Monday, December 01, 2008
Here's the latest video of my vintage computers, retro games consoles, and classic gaming handhelds collection.Labels: computers, consoles, video
Steve 1:32 AM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Yet another new and rare addition to my collection.The Enterprise 64.
Steve 8:31 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, October 13, 2008
I've gradually been adding to my computer and console collection over the past couple of months... something like 10 new machines.All of them are quite nice, a few are slightly rare, or even a little exotic, but this latest one... it's a true collectors item. The Sinclair ZX80. Not ZX81.... ZX80!
It's probably the first computer in my collection that really cost me an arm and a leg, but even then, I got a very good deal, as I've seen them sell for even more.
So, rather than post a photo, and write a whole load of technical mumbo-jumbo, and as I don't have any games for it, to record videos of, I've recorded a short video article on it, and uploaded to youbube.
This vid is by no means comprehensive. I remembered loads of details and stuff that I could have, or should have, included, but what the heck. I think it serves its purpose fairly well.
Steve 2:00 AM [+] (3) comments
Monday, September 29, 2008
I've added some new content to my Retro Computers and Consoles section.My collection's been growing quite a bit just lately, with a few more systems either in the post now, or due to be posted very soon. So expect another update to this section of my site fairly soon.
All I need to do now is find the time to record more video clips of the games, and update my video pages, etc, but time seems to be in very short supply these days.
Steve 3:18 AM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Having a large section of my website dedicated to my retro gaming collection, I get quite a few emails from people, asking me "how much is my old (insert console or computer name here) worth?"Well, to help these people out, and to save myself a lot of emailing, I've done a new page that lists the average prices you could expect to see on ebay, for a lot of old machines.
It's by no means complete, but covers a lot of systems that I don't yet have in my own collection.
There's also a section at the bottom, offering advice for both sellers and buyers, when using ebay. The intention being to help them avoid the common pitfalls, when trading these kinds of machines.
So, if you're interested, check out my Retro computer and console price guide.
Steve 2:45 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, September 08, 2008
I turned 40 last week (tuesday).How'd that happen?
I had the week booked off work, coz no way I was gonna spend my 40th there, and apart from my birthday itself, when I spent much time playing with new toys, I've spent most of the week being extremely busy.
Busy doing what?
You may well ask.
Photos! Lots and lots of photos. Well... 86, to be precise.
So it took an absolute age, but I've finally got my collection of Scarborough photos sorted, processed, pages done, and all uploaded.
Go take a look, then check out the ads down the side of the page and book a holiday there, or something ;)
Steve 3:13 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
This will be quite a mish-mash of a post, as it covers several topics, spanning the past couple of weeks.So first off... the techie stuff.
The notebook pc.
Over the past few months, I've been watching with some interest, the development of the Asus EeePC.
This is a very small, light, and low cost laptop that's quite taken the market by storm. It has a solid state storage system, as opposed to a hard drive, built in webcam, no optical drive, and runs linux by default, though it's possible to run windoze on them. Later models offer more storage, and windoze as an option.
The idea of the EeePc has always been that they're for those who want a 2nd, low cost machine, to be used mostly for surfing the net, or while on the move.
For me, this sounded perfect. As much of my time on my main pc is spent simply browsing, wouldn't it be nice to be able to do this downstairs, where I could chat with Andrea while I surf?
The downside of the EeePC has always been the rather pathetic storage capacity, as even the later models, with increased capacity, only offer 20gig, much of which is taken up by the OS.
To be honest, this was never going to be enough, so I held off buying one.
Now market forces being what they are, as soon as other manufacturers saw what a success the EeePC was, they started building their own mini-laptops, along similar, but slightly improved lines.
So, not long ago, the MSI Wind hits the market, offering all the advantages of the EeePC, with much improved storage and CPU.
Shortly after that, they license this design to PC World, who produce what is basically the same machine, rebranded as the Advent 4211, and £50 cheaper.
This is the point where I decide "£179.99 for a perfectly usable notebook sounds like a good deal to me."
Now, having a wife who knows a great deal about getting online bargains and discounts, I bought mine at an even lower price, which was nice.
The mobile broadband
Already having mobile internet access on both my MDA Pro, and my mobile phone, I know how useful it can be, and also how fiddly and frustrating it can be when trying to do stuff on such small devices.
Now, the techie media has been making an amount of noise about the latest "mobile broadband" offerings for pcs and laptops, from all the main mobile phone companies. So when 3 started offering Pay As You Go mobile broadband, I decided it would go very nicely with my new notebook, being especially useful for holidays and suchlike.
I duly went and bought one from the local 3 shop, and hey presto.... absolutely rubbish!
It failed to recieve a 3G signal... ever! Then on the very few occasions it was able to get a gprs 2G signal, it was from Orange, and with an amazing bandwidth of 0.02k/sec.
Web page loading time was not a factor. They never loaded.
Needless to say, the 3 mobile modem went back to the shop for a refund.
Next I decided to try offering from Vodafone. This uses exactly the same modem, though it's on contract, instead of pay as you go. £15 gets you 3gig of data per month. Perfectly adequate for someone who only wants to use it when on holiday or whatever.
So when I get it home and install it, guess what? Nothing!
This time however, it's not down to a crap service, but simply that my sim hadn't been activated.
Now I've been using it for a few days, I can tell you that at home, I only receive a 2G, gprs signal, despite what the woman in the shop said I'd get, but even this is not terrible. 50k/sec, which is slightly better than you'd expect on dialup.
While away for the weekend (more on that soon), I got a solid 3G and 3G+ signal, and saw speeds up to 225k/sec, which was really quite impressive.
The Weekend Away
We just spent a long weekend away, staying at The Moore Place hotel, in Aspley Guise, just outside Milton Keynes.
The plan had been to visit my mother, do some shopping in the city centre, and maybe fit in a visit to Bedford.
However...
We arrived on Saturday afternoon, and were both rather shattered, so napped until 8pm, when we had a table booked in the hotel restaurant.
The mushroom soup was both fascinating and impressive, but while the chicken main course that I had was great, the vegetarian offering was definitely not to Andrea's taste.
This left her with a very nasty case of what we assumed at the time was indigestion, but later events have led us to believe we were both suffering from a stomach bug.
After the meal, we played chess in the lounge, as they just happened to have a set there. I'm guessing not many guests bother with it, as we seemed to attract an amount of attention, just by playing it.
After our game, I took some night shots of the pond and waterfall, outside.
On Sunday, we woke late, watched the grand prix on tv, and then went to a restaurant in Milton Keynes.
£40 for 2 burgers, chips and salad seems pretty extreme to me, though they were seriously good burgers... and we didn't actually pay that much, as most of the bill was paid with Tesco Deals vouchers. Andrea's bargain hunting pays off yet again.
Then the bug struck again. Very soon after leaving the burger place, Andrea was hit with the most extreme indigestion, and only 4! Rennie indigestion tablets stopped her from being sick.
After Andrea's stomach had settled enough, we went and visited my mother, who seems to have settled into her new home very nicely.
When we got back to the hotel, we munched sandwiches for tea and watched tv, till bedtime.
Trouble is, I woke up at 4am, feeling kinda wrong.
At first I couldn't put my finger on it.
"Aha! Indigestion.... I know that feeling. A Rennie will fix it."
Nope. Still felt like shit.
Another Rennie?
Nope... still felt bad,
The next one after that seemed to be doing the trick... right up to the point that I was repeatedly sick.
Next morning, we checked out at 11am, and had planned to go back into Milton Keynes, to do the shopping we hadn't yet found time for, but I was still feeling pretty rough, not to mention drained, so we just came home instead.
Labels: computers, holidays, hotels, phones
Steve 2:42 AM [+] (0) comments
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