Vintage Computing

Anyone else ever use GEM? The first computer I ever used was a late '80s Amstrad IBM compatible (that was slightly older than I was) that ran it, and I've yet to find that many people with memories of it. Keep wondering if my parents kept it somewhere, would love to try running it again.

Also, I've inherited a box of the later models of the ZXSpectrum (the kind with a built in 3" floppy drive), yet can't seem to get any picture out of them on a '90s TV. They seem to be booting, but no output. Anyone have any advice to fix this or are they bricked?

While i've never used it (due to me not being around in the 80's) I do know a bit about it. It was also what atari used as the operating system for their ST line of computers. Interestingly atari actually turned down a deal from microsoft for the ST to run windows, opting instead for GEM... which wasn't really very popular.

I downloaded FreeGEM a couple years back to play around with on my PC. It was pretty cool but I don't remember doing much with it.

As for the Spectrums, are they connected to the TV using an aerial cable. If so have you tried re-tuning the TV? Those old computers and consoles needed a separate channel tuned into it's frequency in order to work.

Here's a link to the manual for the +3 (I assume it's that one with the floppy drive?)
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/ZXSpectrum128 3Manual/chapter2.html

Something like that, though I think one is the +3 style keyboard without any attached drive. Anyway, as soon as I can prove they work I imagine they're eBay bound, I'm far more a fan of vintage consoles myself.

Though, that said, Elite is one of my favourite games of all time, so if I ever get hold of a BBC Micro (my old Primary school had loads, we were that high tech... in 1998) I'll probably be set for a while

Apologies for dredging this thread up from the depths, but I can't resist it! I have a (relevant) sob story coming up in a minute, but in the meantime, this is what I have at the moment:

• BBC Model B+ (like a B, but with shadow RAM and an inbuilt 1770 floppy controller)
• Dragon 32
• ZX81 (with Sinclair 16K RAM Pack. And non-original Blu-Tack...)
• Amstrad PCW8256 (not in a good state)
• Amstrad NC100 notebook (not working at all)
• Psion Series 5 (the original one, not the MX -- photo below)
• Game Boy (the first, chunky version)

The Beeb is my favourite of that little lot. Rather weirdly, I bought it for £15 from an Atari(!) user group stand at the Bingley Hall in Stafford in about 1996. (Anyone remember the All-Formats Computer Fairs? It was one of those.) I did briefly toy with the idea of converting the CMCs' theme to the Beeb, but only got as far as the intro before I realised how terrible I was at arranging for it!

As for the other machines: the Dragon came from a junk shop called "Granny's Attic" in Lancaster, the NC100, ZX81 and Psion for not a lot of money from eBay, the PCW was my dad's and the Game Boy was mine from new.

I'm not sure if it really counts as vintage, but I also have a GP2X console. This is really interesting: an open-source handheld running a version of Linux and using SD cards for storage, with (deliberately) no certification requirements for homebrew stuff. This means that if you have the programming know-how it's extremely easy to write your own games. Even now, it's probably the handheld to get if you're interested in emulating 8-bit or 16-bit machines.

Right; here's a piccy of the Psion (which I use mostly to take notes and, er, play NetHack), then I'll get to the promised sob story.

Now then, sad strings please, Ms Octavia... years ago, when Jupiter Cantab went bust, a company called Boldfield (who still exist!) bought up their stock of Jupiter Aces and associated peripherals, and also wrote some of their own software. I had two working Aces, original packaging, two 16K RAM Packs, joysticks, manuals and a whole heap of cassettes. Some time in the early 1990s, I chucked them both out as junk. I reckon you'd do well to replicate that collection for £500 nowadays. Ah well...

Very true: there's a distinct lack, even now, of straightforward lists of the "Use these numbers to get a guitar sound" guides. I do have the classic BBC Micro Graphics and Sound by Steve Money, but even that only devotes eight pages to ENVELOPE, and guitar is conspicuously missing from the list of examples. I've also got Mastering Music: Programming sound on the BBC Model B Micro by S & A Gibbs, but that doesn't help too much either. And The BBC Micro Book: BASIC, Sound and Graphics by Jim McGregor and Alan Watt takes a "blinding with science" approach, and in any case is more interested in machine-gun sound effects!

I liked Forth as a language: I had a ZX81 implementation of it (published by Artic, I think) which was intriguing but crashed at the smallest provocation. Ace Forth I more or less understood, and could use to write simple programs that actually worked, like so:

: squares 11 1 do i dup * . loop ;

which creates a new word "squares" to print the squares of every integer from 1 to 10. I'm quite pleased with myself for remembering that offhand!

Edit: Relevant to this thread: not so long ago I spoke briefly (online) to someone who said she was the daughter (or maybe niece; I can't remember now) of John Shireff, the designer of the Camputers Lynx. It's tremendously obscure now, but I remember thinking it looked rather nice when I read about it in Your Computer (which I used to devour).