My retro computer collection (hoard?) is about to gain a few new members. Amy has a pile of Amiga disks that need keeping safe and an Amiga monitor. Someone on the YakYak forum is offering an Atari 1040STFM too. I’ll have that thankyou

No, I have no idea where to put this stuff either… Well, there’s the bathroom and kitchen I guess. With all this old tech inhabiting my house I really should find a way of networking them. Serial ports seem like the best way.

I have quite a lot of retro computer hardware and old games consoles. It’s not my fault they’re so cheap (or free), and I am in no way trying to live my childhood again

Since I have so many I thought it might be interesting if I took photos of them and wrote a bit about each one. Some of the machines I own are mine from back when I was small and just starting out with the whole computer thing. I still have the very Spectrum that I learned to program on.

I won’t be regurgitating the vital stats about each machine, Wikipedia is full of that anyway. I don’t quite know what my “angle” will be, I’ve seen other retro websites and want to do something personal, but interesting to others apart from me.

Any ideas?

My copy of Count Zero has just been shipped, along with The Guide to Computer Games which is an old 80s computer book aimed at kids, but being the 80s the kids are treated like intelligent people who might understand what RAM is. It can sit on my shelf next to my ZX Spectrum +3 manual and early BASIC programming books.

Also in the post to me is a Proclip car mount for my Nokia N810 Internet Tablet since the current suction-cup mount I have is incredibly wobbly and a great advert to car thieves. The new Proclip mount will fit near the radio and be easily removed. Also, since Nokia provide a proper N810 car mount that fits the Proclip system, I’ll know that my N810 isn’t about to come unstuck and try to escape while driving. I’ve had the suction cup on the current mount fail several times before; either the window is curved too much, or the suction cup is made from plastic that isn’t bendy enough to maintain a suction.

I’ve just acquired an interesting collection of old computer kit. I now have:

• An Amiga 500 without PSU
• An Amiga 1500 with monitor and keyboard
• A WYSE serial terminal
• And a USB floppy drive

The A500 will probably end up sitting on a shelf somewhere until I can find a PSU for it. I’ll use the A1500 since it has a hard disk and a monitor; I don’t exactly trust 21 year old floppy disks or have a spare TV to use. The Amiga 1500 has a slightly damaged keyboard, but it’s only a few keys on the numberpad that I’ll probably never press anyway.

The terminal might have a problem that causes it to turn off randomly, but I tested it the other night for about an hour and it seemed OK. Once I’ve confirmed I can connect it to my Linux machine I’ll create a giant serial cable and put it downstairs somewhere. It’ll make a nice IRC client or quick login to my server to check things. I figure I can make a long serial cable from some spare Cat5 cable and DB9 connectors.

From Random

Today I spent a fair amount of time driving around in a hired van. Yes, finally after about six months I’ve managed to hire a van and retrieve a sofa from Amy’s. I also called upon the assistance of a fellow YakYakker to help move it. Thanks Andy.

On the way home we detoured past Ikea where I bought some Ivar shelf pieces for in my kitchen, and a Detlof display cabinet which, as you can see above, has been put to good use. It sits neatly in an unused corner upstairs showing off my random collection of retro computing stuff.

My washing machine has just finished washing the covers for the settee cushions. They were rather dirty, turning the water a manky brown colour. Now they’re all clean and probably safe to touch again. I’ve cleaned the settee itself best I can and it’s now drying out. I think I’ll need to hire a carpet cleaner at some point and give all my upholstery a good clean.

It’s great, I have a settee and a chair so visitors don’t have to sit on the floor any more

And so it ends… Day three of Retrovision. The day where everyone sits in the lower part of the bar away from the flashing lights and loud noises, slowly coming to terms with the world again. Tradition dictates there be a Pictochat session, which always causes a certain amount of confusion by the “normals” in the room. There’s nothing stranger than six people hunched over their DSs prodding the screen in silence then suddenly breaking out into hysterics in unison. The Borg have nothing on us lot I tell you.

The sunday roast was good, as was the “survivor’s” curry in the evening. And the lockin in the pub was quite nice too

Yes, the timestamps on these entries are a bit weird. It’s really Monday and I’m … retro-filling my diary to maintain Blog365 coherence. Normally I’d just write one long post and blabber on at length in that, but this way seems better. I know when I did stuff now.

And so to day two. A day of much fun and surprises.

Surprise one being that I won several things in the raffle. Yes, the Vectrex is mine As is a Wiistle (a whistle shaped like a wiimote) and a universal telly remote.

And then… well… the second surprise… Thanks you lot Much appreciated.

Additionally Amy has acquired a Compaq Presario PC, and Devlin (who was also crammed into my car)  has managed to win an Amiga 500 in the raffle and was given a Megadrive. I have no idea how any of this is going to fit into my car since it was full getting here. Car Tetris may happen in the carpark on Monday.

But really, you people who conspired against me, thanks

Today, after a slow and slightly loopy day at school I finally managed to escape and head off to Oxford. Being the last day of this half term, my kids were rather excitable. I had two rolling around on the floor being idiots, and another decided it’d be fun to escape just before the end of school. Just what I need when I’m ready to escape for the weekend; half an hour of running around and writing bits of paper to chase up pointless silly incidents.

Anyway, eventually I had my car packed and was off to Doncaster station to collect Amy and two of our friends to trek off to Oxford for the yearly Llamasoft-flavoured forum meeting known as Retrovision. I won’t explain what a “retrovision” is, the website should be enough, as should this thread on our forum.

We arrived a tad later than the guesthouse people thought… err about 5 hours later, they thought we were arriving mid afternoon, not at seven PM. This meant there was no key and nobody to let us in. A quick phonecall to the owners and we were told our room number and that if we could find someone else from our group they could let us in and our room was open. This wasn’t so hard to do, the pub we were staying in (the rather good Folly Bridge Inn on Abingdon Road) being across the road, a whole thirty second walk away. Now to park the car…

Oxford doesn’t like cars that don’t belong to local people. This is fine in concept, since who does want hoardes of bloody tourists cluttering the streets with their cars, preventing you from parking yours outside your house. However, there needs to be more thought given to weekend visitors with bags, who are staying in guest houses - of which Oxford has hundreds. Really, I have a suitcase and two bags, how am I supposed to get that onto public transport easily? And the Park and Ride is great idea, but not if I can’t leave my car there for more than a day.

Fortunately I found the only free space in the pub’s carpark… and it’s mine for the whole weekend.

Friday nights at Retrovision are mostly test runs of everything - the games, the projectors, the pub’s ability to serve beer and food, and the thin-ness of the guesthouse walls. It appears that talking to each other pisses off people in other rooms. Well sorry, we’ll just use telepathy then!

I decided to unearth my ZX Spectrums and see if any of them still work. I have three;

• A 48k Spectrum
• A 16k Spectrum
• A 128k Spectrum +3

The Spectrum +3’s diskdrive drivebelt had perished, but I repaired it with another from eBay. Unfortunately the tape/sound connector had broken and I don’t think the repair we did has been successful. The Spectrum can hear the sound, but doesn’t recognise it as being loading data.

The 16k Spectrum has trouble producing a stable image,  and when loading anything produces the amusing

M: Ramtop no good

error message meaning “hey! You can’t fit 48k of data into my 16k of RAM”. I had much more luck with my 48k Spectrum though. It doesn’t give a stable image with sound, but if I mute the TV the Spectrum’s internal beeper works fine and the image is as clear as an RF modulated signal can be.

The 16 year old tapes I was using; a mixture of Your Sinclair, Crash and “Spectrum Games Compilation” that had been sat in my cousin’s garage for years. Some of them were mine from when I was younger Tape loading success was about 10%, so about right for a Spectrum then

Need to work out a neat way to cable the whole lot up. I don’t fancy the idea of leaving 20 year old power supplies plugged into the mains without supervision.