What's new Pussycat too?

My balcony is a safe space from intruders. But then again I do live on the 4th floor, so unless Spiderman is on the grab...

No new software this week but I did get the latest Pixel Addict magazine which I have now subscribed to as it's my favourite monthly read. Also got a new book called Curious Video Game Machines, it looks like a fun read about some very curious video game machines

I do have something arriving this week though hopefully, a cool piece of new hardware for use on the Atari. The question is though, which Atari....

 

Depends on if you own an ST or not?

 

Damn Paul, great shout!

More to follow....

 

Looking forward to finding out more, Al... keep us posted!

 

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.

 

Very nice there Al, you might get some titles that are hard coded for disk that may not work 100% although I'm sure they will use a patched OS to fake most of them. Nice price too, hope you get loads of fun with it.

 

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.

 

I've said before that I also found the ST lacking, I have to admit that the nicer colours and great sound of the Amiga was the simple reason I liked it more, but I got lucky, and it WAS the more powerful machine. We all liked Buggy Boy, I even remember the intro on the disk I had it on, it was a spinning ATV logo type thing with interference like you had just found a blank channel on a TV, this and a funky drum beat just stuck in my head. Great fun little game, Carrier Command looked nice to me, but I'm not a simulation / war type person, but it was impressive.

I do want one of those 400 mini's, just for looking at in all honesty, I gave up on getting a real one a long time ago. Mind you, I don't have the little a500 out on display because of space being tight, so the 400 may have a little wait.

I love the commitment to the old computers on here, I myself have lost a lot of it as you know, but I'm having a console revival here, be it emulated or the PS5, it's getting a serious bash when the old neck and shoulder allow it. Apart from a brief stint on the glorious SuperFrog on the Amiga (a proper good game, who says the Amiga can't do a multi level scrolling platformer that looks lush) I have not tried any other retro computer stuff. I will, but the urge isn't as strong as it was. I guess I'm losing some of the rose tinting in my glasses, some of the games I played I now realise it was simply because they were one of the few games I could get and not that it was a good game. Don't worry, the Bruce Lee's, Spelunkers, Jumpman and the like are still firm faves, but some games were just liked because of memories around their time and not them as a fine game.

Remember, all this is personal, I'm not trying to convince others that they should think the same, what I think is right for me, at this moment, it can change, so enjoy your gear..

 

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.....

 

Ouch, good luck with the neck, it's soooo limiting and awkward, let alone bloody painful. I hope yours goes on it's own, mine is here to stay...

All the people on here love their machines, but I always find Al's passion re the stuff so enjoyable. Like all I LOVE hearing old stories re the times, it's not about who you knew or what you did, I just enjoy reading about how you enjoyed yourself, what games gave you a buzz, how you enjoyed a root around Boots BITD. Sure a bit of celeb goss is nice and adds to the depth, but at the end of the day it's about how you enjoyed it all.

I used to love nipping down to the Popular Book Centre to rummage through the comics, hoping to find a rare one. Then back home to fire up my machine and use Omnimon to hack and cheat. Kept me amused for hours but not so much I made Cindy a computer widow.

 

Funny enough I was just thinking about Boots the other day. We had a massive branch in Glasgow and up on the first or second floor they had a big row of all the current home computers set up and working. The first machine I ever wanted was a Philips G7000 because it looked cool with it's flat keyboard! Back then Boots had a great range of software and toys as well, I remember getting lots of my Star Wars figures from it. Think my mum and dad might even have bought my first Atari 800XL from the same branch

Best thing about being a kid/teenager then was going into town and getting to look in Boots / WH Smiths / John Menzies and Lasky's at all the cool machines and type in the usual goto 10 program

Another time when the family was travelling down to Porstmouth I convinced my mum and dad to sit outside Lyons Corner House in London with me until Silica Shop opened for the day

Did you guy's have a favourite 'big' shop to visit, or how about an indie store in your home town?

 

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!

 

Brilliant Andy! And how could I forget about Dixons?? Started work in there one Saturday morning and despite telling them I knew a lot about consoles and computers and video they put me out to sell car stereos (and extended warranties, remember the hard sell they used to give on those feckers). Went for my morning break and never returned to the store again.

 

Bloody ace, Al. Reminds me of the time my mate Bill West did a week YTS at your rivals, Wigfalls. Will tell more later - must dash - have a "sound" day everyone!

 

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

 

LOL! Our minds work in similar fashions, Paul - very funny indeed and you and your mate totally out-witted us tit-heads - we were running around pressing buttons and setting the timers like junior safe-breakers on wine gums whereas you and your buddy were a tad more sophisticated and several tech-levels above us

Any road, harking back to 1985 and the garbage launch of a certain "electric trike" vehicle.

My mate Bill had only been at Wigfalls a couple of days when they took delivery of their C5 and of course all the sales reps wanted a go on it around the King Edward Street store. When it came to Bill's turn, one of the other trainee kids opened the store door and Bill shot out in it, he'd totally lost control of it and narrowly missed a queue of passengers lining up for a bus and actually ended up in the BUS LANE! Hilarious... no wonder Bill never got into sales. He wasn't invited back after his "introductory" week with Wigfalls and I sincerely hope that you did a lot better, Al!!

 

An out of control C5, is that possible?

 

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

 

Been busy with work and birthdays this week but did get the latest issues of Retro Gamer and Pixel Addict in the post.

Retro Gamer has a 6 page guide on Buggy Boy this issue, just after Andy talking about it. Think I'll need to load it up on the ST/Amiga/C64 and do a comparison.

Pixel Addict is a really nice little magazine. It focuses more on hardware and also does features on systems that I have never heard of (it's done a good few French computers). Really looking forward to next month though as the main feature then is a deep dive into Radio Shack / Tandy. Up until last month you could get the magazine in WH Smith but they've now went mail order only again as the distributors were taking too large a margin.

Finally, picked up a boxed copy of Combat for the 2600 from my pals store Forgotten Worlds. I already had the loose cart but wanted the instruction manual and it's nice to have the box on display as well.

I don't have any other purchases planned at the moment as I'm saving up for my summer holidays and The400 Mini that gets released at the end of March. Instead I've been clearing out any underused electronics and other bits (bluetooth speakers, cd player, diy tools, etc). In the process of doing that I found a lovely condition ST mouse and power cable in a box so they'll be getting put out on the STE at some point.

 

Nice work, Al, on getting the full blown Atari Combat cart, fab manual and box art etc plus finding those ST rodent accessories!
I also look forward to your Buggy Boy reviews on the various formats (yep, cosmic forces at work again there!) and your mention of the fab French machines in Pixel Addict reminds me that I must get my finger out soon and do a thread on Manu's Magical French Collection/Connection... coming soon, for sures as he has some amazing exotic beasts in his retro cavern Take care all and thinking of Matt and family and all you guys on here who know the sense of deep loss that our buddy's going through... R.I.P. all our nearest and dearest who have departed.