fimbulvetr

Just wait for a deal. I recently picked up a 600xl for $75, and a boxed 800 for $150. You can get deals, but you have to be patient.

I got a ti99/4a because that is what my mom bought with a small inheritance as she wanted to try out computers. I don't remember her ever really using it. She bought it the first year it came out, and it was expensive. No idea why she chose the ti99 instead of something else. She also got a VCR at the same time, which she got a lot more use out of. Starting in the mid-80s I got cast-off PCs from my dad, so once I got into that ecosystem I stuck with it.

I dunno. I only have an 800. I use the joystick to navigate and select games with my Ultimate Cart. There are some other things it can do that requires a keyboard, e.g. if you want to scroll by page you need the shift key.

My Ultimate Cart is controllable by a joystick.

Hah! If I only I had a crystal ball to predict! I'm guessing the rarest of the rare will maintain some value as historical artifacts. The rest of it is just so much consumer-grade junk churned out of the factory. I think that realistically, to anyone born born in the last 20 years, 8-bit computers from the 70's and 80's to them are what tech from the 30's to 50's are to someone from my generation. I appreciate the tech of a nice vacuum-tube radio or whatever and all, but most of the collectors of those are currently aging or dying off, and you don't see a big crowd of younger people clamoring for the stuff. They are dust-collectors and space-eaters. I watch Antiques Road Show, and it is always fascinating to see them explain to somebody that if only they sold it 10 or 15 years ago it would have been worth a mint, but now that market is gone. The current prices of a lot of this stuff is aimed at middle-aged folks like myself with disposable income. In 10 years or so a lot of us will probably start thinking of offloading our horde. I know I am already starting to have more difficulty and frustration with repairing old electronics as my eyes age. At some point it will probably just be a pile of crap taking up space and collecting dust. My kids have no interest in my old electronics. They are just dad's ancient computers. It's a fun hobby for me now though!

I have no doubt the bottom will fall out of the retro computer market in the near future... I look at my father-in-laws huge toy train collection that he amassed over decades at great expense, and now he can't find anyone to even give it away to. I can see the writing on the wall for old electronics as a lot of us (and the machines) age.

Pickings are much, much slimmer in my part of the world up here in Canada. Old computers rarely come up in local ads, there are no local retro computer clubs, and ebay is often the only option and we get screwed on shipping and import fees. When I do see local ads, people are usually asking more than what I can get things for on ebay just by being patient. I've gotten a couple good local deals over they years, but they are few and far between. Much smaller market here, so there was much less to begin with and I think a lot of stuff was recycled. Pretty well 100% of the time I see someone chime in with something like "Don't get ripped off on ebay! Buy it on Craiglist!", it is someone from the USA. (Craiglist isn't really a thing here, although we do have the crappy little wannabe, Kijiji). It's frustrating!

I KNOW! Drives me crazy! There is no real good reason for those prices, and yet here we are.

I don’t know where cheap C64s are anymore. The price on them, at least ones available to me in Canada, have gone crazy lately. Atari is a cheaper option from what I can find. I may get a The C64 Maxi when they start shipping in November, as for US$130 it seems to be an excellent all-in-one 8bit with new hardware, and a lot less than what it would take for me to get even a basic C64 setup. Since I first commented I picked up a CoCo 3 for a surprisingly good price, and I will amend my previous assessment. I found the CoCo 2 lacklustre, but the 3 with a $20 512k ram upgrade and a CoCo SDC is a fantastic computer with a much better game library. Highly recommended.

It is a bit frustratingly opaque at times. I don’t think there is a way to save, the more I play with it, or if there is the method is so obscure I don’t see how anyone would guess it. Too bad. I guess I’ll shelve that one, as who has hours of uninterrupted time to devote to a text adventure game?

So I’ve been playing the Adventure in Wonderland text adventure game by Prickly Pear Software. The manual for it humbly claims to be “the BEST adventure game ever written for the colour computer”. I don’t know if that claim is true, but it is a pretty awesome game except for one thing... I can’t figure out if there is any way to save you game. Anyone know if you can save or not in this game?

I like the monthly myti99 chat, and usually try to make it. I couldn’t this time though, as I had something else going on.

It is for a ZX Spectrum computer, not a gaming console. You would hook up a printer for the same reason as any other 8 bit computer.

Kempston joysticks are the same as Atari. Sinclair joysticks are not. Which is why the Kempston interface is so popular with the ZX crowd...

6390, level 7

Mine is a cart. I got the original box and manual. This is one of my favourite games for the TI. Great pick!

I use a PEB with a Lotharek HXC SD floppy emulator to run the disks. There are archives of all the disks available, e.g. http://www.99er.net/download2/index.php?act=view&id=218

My beige flat panel monitors have manufacture dates of 2000 (the Dell) and 2001 (the NEC). My last beige-box PC was my first Win XP machine, which I got around 2002 or 2003. But definitely everything since has been black.

That is news to me. Probably was for whatever crap drivers came packaged with it when it was new. I paid $5 at Value Village for mine. Which reminds me, I also have a beige Dell LCD monitor, Model No. 1701FP that I got at Value Village. The style of the NEC matches the case of my 486 better though.

They exist. I have a NEC MultiSync LCD1545v that matches the beige of my 486 perfectly.

The last time I used Basic was some time in the early 80s, typing in programs from a magazine into a ti99. I dont remember any of it except a few simple commands, and my grasp of it was never that great back in the day. I’ve been considering getting into it recently, so this and the best Basic threads got my attention. As one data point, there is no way I would consider starting with a C64 in 2020 just based on the whole peek/poke thing. I am considering Atari or CoCo.

I couldn't put my TI Color Monitor on top of my PEB if I had it in tower configuration or had the top off. Even then, I almost never need to get into the gubbins, so have no reason to leave the top off.

That was a good price and looks like it had never been used. No wonder it disappeared so fast. I finally picked one up earlier this year that was dusty and beat up, and ended up paying CAN$200.

Yep. As soon as I found that out it was dealt with.

Good idea, I may give that a try. I ran into that issue with my ti99... I didn't realize that the ti has +12v on pin one of the video socket, and used an aftermarket "universal" cable... good thing I didn't plug the hot wire into my monitor, but I had been using that cable for a number of years and wasn't always that careful about plugging it in as the colors weren't standard so I would play guess which wire is composite.