galax

Some programs don't work well with later machines and TOS versions, so I'd use start off with Steem configured as your machine was: STF (means pre-STE I think), TOS 1.04. I would use high resolution if your program supports it, medium is quite ugly. The ST drives A and B in Steem aren't your PC's floppy drives. You put disk images in Steem's 'drives' by using the disk manager (drive icon on right of the main toolbar). You can also configure a PC folder to use as a hard disk here, which saves messing with disk images and is handy for getting files in and out of the emulator. So open up the drive manager, navigate to your MTPro.ST, drag and drop it on drive A, and tell Steem to reboot the ST (right click on the red reset button on the toolbar I think, then the yellow play arrow to start the machine). If you upload your MTPro.ST I or someone else can tell you if it is working.

They don't use the Commodore name or logo anywhere on the product, and they don't even call it a C64. From their website:

They also attacked a C64 breadbin with a dremel and a hacksaw, and cut some slots in the side (Edit: they only showed the slots in the renders), so there is that. Some of the nonsense on Indiegogo defies belief. Maybe some people see it like gambling in a Casino; an entertaining way of throwing away your money. The most entertaining one I have seen recently is the Triton Gills. It is a completely nonsense fantasy product that was debunked as early as 2 years ago, had $900k refunded from the campaign already (at which point they added an obviously fake video and changed their story about how it worked), has its own fake warning Indiegogo campaign, and of course at least one forum thread full of haters. Still there are 1,000 people who are desperate to throw away $300 on it.

Are you sure? I haven't seen it plugged into anything in any of their photos or videos. Their Indiegogo says which doesn't sound like a clear statement that the prototypes are already working to me. They only have concept renders of the handheld version.

There was this rather confusing response: So the reason why they're not involved with THE 64 any more is the same reason why they're not involved with the Vega?

The hardware guy, of both this and the ZX Vega projects, would have been Chris Smith who as I mentioned yesterday resigned as a director of both companies last week. Maybe his work on this design is done?

I don't think you've underpriced it; it's pretty battered - Zap's is in much better condition. Last year I paid half the amount that you are asking for one in better condition, but maybe I got a bargain- I don't know. If you think people on here are going to pay higher than eBay prices to someone with no forum reputation then you're going about this the wrong way and you should just see what you can get on eBay.

Yep but the label on the external PSU has the opposite opinion on the polarity to the label on the bottom of my STacy, and a slightly different voltage too.

I already bought Llamatron by sending Jeff a cheque 25 years ago (I still have the cigar smoking camel poster he sent back!) and I can't wait to buy it again

Yes, the advantage over pre-ordering for the seller is that there is no risk. The main benefit for the buyer is that a product may get made that otherwise couldn't exist, if the seller was unable to raise the necessary startup capital from banks, venture capital, etc.

Not all investors get equity, crowdfunders are more like debtholders than shareholders, except without any rights except to hope that their debt is paid off with the product they agreed to, at a time that is convenient to the borrower, and with no additional interest no matter how late the payment.

Indiegogo also offers the 'flexible funding' option which is being used here, so there's no way for the crowdfunding to fail. It has become just another way to market a product, rather than a source of investment.

The company behind this started in August 2015, Darren Melbourne was made a director in March, and then all the other directors resigned: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09745704/officers http://the64.computer/about/ Copyright © 2016 Retro Games Ltd, Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, Company Number 09745704 Two of the directors (Chris Smith and the founder Paul Andrews) were involved in the ZX Vega, and just resigned from that company too: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08831435/officers Chris Smith and Paul Andrews' names have been retroactively removed from last year's Vega Indiegogo project page (how is that even allowed?) Before: https://web.archive.org/web/20151016054200/https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sinclair-zx-spectrum-vega#/ After: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sinclair-zx-spectrum-vega Not sure what's going on there really, wouldn't give any of them any of my money right now.

Hey I liked the Part 2 video you uploaded today, "nothing gives me more pleasure": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0vxzn1Hw7A - can't wait for the next one!

Well as we mentioned before Wikipedia now tells the world it is/was the "Retro Chameleon", which seems to be a bit of "original research" (which they aren't supposed to do) as I haven't seen that used anywhere else [citation needed].

Thanks, and yeah never seen that sticker; some people even nowadays like to put stickers all over their laptops. Probably nice and scratch free under that sticker once you get the gunk off with IPA or similar.

If the shielding ever gets in the way just leave it out. It was only ever there to keep the overly cautions FCC happy. They were worried that 'personal computers' (Class B; home computers) could generate stray RF interference that would interfere with the neighbors' TV signal. 'Business' computers and UK-made home computers never had any shielding, and it never caused any problems.

Recapping or replacing the PSU is one of the easiest of fixes- tracking down a bad IC somewhere on the motherboard, finding a replacement, and desoldering it, would be a lot more tricky for example. Red=5v, black=0v, blue=12v sounds right to me; I can't remember for sure as it's pretty easy to work it out when you have the PSU there. If you see -7v for example you have the +ve probe on 5v and the -ve on 12v.

Nice! Careful not to let that heavy lid drop on your fingers, I learned that the hard way. My Stacy and (dead) PSU disagree about the voltage and whether or not the centre of the connector is positive or negative. Could you test it with a multimeter and confirm what it is outputting when your PSU arrives? If it's a screw inside you should probably get it out before powering it up; would be nasty if it shorts something out.

I saved up money from my paper round to get the £299 Explorer Pack in 1989 which wasn't really much of a 'pack' to be honest: it came with "Ranarama, a tutorial program, and some desk accessories" and I think ST Basic as well. Well at least Ranarama was fun. My friend's parents got him the Super Pack a month or two earlier which was £399: Arkanoid II - Revenge of Doh, Beyond the Ice Palace, Black Lamp, Buggy Boy, Chopper X, Eddie Edwards Super Ski, Ikari Warriors, Marble Madness, Organiser, Quadralien, Ranarama, Return to Genesis, Road Wars, Seconds Out, Starquake, Summer Olympiad, Test Drive, Thrust, Thundercats, Wizball, Xenon, and Zynaps. Some decent games in there, although I probably got more mileage by spending the extra on Stunt Car Racer, Kick Off, a bunch of ST Magazines, and a bunch of blank disks for compact menus. A few of the games weren't well copy protected too; I definitely took a copy of Summer Olympiad. The Discovery Pack was a bit later than these two I think. As far as I can find out it had Space Harrier, Bomb Jack, Out Run, and Carrier Command. It looks like a subset of the Power Pack that was around at the same time; maybe those two replaced the Explorer & Super packs. Neither of us had a monitor, although my family TV had an RGB input which I eventually hooked the ST up to, for a much better picture but not as crisp as a monitor. I did get an SM124 monitor and Star LC24-10 printer a few months later which were both awesome. I'm pretty sure the STE was released in the US as well, I was still in the UK at that time though. The 1040 STE just had more RAM than the 520, and some were sold with 2 or 4 MB pre-installed by some dealers.

I was referring to the confusion caused by referring to "RETRO UK", which looks more like the UK office of Mike Kennedy's RETRO to me. But yes the smiley was there because I don't think there's any real confusion for most people.

The diagram might be clearer with the arrows going in the other direction...

Many things have surprised me about this debacle, the fact that John Carlsen didn't act like a normal person isn't one of them. Maybe we need a FAQ

Nice, I found the Jag shell but had to give Lee a cheque and then got kicked out of the show :\ I'm sure someone somewhere is already working on an arcade game version, I can see a sort of empire building game working too, where you have to make these sort of important business decisions:

You have TOS 1.02: http://www.avtandil.narod.ru/tose.html This is fine for gaming from floppy or a floppy emulator, but you should probably upgrade to at least 1.4 if you want to use a hard disk/ultrasatan (may start tunning into memory issues though). There are quite a few mono games. MIDI programs are usually mono only or much better in mono. Quartet looks great in mono, not sure about chiptune trackers- most seem to be low res. Should be enough to keep you busy while you look for a colour monitor.