I guess its my own fault sometimes that bad things happen. Like when I'm lying in bed and thinking what little projects I can begin... From a single thought a whole string of disasters can eminate, and that is just what happened this week... Having acquired a number of A4000 bits and pieces I decided it was time again to muck around with the A4000T. Bad move. The 4000T had suffered at the hands of scuzz once before having switched the beast on and burnt the Cyberstorm. And it wasn`t the first time this month the poor old T had been mucked around with. I determined that I needed to check out that Cyberstorm again and having failed I determined that if I strip the machine right down to the bones I may just get to the root of the problem. And so I came home early from work and set too.. After three or four hours of failure I had a minor break through... I found a pin busted on the floppy drive. I was happy-ish. Problem now was getting a floppy drive. Thats where the lying in bed and thinking don`t help.. I remembered I had a floppy drive in the A3000D project... So I was home early again and stripping the poor T down. Well this didn`t work, though I did get a glimmer of life from the floppy, which could well be busted. So I decided to put the T away... That really is where this little adventure should have stopped... Sadly not. I then decided to fit the Cyberstorm MKII into the A4000d. This didn`t work. I then tried the A3640, this worked but I had the slowest A3640 on the planet... Flaky card. And then the big decision.. To use my prized Cyberstorm MKII. This worked... I had to nail the machine to the table. The computer literally flew.. Whoo Hooo.... So on Saturday I set too building a whole work station around the A4000d complete with PicassoIV, Catweasel, Oktagon Card, X-Surf... There really wasn`t anything I wasn`t prepared to bang into the A4000d. All went well, until I tried to upgrade the OS3.1 to 3.9 I did get OS3.9 working just fine until I loaded Opus Magellan and then I lost all the icons. I went for the re-install from 3.0 to 3.1 to 3.5 and 3.9. All went well until I upgraded the Picasso96... And then disaster. The mouse froze. Then the computer froze. Then the computer refused to boot. She was dead. And I was truly unhappy... And all because of a thought lying in bed. It is very sad when an Amiga dies. I cannot deal with it. I just have to work even harder to put matters right. And so I have contacted the guys that repair Amigas in France and it will be done... For the sake of Amiga. I have attached some pics of the cards.. They are working fine. Its the motherboard that is buggered. never mind.Cyber Hell
I travelled to Southampton this weekend to pick up a Compaq Luggable, the first one. Strange bit of kit this cus it has the keyboard and small monitor screen in the base, Bit like the Osborne, only a bit more slick. Still a heavy unit and I have no idea how you travelled around with this baby. What I read... The Compaq Portable was announced in 1982. It weighed about 28 pounds, used the Intel 8088 microprocessor, ran Compaq DOS (which was basically the same as MS DOS), and came with 128K RAM minimum. It was available with 1 or 2 5-1/4 inch floppy disk drives, a 9 inch CRT display (25 lines by 80 characters) and could support some graphics. It ran on AC power, and was about 20 inches by 15-1/3 inches by 8-1/2 inches high. It sold for $2,995 and was very successful. In 1983, the COMPAQ Portable Computer rolled out through network of authorized COMPAQ Computer Dealers. Compaq took in revenues of $111 million, the greatest first-year ering and raised $67 million. During this year, Compaq shipped more than 53,000 portable computers and employed a total of 615 people at year end. [ end blurb ] The guy also let me have another IBM PS/2 Luggable with a very sticky handle. Reckons he can get me some rare Russian stuff so I do hope to keep in touch.
Not the actual machine
Last year for my birthday the good folk at work had a cake made. And guess what the subject was... A retro computer. And not a work of fantasy, an actual computer model was used and they chose the TRS80 Model III. So consider my surprise and delight when offered a TRS80 MKIII during my travels on Saturday. I mean how could I refuse... Just have to remember not to try and eat the thing... Saying that it's taking up all the space on the Workbench at the moment. [ technical ] NAME TRS 80 MODEL III MANUFACTURER Tandy Radio Shack TYPE Home Computer ORIGIN U.S.A. YEAR 1981 END OF PRODUCTION Unknown BUILT IN LANGUAGE TRS-80 Level II BASIC KEYBOARD Full-stroke keyboard with separated numeric keypad CPU Zilog Z80 then Z80A SPEED 2.03 MHz RAM 16 KB (up to 48 KB) ROM 14 KB TEXT MODES 32 or 64 columns x 16 lines GRAPHIC MODES 128 graphic characters COLORS monochrome I/O PORTS Tape (500 or 1500 bauds), Centronics, RS232 BUILT IN MEDIA Zero, one or two 5.25'' disk-drives. OS TRS DOS (other OSes were available : New DOS, LDOS, MultiDOS, ...) POWER SUPPLY Built-in power supply unit PERIPHERALS Various Tandy peripherals PRICE No disk model : AU$1450 (Australia, 1981) $2495 in 1984 for a complete system with 2x360 KB drives, TRSDOS, 64kb Ram, software and printer [ end technical ]
Hi Probably one of my most remembered games boxes for the Amiga was Darkseed by Cyberdreams. Why I never bought the game I will never know... Great artwork. I have tried a few times to get this on Ebay and failed, but success at last and today it arrived... [ quote ] 'Horror' mystery set in and around a dark and gruesome world based on the drawings of Alien-artist H.R. Giger. Man wakes up in his new house, only to discover that a mirror in the living room is a portal to an alien world, where creatures are planning to conquer our world! [ end quote ] What was also in the box was a Commodore Warranty Registration card and a games magazine for the Computer Store packed with Amiga games. Dark Seed must have been sold with one of the bundles me thinks at some time, though I can`t remember.
Hi I had arrive today the Philips CD-i 450. I do recall the rush to get CD interactive stuff when it first came out, and I guess the PS1 was very much the consequence of the failure of this technology. Sony and Philips were instrumental in developing the technology... [ quote ] CD-i or Compact Disc Interactive is the name of an interactive multimedia CD player developed and marketed by Royal Philips Electronics N.V. CD-i also refers to the multimedia Compact Disc standard utilized by the CD-i console, also known as Green Book, which was co-developed by Philips and Sony in 1986. [ end quote ] Interesting that Sony were first developing the Playstation with Nintendo. But Nintendo formed an aliance with Philips and Sony decided to go it alone. Nintendo fought Sony over the rights but lost and the rest is history. [ quote ] Nintendo had initially planned to release a CD based add-on for it's SuperNes console. Philips was one of the companies that they initially collaborated with to design it. [ end quote ] There were others involved in the CDi development [ quote ] Besides Philips, several other manufacturers produced CD-i players, including Magnavox, GoldStar / LG Electronics, Digital Video Systems, Memorex, Grundig, Sony, Kyocera, NBS, Highscreen, and Bang & Olufsen, who produced a television with a built-in CD-i device. [ end quote ] You can see the console on this link... http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/cdi.htm In October 1996 Philips downsized their Los Angeles office from 120 to just 15 and in 1999 officially stopped support for the CD-i concept. The kit was always more expensive and with a general lack of good quality games suffered at the hands of the big boys. What is interesting, is that the errors of Philips unique development concepts have somehow transferred to Sony, who year in and year out seem to want to create expensive kit that nobody wants... Strange that. Technical Specs Manufacturer: Philips Model CDI 450 Released: 1994 (Start of CDI as it was 1991) Production ends: 1996 Processor 68070 (Philips) Mhz: 15 RAM: 1 MB (expandable to 2,5 MB with MPEG Cartridge, +1 MB RAM +512 KB MPEG decoding RAM) ROM: 512 KB Data Medium: CD Graphic, Resolution: up to 768x560 Colors: 16 Mio. Sound: up to 16 Bit, stereo, 44,1Khz Ports: Cartridgeslot (VideoCD-Cartridge), AV-Out, Joypad-Port Joypad: digital, 2 Buttons Sold in: Europe, USA (from Magnavox) Specials: plays CDI, Audio-CD and with Upgrad-Cartridge CDI-Video and Video-CD's Accessories: Digital Video Cardridge (Video-CD-Cartridge), Joypad, and a lot more... Launch price: about 750,- DEM
Have you ever noticed just how little the insides of computers have changed over the years. Still those crappy electrical connectors and messy ribbons... The only thing that has really changed is the size of the fans on the processor boards... And don`t I just know it. I made another silly error today. I decided to fit another hard drive into this XP machine I was gifted from work. The machine isn`t old... Only about three years old I would say. Anyway.. I set too thinking I would be done in a few minutes. Not the case. Fitting a new drive was almost impossible. Not only are all the screws difficult to remove, the cradle had a clip on it that was fouled by any new drive, making the bottom of the bay useless and having removed the clip you cannot slide the drive in cus of the massive fan on the processor. So I dismantled half the unit and finished up junking the floppy drive. And when I finally got the thing up and running the insides looked like a butchers chopping table. Honestly... If I cracked open a Win3.1 machine from the early nineties it would look just the same. Is that the best we can do after all these years... What the eye can`t see there seems little point in changing. Computers really are not a design art anymore. They use to be a design art. Just look at the vast array of machines on my web pages. The bloated uneconomical way the computer world is structured today flows through everything. Only with competition of ideas will things change... And so I won`t hold my breath. More cream me thinks for my saw fingers.
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Last updated 18th February 2007
Chandraise Kingdom