The Console / Computer Collection

I've been collecting for a while now - started out with the Game Boy 3D and just went from there. No idea why I do it - it just seemed to roll along and I got more bits and pieces as I came across them, and now it's just well, getting a little out of control. But anyway, this is what I've collected so far, and the wish list is at the end. So hey, if you've got one of those items sitting in your attic and you want shot of it, I'll be happy to pay the postage and send a few EA games your way:) One day I'll have a room dedicated to showing this stuff off. For now, at least I've got them.

So most of these work, obviously testing the UK ones is a bit of a problem. I have the power supplies for everything, and usually joysticks, TV hookups and games for each (I have almost every cartridge for the Intellivision they made) - although I'm not actually collecting the games per-se, just the consoles / computers.

Note, the rules of aquuistion for this collection is that the console / computer has to be able to play games, and has to be something that most people would remember - so rare Commodore cartridge only consoles might be nice, but aren't a priority over stuff like an Apple II. I'm also not going for business machines that can play games, or I'd be at it for ever.

Here you go - in no particular order except the one they came out of the storage boxes in.

UK

	The Sinclair ZX81 - 1k of Ram, Basic on board and that awful awful touch membrane keyboard. The one shown is complete with the 16k Wobble pack too.
	The sequel to the ZX81 - The Sinclair ZX Rectum. Sorry, Spectrum. The one machine you had to be an octopus to program. 16k (or 48k) on board, 16colors and sound too! Manys the young programmer who started out coding for the Z80 processor on this machine.
	The Spectrum +2 - I can't actually remember if this version was manufactured by Amstrad, although I think it was. There was a Spectrum + before this which looked almost the same, but didn't have the tape deck on the end of it. When Alan Sugar of Amstrad bought Sinclair Research most people through it was the end of the Spectrum, but it wasn't. Amstrad managed to make money from it even though they have the CPC range out at the same time.
	The Sinclair QL - and look, is that the infamous Dongle there? This machine was the follow up to the Spectrum, and had a 16 bit 68000 chip as it's CPU, but even though the chip had 16 bit addressing, it only had an 8 bit address bus on it, which kinda defied the point of having a 16 bit chip in the first place. The Quantum Heap - sorry, Leap - also had 4 built in applications, a more real keyboard and a dual tape loop system that sinclair pioneered that never worked right and kept eating the tapes. Donated by Mr. Tom Forsyth whom I owe a beer to.
	The Acorn Electron - basically a cut down BBC Micro that could play most BBC games. I never understood why this machine existed since the market for it just wasn't there. If it wasn't a BBC Micro then parents (and kids) weren't interested. Still, if it could play Defender...
	The Dragon 32 - Dragon Data, a relative outsider in terms of computer manufacture (not to mention a Welsh company) made this machine - 32k ram, 16 color graphics and Microsoft Basic onboard (!). It was a mild success in the UK, and there was actually a 64k version too which died a death as did Dragon Data. Still had the best version of Donkey Kong I've ever seen though.
	Oh yes! A BBC Micro Model B is now mine! And here it is, in all it's glory!

US

	A Atari Super Pong - the model C-140 (not actually sure what the difference is between this and the C-18 - both have 4 games on board). This console actually generated a law suit from Magnavox over the Pong game that Atari won that opened the gates for companies being able to make games that looked the same.
	The Intellivision. We all have our intellivision stories eh? I remember hearing the voice synth for the Football game for the first time and thinking that was just awesome. I actually have almost every game ever made for this machine.
	The Atari 800 - basically the same machine as the 400 but with a real keyboard, two cartridge ports (though why still remains a mystery) and 48k memory instead of the 400's 16k.
	The Commodore 64 - main stay of the Commodore empire. I loved mine, and learnt to program on it. This machine has a special place in my heart. Nuff Said.
	A very dirty Commodore 16 - donated from my good friend Les. This machine is basically a very cut down Commodore 64. A nice a machine but I have no idea why they made this - it's like the Electron, a nice idea but whom exactly was the target audience.
	The Odyssey II - the sequel to the original Odyssey, only this one takes cartridges. Mine is a bit messed up but hey, at least I have one.
	The Super Nintendo - one of the biggest hits for Nintendo, challenged only by the Sega Genesis. Not much to say about this except you can't possibly have a console collection without it.
	The original NES - Nintendo Entertainment System. I remember seeing Mario for the first time, and just playing it for hours. And that weird Robot thing that didn't do much. This is what kick started the Japanese invasion of Video Games in America, and much has been written about how they targeted Atari for destruction.
	The Nintendo 64 - originally the Ultra 64. Not enough memory and some very strange graphics decisions - 4k for textures? Anyway, some surprisingly good games for this machine, mainly from Nintendo or Rare - all people who had Nintendo backing but at least someone got something out of this machine.
	The Sega Genesis, competitor to the Super Nintendo. A great machine with some good games. Eco the Dolphin was great, and of course who could forget Sonic? I remember my Brother (who was brain damaged) loved that. And that means something, at least to me.
	The Sega Master System. Complete with Phaser (yeah, it's actuallly called a Phaser too!). I have no idea about what this system could do, since I just found it at a garage sale.
	Sega Dreamcast. The Sega that never was. In fact the machine that brought down Sega hardware. And it's a shame because it was a great little machine and even nicer to develop for. For some reason it just wasn't supported and I've no idea why.
	The Commodore Plus 4. Basically, again, an extended Commodore 64 with better Basic Interpreter and some inbuilt software like a spreadsheet, word processor etc. Really developed to compete with the Apple II and it failed. After this one failed Commodore ended up buying Amiga Lorraine in order to have next generation product, and we know where that went.
	The Commodore Amiga 500 - the cheaper Amiga that people could afford and one targeted squarely at games rather than graphics snobs, as the 1000 was. I had one of these for the longest time - learned 68000 assembly language and worked with a co-processor for the first time, although getting the hang of that blitter chip required some thinking at the time. A Great machine and one that should have gone further, and been the Mac of our time.
	The Atari 400 - red headed step child to the Atari 800. Basically the same machine with less memory, only one cartridge port and that tacky nasty membrane keyboard. The first computer I ever owned. I remember playing Star Raiders and Silent Service on this - Star Raiders was just insane. Real 3D space dog fighting in 8k. 8k!! Donated by Calvin Rein who needs more beer.
	The machine that truely kick started the game developer business - the Atari VCS (Video Cartridge System) or the 2600 as it eventually designated. This actually went through several revisions - this is a later one because it has 6 buttons and not 4. I remember playing space invaders on this on a machine in the local electronics shop because there was no way we could afford to buy one. I used to play with a friend in competitive mode. Now I look back on it, I wonder why the shop staff let us just plop down infront of the TV at the store and play for hours..?
	A redressed 2600, redesigned when the 5200 came out in order that the line look the same. Exactly the same in specs, though with a redesigned mother board.
	The 7800, the last of the Atari console line until the Jaguar came along. Between this and the 2600 was the 5200 (which I am still looking for). The 5200 went with a really complex joystick, and when the 7800 was released they went back to a more streamlined and simple control mechanism. What's interesting though is that the 7800 is backwards compatible and can play all the 2600 and 5200 games.
	The Magnavox Odyessy 1 - the first mass market Pong console. This is what really kick started games at home, and was the subject of the first major gaming lawsuit, between Atari and Magnavox. Thankfully for the industry today Atari won, or the gaming landscape today would be Veeeeeery different.
	The Sony Playstation - Sonys first foray into the console manufacturing industry and man, what a bang. Single handedly gave the death blow to the American Console Manufacturing industry already pretty much killed by Nintendo, and also giving Nintendo themselves a real run for it's money. This cemented the Japanese dominance of the gaming industry.
	The original Intellivision - The Sears Super Video System. When Intellivision first started up and had some prototypes, they went to Sears to ask for some seed money, and Sears agreed, providing the first 20k machines produced were Sears badged. And so the Intellivision was born. Exactly the same specs as the Intellivision, it plays all the same games.
	The Mattel Aquaris. Mattels only real foray into computers / gaming machines when they were all the rage in the early 80's. Basically a Japanese built machine, the forerunner to the MSX standard, which never caught on in the US. This machine never caught on, and it's not hard to see why - that key board is just mush.
	Ahhh, the first home machine Commodore built, and man, talk about hitting it out the park. The Vic 20 (named after the video chip) had 3.5k of useable ram, and very basic(!) Basic Interpreter and a really nice keyboard, as well as pretty decent sound and some outstanding graphics for the time. Everyone wanted one. I know I did, but I had to wait for the Commodore 64 to arrive. Although doing your accounts on it was a joke and everyone knew it. This was a gaming machine, nothing more, nothing less. This is the box version was donated by my good friend Calvin Rein, who is too nice a bloke to be working in video games.
	The Texas Instruments TI-994A. Why the naming convention I don't know, but a great cartridge based system that you could get a floppy for (which is apparently on the way for this system). Analog based joystick and an outstanding version of Scramble. And a nice real keyboard too. After this, TI went off making laptops type word processors; I've no idea why.
	The Adam ColecoVision. A really nice cartridge based system designed with expansion in mind, and man, did they ever deliver. It nearly became the in thing to have, but just, for some reason, didn't. Perhaps the price of all the Adam's expansion bits and pieces was just too much. Donated by my good friend Calvin Rein whom I bought beer for, but it just didn't seem enough.
	The Adam Expansion kit for the ColecoVision. This makes the ColecoVision an actual computer. Comes with printer, and the actual computer part, with tape drive, the whole bit. I gotta say, I am quite impressed by all this, I get the feeling that the folks at Coleco actually really thought about what they wanted to do and just went out and did it. 2 thumbs up on this one.
	Ahh, the Atari ST. Well, should have been called the Commodore ST since it was developed by most of the team that built the Commodore 64, and if they hadn't left Commodore after being pissed off by Jack Tramiel while he owned it, it would have been. Anyway, great machine, only thing it was lacking was an internal graphics rendering chip - like the Amiga had. It did have a kick ass mouse drive front end called GEM though.
	The Commodore Amiga. Originally financed by Atari, but when Atari ran out of money, Commodore arrived and finished milestone payments, to the annoyance of Atari who filed suit with Commodore, Amiga Lorraine and all the employees thereof. The original 1000 has the signatures of the development team in the plastic of the bottom keyboard.
	A working Vectrex, with mega cartridge. This all in one Vector Scan home system was just awesome, right down the little built in Arcade controller. The Mega cartridge contains every game made, except for those still under development using an emulator. Yeah, people love this machine so much they are still making games for it!
	The Sega Saturn - the dual processor machine from Sega that really started the downward trend, because it was impossible to actually code for properly, or indeed design code for that would work well. Distributed computing before it's time and before anyone had a clue what to do with it.
	The Atari 600xl - basically a re-dressed Atari 400 with real keyboard and lots of chrome. The first thing that Jack Tramiel did when he bought Atari was revamp the existing line with prettier versions that actually had almost nothing extra to them.
	The Sega 32X cartidge expander. Almost a console in it's own right, this expanded out the Sega Genesis to a 32bit system by inserting itself into the cartridge port. It was backwards compatible (ie by removing it) and worked fine - but as a marketing idea to prolong the life of the Genesis while bugs were worked out with the dual processor setup of the Saturn it didn't work at all.
	An Atari Jaguar. Ahhh, I have a soft spot for this. I remember playing Aliens vs Predator on this, as well as Tempest 2000. This is the cartridge only version, I still need to find a CD add on for this.
	I finally picked up an Atari 5200 - the inbetween console for Atari. It's interesting that this thing is such a monster, and that the controller for this had *so* many buttons, but broke so easily. Even now there are websites out there catering to rebuilding your controllers with stronger parts!
	This is a Sinclair Spectrum, US model. It's a Timex Sinclair. Note that it actually has the micro drive built in, something on the QL had in the UK.
	An original Tandy TRS 80 Model 100 Laptop, complete with very small LCD screen!
	One Apple IIe - complete with Disc Drives
	An actual Tandy TRS 80 model 200 laptop - more of what we understand a laptop to look like today.
	A Tandy TRS80 - model 3 (Ie the Tandy Color Computer model 3). Great stuff! I have an Atari 130XE back in CA - it's with the rest of my collection awaiting being brought to AZ. I also have a 3DO coming too! From my good friend Chris, a Panasonic 3DO is now mine. And no collection would be complete without a Commodore 128, right?

HandHeld

	The (original) Nintendo Gameboy. I loved mine - used it a lot and still have some cartridges for it.
	The grand experiment - the Nintendo 3D gameboy. Crap games, crap visuals and crapola in general really. Don't really know why I have it, except it's part of the collection.
	The Atari Lynx - this was a great little machine and deserved better accolades and sales than it had. There were a couple of amazing multi-player games for this.
	The Sega Game Gear - portable color gaming. This one had a TV input cartridge which was awesome.
	This - underneath all the grime - is a Pocket Neo Geo. I had no idea these even existed till my good friend Les told me he had one, and would I want it?
	The Nintendo Gameboy Advanced Original. Nuff said

The Wish List

UK
An Oric 1 - or an Oric Atmos, or for preference, both.
An Amstrad CPC 664 - not really looking for the 464 since the shipping costs for this are gonna be outrageous on this, and I don't want to spend it on a green screen monitor.
A MemoTech MTX 500 - although the 512 would be nice if that's what you have...:)
An Acorn Atom - the predecessor to the BBC Micro.
A Jupiter Ace - the great experiment of a machine shipping with the Forth Language instead of Basic. I don't think I'm likely to see this one.
A ZX80 - The forerunner to the ZX81 - hey you know you can run a nuclear power station with this? According to the ads for it anyway.
The Elan Enterprise - now this one I truely don't expect to find. At one point this was called the Flan. And it looked like one too - a pretty one with green and red keys. But it did have a joystick built in.

US
A Bally Astrocade - Bally Midway made a games console. Did you know that? And it had a keyboard and basic cartridge you could buy too!
An Atari 1200XL - The Shiny Spacey version of the 800. With Chrome.
A PC Engine - I've never actually seen one of these, but I heard about them.