Author: Croccy22

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Amstrad NC200

Having had the NC100 whilst I was at school and having one again in my collection now, I have still always wanted its bigger brother the NC200. The bigger screen, built-in backlight, and a 3.5″ floppy drive made it a far more advanced device.

I’ve been keeping an eye out for a while now for a decent priced one, and finally picked one up for a price I was happy with.

Since this has a built-in serial port and terminal emulator, My next thing to do is to get this connected up to some old skool BBSs.

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The Retro Hour Podcast Kickstarter has launched!

If you like retro stuff as much as me, then hopefully you have already checked out The Retro Hour Podcast.

The guys behind the podcast have now launched a Kickstarter campaign for their new book “The History of Video Gaming, From Those Who Made It Happen”. These guys have interviewed the most famous people in the industry over the years, so this book is sure to be a good read!

So go and back the project now! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/retrohour/the-retro-hour-book

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Parappa the Rapper merchandise

Although I mainly collect old computers and consoles, I do also have a selection of other retro merchandise and toys. I think in the near future I’m going to have to add a new section to my archive to include some of this stuff.

My latest pickup was this strange and seemingly quite rare Parappa the Rapper toy. It’s a moving toy depicting a picnic scene with Parapper and Sunny. When you press the button there is some Japanese dialogue and then it busts out into a cute tune and their heads bob around to the music.

The Boom Box in the scene contains a removable keyring containing a cartridge that holds the music and speech data. I assume they planned on releasing additional keyrings or something, but I think only 3 different models were ever released and I don’t know if any additional cartridges were ever made.

One thing is for certain though, it has a very high cuteness factor!

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Philips Videopac G7000 (Magnavox Odyssey 2)

This is another interesting machine I picked up a little while ago but hadn’t gotten around to updating the website.

This console/computer was released in 1978 and was named the Magnavox Odyssey 2 other in the USA (They got a much cooler name!). Many people refer to this as a console, but with it having a full qwerty keyboard and its own programming language, surely it’s a computer? Although the keyboard is absolutely awful so full respect goes to anyone that actually wrote a program for this thing using the assembler cartridge.

The system came in its original box which is in pretty nice condition, along with a selection of games to keep me entertained for a few minutes. The system itself is also in very good condition and seems to be working perfectly. Such a strange design!

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Sega Mega CD

I’ve always wanted to grab a Mega CD but the prices have always put me off. But recently I came across a listing for a Mega CD that was “not powering on” for £100. After previous research, I believed this was likely due to the pico fuse gone in it as is common on these units. So I decided to take the chance, and sure enough, after replacing the fuse it came to life. I’ve since replaced all the capacitors in it also as these are prone to failure in these units too.

Now I’ve gone this far I guess the 32x now has to be added to my shopping list!

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Sega Nomad – Megadrive on the go!

For those who have not heard of this, the Sega Nomad is a portable Megadrive (Genesis) that was only released over in America. I’ve wanted one for a while but they don’t often come up for sale in the UK, and with current exchange rates, importing stuff from America isn’t a great deal at the moment.

So when this one popped up on eBay in the UK, I decided to go for it. Its all fully working and it pretty good condition except for a few minor scratches on the casing.

My next project for this one will be to design and 3D print a battery pack for it using 18650 cells. I have ordered all the pieces I require so will hopefully post about its progress in the near future.

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Compaq SLT 286

After buying one of these as spares or repairs to try and fix up, I hit a bit of a stumbling block when I discovered the internal DC-DC converter seemed to be dead. I looked around for the schematics but didn’t have any luck. So I decided to get a second one and combine the two using the best parts of each, and now I have a fully working one I can measure the voltages and maybe resurrect the other one in the future.

But for now I have this one fully functional with the 40mb Hard Drive and a 4MB Ram expansion. Looking at the contents on the HDD it seems it once belonged to Woolworths! I guess they didn’t have proper disposal procedures back then.

Whilst I had it in pieces, I also fixed the common issue with the Dallas RTC chip being dead. This means it doesn’t remember any of its settings after you turn it off, and you then have to boot it from floppy to configure the HDD.

I’ve replaced it with a modern alternative so now the battery is easily replaceable in the future.

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Vectrex gets a splash of colour!

I’ve had the Vectrex for a while now but didn’t own any original games for it. I started by using a multicart and then moved on to the Pi-Trex.

The issue with this is the original games used to ship with colour films that fitted over the screen to add some colour to the vector art. That issue is now a thing of the past as I have not only purchased my first original game, but also purchased a pack of 9 original overlays from one of the retro Facebook groups.

So here for your viewing pleasure is Scramble running on the Vectrex with its matching overlay!

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Local CRT find. Samsung Flat Screen

I have had a 21inch CRT in the bedroom for a while now with the Playstaion 1 and 2 hooked up to it for lightgun games. It did the job and was free so certainly no complaints. But I have always been on the lookout for a 21inch Sony Trinitron flat screen to take that spot.

Well, I am still on the lookout. But! I did comes across a Samsung 21inch CRT flatscreen on Facebook Marketplace for free. I messaged the guy as soon as I saw it but didn’t hear anything back so just assumed I missed it. Then 3 weeks later I recieved a message to say it was still available if I wanted to collect it. By the time I finished reading his message I was already in the car!

So here it is, and it’s a beauty!

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Another custom built unit

I was starting to run out of shelf space for new toys, so I had a move around and cleared a new area in the lounge. Originally I considered buying some of the usual cube storage that everyone gets. But it was just the wrong shape/size and didn’t fit my needs.

So I busted out my “not to bad” DIY shelf making skills and constructed another shelving unit to hold a mixture of computers, consoles and some drawers for random retro stuff.

if you look carefuly you might spot some spoiler alerts for systems I have not yet added to the site! And you will also spot an ominous empty shelf crying out for something different to sit on it 😁