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

My mate at work was an old Amstrad fanatic back in the late 80s, Al...

His fave choices - Oh Mummy and Harrier Attack! Great bundle you've picked up there.

Enjoy!

 

Managed to get Oh Mummy and 180 Darts at my pals shop today, bargain £1 each. He has a pile of cassette games for the Atari, Speccy, C64 and Acorn.

I also just found out that Deathchase isn't an original eighties Amstrad title. It was only made about 15 years ago so no chance of getting that!

 

Lovely jubbly... any chance of a list of these £1 a pop titles,Al? I might be interested in 1 or 5?!

 

I'll probably be down in the next week or so, will take a few photos and send them to you Andy, no problem.

 

Cheers, Al.
Many thanks in advance.

 

My visit to the North West Computer Museum a couple of weeks and its collection of 80/90's beige PC's with chunky IBM keyboards and mice made me yearn a bit for the old days.... so a couple of weeks later and I have added a couple of new bits to my PC at home.



The keyboard is from Periboard, one I've had my eye on for a while and heard good reports about. As well as nailing the aesthetic it has a good clicky sounding key action. Mouse is from a brand you may or may not know, Cherry. It's fully optical but also old school enough that it comes with a usb to ps/2 adaptor

Also on the way but not quite here yet are a set of Creative speakers to finish the look. What do you guys think?

My lovely Trust Mechanical gaming keyboard and mouse are sitting spare at the moment but will make a great swap-in for when I feel like a change agaiin.

 

Yeah, that little set-up has got Old School writ large all ovver it, Al - nice work, fella!
Yes, Cherry are well known for their keyboards but never heard of a Cherry mouse before but one had to come along some time soon

TRUST you to nail both, mate.

Well done.

Show us the full kaboodle, when yer ready, Al - like you, I love the old solid and clicky key sound feedback - when keyboards where PROPER keyboards (and blokes knew where they were and the gals were glad of it!!).

Eeeeh, I'll just dig mesen a deeper hole before I get me coat and sod off owt of it!



I'm thinking of summat like this for Al's PC workstation, resplendent running Win 3.1 with a good ol clunky CRT too - if not, I'll be seriously disappointed

 

I was thinking of maybe something like that Andy. Got an old 14" CRT svga monitor in storage so all I'd need is a beige tower and I would be in clover. What I'd really like though is a proper old style IBM PC XT base unit and montior. They go for silly money nowadays though. I suppose the PC usually sits out of the way though so not as important maybe as the contact points of keyboard and mouse.

Right, I'm off to download a copy of Dosbox and Wolfenstein.....

 

Had a couple of retro related items arrive into the cave this week

Latest issue of Pixel Addict is looking good. Lots of interesting little articles as usual. Really enjoy this magazine.

Shareware Heroes book I heard about on a podcast somewhere. Looks quite text heavy and slanted towards America but should be an interesting read nonetheless.

The N64 Visual Compendium is the latest in the series from Bitmap Books. The quality is top notch as usual with lots of lovely screenshots, mini reviews and some more in-depth articles.

The Atari Gamepad is the CX78+ controller for the Atari 2600+ (works on the original 2600 and 7800 consoles as well). My old pad was getting a bit sticky so this arrived just in time and they have done a great job with it, feels just like the original but slightly better perhaps on the d-pad itself. Got quite a kick from opening up a new Atari accessory!

Lastly the wooden Atari Games and 2600 signs were laser etched on wood by a good friend of mine. He is trying out some designs for a new business and thought he would surprise me. Cool guy that he is




I suppose my 'new' Amstrad green screen monitor should be included as well but I won't pick that up from Andy until later in the summer lol. Apart from that I'm bidding on a boxed copy of Video Olympics for the 2600 and still looking at SD devices for the Amstrad 464....

 

Some tasty retro treats there, Al, and boy you work hard for em battling away in the NHS (National Hardware Section).

That Pixel Addict release with the ELITE articles looks damn good and I also like the look of your new Atari gamepad which I know you will get a LOT of use out of and certainly won't be sat there gathering dust.

Mate, yep, yer green screen CT64 monitor is all boxed and ready for you and with a bit of luck you'll have it on your next visit down.

I've got some new bits to reveal but am struggling at the mo with me hayfever and available time/energy but will reveal some tasty titbits like Al for weekend... all being well

Oh, and don't mention ENGLAND's lacklustre performances of late - I am sure the retro England team will be spinning on their Subbuteo bases Utter garbage and I've watched more interesting grass growing contests. Unlucky Scotland - Al, your boys deserved better, should've had a pen against those Hungarians but in the end were found wanting in the striking dept. Unlucky lads...

 

Looking forward to your relevations Andy... Always good fun to see new (or old) stuff so please post some pics at the weekend if you get a chance mate

I will also take some pictures of the 1050 and 1029 in the next couple of days for you, sorry about the delay in that.

 

Heaven only knows, Paul, re the 1029 ribbons but if I do recall, they were the same as something like a Seikosha GP100 and they manufactured 100,000s of them so there might be some NOS lying around... somewhere. No worries whatsoever, Al. Those peripherals still do look attractive on display so don't blame you wanting them still and hoping to get a new set-up, up and running and doing a real cool show and tell with em, as it were.
Good luck with the new retro computer desk acquistion and display and of course in the future, when you are ready to wave em goodbye, I'm likely to be still more than interested, mate.
Lovely pics btw, you should be a retro computer photo journalist, you've missed yer calling, Al, and I loved Paul's stories printing out virtual Print Shop (great software by Broderbund) banners with HAPPY BOFFDAY and cakes and stuff on - I used to love all that dot matrix banner fun too back in the day - nice one, fellas.
Enjoy, your retro computing guys - you never fail to raise a smile on this old fart's fizzer!

 

Thanks guys, ribbon leads much appreciated. I do have a NOS for it so will need to give it a try once I get things all set up. Your name is still top of the list if I can't make the retro space work though Andy. In the meantime I'm going to take a look at the printer emulation under Altirra, that sounds interesting!

 

In the meantime lads... live from the Kings Theatre Glasgow....

 

SHOWADDYWADDY... STILL, going strong, Al.

Who were the backing band, Mud? Rubettes? Krankies?!!

I'm only jealous - I love 70s rock n roll, me.

 

50th Anniversary tour Andy. And they still have the same original drummer!

 

Brilliant, mate. Absolutely incredible. All I wanna know is... will Swifty Tail still be rocking n rolling in 2074?
In fact, will anyone if Trump/Biden/Putin carry on

 

Lovely lot there, Al.

Fingers crossed that that disk contains the "long lost lists" indeed of your ST formative years, mate...

Keep us updated, pal.

 

How much of Showaddywaddy is original members?

As for Best Electronics, be warned, Bradley, the owner, is a bit of a Marmite guy. He can be right helpful one day and starts complaining about what and how many you are ordering from him. Met him once a long time ago, he came over from the states for the PCW show, tried to get a free catalogue off him, but he wasn't having any of that

Also, the last time I heard, he had a minimum order limit of 20 dollars (I think), probably more now.

Lastly, be grateful Chris linked you direct to the ribbons, Brads site is just a MESS, and he refuses to bring it into this century

 

The only original member now is the drummer, been with the band since they started in 1974.
BEST's website is an absolute riot and I've heard of Brad's 'unique' sales technique.

 

Still not had a chance to try the usb drive with any of the emulators but I will eventually. In the meantime found an old disk catalogue of mine for the Amiga in amongst a pile of Workbench discs so that give me something extra to aim for!

 

It's great isn't it Richie? Cracking price as well. Very chuffed with mine, loading times are crazy good!

Any particular Saturn favourites?

 

I used to have the Video CD card for my Saturn back then but they cost a fortune to pick one up nowadays. That's one thing the Playstation does better, playback of FMV is a lot better. The Saturn wipes the floor with the PS1 when it comes to 2D games like X-Men vs Street Fighter. After I bought the last couple of Saturn games released in the UK, House of the Dead and Deep Fear, it was a bit of a gap until I bought a Dreamcast as soon as it came out. I think I paid £400 in 1998 for a Japanese import Dreamcast. I was so keen to get one I couldn't wait for the UK model. Trying to work out what people were saying in Sonic Adventure
The Saturn was my favourite 32 Bit console even though it didn't do as well as I would have liked.

 

You should give it a go under emulation bud. I know physical kit and games these days are getting on for silly money for some games. Deep Fear for example is I think, the last game released for the UK Saturn and didn't get a big release. I bought it at the time but I traded my copy in back in the late 90's ( it's a bit like my mum selling my original vinyl caped Jawa for a Fiver! ) so on Ebay it's on for £400. Is it worth that? absolutely not. The voice acting is abysmal, the cut scenes aren't very good but the idea and game itself are good though. It's Resident Evil meets The Abyss, set on an undersea base infected by a virus brought from outer space.

 

I really like the Saturn emulator on the PC (Mednafen) but much prefer using the real console on a CRT with the Saroo cart. I got a great deal on a Japanese Saturn a couple of months ago when I heard about the Saroo

McRae is good although I'm more of an arcade racer, think Sega Rally. Auto Modellista is a belter of a title if you get the chance to play it Richie. The graphics really are something else. I'd like to add the original boxed version to my PS2 collection but it can be quite expensive nowadays so until I come across a cheap copy it will be the iso image on the Playstation 2 instead