thinking about getting an 80's computer

[Pipster]

I'd say the Spectrum as well, far superior to the C64.

 

If anyone in the UK is interested i have loads of C64 for sale, i got it cheap and really don't have the room, boxed printer, boxed disc drive, 3 x early C64 (1 boxed), 1 x later C64, 2 x Amiga A500, 2 x Music makers and some C64 games as well. Let me know, here are some pics...

 

 

[ApolloBoy]

I'd say the Spectrum as well, far superior to the C64.

 

Except we in the US got a watered-down version of the Spectrum.

[Atari-Jess]

Don't listen to anyone british.

 

I mean that only because they'll reccomend british systems that you will not be able to find anything for. And if you do, it will be inflated british pounds and then shipping.

 

So no Spectrum, no BBC Micro or whatever they want to recommend. Not only that, but

they are in PAL and you, being in NTSC land do not want a pal system.

 

The Atari 800XL or the Commodore 64 are your best bets.

 

They plug into the TV, parts are easy to find, they were both heavily mass produced.

The C64 more so however.

 

You can buy a device for the Atari to plug into your computer to access a huge array of games that are then played on the original hardware. SIO2PC and I wouldn't doubt

that an equivilant for the commodore may be around somewhere.

 

Don't listen to people and their pet systems, like the amiga 1200, or the Apple IIgs

 

Too expensive, a lot of effort in getting these systems. You want to remain simple like

you can with consoles.

 

People will likely argue with me but I, bias aside believe this to be the truth.

[SteveW]

Man, i'd love to get a Timex Sinclair 2068 with a Spectrum compitability RAMpack. It's a shame that Timex decided to bring the Spectrum to the US, and then cripple it by making it incompatible with all the Spectrum's software. What were they thinking?

 

Since i've been reading the British magazine Retro Gamer, it makes me want to get a Speccy. Emulation doesn't quite work for me. The best way to get an NTSC Spectrum would be to get a TS-2068 with a compatibility cartridge. But they didn't sell worth anything over here, since they were introduced at Christmas 1984, and the store's shelves were already choked with computers, they never stood a chance of getting noticed. They're fairly rare now.

[Pipster]

Is there no way you could get a Spectrum to work over there? You must be able to get some kind of 'step down' power converter like we can to run US electrical goods, i have about 20 Spectrums and i'd gladly sort you out with one. The games go for pennies over here as well.I imagine you get multi-format tvs in the US?

[Atari-Jess]

Well yes, you would be able to get a spectrum to work if you REALLY wanted it that badly.

 

You would need the power converted, you would need to have a TV that accepts pal, which is likely that he'll have to buy another TV, then once he gets the spectrum shipped, what if he wants accessories? diskdrives, cassette drives and the like?

 

He'll need more conveters to deal with anything else that has a psu.

 

At least where I live, Commodore equipment is in abundance (in comparison to other 80s computers, with the tandy coco in second place)

 

He would have to REALLY want the spectrum to be willing to spend the cash.

[Jess Ragan]

I for one am not the least bit impressed with the Spectrum. All the games for it have an odd tendency to use single color graphics for everything, even backgrounds. You'll have a blue character set against an almost entirely black and white playfield, filled with dithered monochromatic mountains and clouds.

 

Individual colors on the Spectrum are like oil and water, repelling each other rather than blending in perfect harmony. This makes nearly every game on the system fugly beyond belief. If you intend to play games on your computer, and you'd rather not have your eyes bleed after ten minutes, don't buy a Spectrum!

 

If you don't believe me, perhaps these screenshots will convince you. Prepare for severe eye trauma!

 

http://spectrummagic.emuunlim.com/Spectrum...gic%20Games.htm

 

If you're going to buy an 80's computer, go with a Commodore. The Commodore line ruled the computer industry until MS-DOS and Windows started to catch on with the public. There are thousands of games for the Commodore 64 alone, and the Amiga 500 brought advanced audiovisuals to personal computing, singlehandedly defining the term "multimedia PC". Heck, even the humble VIC-20's not bad, although it takes a special kind of fan to remain loyal to it after all these years. It hasn't aged gracefully, lacking the power and the stylish case designs of today's computers, but I love it anyway.

 

JR

[classicgamingguy]

Hmmm, how about a Macintosh Classic SE? Or a Macintosh Plus?

 

Uhm, okay..................I'll go away now.

 

Steve

[Pipster]

A stand alone cassette player runs on batteries and the vast majority of games are cassette based anyway apart from a few ROM carts that need an Interface 2 which doesn't need a seperate PSU anyway, a complete Spectrum set up will only need one power supply and yes the graphics were dodgy but some of the games were infinitely better than the equivalent C64 titles.

[MosDN]

About the Spectrum: It was impossible to disguise a bad game with nice graphics due to colour clash and the availability of only 15 colours.

And don't forget the single sound ("Beep") channel....

I bought mine in '84 and loved it since.

 

Try the World of Spectrum website.

 

Some good games:

Atic Atac

Jetset Willy

Elite

Lords of Midnight

Skooldaze

[Pipster]

Exactly, it might not have been pretty but it played well, i still have mine form 1983 and would never get rid of it.

[kevin242]

Don't listen to anyone british.

 

I mean that only because they'll reccomend british systems that you will not be able to find anything for. And if you do, it will be inflated british pounds and then shipping.

 

So no Spectrum, no BBC Micro or whatever they want to recommend. Not only that, but

they are in PAL and you, being in NTSC land do not want a pal system.

 

The Atari 800XL or the Commodore 64 are your best bets.

 

They plug into the TV, parts are easy to find, they were both heavily mass produced.

The C64 more so however.

 

You can buy a device for the Atari to plug into your computer to access a huge array of games that are then played on the original hardware. SIO2PC and I wouldn't doubt

that an equivilant for the commodore may be around somewhere.

 

Don't listen to people and their pet systems, like the amiga 1200, or the Apple IIgs

 

Too expensive, a lot of effort in getting these systems. You want to remain simple like

you can with consoles.

 

People will likely argue with me but I, bias aside believe this to be the truth.

893469[/snapback]

 

 

The A1200 and AppleIIgs are not good choices, I agree. Nor are Britishsystems if

you live in the US, but I dont agree the c64/atari 800 are the only ones. The Amiga

500 and Atari 520ST are perfectly good choices, they were both relatively

popular and there are tons of games fo rthem.

Edited July 19, 2005 by kevin242

[carlsson]

When it comes to Amiga 1200, it is a 90'ties computer; released late in 1992 or early 1993 if I remember correctly. Amiga 500 is a late 80'ties computer, but not so typical for its decade. Most of the others mentioned are more typical, being programmable in Basic upon start up, connect tape drives as well as disks, even cartridges in most cases, connect to TV, rather limited architecture so you have a chance to learn it all if you are determined etc.

 

Do you want a big selection of games to play? Do you want to try programming? Do you want to interface it with newer computers? Do you want to do some hardware hacking? Do you want a system that is "complete" to start with, or one that is expandable?

[Zonie]

I'd say the Spectrum as well, far superior to the C64.

 

If anyone in the UK is interested i have loads of C64 for sale, i got it cheap and really don't have the room, boxed printer, boxed disc drive, 3 x early C64 (1 boxed), 1 x later C64, 2 x Amiga A500, 2 x Music makers and  some C64 games as well.  Let me know, here are some pics...

 

 

893218[/snapback]

 

EASY SCRIPT!!!!!

 

Gawd I wrote all my H.S. and College papers with that!!!

 

Got sooooo used to 40 column, I had to berak all my editing habits when I got a PC.

 

All favorites aside, I agree with whomever reccommended the C64 or and Atari 8-bit (400/800, etc)

 

More stuff available, better prices, better support, and no hassels converting anything.

 

Any version Apple II is a good choice too.

Edited July 24, 2005 by Zonie

[Atari-Jess]

The ST is a good machine for gaming but its very big. Its a bulky system.

You're not always very likely to find an STfm (I have a 520STfm) and many

games REALLY need that whole meg (my 1040STf) but you need the monitor

for it. (I have a backup)

 

So as much as I think its cute, and that I like the GUI and games, its a hassle.

 

Personally I want to advocate the Atari 8bits simply because of the SIO2PC.

 

I love my 8bits!

 

Any computer that has a proper SIO2PC like device and is smallish, is a plus.

(And you cant beat the feel of turning the switch on an old 5.25 disk drive!)

Edited July 25, 2005 by Atari-Jess

[Shannon]

Avoid the Amiga 1200. You'll just have compatibility problems with it because most games required kickstart 1.3. The Amiga 1200 uses Kickstart 2.0 or something like that which means you would have to load the kickstart 1.3 disk everytime you wanted to play older titles.

 

If it was not for that I'd recommend the 1200. Bad thing about the 500 is I believe it needs a special adapter to get RF output, but with the proper cable you could probably hook it up to a TV with a Video input and L/R audio. That is pretty much how the commodore monitor that it came with hooked up to it anyways.

 

It's been ages since I had one (over ten years). But I'm pretty sure you could do it.

 

Anways an 800xl, C64, or Amiga are all good choices. I guess I'll throw in the ST as well though I'm not sure which version is hookeable up to a television.

 

Side note: I did not know there were adapters to use SD cards and IDE drives on a C64. Links anyone?

[AlexKIDD]

I still havn't bought any computers though I have decided that I want an Amiga 500. I'm only interested in playing games on it, no programming or anything. I would like to know if I buy one on ebay what exactly would I need to get it up and working and playing games? Also i'm wondering if you can plug 2600 joysticks right into it or is there an adapter required?

[CaptainCaputo]

i got the Ti99 and i think its quality system

[Shannon]

The amiga joysticks use the same connectors as the Atari did. It's amazing Commodore did not get sued considering Atari sued Sega.

 

It has been a while but I think the base Amiga 500 has 512k which could be expanded to 1Meg with an expansion card that plugged in underneath. Which would give you 512k Chip memory (shared between the graphics chips and processor) and 512k Fast memory (only useable by the CPU)

 

I think hardware modifications had to be made to turn the extra 512k into Chip memory. Which is only useful if you add more RAM thru the expansion slot on the side.

 

Having ALL the RAM as Chip memory can actually slow programs down. I think the Amiga 1200 had 1 meg of Chip Ram (along with an AGA chip).

 

Not sure how many games needed 1 meg of chip memory if any at all.

 

Typically an Amiga 500 came with a mouse, kickstart 1.3 (the BIOS pretty much), some Workbench disks (1.3 I think?), although they could be 2.04 or whatever it was.

 

Most game disks are self booting anyways.

 

The Atari ST mouse is NOT compatible with the Amiga mouse.

 

I'd tell you more, but I barely remember that much.

[SteveW]

The guy I got my Amiga 1000 from had modded it to have a megabyte of memory, but only 512K were visible to programs, unless I ran a special version of Workbench. But Psygnosis games usually detected the extra memory without Workbench. Leander had a nice little intro screen with a smoothly animated rotating memory chip along with a message about extra memory being detected.

[ScottHuggins]

Check out the TI/99-4a! Awesome little computer.

[Atari-Jess]

The Ti99 wouldn't be so bad if iit wasn't so freakin' obscure.

 

No matter how many people actually owned one, I am sure those numbers

simply do not compare to the sheer amount of sales for the atari or commodore

machines. Not to mention the amount of software you'll find is vastly different.

 

But then again, its not exactly a fancy system. Single colour sprites,

16 colours (one transparent) 16k video ram 256 bytes cpu ram

 

not so nice sound chip

 

a 35% market share at its peak, but that wasn't for very long.

 

I think he would be happier with a 800xl or c64

 

I was happier with the Adam than I was with the Ti 99

(unfair comparison I know, but for the record I didn't like the adam)

 

oh AND this thing was released in 1981, so its more fair to compare this to the Atari 800 or the Vic 20 maybe

Edited July 26, 2005 by Atari-Jess

[Famicoman]

Wheres Super Psycho when you need him? I would sugest a Commodore 64, and/ or any Apple 2. Commodore has great games, Apple has great capabilities. Just go to Retropuring

 

http://particles.org/forums

 

Super Psycho's Apple 2:

 

http://homepage.mac.com/superpsycho/thelab/appleiigsgal.html

[Atari-Jess]

The Apple II is nice, but my favourite is the IIc, nice keyboard and built in diskdrive.

 

IF you get one, get something like that, and avoid the rest of the a2 family.

Edited July 27, 2005 by Atari-Jess

[carlsson]

Side note: I did not know there were adapters to use SD cards and IDE drives on a C64. Links anyone?

IDE64 homepage: http://www.volny.cz/dundera/

 

The Atari ST mouse is NOT compatible with the Amiga mouse.

But some 3rd party mice had a switch to select Amiga or Atari mode. I have one.

 

Btw, I don't know if anyone mentioned MSX systems in this thread. Those should be at least as popular as TI-99, a system I always thought seems to have good raw specs but was horribly crippled due to cost reduction.