playing Fortnite I knew nothing but just playing the game made me realise what I'd been missing. Don't get me wrong, I love Doom and all my retro games but Fortnite is something else. OK it took me a long time to gain the skills needed but I'm glad I did persevere with the game. It's given me so much love. Wonderful game.
I watch my sons and their friends play Fortnite, and rather than want to join in, I disappear to my computer room, start my C64 (breadbin of course), and load Way of the Exploding Fist II...and the legend really does continue...
Back in the 80's (about 1984) I worked at a computer and electric typewriter retailer. The electronics engineer made his own dongles to pirate software. He just used a multimeter to probe the dongle, figure out what it was doing to the signals sent to it (occasionally he would have to probe the computer port itself). Then just get a compatible serial or parallel conector, and use various componets (mainly resistors) to replicate the voltages and signals the software was looking for. He mostly had to do this for the Apple II computers on display and in the workshop, and some early PC's. Clever bloke. He also built a simple interface on Veroboard for my 48K Spectrum, soldered to the motherboard, that allowed it to give out an AV signal.
That Doom video has been in my feed for weeks, gonna have to check it out. Also saw an article that Sony had to yank the doom remaster due to it having the same SKU as the original ps4 doom release, luckily I downloaded it for free a few weeks ago 😉
Problem with the Vortex module is that while it's cheap the delivery from the suppliers costs as much as the unit itself. You could always include an AGP slot and PCI-E slot with jumper to switch between them. PCI-E 1 lane cards are available brand new from the same supplier as the Vortex module.
I'd say Wolfenstein 3D was the one that really changed things, Doom certainly took that wow factor and amplified it by more than W3D but I can remember working at computer factory as a teen and someone loaded up W3D on a 386 and the factory stopped! everyone just huddled round the compaq systempro and we were all just in awe! Doom, and then I think Quake showed once the genie was out the bottle, it was exponential as how it grew.
The MiSTer doesn't really have a typical FPGA implementation of 486, it runs a port of dos-box emulator. I have seen an R-Pi implementation of a voodoo card, however
As I understand the Vortex SOM is limited to a single ISA and PCI-E 1 lane. The ISA channel is taken up by the onboard sound and so it's not possible to include an extra ISA slot. I guess it would have been possible to not have on board sound and have an ISA slot instead. I believe that converting PCI-E 1 lane is relatively easy to go to AGP but it's not possible (or easy) to go to PCI. I think AGP is a good choice since there a lot of AGP cards and possible to get Voodoo cards. I was lucky enough to get one of these boards, but given the difficulty of building these I don't think that Eivind will build any more. However, he does have a new project TinyLlama 3 which is a return to the very small form factor.
Ugh. Been there. I still have one that my band mates didn't know was there, and managed to snap the USB plug off of. Required some repair and a bunch of electrical tape to avoid losing my "right" to use the software I paid for. Eff DRM.
Yeah Dave all the interesting PCI cards are super expensive nowadays, from nVidia the Riva, TNT, TNT2, or from 3DFX all the VooDoo3 and 4 series, crazy expensive, ATI Radeons all the same. I would had go Micro ATX with AGP PCI and ISA 😅
Re: GUS and Voodoo are not essential -- This is absolutely correct. The original Voodoo was not a very capable card. It was really more of a proof-of-concept and tech demo than a viable product. By the time you had enough CPU power to run the games where you wanted accelerated 3D graphics, you just about had enough CPU power to software-render the graphics as well as the Voodoo 1 did. The Voodoo 2 was better, but it was also getting into the Windows 95 gaming era, and you had other options. 3dfx came into its own with the Voodoo 3, which at the time made all the difference in the world. But now you're spoiled for choice, so unless you really want a Voodoo because it's a Voodoo.... You're better off with soft rendering on a faster CPU (since you can always just use a faster CPU now), or any available GL/DX card in Windows. As for the GUS, it was vital for a very niche crowd for a very short time. It's desirable for its legendary status, but it's not a very useful card to have. Any of them. They're not great at DOS gaming, unless the game _specifically_ supports GUS -- and many of them only "support" GUS as yet another generic sound card, not as the unique hardware synthesis engine that it was. It's not a great Windows sound card either. If you are living in the early 90s, have a slow PC, and are a rabid demoscene, MOD, or MIDI fan, then it's a godsend. If you're living in 2024, get an AWE if you want hardware synth. Otherwise, get anything that has SB Pro support under DOS (if you care about DOS), and 16-bit 44kHz under Windows (if you care about Windows.) These are both vanity hardware options for those of us that lived through a period where they were The Card To Have, and have very little practical relevance for someone who just wants to run retro software today.
I would like an FPGA based Win9x capable system. Maybe multiple FPGA's for the different components as well. Small one for Sound and I/O, and two beefy ones for CPU and Graphics. As Voodoo 3 3000 has been fully emulated, I'm guessing it may well be possible? Maybe have sockets for the FPGA's so you can swap out different modules? Unsure as to how it would work, be very interesting though. Or how about an FPGA PCIE card you can fit in your current system which emulates a retro PC and have some kind of software where you can manage the card and run the retro FPGA system in a windows or fullscreen. Kinda like a hardware emulator? Then you could make use of USB floppy drives / DVD RW's and the sound could come through your speakers as well. Only problem would be to solve the CD audio which many games used coming through an external USB DVD drive. I'm sure it'll be possible with software. Just a few ideas I had.
We've had Clint on a couple of times and I'll no doubt invite him back on when it gets to a year after his last appearance. He's such a great guest so I hope he's able to Funnily enough TWiR was on his latest video (very briefly!) this week.
Not sure why all these new projects for dos games. I mean you can buy a full 486, pentium 1 or pentium 2 for buttons as Dave would say. I mean interesting but pretty unpractical.
@52:08 -Digger-Dingle-Dangle-Dongle-Dungle von Hautkopft of Ulm! - Why on Earth did you say that? - Well, I guess I must have panicked... and where else would I say it? 🥸😆 - For coffee-protection, Dave? 😁 - So, what's the difference between an elephant? - It neither wears a tie. 🤔
Great show, gents. Let's have Richard on more often.
Richard is a retro god
Bingo card was brilliant Richard - thanks for a good laugh! Fun show gents. The ITX Llama does sound full of potential.
Unfortunately it looks like - judging by the comments on the video for it - the llama was made by one person who has done one production run and further production is not promised
@@aaldrich1982It’s open source though right? So others could take it and run their own.
@@duncanstyles133 I hope they do! The retro scene could always do with more ways to easily get into playing old games. Plus, this uses ATX power not AT, so you don't have to find a reliable 30-40 year old power supply.
Happy 4th Birthday TWiR. (Has it really been four years, blimey).
Richard was very enjoyable thanks to him for his time and contribution!
More Richard on the show!
Thanks for the shout out!
We should all get our old dongles out and compare them. It'd be like a dongle party!
Steady on!
Who would have thought a "Dongle" segment would have me choking on my coffee 😂😂
Richard is the man, the MiSTer Multisystem is my favorite way to enjoy MiSTer!
First LGR shows his dongle and now the TWIR crew are going to show theirs! 🤣🤣🤣
OMG, Richard's Bingo card. Absolutely EPIC!!!!!!
Your vid here played right after the latest LGR where you made an audio appearance. One of the last things he said was dongle then the first thing you mention here is dongle. Perfect! 😂
Spooky.👻
Weirdly enough when I saw him tweet it I had sent him a DM about both doing dongles in the same week and didn't know I was actually in the episode - very briefly! (Dave)
Proper clever guy is Richard. So glad we have people like this in the UK. Great show everyone, enjoyed it.
As a 55 year old gamer who's been playing games from the start (C64), I don't think we as the older generation give enough applause to the newer games like Fortnite. When I started playing Fortnite I knew nothing but just playing the game made me realise what I'd been missing. Don't get me wrong, I love Doom and all my retro games but Fortnite is something else. OK it took me a long time to gain the skills needed but I'm glad I did persevere with the game. It's given me so much love. Wonderful game.
I watch my sons and their friends play Fortnite, and rather than want to join in, I disappear to my computer room, start my C64 (breadbin of course), and load Way of the Exploding Fist II...and the legend really does continue...
@@AbooSulaymaan Everyone to their own. The way of the exploding fist is brilliant man. It's just a great time to be a gamer.
Rees is my age. I also played Doom at age 10. I too became obsessed with the game.
Brilliant episode guys - really enjoyed that!
We may need Neil back soon, to get the 'Carry on up the Retro Dongle'!!! cast back on track? Cracking show this week. 😆🤣
Back in the 80's (about 1984) I worked at a computer and electric typewriter retailer. The electronics engineer made his own dongles to pirate software. He just used a multimeter to probe the dongle, figure out what it was doing to the signals sent to it (occasionally he would have to probe the computer port itself). Then just get a compatible serial or parallel conector, and use various componets (mainly resistors) to replicate the voltages and signals the software was looking for. He mostly had to do this for the Apple II computers on display and in the workshop, and some early PC's.
Clever bloke. He also built a simple interface on Veroboard for my 48K Spectrum, soldered to the motherboard, that allowed it to give out an AV signal.
Great episode as always! TWIR bingo was a great idea.
Dongles in the music cupboard ah those were the days
Hello Richard!
That Doom video has been in my feed for weeks, gonna have to check it out. Also saw an article that Sony had to yank the doom remaster due to it having the same SKU as the original ps4 doom release, luckily I downloaded it for free a few weeks ago 😉
Problem with the Vortex module is that while it's cheap the delivery from the suppliers costs as much as the unit itself. You could always include an AGP slot and PCI-E slot with jumper to switch between them. PCI-E 1 lane cards are available brand new from the same supplier as the Vortex module.
Dave's not biting on Richard's dongle.
The latest version of the TinyLlama has an integrated PicoGUS built right in for sound. So that takes care of the Gravis Ultrasound question! 🐷
I'd say Wolfenstein 3D was the one that really changed things, Doom certainly took that wow factor and amplified it by more than W3D but I can remember working at computer factory as a teen and someone loaded up W3D on a 386 and the factory stopped! everyone just huddled round the compaq systempro and we were all just in awe! Doom, and then I think Quake showed once the genie was out the bottle, it was exponential as how it grew.
Wolf3D was that for me. Doom was merely an advanced Wolf3D.
The latest version of Cubase, for PC or Mac, still uses a license dongle. Thankfully it’s USB based now.
love Xybots ahh my college years
Only 4 minutes in, Dave seems to be in a particularly contrarian state of mind today! 😂😂
Oh no I'm not (Dave)
@@ThisWeekinRetro 🤣
I have a mouse jiggling dongle, invaluable for working from home.
The MiSTer doesn't really have a typical FPGA implementation of 486, it runs a port of dos-box emulator. I have seen an R-Pi implementation of a voodoo card, however
I say ISA like the Still Game character
That's Plenty
I always said the letters ‘cause I only ever read it. Same for scsi until my first job where they mercilessly took the PSSR out of me.
As I understand the Vortex SOM is limited to a single ISA and PCI-E 1 lane. The ISA channel is taken up by the onboard sound and so it's not possible to include an extra ISA slot. I guess it would have been possible to not have on board sound and have an ISA slot instead. I believe that converting PCI-E 1 lane is relatively easy to go to AGP but it's not possible (or easy) to go to PCI. I think AGP is a good choice since there a lot of AGP cards and possible to get Voodoo cards. I was lucky enough to get one of these boards, but given the difficulty of building these I don't think that Eivind will build any more. However, he does have a new project TinyLlama 3 which is a return to the very small form factor.
I use a USB dongle called iLok. It stores licences for software VST instuments that I use in my PC-based digital audio workstation (DAW).
Ugh. Been there. I still have one that my band mates didn't know was there, and managed to snap the USB plug off of. Required some repair and a bunch of electrical tape to avoid losing my "right" to use the software I paid for.
Eff DRM.
Yeah Dave all the interesting PCI cards are super expensive nowadays, from nVidia the Riva, TNT, TNT2, or from 3DFX all the VooDoo3 and 4 series, crazy expensive, ATI Radeons all the same. I would had go Micro ATX with AGP PCI and ISA 😅
10 years old playing bloody and dark games like Doom.
Now try to picture that in the modern age 😅😂
Re: GUS and Voodoo are not essential -- This is absolutely correct.
The original Voodoo was not a very capable card. It was really more of a proof-of-concept and tech demo than a viable product. By the time you had enough CPU power to run the games where you wanted accelerated 3D graphics, you just about had enough CPU power to software-render the graphics as well as the Voodoo 1 did. The Voodoo 2 was better, but it was also getting into the Windows 95 gaming era, and you had other options. 3dfx came into its own with the Voodoo 3, which at the time made all the difference in the world. But now you're spoiled for choice, so unless you really want a Voodoo because it's a Voodoo.... You're better off with soft rendering on a faster CPU (since you can always just use a faster CPU now), or any available GL/DX card in Windows.
As for the GUS, it was vital for a very niche crowd for a very short time. It's desirable for its legendary status, but it's not a very useful card to have. Any of them. They're not great at DOS gaming, unless the game _specifically_ supports GUS -- and many of them only "support" GUS as yet another generic sound card, not as the unique hardware synthesis engine that it was. It's not a great Windows sound card either. If you are living in the early 90s, have a slow PC, and are a rabid demoscene, MOD, or MIDI fan, then it's a godsend. If you're living in 2024, get an AWE if you want hardware synth. Otherwise, get anything that has SB Pro support under DOS (if you care about DOS), and 16-bit 44kHz under Windows (if you care about Windows.)
These are both vanity hardware options for those of us that lived through a period where they were The Card To Have, and have very little practical relevance for someone who just wants to run retro software today.
I watch a Korean UA-cam channel called "haha ha" where a very tech-savvy guy takes care of many cats, and one of them happens to be named "Dongle."
I would like an FPGA based Win9x capable system. Maybe multiple FPGA's for the different components as well. Small one for Sound and I/O, and two beefy ones for CPU and Graphics. As Voodoo 3 3000 has been fully emulated, I'm guessing it may well be possible? Maybe have sockets for the FPGA's so you can swap out different modules? Unsure as to how it would work, be very interesting though.
Or how about an FPGA PCIE card you can fit in your current system which emulates a retro PC and have some kind of software where you can manage the card and run the retro FPGA system in a windows or fullscreen. Kinda like a hardware emulator? Then you could make use of USB floppy drives / DVD RW's and the sound could come through your speakers as well. Only problem would be to solve the CD audio which many games used coming through an external USB DVD drive.
I'm sure it'll be possible with software. Just a few ideas I had.
should get Clint on for a whole or half episode guest host (enjoyed Lurch)...or ?
oh yeah, that guy who runs the mancave channel Noel or something - he's pretty good too for a guest spot....
We've had Clint on a couple of times and I'll no doubt invite him back on when it gets to a year after his last appearance. He's such a great guest so I hope he's able to Funnily enough TWiR was on his latest video (very briefly!) this week.
Neil who?
@@ThisWeekinRetro ah he was on fairly recently I suppose and yes, I saw that :)
Well played Richard 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Um wow, just wow... lol. XD
Not sure why all these new projects for dos games. I mean you can buy a full 486, pentium 1 or pentium 2 for buttons as Dave would say. I mean interesting but pretty unpractical.
Oh Dave, you've clearly had too much sugar free Irn Bru. The Super Famicom is not dark red, you're thinking of the original Famicom.
I know! Richard told me when I said it. I didn't think I'd get away with it.
if a dongle is a piece of hardware required for a piece of software to work, does all apple hardware qualify as a dongle?
8 mins in gets really creepy and dark... wtf?
oh you mean dddos attack, right.
4th like
where is neil
New member in his family so taking time off for that, I believe.
i suppose its time to catch up ;)
@@DayzuraYup.
@52:08 -Digger-Dingle-Dangle-Dongle-Dungle von Hautkopft of Ulm!
- Why on Earth did you say that? - Well, I guess I must have panicked... and where else would I say it? 🥸😆
- For coffee-protection, Dave? 😁
- So, what's the difference between an elephant? - It neither wears a tie. 🤔
Yay, first like
🪣&🔘😂
“Aye the Barras are better” 🎵…better for pirated software 🎶