Retro Computer Museum – Gaming Day

Today was the R.C.M gaming day, an event organised by the curator of a Retro Computer Museum  – http://www.retrocomputermuseum.co.uk/ I stumbled across their website a few months ago and have been really looking forward to getting my mitts on all the old computers/consoles I used to use, wanted to own or have never heard of. Being only a short drive away, I’ve had it marked on my calendar and have been counting down the days.

One such system I’m really keen to see was the Vector based console, the Vectrex, a system that seemed unlike any other home console produced. I was also looking forward to seeing the two M.A.M.E conversions on show and hopefully to get some of my questions answered about my own ongoing conversion.

So…up early this morning and breakfast with Curstie, watered the plants, checked/packed my camera gear, sat-nav  set and off I went…nearly forgetting to wave goodbye in all my excitement.

Although things didn’t kick off until 10:30am, the car park was almost full when I arrived around 10am. Luckily I was able to bag the last spot as the nearest car park was a good 10mins walk away.

The sheer number of computer systems on display was fantastic and the noise of classic games being played was pure nostagic. Nearly everyone was grinning ear to ear including myself.

Here’s a small selection of the 300 odd photo’s I’d taken and i’ll post a few more tomorrow.

A Cheetah 125+ Joystick sits on top of a Acorn Archimedes A3010. I must have gone through dozens of these fragile leaf switch joysticks with my Commodore +4 & C64 so to see (and play) with one today shows it must have been really looked after.

The Acorn Achemidias A3010 was running a copy of Lotus Turbo Esprit (you can see the option screen on the first photo) which is one of my favorite Commodore Amiga games. I had a quick go and must admit it blows the Amiga version out of the water. I got chatting with a bloke who sat next to me and wasn’t long before I was racing.

It turns out he’s was helping out by supply some of the equipment for the show and pointed towards his own custom Sinclair Spectrum +3. Note the IDE ribbon cable fitted to the rear port -  this was connected to a standard PC harddrive and with a bit of magic allowed him to store tons of  Spectrum game images that loaded within a few seconds.

This bartop MAME arcade machine has been built to really high standard. The joysticks used are the same i’m using for mine.  I has long chat with the owner and came away with a lots of info and his email address in case I have any further questions..another nice chap !!

I always wanted Astro Wars for Christmas as a child…I wondered if this was up for sale

Commodore Vic-20 – Commodore really did have a thing for Beige computers!

At last…been waiting ages to have a go on a Vectrex. About a hour later a queue was forming behind me. It didn’t disappoint, I’m seriously considering hunting one of these down on eBay.

Ah, the good old BBC Micro. Our Schools ‘IT dept’ consisted of just two of them but it was messing around with these early desktop computers that helpded shape my future career. Although, today it was all about Chuckie Egg!

Released in 1984, The Commodore SX64 was designed for the ‘executive on the move’. Weighing just over 10kg, I bet said executive needed to lie down a lot an enhanced DX version, with twin floppy drives was said to have been produced in limited numbers and therefore incredibly collectible.

The Amstrad GX4000 home console. Not a bad 8-bit system but one released way too late in the game when 16-bit consoles were becoming popular. Why pay top dollar for  a game cartridge  essentially being an identical port of a standard Amstrad CPC-464 game that sells for next to nothing. Mr Sugar…you’re fired !!

I remember my local store selling them a few months after the initial release for the price of a Pizza just to get rid of them. Commodore tried to get into the console market too with the C64GS but likewise failed.

Today, I stopped by to have a quick go as a ‘Pang’ cartridge was loaded and ready for play. I’d forgotten how addictive this game was, although I still prefer the arcade original.

A couple of old PC’s had been setup for Lan gaming with Doom 2 and Heretic on offer.

An Atari 800XL, with Dropzone loaded. After loosing all my lives within a few minutes I loaded up Battlezone before anyone could see my low score:-)

This Amiga 500 was very popular playing endless rounds of Sensible Soccer.  I stopped by the Amiga 3000 for quick go on the classic shooter XenonII and later checked out some amazing graphical demos on a Amiga 4000.

One of the many tables set out with a wide variety of computers to play with.

A very nice clean Oric-1

Likewisrm a very pristine  Sega Sk-1100 keyboard which was an optional addon to the Sega SG-1000, a precursory to the Sega Master System.

Someones ZX Spectrum+ was over heating, unless it was from all the blokes drooling over it!

Commodore C64, ah happy days !!

Just a few of the many Atari consoles ready for use. Surprisingly though, I didn’t see many 2600 ‘woodys’ about.

More photo’s to follow tomorrow.

One good turn.

Yesterday, I received a call from my older brother to say that his main PC had died and wasn’t sure what to do as it wasn’t booting at all. He’d get as far as the initial POST screen and that’s about it. I tried to diagnose over the phone but it’s so much easier to have it in front of you. We tried the usual things like taking out some of the memory sticks, checking all of the motherboard cables connections, checking hard disks and generally seeing if we could spot the fault by process of elimination. After a few hours we weren’t getting anywhere so being sure it was either the motherboard or processor and deciding he’s long overdue a few upgrades, we drove to Maplins to have a look at what they had to offer.

I think he was glad I came along because the sales person jargon was confusing him somewhat. He was upgraded from a older motherboard therefore we needed to get the balance right between supporting older hardware and providing plenty options for future expansion. So, with this in mind we brought one of Maplins motherboard bundles. A nice Matx board with a mixture of IDE and SATA ports, plenty of PCI slots for the variety of cards he already has and a fairly decent Nvidia 8100 on board chipset (like me, he’s not interested in modern gaming). Adding to this, a chunky AMD Phenom Quad core processor and 2gb Ram should keep him zipping along.

Maplins also had a 750gb SATA drive on offer so he brought one of those too as his existing 120gb IDE drive was rapidly getting full.

On the drive home I explained the better practise of partitioning the hard disk, especially as a whopping 750gb might be easier to manage if split into smaller chunks. Maybe one for the OS/programs, one for his work data, and one for the rest of the families data etc.

Back home, we stripped his old PC whilst having a real good laugh about the old days with his Commodore 64 and the time I thought I’d blown it trying out the ‘paper clip reset button’ hack. He looked on nervously as I carried out the build

The CPU attached perfectly, the fan and heatsink also went on without a hitch. There was even a sachet of thermal paste included with the motherboard kit which was nice to see. RAM was fitted and then the motherboard was screwed in to place. Next, he various USB, front panel, data and power cables were connected too.

At one point I thought we’d slipped up by not checking his older PSU to ensure it had a SATA power connector but thankfully it did – sweaty palms for a minute there though!

Next went his old 120gb IDE hard disk but I left out connecting his SATA and DVD drive so, if we did have any problems, it might be easier to spot them with less hardware connected. One final check to ensure everything looked o.k. and we switched it on……perfect, everything seemed to work o.k. and the familiar WinXP boot screen was displayed. I’m supprised his OS didn’t have a hissy fit about all the hardware changes but it seemed to be running just fine.

So, satisfied that everything was working, we shut it down, plugged in the new SATA disk and went about partioning and installing a fresh copy of Windows. He was happy to do this bit himself so I left him to it…formatting a 750gb drive…ouch !!

For my trouble he asked of I wanted any of the older bits we’d removed. So, my reward being 2x1gb sticks of DDR Ram (which should take my main PC up to 4gb), an AGP Geforce 7600gts (for the Mame Arcade Cabinet PC), and a duff motherboard/processor which although probably dead, if i can get working again it might be a nice upgrade  for his son’s aging Athlon based PC.

Although I would never ask for anything in return, it just goes to show, one good turn…..

A look inside Microsoft’s ‘Digital Home’.

Quoted from the BBC technology website – ‘Microsoft’s new home of the future shows how the company plans to incorporate technology into more areas of life over the next decade’.

The digital wallpaper and interactive kitchen counter top are fantastic!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8046659.stm

I’ve been thinking about putting a very small form factor or all in one PC in the kitchen for a while now.  Something along the lines digital signage media displays you see in supermarkets or reception areas.

I like the idea of having a display showing the latest news RSS ticker, weather widgets and live TV whilst making breakfast. Even better it it was on a touch screen display.

I often use my laptop in the kitchen when cooking up something different and have the recipe or recipe video up in front of me.

Something like the new Eee Top PC from Asus seems to a step in the right direction and is something I’ll be keeping an eye on.

http://www.asus.com/ProductGroup1.aspx?PG_ID=7dDelmkESu9DXgVB

Spring cleaning my PC’s

The predicted rain didn’t fall this morning so after washing our cars this morning I thought I’d have a leisurely afternoon on my PC. Continuing with the ‘cleaning’ theme I thought I’d  try out a new Windows tune up utility funnily enough entitled Tuneup utilities 2009 -http://www.tuneup-software.co.uk/products/tuneup-utilities/

I don’t usually go for utilities like this as I generally keep my Windows boxes is tip top condition myself. Back then in the days of  Windows 98/2000 I used to use Norton System Works but nowadays I avoid Norton products like the plague…don’t get me started on Norton Anti-virus….shudder !!

I can see why the little app is very popular and likewise received many great reviews from various computer magazines and sites.

I ran through the various scans which seemed to zip along without crippling my PC. A reboot later I can defiantly see an improvement.

Here’s a quick list of features -

• Intelligent Defragmentation
• Startup Manager
• Registry cleaner
• Memory optimizer
• Speed optimizer
• Free disk space
• Comprehensive performance log/system information (seems better than Everest)
• Uninstall Manager
• Shortcut cleaner
• Disk Doctor/Utilities
• File Shredder
• Windows GUI customiser – Change Boot, Logon screens and desktop icons etc
• Process Manager

It’s a fantastic little amalgamation of useful apps for those looking for a one click to fix or for those power users like me who like to tinker.

MS Windows 7 Release Candidate released for public download.

Today, Microsoft have made available the release candidate of Windows 7 for public download. It’s available in both 32bit and 64bit flavours.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

Expect the d/load servers to be running slow though- you could always try Bit Torrent?

I’ve been running the various 32-bit beta releases for a few months now and am so far loving the redesigned O/S. It’s well worth checking out if you have a spare PC or hard drive. Don’t forget it’s still in the early stages so don’t use it for really important stuff…just in case !!

I’m currently downloading this latest release and will be taking it for a test run over the next few weeks. I’m especially looking forward to seeing what all this ‘Virtual Windows XP mode’ is all about.

PC mag have written a intersting review of the RC and well worth checking out if you’re curious.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2345970,00.asp

Interestingly enough, MS could be looking at providing multi based ‘family licensing’ models due to the fact that most average households now own more than one PC. It makes sense really i.e. buy one copy of Windows and pay a reduced amount for additional licences rather than having to pay top dollar for each stand alone product. I’m guessing that this wouldn’t include OEM builds though?

Goodbye Commodore, Hello IBM..my first gaming PC

Continuing on from my 8-bit and 16-bit trips down memory lane, I thought, this time I’d concentrate on the first few PC’s I owned.

Up until the early nineties, I was quite content with my Commodore Amiga 1200 as a gaming computer (accompanied by a Nintendo SNES) however this soon changed on one particular visit to my local game store. They were demonstrating the new Lucasarts Star Wars games ‘X-Wing’ and ‘Rebel Assault’ and being a huge Star wars fan frustrated by the lack of new material after the original film trilogy this was just the ticket to relive those glory days in the arcade halls playing the original Star Wars arcade game.

The problem was, PC’s at the time were expensive…very expensive. I was going to have to save and save and save. I was still working at IBM at the time and I enquired with my manager about the purchase of second hand parts. Alas, there was no real easy way to process cash orders via the company so still determined, I opened a new bank account and transferred part of my salary each week.

A few months went by and I was still eager to have my own PC. Games on PC’s were getting very good and I remember a tech friend of mine bringing along along copies of Prince of Persia, Wing Commander and Microprose’s F-19 in to my workshop and we’d sit and play them during lunch – and into the afternoons if we could get away with it:-)

One day, my manager came by to see if I was still interested in having a PC as he was upgrading his own and wanted to know if I to buy his old one. Money was exchanged and I was soon moving the Amiga to one side and setting up my toy.

It was an 386SX with 2mb Ram, 30mb hard disk, floppy disk and 14″ colour monitor. I went straight to the computer store and brought a few games including X-Wing. I couldn’t have been happier. Through work, I was familiar with MS-DOS/PC-DOS and quite content with command line navigation in the days before GUI desktops.

Over the next 12 months I upgraded the motherboard and CPU to a 486DX, doubled the memory and fitted a single speed CD-Rom drive. I remember playing FMV classics like ’7th guest’ and the brilliant Tex Murphy game ‘Under a killing moon’

I’d left IBM and was attending college when the next ‘big’ release hit the stores. To my mind this killer game effectively changed the view of many that PC’s were rapidly becoming the hardware of choice especially as the Amiga appeared to be on a downward slope. This game, of course, was Doom II.

It had everything, great graphics, great music, freedom to explore and BIG guns. Deathmatch Lan games became very popular during lunch break and served many as a great introduction to network basics.

At the time, my PC was struggling a little to play this full screen and I was really getting into creating custom levels for Doom so another upgrade was in order.

Intel had previously released the first Pentium based microprocessors and prices were starting to drop on the early 75mhz and 90mhz chips. I wanted something faster and after a few weeks of weighing up the pros and cons, I sold my beloved Amiga 1200 to raise enough cash for the upgrades. By now the Amiga was a dying system, hardly any new software was being released (the Commodore CD32 just didn’t do it for me). I sold all my kit to a college friend for next to nothing – Something I regretted later on.

I virtually upgraded every component, starting with case as all my previous PC’s had been horizontal desktop models and this was the first tower case I brought. I remember it had three green LED numbers on the front that could be adjusted to match the CPU clock speed – I set mine to 999. I upgraded the motherboard allowing me to fit the new Pentium 133mhz CPU chip. I added 8mb ram, 80mb harddrive, soundblaster 16 card and a quad speed CD-Rom drive. At the time, this made for a monster PC and I remember these upgrades costing me around £800.

Over the years I’m upgraded and owned many more PC’s throughout the Intel Pentium range. Years ago I lost interest in modern gaming therefore upgrading my hardware ever other few months just wasn’t necessary. If i do get chance to play a game, it’s usually a favorite classic.

Here’s a few examples of early PC games I used to play.

• Prince of Persia – Forget the modern version, this original gem is my favorite game of all time.

• Star Wars – Tie Fighter – Although X-Wing was the game that made me switch from the Amiga, the CD version of Tie Fighter was miles better.

• Star Wars Dark Forces – Doom + Star wars = Happy days !!

• Sim Copter – I was never a big fan of games like Sim City, although Sim Theme Park and especially Sim Copter used to eat into my free time.

• Full Throttle – I’m a huge fan of every graphic adventure game from Lucasart.  The Dig and Day of the Tentacle are also my favorites and I still play them all today via the ‘ScummVM” emulator – http://www.scummvm.org/

• Tomb Raider – Not a particular favorite of mine but I recall was the first title (via a update patch) I played taking adventage of the the new breed of 3d graphics cards.  My first card was a 4mb Voodoo 3DFX card at £179!!

• Interstate 76 – Another game I brought that supported the new 3Dfx graphics cards and my first PC steering wheel too.

It was this orange ‘Interceptor’  that led me to buy this – My ’79 Vauxhall Viva way back in 1999. I never did fit the gun turret