Vintage Computers

OK so I collect old computers. This puzzles many people, but it's really no different to collecting anything you enjoyed in times gone by.

The microcomputers of the 1980's were great machines for learning about computers and programming. You could easily get right down to the micro level with machine code or assembly language. You could also come to a fairly good understanding of the then common Disk Operating System known as CP/M. You could even customise it and "port it" to run on other similar machines with Z80 or 8080 CPUs.

These days PC's are so powerful and complex that it's harder for beginners to start with PC's and get a full understanding of what's actually going on in there. It could be better to start with one of the many hobby micro development systems that are out there now. They even come in 32-bit flavours and can run some fairly decent OS's (like FreeRTOS, or Linux on the more powerful ones). The Raspberry Pi (or Pi Pico) is one great, low cost way to get started.

My vintage computer collection includes:-

4x Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k (2 working and 2 not)

1x Sinclair Spectrum +3 (working)

1x Spectravideo SV-328 MkI (fully working)

3x Spectravideo SVI-328 MkII (all fully working)

1x Spectravideo SV-728 MSX (fully working)

1x Spectravideo SV-738 X'Press MSX "Portable" (fully working)

3x Amstrad CPC6128 (2 fully working)

1x Amstrad CPC464 (not working)

4x Dick Smith VZ-200 (3 working and 1 not)

2x Dick Smith VZ-300 (both fully working)

Various peripherals and expansions such as cassette tape decks, Sinclair ZX Interface 1 and a Microdrive (aka "mini stringy floppy"), SymbiFace II (for the Amstrad CPC's), HxC Floppy Emulator, Dick Smith 16k RAM expansion.

From time to time I like to tinker with these old systems. Recently I bought a rare SymbiFace II interface for my Amstrad CPC6128 computers, hooked it up, installed the latest SymbOS 2.0 and got it all working nicely - WoW I now have an Amstrad CPC6128 complete with 512k RAM, 512k ROM Emulator, PS/2 mouse, Real Time Clock and a 120Gb IDE Hard Disk! On top of all that the internal disk drives work on both my machines (after I replaced the belt in one of them). I even hooked up a second floppy (3.5") to the external FDD port so I can transfer files downloaded off the Internet to be able to run on the CPC! This is all just too good. The community have achieved some amazing things over the years. Also I bought an HxC floppy drive emulator. This device is neat - you stuff files onto a standard SD memory card, formatted as FAT32, from your PC, put it into the floppy emulator, and the CPC6128 can read the files!

CP/M Disk Operating System

The Amstrads were originally shipped with CP/M. The Spectravideos had it shipped with their disk drive subsystems. I'm already running and programming with CP/M on my Amstrad CPC6128's. I plan on running the Spectravideo CP/M even though I don't have any disk drives for them. To do this, I'm thinking about creating a disk sub-system emulator with CPM on a micro SD card.