Need help with my computer

[freewheel]

They had PC's but remember with a PC you are paying for a complete computer with CD rom,Disk Drive. Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse.

Even a 286,386 or a 486 had pretty good price tags with them. since you are getting a complete computer with MonitormKeyboard, Mouse,modem,CDrom, 3 1/2 and 5 1/4

inch disk drives.

Even on ebay I found a working 286 computers selling for $377 dollars. The 386 computer also had a pretty good price and those are at least a 32bit computer.

You can buy broken PC's in hopes of getting them to run again but most I found were striped of memory,soundcard,Video card.

 

 

OK, as I suspected - and I mean this as respectfully as possible - you don't really understand the modern used PC market at all. You don't go to a collectibles/retro show looking for a used PC. For $377, you can buy a brand-new PC that's thousands of times more powerful than those 286/386s you're talking about. And it's been about 20 years since you have to deal with getting a modem, CDROM, memory, sound cards, etc. All of that has been standard for eons - and in fact the vast majority of it comes onboard these days. Pretty much with any PC manufactured in the past 10 years will need a mouse, keyboard, and monitor - and that's it. Everything else comes with it and simply can't be removed.

 

Here in Canada, where these things are usually at least twice as expensive as in the US, with 2 minutes of searching I can get a complete used PC for $199, and that's from a retail shop and this thing has 4GB of ram, 1TB hard drive, etc - WAY more than you need to set up a programming environment and every emulator you could possibly want to run. You'd need a mouse/keyboard/monitor, which would run you about $5-10 used at any thrift shop or garage sale.

 

You should be able to put together a complete PC setup for under $100 these days, unless you live in the absolute middle of nowhere. And I know for a fact that you can get a used Chromebook, fully working, for $100 including shipping on Ebay. Yeah, it's a lot all at once - but it seems like you keep putting out $25 here, $25 there... that adds up. You could have every Intellivision game ever made running for your daughter, plus a far easier computing environment, for less than what you've spent already.

 

Anyway, I'll stop trying to be "helpful" now I just didn't think you were aware of how cheap a semi-modern PC would be. Don't get me wrong - making this old gear work 30+ years later is a LOT of fun and it's what we all do here - it's just never, EVER going to be cheaper than an actual PC, unless you get very lucky. Fortunately things like that printer cable are easy to manufacture, so at least that's one place where you can get lucky

 

And you're not messing up the programming forum here. You're just not going to find much help, because in all honesty I suspect that maybe 5 people alive have actually written anything useful in ECS BASIC. It's just that bad. It was that bad when it was released, let alone today. It's certainly a fun challenge to try to make it do something fun though!

[mr_me]

There are stores that deal in refurbished PCs. These are named brand computers that would likely come off a three year corporate lease. The last time I bought a computer I paid CAN$90 plus tax for such a PC that was about three years old at the time. It was complete with dvd drive and a Windows license but keyboard/mouse/monitor not included. DVD/optical/floppy drives have become obsolete now and even printers aren't as critical as they use to be. Yeah, so a used PC needn't be more than three or four years old. And parts are readily available for upgrading RAM/storage or even CPU. And don't forget, brand new Raspberry PI computers that can plug into a TV are even cheaper.

 

And I'd be interested in reading about ECS basic when posted here.

 

Edit:

Carefull with Chromebooks; especially those based on ARM CPUs can be quite limiting as a computer.

Edited May 22, 2016 by mr_me

[Sean39]

Hi Guys

 

Thanks for the help. I thought looking for a really old computer would have made them cheap. Wow I was very wrong and even the ones missing all their cards were selling

for $175.00 at this show. That was the 286 and 386 machines. This was just a bare gutted computer. They had the Floppy drives and CD rom but memory was all gone and

sound card,Videocard,Serial /parralel printer card and modem all gone. They still wanted a $175 for those computers. If complete and working at least $300 and up.

Some things were cheap at this show and other were off the scale. Remember there were hundreds of dealers and I just lucked out to find one who carried the printer

really cheap.

Now where I live is in the middle of no where and this place only offers dial up internet connections at 56K speeds. They are hoping in the next few years to carry a DSL

connection out here.

 

So a modem will be needed for me since only having dial up and that all we can get unless I have a satelite receiver for internet connections installed.

 

Thanks

Edited May 22, 2016 by Sean39

[+5-11under]

Buy a core 2 or an i3 or i5 computer. Maybe from eBay or from a company that sells off-lease computers. Probably less than $100. Run an emulator, maybe Apple or some other well-known computer.

[Sean39]

Hi Everyone

 

I have been gone due to the fact that my daughter went in to have surgery. I am back now and she can start back on learning basic programing again.

 

Thanks

[Sean39]

Hi Everyone

 

 

We have been Busy and are still using the Intellivision ECS computer.

 

Also wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas

 

Thanks