Most liked posts in thread: What's new Pussycat too?

The trouble with my lot was that we shipped in very few new titles (also remember that what the UK got as new had been out for quite some time in the US) and never any US versions. And after that they would buy bulk el cheapo deals from the usual suppliers of gear that they themselves wanted rid of, so Maplin brought it for next to nothing and tried to use the shops as an outlet for them. As I've said before, I moaned like hell about it and sent 99% of our stock back to the head office as it was just taking up space.As you say, nothing wrong with the games when they first came out, but a couple of year old stuff was pointless.

As for Matt, I sort of guessed he had an 8-track setup, I'd not seen / remembered the pictures. And like him, I hate things with bits missing, it's like an OCD nightmare..

 

First time back on here for a while so only just catching up with events. Really,really sorry to hear about your Dogs Matt, don't really know what to say mate. We lost our Merlin just before Christmas due to a brain hemorrhage which was upsetting to deal with but not a patch on what you went through.

 

Sorry to hear about the dog / family member Richie..

 

My Atari 7800 console eBay purchase arrived the other day so I managed to get a sit down earlier and have a proper play. The joypads were a bit stiff to start with but seem to have loosened up, and the power button is a little bit iffy but just needs a firm press. I was most impressed by the picture quality though, compared to a couple of previous 7800's I've had the RF output on this one is pretty strong. Now all I need to do is decide if I'm going to try and track down a couple of the 7800 carts I want, or save up lots of pennies for an SD Gamedrive for it instead. So if anyone see's a reasonably prized Ballbazer or Galaga on the console please let me know!

 

Thanks Andy. I've messaged about Ballblazer.

 

I received my DIN connector for connecting L/R lines in/out on my reel-to-reel, so I'm ready to start using it today. This is also the same type of cable that Atari 8-bits and C64's use for audio/video monitor ports too, if you want it cheaper that the computer dealers sell it. Only $8 from Amazon.

Though pinouts are slightly different between A8 & C64, so RCA colors may not match. IIRC they are right colors for C64 (for plugging into a Commodore monitor) but Atari uses, IIRC, yellow for composite video but any one of the other three could be audio out and luma/chroma outs, so a bit of experimenting is required.

For my reel-to-reel red/white are lines in and yellow/black are lines out to my amplifier.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00M0FXP64?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

 

Someone is going to have fun with the good old equipment...Good on you Matt...Have great fun..

 

I have put my C128 outside in the summer, not last year but 2022 and it did lighten up a bit

 

Depends on if you own an ST or not?

 

Apologies for the delay in posting, but Royal Mail managed to lose my delivery for a few days so only got a chance to have a play with it this evening. So what is it?

Well, the item in question is SidecarT. It's a cartridge for the Atari ST that uses a Raspberry Pi Pico to not only emulate other cartridges but to let you load your own floppy images from an sd card and best of all, download games over a wifi connection!

Excuse the quality of the pictures but I couldn't get any decent photo's of my crt display.

This is the SidecarT flashing it's little lcd heart while downloading a game


It boots to a configuration screen that lets you choose the various options


This is part of the games database you can download from over wifi. Pretty comprehensive list of titles.



If you have a working floppy drive it can still be booted from as normal as well.

Future updates they're looking at being able to network machines and use as a hard drive so worth keeping an eye on if you are fan of the ST. Price worked out at £51 including postage from Spain.

 

Aye, good luck and enjoy, Al.
Thanks for posting those images and giving us a little explanation as to how it works/what goes on and the capabilities etc.
NOT an ST fan but I am sure others here will be interested and might even have a dabble themselves.
These screen resolution/fonts/desktop/GUI shots do bring back a whole lot of memories for me but largely I was left disappointed with the ST but some games and apps were neat and did give me pleasure, eg. Carrier Command, Kick Off and a buggy racing game...Buggy Boy?








Thanks for the memories, Al.

 

Ah Buggy Boy. Great game that I must have a play at again soon. So far the SidecarT has ran everything I've tried, but for any software it doesn't then I have an STFM with a Gotek drive installed as well. The ST has always been one of my favourites (if not favourite) computer as it was my main computer during my teenage years. It was also the computer that I ran a public domain library for and started my own business selling and installing them for new users. I even became part of the cracking scene for a good while and made lots of friends, some of whom I still keep in touch with to this day.

Of course, the Amiga is the more powerful of the two 16bit systems and games that weren't just simple ports always played and sounded better on the Commodore system. But deep down I'm really an Atari guy at heart

What is pretty crazy is that all these years later I can now buy a new 2600 console and games are being released for it. And then we have the 400 Mini to look forward to at the end of March! What a time to be an Atariain.

 

Great posts, Al and Paul.
I totally get both - both of you are passionate about your memories, experiences and retro loves and I get a buzz just outta reading em.
I can way understand how exciting it must have been running a PD library, back in the day, supporting any of our beloved machines, and cos yours happened to be the ST I can see why you are so still in lurve and that reason alone rocks for me, Al - your enthusiasm, passion and devotion is carved in stone and it's great that ST guys are still in touch and vice versa.
You know what, Paul, some of your aches and pains now find "pride of place" in my ageing person too... achilles tendon (of late following hard on heels of tooth and root extraction) and now overnight my bloody neck has a crick or pull which is causing me to have to turn my whole body at the mo (also denying me much-needed kip too) so I too can sympathise with the amount of restricted time you now can spend in front of your system(s) before your body screams out ENOUGH but once again, your great enthusiasm carries you on as you relive, replay and reminisce on all the great consoles/platformers and superb graphical creations that you recommend to us Atari Owners.
It truly is a case of we've never had it so good and thanks to you fellas, there are still fresh recommendations and reviews to enjoy - cheers, fellas.

 

PD Force (I know it was a really original name) was great fun, it started off in a market stall confusing everyone who was looking for pirated games instead . I ran it for a good while and used to attend the computer fairs that were a regular occurence back in the 80's/90's. Also have some great memories of reading ST Format from cover to cover every month and maybe that's going to be next on my list, to see what back issues I can possibly find to add to my collection. Ah yes, them were the days alright lads!

It's always good coming on here and talking to you guys about our micro past and now present pains amongst other things. Did I tell you how sore my left knee gets in the bad weather.....

 

Hi, Al.
Hull Boots also had Beebs, Electrons, Dragons and definitely Ataris but our "goto" area, once we'd done the 10 PRINT "BOOTS ARE BASTARDS and DIXONS IS CHEAPER" 20 GOTO 10 routine, and run off laughing, was the Hifi's... especially those music centres with a timer on like say this one...

Look just to the right of the PYE badge (left hand side) - many models had a digital clock... with alarm/wake up functions that were dead easy to set to go off say in a few mins... once you and your mates had had chance to leave the HIFI department and depart the store...

Why would we do that?

Because several of these radios would be programmed by us around the store whilst in "stand by" mode tuned into say Radio 1 with the VOLUME TURNED UP TO 10 ready to go off like ticking time bombs!

It took us all our composure to rush out down the stairs/escalators and not to burst out laughing as we headed out the store in Hull Prospect Centre whilst behind us, coming from upstairs, was one HELLUVA HULLABALOO as the fekkers all turned on at once - in several different areas of the dept - which would take the assistants some time to run around and sort out and switch em off (whilst being simultaneously deafened)!!

Needless to say the store assistants/detectives got to recognise us and in the end we used to get unceremoniously booted out the store so we had to leave it for months at a time before we dared re-try it again but it was such a laugh to 14-15yr old yoofs for at least a year of our teenage loungeabout lives!

 

My old mate and me brought those watches that you could use as remote controls. In my case it was simply to do that and it was a bit of tech, i'm partial to that. Kev on the other hand had demonic plans for the watches, I got this call with Kev in hysterics asking me to bring my watch.. Similar to the radio's on standby but far worse. We went the length of Walthamstow market at about 11:30pm and the market is the longest in Europe (or was then). he got to every hifi shop or place with TV's in and set them all to full blast (well the one's we could see the brand of) with the watches...

Probably the most childish thing I've done as a grown bloke, BUT it was hilarious to us..

Needless to say, after it was done a few times the shops just unplugged the TV's to ruin our fun..

Jez, I was such a pillock at times..

Bit of a one-trick pony though, the watches were huge and ugly, so never got worn after that. Casio tat

 

I wonder why I thought I was the only person in the world to do the goto 10 leaving "Matt Baker rules" on every computer I ever came across. I'd space it just right to get the scrolling to fill the screen looking like it was all scrolling diagonal too, instead of the straight line of text down the left side of the screen. Any of you do that or just the straight scroll on the left?

Kids today have no idea the fun they are missing out on these days with no BASIC interpreter built in with the one blinking cursor in the upper right once a machine is booted without peripherals. It's all about the simple pleasures, isn't it mates? I guess that's why we stick to our old machines and the simple smiles of joy.

But no heads in the sand lads, we can still enjoy newer tech, but the joy certainly doesn't last a life time like ours and our being the luckiest kids in the world during the time of the first computers, imagining the great electronic future unfold.

No generation before or since has such an opportunity of experience like ours, the golden age of tech and gaming and the pleasures of mixed analog and digital tech and using them together in harmony on our little micros and taped decks! The joy of entering text out of a magazine for hours, then as much time debugging what we typed to get it to run properly. From text on paper to a new world to behold on are analog CRT's displaying the inner secrets of the unseen digital worlds we created ourselves.

All of that is also now gone forever except for us proud few who can still choose to grab that 40-year old yellowing magazine, flip on the 40-year old micro and relive for only ourselves, should we choose. Hold tight to your vintage micros until they pull your lifeless body up that is slumped over a beeping machine because your body lay on the keyboard as it entered random text until ram ran out...end of line...

 

Yup, I did the same across the screen idea, I wanted to fill the whole screen because that made me a master of the computer...LOL

Anyway, the straight down the left is BORING...

Was a tad silly as I was a young man, not some 10yr old being daft...A child at heart

 

I still do it to this day on rare occasion at events if a micro is left alone with the cursor blinking in the top left. Even I was about 13 before I did my first "goto 10" program and 16 before I laid my hands on my first micro, as most of you, the eternal ZX81! Though disappointed the first time I did "goto 10" on it and it didn't scroll, but just filled the screen once and stopped, as I recall.

It would take a bit more than a "goto 10" on the ZX to create the slow, jumpy, software scroll...quickly gotten over disappointment though, as I finally had my very own computer, no matter how tiny and primitive, it was my most prized possession...for a year anyway, until I got the 128K Atari 130XE when my friends all had the mere 64K C64, and the feeling of ram superiority it gave, and wonderful sound and colors that made me forget the ZX81 until the 21st century and first occurrence of micro nostalgia.

 

My favourite prank was at a word processing class we got sent to from school. It took place in the local college who had an entire suite of BBC Micro B's with floppy drives and CUB monitors. I created a file called virus.txt and copied it on to everyone's disks. You should have seen the look on the face of the lecturer when he opened one of them to be greeted with the message that if you tried to delete the file it would format the floppy then erase any eproms in the computer. We ended up getting the rest of the day off while the poor sod tried to figure it out. I'm guessing the technicians had a right laugh at him when they eventually got called in

 

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a very basic digital camera (https://www.campsnapphoto.com/) and have been having some fun playing around with it. It has no screen, no menu's, nothing more than a basic LED flash and a button to press when you want to take a photo. Basically like an old point and shoot where you don't know how crap your pictures turned out until you get them back from the local Boots, or in this case copy them to your PC.

In order to take these pictures in black and white I had to change the firmware on the camera (yes, it's that basic a camera you need to change the firmware to change from colour to B&W snaps).

 

Thanks Alex, the harbour is in the centre of Glasgow running down our famous River Clyde. The Camp Snap camera is a lot of fun to use. I'm planning to use it for some street style photography. It's also nice not to be constantly tinkering with the camera on a mobile phone and feel more in the moment.

XBox Media Centre is great, I had a version myself a while back and it's amazing what that machine can do. Hope you have lots of fun with it. Do you know what kind of mod the PS2 has? I use one called MC2SIO with McBoot. It lets you play the "backed up" ISO images from ad SD card in the Playstation 2's memory card slot. Very neat. And so many awesome games to play as well.

I've never heard of Mistica. Is that a version of the Mister FPGA? Not something I really know anything about but always intrigued me. Do you have a preference between hardware/FPGA and software emulation for old systems?

 

The SD drive for my Nintendo 64 arrived today (didn't expect it this quick) and I've had a quick play already.

It comes supplied with an SD card full of 340+ NTSC and 270 PAL games. When you put the cartridge in it loads to a menu page and you just select the folder you want and run the games from it. Nice and simple, no messing and it automatically creates save states on the SD card as well.

So far it's mainly been racing games I've tried. Ridge Racer is really good as expected but I've been surprised by how much I enjoyed Cruisin' World which feels a lot like Burnout. It's going to take me some time to work through all the titles that's for sure. Total cost was just under £60 delivered and I would recommend it to anyone who has an N64 and wants to increase their games library....

 

Never been in Glasgow. I really must come there sometime in the future. I advise you to keep taking pictures with your current attitude. It works fantastic, in my humble opinion. And it's a great excuse to go out exploring your own country.

The XBox Classic is so much fun and the XBMC is so flexible and easy to use. A lot of features and expansions to be installed. Sometime soon I'll have to replace the internal hard disk, the original one of 20GB is almost full.
The mod of PS2 in indeed the FreeMCBoot, mounted on a 64MB memory card. Then my friend Cristiano copied a bunch of USB drives and SD cards full of PS2 games and retrostuff (emulators and games, from Vic-20, C64 to SNES). DOn't know if MC2SIO is another way to name this modification. Could be a totally different mod, though.

The MISTICA is a variant of the original MIST, just a bit more powerful and with a neat architecture and ports availability. It's an FPGA board completely compatible with MIST or SIDI versions. The MISTer is a much more powerful and manageable version of FPGA system. Its hardware is more expandable, and the Nano DE10 board is very powerful and it features a LAN port and a Linux-based OS which adds to the flexibility and upgradeability. I would buy one but the current price is a bit too much for what I consider acceptable for an entertainment system. For the same price you can easily get a powerful PC and install Batocera or other retrocomputing distros.

 

If you ever make it to Glasgow or Scotland Alex, I'd be happy to meet up and show you around.
Although, as Paul and Andy will probably testify my heart lies in North Yorkshire and it's beautiful seaside towns like Scarborough and Filey

The Mistica sounds really interesting. Between that, the Xbox and PS2 you are going to have plenty to keep your hands full. Enjoy sir!