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New Zealand Lower North Island Vintage Computer Show and Tell 24th Oct, 2021

Posted on by ajross

A great day out here in the Lower North Island of New Zealand where owners of vintage computers got to show off their machines, talk about them and have fun.

On display was the following computers:

  • Atari: Atari 800, XEGS, 130XE and the 800XL
  • Apple Computers:The Apple Lisa, Apple IIGS
  • Oric:The Oric Atmos 48K, Oric One
  • IBM:The IBM PC Jx, 5155 PC Portable
  • Sinclair: Cambridge Z88, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, ZX Spectrum Plus, ZX Spectrum 128K, ZX Spectrum +2 and +3 (in box), Sinclair ZX80, another home-made ZX80 (in a calculator case!), a Sinclair ZX81, the new ZX Spectrum Next.
  • Commodore: PET 8096-SK, PET 8032, PET 4016, Commodore Amiga A1200HD
  • S100/Kit computers: The ‘Dream 6800’ S-100 kit computer, The MSI 6800 University Trainer machine, the SWTPC 6809
  • The rest: Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 4, Memotech MTX 512, MB Vectrex, Panasonic MSX CF2700, The Backplane Pro (s100 style modern machine).

Bonus content!

If you become a member of my channel by pressing Join, or by becoming a Patron, there is a full length version of this video with bonus content showing how great the Apple Lisa was to service, as well as the Lisa Operating System. All of the Sinclair stuff, including a UHF broadcast from a Raspberry Pi, as well as more detail on the MTX, Oric’s and more!

IBM PC: The first games ’81-’91 Part 9 (1989)

Posted on by ajross

Whether it was because there was more money being ploughed into the games industry by 1989, the advancements in tech, or the fact that the PC was taking over from its contemporary competitors, the depth to the games in this year were much more than the shoot-em-ups, platformers and little adventure games of ’81-’88. Games in this year include Death Trak Quest For Glory Indianapolis 500 Leisure Suit Larry 3, Pipedream, Prince of Persia, Simcity and more! I hope you enjoy my videos! If you want to help keeping me going, please subscribe to my channel, and if you feel that my content is good, I’d really appreciate it if you could buy me a coffee or something on Patreon (www.patreon.com/alsgeeklab) or ko-fi (www.ko-fi.com/alsgeeklab)

IBM PC: The first games ’81-’91 Part 8 (1988)

Posted on by ajross

I reviewed approximately 82 games for this year. The vast majority were worthy of keeping in the ‘play that again’ pile. It made for an almost impossible task of selecting just 10 #games that I’d consider the cream of the crop, so don’t hurt me too much if you don’t agree with the list! I hope you enjoy my videos! If you want to help keeping me going, please subscribe to my channel, and if you feel that my content is good, I’d really appreciate it if you could buy me a coffee or something on Patreon (www.patreon.com/alsgeeklab).

Documentary: How and why IBM made the first PC

Posted on by ajross

IBM released the IBM PC 5150 in 1981. Internally, IBM went through massive hurdles to get a personal computer to the market to compete with the other microcomputers of the time. This documentary shows all of the happenings organisationally as well as the trade-offs and decisions that led up to IBM choosing the sluggish 8088 CPU.

Some of the main reference material: BYTE Magazine, September 1990: https://archive.org/stream/byte-magaz… “Bill Gates, Microsoft and the IBM Personal Computer” – Infoworld Newsweekly, August 23rd 1982: https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=V… “Microsoft Announces 8086 Basic” – The Intelligent Machines Journal, Summer 1979: https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=F… IBM Exhibits: https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhib…

IBM PC – The first games ’81-’91: Part 4 (1984)

Posted on by ajross

Games just kept getting better on the IBM PC. By 1984, some top arcade classics get porting treatment as well as some novel firsts. Some really substantial long-playing games feature too. NB, Although Kings Quest was released in 1984, I’m including it in 1985, as the full EGA and MS-DOS version was released around then.

https://youtu.be/KDjpYWRyx0U