Retro Computers

[boxst]

Bear-n said:

I've just peeked at sold prices for the Panasonic 3DO, which has now tempted me to sell mine!

Wow, didn't realise how much they were. I gave all mine to friend who is a collector (3DO, N64, Sega Saturn, Dreamcast, SNES) along with a bunch of games and a few 'back-up' devices that I bought in the Far East.

I still think Road Rash on the 3DO is superb.

[littlebasher]

Zoobeef said:

This is all the stuff I have. All but the 1200 may go though.

Is it for sale


Spurred on by this thread, i went into the loft at the weekend and got out my C64 and VIC20

Then discovered i actually have 2 boxed VIC20s, can't remember where the other one come from !

S2DIEC thingy and a fastload cartridge makes loading C64 games a much faster affair. Still rubbish at most of the games i remember.

[Morningside]

Stuff I've owned over the years:
ZX80, ZX81, Jupiter Ace, Spectrum (Still own) ,Spectrum 2 & Spectrum 3, Sinclair QL, BBC B and Master, RML 380Z & 480Z, Commodore 16, Commodore 64 Executive, Apple 2 GS, Apple 2 (Still own), Apple 2e, MSX, Compaq luggable, Apricot, DEC Microvax, Macintosh 128k, Macintosh 512K (Still own). Various PC clones. Pet 2001.

I also have lots of TI programmable calculators.

I'm sure there are many others.

Would love another ZX81 or to me the holy grail of a Sage IV running UCSD Pascal.

Edited by Morningside on Tuesday 31st December 20:45

[The Don of Croy]

My Dad bought a Commodore Pet in 1978 iirc, the one with a tiny keyboard and 8k.

Used to spend hours keying in a game from a magazine only to find a message like “gosub error in 1030” ready to snuff out my enthusiasm for programming.

Dad meanwhile progressed to machine code and used it to partially automate the welder at his work. Dad was bright.

My middle brother also dabbled and has spent the last quarter century in the USA doing some systems crapola, which apparently pays the bills. Another bright bloke.

Fast forward to 2019 and my youngest (16 yo) is collecting Amigas, Apple Lisas, sundry other redundant kit and gradually filling the loft with components. But lately he’s started car fettling...

[snuffy]

The Don of Croy said:

My Dad bought a Commodore Pet in 1978 iirc, the one with a tiny keyboard and 8k.

My old man used to bring a Pet 2001 home from his work at weekends for me to play on. Now that is what a computer should look like.

[Gary C]

snuffy said:

The Don of Croy said:

My Dad bought a Commodore Pet in 1978 iirc, the one with a tiny keyboard and 8k.

My old man used to bring a Pet 2001 home from his work at weekends for me to play on. Now that is what a computer should look like.

The chiclet keyboard PETs are worth a fortune these days

I have a 3032 (which is basically a 32k European 2001) with the 8050 disk drive.

Bizarrely, the disk drive has more processing power than the computer as it has two 6502 processors against the one in the PET. As the PET uses IEEE-488 to communicate with the disk drive, I have made a little Arduino interface to emulate a drive and load programs from an SD card.

[Morningside]

Gary C said:

snuffy said:

The Don of Croy said:

My Dad bought a Commodore Pet in 1978 iirc, the one with a tiny keyboard and 8k.

My old man used to bring a Pet 2001 home from his work at weekends for me to play on. Now that is what a computer should look like.

The chiclet keyboard PETs are worth a fortune these days

I have a 3032 (which is basically a 32k European 2001) with the 8050 disk drive.

Bizarrely, the disk drive has more processing power than the computer as it has two 6502 processors against the one in the PET. As the PET uses IEEE-488 to communicate with the disk drive, I have made a little Arduino interface to emulate a drive and load programs from an SD card.

Wonder if he's on here? Many years ago I sold one and he came to collect it at the end of Colchester radio rally (Remember thost?) and arrived in a convertible BMW. The PETs are quite heavy with a solid metal construction and he wanted it in the back seat of his car. Fearing about damaging his car I kindly declined. He put the drivers seat forward and I handed it him and as he took it off me to put it into his car he scratched the side of the car getting it in. He brushed off the damage but I could tell he was rather pissed off.

[Hedobot]

snuffy said:

My old man used to bring a Pet 2001 home from his work at weekends for me to play on. Now that is what a computer should look like.

Absolutely !

My school had various Pet's. As a kid i thought they were something from the future.

Then they got the BBC Model B which was so much more "user friendly" ... spent ages programming in BBC Basic.

Great memories... in 32K... well depends on what mode u were in

[Morningside]

Hedobot said:

snuffy said:

My old man used to bring a Pet 2001 home from his work at weekends for me to play on. Now that is what a computer should look like.

Absolutely !

My school had various Pet's. As a kid i thought they were something from the future.

Then they got the BBC Model B which was so much more "user friendly" ... spent ages programming in BBC Basic.

Great memories... in 32K... well depends on what mode u were in

I always thought HHGTTG TV series reminds me of the PET.

[Dr Jekyll]

The Don of Croy said:

Used to spend hours keying in a game from a magazine only to find a message like “gosub error in 1030” ready to snuff out my enthusiasm for programming.

Mind you, fixing the bugs was often more fun than playing the game.

[ChevronB19]

Gary C said:

snuffy said:

The Don of Croy said:

My Dad bought a Commodore Pet in 1978 iirc, the one with a tiny keyboard and 8k.

My old man used to bring a Pet 2001 home from his work at weekends for me to play on. Now that is what a computer should look like.

The chiclet keyboard PETs are worth a fortune these days

I have a 3032 (which is basically a 32k European 2001) with the 8050 disk drive.

Bizarrely, the disk drive has more processing power than the computer as it has two 6502 processors against the one in the PET. As the PET uses IEEE-488 to communicate with the disk drive, I have made a little Arduino interface to emulate a drive and load programs from an SD card.

About 15 years ago, I visited my mate who was doing a material science PhD at Cambridge - in a little side room there were PETs piled up to the roof...

[Hedobot]

Dr Jekyll said:

The Don of Croy said:

Used to spend hours keying in a game from a magazine only to find a message like “gosub error in 1030” ready to snuff out my enthusiasm for programming.

Mind you, fixing the bugs was often more fun than playing the game.

I remember a copy of Computer & Video Games magazine had a machine code article where you had to type in the the hex for some fancy demo... cant remember the platform.. I think it was for a ZX Spectrum. One key wrong and boom. Did show off how coding at a low level could reveal some impressive results. Obviously it would have been done originally in assembler and I was just typing in the hex equivalent but that was not available to plebs like me at the time

edit... brain... i think u had to put the hex into a REM statement and then run a call command..... brain fog

[Sterillium]

I'm tempted by something like this...



Three thousand old arcade games built in, for circa £100... anyone got one?

[Starfighter]

Had something similar years ago for the lad. He was 7 and thought it was amazing. He’s now 22 and doing machine learning to analyse star charts.

It took him about 2 years to finally kill the joystick. Almost got him a Qwikshot 2 from eBay and then remembered how long those lasted playing the athletics games.

[Narcisus]

I remember typing a fancy assembler program in Acorn User I think when I was about 12 that made your screen touch sensitive.

Took ages then when I ran it it slowly spelt April Fool on the screen lol !

Also remember a nice little program again on the beeb that simulated a space shuttle launch and landing think that might have been in c&vg.

And another that springs to mind ! Little graphical program that moved to music which was great :-)

Good times

[iwantagta]

Narcisus said:

I remember typing a fancy assembler program in Acorn User I think when I was about 12 that made your screen touch sensitive.

Took ages then when I ran it it slowly spelt April Fool on the screen lol !

Also remember a nice little program again on the beeb that simulated a space shuttle launch and landing think that might have been in c&vg.

And another that springs to mind ! Little graphical program that moved to music which was great :-)

Good times

I spent 6 hours typing & re-typing a multi-page code from Amstrad Action magazine.
It didn't work.
The following issue they issued an apology for a typo in their code.

Unhappy times.

[SeanyD]

iwantagta said:

I spent 6 hours typing & re-typing a multi-page code from Amstrad Action magazine.
It didn't work.
The following issue they issued an apology for a typo in their code.

Unhappy times.

I authored some of these programs, it was usually the printer operators that introduced the mistakes during the print process. Also number zero's back then quite often wouldn't have a diagonal line to differentiate from the letter o, adding more room for errors to creep in.

Happy memories.

[dsgrnmcm]

At last!

I'm a bit of a gamer, and love the retro stuff!

I have (in no order) Vectrex, Spectrum 48K & 128K with built in tape deck, Commodore 64, Amiga A500, NES, SNES, N64, Game cube, Gameboy (with updates backlit dual colour screen) XBOX, XBOX 360, XBOX One. XBOX 360 is chipped with a load of emulators on it and runs MAME with a load of arcade games on it!

Gameboy



Shrine:



Rig or set up: with surround sound (all off ebay!)

[silentbrown]

I started with a Science of Cambridge MK14, purchased by knocking on their door in Cambridge...

All long gone and sold, but I still have this slightly more recent artefact, if anyone recognises it...

[Hoink]

Zoobeef said:

Dug out my old Amiga stuff the other day. Includes a A500 and A1200.
1200 is now set up to a 32" CRT using a new scart lead. Chaos engine looks great.

How long had you Amiga been sitting round? Mines been sitting in the loft for 20 years so I'm wondering whether it will be okay just plugging it in.