I never owned a Commodore, but I remember playing with the ones in the local K-Mart in the late 80's. They really didn't care how long we were there
I bought a new computer! ..... Relatively speaking.
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I never owned a Commodore, but I remember playing with the ones in the local K-Mart in the late 80's. They really didn't care how long we were there
I used to have a collection of vintage computers, then had to purge them during a move. 
More recently, I got my hands on a Macintosh Plus, which is one of the Macs they made in the '80s that's a single unit (apart from mouse and keyboard) that you can lug around and comes with a black and white screen.
It's in surprisingly good shape, although I have yet to disassemble it and check the caps. Serial number indicates it was built in 1987.
Rather than fuss about with floppies, I got my hands on a little device called Floppy Emu, which connects to the 19-pin port on the back of the Mac and emulates floppies (and even hard disks) which you keep stored as images on a micro SD card. But it doesn't come with any hard disk images I considered suitable, so I had to build my own. Turns out this is pretty easy to do using the Mini vMac emulator. Starting from a blank disk image, you can install the OS of your choice (I went with System 7.5.3 which is probably overkill for this machine) and then simply copy in whatever programs you want. Shut down the emulator, copy the disk image to the SD card, load it into Floppy Emu, and boot up the Mac! Everything is there and ready to go.
So far I have played The Oregon Trail and killed my entire party by fording a 20-foot deep river. I regret nothing.
More recently, I got my hands on a Macintosh Plus, which is one of the Macs they made in the '80s that's a single unit (apart from mouse and keyboard) that you can lug around and comes with a black and white screen.
It's in surprisingly good shape, although I have yet to disassemble it and check the caps. Serial number indicates it was built in 1987.
Rather than fuss about with floppies, I got my hands on a little device called Floppy Emu, which connects to the 19-pin port on the back of the Mac and emulates floppies (and even hard disks) which you keep stored as images on a micro SD card. But it doesn't come with any hard disk images I considered suitable, so I had to build my own. Turns out this is pretty easy to do using the Mini vMac emulator. Starting from a blank disk image, you can install the OS of your choice (I went with System 7.5.3 which is probably overkill for this machine) and then simply copy in whatever programs you want. Shut down the emulator, copy the disk image to the SD card, load it into Floppy Emu, and boot up the Mac! Everything is there and ready to go.
So far I have played The Oregon Trail and killed my entire party by fording a 20-foot deep river. I regret nothing.
Well - at least they didn't die from dysentery!
Well, I've managed to get my modern-day TV's color setting on one of the inputs color-adjusted to, more-or-less, present the correct colors for the graphics. (I have a VGA-EGA connector coming so I can hook a modern monitor up to it, may grab an old CRT monitor from a garage sale to use. Getting a contemporary monitor is fiscally impractical and monitors that old may need work beyond my experience to work properly (replacing internal electrical components.)
Having.... Mixed results getting a contemporary joystick. The two I've gotten work "okay" and I've tinkered with some of the mechanical components in them to make them work better, but they're still not as responsive as they should be. (Not dinging the sellers from EBay I got them from, in their product descriptions they did say the joysticks are untested and not guaranteed to work, and they were cheap plus free shipping.)
The big hurdle? Upgrading this baby to a full 640K from the "stock" 256. The upgrade card needed to do this is very rare, there's a few diagrams out there for making one's own but, again, out of my expertise to do. So I either need to find one for this machine or find one someone built for this machine selling.
Oh, also finding viable 360K 5.25" floppies. "Newer" ones with larger capacities cannot be read by this machine's drive apparently.
I did get a version of DOS for it to act as a "boot disk" in order to use other software that doesn't auto-load so now I can get to a command prompt!
Hey, BASIC is on one of these. I wonder how much BASIC coding I remember? Damn, I bet I still have a BASIC book somewhere. Maybe make my own text-based adventure game?
Used to do that a lot back in "the day."
Vintage computing: Sorta fun.
Having.... Mixed results getting a contemporary joystick. The two I've gotten work "okay" and I've tinkered with some of the mechanical components in them to make them work better, but they're still not as responsive as they should be. (Not dinging the sellers from EBay I got them from, in their product descriptions they did say the joysticks are untested and not guaranteed to work, and they were cheap plus free shipping.)
The big hurdle? Upgrading this baby to a full 640K from the "stock" 256. The upgrade card needed to do this is very rare, there's a few diagrams out there for making one's own but, again, out of my expertise to do. So I either need to find one for this machine or find one someone built for this machine selling.
Oh, also finding viable 360K 5.25" floppies. "Newer" ones with larger capacities cannot be read by this machine's drive apparently.
I did get a version of DOS for it to act as a "boot disk" in order to use other software that doesn't auto-load so now I can get to a command prompt!
Hey, BASIC is on one of these. I wonder how much BASIC coding I remember? Damn, I bet I still have a BASIC book somewhere. Maybe make my own text-based adventure game?
Used to do that a lot back in "the day."
Vintage computing: Sorta fun.
Nope - 1.2MB floppies are right out... You also will not be able to upgrade the drive to a newer type (not internally anyway).
You can find pretty anything you need to know about BASIC programming online nowadays:
https://www.google.com/search?site=...i131i46k1j46i131k1j0i131k1j0i10k1.VtTUQ6fqRyk
You can find pretty anything you need to know about BASIC programming online nowadays:
https://www.google.com/search?site=...i131i46k1j46i131k1j0i131k1j0i10k1.VtTUQ6fqRyk
I know the 1000-EX has available an external floppy drive but I believe it's not any higher than 360K itself, maybe it goes to 720.
I remember a good deal of BASIC and do have old books on it. Will have to check out the linked resource.
I remember a good deal of BASIC and do have old books on it. Will have to check out the linked resource.
I am nostalgic for the BBC Micro model B, its OS complete with advanced BBC BASIC, and many of the programs that it could run - but time and technology have moved on and so have I. It was the dog's bollocks (boite de luxe) compared to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum etc.
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/182/Acorn-BBC-Micro-Model-B/
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/182/Acorn-BBC-Micro-Model-B/
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Talk about old computing:
http://www.retrothing.com/2009/10/build_your_own_.html
That should be in third grade advanced placement. Each grade gets another computer advance from the past.
http://www.retrothing.com/2009/10/build_your_own_.html
That should be in third grade advanced placement. Each grade gets another computer advance from the past.
^^ Nice site!
Yeah... old tech and the current generation of kids, oh how you can mess with them..
did that to a kiddie.. a Windows 95 machine, okay he could operate the GUI but he made a mistake, instead of rebooting he made it fall back to DOS so all he got was a C:\ with the blinky cursor, so next on the screen was khdilwhdasHjsjdasjdklsk and then command or filename not found error, then little screams of terror because of course the mouse didn't work and the kid thinking he killed the computer, after letting him sweat for a few more minutes
I smugly reached for the keyboard and typed "win" then enter and behold.. TEH PRECIOUSSS came back..
My brother once handed a generic clone XT machine to an intern, the kid had been a bit arrogant about his own abillities.. humility set in soon after.
Yeah... old tech and the current generation of kids, oh how you can mess with them..
did that to a kiddie.. a Windows 95 machine, okay he could operate the GUI but he made a mistake, instead of rebooting he made it fall back to DOS so all he got was a C:\ with the blinky cursor, so next on the screen was khdilwhdasHjsjdasjdklsk and then command or filename not found error, then little screams of terror because of course the mouse didn't work and the kid thinking he killed the computer, after letting him sweat for a few more minutes I smugly reached for the keyboard and typed "win" then enter and behold.. TEH PRECIOUSSS came back..My brother once handed a generic clone XT machine to an intern, the kid had been a bit arrogant about his own abillities.. humility set in soon after.
The best way to teach kids computing is to only allow them to see a modern desktop or smartphone as they graduate. They should never see/be absorbed.
Smart phones--to me--are something for first responders--you should earn that power over time.
They'd appreciate it more.
Smart phones--to me--are something for first responders--you should earn that power over time.
They'd appreciate it more.
What!??! You mean learn to use it responsibly?!? Are you mad?
That sounds more or less like my first computer, although I think the hard drive was only 20 megs. Wolfenstein was an epic game.
Fun fact - In Windows 3.1 the drawing program was called Paintbrush and so for the next two decades I kept calling it Paintbrush without realizing that they dropped the "brush" part in Win 95
I had a great time playing 'Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss' on my 386. It was the first role playing game I ever played. I managed to get down to the bottom dungeon and release the princess and I had collected 7 talismans. I only had to find the other 2 talismans and get out the front door. At this point my teenage son removed the game so he could put another new game he had bought on. I was really, really annoyed at him. I didn't want to start the game all over again so I never ever completed it
There really was. It and the ZX80 were precursors to the Spectrum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX80
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81
The Radio Shack ones were TRS-80's, so I actually wondered if Red Dwarf made that up.
Yep - my High School Science teacher had a ZX81!
I remember that all too well...
I remember that all too well...
I've got two C64's the older breadbox and the newer Amiga lookalike, one of them has a floppy drive, I also have two MSX's one never used, and 4 Atari machines, 8 bitters 800 XL and 65 XE and a 520 ST and a 1024 ST besides these 8088, 8086, 80286, 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium MMX machines and two Cyrix machines one a 6x86 PR 200 and a PR 233, the latter one only a mainboard and chip, I used to have a K6 but sold it on, after getting up to the Pentium III 450 I switched to AMD Duron 700, 750, 800 and 850 through trade and swap, then the lovely Athlon 2200+ back when I had the 2200+ I could simply not think of it ever becomming obsolete, it ran Win2K like a dream, fast reliable etc, then my brother bought an Athlon 64 x2 3800+ socket 939 that was a real WTF??!! moment...
My fastest retro machine is a Barton core 2800+ but with the way things are looking now even my FX 8350 might be considered vintage soon..
My fastest retro machine is a Barton core 2800+ but with the way things are looking now even my FX 8350 might be considered vintage soon..
Well, I've managed to get my modern-day TV's color setting on one of the inputs color-adjusted to, more-or-less, present the correct colors for the graphics. (I have a VGA-EGA connector coming so I can hook a modern monitor up to it, may grab an old CRT monitor from a garage sale to use. Getting a contemporary monitor is fiscally impractical and monitors that old may need work beyond my experience to work properly (replacing internal electrical components.)
Having.... Mixed results getting a contemporary joystick. The two I've gotten work "okay" and I've tinkered with some of the mechanical components in them to make them work better, but they're still not as responsive as they should be. (Not dinging the sellers from EBay I got them from, in their product descriptions they did say the joysticks are untested and not guaranteed to work, and they were cheap plus free shipping.)
The big hurdle? Upgrading this baby to a full 640K from the "stock" 256. The upgrade card needed to do this is very rare, there's a few diagrams out there for making one's own but, again, out of my expertise to do. So I either need to find one for this machine or find one someone built for this machine selling.
Oh, also finding viable 360K 5.25" floppies. "Newer" ones with larger capacities cannot be read by this machine's drive apparently.
I did get a version of DOS for it to act as a "boot disk" in order to use other software that doesn't auto-load so now I can get to a command prompt!
Hey, BASIC is on one of these. I wonder how much BASIC coding I remember? Damn, I bet I still have a BASIC book somewhere. Maybe make my own text-based adventure game?
Used to do that a lot back in "the day."
Vintage computing: Sorta fun.
FYI, you can forget your disk hassles by getting a floppy emulator like this one. The one I got for my Mac is a real gem. No need to fuss with physical floppies at all.
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