Old Computers.
Yet another Anorak.
Or
Emulators? We don't need no stinkeen emulators!
My first Computer was a 48k Sinclair Spectrum. I took a lousy job in a fruit 'n' veg shop to save up the £130 for it! But I really wanted an Atari. There was a shop in town that I would go into, walking past the Texas Instruments machine, taking a quick glance vectrex machine and settle down next to the Dragon 32 and watch people playing Star Raiders on the 800. It was loud, trashy, had explosions and you could zap tie fighters! If they moved me on, I moved off to the Bentals and lurked in their computer area where they also had an Atari with star raiders. But an Atari 800 was as much as a BBC micro, at about £300. When I left school and got my first proper pay-packet I shot off down to dixons and picked up a spanking new 800XL with a 1010 data recorder. Later getting a Disk Drive (wow, a revelation compared to 15 minutes loading from a cassette). I found a few small shops here and there that had games for what was a minority machine. Somehow the extra effort added somewhat to the fun. There was a place in Great Yarmouth near where my Grandparents lived which had loads of carts so holiday times with them had an added bonus. Special mentions should go the little games booth in the Epsom indoor market which I bought much of my software from, and the long lost games world in Hammersmith who I discovered was selling Atari games (disks and carts!) when I went in there looking for old traveller rule books! Mother liked it so much I bought her an old VCS so I could get my machine back!
Idiot here sold it all to pay for an IBM luggable that I needed for university a few years ago.
Early in 2000, I decided to start collecting stuff
again! But where did this Amiga come from?
Generic Links.
Events.
Live Publishing, home of Retro gamer and an active board for fans of old computers.
Jagfest. It started as an Atari Jaguar fan meet, and has grown to include other machines.
Retrovision. More fun with old games and machines.
Fun!
Hey Hey 16k,
a song that seems to hit a chord and sum it all up perfectly.
Shops
16/32 systems shop Atari specialist with a few other bits as well.
Consol Mad, run by a Devilman of a collector.
UK Retro. still have stuff in its shop packaging.
Cronosoft. new games for old machines.
Retro Gear seems a good site.
Atari 8-bit Links
The first computer I ever touched was an Atari 400, Star Raiders had me transfixed. Here is some useful links to my computing first love.
DGS Software. a public domain software distributor in the UK.
Extreme M.U.L.E.ing A Fan site of one of the most fiendish games ever, and it started on the Atari.
My Current collection includes the 800XL, 130XE and XEGS models, with the 810, 1050, and 1050 US doubler chipped disk drives.
Amiga.
This machine just refuses to roll over and die like a good little outdated machine. It brought Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) like Windows to the masses. For years it was the machine of choice for animation and graphics. Andy Warhol endorsed it, Babylon 5 and Jurassic Park were created on it. My current collection includes a CD32 and SX-1, and a 1200 with hard drive, Surf Squirrel CD-Rom interface, 4x CD-Rom and 030/50mhz accelerator with 32meg of ram.
The Big Book of Amiga Hardware.
Amiga Deals. The UK's Amiga shop.
AmiBench. The great Amiga bring and buy.
AmigaKit Another UK based shop
AmiNet the web repository of Amiga software.
Workbench History and info. This chap has been building a web database on the various Workbench (the Amiga GUI) versions. Its now up to 3.9, which has all the features you would expect to find in newer versions of windows.
The Amiga 404 page. when the Amiga went wrong, it never crashed, it 'guru-ed'.
How to get those old Amiga games working. Title says it all.
EyeTech. Hardware mainly, close links with the new Amiga company
I Always looks on the Amiga with some awe. I never could afford one. Then one day I saw on on CIX, well actually I saw a Monitor that I wanted for my Atari, this old 500 came with it, birth of the Blues, or revelation. Take your pick. Whatever way you look at it, the machine was a revelation and the collection grew.
