Retro Computers

[CaptainSlow]

rxtx said:

wormus said:

the comma made it print across the screen.

That all depends on the BASIC dialect. In Sinclair BASIC, it's the semicolon that concats printing.

Yup same in most...as per my post earlier.

[272BHP]

wormus said:

Just fired up my Mame64 emulator (uses original ROMs) and had a game of Defender. Reminded me old arcade games were really crap!

I think Defender still plays really well.

[Gary C]

J4CKO said:

Anyone else into retro computers?

I keep finding myself browsing eBay looking for a C64 and/or a Spectrum to relive my youth, Emulators dont seem to cut it any more, too much messing with settings for controllers and the like.

What is the going rate for a working one ?

Any pitfalls in buying them (apart from being ancient and a bit rubbish)

Anyone tried the SD card add ons and plugged on into a modern monitor ?

Got several.

But prices are going crazy. Wouldn't spend more than £50 on an 80's working home computer, but people are asking £200 upwards !

I have a 3032 Commodore PET, 48K spectrum, Apple II europlus, TRS-80 model 4, BBC B, C64, ZX81, MicroVAX II, MicroVAX 3300, VAX 4000/96 but for me its mainly about fixing them.
Collecting becomes addictive.

SD cards are really essential for anything 80's that you actually want to use

[Gary C]

Nimby said:

Any BBC owners remember waiting for Fridays and the new program on the Ceefax page? I didn't have the adapter so I had to copy it down on paper and then type it in.

I had a portable TV so copied it straight off the screen

[Some Guy]

272BHP said:

I think Defender still plays really well.

Yes and epic sound effects and that little tune on start up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gss3lxeqCok

[Gojira]

I'm reminded of the day, back when the world was young, when one of my mates asked me to give him a lift to Electrovalue in Burnage, to buy some RAM to upgrade his Acorn Atom.

Fifteen quid, for two 1k x 4-bit chips, that had to be soldered to the motheboard.

Yep, 15 quid a kilobyte and this was in the days when a pint and a half of Robinsons Best Bitter was still about a quid...

Kids today, don't know they are born!

[anonymous-user]

When I had my first PC, a 486, an extra 4mb ram cost £128....ouch.

[driverrob]

Gojira said:

I'm reminded of the day, back when the world was young, when one of my mates asked me to give him a lift to Electrovalue in Burnage, to buy some RAM to upgrade his Acorn Atom.

Fifteen quid, for two 1k x 4-bit chips, that had to be soldered to the motheboard.

Yep, 15 quid a kilobyte and this was in the days when a pint and a half of Robinsons Best Bitter was still about a quid...

Kids today, don't know they are born!

£495 for a PET printer or dual floppy disk drive in 1980 !!!!
£100 for a 16kB RAM pack for a ZX81 in 1982
£200 for a 5MB hard disk drive on a full length board for a PC in c.1986

Apply inflation to those prices!

[anonymous-user]

I seem to remember an Amiga hard drive being something like £400 for a 40mb drive. MB! Not GB, MB!!
Today I can buy a terabyte for £35.

[Morningside]

Some Guy said:

272BHP said:

I think Defender still plays really well.

Yes and epic sound effects and that little tune on start up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gss3lxeqCok

Yes I agree. Amazing what they did with limited processing power. I'm sure I read somewhere that the aliens "teleported" away when the screen/refresh rate started to slow down.

Still command a good price still on eBay.

Robotron also had some great sound effects as well.

[Gary C]

Nimby said:

DavidY said:

BBC Model B was £335 on pre-order - I know because I bought one!!

Model B's were as rare as hen's teeth at the launch. I gave in and bought a Model A, and an electronics wiz mate upgraded the RAM from 16K to the B's 32K which was supposed to be impossible. I had access to the right RAM chips (thanks, IBM!), and he piggy-backed them on the exiting ones and added various tiny patch wires. It was a thing of beauty - I wish I'd taken some photos.

Any BBC owners remember waiting for Fridays and the new program on the Ceefax page? I didn't have the adapter so I had to copy it down on paper and then type it in.

I had one of the first BBC B's with the unfinished operating system in EPROM.

[snuffy]

driverrob said:

£495 for a PET printer or dual floppy disk drive in 1980 !!!!
£100 for a 16kB RAM pack for a ZX81 in 1982
£200 for a 5MB hard disk drive on a full length board for a PC in c.1986

Apply inflation to those prices!

£495 for a PET printer or dual floppy disk drive in 1980: Now £2085.

£100 for a 16kB RAM pack for a ZX81 in 1982 : Now £346.

£200 for a 5MB hard disk drive on a full length board for a PC in c.1986 : Now £575.

[snuffy]

I had a Ceefax adapter for my BBC micro. It was about half the size of the computer itself as I recall.

Ceefax, Oracle and 4-Tel. Those were the days ! I used to spend hours reading teletext.

[droopsnoot]

CaptainSlow said:

rxtx said:

wormus said:

the comma made it print across the screen.

That all depends on the BASIC dialect. In Sinclair BASIC, it's the semicolon that concats printing.

Yup same in most...as per my post earlier.

As I recall, a comma would move the output to the next tab-stop (which were usually fixed positions) and suppress the CR/LF, and a semi-colon would just suppress the CR/LF, so output would be right up against the previous output.

Ooh, prices. I remember buying our first Gigabyte hard disk for the development machine in work, that was just under £500.

Sharp MZ80k prices from 1981:

[driverrob]

For comparison, apparently "In 1980 the average wage was £5,720 and the average house cost £22,677"

[Halmyre]

snuffy said:

I had a Ceefax adapter for my BBC micro. It was about half the size of the computer itself as I recall.

Ceefax, Oracle and 4-Tel. Those were the days ! I used to spend hours reading teletext waiting for teletext to update its pages.

FTFY

[DavidY]

snuffy said:

I had a Ceefax adapter for my BBC micro. It was about half the size of the computer itself as I recall.

Ceefax, Oracle and 4-Tel. Those were the days ! I used to spend hours reading teletext.

I spent several years (1987-93) working for the company that supplied 70% of the world's teletext and subtitling systems !!!

Halmyre said:

FTFY

We did a full frame system for an airport staff information system, that was transmitting teletext data on every TV line (no picture), 625 pages a minute output and near instantaneous page update (faster than my broadband and Pistonheads!!)

Edited by DavidY on Tuesday 7th May 17:45

[snuffy]

Halmyre said:

snuffy said:

I had a Ceefax adapter for my BBC micro. It was about half the size of the computer itself as I recall.

Ceefax, Oracle and 4-Tel. Those were the days ! I used to spend hours reading teletext waiting for teletext to update its pages.

FTFY

Weren't later TVs cleverer where they loaded all the pages in RAM and then when you selected a new page it already had it ? Caching in fact.

[Morningside]

I had a Jupiter Ace from new. Went to Jarrolds of Norwich and they didn't have a ZX Spectrum so the clever salesman sold me one of these instead.

Only commands I worked out were

VLIST

1 1 + .

I read somewhere "As fast as machine code and as easy to learn as BASIC" . Really? It was impossible. So I binned it.

These days they are making a fortune

I also had a RML 380Z and about 10 RML 480Z's from the local school.

[Zad]

snuffy said:

Weren't later TVs cleverer where they loaded all the pages in RAM and then when you selected a new page it already had it ? Caching in fact.

I think with Fastext they cached the pages that were linked to the 4 colour buttons, and later models cached the sub-pages on the page you were currently viewing.