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jbenam

@jbenam.bsky.social
144 followers 305 following 1.1K posts

Retro-hardware aficionado.

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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Impressive work as always @randallinden.bsky.social !
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Gemini is utter ass - I last tried it months ago and it was consistently wrong on a lot of stuff. You should give Claude Fable / Opus a try. Apparently GPT-6 is also pretty good.
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Video plz Really curious of how it plays!
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Great example to show that composite is THE way to enjoy retro games, while this contemporary hysteria of having to chase “SHARP-ASS RGB PIXELZZZZ” at any cost is just modern revisionism. These games WERE INTENDED to be played like this. Nothing will ever change that simple fact
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Grew up with an Amiga and only met EGA games in the late 90s after getting a PC. They quickly became one of my favourite graphical styles. It has lots of personality and it’s immediately recognizable. Colonel’s Bequest is one of my favourite games ever
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
First one looks like Claude, second one looks like ChatGPT but I can’t be sure, might be Claude as well. Apparently some of the newer models instead of hallucinating stuff prefer asking someone via email for confirmation, which is kinda better I guess?
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Ew, the internet would be better off without that festering cesspool of hate
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
If that’s what Shinji has to pay for walking in on Rei, just wait until George W. Bush gets wind of what transpired in Asuka’s hospital room
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
I always thought that these holes on my Model Ms were for attaching a palm rest or something. Good to know they’re actually drainage channels!
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Honestly that’s a pretty weird move on Apple’s part. I was expecting the Duo to just tap into the enormous amount of iPad software but no, let’s have YET another target for apps
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Ultima IV (for some people it’s even better than the DOS version) Wonder Boy in Monster Land Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap Wonder Boy in Monster World (this one is probably better on Megadrive, if you have one)
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Sure. But they didn’t grow up with Commodore, so they’re probably more willing to pay for a Sony than something they’ve never heard of and for which they harbor no nostalgia. Also we’re a niche and they’re going to be a niche of a niche, so I am not expecting crazy numbers there
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Thank you for your reply.That’s okay then. I keep DOS to ISA/VLB machines while PCI is usually for Win9x. No big loss, then. Cheers
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Do people really believe that Gen Alpha will purchase their Amigas in 10-20 years for crazy amounts of money? Only people born in the 80s want to purchase this stuff, because they have nostalgia for it. Just like Gen Alpha will purchase PS5s for crazy amount of money in 30 years
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
They need to justify to themselves that no, they didn’t get fooled by that one retro seller but it’s just that these things are truly really rare and that their prices will only go up, so that’s a good investment, I swear!1!1!!. It’s just baseball cards all over again and people are falling for it
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Also they’re in no special places. Just look around classifieds and they will pop up every now and then. A multisync monitor just sold for 40€ on Vinted some weeks ago. High retro prices are just a construct of the mind of the feeble who can’t get to wait for one to pop up at the right price
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
The problem is that a few unscrupulous individuals have pushed the narrative that turned them into “holy grails” because of some interest in doing so, probably because they were sitting on warehouses of these previously-worthless items. Pump the prices up and… get quick rich scheme successful.
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Not a fitting example. People who buy reproductions and people who want original hardware are different, not usually overlapping, markets. CRTs won’t make a comeback AND they won’t be around forever. You can repair the electronics but when the tube’s gone there’s a finite amount of tubes around
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Ew, that’s scummy
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Yep 😭
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
How’s the ARK2000PV compared to something like a Trio64V+? I passed on one for 20EURs some weeks ago
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Missed one for 30 EURs some years ago 🫠
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
And sorry to burst your bubble but these things ARE getting cheaper over time. I can find a boxed C64 with plenty of stuff for less than a 100 - some years ago you wouldn’t find one for less than 200. The speculative peak is behind us, the value of these things will freefall from here on
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Also the 1084S doesn’t do anything special over a normal TV. People need to stop fetishizing the Commodore logo and pay absurd prices just because of one small logo.
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
History? Where? Is this the exact monitor used by the Apollo 11 mission, coming with a certificate of authenticity? Or it’s just something that was made in the millions back in the 80s? This is bullcrap and it’s the excuse used by all scalpers - you can still find plenty for sale.
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Wow these prices are obscene. Do people really pay that much for timebombs such as CRTs that could break down any moment? I paid 50 EURs for each of my 1084s and sometimes I think it’s too much. Retrocomputing really became a rich guy’s hobby, eh?
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
That said, I never had any particular interest in old Macs until I stumbled on a VERY cheap 475 3-4 years ago. I fell in love with System 7 (one of my fav classical OSes ever, now) and I quickly added a Beige G3 (upgraded to G4) a Quadra 650 and a SE/30 to my collection. Gotta love classic Macs!
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
I first started using Macs in early 2014 when working in London - while I wasn’t yet appreciating the hardware fully, I remember liking the OS very much. I then went back to Windows (WHY) for a few years then W11 pushed me back to Apple, this time for good. Apple Silicon just sealed the deal [1/2]
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Gotta love how most people assume that “FPGA = magically 100% accurate to that original hardware”. Just like a software emulator implementation can be inaccurate because it’s coded by an (hopefully) human, the same goes for an FPGA core. Most people fail to grasp that, though.
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
I got the same POS 15 years ago and I immediately noticed that you could use multiple plugs at the same time, which made me wonder if they were all linked together and thus lethal. I ended placing copious amounts of electrical tape around the plugs I wasn’t using just to be safe. I’m now glad I did!
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Same here, never played I and II but III was a fav of mine when I was a kid
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Yep. I found this one in a random junk box. Still kicking myself to this day
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
The worst thing is that I had the mouse this software was for, found it in a drawer in one of my jobs (“sure, you can take this old piece of crap”) aaaaand forgot to take it with me when I left.
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Same here, I guess. I will try to stick to my small CRTs when possible, but sometimes it’s just better to play retrogames on the big TV while laying on the couch. Hopefully the CRT masks (my most wanted feature) won’t be too downgraded from the 4K-Pro
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
I guess that these people somehow need to convince themselves of the fact that the $500 they spent on that PVM were somehow justified. They will never admit that they were fooled by someone on Reddit in paying these ridiculous prices when a free curbside CRT does exactly the same job, if not better
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
This focus on PVMs and such is just modern revisionism. Almost nobody used RGB back in the 90s, we all played in composite and enjoyed it greatly. We were (me included) brainwashed by some YouTube / Reddit “experts” in believing that somehow we all had to play in RGB or else we shouldn’t play at all
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Debatable, IMHO. Games were produced with composite in mind, art was designed with composite in mind (dithering, gradients, color blending) and most studios had crappy consumer CRTs next to their workstations because they KNEW players would use these instead of PVMs in RGB. [1/2]
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
These days lots of people want it only because of its rarity and not because of its (few) merits. Sadly after the A500 (which was nothing more than a cost reduction of Jay Miner’s original and groundbreaking design) Commodore dropped the ball and nothing that came later really advanced the Amiga
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
not even half of the much fanfared speeds it should’ve brought to the Amiga, the Amber chip was just a bandaid over the fact that the ECS (which was too little, too late, in usual Commodore fashion) chipset couldn’t produce 31KHz without slowing to a crawl, and I could go on for a while. 🧵
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
While the A3000 has attained mythical status (and impossible prices) these days for no clear reason, the truth is that it was an half-assed machine like almost every Commodore-produced Amiga. The SCSI implementation on launch was slow and buggy, Zorro III was (and stayed) a mess, not attaining 🧵
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
VIA is the easiest to find but it tends to slow down AGP on my K6-2+. Apparently NEC/ALi cards should be better on that front. I have them but I haven’t been able to benchmark yet
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
PCI USB card makes it easy - just install the appropriate drivers and it worked. Plenty of $5 cards out there
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Can’t you just use USB sticks? Slap in a PCI USB2.0 card and enjoy fast-ass transfer speeds without having to remove the drive itself (which makes it VERY prone to failure)
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
IMHO I would just purchase an era-appropriate mechanical HD and not deal with the fickleness of IDE support of old BIOSes
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
I guess I will have to recap them first before slapping them in a case (if I ever decide between a Pentium 3 and an Athlon)
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
I think that pretty much all my socket 370 and socket 462 boards have bulging caps. These were the worst years for the capacitor plague. The OG Xbox was also severely hit by it
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Usually these cards have built in boot ROMs that should take care of making the drives “visible” to DOS (unless it’s a newer card meant for WinXP or something)
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Looking hard for one but I can’t find any at decent prices :( Just when I finally scored a mobo that supports one
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Pretty crazy how much disposable income the median Amigan has. In no other community prices have reached so high. You can literally slap “Amiga” in the title of anything and it will sell for 3x the market price in less than 24 hours
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jbenam @jbenam.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Yep, it’s a line in config.sys Something like: device=c:\dos\ramdrive.sys [disksize sectorsize [numentries]] [switches] I guess it exists on your floppy or something right now as you’re saying that there’s no hard drive connected, right?
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