Do you play Keen on original hardware?

Here, you can get help with anything or just chat about the original Commander Keen games.

Do you play Keen on original hardware?

Yes; I play Keen on an old computer.
10
20%
Yes; I play Keen on my original Keening machine.
5
10%
No; I don't play Keen on old hardware.
36
71%
 
Total votes: 51

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DHeadshot
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Post by DHeadshot »

Very hard to handle the controls on a touch-screen. Give me buttons or keys any day...
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Post by RoboBlue »

I've been playing Keen portably on my ds flashcart through an emulator, and that works extremely well.
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Amstrad!

Post by Benvolio »

http://classictech.files.wordpress.com/ ... =243&h=300
(google images, not my pic!)

I used to have a lovely Amstrad from 1986, 8086 processor, EGA, absolutely wonderful computer for DOS games... PC speaker sounded incredibly rich! the excitement when i inserted this 5 1/4 inch "WHAT personal computer" magazine cover floppy with Keen1 v1.0 on it and installed - took half an hour to install, disc was a tad corrupt so my entire keen life could almost not have happened.

I have the disk somewhere, i'll scan it in if i ever find it!! A real treasure.

Sadly, Amstrad pcs from that era had the PSU in their proprietary monitor, such that my screen started to increasingly taint to a dark pink, and furthermore to dispense the most almighty electric shocks if you touched it. You couldnt replace the monitor except with an Amstrad one, so the PC was somewhat doomed. Eventually we got rid of it.... aaagh!

so... Dosbox on win7 it is. (I steadfastly clung to win98 until a year or so ago!)

This glorious game was also on the disk!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkOcamNXnaA
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Post by GolfHacker »

Another DOSBox user here. I'm a Mac user now, and am very grateful for DOSBox.

I'm also thankful I transferred the contents of my old Keen floppies to a CD-ROM before floppies became obsolete. Whew!
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Post by kuliwil »

GolfHacker wrote:I'm also thankful I transferred the contents of my old Keen floppies to a CD-ROM before floppies became obsolete. Whew!
What, you mean you didn't do what I did and put a floppy drive into your computer just so that you could read Keen and other old game discs? 8)

99% probability you don't have a tower and thus couldn't do it, so fair enough.

I just realised I still use some original hardware: I have the floppy drive and HDD of old Keening computers in my present computer. In spirit, it's the same computer... ish. :celtic
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Post by GolfHacker »

Actually I have a Mac Pro, so I do have a tower. But I doubt Apple is including drivers for floppy drives in their newer operating systems. Wonder if anyone makes a USB floppy drive with Mac drivers...?
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Post by kuliwil »

GolfHacker wrote:Actually I have a Mac Pro, so I do have a tower. But I doubt Apple is including drivers for floppy drives in their newer operating systems. Wonder if anyone makes a USB floppy drive with Mac drivers...?
Surely they still have floppy support! At least for USB drives.

Got a spare old box around? You know what to do to find out ;)
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Post by thehackercat »

The Mac Pro is extremely versatile. I'd be surprised if it wouldn't accept a floppy drive. Older drivers should still be supported; if not, I'd check Macintoshgarden or some such site.

Or you could install Win98 with Bootcamp for the sole purpose of using your floppy drive! :dopefish
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Post by Commander Spleen »

Hmm, somehow I missed this thread. RECTIFY

I have a bunch of identical Pentium I computers, remnants from a much larger collection I had to sadly trim back a few years ago. One of them acts as my main DOS computer, which is setup to connect to the network, which is how I populate it with excellent games. I should install Keen 9 on it and finish playing it. Currently it has A New Dope and Fall Up, along with all the original games and a very select few of my all-time favourite DOS games. It has an alternate configuration for IPX gaming. In 2004 I had a nice DOS-only LAN happening, and much Death Rally, GTA and Duke3D was played. But there hasn't really been the space for it since. But one day soon, it must be rebuilt for some serious NetKeen sessions.

I also scored a 386 last year. it It has a terrible BIOS with no HDD autodetection, and had a barrel battery I removed recently but haven't replaced with a lithium one. So I haven't got around to setting it up properly. A 486 would be much more ideal. I think there are enough parts around to build one, but they haven't miraculously merged themselves yet. It would be much better if my original 386 was still alive, or at least its hard drive. But alas...

The Pentium works well for pretty much everything though. A 386 or 486 would just be a nice luxury for games relying on a slower clock speed.
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Post by T-Squared »

I have an old Compaq Portable III computer that can play Keen 4 CGA just fine! (In fact, it runs with the original "buzzing" speaker sound effects.)


(It also has a 1200 baud modem that I can use to swipe a copy of CK6! Muahahahaha! :mort Uh... that is, if I can ever figure out how to dial up to my local ISP. ARGH! >.<)
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Post by Keeper »

The original hardware is lost and gone for so many years now... but the good memories will never go away.

I play in DosBox, of course, but sometimes I just play it straight under Win XP - especially Keens 1 - 3 (their sound effects are not something I would really miss). It runs pretty well.

So far, the only Keen that absolutely requires DBox is K9.
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Post by DHeadshot »

Keeper wrote:So far, the only Keen that absolutely requires DBox is K9.
And Shmaynoria.
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Post by TerminILL »

All music-enabled mods require DOS or DOSBox. Plus, I think he was referring to official or close enough to Keens, rather than Keen mods, ie Keen 1 through 9. Please contain your enormous Shmaynoria boner.
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Post by Keeper »

DHeadshot wrote:
Keeper wrote:So far, the only Keen that absolutely requires DBox is K9.
And Shmaynoria.
Well, I haven't played that, so...

To avoid future confusions, there are exactly 4 Keen mods that I have played - the TUIT trilogy, and The Perilous Pursuit.

Perhaps I will explore other mods in the future :dopekeen
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Post by Benvolio »

Keeper wrote:4 Keen mods
I would strongly recommend you broaden your horizons... literally tens of thousands of hours of production by people at least as talented as those who created all the mainstream video games of the past 20+ years are available at your fingertips for free at http://www.shikadi.net/keenwiki/. You probably know that already ;-)
Keeper wrote:So far, the only Keen that absolutely requires DBox is K9.
Well it depends very much on your system... I know that there are several other mods including Keen8 and Bazooka Wowbagger that fail to run under my win98 machine!
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