Tony is a Geek

well, it's not all doom & gloom. lol, well, it is, but it isn't. I was clearing out a couple of rooms in the house, I've basically sold off all my old ATARI ST machines and accessories (2x1040STs, 1x520ST & 1x520ST with 4MB upgrade), including a genuine colour monitor, an Megafile 30, an SH204 and other harddrives, loads & loads of other things Atari related that took me years to acquire. I also sold off the Sinclair Spectrum machines, books, tapes, etc... and the Atari 800XL machines (3 or maybe 4 of them?), along with cartridge games and a side3 cartridge and a FujiNet device, again, with a load of software, disc drives, tape drives, etc... all working.  I also threw in the Toshiba MSX machines (2x!) and tape drives and software. As I was in the mood, I threw in an Amiga A500 with a 2Mb plug in with 2xhard-drives, LOADS of floppy discs, software and a genuine monitor too.  yeah, that hurt, a lot. especially seeing as it was for £650. I know, I know, I know. I ...

A short while ago (March 2023), I had a few days I had to take off, basically, if you don't take your vacation days by end of March you lose them and I also give too much to the company I work for, so I decided I would actually take the time off & I would do "me things".  That involved taking a visit to the official "Museum of Computing" in Swindon. Now, I had heard of this place for quite some time & I had visited Swindon a few times (it's only 35 miles up the road), I had never been there on a day when it was open.  So, I did.  It was nice. If you ever want to visit, go to their website HERE . Anyway, Mrs.isageek, was quick to point out that, "you've got one of those...and one of those... and some of those... and that...and that...haven't you got a few of them?", etc..etc... you get the idea.  She actually was right.  I did have quite a lot of what was on display, as well as what was accessible & usable - albeit back home the ...

Okay, this will be a QUICK post... honest... I was watching a YouTube video about a new Retro-Museum being opened in DERBY.... ...and I was thinking, well, there we go - when we pop along in the motorhome to the Peak District we can "pop-in" on a Saturday 10-4pm for a visit. Then my missus said, "you could probably open one of your own".  This got me thinking. I then decided to take a little look up in the loft(s)..and whilst I had sold off an entire room of Amstrad related retro-hardware about 10years ago (I dread to think what that lot would be worth now - but hey-ho) I found quite a few boxes of interesting machines that I had bought back in the 2007/2008 timeframe. As I said, I'll do a more indepth post on each setup etc... in the future, for now here is a taster; there are quite a few Spectrum machines (something I never had as a kid), a few Toshiba MSXs and a few Atari 800 XLs.... with lots of peripherals. Yes, that is 2 x 5.1/4" floppy disc drives - ...