I thought it might be a good idea to create a new thread for us to show-and-tell new things which came to us as gifts. First it was meant for Christmas, but then I decided what about Hanukkah? And then what about birthdays, anniversaries or all other religious and secular occasions we give or exchange gifts. So the only guide line for this thread is that it was a gift, no matter how or why it was given. You can specify in your posts if it's for a special occasion and what occasion. So I'll start it off with showing and telling of my Christmas gifts. I received under shorts and socks as is per usual in this family, everyone get those for Christmas. I also received one of those small torches which is telescopic and magnetized for such stuff as retrieving lost bolts, nuts, screws and washers when working on vehicles. That was a nice stocking stuffer. My main Christmas present was a new Sony Blu-ray player. I gave my other still working Blu-ray player to a friend who only had an old DVD player. It works perfectly well, for CD, DVD and standard Blu-rays. My new Sony however, is compatible with much more. I always test every type of media I own that's CD sized optical disks when I buy a new disc player, as some times they support optical media that they don't specify on the box/manual/etc. So I'm immediately enamored by this Sony player (which is new old-stock from 2016 on sale for $100; I was the one doing all the Christmas shopping for the family off of Amazon $100 was the limit for the three of us for the main gift) because after testing all my optical media, it plays them all (aside from proprietary gaming consoles of course). It plays CD, SACD and even my old Video CD's (which it also upscales and they look better than Laserdisc, not as good as DVD). And of course Blu-ray, blu-ray 3D movies(though I don't care as I don't have a 3D TV and they went the way of the Dodo AFAIK, DVD, USB media and last, but not least (which is cool since I don't own one) PS3 discs and gaming! I can get a wireless PS3 controller and burn PS3 games on DVD-R (or recordable Blu-ray, I forget which format PS3 games uses). Lastly, of course, Wi-fi and LAN and it has all the main streaming video services available to download, install and use (Netflix and Youtube already installed). And of course it's HDMI out for all of those optical media discs. Oh, and as you see, it can also upscale to 4K. Of course I only have a 1080p projector, but it's there for the future... The biggest thing for me is the ability for it to play my old collection of Video CD's, which I was using an old S-video out DVD player for before (with no upscaling). So I replaced two units with one that covers all I wanted and more! Just to avoid possible questions about my switchbox above and it's labeling, it's the one that I plug my composite video only machines into (or ones I only have composite cable for like the PS2) and audio only like my 8-track which wouldn't fit on my other audio-only switch box) I send the composite video output through an S-video adapter and then it goes to my #3 switch box on one of the inputs, which is my S-video only switch box. It doesn't improve the video, but it allows composite video to be sent through S-video output to my S-video-to-VGA upscaler and finally out to VGA which is all upscaled and 3D comb filtered and scan-doubled to progressive scan 480P which is then displayed at 1024x768 VGA which then makes them all look much, much better. All the labeling including what it goes out to is for my convenience as I have so many switch boxes and upscalers, if I didn't, I can't even remember which buttons to push to get one of my devices A/V set right to watch/listen as I have to push buttons on several at a time to get what I want as the through-put.
In terms of gifts, I didn't get any, it was all very tight here, and it's car tax renewal and insurance renewal, all in 14 days of each other. But I had Serena, Cindy and Felix, a wealth of festive goodness. I did treat myself pre Xmas to a CBM 1541 Mk II disk drive and before that an A500 Mini, which I have to say I got bored with way too quickly. Never knowingly used an upscaler, I hear all sorts of things re the RetroTink, but at the price they cost, it's well out of my league, and to be honest, I don't know what I'd do with it. When my old mate Bob passed I inherited numerous bits of gear including 2 blu - ray players, oddly enough, a Sony one. I'll never make as much use of it as you have Matt, you maximise the use of stuff. I did have a SA-CD player back then (well the function was built in) and a whopping 2 SA-CD's Likewise, I don't have a 4K TV (or above), maybe one day if the lottery keeps on drip feeding me money, as one thing I love are films, I stopped being a cinema person long ago, but with COVID and people's attitudes I don't miss the cinema other than the huge screen and massive sound, the disease, ignorance and dirty habits of folks are not something I miss. So maybe I'll be luck and get a huge TV and make home my cinema. Sorry, wish I had some wonderful gift stories, but we tend to be a bit lean about that these days.
I've seen the Retrotink in action, and my $80 Ambery video2VGA and RGBtoVGA upscaler/converters work just as well. HDMI versions can be had for $20 more. The Retrotink is a rip-off.
Good thread idea Matt. I got one retro-inspired gift this year, a teeny 3.5" retro looking LCD screen with a barrel load of built in NES games and a wireless controller. It plays surprisingly well. Will take a picture later if I get a chance. My daughter got me a great deal on a coffee machine which goes with my gadget nature so looking forward to trying that out.
On ALiExpress they can't give those NES playing things away (not saying it's cheap), normally around 5 quid inc shipping.. As I'm no NES fan they don't do much for me but as a time wasting retro bit, they are good..Now if it was a Mini Snes playing thing, that would be another matter But who am I kidding, with my eye's I'd barely be able to read text on one.. I feel a bit like Capt Kirk in Wrath of Khan where he has to use glasses to read something because he's allergic to Retnox5, made him feel old...
Hey, guys. Lovely to see your posts and catch up on your news. Matt is (and always will be) Blue Peter, Bluetooth and now Blu-Voodoo-Ray compatible, incorporated and conglomerated. I raise a glass too to Paul's strong family values and reminding us that the love in his life are his gals - Cindy and Serena - and with them by his side he will conquer all. Basically, the Baz retro story this Christmas is somewhere in this pic - thank you one and all who sent me either lovely messages, missives, micros or Chrimbo cards and best wishes to us both - they were all much appreciated and all the very best to you and yours, Atari Owner members. ABOVE: Baz and his "whatnots". Cheers, gang.
That's me too Paul, can't see text and small icons are blurry a little less than a meter a way or closer without reading glasses. But that's true even with my 13-15 inch CRT monitors and any LCD 19 inch or smaller. That's why I only use them for my vintage computers where I need the keyboard. For consoles and movies, it has to be my huge projection screen to enjoy them all, from the classic to modern, without reading glasses. If I ever win the lottery I'll get laser surgery done. I'd get tooth implants too as my teeth are pretty bad now. I always brushed, but was never regular with flossing and that's where my teeth went bad. They looked good on the fronts right up until I lost the teeth I lost. I'll have to settle for partial dentures pretty soon though, if my mother keeps living. I had been trying to hold out until she passed and then use my share of the inheritance on implants, but unfortunately (only unfortunate for my teeth) she's still living on against all odds. That's interesting that you referred to that from The Wrath of Kahn, as I just watched that movie last night, before starting this thread, to test out my video CD version of the movie. I also have it on laserdisc, but with the new Blu-ray, my video CD collection looks better than the laserdisc versions! Anyway, I just don't go for the mini's and Flashback type consoles and computers because I have the original machines, for all the consoles I care for anyway, so I have no need for the new stuff, especially since I have the SD card cartridges to load the entire libraries up to them now. And I'd still rather get the original for the consoles and computers I still want to get. I have only the Colecovision Flashback, which was a gift a few years back.
Nice C64 mini @Andy Barr ! I thought about that one, but am still holding out for space for the real thing, disk drives, tape drives and all! Have fun!
I've looked at the mini despite owning 2 real machines and I'd have to say, don't do it. It will give you a nice experience but not the proper experience. Again, it depends on how hardcore you are with the real item, I recently got an Amiga Mini and it's the cutest little box out there BUT soon after getting it I was trying a load of my go to games and slowly, but surely I started seeing little issues here and there. It became clear the emulator used was not up to the job, so I found a place that allowed you to update the emulator and add a whole host of other emulators as well. I updated and still there were things showing faults. Now a casual player might not see stuff like this, but I'm one of those detail conscious folk who spot everything, if it's not like the real machine I'll see it. Don't get me wrong, they play plenty of things perfectly, probably a majority of the software out there (although I've not tested that notion and never will) and the cleaner screen may be a nicety for some, but I want it to play as the real thing for everything. That's one of the joys and pitfalls of emulation, a great emulator plays 99.9% of stuff while adding nice little bonus things like save states, cheats, multiple configurations, but when the emulation is weak, then it ruins the whole experience by triggering crashes during a game, bugs where you get stuck and so on and so forth. These days most emulators that have some history are pretty damn good and the odd emulator like the brand new BigPEmu that does the Jaguar start out stunningly well, the only problem is that the people making the Mini's won't license some of the newer emulators because they run on Windows which makes using that OS a big No so they use Linux based emu's which are lagging behind (one of the poor things about a free OS). If they could so a deal to have a Win 64 backbone and things like Altirra, WinUAE, HOXs64 etc etc then these mini's would be hugely better. Is it me being picky, maybe, I like stuff done properly, and I'm sure a casual gamer or someone using a C64 mini or the like for the first time would have a great time, but those who played and maybe programmed on the machines a lot on the real thing will spot the issues.
It's still a possible cost based item, I got a nice, serviced 1541 Mk II for 67.00 inc delivery, which is a good price considering what 1541's that are untested go for. Not sure what the US pricing is for C64's or C64C's (I'd imagine 128's are very expensive everywhere) is, the older bread bins go for more than the newer C64C version with the only real difference is an updated sound / SID (not Space Intruder Detector ) chip and a very slightly different VIC chip. To be honest, the C versions are also more reliable and look nicer. A tape deck might be a via option too, considering the speed of the real un-modded drives, although Jiffy DOS is a very cheap disk drive mod (2 chips changed, one in C64 and one in the drive) and makes the drive very much more fun and it's very compatible with fast loaders. But the tape deck is nice, the load speeds are good and with things like Invada - load you got to play a game (I wonder what game it lets you play while the game is loading, in fact most of the newer stuff gave you loading music, nice screens and other fancy features while it did its thing. There's plenty of fun to be had with the C64, best computer ever, nah, but a nice one for the retro enthusiast.. My, best computer ever would be an Amiga 1200 with a 68030 in and a HDD, it's what I had and HATED selling it (twice over as well, my original and then one given by Bob's brother when he died). Just a dream machine.
Ahh, yeah, I don't care much for emulation at all. The only emulators I use, which is like one evening every 5 years are those I burned on CD-R for the Dreamcast. Amiga, ST, C64 and all the older Sega consoles (and Game Gear). The only one the DC can't handle is the Saturn. It does OK with the games that came with the emulators I burned to CD-R, but of course those were chosen because the do work OK, obviously. I haven't tried any that didn't come on the disc images with the emulators on them, and it's only about 25 games for the Amiga and ST and maybe twice that for the other systems mentioned. Other than the DC though, I don't use emulation at all except for Altirra on my PC, and I only use it to instantly see my A8 Rastaconverter images to make sure they don't have errors that pop up once in a while with Rastaconverter and then I use a utility on the PC to fix those errors before posting the .xex file of the image on AtariAge. Even though Altirra is pretty much perfect, even with all the upgrades too. Why should I since I own the real machines? But Altirra for displaying Rastaconverter image .xex's without having to save the .xex to and SD card, load it up on my real Atari, see errors, then back to the PC to fix is quite handy, but that's it, period. The one exception other than the very rare use of Dreamcast emulators will be emulating the Apple II and the Spectrum on my real Atari, once I finally get it upgraded with a Rapidus, which is a requirement for those emulators, as it's really the 64816 on the Rapidus that emulates them. It can be done with a stock Atari 6502 and a megabyte of extended ram, but then they run as slow as molasses at the North Pole* And only because I just think it's too cool that an upgraded Atari can emulate those machines with a Rapidus! And I'll probably rarely use those emulators anyway as there isn't much that interests me on the Apple II or Spectrum. I thought these mini's, like the C64 and Amiga ones were like the Atari 2600 flashback(except for the Flashback 1 that was FPGA of the NES that then was emulating the 7800-HELL NO!!!), Intellevision and Colecovision flashbacks use programmed FPGA's which is basically the original hardware reduced to one chip, and they work perfectly. Now that I know the mini's are emulators and not circuit-programmed FPGA's then I've absolutely no interest in them at all. I'll get the real hardware. *In the northern states we have a saying: "As slow as molasses in January," but I'm not sure you Brits know that saying as I don't think you usually get nearly as cold as the northern states in January...thanks to that Atlantic Gulf stream that keeps Great Britain warmer than the land-locked northern U.S. states...
I would agree the C64 is the second best 8-bit computer ever, a VERY close second to the A8. But I admit it's better at a few of things than the A8, but then the A8 is better at few things than the C64, so it's almost a rub...not quite IMHO though, due to the A8 numerous graphic modes (and ability to mix modes on-screen with DLI's and with a bit of creative programming create new software graphic modes that can display so many more colors on screen because of that, and comparatively HUGE color palette. Which with me being an artist will win out every time over a few extra sprites! Of course the C64 has a much, much larger software library, but when the Atari already has so many thousands of games that I'll probably never get around too, I say so what if the C64 has 10's of thousands, since I'd never get around to all of them either! Both have more than I can play/use in one lifetime regardless! In the states the C64C is much cheaper than the bread-bin C64's too, which may end up being the only reason I *might* settle for a C64C, even though I hate those grey and beige wedge shape computers as I mentioned previously, I believe in the VIC-20 thread where we were talking about our aesthetic preferences?
Do you know what, Al, I'm gonna get the little bugger out tonight... and report back, mate. Just waiting for Utd to hopefully beat Bournemouth and Arse to stamp on the Geordie Maggots then I'll be back with ye.
Does Bev know that you show your little bugger to folk.. Dropped Serena off to the station, but on the way a christmas tree was caught by the high winds and lashed in to my car spraying the car with pine needles. Made us giggle a bit.. I hope that wasn't you in the Xmas suit trying to show me your 'little bugger'.
Ho ho ho! Nah, mate. If I whipped my Mini Me out there would be alerts on the news for missing serpents and the like (I've currently got it tucked into one of my socks and much chafing is going on so I'd best re-arrange me ging gang goolies and have done with it). Sounds like you guys had a close escape with that flying wind-assisted Christmas tree and the shedding of its needles... I just hope you didn;t catch "tinsilitis" whilst removing the decorations from your wing mirrors
The old tree was like a tumbleweed, I thought it was just going to roll across the road but as I got nearer it sort of stopped, so I went to go past and it clobbered us. As for tonsils, long gone... You and mini me keep safe, no polishing it tho...
