Old Computers [PREV] Not your conventional cassette player..

I have a peritel modul that I used on TV in the 80's (you can see it between the the ZX and the joystick kempton/cursor modul on the picture with the Aiwa and the Quickshot)... And my LG Led TV still have a peritel input... it works fine (way better than the composit/video out even with the mod)

 

For those of us in Europe wondering what Peritel is it is what people in France call SCART.

Rather strange given that SCART is an acronym for Syndicat des Constructeurs d'Appareils Radiorécepteurs et Téléviseurs the French organisation who invented it.

For those outside Europe who are wondering what SCART is

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCART

The separate signals for RGB give a similar picture quality to VGA.

 

It would been a miracle if we, in france have done something logical

 

Hi,

I'm fond of retro computing too, and own some "computosors"... Like my boomboxes, I love to mod them, like including a divIde inside a Speccy 128+2, or Gotek in Amiga, or sd2iec in C64, or sio2sd in an Atari 65XE, or a rapsberry inside a +2...
And my favourite of all time is the Speccy 128k+2.
There is a very active community working on the Speccy, you can see it there : http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/
Some of my jewels :

 

Wow! That's pretty impressive collection. I didn't realise you could put a Raspberry Pi in a Spectrum, I might have to look into doing that.

 

Woooow ! What a collection !! I'm jealous There are serious moding here ! My amiga is also Gotek powered, shame you're not closer in France, I have 3 full boxes of fAtari ST floppies I would be happy to give for free !

 

That is an impressive collection. I have never known anyone who had an Oric and I don't even recognise the computer at the bottom left.

The modified Spectrum reminds me of the sort of thing people were doing when mini ITX boards first came out.

http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/c64/

It is worth browsing through some of the other projects although many are now over ten years old.
That explains why your Raspberry Pi is faster than the PC motherboards they were using.

 

Bit of a thread revival, sorry about that! This is another one of my passions and something I actively collect! Here is a list of what I have tucked away!

Nintendo

NES x6
SNES x4
US SNES x1
Famicom X1
Super Famicom x1
Sharp Famicom Twin x1
Virtuaboy x2
Gamecube x3 (x1 Silver Jap import)
Wii x2
N64 x3 (x1 Pikachu)
Gameboy mk1 x3
Gameboy Colour x 3 (x1 Pikachu)
Gameboy Light (silver Jap import)
Advance x1
Advance SP x1
Advance Mini x1
DS x1
DS Lite x1
3DS x1

Sega

Mastersystem 1 x2
Mastersystem 2 X3
Mega Drive 1 x3 (x2 Asian red top)
Mega CD2 x1
32X x1
Saturn x2
Dreamcast x3
Gamegear x8

Commodore

C64 x2
C64C x3
Amiga 500 x1
Amiga 500 + x1
Amiga 600 x2 (x1 HD)
Amiga 1200 x2 (x1 Escom with an accelerator card)
CD32 x1
Plus 4 x1
P500 x1 (prototype)
C128 x2

Atari

2600 Woodie x2
2600 Darth Vader x1
2600 JR x6
7800 x1
520 ST x2
1040 STe x2
800 XL x1
Jaguar x1
Lynx 2 x1

Sony

PS1 x5
PS2 x9
PS3 x5
PSP Original x4
PS4 x1 (technically not mine but I bought it for my son!)

Phillips

CDi x7 (various versions!)
Video Pac x1

3DO

Panasonic FZ-1 x3
Panasonic FZ-10 x1
Goldstar x1

Microsoft

Xbox x4 (x3 Crystal)
360 x2 (x1 dead rrod)
360 Slim x2

Spectrum

48K x2
Plus 2 x2
Plus 3 x2

Others

MB Microvision x1
MB Vectrex x1
NEC Turbo Grafx x1 (US Version)
Amstrad GX4000 x1
BBC B Micro x1
Neo Geo Gold X x1
Neo Geo Pocket x1
Neo Geo pocket Colour x1
Bandai Wonderswan Crystal x1
Fairchild System F x1
Wattara Supervision x1
Mattel Intelivision x1

I have a load of Grandstand-style games too, like Firefox and the likes. Don't ask why I have so many, its mostly due to bootsale finds and sellers that won't split when you see a game you really want. I do plan on thinning some out one day.....(like that's ever gonna happen tho!) I also just like owning the hardware, don't really know why, I just like that side of the collecting game.

 

Can you elaborate please?

 

That is an impressive collection.

Surprisingly I have two models you don't have

Sinclair ZX81 (bought from new -in fact in the Sinclair tradition bought before they finished developing it.

Toshiba HX10 MSX (x2). One was bought from new along with the matching music keyboard and the other at a junk sale.
For those in the USA MSX were a series of machines from companies like Sony, Toshiba, Philips and Pioneer all made
to a common specification defined by Microsoft. They were the original platform for games like "Metal Gear" (not that I'm much into games).

Many computers have gone through my hands, bought at Amateur Radio Rallies, played with and then sold on.

A few of those which aren't on your list were

Research Machines 380z
BT Tonto (both more business orientated)
Texas TI99-4A (bought new and kept for about 3 months - it was that good)
Dragon 32 (like a Tandy Color Computer)

Recently I have noticed there is quite a lot of interest in Retro PC hardware.
Although things like DosBox can be used to run old PC games many people find it is easier and more authentic to use the hardware they were
designed to run on like an original Pentium with a Gravis Ultrasound.

Have a look on Youtube for the 8 bit guy and LGR (alzy Game Reviews) to see what I mean.

Finally youngsters will be amazed that this was once cutting edge and achieved worldwide fame. IMHO the sound still is

 

The Commodore P500 is a 'frankenstein' of C64 and PET computers. It was never meant for release, a few demo systems were sent to shops, but it never got FCC type approval and was ultimately shelved. I bought it at a bootsale, in its box, £4! Bargain! There is one on eBay for £2995! Though to be fair its been on there for ages! I don't personally think its worth anywhere near that amount, but I wouldn't complain if it did sell!

More info on it here: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/4861/Commodore-P500/

I've never owned an MSX, I would like one though! The ZX81 seems to fetch decent money these days too, but if I found one for the right price, I'd be tempted.

I'd love to open up a bar/club/shop where you pay a small fee on entry and you can play to your hearts desire, or rent it out for parties etc...

I guess I've always had an interest in vintage electronics, there is just something about it that makes it cool and I love owning it. I am planning on maybe (just a maybe at the moment though!) of thinning out a bit of my collection as I do really have far too much. I need to have a massive sort out, keep what I want and sell the rest to buy bigger and better things!

 

TYVM, I wasn't aware of this P500 Very interesting!

 

Lupogtiboy

I had one of those P500s given to me in the early 1990s before home internet and Ebay. I'm not sure if it worked and with no software or peripherals I scrapped it to get a few parts. Then when I became a regular Ebayer I saw one for about £700. People make a big fuss over the stylish case. You live and learn.

Mister X.

I reckon there were almost as many different MSX machines as there were Boomboxes.




However, they were never particularly popular in the UK with the Spectrum, C64 and BBC Micro being the most popular home computers
Sony sold MSX Hit Bits in their Sony Stores. The Yamaha MSX was sold in Musical instrument shops (as it could do things like edit and sequence their DX7 synth).
The Toshiba HX10 was by far the most common, although by the time I bought mine it had been reduced to less than half the price of a C64. The matching music keyboard came from Boots (a large chain of Chemist / Beauty stores who also sold records and audio gear). I couldn't resist it when the price was reduced from £249 to £99.

In contrast when I went to Spain (Majorca) in the mid 1980s MSX were the only computers I saw in the shops.

PCs didn't take off at all in the UK until the end of the 1980s when Amstrad worked out how to make them for about £500 (by putting most of the chips into one ASIC). Even then they were thought of as a business tool. By then most home users would chose an Amiga or a Atari ST.

I would be interested to know how many Apple IIs were sold in the UK. My guess would be less than MSX as they were so expensive here.
Later on Macs were more popular. At work in the early 1990s the engineers like myself had the VAX mainframe and shared HP Vectra PCs while the managers had Macs (with their 9" B&W screens).

 

I don't know about Tariffs. They wouldn't explain why the TRS80 and Commodore Pet (both American machines from the same era) were far more popular than the Apple II in the UK (and probably in Europe too). Government policy certainly played a big part in the success of the BBC Micro here with it being the machine that was designed for and subsidised for schools, which rich parents then bought to increase their childrens IQ (my joke but you certainly got that feeling at the time). The Commodore 64 was a huge success being priced between the BBC micro and the Sinclair but being less toy like than the Sinclair.

Regarding Apple I think it was most likely their policy of charging as much as they possibly could for their products which put them outside of most peoples price range. In contrast just about any family could afford a Sinclair. Interesting that that Apple advert doesn't put any emphasis on the prices. In fact I didn't even spot them glanceing through the first time. Most UK adverts I remember would have had the price as the main feature.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=sinclair+spectrum+advert&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=WMwhWl42WLB-EM%3A%2CH0lAx0u0_kzrdM%2C_&usg=__sDbr8P96GWL_EVSkOlgbsQ1S7Wg=&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjFy8DUsvDZAhVCWsAKHazFAYgQ9QEIKzAA#imgrc=WMwhWl42WLB-EM:

Consequently I read somewhere that by the mid 1980s the UK had more computers per Capita (people) than any other country. That may have been as Games consoles like the Atari 2600 never really took off being perceived as too expensive for something that wasn't educational.

Wondering about prices I found the following article which explains it all. To put things into context my starting salary as an Engineer in 1984 was £6800 a year.

http://www.i-programmer.info/history/machines/109-uk-micros-of-the-1980s.html

The only thing it doesn't say is that the ARM processor, now used in about 95% of phones including Apple, was originally designed by Acorn for the successor of the BBC Micro, the Archimedes.

p.s I forgot one other old computer I had. Sharp MZ700. A Z80 based Japanese machine that wasn't an MSX.

 

I was looking through some old adverts at lunchtime and likes this one from Amstrad re-emphasised my point about prices.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=a...h=728#imgrc=bTG3lZptfnE_uM:&spf=1521223582637

Shortly before launching their PC they had launched a highly successful machine aimed purely at word processing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_PCW

I didn't realise that they had been sold in the USA

I think Commodore and Amstrad had a lot in common, both working on the principle that if they halved the profits on each machine they could sell three times as many.
"Computers for the Masses not the Classes" as Jack Tramiel the founder of Commodore said.

https://hackaday.com/2016/12/13/computers-for-the-masses-not-the-classes/

 

I have just watched this video about a very impressive computer collection her in the UK and thought other people who contributed to the thread might enjoy it.