Retro Computers

This is one of my recent (and very cheap) eBay purchases. It’s in very good condition and it works. It may new a new power socket or plug on the PSU. Also came with tape leads.

This British computer was one of the most popular computers in Europe in the beginning of the 80′s. It was a small computer, which was a competitor of the Sinclair Spectrum.

The two models (16 and 48) had the same technical characteristics.
A small plotter was available for this computer.

Notice that the sound chip was the same one used in the Amstrad CPC, MSX computers and Atari ST!

Its ROM was very buggy, & was later replaced with the Oric Atmos.

The text above, and photos were taken from old-computers.com

Good haul at Wisbech carboot sale today.

• Amstrad CPC464.
• Amstrad DD1 disk drive for the 464 (Wanted one of these for ages!)
• Amstrad CPC colour monitor.
• Amstrad MP1 – Power supply and RF modulator for the CPC464 only. (No 12v for 664/6128)
• Amstrad CPC firmware manuals.
• Lots of CPC disks and tapes including business and programming software.
• 4 boxes of boxed Amiga games.
• 100s of Amiga ‘backups’.
• C64 tapes.
• Lots of various programming books.

The CPC464 and monitor work great. The DD1 disk drive will need a new drive belt.

On the way back from my holiday in Devon, I took the opportunity to pop into the Museum of Computing in Swindon.

The museum is situated in the centre of Swindon by the Wyvern theatre. There is plenty of parking nearby. It costs £2 for adults, £1 for children and a family ticket (2 adults and 2 children) costs £5.

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Built by engineer Tommy Flowers in 1943, the Colossus computer was the first digital, programmable, and electronic computing device. The machine was used by British code breakers during World War II to help decipher messages encrypted with the German Lorenz SZ40/42 machine.

In 1993, Tony Sale started the Colossus Rebuild Project and in 1994 a team led by Sale began to recreate the massive machine at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park in the UK. On June 6th, 1996, the recreated Colossus was first switched on, and by 2007 a fully functional replica of the Colossus Mark 2 was completed.

You can read the rest of the article at Poll: Have you ever restored a vintage computer?

I found this interesting interview with one of the developers who had one of his games included in the Cassette 50 games tape.

I’m pretty proud of this one. The authors of Cassette 50 – a notorious collection of primitive, mostly BASIC games advertised in seemingly every single ’80s game magazine, every single month – were mostly anonymous, uncredited kids, paid just £10 for their efforts. In 2005, thanks to a name left on a title screen and a few hopeful phone calls, I tracked down one of the games’ creators, now all grown up – and able to tell the story of how he (and his dad) put his little heart into that little game. Amazingly, he’d never even heard of Cassette 50: he’d sold his game, got his £10 and thought nothing more of it. My call prompted him to fire up Galaxy Defence for the first time in years, and show it to his son. Aw.

You can read the complete article here : Cassette 50: the interview

The Centre for Computing History has opened its museum shop. You can purchase a wide range of key rings, lighters and wallets as well as modern and retro disk media. You can buy 3.5″, 5 1/4″ and even 8″ disks as well as DVDs

All proceeds from the sale of items from the museum shop goes directly to support the museum.

You can visit the shop here.