Lego Mindstorms for 3 year olds
DISCLAIMER: You should of course note the recommended ages for toys such as the Lego Mindstorms sets indicated in this article. So I have a 3 and a half year old son … and as a very nerdy Dad, I am...
View Articlepcduino3 nano
So I recently bought a pcduino3 nano . I have completely avoided the Arduino and Raspberry Pi crazes. Especially for the Raspberry I never quite saw the point of a computer that used an SD card as a...
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Retro computing and monitor output
So I’m going through some kind of ‘retro computing’ urge at the moment. Sure I’ve used emulators, and I also have a Terasic DE-1 that can run as an Amiga or an old 8 bit Atari, but for whatever reasons...
View ArticleRetro computing and loading stuff
So after getting monitor output working on these old computers the next challenge is loading stuff. Generally, just about every game and application ever released for these old platforms has been...
View ArticleWriting floppies for the Amiga
So this is more of a part 2 to ‘Retro Computing and loading stuff‘ . One of the challenges I have with the Amiga is getting data from ADF images onto real floppy disks. Initially I used transwarp using...
View ArticleEmulating floppies on the Amiga
So while I was pretty happy with being able to get ADF’s into readable floppies using ADTWin, I had actually ordered a gotek floppy drive on Aliexpress. There are quite a few places selling these. I...
View ArticleOld yellow computers
If you have any old 80s computers that were originally beige in colour, it’s highly likely that (after 30 years) they have gone a rather yucky yellowy colour. I guess a lot of people must have thought...
View ArticleThe ZX Spectrum
So continuing on with my current binge in retro computing, I recently bought a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K. It was in quite good condition. It came with power supply, original box and manuals as well as...
View ArticleThe Amiga 600
So I recently bought an old Amiga 600 off ebay. It’s probably an odd purchase given I already have two Amiga 500’s and if anything “I always wanted an Amiga 1200, not a 600″. But I guess my son’s...
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Amiga 1200
OK, maybe I do have a problem; two Amiga 500’s, an Amiga 600, and now an Amiga 1200. Surely one can have too many Amigas Well I always wanted an Amiga 1200. I remember in the early 90s, here I was a...
View ArticleToo many floppy drives
So with all these Amigas, it’s been a bit hit and miss having working floppy drives. My A500 from my teenage years seemed to have a completely dead internal drive, the 2nd A500 I bought cheap had a...
View Articlefreeuef-alsa
freeuef-alsa is a modded version of the UNIX version of freeuef (for loading tape images into an Acorn Electron). I’m using ALSA for sound output instead of OSS (on linux). You can download the latest...
View ArticleRetro computing and monitor output part 2
As per part 1 , I’ve been trying to find a solution for display output for ‘all’ of these old computers (so far two Amiga 500s, an A600, an A1200, a ZX Spectrum 48K, an Atari 800XL and an Acorn...
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More modding floppy drives
OK, so I still seem to be acquiring more old floppy drives to mod for use in Amigas. I seem to have a acquired a few more panasonic drives, as these seem to work as close as possible to a real Amiga...
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Amiga 500 internal 512K expansion
So I have two Amiga 500s. One is a rev 5 motherboard one from my childhood. Another, I bought recently having a rev 6 motherboard. Both have an extra 512K so a total of 1MB of RAM which is pretty much...
View ArticleArduinos and retrocomputing
In the past year I’ve acquired a few Arduinos (two Uno’s and one Nano). They were cheap chinese clones … and well they have sat in the drawer for most of the year … as I haven’t actually figured out...
View ArticleAmigas and 5 1/4″ drives
So, all Amigas came with 3 1/2″ floppy drives back in the 1980s/90s. Initially when the Amiga 1000 came out 3 1/2″ diskettes were quite expensive compared to the then older 5 1/4″ diskettes. I had two...
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Reviving the Colecovision
So not only did I retrieve a 5 1/4″ floppy drive from my parents recently, but I also grabbed the family Colecovision and my brothers old Acorn Electron. Since this was all fitting in my luggage going...
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The ZXMore – part 1
I spend a bit of time looking at ebay.co.uk in the ‘Vintage’ computer sections. The UK was really the centre of interesting 80s home computers … so there is a lot of variety. However I recently came...
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Commodore 64
So, next in my long list of computers I wanted but never could afford as a kid is the Commodore 64. I can’t quite remember how much they cost in the early 80s in Australia. Definitely in the $300 or...
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