carlsson Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 I don't think getting a spare C64 is an irrational want. Getting a Spartan to emulate an Apple ][ on your C64 might be though. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roland p Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 - An amiga 2000/3000/4000 upgraded to the max (Powerpc/68060, graphics card, 16-bit sound) - PC Engine LT - Gaming PC with 2 Voodoo2's - ST Book - MSX Turbo-r - Commodore SX-64 - Atari 800 with all old peripherals. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 I want a friend nearby who looks after this kind of stuff and likes to show it off. I don't need any old computers for myself. :-) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akator Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 Personally, I feel that all of my classic hardware ownership is an "irrational want." The hardware is still awesome and I love it, but that love is not rational 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oracle_jedi Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 For me its a Camputers Lynx. I love the design of the Lynx, with its elegant business grey case and red legends on the key caps, and I loved the idea that you could take a Z80 based home computer and expand it to run CP/M with an 80-column display. Of course the reality was that the 48K Lynx could never deliver on that promise, and I don't think the 96K Lynx could either. As I understand it the 128K Lynx, which could run CP/M, was mostly incompatible with the smaller memory machines, so little of the entertainment software would run on it. Yet I still lust after a 96K Lynx with the disk drive. I have the emulator, and I know the software was pretty bad. The 48K machine was really more like a 16K machine as 32K of the RAM was dedicated to video, and the video display was painfully slow, as each character was rendered pixel by pixel. The Lynx BASIC was bizarre with floating point line numbers and a screen that wrapped back to the top when you got to the bottom. I have resisted buying one, they don't come up on EBay that often, it would be expensive to import to the U.S., and would be something toyed with once or twice a year, and then put back in to storage as my Atari 8 bits, VIC20 and TI99/4A are much more interesting machines to interact with. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.Ivy Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 I wouldnt mind a Commodore 8050 dual disk drive. I dont need it, but id sure like it 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 (edited) For me its a Camputers Lynx. I love the design of the Lynx, with its elegant business grey case and red legends on the key caps, and I loved the idea that you could take a Z80 based home computer and expand it to run CP/M with an 80-column display. Of course the reality was that the 48K Lynx could never deliver on that promise, and I don't think the 96K Lynx could either. As I understand it the 128K Lynx, which could run CP/M, was mostly incompatible with the smaller memory machines, so little of the entertainment software would run on it. Yet I still lust after a 96K Lynx with the disk drive. I have the emulator, and I know the software was pretty bad. The 48K machine was really more like a 16K machine as 32K of the RAM was dedicated to video, and the video display was painfully slow, as each character was rendered pixel by pixel. The Lynx BASIC was bizarre with floating point line numbers and a screen that wrapped back to the top when you got to the bottom. I have resisted buying one, they don't come up on EBay that often, it would be expensive to import to the U.S., and would be something toyed with once or twice a year, and then put back in to storage as my Atari 8 bits, VIC20 and TI99/4A are much more interesting machines to interact with. I always thought the Lynx was interesting and I'd love to have one, but any time I've seen them up for auction, they seller didn't ship to the US or the price went through the roof. The machines with extra RAM are very rare. The oddities of the BASIC aren't surprising. Almost every machine with it's own unlicensed BASIC have some differences and it sounds like the programmer might not have had a lot of experience. Displaying text with graphics isn't unusual, the ZX Spectrum does this, and programs on the Tandy CoCo used it for word processing and the Flex OS before that. So... that in itself isn't a huge deal. How efficient the code and hardware are might be. The 6x10 font doesn't lend itself to really fast text output and it sounds like the Lynx had a lot of video wait states. The Lynx was a decent idea but the company made some critical mistakes. It sounds like the hardware and BASIC needed some work, they tried to compete with budget computers using a more expensive machine, and they had minimal financing. Edited March 11, 2016 by JamesD 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clint Thompson Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 - An amiga 2000/3000/4000 upgraded to the max (Powerpc/68060, graphics card, 16-bit sound) - PC Engine LT - Gaming PC with 2 Voodoo2's - ST Book - MSX Turbo-r - Commodore SX-64 - Atari 800 with all old peripherals. There's nothing irrational about wanting an ST Book! I would love to own one as well... crescent fresh condition even. I think when it comes to irrational, probably an FM TOWNS Marty II - just because it would be cool to check out in person but I suppose that's about it. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fultonbot Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 A working 1450 XLD. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElementalChaos Posted March 25, 2016 Share Posted March 25, 2016 (edited) I really, really want an Apple ImageWriter II even though I know I'd probably only print a few things and then never touch it again. Edited March 25, 2016 by ElementalChaos 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rpiguy9907 Posted March 26, 2016 Author Share Posted March 26, 2016 I just splurged on an Okidata dot matrix printer for my commodore. Unfortunately it only has CBM serial, so I still need something for my Apple //s... An ImageWriter would be awesome! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krslam Posted March 26, 2016 Share Posted March 26, 2016 (edited) A KIM-1 or an Atari 1450XLD would top my list. Would also like one of those later rounded PET models, like the CBM 8296-D or similar. Or a Commodore 65 or a TI-99/8. OK, I guess I have several irrational wants. Edited March 26, 2016 by krslam 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Win16fan Posted March 26, 2016 Share Posted March 26, 2016 A Commodore Amiga. I find it fascinating, but I don't know if I can justify the price. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted March 26, 2016 Share Posted March 26, 2016 A Commodore Amiga. I find it fascinating, but I don't know if I can justify the price. You can get a 500 pretty cheap, but you'll need either the monitor to go with it or get a VGA board for it (unless you really want to suffer with RF on your TV). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Win16fan Posted March 26, 2016 Share Posted March 26, 2016 You can get a 500 pretty cheap, but you'll need either the monitor to go with it or get a VGA board for it (unless you really want to suffer with RF on your TV). I'll keep this in mind. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlsson Posted March 26, 2016 Share Posted March 26, 2016 Oh yes, I used to have an irrational desire for an Okimate 10 colour printer, like the ones advertised in COMPUTE! in the mid 80's. I thought they would print very pretty colour pictures, better than e.g. a VIC-1526 colour plotter would. This desire is something I had well into the mid-late 1990's, and I may even have had a chance to pick up one, but at that point I didn't bite. After reading up on Wikipedia how it works, and the fact that generally I'm totally indifferent to vintage computer printers these days (as opposed to most other vintage computer peripherals), it no longer is a want of mine. Also, I've already got a colour laser printer that possibly generates as good, or better colour prints as the Okimate with its wax printing would. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nateo Posted March 28, 2016 Share Posted March 28, 2016 I really want a Commodore 1764 REU. And pretty much just for GEOS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted March 28, 2016 Share Posted March 28, 2016 1400XL motherboard, we had a few come in to my store back in the day from a supposed ex Atari employee but I sold mine shortly afterward.. though supposedly not made a repro 1450xld Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted March 28, 2016 Share Posted March 28, 2016 I really, really want an Apple ImageWriter II even though I know I'd probably only print a few things and then never touch it again. we have seen several as recently as last year, we recycled them.. ugh! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Almost Rice Posted March 28, 2016 Share Posted March 28, 2016 Coleco Adam system. I remember my little 10 year old mind just dying to have one. Good thing we never got one and they disappeared so quickly that I never got a change to get one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rpiguy9907 Posted March 31, 2016 Author Share Posted March 31, 2016 @Almost Rice - I posted the very same thing in the Your First Computer thread - I asked for an Adam but got a Commodore and it worked out for me much better than an Adam ever would have! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CatPix Posted April 8, 2016 Share Posted April 8, 2016 If I had the room... and money... I'd get a monster mainframe from the 60's or 70's. UNIVAC 9400 anyone? I mean, just the name UNIVAC brings Sci fi stories in mind Or a DEC PDP-1 to play Space Wars. Or a PDP 11 A Micral. We invented the first ready-for-use micro-computer, I have to get one! Soviet computers... Because some looks cool. This one amuses me... That might be the only IBM-PC XT compatible ever made in a "80's all in one" style. And this PDP-11 compatible clone was the very one Alekseï Pajitnov used to program Tetris. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlsson Posted April 8, 2016 Share Posted April 8, 2016 I can't claim it being an active irrational want, but I wouldn't say no to a Sord SMP80/x series. There is a claim that Sord made the very first computer to use an Intel 8080, ahead of Altair and everyone else. http://museum.ipsj.or.jp/en/computer/personal/0086.html 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted April 8, 2016 Share Posted April 8, 2016 The Univac and Sord SMP80/x look almost futuristic. Like a 70's concept car except for computers. My wife had a load of big iron in the form of small vax' and pdp material. Took a lot of fiddling and busywork to get anything even remotely useful done. Even in a hobbyist sense. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
retrofixes Posted April 9, 2016 Share Posted April 9, 2016 For me it's the Apple 1 Replica. I actually have a great reproduction PCB and sourced all the chips. Not sure when I will actually start the projects. Still need a keyboard, tape player and transformers. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.