Just fired up this Amstrad MegaPC and although it fires up it boots up with message that the battery is dead. Anyway, I decided to open up. First thing, this is a magic size for a computer. Just as the A1200 could have become I guess, with a games controller motherboard one side and a general computer motherboard the other. Fitted with hard drive etc so it kinda is like the current PS3 X360... except the differing motherboards, though that's not an issue. Anyway, should I have been surprised to see the dreaded barrel battery. So corroded and leaking, and yet nothing on the motherboard. How strange. I quickly removed the battery and cleaned up fine. Then, I was just about to put the case back together when I noticed the inside of the top cover.... The whole surface internally was so badly corroded and the paint all flaking. This guy had stored this unit upside down for years. And the battery had been dripping off the battery into the case and not running onto the mobo. How lucky was that. Amazing. And there you go, yet another machine that won`t last cus of the dreaded battery problem. Would be useful to have some kind of data base of all units with these batteries. Old Computer Com haven`t got one of these computers in their collection heh heh ... The MegaDrive uses the Motorola 68000... [ quote from another site ] http://www.uk.playright.dk/raretitel.php?id=13883 Amstrad Mega PC Classic Console The Amstrad Mega PC, released in 1993, was the first and last ever IBM-PC and games console hybrid. This bizarre curiosity combined a fully functional PC with a Mega Drive. This is the only Mega Drive system that uses a VGA monitor for display. The music also sounds a little different from a normal Mega Drive. The first version of the hybrid system had the following PC specs: 25mhz 386 1mb of RAM 40mb hard disk Ad-lib sound SVGA graphics. Running windows 3.11 as standard. A simple ISA card with a ribbon connector for VGA and sound internally connects the Mega Drive to the PC hardware. [ end quote ] http://www.homecomputer.de/pages/f_info.html?Amstrad_Mega_PC.html [ From Wiki ] The Mega PC was manufactured and released by Amstrad in 1993 under licence from Sega, which was a similar, but unrelated system to the Sega TeraDrive. Essentially just a standard Amstrad PC with Sega Mega Drive hardware bundled inside, the system was wired to share the dual-sync monitor and speakers, with the Mega Drive on a separate circuit board. Initially released in PAL areas such as Europe and Australia in 1993, its success was very short lived due to its very high retail price of £999.99 (later reduced to £599), with the CPU also being outdated by the time of the system's release. It is slightly easier and cheaper to acquire an Amstrad Mega PC in Europe due to more units being manufactured, than it is to acquire a Sega TeraDrive elsewhere. In recent years, both systems have increasingly become relatively difficult to come by, as they are owned and often purchased by many as collector's items. [ end Wiki ] Perhaps Wiki should have reminded all those collectors that if they do not remove the battery the unit will be real history. [ some other pics from the web ] http://www.savagereactor.co.uk/?page=projects/amstrad/photos.php [ end blurb ]
Amstrad MegaPC with battery safely removed
Just a quickie blog to announce a new section to the collection, as a small tribute to the humble calculator I was never that lucky to have owned a calculator at school. Complex calculations were left to scale rules and more commonly log tables. Log tables were great cus you could put all your crib notes in the side columns... ' SOHCAHTOA ' My brothers first calculator cost a fortune in it's day, and wasn't even scientific. Crazy that even at this time... early seventies, you could not have a calculator in an exam that plugged into a wall. Anyway here are the first of many more images to follow as I build a steady collection of calculators
Note the last calculator here as it is a pure physical contraption with no electronics
On the Amiga front I had the ' Thrilling Role Playing Game ' BAT II from UBI Soft... complete with ( wait for it ) a Dongle. So unusual that. So you can see what I will be doing this weekend.
Have just had arrive the very first copy of Your Commodore from October 1984, no less. 'Congratulations you have had the good sense and judgement to pick up a copy of the first issue of a GREAT new magazine dedicated to the Commodore range of microcomputers ' Featuring ..Mastering Machine Code, Machine Code to BASIC, The BASIC Facts Pt 1, Code Breaker, Sprite Designer 64, Your Own Arcade Game, Tales from the Crypt, Introducing Modems, Making Music.... and on and on. Just magic.
As most of you know I collect loads of other computers, mostly to have a play, and more seriously by way of comparison of the models from a given year. I hadn't intended getting an iMac but at £14 who could resist. This computer arrived within two days and I gotta say was a dream to use. It kinda just does what it says on the tin. So fluid and easy, and looks quite sexy. I liked the cable hold in the side, the handle on the back, the cute colour and the CD from the front. The picture is so clear, and the machine looks fine left out on a table. Not sure if I shall use it sensibly, though I did have some fun with a dinosaur game on it. Maybe more on this later. I have now sat it next to my serious Mac. [ blurb ] The Apple iMac G3/333 (Fruit Colors) features a 333 MHz PowerPC 750 (G3) processor, 512k backside level 2 cache, 32 MB of RAM, a 6.0 GB EIDE hard drive, and ATI Rage Pro Turbo graphics with 6 MB of VRAM packed into a colorful "retro futuristic" all-in-one case design with a 15-inch "crystal clear" CRT display. It was offered in five different colors -- lime (lime green), strawberry (pinkish-red), blueberry (royal blue), grape (purple), and tangerine (orange-yellow). Apart from a faster processor, the iMac G3/333 (Fruit Colors) effectively is identical to the iMac G3/266 (Fruit Colors) that preceded it.
The iMac waiting on the bench to be cleaned and catalogued What happens next to this computer I have not decided.
Yesterday arrived the Sinclair Mini TV unit which was amazingly small, the size of a pocket calculator. Complete and with manual and case. Amazing for its age. [ what others said ] Screen folly One of Clive Sinclair's lesser-known follies was the development of a mini TV screen, known as Microvision. In the late 1970s, there were no liquid crystal screens of the type now routinely used for tiny TV sets and camcorder view-finders. The only screens available were cathode-ray tubes, with a 'gun' at one end firing electrons at a fluorescent surface at the other. This makes the tubes long and bulky. Sinclair decided to develop a slimmer CRT by laying the fluorescent surface parallel to the beam and then using electrostatic plates to deflect the beam through 90 degrees onto the screen. With a lens over the front surface of the small screen to make the squashed image look realistic, pocket portables went on sale in the early 1980s. But the pictures were poor in quality and in black and white, and by the time the bugs were ironed out, LCDs were rolling off Japanese production lines. [ never mind ]
Sadly no battery, so I shall never be able to enjoy this little trinket. Would have been interesting to see if I could have plugged my ZX81 into it..
Coming home in 1994 in the evening was such a treat for me, what with having my Amiga1200 sat there ready to rock and roll. Every day was a new computer adventure and the mags were just bursting with kit. Lunchtime I would wander down to Lansdown Computers and mull over the new kit available. I would simply drool over some of the more expensive stuff and dream of the day when it would be mine. Saturdays meant Silica in Southampton and Game and Electronics Boutique and more goodies. I recall trudging through Southampton with my new Microvitec monitor , so excited. The room filled with goodies. I had my video digitiser and sound digitser, my sexy speakers. The video was plugged into the Amiga as was my tape machine. There were games abound and the eternal fun with AMOS, DPaint, digitising and creating pics and animations. Sitting in this room then was unlike anything I have ever experienced. I guess I was lucky. I lived the Amiga dream, and still do in a certain way... However the mist of time is now thick and sadly the age of these items does make the past what it is ' the past '. I live in hope of a new dawn for computing, where again I can joy in the multitude of adventures that the Amiga presented weekly. I can dream again of a truly magical community. And I can hope that one day I sense that same excited joy in the eyes of the computer sales guy over the kit he was selling me. Sadly though my passion is fed now by retro, and while it isn't half bad it really isn't the world I once knew.... As odd as that may sound.
When I was a touch younger I was travelling to work by bus reading my machine code book for the ZX81 and gazing out at the terraced houses of the Midlands and the congested streets, I guess I believed that the future was just around the corner. Certainly progs like Tomorrow's World were preparing us for the brave new world. I guess those guys at Amiga in the early eighties, before the official birth, thought they too were going to be part of some brave new future. Many at that time believed that the thing they held in their hand, so small, was going to transform the very substance of mankind. Anyway 2007 now, and there are still the same old buses, same old congestion. Sure electronics got smarter, but hey the internet is still the internet, a phone is still a phone and technology is just recycling all that we have known for some time. The jump from ZX81 to A1000 was a giant leap. Win3.1 to Vista is really just a small small step. The point is, if we are gonna generate the same kind of excited fervour that followed the birth of micro technology, we gotta be doing just a touch better than the crap currently on offer. There really isn't the diversity of interest and brave frontiers that are gonna lure folk to search and test the technology. It has been lost to big business and we need yet again our new ZX81, just to upset the old apple cart or should I say.. MS cart. Just a thought.
If you can only see this CONTENT window
then click the image above for the full site
Last updated 11th August 2007
Chandraise Kingdom