Diary of a Retro Computing Geek

My brother was married in the Summer of 1985 to his long-time girlfriend and school sweetheart and promptly moved out of the family home to start their new life as a married couple in the Anniesland area of Glasgow. This meant that the window which now lay open as wide as it could go on a hot Saturday morning in our tenement flat in Clydebank was the window of my new room - Finally!

We’re not often blessed with hot summer days in the West of Scotland but this particular Saturday morning (and many more like it), saw the Fourteen-Year-Old me sitting on the corner of my bed and in front of my little black and white portable TV – bent over a Ferguson Tape Deck with a small screwdriver in my hand whilst I tried to adjust the azimuth just right for the fifth or sixth time as I try to get my copy of “Saboteur” working on my rubber key Sinclair Spectrum. A-Ha’s “Hunting High and Low” album is quietly resonating through the ceiling from the upstairs flat and providing a backing track to my efforts.

I could hear a bit of a ruckus outside somewhere and I lean towards the bedroom window and peer out. As I thought; a few of the older kids were baiting the local shop keeper down the road who had come out of the shop to shout at them. The ruckus came to a swift finale when a bottle was flung, smashed off the dustbin next to the shop and the kids ran off, leaving the poor guy to sweep up the mess in preparation for whatever grief would come his way some other day. I would be playing football later against these muppets who came from the street down the hill from ours (and where much rivalry existed between). These matches which as always would end up in a fight. I would much rather be sat in front of my “little black box” (as Kate Bush would later call her computer in the song “Deeper Understanding”), playing games (if I could get them to work) or typing in a program from a listing in the latest edition of Sinclair User. I turn back to my TV and see those words “R Tape loading error, 0:1” again. Argh! This game just won’t load!

Flash forward 30 or so years and the scene is VERY different – but at the same time very familiar.

It’s another Saturday morning in the Summer (this time – more typically grey and a bit rainy) and I am sitting in front of a beautiful Bang and Olufson 24” TV which I picked up from a seller on Gum Tree a couple of years back for the princely sum of £30. I have a pristine Spectrum 128 “Toastrack” perched on top of an Amiga 1200 (I couldn’t be bothered moving it) and I’m playing the recent game “Flame Princess Adventure Time”. Yep it’s 2016 and I’m playing a NEW game on a Sinclair Spectrum. How cool!

My Fifteen-year-old “Junior Geek” Daughter is still asleep in the next room (and likely to be for some time yet!) and my wife is having breakfast down stairs whilst reading her book (dog at her feet or snuggled in next to her no doubt). All is well in the world (well in this little family bubble of mine in our nice wee house in the south side of Glasgow it is anyway!).

I’ve downloaded the new and revamped version of “Giana Sisters” for my Amiga and will be putting that on soon but for now I am enjoying messing around with my Spectrum.

This has been my hobby for years now. Collecting Retro computers, lovingly restoring them (or having much more skilled people than me – restore them for me) and playing old and new games on them.

The Retro Computing and Gaming thing has become much more popular in recent years; with multiple events of varying sizes going on up and down the country. I attend some of them and have even exhibited some of my collection at them (along with my friends and their collections). I’ve met such lovely people in the last six years or so in doing this and these people are now highly regarded friends from all over the country.

My Sinclair Spectrum 128Kb no longer needs me to be bent over an old tape deck for hours whist I try and get games working. I can load in games via my PC using a program (or App as thy are called now – god I feel old!) which turns software images into sound which can be played at high speed straight into the machine (like the old tape deck but much – much faster) or, as I prefer, I can stick my micro SD card into my Zaxxon DIVMMC device and load games from a menu; and this is where I get great enjoyment. Using old computers and games consoles – but in a different, more modern way.

I have a decent collection of machines and devices now (everything from a ZX81 through BBC’s, Commodore’s, MSX and Atari to Silicon Graphics Octanes and everything in-between). This blog will focus on a different machine each time and describe ways to make them faster; do more modern things and of course – play the games we loved when we were younger as well as the new ones that are coming along! You’ll have to forgive me as I discuss these machines and reminisce about the times when they were new and shiny and what was going on in my life at that time, because whilst I enjoy all the new things we can do with these old machines; a great part of the fun is sharing in the nostalgia and being aware of just how far we’ve come from the early days to where we are now.