Compumater

I still stop by, but mostly use emulation these days to play. Its been a LONG time since I held that cart!

I always loved the Colecovision. The games were miles ahead of the 2600 and 5200 versions, and I was excited to see the Adam when it hit the stores. On paper it looked great, and I can't help but wonder if they had managed to get that thing to market without all the issues, do you think it would have done well? It seems to me to be slightly better than the C64, and that continued to sell well all the way into the 90's so I do wonder. I bought a never used setup for $10.00 in 1988 and used it as my main computer all the way to 1993. I had to write everything for it in applesoft basic, and that was a pain as I could never find programs for it. Years later when eBay became a thing I realized it wasn't just me! There just wasn't a lot of stuff made for it. I used the heck out of that printer though! So let's say in another world, the bugs were not there, would it have mattered to the market? Would the Adam have become a major player?

DosShell on my dos 5.0 disk was a game changer when paired with a mouse. I had never used a GUI with my IBM machines, and it saved me so much time. Going back farther. The GEOS 128 2.0 "OS" was a huge leap forward from the standard Basic environment found on C64/128 systems. Loved using it and did so for far far too long.

Sort of a failure, but still a cool unit? The Commodore REU. I had such high hopes, but other than GEOS, I really can't remember anything that really used it. Don't get me wrong. A 512K REU with GEOS 2.0 rocks and makes a very nice 90's mac alternative especially with the 128 version, but again. I can't think of anything that used it. I was hoping for massive games, faster load times, and so on, but none of it happened.

I had a great late 486 motherboard back in the day. It was the UMB VIP-486. It had 4 72 pin slots so you could stuff 128 meg of ram into it, and it came with VLB,ISA, and PCI slots. (hence the name VIP) It also had a 256K write back ram setup so it was really speed for it's time. I had the 5X86 133mhz over clocked to 160mhz and it was pretty stable. I rounded out that system with 2 pci cards, one was a Sound blaster, and the other a high end ATI All In wonder PCI car that I actually used to video converting and editing. It could record from VHS tapes and was state of the art for it's time. That was a great setup and I hope yours is just as much fun.

I've owned a few of these over the years, and while I never found it to be an impressive game machine I did like it enough to collect for it for a bit in the 90's. I always wondered why they never came out with a basic programming cart for it. It was the only system at it's time to include a full keyboard, so it would have seemed like a no brainer, but I never found one. Did they ever intend to flesh this thing out and add a basic cart and maybe a tape interface?

I tried to tell you back on page one, but this isn't going to work. I tried a CF card solution and bought many many CF cards of various sizes to try and trick the bois into formatting one. Nope. I tried a more modern HDD controller card. Nope. won't work with any HDD card but the original. You must find a very old IDE to play with it. Not even a modern IDE of a larger size would work. Really sucks.

I've been down this road. What a pain I found a set of Compaq setup disks and was ready to upgrade to a CF card. There are 42 options. None worked. So I tried another card, and then 5 others. Never got it to work. Thought it maybe the IDE controller that comes with the unit so I swapped it out for a generic. That one won't even let the computer post. Apparently the stock IDE board is the only one that works with these computers due to the custom bios in ram thing. The one I have still has a noisy but working 32meg HD and it looks like I'm stuck with it forever as I can't get ANY IDE drives or CF adapted drives to work in it's place. I'll be following to see if you have better luck than I did as it was a LONG month of trying. It takes over an hour to boot and reboot for every HD option per drive. 10 years ago i had a dedicated computer with an old 360K floppy for writing disks, These days I have nothing that will play well with that type of drive, and the Compaq won't do 3 1/4 drives. 1.2 meg or 360K 5 1/2 is the only working format. When i got mine I figured as soon as I had Dos 6.22, Dosshell, and a Comm program loaded onto the HD, I'd just telnet the rest of the files to it, but I never even got that far. Such a shame too as it's a really nice looking computer.

I wouldn't have been able to afford one, but think about what our lives are like right now. Computers run everything and make our lives so much easier. I think we forget how even simple book keeping, spreadsheets, writing a 5 page letter, and other simple day to day tasks would have been without one of these. To do the same work on paper or with a early calculator or worse yet, no calculator at all would have taken days vs. hours. It wouldn't take long even in 1981 to pay for one of these if you were using it for a small company. The savings in time and the reduction in mathematical errors alone would pay for it. As for a personal person getting one? If you were an early "Computer Nerd" I'd bet the purchase of one of these would have given you many many hours of use so broken down to hours per dollar it may have been a thing that could be rationalized. One thing I can say for sure. It was a great time to be alive and way more fun than today's computer climate.

The last great piece of hardware I bought for these tiny little computers was the incredible ZXpand from overseas. Since then I've kind of fallen off the vintage computer train. There was some talk about a wifi module for it, and I was wondering if it ever happend. The thought of surfing the net in slow mode with a whopping 2K is killer!

Just having a flash back to my first dip into the internet and finding a genuine C64 emulator. It was C64S (version 2.5 I think). Dude... I must have spend a year with that thing! I ordered the 2 CD set "High Voltage" from overseas and it had a HUGE pile of C64 programs and files. I Still have the disks, but have since moved onto windows based C64 emulators. Still, that and a Atari 2600 emulator called PACE were my first window into the internet and my first solid trip back into the world of computers and games I actually wanted to play. I wonder what happened to C64s2.5.

Wow, I had no idea. I too read, studied, and played many of the programs Tim wrote. He was truly an expert in the era when it came to the zx81. So young to pass, and such a loss.

I don't know If I consider myself an expert but I've built, modded, written for and most importantly owned Timex Sinclair 1000's since 1985.

I don't know how "Vintage" it is, but my panasonic Toughbook CF-29 (Win-XP, P3-1200mhz, 1.5 gig ram, and 15 gig HD) works full time as a shoutcast streaming device working as a server to a 20 peer station. It's also hooked to a Part 15 AM radio transmitter that simulcasts the station to AM 1670. Its old but sometimes when I'm tweaking the system I still use it to hop on the net from to transfer music files, update the system, and perform other random stuff. I wouldn't call it a speed demon but it works wonderful for my web station/radio station. This unit replaced a P233 / 64meg setup that was used for the same task but ran Windows 98se and had a smaller 6.5 gig HD. A battery leak killed the Motherboard after nearly 10 years of continuous operation. That system was limited to 8 simultaneous listeners, but i doubt it ever reached that capacity.

Dude, you are in luck. There is a add-on for the zx-81 and Timex/Sinclair 1000 called the ZXpand. With out getting to far into it, it has an SD port and a menu operated OS. Plug it into your zx, and wow! I have every .P file ever uploaded to the net on a 32meg SD card and all of them are instant load. No more custom cables to load wav files from your PC, or worse yet hooking up the old tape deck. Its freaking GREAT! It also has a 9 pin joystick port, optional sound board, and I understand the latest units may come with a com port. Its a few $$ but I've had my for 6 years now and love it. It makes the timex 1000 a totally fun computer again.

I've been stuck inside for a few days from all the snow we've had, and during my bout of cabin fever I've been visiting many of the old school BBS's that are still hanging on out there on the Web via Telnet. If you haven't been on one of these since the end of the BBS era (1997ish) you owe it to yourself to download syncterm and give them a try. So many fond memories of dialing up late night BBS's to get the latest shareware release of Doom, Duke 3d, wolf 3d, Raptor... The list goes on and on. Stopping by my favorite message BBS (Millways) run on a bone stock 2 floppy drive Apple 2c even in late 96! Or heading over to "The Cave" that ran my favorite BBS software WWIV 4.24a Those were the days, and I'm glad to say that some of these old systems are still kicking. Fido net is still sort of active. Dove-net is rocking, heck WWIV-net is back! Love it. Anyway That's it, just thought I'd point out that these BBS's are still going...well, maybe not strong, but still going anyway in 2018! /s

I Have decided to sell my pre-order to : Swami I have forwarded him copies of my E-mail confirmation from way back in the day, and when Curt gets his order webpage up and running I will forward Swami's info to him as the new shipping address. Sadly for me this product came about 7 years too late. I've moved on from the 7800.

Well, I've been playing around with it when I have had the chance, and I really dig this old timer. the OS is snappy, and with the tenfourfox Web browser It is actually usable (but slow) on the internet. I've ordered some "upgrades" for it. A 16gb SSD sata drive and a Ide to sata adaptor. This should help not only speed up things, but also quite down the system as the bearings in the hard drive were quite noisy. I've also ordered a set of OS X install CD's to reinstall onto the HD when I'm done. The last great thing I found was that the install of ITunes from 2005ish still works and was loaded with pod casts and music from that era. When I booted it up, it started to download all the "new" podcasts from the previous owners list. Crazy to see this old tech still being as useful as it has turned out to be.

Thanks. I downloaded it and installed and here I am trying it out. seems to work well so far. The model is a "slot loaded" 400mhz with firewire ports and usb ports. It has a 9 gig hard drive and 1 gig of ram. I'm hooked to the internet by way of a ethernet to wifi adapter from vonet. I'm already considering a "upgrade" getting a 700mhz motherboard to swap out with this one. I think they also had some extra video ram. Also considering a ssd harddrive of somekind for a speed boost. On a side note what is the equivilent to the right mouse button? mine clicks but appears to do nothing, hence the misspelled words. (no spell check) the words light up as wrong, but hovering over them and right clicking does nothing. Bad mouse?? or operator error? Anyway that's all for now.

Just to prove my point. I'm typing this message from the Imac. It loaded atarage perfectly, let me sing in, and is posting this without issue. I've played with Windows 98 computers, and even XP computers that have more issues with the internet than this thing! Speed wise I'm going to compare its pathetic 400mhz G3 chip with something along the lines of a p4 1.6ghz running XP. Slow but usable. I know I'm the only one amazed by all this, but seriously. A 2000 model computer that is really truthfully still useful today?!? Crazy, and then add to that the fact that It was taken from the side of the road and last used in 2010?!?! I am blown away. End rant.

So, I'm driving home the other day and I pass a pile of CRT old school TVs mixed in with some other junk, but as I'm driving past it I catch a glimpse of a oddly shaped blue monitor. I decided to turn around and take a look at it. Low and behold it was a blue Imac with the keyboard and mouse! The dang thing looked like it had been outside in a barn doe many years. A think layer of dirt (not dust) was hard caked on it, but all the calbes were there and since I've never owned a MAC since the mac plus I figured I'd grab it to play with. It was well past dark when I finally got to the house and this thing was way to dirty to bring inside so I hauled it to the garage and cleaned off the monitor enough so I could see if it powered on. Dang thing worked! Turns out it had been "maxxed out" so to speak as it had 1 gig of memory and os X10.4.11 already installed. I cleaned it up yesterday, brought it inside and hooked the Ethernet plug up to my wireless vonet device. I'm impressed at how well a 17 year old computer still works in doing modern stuff. YouTube is a no go, but for the most part this thing still works on the modern web! I've never owned a G3 Mac, so if anyone out there has some software recommendations I'd love to hear them. Old school video editors? Best web browser for 10.4.11? mp3 player? Stuff like that. I've got it setup and want to use it for a while before deciding to sell it so I'd like to get some use out of it. My initial reaction to this machine and to OS 10.4.11 is that it must have been WAY ahead of its time. in 2000 us IBM guys were using windows 95 or 98 and compared to that operating system this thing is light years ahead. The fact that its built in web browser (safari?) still surfs the web well is a testament to its programmers. Let me know what else it can do!\

My top 3 would have to be: 1- Geos 2.0 for the C128. I had a great setup that included the 512K REU, and a 1581 floppy. That combo with Geos really rocked. It did everything a mac 128K did for a fraction of the price. I used mine up till 1994 2- Ms-dos 5.0 or 6.22 with the very useful Dosshell. Dos was a great way to poke around on sub 386 computers, but with dosshell you had the ability to use a mouse and do routine tasks much easier. I also found it much easier to keep track of my ever growing BBS file collections with the great menu system. Dos shell and a mouse made an original IBM XT feel like a 386-16 and I used mine all the way up to 2000! 3- Windows 98se It had its issues, and I would generally reinstall it every 15 months to keep things running snappy, but 98 changed the world. If they made a web browser that ran on it today, I'd still use it on my laptop. As it is win XP is getting really close to uselessness only because of a lack of support for modern browsers.

I was looking to get an older PC/XT clone or if it was the right machine, something all the way up to a P1 233mhz. I started off looking at the Tandy EX a sort of all in one with built in keyboard and floppy and that got me thinking... Were there any other manufacturers that made a similar product? I'd love something in the 286-486 range that is compact and includes the same and feel of the 1000 HX, but also features a hard drive and at least 1 or better yet 2 isa card slots. I could swear at some point in my life I saw a Compaq all in one that included a monitor, but I'll be danged if I can find any info on it. So ????

Man, that place is the place for ZX/Timex Stuff. I got my zxpander plug in from them, and it is incredible what can be done on my little T/S1000 now. I've got the reverse video composite mod from them, and the zxpand unit. With those two and a old Apple 2c monochrome 9 inch monitor I feel like its 1981 all the time! Games and even BBS's look great in the proper green letter on black screen (as opposed to black letter on green screen) and the zxpand is like a hard drive. I have every zx file I've ever found + all the ones I made myself over the years at my finger tips with out a dang tape deck in sight. The menu system is better than anything! Yes I spent more $$ than I wanted to to get this setup, but its been worth it.

So I was watching The Walking Dead last night, and wouldn't you know it, they had a battleship gray 2 disk TRS-80 model 3 in it. Sadly they used it to smash a walkers head in, but still.... Its been a LONG time since I saw a retro computer in anything on TV.