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

Rush should be an exception, if only because they are virtuoso's that never miss a beat or transition and unlike every other rock band, sound better live (now we are limited to "live" recordings with Neil's death of course) than on studio recordings! I love them because they are the fullest sounding 3-man band that ever was, since they play multiple instruments and sing and chew gum all at the same time, and Neil, with all the lyrics on top of playing the largest drum set in the history of drums!

 

I have an Eligoo Adruino board and Eligoo touch-screen I bought several years ago with the intension of making an SDrive Max to send along with my 800XL to a friend. I already made one for myself. But with all the loading solutions I have for my 800CX and 1200XL (Fujinet (soon x2) SD, MyIDE II CF, Incognito CF, The Cart!, SIO2PC&APE, Turbo Freezer) I never used my SDrive Max, so it went with the 800XL to my friend.

I need to use them for some project. Right now I figure I'd use the Arduino for my robot in some way; an 800 mobo and 1200XL mobo dual-brain robot with Fujinet wi-fi&BT to communicate as well as dual-PIA's I can use a port or two (8 controller ports on the 800, 6 on the 1200XL) for LAN communication within the robot too. And of course the 800 mobo will have Incognito and CF drive and Fujinet SD, the 1200XL Fujinet SD and U1MB/SIDE 3. So no need for SDrive Max in the robot either...SDrive Max just became obsolete and redundant to me before I even used it once!

 

My RUSH album Caress of Steel finally arrived yesterday, it was listed as very good condition, but I guess they were referring more to the cover, as the vinyl LP inside looks like it was never played! More likely of course it got played once or twice and then just sat in a milk carton crate for years while the LP's on either side were used, thus some minor wear on the Album cover and slightly dented corners, etc. I'm more concerned with the vinyl obviously. I haven't had a listen yet, maybe tonight.

Also arriving yesterday was another RUSH album, on CD this time as it was never released on vinyl. Major new Album releases have been coming out on limited edition vinyl from Rush for the last 20 years or so, after CD only releases beginning in the mid 80's with Power Windows and not returning until the turn of the century, though some of the gold and platinum albums have been getting anniversary or remix editions on vinyl this century. Though being a gold or platinum album for Rush, means the vast majority of their releases over the years being third, behind only the Beatles and Rolling Stones in consecutive Gold or Platinum status albums!

Anyway, I got side-tracked there, the CD I got is their 30th anniversary tribute album to the songs that influenced them as kids and teens in the 60's. A cover song album of 8 60's covers, and they did a fantastic job on all of them, which is why I got the CD after listening to it in it's entirety on Youtube. A 2004 release (Clockwork Angels I got that I posted above was their last studio album released in 2012 after that only live and re-release albums have come out) entitled FEEDBACK

 

On a general vintage related note, but having to do with the vinyl material I got to make my own dust covers for the rest of my vintage electronics, I made the largest one I needed first, measuring, cutting and attaching Velcro strips instead of sewing corners. A dust cover for one of my turntables. The pro DJ one that doesn't have a protective lid like my Pioneer turntable. I also used Velcro to attach some Styrofoam cubes to the corners without the Stylus arm and in the center where the platter is, so the cover sits somewhat evenly. I think it turned out pretty good for my first attempt. I should have made it's height about an inch shorter though so it would hang instead of rest. But n uneven turntable is a lot harder to measure right than most of the peripheral device dust covers I will make.

 

Japan for me means shoot em ups and they made some brilliant ones. Japan also means RPG's but as I don't speak Japanese and I don't think it's fair to keep asking my daughter to translate, I don't really play them....

 

That is pretty cool that you owned the EQ!

I used the metal end caps off of a mini glass fuse.

JVC invented the "EQ" back in the 60's and they had another name for it before "equalizer" became the term...

S.E.A...Sound Effects Amplifier (pre). What my (our) JVC equalizer's model designation is...

 

I always had cheap, low end department store shite for my audio equipment back in the day. Even this JVC system from '78/79 I got used in the late '90's from a second cousin I happened to live near at the time. He had just bought himself a new '90's system. Which in truth, was a down-grade from this incredible JVC system, but he was just a consumer with money and doesn't really know shite about audio systems. So I ended up with a classic system with near-legendary status on several of the components, namely the amplifier itself.

I didn't become an audiophile until I got this system as I'd never had one as quality before, even mid-range by JVC audio line standards. But once I knew just how good my LP's, CD's, and even high-bias casette tapes sound through a decent system, I was hooked. So now it about restoring and upgrading (adding modern tech into the mix with modern abilities like surround, blue-tooth, MP3 playback, etc.) it all and recollecting my vinyl and CD collections that were mostly lost or water damaged in storage. The old amplifiers are light-years better than the junk on the market today, even in the high-end audio stores.

 

I have a 5.1 cheapy system too, it's what I use with my vintage 8-bit computers, with Pokeymax and Yamaha chips on the Coco 2's Super Sprite FM+ upgrades. It's what I bought and used the years my JVC was in storage due to a lack of room, and pure laziness to pull it all out and whip it into shape and connect it up.

I finally started the process earlier this year and am finishing it up now. I've had it up and running, but just the amplifier with only all my movie & video game gadgets hooked into it. The receiver, tape decks and turn-table were set up, but not connected. Then I got the turn-table going first, and now the rest.

But I'm also still using the replacement Pyle Amplifier as my JVC hadn't been repaired yet from when it went down soon after I hooked it up, which is what I'm working on now. In the end I'll have both amps integrated into the system together, as I want the 5.1 surround for some stuff, and the JVC quad stereo for stuff that isn't in 5.1 like LP's and CD's, but they'll sound better on the quad stereo system they were made for too.

 

ABSOLUTELY ACE/AWESOME! I could easily run out of suitable positive adjectives so I'll just say that I adore your new-look displays, Matt, and keep the great show ever improving - your retro collection must be second to none in terms of aesthetic presentation and the sheer variety of it all and how well you mod, improve, care and show it all. You can feel the lurve from here! Keep it going and lovely to see the Retro Gamer 7800 UK mag on show too!

 

Continuing to fill out my collection of Rush music, after rediscovering my favorite group over the summer, I just purchased an audiophile quality box set of their classic Permanent Waves album and three more albums on CD. Roll the Bones, Counterparts and Test for Echo. The LP is a classic 70's album, the CD's complete their albums released during the 1990's.



Between CD's and audiophile quality vinyl, I now have 12 of their 21 studio albums, stretching from 1975 (first 2 albums came out in '73/74) through 2012, the last studio album; though more live albums came later. (The band disbanded in 2015/16 due to health of drummer Neil Peart).

I also have 1 of 4 live albums, a Blu-ray and Laserdisc of live shows and a graphic art DVD version of one of the 70's albums I have. 16 discs of musical masterpieces (actually more since some are multi-disc albums/sets).

I only need two more 70's albums to complete that decade and one more for the 2000's era. I still am missing the majority of their 80's work, but that's their weakest era, IMHO, of making the greatest progress rock/hard rock music of all time (which means even their weak stuff is better than everything else, IMHO, of course).

 

It's all wonderful and blows my formica-formed mind, Al.
I aspire to have this kind of kit creating a sonic boom in my Retro room.
Cheers once more, Matt, for sharing.

 

And you can't even see the wires Andy....

 

Absolutely, Al - not a trace!!

 

Here we go, Matt. A closer look at the Denon tape deck and thanks for the positive feedback:



It is a nice tape deck. I bought it together with some bi-pole speakers, a turntable and a different amp back in 93 with some redundancy money I got from a computer firm (Radius - a Texas Instruments reseller in UK) which went tits up. I always thought I'd like to have something to remember em by and by god, this kit, in the main, has lasted great the past 30 years (I sold the other amp and speakers to a mate when I quit my batchelor flat and still managed to recoup £250 for em). Like you, I could do with giving these beauts a wipe down but for now, it's just great listening to the rich sounds they produce and remembering those bloody great 70s/80s/early 90s memories. The amp, btw, is a Cambridge A4 which is very much mid-range (or was, probably discontinued as it's 20 years old). It does OK, Matt - nothing fancy but it's a reliable workhorse.

Specs here, if you're interested:
Cambridge Audio A4 - Stereo Integrated Amplifier

• 50 watts RMS per channel.
• 5 line level inputs.
• Tape/MD output.
• Pre-amp output.
• Bi-wire terminals.
• Bass/Treble/Balance/Direct functions.
• Dimensions: 430mm wide, 280mm deep, 90mm high.

What I aim to do next is... yeah, some of you will probably have already guessed the nerdiness of my lines of "progression", is to produce a few "MIX TAPES" for a couple of pals.

Let me know if you still own a tape deck and want one of Baz's "XMAS SPECIALS!" (or you might just wanna go and put yer head through a mangle for a similar effect)

Have a great weekend, fellas, enjoying your retro memories and having some quality R&R time with your nearest n dearest.

 

What with the "ambient" lighting it aint easy to check out all the features on that image. This stock image might be clearer:



Nice You Tube clip here:

 

Here's something new, if utilitarian. Protective outer sleeves for both LP's (and LD's) and CD's. The inner sleeves I had previously, to replace water damaged ones from my old LP's. But I also use them to replace paper-only sleeves in some albums, as the rough paper is not good for the vinyl.

And some random examples from my Rush collection wearing the new protective sleeves. Now, finally, no more scratched up CD jewel cases! They will stay as clear as when new...it's not just an LP thing...of course they protect the printed cardboard (2112 & Clockwork Angels CD's below)CD albums too, just like with LP's...

My LP & CD collection is now all cleaned and protected inside and out and only handled with blue hands. (surgical gloves)

Also, notice the difference in the album covers between the Clockwork Angels LP and CD versions...I just noticed myself...

.

 

There are a couple of things I want that are vinyl only (nothing you guys would know), but price's and risk make me shy away. I did buy one of the items I wanted last year, but the "near mint" description was miles off, covered in scratched and scuff that were clearly audible when playing. Shame, the guy apologised and had a perfect review score.

The other thing that put's me off is that I want to record it as a lossless format, whereas the deck that I got from Bob is one of those that can make MP3's and I bet the bit rate is 192, so missing a bit from either end of the audio spectrum. I probably could hack a feed off the amp but it's soo low on my list of jobs that I'll probably never do it.

Things are getting a little tougher to do now, as I found out last night when evicting that blooming rat, I thought I'd done ten rounds with Tyson by the end of it.

One day, maybe I'll just get the 12 inches I want and just listen to them even though I really want a digital version to use instead.

 

Tragedy strikes! Feel for me and my 1st World woes! While carefully handling my most expensive and prized LP's, while pre-cleaning to play it, my fingers slipped! My precious hit a hard surface and left a terrible mark! And sure enough, I played the record and at that point I now have a re-occurring skip!! You know, the kind where the same one second of audio skips incessantly! I suspect that once past that, it will occur even more judging by the scratches! Oh WO-ES me! So now I have one song on four album sides that I have to skip over. (three songs per side on the ultra high fidelity Double-LP) Unfortunately it's a good song too.

The only real downside to vinyl:

 

After a bit more digging, I did confirm my suspicion that the original album cover for Clockwork Angels is the swirling clouds, and only my re-mastered special edition 2xLP got the special cover treatment changing to the radiating water droplets.

I think it's a metaphor for the added clarity and fidelity of the remastered edition...instead of a blatant "remastered special edition" printed somewhere.

Mind you though, it isn't as if the original was recorded and mastered back in the 70's, it's their last album from 2012, so only a decade old, and my remaster was done in 2018, IIRC. So I'm sure the original sounds pretty good too. But Rush did remasters and re-releases starting in 2014 for their 40th anniversary of their first album and every year new 40th anniversary editions for each album in chronological order, as well as 20th & 30th anniversary albums for the newer releases and so on.



And yes, this is the album which befell the recent tragedy.

 

I have a feeling there probably isn't much new in the article of the Bally Arcade that I hadn't already learned from other sources, mainly the BallyAlly website which is chalk full of history and whatnot. But, I've downloaded and will be reading it all anyway, for the other stuff and the Bally stuff just in case there is new info and maybe some stuff I want to refresh my memory about too, as I continue blogs about it on AA.

 

PMSL!

There you go, Daz.

You got two for the price of one there.

Matt putting the record straight on my version of Brit humour (sane as a box of frogs) and the complete recount there on his Bally Arcade RAM investigations & implementations, rare motherboard with the front edge connector combo and how those new set of eyes he introduced from his previous work on the Atari's RAM led to his blazing onto the existing Bally scene as the new guru on the block!

Great work, Matt as I seem to recall the Bally looking a little worse for wear in the early days of your labour of love and your progressive improvement work on the old timer brought her back to looking and running better than ever.

I'm sure there's a future RMW article in there somewhere!

 

Well, it is apparent that hardware articles are included in the magazine, I believe the Bally/Astrocade community is far too small too warrant a hardware hacking/upgrading article in the magazine. A history is a whole different story as it's probably introducing most readers to a machine they have never heard of before and therefore a great curiosity piece for such a magazine. But after being on the scene for a couple years now, my guess is less than 100 people in the world, probably all in the states, since I don't believe it ever sold out of the states, actively involved in the community, maybe even less than 50, quite possibly even smaller! I'm sure there are a bit more than 100 people that own them as collectors items, but are not really users or active followers or contributors to the community. But it seemed to me there were only about a dozen people actively involved through this strange email-forum I'll get into below.

The Bally Arcade/astrocade forum on AA, is the only actual forum for the system on the internet, and only the one web site with any info is BallyAlley.com, which I referred too in my last post. And the AA forum is quite dead the vast majority of the time, with only a few semi-regulars that post there. The only other place that is more active is actually this strange sort of e-mail forum where all communication is sent through emails. There is an actual site to post at instead of using the emails to post and reply, but it is very confusing to follow the conversations that way. It's very hard to explain, and it's not an open thing either, it's private and you must apply for membership and get approved, which everyone who does gets approved, but it's just a very convoluted and buggy system that most involved ignore, basically just relying on the email to do the communicating.

It's run by the same guy who operates the BallyAlly website, and very frustrating to use either way, at least for me, where I kept running into all kinds of issues of emails not going through or received many times, depending on what email service one uses. And I had to change the email service I was using three times as unusual and buggy things constantly occurred for me, including random blocking of emails and being blocked from the actual site too, that was not done by the guy who runs it all. He was constantly having to look into issues I was having, and suggesting I just re-apply for membership to solve the problem. Communicating through the site or emails, the way it's all setup is very confusing and convoluted and I could never get used to it and figure out how to use it better, no matter how much people tried to tutor me.

I just got so sick of it that the last time my membership was blocked/revoked and emails lost, and he told me to re-apply and I should probably do it through a new email address from a service he used, after trying through the three I already had. I just stopped using it at all and told him from then on I was only going to post on the AA forum, that only a small handful of the small handful of regular users even use, since it's relatively recent and most seem to be satisfied with the email communication and have stated they don't care for the type of forums like AA and would just as soon keep doing it through emails. He said he would copy and send any posts I made on AA since he was one of the very few that did frequent the AA forum too.

Other's didn't seem to have the issues I did. Except issues they had when I was attempting to post and reply, or start a new conversation and the way it all worked was everyone sent posts and replies to a general email account on the site, and then everything was forwarded from there to the individuals email addresses. it's all quite strange. And every one else there were too stubborn in their ways to convert to a standard internet forum. They all seemed very strange to me for those reasons. Most seemed quite nice and all that otherwise.

I haven't even bothered to post in the AA forum either since about a year ago, so I guess I was really only involved in the community for about a year, since I haven't bothered even with posting on the AA forum for that long, since there are so few replies and I've been busy with other things in life and have also been focused on other systems more since.

Everything about the community is as strange as the way the Bally Arcade works internally, as briefly describe in the article in this issue of RMW. I'd be happy to contribute with hardware hacking/upgrade articles for the Atari 8-bit and Dragon/Coco range, but I don't know how interested RMW producers are in those systems, but I guess @AlexDrito would have to answer that one. This is only the second issue I've been exposed too, and if you recall, I put my foot in my mouth complaining about lack of coverage of the Atari 8-bits and some other unflattering remarks I spoke openly of, upsetting Alex, not knowing he was directly involved at the time, or else I would have been more tactful in my remarks about the magazine.

I still found little of interest in this issue to me, beyond the editorial and Bally history article, since once again, it was mostly about systems I don't own and never plan too, aside from possibly the C64, but since I don't own it yet and don't know if I ever will, I have little interest in the articles about it either right now. I skimmed through the rest of the magazine, but mainly looking for something else that pertains to machines I own, and found nothing once again. Now I do know that Alex said before, when the previous issue was released, that they planned to do for regarding the Atari 8-bit and other Atari machines, but no one writing for the magazine already had much interest and hoped for more contributions from outside writers who were more interested in contributing Atari related stuff. Even the most popular Atari of all time, the 2600 only got a small blurb of recognition in the Burger Time article, I was hoping maybe some of the homebrew/clone versions done in recent years for the A8, 5200 and 7800 might have been mentioned, but nope, which is another clear sign to me that there just isn't much interest in Atari machines from the writers or readers in general.

But is there really much of an audience from within the regular readers for the Atari or the Dragon/TRS-80 Coco machines to justify me bothering with articles about those machines? If there were, I think some of the other readers might have contributed those articles by now to this current issue. Of course I would be willing to attempt to re-edit some of my AA blogs to article form if Alex or others involved think any of them might be well received by them and their audience, beside the few of us here, that is.

 

I'm stunned by the extent of the problems you encountered and the trouble you went to, to keep in touch with the Bally Arcade fraternity / forum, Matt, and get them up to speed with your enhancements, fixes and upgrades etc.

I think most folks, myself included, would have given up and walked away almost immediately but full credit for trying, trying, trying, trying and trying again as it sounds like their archaic system was trying you from the word go.

As for contributions to Alex's (aka Dave/Daz/Cercamon) mag, from my point of view, it's ages since I've had a crack at writing an article so it'll be a fairly novelty retro "project" for 2023.

He sent me an Oric article in Italian to "proof read" several years ago, as it was already semi-translated into English, and I quite enjoyed helping out with that.

What to base my article on though...

Oric (underdog machine) vs Speccy (everyone at school had one except me) articles have been done to death;



Did/Do you have to be a Boffin to own a Beeb? That would be as boring as the title suggests;



Atari? Aint they expensive and you can only play games on em? Why were Atari 8bit micros commonly seen as mere game machines in the UK in the 80s? (Again, this has been covered umpteen times already);



Hmmm, I'm in need of novel, micro motivation and some retro subject that I'm au fait with and can get my (box of frogs) teeth into

IDEAS on a beermat to the usual address, guys.

 

Better late than never, Matt.

It must have left here around Dec 10th, I reckon, so it's taken about a month to reach you Stateside.

Whatever - you can enjoy a good Yaarkshire brew anytime, mate!

After all, if it's good enough for him...

 

Here, here, here, Matt.

All that and more.

The comedian in the picture is our PM, Mr "Rich Tea" Sunak himself!

Ban them all back to the bad comedy club that they have all previously been thrown out of and yes, like you mate, I mean the politicos. Prats and pillocks, the lot of em. Not a statesman/states person among them worthy of the name.

We are currently absolutely and utterly spoilt rotten for utter rotten apples in our Houses of Parliament and on your Capitol Hill / House of Representatives etc.

Never mind - pop the kettle on, feet up and have a brew is the sure-fire cure all and English answer to most things short of all-out Nuke war.