Posted - 2010.09.03 14:50:00 - [3]

 

Edited by: Ultim8Evil on 03/09/2010 14:49:52

Originally by: Vogue

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Recently I brought a Commodore Amiga A1200. I also got a 50mhz accelerator card for it.

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I never managed to get an A1200... my dad bought me a 486

Remember looking at an A600 my mate was selling, but couldn't cope with not having a numeric keypad, and my 2MB Ram 500+ was actually better specced than an A600 anyway.

Posted - 2010.09.03 15:54:00 - [5]

 

I still own my Megadrive 2 over 100 cartridges as well as my old Amiga CD32, don't have many games for the CD32 unfortunately as not many where released but I do still have wing Commander for it. I have some other old consoles about like an early playstation I got as a X-mas present in 1995 and a Dreamcast and Nintendo 64.

All of them are boxed up and stored and not actually used them for years, I guess I should get them out for nostalgia's sake sometime.

Posted - 2010.09.03 16:07:00 - [7]

 

Originally by: CCP Adida

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...German Super Nintendo...

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I want one.

Posted - 2010.09.03 16:26:00 - [9]

 

Originally by: CCP Adida

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I have a German super Nintendo that i still need to get the adapters for! Right now it's just a cool decoration in my basement.

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I have a NES, Pads, Games and Adapters. Also have an old Sega Megadrive and all assorted equipment [somewhere] with the original Sonic games.

Posted - 2010.09.03 17:38:00 - [11]

 

I think my parents still have a Pong console in the attic somewhere. Might have to dig it out and see if it works when I visit next.

Posted - 2010.09.03 22:00:00 - [13]

 

My parents still have my first real PC somewhere, Epson 8088...4.77 mhz ftw :P

Posted - 2010.09.03 23:12:00 - [15]

 

Edited by: Cat Casidy on 03/09/2010 23:14:07
my first was the Atari 2600, loved playing Pole Position on it. Once I figured out the car never moved the background just moved around it I'd scotch tape tail shots of cooler cars to the screen. Learned basic on that one too i think, maybe it was the next version with the keyboard...yeah probly the one with the keyboard.
My oldest piece of technology is my Jeep
-akk retracted, it's my bikes

Posted - 2010.09.04 08:08:00 - [17]

 

Edited by: Elysarian on 04/09/2010 08:10:40
My first "game system" was a Pong thing (was similar to this)
I then got an original Atari 2600 - I remember pulling an all-nighter on that baby playing Defender until it crashed :)
Next was a Sinclair Spectrum (the original rubber-keyboard model with a whole 48K of RAM!)
Went from there to a Sega Megadrive before buying my first PC (a 486SX25 with 4MB ram and a 250MB HDD - I overclocked it to 40MHz)

My fiancee and I currently own:

• Spectrum +2a


• Sony Playstation


• Playstation 2


• Playstation 3


• Nintendo Gameboy Pocket


• Nintendo Gameboy Colour


• Nintendo Gameboy Advanced


• Nintendo Gameboy Advanced SP


• Nintendo DS


• Nintendo DSi


• Nintendo Gamecube


• Nintendo N64


• Nintendo Wii

Edit: LMAO at Intense Thinker's post - the iPhone preorder on the flyer he posted :D

Posted - 2010.09.04 11:34:00 - [19]

 

Vectrex, still have it. It's pure awesome and has it's on monitor (B&W, you get coloured plastic screens to put in front of the monitor), Two analog sticks and vector graphics.

Posted - 2010.09.04 12:15:00 - [21]

 

Yeah ... I've got a Datsun 280Z and a 1969 Chevy Camaro ... and those are the oldest things I own. Neither runs. I'm driving a Nissan Quest now ... *sigh*

As to old computers ...

My oldest is a Lobo Max-80 with 128k of RAM. I had two 8" single sided disk drives, then got two 360k floppies and a 5 Megabyte hard drive (my friend had to hack the operating system to get it to talk to that hard drive). I had a Green Screen Zenith Monochrome monitor for it but bought myself and Amber Amdek Monochrome monitor with an etched glass anti glare screen built in. I had CP/M 2.2 and 3.0. 3.0 could use the top 64k of that 128k of RAM - while 2.2 had to use it as a RAM Drive. But that came in handy. I made a macro that first loaded all of Word Stars overlays into that RAM drive and then executed a version of Word Star I'd set to access those over lays on that drive. Amazing how fast WS ran with those Over Lays in memory instead of on a floppy disk ...

The great joy of these old computers - was that they did anything at all. Before these early little micros - the only people who could own a computer were the government and large corporations.

I was going to buy an Amiga 1000 ... but ... I had gotten myself a job as a tech guy and needed a system that was compatible with what I did at work - so I bought one of the original Compaq Portables (usually referred to as Luggables) that was about the size and weight of an old sewing machine. It came with two, full height, 5.25 in. floppy drives but I took those right out and put in two half height floppies and a varying mixture of hard drives over the years. You could pop the top of the case open and I had to put an external fan on the system or it would over heat. One of the hard drives I put in there was a hard drive on a card - so that the hard drive was attached to the controller. The problem there was ... this machine was designed to be tilted up on a little set of feet that folded out of the case, so you could see the monitor. Doing that would tilt that hard drive to the side and - it would stop. So I replaced that with a couple of drives that mounted in the front drive bays next to the floppies where, since the axis of the drive stayed the same as it was tilted back - they had no problems turning bout that axis. I also bought a big swivel platform for this that would let me tilt and turn the whole box, making it easier to read.

At that time we were sharing computers at work, so I brought mine in every day and had my very own computer. I could talk to the main frame at work through the systems serial port and had a modem installed I could dial up bulletin boards with. I even had a Compuserve account but I didn't use it much.

Then I saw that the Main Frame computers we were using at work were going to be replaced by LAN's and so ... I bought a bunch of old systems, Network Interface Cards - and built my own LAN at home just to learn how to do it. All this came in handy later on when I made the transition to being a Systems Administrator - but - I've got a ton of obsolete systems laying about, mostly old 486's.

To teach myself about servers, I cobbled together a Raid Array in one system with 5 drives - for a whopping total over over 1 Gigabyte of space!! Unfortunately ... not having an air conditioned room to operate that system in ... all those drives generated to much heat. But it was one more thing I learned that I came to apply to my job ... which was why I did it.

I do remember once ... when I was at this computer convention, I was walking past this booth and the booth girl (who was cute) seemed really eager to talk to me. I assumed her boss was watching her or something. So, I stopped and talked to her for a while ... but then when I was telling her about what I did at work and how I'd trained myself to do my job at home ... when I couldn't remember how many computers I owned ... all of a sudden ... she didn't want to talk to me any more! LOL!

Posted - 2010.09.04 18:42:00 - [23]

 

Edited by: Toshiro GreyHawk on 04/09/2010 18:54:02
Datsun 280Z - very nice classic car. I had a Nissan 300ZX TT once.

For old PDA's I have a Psion 5 and a HP Omnigo 100. They have tactile keyboards which is nice. But as they have mono LCD screens they can be hard to view in bright sunshine. I also have a 80's HP 32S II calculator.

Some years ago I had a IDE Raid 5 controller, promise SX4000. Had a 750GB Raid 5 drive from 4 x 250GB drives. But it dawned on me one day that if the controller failed I would be stuffed as I could not get a replacement as its so sold. So now i just have a external usb hard drive and do incremental backups with robocopy.

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Thanks. Wish I could take better care of those cars ...

Yeah ... back ups suck. I've got so much stuff backed up to media I no longer have working devices for. If it was important stuff ... I could get at it some how ... but mostly it's just to much of a pain in the ass to bother for my old collection of Kathy Ireland pics.

Iomega Cartridges, 180k 8" floppies, 360k floppies, 1.2MB floppies, 1.44MB floppies, Zip Drives, Jaz Drives ... Tape ... and of course CD's and DVD's. Mostly what I do now, having more than one computer, is to just copy things I want to back up to a different system, then hope they don't all fail at the same time.

*shrug*

Another problem with all that old media ... is that it ain't on there forever ... Those images will fade ...

Even the CD's and DVD's you burn yourself can fade as you aren't stamping pits in them the way a factor does - but modifying a film ... that is vulnerable to heat. People burn those things and think they've got something that will last forever ... but they don't.

Tape of course is the worst as the magnetic signatures will bleed through from one layer on the reel to those above and below it - as their images bleed through to it. I've had clients who've had tapes go bad on them after six months.

Mostly ... what a business does - is have two types of back ups. They've got running back ups where they make differential back ups daily or weekly (depending on the business) - and these are fine, especially if they are over written as that refreshes the image - but then they make archival back ups that they store away ... and these ... after a while ... may not be fine. The trouble here - is that people don't go to their back ups until they've had a problem ... and only then find out that it's to late to do anything about it. They can go to data retrieval services ... but if the data is corrupted ... even these guys are going to have trouble getting a readable version of it.

*shrug*



One thing here that's kind of sad ... is that a lot of those old computers, even if they were in good shape physically, might not be usable any more if the media their software is on has degraded and can't be read.

Of course there are other problems too. The CMOS batteries die and then the thing has trouble booting up - but worse than that - I've had certain types of these batteries leak onto the motherboard circuitry and - even though you couldn't see any damage - that mother board was toast.

A lot of devices tell you to take the batteries out when not in use - and that's why. I lost an ignition tuner and an HP 41CV that way. They look fine but something about the electrical characteristics of the device have changed - and they don't work any more.

*sigh*

The trouble is ... we seldom sit down and say "OK. I'm not going to use this any more for the foreseeable future - so I'll secure it for storage." Instead ... we get something new ... and the old thing just gradually gets back burnered to where we don't actually use it any more. Then, when we do try to use it ... there's a problem ...

Posted - 2010.09.06 09:59:00 - [25]

 

Amiga 4000's fetch about £350 on ebay UK. They are very desirable for vintage computer collectors. Esspecially so considering that an equivlent 486 would not even sell on ebay as the postage costs would be more than a few pounds people would be actually willing to pay for it.