After backing a Kickstarter for the Fusion Annual 2021. One of the perks was a signed copy of the Oliver Twins Collection for the Evercade. This arrived today so have some great Dizzy games to play through on the Evercade now. I believe these are all NES ports so most are pretty good versions. Although the NES version of Treasure Island Dizzy seems very bland to me. Even the Spectrum version looked better 😛
I never imagined that this would actually be possible. But whilst I was looking around retro projects recently I came accross another ESP8266 based WiFi MoDem project. This one connects up to any device using a standard RS232 Serial Port.
Reading through the project it mentioned some of the computers it works with. The Atari Portfolio was listed as compatible which is what I was searching for so I will be having a play with that once I can source the serial port adapter for it.
But also in that list was the Amstrad Notepad NC100! I knew this already had a serial port as I used to use it for transferring my school homework over to my PC back in the 90s. But I never thought about the fact that it had a terminal emulator built into it.
So I build the modem, designed and printed a case for it then turned on the NC100 and hit Function key + S. After a few config changes in the menu I was ready to go. Setting up the WiFi network was easy and is all done through a text driven menu.
Then it was just a case of using the atdt command to connect up to one of the many BBS’s still available.
Now obviously the experience isn’t perfect as the notepad has an 80 x 8 character display. But I found a few BBS’s that actually allowed that to be configured and it worked perfectly!
I wish this would have been available back in the 90s, would have made my english lessons much more bearable! I could have done it back then with a dial up modem and a telephone line, but I am guessing the teacher would have noticed that even if they had no clue what it was.
Something a bit different added to the collection. Been wanting one of these for a while. Now all I need to do is figure out how to hook it up to an ATM machine 😀
This computer was used by John Conner in Terminator 2: Judgement Day to hack the ATM and also the door codes in the most advanced research laboratory on earth. I guess they should have upped their security a bit!!
Introducing the Atari Portfolio
I was contacted the morning by BBC Radio Devon as they were doing a piece on Retro Gaming for the Playstations 25th Anniversary. So I was interviewed live on air this afternoon. It was probably one of the most nerve wrecking things I have ever done lol. I’m not very good in social situations so I thought I was very brave 🙂
Click below to listen to the interview
I have recently purchased and fitted a component video mod for the C64 from videogameperfection.com
I bought this as I got a second OSSC for the bedroom and then discovered that the C64 cannot do any sort of RGB output so it didn’t work.
After fitting this the image quality is now amazing. Never seen it so sharp.
This is the first of what I hope to be a series about modfying retro computers and consoles to get the most of them in modern times 🙂
Came across this for sale on the Revival Retro Events facebook page and couldn’t resist.
Lemmings CDrom for the PC signed by Mike Dailly one of the orignal programmers.
Used to have one of these when I was at school and used it for typing up my notes in class. Well thats what I told the teacher. This little gem however has a great built in feature, hit Function and B and you are dropped into BBC BASIC 😀. Great to have one back in my collection as mine suffered a cracked screen and got binned many years ago during a garage clear out 😪
Another handheld added to the collection. Also got a Supercard from Wish to load the ROMs onto. Great little console to mess around on 🙂
So I have a few ESP8266 boards kicking around and wondered if there was any cool C64 projects available. Well yes there is! With a bit of soldering and a C64 userport, you can turn one into a WiFi capable Modem for the C64.
I built this up a few nights ago and have since been connecting to some of the many BBS systems still running and usuable from the C64 terminal program CCGMS.
With its colour character based graphics the experience was actually pretty satisfying and there is something really cool about going back in time and seeing the “internet” back as it was in the good old days 🙂
One of my regrets was selling my boxed Atari Lynx II with 8 games many years ago to a local second hand shop. I think I got about half the amount I have just paid out for another one 🙃. But at least it is now back in my collection.
I am currently on a waiting list for an SD card adapter for this and have a few orignal games on their way to keep me entertained so will do a review in the not too distant future.