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Is anyone into "retro-computing"?

IndyColtsFan

IndyColtsFan

Lifer
As you can probably tell by my signature, I have been getting into it big time. I am in the process of restoring a Commodore Amiga 2000, which was my high school graduation present way back in 1989. I swapped out the motherboard (mine was damaged by a battery leak and I haven't had time to fix it) and amazingly, the 18 year-old Quantum 52 MB (yes, MB) booted right into Workbench 2.0 without any issues. I've got an "accelerator card" on the way with a SCREAMING 68030 chip on it ( 😀 ). I think the next addition will be a flicker fixer so I can hook it to the analog VGA port of one of the monitors in my sig and place the system under my desk.

Anyone else into this hobby and want to share stories? Any other Commodore fans? I am still shocked that most of my 25 year old C64 floppies STILL seem to work. The Amiga was a revolutionary machine, and even booting it up today, I am still surprised at fast it feels and am amazed by some of the software. An incredible, incredible machine.
 
I think to qualify, it would have to be around 15 years or older. I have a PPro system in my garage with Win98 that I built around 1997, so I think it is borderline. I am hanging onto it.
 
Monster_Munch said:
I have a C64 with hundreds of tapes under my bed. It was my first computer and I can't bring myself to throw it away.
Click to expand...

I REFUSE to throw Commodore stuff away. I still have my C64, 128, Amiga 2000, and I think a Vic 20 in my attic. My C128 is on my desk, under my monitor shelf, and I built an adapter cable that connects it to the 42" plasma in my man cave. It is pretty slick!

Amiga -- well, that's a special beast. If I had room, I'd buy an Amiga 1000 and an Amiga 3000. I love those two machines and I think they're the most beautiful PCs ever made. I can remember the anticipation building in the summer of 1985, waiting for the release of Amiga. When it was finally released, everyone was completely blown away.
 
I have a timex sinclair in my attic I've always wanted to pull out and plug in. I'd get bored quick though, since it's basically just a calculator with some very basic logic.

I threw out my commodore 64 a while back, I really wish I hadn't done that. It would be fun to code some games on that, bring back memories of when I was a kid wasting all of my time indoors 😀
 
Amiga 1000:

Amiga_1000DP.jpg



Amiga 3000:

AAA3000.jpg
 
I've kept my TRS-80 model 1, Atari 800, and C=64 for nostalgia's sake since I did my first programming on them for Adventure International and Simulations Canada long, long ago.

seadragonc64.png


I don't run them though, I copied the floppies to PC images to use with emulators.
 
My dad still has an IBM PS/1 from 1991 that used to belong to me. It has a tiny screen and no hard drive. Great for "surfing" the free online Prodigy account that came with it with my 2400 baud modem. It was owned by Sears and IBM back then.

ibm_ps1_explained.jpg
 
DaveSimmons said:
I've kept my TRS-80 model 1, Atari 800, and C=64 for nostalgia's sake since I did my first programming on them for Adventure International and Simulations Canada long, long ago.

seadragonc64.png


I don't run them though, I copied the floppies to PC images to use with emulators.
Click to expand...

I had a TRS-80 Model 1 myself. The one with the seperate monitor and the tape drive. I remember doing some programming in BASIC but never really took it anywhere. Assembly Language was the shit everyone seemed to be using back then.
 
I've got an Apple II+ with dual 5 1/4" drives and a monochrome monitor sitting in a closet. One of these days I need to take it out and see if it still runs, maybe I could play some Loderunner.
 
My kids - and now my grandkids - still play Asteroids, Frogger, Centipede, River Raid, PacMan, Missile Command and so on on my Atart 800. I've had to tweak it over the years but it still works just fine. Those carts have taken a lot of abuse and it's amazing how many of them still work.

(also a jay miner design, so I can relate to your commodore amiga)
 
The oldest I have is a pentium 166mhz with windows 95. I have not turned it on in maybe 8 or 9 years. It just sits in a compartment under my computer desk, out of sight, and out of mind.

I threw out my packard bell 75mhz running windows 3.11 sometime in 1996 or 1997.
 
First computer I had was a 25mhz 486/SX with 4 MB of RAM. I feel zero nostalgia for that thing, I can't count how many hours I wasted screwing around with bootdisks trying to get some games to run. Wing Commander 2 was a freaking nightmare...
 
I got rid of my Commodore stuff a few years ago. While this doesn't really fit into the category of computing, my Dad recently gave me a big box full of all my Atari 2600 stuff.
 
My C64, A500 and A1200 are in a closet over at my parents place. Haven't used them in at least ten years, though I've been running the CCS64 and WinUAE emulators a few times to check out some old games or just mess around with AmigaOS.

Old PC's are not as interesting. They're just like our current PC's, only slower. Amigas, Ataris, Macs etc. ran completely different hardware, different OS's etc.
 
I don't consider "anything" IBM-compatible to be retro. Even a 286-12 or an XT. IBM PS/2 (as in model 80's) are special though since they had the weird microchannel bus. Odd that IBM moved to an incompatible with its own design, design immediately after all the clones came out.

I wouldn't pay anything for one, but I did grow up a serious commie fanboi. I was still into doing cool shit on my commodore (had a vic-20, then a 64, then a 128, a couple 1541's, the 1571, and even the rare-ass 1581 (3.5" floppies!!!) and the 1720 monitor (I think thats right). My mom threw it all out once I moved out and joined the military, even my 386sx-25 and my 286 and my 486dx4-100 boards that didn't have cases but worked well.

At one point I rocked 2 full-height mfm 10MB drives in an XT with a full-length 1200 baud modem. You turned that sucker on with its massive red power switch and it didn't go "hmmmm - beep" It went "SNAP! <lights dim> HUMMMMM MUTHAFUCKA BEEP!!!!"

If it counts (and it doesn't) Using a dell precision dual xeon (netburst era xeons) with a single 2.4ghz xeon - a promise raid controller and a ton of mismatched drives in a JBOD as my media server. Runs tversity and pyTiVO.
 
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