An Ample Sort of Option
Aug. 12th, 2024 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerNew programs (even if only “new to me”) help keep “old computers” from becoming the fixed entity the first part of that name might imply. New gadgets play their own role, but most often I try out the new programs with emulators, which can provide their own novelty. A little while ago I learned about a MAME “front end” called Ample. As if acknowledging how it ran on the modern Macintosh it focused altogether on Apple computers starting out, but within that bound it did make it easier to preload disk images, fill virtual expansion slots, and enable “CRT emulation” without adding command line arguments or scrolling back and forth through MAME’s own austere menus. Having already tried out the emulation MAME now offers of the early colour Macs, I was willing to try out Ample a bit.
A while after that, I went back to the program’s source code page and discovered some Tandy computers had been added without me noticing, focusing on the Color Computers. I had noticed the Atari ST listed in Ample’s list of machines before, and thought a bit about how it had also used a Motorola 68000 and had been greeted with proclamations that its low price would surely lead to software dominance, only to wind up supporting gadgets that let it run Macintosh programs. The new addition was just a bit more of an unusual juxtaposition. Much has been made of the Apple II and the original TRS-80 being introduced in the same year; something has been made of the cheaper, more widely available TRS-80 far outselling the Apple II in the 1970s (when Commodore partisans aren’t trying to make a similar point about the PET or at least talking up how it booted into BASIC and had lowercase as a standard). I am conscious even so that Radio Shack computer users seemed more conscious of Apple computers among “the competition” than Apple users were of Radio Shack computers. In any case, I downloaded the new version, aware of a comment or two insisting the dedicated Color Computer emulators that can be made to run on the Mac still have certain limitations. What I found straight off, though, was that the Color Computer 3 program I’d first emulated via MAME, the graphical word processor Max-10, still has a problem with its “keyclick” sound.
A while after that, I went back to the program’s source code page and discovered some Tandy computers had been added without me noticing, focusing on the Color Computers. I had noticed the Atari ST listed in Ample’s list of machines before, and thought a bit about how it had also used a Motorola 68000 and had been greeted with proclamations that its low price would surely lead to software dominance, only to wind up supporting gadgets that let it run Macintosh programs. The new addition was just a bit more of an unusual juxtaposition. Much has been made of the Apple II and the original TRS-80 being introduced in the same year; something has been made of the cheaper, more widely available TRS-80 far outselling the Apple II in the 1970s (when Commodore partisans aren’t trying to make a similar point about the PET or at least talking up how it booted into BASIC and had lowercase as a standard). I am conscious even so that Radio Shack computer users seemed more conscious of Apple computers among “the competition” than Apple users were of Radio Shack computers. In any case, I downloaded the new version, aware of a comment or two insisting the dedicated Color Computer emulators that can be made to run on the Mac still have certain limitations. What I found straight off, though, was that the Color Computer 3 program I’d first emulated via MAME, the graphical word processor Max-10, still has a problem with its “keyclick” sound.