Arnuphis

17/20. More familiar with the Fall than Spectrum games. RIP M.E.S.

Sid Meier's Pirates! - I could just stop here really. PSI-5 Trading Company Space Moguls Airborne Ranger Times of Lore Wasteland and for just fun.. Mancave!

and of course this is a handy book as well if you can find a copy... https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Mac-Scrolls-MacIntosh-Thousands/dp/0940235250/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=dead+mac+scrolls&qid=1634423345&sr=8-1

I presume you know of this one? https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php

Another interesting product now priced beyond interest.

Hey, your choice. To each their own. I hope you get a lot of use out of it and it doesn't just become an expensive paperweight gathering dust. Out of the people buying it, how many are actually going to use it to contribute anything apart from bragging rights? For all those boasting Dev Kits there is precious little actually being developed. The reason the C65 is so expensive is because it was a non-released prototype from 30+ years ago and only 100 exist and a lot of them are missing pieces. It's a collectable. Why you would really want one though is beyond me, because it has no practical use. It's just an object to have and then eventually sell on. Cool if you found one in a loft but otherwise not worth buying at collector price now. The Mega65 is a modern FPGA system that just happens to be in a knock off C65 case. It will never be as collectable or expensive because it has no real footnote in history. It's a copy of something with a few embellishments. It has no more practical use than a Raspberry Pi or MiSTer and those are far less expensive. And at that price its the Atari VCS of modern retro systems. Spectrum Next is a much better project IMO and less than half the price. Hurts me to say that as I am a Commodore fan.

$800+ dollars basically(without taxes and including shipping). No thanks. Way to expensive for what it is. Thanks for testing it for us though! Those with deeper pockets (and maybe less sense?) can iron out all the bugs for the rest of us. If they ramp up production on a Version 2 and sell it for $499 I am in. Otherwise I can always get one from someone with buyers remorse.

I still stand by my PCW8256 for Infocom stuff at least. However I did play Lurking Horror on a TI-99/4a with a PEB. The noisy disk loading and delay after you typed in commands kind of added to the tension as well haha. I really wish there was more stuff for my Sharp MZ-80B. That machine screams text adventure with its all in one design and nice keyboard. Or A TRS-80 Model III/4/4p. That green screen is essential. No colors for text adventures please!

I hear you. I got the 'next' on this go around. It was pricey and is the upper limit of what I will pay for things like this but I did it to support retro efforts as I want to see more projects come along. The Mega 65 was on my radar until I saw the anticipated price. Frankly the X16 looks a more likely contender.

Well maybe there will be such a demand that a second, higher production run will be done at a lower price. I would love one but the wife may not be too happy on me dropping $1000 on such a hobby item. Its going to wither on the vine if the machine is to scarce and too expensive.

Color me excited for this one. Hopefully it is not a silly price.

Wow. Okay then. R.I.P. Sir Clive. 81 is respectable but a sad day nonetheless. I know back in the 80s you and your computers were the enemy of me, a Commodore user. I mocked your membrane and rubber keyboards, wobbly ram packs and horrible screen colors but thanks to you computers were affordable and easy to get. So many lives changed and careers launched by your little plastic boxes. You were ahead of your time with the idea of an electric vehicle and you were a true inventor until the end. Now you can hang out with Jack Tramiel and trade barbs in a better place.

Firstly, if you are using the original C64 power supply STOP RIGHT NOW. Do not ever use it again or get a c64 saver to plug in between the PSU and C64. Depending on your model (breadbin/C64c) it could be the PLA. Good news is replacements are easy to find. But firstly you want to ensure you get a trusted power supply and go from there. The C64 is so popular you will have no shortage of resources to get it back up and running.

Yeah $750 puts you into A1200 country. $300 tops for a bog standard A500 and extras. My club was selling them boxed for $50 when we had some.

Due to production delays the Electron missed the vital Christmas shopping window and was unable to get enough units in the stores to satisfy demand. It never recovered as the bottom then fell out of the market shortly after. And I am talking about the UK.

I can speak from personal experience that the Tandy was not cheap! Not in the UK at least. I remember looking at a Model III in a store and saw the price and it was way beyond anything I could afford at the time. It was a professional computer. Never understood why it got the 'Trash' monicker either. I presume it was due to flaws with the Model I but the Model III/IV boy that was a dream machine in the day. Just like the Sharp MZ-80. Rich people computers. When I saw listings for them in magazines I really wished I had one. My Vic-20 C2n Was rock solid. Never failed to load. As was my TI-99/4a cassette recorder once I got one without dolby and a tone control (just volume) and used basic ferric tapes but there is no way I would have put up with them if floppy was an option.

I think the only cool moment I had with cassette was playing Ghostbusters on my C64 and enjoying the 'Invaderload' program. Otherwise I was out of the room making tea while stuff loaded.

Yes C64/128 probably has the most choices. However for that classic experience I would choose another system. For example, the Mrs and I recently decided to play some old Infocom games. I chose the Amstrad PCW 8256 because it has that classic green screen that is great for evoking text adventure atmosphere and a good keyboard to type on.

Floppy all the way. I never chose a cassette for my Vic-20 or TI-99/4a it was simply all that was affordable at the time. Once I got my first disk drive (on a C64) it was like stepping into another world.

Oh Yes. RiscOS is very much alive and if you have a Raspberry Pi you can download it and have fun. https://www.riscosopen.org/content/

No CD-Rom until the Risc-PC around 1994. You could get one as an external device but the Risc-PC was the first one to come with a drive bay in the case. I actually sold my Amiga 500 to get an Acorn A5000 and it was quite an upgrade. But the true answer? It depends what you want out of a computer. Amiga and video production was unmatched for the price but everything else would depend on the software. I think RiscOS was far better than Amiga OS. The video output on the archie was easier to use with VGA monitors and the raw power of the Archie was better. I know I never missed my Amiga except the larger gaming software base. The productivity software was so much better as well on my A5000. For me at least it was a better computer in all aspects. RiscOS felt like such a great leap forward that when I had to move over to PC Windows 3.1 for a job it felt like a horrible step back. Glad its still around and I have a modern RiscOS machine I like to use from time to time. But I still miss my old A5000.

Yes. The TI-99/4a. There is a reason they were being sold at a loss towards the end. The build quality on the original was amazing. Also the Atari 800 was a solid machine. Mine still works without any repairs or upgrades.

Zarch - Archimedes

To follow on from my original post, I finally got to the ST part of the book so at least that was included. My experience was not just that of an 'acne ridden teenager'. When I left school and went to college to study computer science the college had a mainframe for COBOL and BBC Masters for classroom use. My work experience placing was at two companies. One was a university campus which again was just dumb terminals and a mainframe and the other was a small business that had PETs. It was not until I started working at an insurance company in 1989 that I finally saw an IBM PC. Again, ZERO Apple anywhere. I didn't actually see any Apple kit until I was working as a repair technician and we had one client who was a design studio and they had some PowerPC Macs. The external SCSI devices were always causing issues. They next time I saw Apple stuff was when I worked at a large network product company. I saw them dump all their PowerPC Macs into a skip and replace them with Compaq Laptops/Server. What I am basically saying is that Apple really were not a thing here in the UK at that time, a least not in my area/experience. I know they like to rewrite history to make themselves the be all and end all of computing history and innovation but I really do feel that that portion of the book would have been better served elsewhere. Maybe with the Atari 8 bit line or like mentioned previously, the 'nearly were' machines like the Jupiter Ace, Newbrain, Lynx, Oric, TI-99/4a etc. Because they were the machines on sale in the stores to the general public in this period. If only the 800 had been priced better in 1979 when it came out.. So ahead of its time. As a kid I would have loved one and would probably never have been such a Commodore devotee if i had gotten one. But they never got here until '81 and were around 650 pounds at the time (2 and a half grand today!) so they were beaten on price by Sinclair/Commodore. So it was probably never going to happen.

Some serious Atari rage going on with one of the previous posts haha. But I understand completely. Seems a big omission. It's a fun book though for what it is. Ok I had 'boots on the ground' in the UK during this period of computing history. In my part of the UK it was all Zx81, Spectrum, Vic-20, C64 and Dragon 32. One kid had an Oric-1 and another had a Beeb. I saw Atari 400/800 on sale at some department stores(they were expensive!), along with Colour Genie , TI-99/4a and a Tandy at the Tandy shop. Later on I saw Sharp MZ-700, Tatung Einstein and Amstrad and a single Jupiter Ace. The schools had BBC Micros, along with a RM-380z and ONE pet. The computer mags had listings for Commodore/Atari/Sinclair mainly with the odd other platform on occasion, I never saw a SINGLE apple computer on sale or any listing for games in any magazine I bought so why they turn up in this book instead of Atari is beyond me. Maybe the author didn't have much to say about them for for history alone its too big of a name to ignore. Especially since Jay Miner designed the 800. Apple had ZERO influence in my area and certainly didn't 'build' the Britain I was living in. Whereas Atari was very much in the scene. Why mention Amiga and not ST either?