Retro Computers
Discussion
J4CKO said:
I dont think there was any other way, they arent perfect but at least there arent now 300 odd competing standards of proprietary hardware and software.
My adventures in Pi Retrogaming are annoying me, thought it would be a case of just setting it up, downloading and image, burning it and off we go, just keeps conking out and requires loads of fiddling,
But, saw this advertise on FB, anyone got any insights, looks like EmulationStation pre packaged with loads of roms and tested to some degree.
https://thepixelgamer.com/
I havent got a Pie, but I have WinUAE (Amiga emulator) set up on my PC and it works well. You need to download the Kickstart ROMs as well as the game ROMs Usually the best version of a game to download is a WHDload file. It's a copy of the game files that would have been installed on an Amiga with a hard drive. My adventures in Pi Retrogaming are annoying me, thought it would be a case of just setting it up, downloading and image, burning it and off we go, just keeps conking out and requires loads of fiddling,
But, saw this advertise on FB, anyone got any insights, looks like EmulationStation pre packaged with loads of roms and tested to some degree.
https://thepixelgamer.com/
Zad said:
I must admit, I thought the MSX only came here in any sort of numbers by 1986-87 or so. Way too late to the party anyway, and at a price point way higher than most British people could afford .
No the MSX came out in 1983. 1987 was early Atari ST time.The Toshiba HX10 was sold for £400 prior to Xmas 1983 and was soon retailing at £200 in WHSmiths after Xmas.
The BBC B was £400 too, which is why the Electron was launched as a lower cost version.
The Electron and Speccy 48 were around £200 with the C64 slightly more. The Amstrads came out a year later.
MSX were used in schools in France and Spain so are their BBC B equivalent. ..which led to the MSX2 platform that a smaller number of manufacturers continued with in about 1987.
Narcisus said:
There was an *FX call on the beeb that you could use that made the screen look like white noise. You could then disable the break key and watch the Sales Expert spend ages trying to re tune the tv in 
Not sure about the *FX call - I've been making my own CTRC and video ULA, and I can't think of any that would do it - but the break key was hard-wired into the reset line, so impossible to disable without unplugging the keyboard. 
(I suppose you could've told the CTRC to display from zero page, which means that as the CPU's doing it's normal thing, it would appear as though random stuff was happening - MODE 7 would've been the best for that). (Another alternative would be to disable the VSYNC/HSYNC signals, but I'm not sure what that would do)
The Archimedes was much easier to disable the break (although the reset at the back of the keyboard may have also been hard-wired) - and the video was much easier to control to make static.
shed driver said:
Who remembers going into the computer shops, or larger WH Smiths where the computer was on display.
10 print "Peter is a knob"
20 goto 10
Setting it running before Peter came over to see what you were doing?
Or maybe just me?
SD.
10 print "Peter is a knob ";10 print "Peter is a knob"
20 goto 10
Setting it running before Peter came over to see what you were doing?
Or maybe just me?
SD.
Adding a space and adding a semi colon was the way to do the job properly in Dixon stores lol
CaptainSlow said:
No the MSX came out in 1983. 1987 was early Atari ST time.
The Toshiba HX10 was sold for £400 prior to Xmas 1983 and was soon retailing at £200 in WHSmiths after Xmas.
The BBC B was £400 too, which is why the Electron was launched as a lower cost version.
The Electron and Speccy 48 were around £200 with the C64 slightly more. The Amstrads came out a year later.
MSX were used in schools in France and Spain so are their BBC B equivalent. ..which led to the MSX2 platform that a smaller number of manufacturers continued with in about 1987.
BBC Model B was £335 on pre-order - I know because I bought one!!The Toshiba HX10 was sold for £400 prior to Xmas 1983 and was soon retailing at £200 in WHSmiths after Xmas.
The BBC B was £400 too, which is why the Electron was launched as a lower cost version.
The Electron and Speccy 48 were around £200 with the C64 slightly more. The Amstrads came out a year later.
MSX were used in schools in France and Spain so are their BBC B equivalent. ..which led to the MSX2 platform that a smaller number of manufacturers continued with in about 1987.
DavidY said:
CaptainSlow said:
No the MSX came out in 1983. 1987 was early Atari ST time.
The Toshiba HX10 was sold for £400 prior to Xmas 1983 and was soon retailing at £200 in WHSmiths after Xmas.
The BBC B was £400 too, which is why the Electron was launched as a lower cost version.
The Electron and Speccy 48 were around £200 with the C64 slightly more. The Amstrads came out a year later.
MSX were used in schools in France and Spain so are their BBC B equivalent. ..which led to the MSX2 platform that a smaller number of manufacturers continued with in about 1987.
BBC Model B was £335 on pre-order - I know because I bought one!!The Toshiba HX10 was sold for £400 prior to Xmas 1983 and was soon retailing at £200 in WHSmiths after Xmas.
The BBC B was £400 too, which is why the Electron was launched as a lower cost version.
The Electron and Speccy 48 were around £200 with the C64 slightly more. The Amstrads came out a year later.
MSX were used in schools in France and Spain so are their BBC B equivalent. ..which led to the MSX2 platform that a smaller number of manufacturers continued with in about 1987.
Listing magazines, type in reams of code only for it not to work, then either try to fix it or wait for the next edition which had a column of errors and their fixes.
And trying to convert from one computer to another. I learnt so much trying to translate from one BASIC dialect to another.
SD.
And trying to convert from one computer to another. I learnt so much trying to translate from one BASIC dialect to another.
SD.
tribbles said:
Not sure about the *FX call - I've been making my own CTRC and video ULA, and I can't think of any that would do it - but the break key was hard-wired into the reset line, so impossible to disable without unplugging the keyboard.
(I suppose you could've told the CTRC to display from zero page, which means that as the CPU's doing it's normal thing, it would appear as though random stuff was happening - MODE 7 would've been the best for that). (Another alternative would be to disable the VSYNC/HSYNC signals, but I'm not sure what that would do)
The Archimedes was much easier to disable the break (although the reset at the back of the keyboard may have also been hard-wired) - and the video was much easier to control to make static.
I think it was *fx154, it was a very long time ago haha ! Yeah it wasn't disabling the Break key in hardware I cant remember exactly what I did but if break was pressed it would just re run whatever I had written and the same if you did a hard break... I think lol !(I suppose you could've told the CTRC to display from zero page, which means that as the CPU's doing it's normal thing, it would appear as though random stuff was happening - MODE 7 would've been the best for that). (Another alternative would be to disable the VSYNC/HSYNC signals, but I'm not sure what that would do)
The Archimedes was much easier to disable the break (although the reset at the back of the keyboard may have also been hard-wired) - and the video was much easier to control to make static.
Narcisus said:
I think it was *fx154, it was a very long time ago haha ! Yeah it wasn't disabling the Break key in hardware I cant remember exactly what I did but if break was pressed it would just re run whatever I had written and the same if you did a hard break... I think lol !
The escape key you can disable (*FX 229,0 IIRC).- FX154 would've written to the video ULA, but I can't think of anything that would immediately do that (possibly running Teletext at too high a frequency?)
3.1416 said:
I don't remember paying £200 for my speccy 48K - thought it was a lot cheaper.
Worth every penny for hours of frustration with Jet Set Willy, Tir Na Nog and typing in reams of hex - smoother with machine code!
The 48k model was close to £200 with a couple of games. I had Manic Miner come with my MSX..the first in the JSW trilogy.Worth every penny for hours of frustration with Jet Set Willy, Tir Na Nog and typing in reams of hex - smoother with machine code!
CaptainSlow said:
That must have been in '82 or very early '83.
I ordered it in September 1982 and it was delivered in mid December 82, it was one of first series 3 boards with improved (you can't fry an egg on this one) PSU, I used it at university for the following 2.5 years building a sideways RAM board, a fast overclocked stereo D/A - A/D board (could simulate a Fairlight!! - it sat on the 1Mhz bus) and adding a 40K single sided floppy disk drive for which I wrote paging software allowing you to write larger programs with the higher resolution graphic by swapping sections of program to and from disk!!I sold it shortly after graduating as working with computers for my day job, meant that I didn't want to see another computer when I got home!
A great machine and the interface capability at the time was fantastic. A friend and I both had them at university and by b
dising the RS423 we wrote networking software that would share screens between our computers, those were the days, a lot of machine code!!!shed driver said:
Who remembers going into the computer shops, or larger WH Smiths where the computer was on display.
10 print "Peter is a knob"
20 goto 10
Setting it running before Peter came over to see what you were doing?
Or maybe just me?
SD.
I seem to remember there was a Poke command on the BBC or something else of that vintage that disabled the Escape or Break key, so you couldn't quit the program without turning it off much to the confusion of shop staff.10 print "Peter is a knob"
20 goto 10
Setting it running before Peter came over to see what you were doing?
Or maybe just me?
SD.
shed driver said:
Who remembers going into the computer shops, or larger WH Smiths where the computer was on display.
10 print "Peter is a knob"
20 goto 10
Setting it running before Peter came over to see what you were doing?
Or maybe just me?
SD.
Oh, it was you was it?10 print "Peter is a knob"
20 goto 10
Setting it running before Peter came over to see what you were doing?
Or maybe just me?
SD.
I did have a large collection of Retro computers & calculators and sold about 99% of my collection including
Sinclair Spectrum. +1, +2 and +3, BBC Master, BBC Model B, ZX81, Commodore SX64 Executive, ZX81, Pocket computers HP95 plus a few Casios. Epson HX20. Apple Macintosh Classic. Apple 2GS, Apple 2c. Plus some obscure single board OU computers and others I've forgotten.
Calculators Sinclair enterprise programmable, Sinclair Scientific, Lots of Texas Instruments mainly programmable. Commodore.
I still have an Apple 2 plus (not europlus) REV 1. Plus a Macintosh Plus and some more TI calculators, ZX Spectrum. I'm sure this will go in time.
To be honest I've run out of space and moved in with the wife so combining both properties just means no more space so something had to go.
The fun of collecting cheap play machines has gone as people are collecting them as a future investment rather than a bit of fun.
Same thing is now happening with old games console. Look at the price of old Sega Master stuff.
So much history:
Sinclair ZX81 Introduction to BASIC
Amstrad CPC 464, upgraded to 646 spec over time BASIC and CP/M
Victor Vicky DOS 3.0 (IIRC) 132 col, 5" monochrome screen, variable speed floppy disks
In the loft for years, then donated to Bletchley Park museum.
Amstrad PC1640, followed by a (long) series of Mesh and Dell Windows desktop machines, interspersed with IBM Thinkpads and other laptops, a cheap Chinese Notebook and a Compaq clamshell.
Sinclair ZX81 Introduction to BASIC
Amstrad CPC 464, upgraded to 646 spec over time BASIC and CP/M
Victor Vicky DOS 3.0 (IIRC) 132 col, 5" monochrome screen, variable speed floppy disks
In the loft for years, then donated to Bletchley Park museum.
Amstrad PC1640, followed by a (long) series of Mesh and Dell Windows desktop machines, interspersed with IBM Thinkpads and other laptops, a cheap Chinese Notebook and a Compaq clamshell.
shed driver said:
Who remembers going into the computer shops, or larger WH Smiths where the computer was on display.
10 print "Peter is a knob"
20 goto 10
Setting it running before Peter came over to see what you were doing?
Or maybe just me?
SD.
Pfft. it was 10 print "Peter is a knob"
20 goto 10
Setting it running before Peter came over to see what you were doing?
Or maybe just me?
SD.
10 print "Peter is a knob" ,
20 goto 10
the comma made it print across the screen. Yes, I went on to become a programmer, got a computer science degree and now, 35 years later work in Digital.
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.
Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff