Arnuphis

Is that Tennis game the one with the speaking umpire who sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger? That used to crack me up.

Great thread! At my school it was the Vic-20 kids vs the Sinclair (Zx81/Spectrum) kids. Then you had the Dragon 32 guy, The Oric-1 guy and even a Jupiter Ace guy. They were mocked for just being weird. So we had quite the melting pot in all. We all had one thing in common though. We all mocked the BBC Micro kid as his parents were clearly too rich. I eventually sold my Vic-20 and bought a TI-99/4a so I joined the ranks of the 'weird' for a while but everyone loved Parsec. Then, because of girls, I swapped it for a bass guitar to raise my faction with them.

I will also second that the Amiga and Atari ST cores on the MiST work GREAT!. Plus it has built in Midi for those musical ST folks. I have had my old unit for years and its rock solid.

I have one of the original Lotharek Mists and its great. Shame the cores were neglected due to everyone jumping to the MiSTer but the Amiga and Atari ST cores are great. It has built in Midi ports as well. He makes quality stuff. I have HxCs and SIO2SD units from him.

Just look for a close computer show and attend. I can pretty much guarantee you will be able to get a working C64 for very little money.

I have accumulated a few items by circumstance rather than choice. For example, when I got a bunch of donated Commodore/Amiga stuff there was an Atari ST monitor in there. How it got there I have no idea. I assume someone else took the ST. So that sits on a shelf. Plus some random cables and whatnot. I would love to see a PET disk in a shop. Been looking for one of those for a while!

Ordered One. I just love old Speech Synthesizers.

Could not agree more. You have been hopping all over the place. Choose one machine and stick with it. Start by programming stuff in basic and then add a little assembly language here and there. Once you are comfortable with it then you can try full assembly. You probably want a machine with a 'friendly' basic and a larger user base for help. Commodore 128, AppleII, Coco etc. Remember that you are doing this for you and for fun. That is the whole point. Realize that you are not going to churn out stuff like Eye of The Beholder in a weekend. It takes months/years of dedication to get to that level. Good luck!

It's great when you land something you have hunted for over the years. Never seen one of these in the flesh. Look forward to seeing it in action.

Thanks! I purchased a copy. Always happy to support new projects for retro machines.

Can you create a stand alone program that any user of C64 can load and run or do they also need Vision Basic?

Are you looking to collect for something obscure or are you just looking for something easy to collect for? What do you plan to do with your collection? Is it something you will be just collecting to look at and enjoy or do you want to program something or build things for it? Are you looking to make a profit on selling it in the future? (The ship has really sailed on this one) or will you keeping it forever? I always say pick something that has a nostalgia for you first. Because it will evoke nice memories. Or maybe something you always wanted as a kid but never got. For price, ease of use, supply of spares and general support its obviously going to be Apple, Atari, Commodore, Sinclair and then TI, Acorn, Amstrad etc. While its fun to get something a little rarer and obscure bear in mind you will be relying on a very limited knowledge base when it comes to help and fixing them, getting software/peripherals etc.

Can't really add much to the excellent posts but I will say this. The thing that annoyed me the most about the TI-99/4a was not the machine itself it was TI. For pulling out of the home computer market when they did. Here in the UK the machine became a top seller after the price cut and the unit + Yahtzee cart bundle was being sold. Loads of new users suddenly came on board. Momentum was growing. The TI-99/8 was coming and then boom. It was all over.

The answer to any computer question of this type is always 'depends what you are using it for'. If it was solely for games then probably not really worth the upgrade at the time. However if you were into productivity or using GEOS or wanted to look at CP/M then it was an excellent upgrade. Being able to fall back on C64 software was also an added bonus. This alone made the 128 more of a success than the C16/Plus/4.

Terrible. Originally they were going to be pretty good but then the system resources allocated to them was cut and you ended up with what you got. I actually ended up getting a plug in word processor cart for mine back in the day because it was streets ahead of the built in one. And even that was not as good as Mini Office on the C64.

I will gladly take one of your 128d's if you decide to part with it! The Mega65 is more of a Commodore 65 replica than anything else and kinda special. I'll tell you more if mine ever arrives! Amiga prices are just nuts these days and the hardware on the 600,1200 and 4000 is a bit flaky with leaky caps and whatnot. Just not worth the hassle. The MiSTer does a really good A1200 and that's enough for my nostalgia fix. I prefer the 8-bit Commodores myself and keep them around to enjoy the feeling of 'real metal'. As for the SX-64, I ordered a screen from here https://shop.tentelian.com/Replacement-screen-for-Commodore-SX-64-5-6”-LCD-JD567M03-AT056TN52-p370607976 Waiting on that to arrive and I will let you know how it goes. Going to 3d print the mounting bracket myself. Its gonna be a fun project!

I'll be looking for peripherals for my Pet 8296 now its fully up and running. A matching dual disk drive would be nice! Also getting a 128d if I see one not listed for an insane price. Going to replace the screen in my SX-64 with an LCD one. I recently got my first Coco 3 so I will be playing around with that and seeing what I can upgrade with. Every year the local Amiga show comes around at this time and I keep asking myself 'Do I want to get a real Amiga again?' Thankfully a look at the prices helps me decide my MiSTer is good enough! Still keeping an eye out for an Acorn A5000 in decent working condition and finally the elusive disk drives for my Sharp MZ-80 a and b. I will as always be following the C64 scene and picking up new titles that look good. Waiting patiently for my mega65 and Spectrum Next. Apart from that I have pretty much everything I always wanted. Oh hang on.. Atari Falcon. Always wanted one.

I remember seeing the TRS-80 model III in my local Tandy store (UK) and I really wanted one. It looked like a real computer. But the price was too high and then Commodore and Sinclair hit the market with less expensive machines with colour graphics and sound and every parent bought those for the kids. The only Tandy-ish machine that got popular was the Dragon 32 and obviously that was based on the CoCo. It's great to finally get my hands on one though. They are great machines.

Clearly overdue for a TI-99/4a port!

First game that popped into my mind was Chuckie Egg.

As much as I love Commodore machines and place them as my favorites I will admit the basic in the earlier home machines was a struggle for the young kid I was. Poke this, Peek that etc. I had tape only so load/save was easy. When I got a TI-99/4a I went from struggling with programs to writing games in a very short time as the basic was so friendly. However the downside is that when I looked to do more advanced things I was locked out and the basic was very slow. It was not until I used a BBC machine that I found the best BASIC ever for both simple and complex tasks. I never used an Apple 2 as no one here in the UK that I know could ever afford one.

It uses a 3.6v battery. Easy to obtain and only about $8-9. Easy to replace and like all batteries it can leak. Have fun!

You can play Duke Nukem 3D! and games of that era. I would replace the drive with an IDE to SD card adapter. Add more ram and enjoy. They are pretty easy to take apart. Just flip it upside down on a towel, undo a few screws and pull out the system board. Fun little machines in their day.

One early experience that sticks with me to this day concerns my first computer, the VIC-20. The year was 1981 and I was 14. I took it over to my best friend's house on a Saturday and we hooked it up to the 'big' color TV in his parent's lounge. We were playing Scott Adams' 'The Count' with the VIC lying on the light green carpet in front of the TV and we were sitting on the carpet as well. It was our first exposure to a text adventure. Anyway we were stuck on the bit where its dark. At that moment my friend's Dad came back from a lunchtime session at the pub. He was a few sheets to the wind and he plopped down in his chair and stared at the big text on the screen for a few minutes as we tried to figure out the puzzle. Then all of a sudden he blurts out as he reads the screen.. 'It's too dark to see!' and then followed it up with 'LIGHT THE TORCH!'. My friend said 'Dad we don't have a torch'. We kept typing and trying to figure it out and his Dad kept yelling 'Light the Bloody Torch!' and friend was yelling back 'Dad we don't have a torch!'. This went on for several minutes until he lost patience with us, grabbed his newspaper and left the room. To this day my friend and still chuckle when we think about it.

I would say nothing higher than a Pentium 200 MMX. You want something that will run 6.22/Win 3.11 and then Windows 98 via dual boot. 3DFX Video card, Soundblaster 16. That for me was the sweet spot of gaming up to the year 2000.