On 25 September 2018 Andrew Colin passed away. He was known to the fans of old Commodore computers as the author of the “An Introduction to BASIC” guides. Continue reading
Andrew Colin (1936-2018)
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Sportron (~1978)
I found this console a couple of weeks ago at the usual flea market; usually I don’t look for these items (you need a warehouse to collect all the variants), but I liked it and for 5 euros I decided that it was worth the risk – flea market findings are often cheap but nobody guarantees that what you buy will work. At the end it was working fine. Continue reading
Fenner SPC-800 (1984)
Samsung made only one computer that was compatible with the MSX standard; it was rebranded and sold in Italy by Fenner, keeping the existing model name. There are two revisions of the Samsung SPC-800; the Fenner computer corresponds to the second revision of the South Corean model. Continue reading
Sega Light Phaser (1986)
The cable of this Sega light gun for the Master System was damaged right under the grip: to repair it I had to teardown the entire unit. I took the opportunity to take a few pictures. Continue reading
Atari 400 (1979)
It’s time to show some love for Atari since my VCS post is almost 4 years old. I took some pictures of my Atari 400, a North American NTSC model produced at the very beginning of 1983. Continue reading
IBM 5100 (1975)
Since the initial price of this computer was between 9 and 20 thousand dollars in 1975 (43 to 95 thousand dollars in 2018!), I didn’t expect to find it in a small town near the even smaller town where I live. A friend of my father-in-law gave him this IBM 5100 for free, probably because my father-in-law talked to his friend about my passion. This person ran a small repair shop, but sadly passed away shortly after and I never got the chance to ask him where this computer came from.
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Sega Master System (1986)
Once a month I go to a local flea market where sometimes – not very often – I find something on the junk dealers’ market stalls. I have “rebuilt” the complete system in two months: the first month I found the main unit, a broken control pad and the power supply unit; the second month, from the same seller, I got the light phaser, a working control pad, and a classic cartridge of Sonic The Hedgehog. Continue reading
PlayStation controllers
Sony released four controllers for the original PlayStation, presented in this article in chronological order. Continue reading
Sanyo PHC-25 (1982)
In the eighties many companies tried to compete in the growing home computer market with one or more products. Some companies made history, other had a niche following, some others didn’t succeed or were successful in a few countries only. Continue reading
My book “Commodore VIC 20: A Visual History”
This book was funded by a Kickstarter campaign that I run in mid 2016. Printed in January 2017, it received enthusiastic reviews from the backers of the project. Continue reading