What's new Pussycat too?

Some lovely acquisitions there, Alex, Matt and Nysavant - they greatly enhance any retro collector's collection.

Lovely to see and thanks for the quality share - great pics.

 

Very nice @nysavant ! I didn't even know there were Atari related hot wheels! Are those a newer item or vintage?

 

Ha, I didn't spot they were Atari related as well.... Very funky indeed... I think I like my Captain Scarlet SPV a bit more though

And something I twigged on for the first time last week, the guy doing the intro for the Captain Scarlet original show was none other than UFO's Ed Straker himself, or rather Ed Bishop as he was (RIP). Gerry Anderson had a little set of folk he reused in various shows he did.

Bishop and Shane Rimmer were known as his "go to Yanks" for anything where he needed an American.

 

I think they came out around 2012. I already had Pong and then my other half got me the complete collection this past Christmas. I did think about keeping them sealed in the packaging but where is the fun in that

 

A couple more Atari related items arrived today. I think the last of the stuff I had purchased/ordered and probably no more new goodies until my business starts rolling again in about a month to 6 weeks.

One is the paperback edition of the book Stationfall, the sequel to Planetfall, both of which I had no idea were books as well as games. Between them and Hitchhiker's I'm beginning to wonder how many Infocom games were first books or became books later...

The other is a new cue ball to replace the badly yellowed (nothing can be done, I tried) cue ball in my Atari Trak-ball, which will finally be completely restored once I install it.

 

I see Missile Command in your future...

 

I just scored a major haul last night. Popped onto the local Amiga facebook page and someone had just posted saying they needed someone to come collect an A1200 and various bits as they were moving office. Half an hour and an agreed charity donation later I had the A1200 and two boxes of various peripherals and software!

Not had a chance to try any of it out yet but looks like I'll be having a bit of fun over the weekend

 

Fantastic! I'm so happy for you! My Amiga 2000 (with 030 card with MMU)and 32megs extended memory came to me from a second-hand, mom & pop computer/console hardware/software store, along with C64's, Atari XL's and a bunch of other stuff, back in the early 2000's for a mere $100. They had this upper shelving all along the top of the store, including over doorways, that had all this stuff up there. The owner said it had all been on the floor in the back store room when it got flooded with an inch or two of water. So there was a lot of clean up inside and out, but I brought it all back cosmetically and working well. I eventually sold most of it off, when I moved from Wisconsin to Texas in 2004, some lost in storage in Texas that was robbed. Anyway, I know how it feels! I had just stepped into the store to browse and asked about one item on that top shelf when he said I could have all of it, pointing around the shop perimeter, for $100. I didn't give him a chance to change his mind. I made a few grand off of it all, it would have been worth 10 times as much now though...

 

Great result, Al - a helluva bargain there by the sounds of it just like when Matt struck "gold" in a chance encounter 20 or so years back. It just shows you, retronauts, there are still a few occasions when all your perseverance and a good bit of luck pays off and you happen to be in that classic location:
The Right Place... at the Right Time.

 

I so miss my 1200 that I sold, it wasn't as pimped out as Matt's one but it was an 8MB machine with a HD in and it was in very good nick.

So, glad to see someone get a 1200, you really enjoy it Al, it's a stellar bit of kit with an amazing heritage of great software and lots of FUN software, Enjoy!!

 

I've not even had a chance to look at the machine or in the bags yet and see what other hardware is installed or if the A1200 actually works. That's a project for this weekend.

Just had another retro item turn up in the post, so will post some pictures over the next couple of days.

 

Good luck to you...Have fun..

 

Just plugged the A1200 and even the floppy drive worked first time
Big bonus is that it also has an internal hard drive fitted. So far I've also unearthed 2 external floppy drives, a dual ST/Amiga mouse, 2 joypads, a Competition Pro joystick (not 100% working), a sound sampler, a Genlock, a mouse/joystick auto switcher and a 9pin to USB mouse adapter!

Starting to work my way through the floppy disks now, must be 100 or so here. A fun Saturday morning for sure

 

I have a tenner with your name on it Al

 

Ok, I'll go 20

 

Joking aside, sounds like a great haul there Al, the old genlock would sell well as would the sampler do it's a good grab you have. IF you ever want to get rid of the 1200 in the distant future then keep me in mind please.

You have fun there.......The Amiga is such a fun machine......

 

I think the Amiga will be a long time keeper Paul. But if I do let it go at any time then it is yours for the same price I paid (i.e. free!).

At the moment I can't afford to get it recapped so won't use it too much until then. Thankfully we have a very active user group here in Glasgow with a couple of very talented enthusiasts who can sort that out for me. I'll need to start looking into WHDLoad games with it having the hard drive though. Nice 'problem' indeed!

I sorted out the other bits and have re-posted on the local Amiga facebook page. I know the Genlock and sound sampler will both go to good homes. A fixer-up power supply and 200 floppy disks have already been claimed in the last hour. Good to know that everything is going to enthusiasts like us who will get enjoyment out of it.

Right now the A1200 is sitting just above my A500 and settling into its new home

 

Yes, nice problem indeed...

The WHDLoad stuff is a dream once you have workbench on the HD and the latest version of WHDLoad is free and just unpacks into the C and Startup dirs.

I'm happy it's a keeper Al, as I always say, I love seeing a machine get used, usually people who say that it's a keeper or the like use those machines, maybe not every day or week or month, but they still get played with and are not just ornaments gathering dust (grrr).

But should the love affair end, then I'm here to be the knight in shining armour and rescue the good old 1200

Have fun Al, there's plenty to enjoy there...

 

Delighted you've got your rainy day filled, fella.

Enjoy, Al and do post up some results of your "play away" sessions!

 

It is actually rather sunny up here in dear old Glasgow. Even going to go for a wander in the park later

 

Enjoy the best of both worlds then, Al.
A sunny stroll then a stroll down "memory" lane as it were with the vintage retro classic 1200 kit.
Completely persisting it down here with that "set in for the day" dismal grey sky look.
We've just done the DIY B&Q, stuck in queues of endless traffic run and now hunkering down for the day.
Get a proper fire lit etc.
Enjoy that bootiful find of yours, mate.

 

Sod DIY.. It can blooming well, do it itself...

Dry here at the mo, but looking at the sky tells me its going to be rather wet and very soon..

 

I used to use WHDload with both my ST's and Amiga, IIRC. Isn't that an app to transfer files from PC to Amiga/ST format standards? Or maybe it just had something to do with HDD's. I had a real HDD of course in my Amiga, and my first 1040STf I had an external one I built into an old IBM PS/1 computer case along with a second floppy drive and a SCSII Zip drive. When I got the Mega STe it of course had a HDD built in, but I also go a 1040STe which I used Satantronic's Satan Drive, IIRC, with standard SD cards which, IIRC, I either used WHDload in conjunction with it, or in making 3.5" floppies for the regular drives off the PC.

 

On the Amiga WHDLoad is a way of taking disk games and making them load off a HDD, it's purely a loader, the actual transfer of files is done by a talented hacker who has ripped the code off the disk, WHDLoad then does the loading of the packed game from the hard disk..

Don't know much about ST's and their software, me and them didn't get on

 

I'll have to look into it more, it may have been only on the A2000 I used it, but it seems like that name is extremely familiar from the ST side of my memory, as I did a lot more file/image transfers with it than the Amiga as I owned an ST much longer (having 4-5 different models to start with and only one Amiga). Though looking back I did prefer the Amiga, I know I've said before, and if I ever get another 16-bit computer, it will be an Amiga and not an ST, TT or even a Falcon as I had one of them, and loved it, but far too little software for it.

And because of the fact that the last 20+ years, knowing all the facts of the industry inside and out, that I'm a fan of Jay Miner and others that worked with him like Joe Decur (I'm sure that is spelled wrong) and not the companies that all "traded" around their employees over the years anyway like they were major league sports teams. So I follow the blood line with my fandom now, not the legal names, so to speak.

Which also wasn't a biased choice made after learning who the engineers were behind the machines of the day, but I found I preferred the Amiga to the ST line first, then later found out that Jay Miner was behind it and my favorite Atari 8-bit line, which probably only answered why I preferred the Amiga over the ST line. And don't get me wrong, the ST line I really liked too, and it's really the descendant of the C64 since Jack brought those engineers with him from Commodore, which is why Commodore had to buy the Amiga or get stuck holding the bag! And the fact that back in those crazy days, things could have still gone the way originally intended and the Amiga would have ended up as an Atari machine.

Now that the companies are long gone, it certainly doesn't matter, and while I'll always have my favorites because nostalgia will put the cherry on top, I'm liking more than just Jay Miner's work these days and appreciate some other engineers for their own uniqueness.

Sorry, I just love talking about all this behind the scenes business and politics that was so "inbred" in the industry back then...it just makes me chuckle thinking about hard-core Atari and Commodore fans who stand by either the C64/Amiga or A8/ST machines and there's essentially no meaning behind that bias, they should be drawing the lines between C64/ST and A8/Amiga in my opinion, if they have too. That's my reasoning behind my favorites, but no discrimination toward the others, only nostalgia separates them from my favorites.

The Coco 2 is just not as impressive of a machine compared to the C64 and Atari 800 line with their custom chips. Regardless of arguments that the 6809 is a better processor or not than a 6502. And the "custom" chips set was all designed by Motorolla, not Tandy/RadioShack, and just didn't have the imagination behind it's design that the Commodore and Atari machines do, like the Apple II in many ways. But was expanable via it's buss like the Apple II, but modular like Atari SIO peripherals. Like if all Atari peripherals where run through the PBI/cart buss on the Atari, but with the Brains in a big-ass cartridge in-between the computer and the peripheral, instead of built into the peripheral like Atari and Commodore designs.

But I'm really learning to like and appreciate it for what it is and it has tons of modern upgrades, which I have the SuperSprite FM+ board which basically upgrades it to the full power of the last generation of MSX machines (not compatible).

But the C64 comes before any thoughts of another Amiga.