Day 364 - #retrorandom - Best ... console ... ever. It's got a 6809 processor and a vector display. What more could you ever want? (well, maybe a slightly neater looking controller!)

Day 363 - #retrorandom - It's very unusual to find PETs in the wild. They're elusive creatures, normally only coming out at night to hunt. But we were lucky to catch a glimpse of this older machine in the rain (well, drizzle) forests of south Kent.

Day 359 - #retrorandom - Santa's been! Happy Christmas everyone!

Not quite a #retrorandom, as I always post this picture at Christmas ... it's my Spectravideo CompuMate running its Christmas demo (built in!). The Compumate is cute, and makes the Atari into an almost unusably bad computer. But wait, the demo gets better ...

Day 355 - #retrorandom - It's a family of Sharps from 2023's Made in Japan at @computinghistory.org.uk - my Japanese MZ-80K2E, an MZ-80A and the gorgeous MZ-2000.

Day 353 - #retrorandom - It's my Triumph Adler Alphatronic again! Sold only through TA's typewriter outlets, this rather expensive 64K Z80 machine was bought by almost no one (and has little to no software either). However, it's a pretty good CP/M machine if you can find the floppy drives for it.

Day 352 - #retrorandom - You can never have too many Cefucoms ...

Day 351 - #retrorandom - Sometimes you need to show the machine who's boss ...

Day 350 - #retrorandom - Who needs the internet when you have Micronet on your ZX Spectrum?! Sadly, the Spectrum turned out to be poorly so I got no further than this ...

Day 349 - #retrorandom - Here's the box to my Prologica CP400, a Tandy Color Computer clone from Brazil. I love the enormous floppy drive, which until recently I thought was just a mockup and wishful thinking on behalf of Prologica ... but no ...

Day 348 - #retrorandom - The problem with buying a bigger car (back in 2023) was that I could take even more stuff to shows. Here I am, off to Made in Japan, I think. Then again, best to not to speak about the years I've hired a van ...

Day 347 - #retrorandom - NOTHING is going to stop me being able to program this EPROM!

An emotional evening installing SunOS 4.1.3 for the first time in 30 years! I've been getting nostalgic for Sun workstations - if the ZX81 was my first home micro, the Sun was my first work machine. My first job as a junior systems manager was to install a server and network of diskless clients ...

Day 346 - #retrorandom - It's the Made In Japan Festival at the @computermuseum in 2023. Who (aside from @loudscotsbloke, whose table this is) can name all the computers in this row?!

Day 345 - #retrorandom - It all started here. On the right, the first home computer I ever saw. On the left, the first one I ever used. It brings a tear to my eye to see them together!

Day 344 - #retrorandom - I may be biased, but I do think the Dragon 200 is one gorgeous computer. This Dragon 64 in a funky case wasn't enough to save Spain's Eurohard - too little, too late - but it's still a beauty.

Day 343 - #retrorandom - It may be naked, but I'm sure you all know what this - it's a VIC-20! Or actually it might be my German VC-20 ...

Day 342 - #retrorandom - Setting up for the Retro Computer Festival in 2023 and if it's not obvious, the theme is French computers! So much AZERTY! And before anyone points at the interloper Dragon, it's also French, modified to have the RGB SCART output you see on all French machines ...

Day 340 - #retrorandom - Well, that doesn't look like the usual Dragon graphics - and it's not! The board on the right with the SCART connection is the clue. It's actually an MSX2 chipset, but powered by the Dragon's 6809!

Day 339 - #retrorandom - Here's my Tandy Coco 3 back in 2022 demonstrating the power of the 6809 processor as it runs a perfect transcoding of the original Donkey Kong (translated from the original Z80)

As anyone who went to the Retro Computer Festival at @computinghistory.org.uk can testify, it's probably the most maddening game ever created.

Day 338 - #retrorandom - I think I could have included this in my recent run of French computers - the Phillips VG5000. Yes, I know Phillips are Dutch, but it was designed, built and sold only in France with an AZERTY keyboard. I won't rant about the surreal keyboard design for once!

Day 337 - #retrorandom - It's been a while since we've had a Sharp, and this is one of my faves, an MZ-1200, sold only in Japan. Basically an MZ-80K in an MZ-80A case. Funky orange numberpad is the giveaway.

Day 336 - #retrorandom - After all that fun in France, let's go for something quintessentially English - the Memotech MTX512. A very handsome machine, easily repaired by just pushing things back into their sockets.

Day 335 - #retrorandom - And let's end this trip to France with probably the most gorgeous 8bit machine ever made - the delectable Alice 90!

Day 334 - #retrorandom - Another random French computer, the Thomson TO9 from 1985. Another stylish case and, like all Thomsons, with a light pen included. If anyone is looking for Christmas present ideas for me, I would love a TO9+

Day 332 - #retrorandom - Another day in France, another stylish French computer. This time the Texas Instruments powered, infra red controlled Exelvision EXL100 ...

Day 331 - #retrorandom - I'm currently in France, so let's have a random French computer! It's a Goupil II - a 6800 based machine with a lot of room for expansion in that funky red case. Currently trying to get the rather wacky capacitive keyboard working ...

Day 330 - #retrorandom - I bought this near mint NEC PC-8001 from Japan a couple years back and was surprised to find when I opened it that ALL the socketed chips had been removed. I patiently waited until a very tatty - but working - machine came up for sale ... and swapped the innards over!

Day 329 - #retrorandom - Another day, another Dragon! I really wanted one of these TouchMaster tablets back in the day - but wasn't too impressed when I got to play with one at a Dragon Meetup. Sadly not very responsive - and the Dragon's graphics don't really help either!

Day 328 - #retrorandom - Slightly fuzzy photo, but cool none the less. This is my dual screen Dragon - a period Dragon Plus board gives me an 80 col screen, but also leaves the original output untouched. So here one screen displays a mandelbrot while the other is showing the maths.

Day 328 - #retrorandom - Here we have my Alice 32K demonstrating that although it looks identical to the Alice 4K (bar a gold, rather than silver badge), it's not a Tandy MC-10 in a red case but actually a much more powerful computer with pretty good graphics capabilities!

Day 327 - #retrorandom - I was very excited to eventually get an Enterprise - my perfect computer when it was announced in 1983. In some respects - the graphics and sound - it's everything I hoped for. But the keyboard's not great - and all the expansion on the back is just bare PCB, no sockets.

Day 326 - #retrorandom - It's the 2019 Dragon Meetup and some wag has decided to make my Fujitsu FM-7 emulate a Dragon!

Day 324 - #retrorandom - For a short but wonderful moment, the Sharp CE-150 printer attached to my PC-1500 actually worked. But since then one has died because the little plastic gears crumbled and the other because I blew it up, not understanding how the battery circuit worked ...

Day 323 - #retrorandom - Spotted at Made In Japan at @computinghistory.org.uk back in 2023. It's a Gakken Compact Vision TV Boy - the only games console that I'm aware of based on the MC6847 graphics chip, which we all know and love in the Dragon, Coco and Tandy MC-10!

Day 322 - #retrorandom - All set up for Synthesized back in 2023, with the ubiquitous Atari ST getting ready to control my Yahama CX5M. This event should be coming back to @computinghistory.org.uk next year - watch this space!

You can't have too many retro computer events! The dust may have barely settled on the Retro Computer Festival at @computinghistory.org.uk, but you definitely want to get this one in your diary too. See you all there!

Day 321 - #retrorandom - it's Laser family outing! At the bottom is the relatively common Laser 310, a Laser 200 with a proper keyboard and popular in Australia back in the day. At the top is the much rarer big brother, the Laser 500, from 1984 - 32K of memory and reasonable graphics (640x192x2).

And the final scores of the weekend! A young chap by the name of Ben came along and just smashed all the highscores set by us old timers - except the astonishing Flagon Bird high score of 64 set by Nicholas @sharpworks.bsky.social Jr.

Well, those scores have increased a bit! And the shock of the weekend was Nicholas getting 64 on Flagon Bird - which we think is the highest possible score! Come see us tomorrow at @computinghistory.org.uk and see if you can do better ...

Do you think you can beat the high scores? And would you like to win a limited edition badge if you do? (*while stocks last). Then you want to come to Retro Computer Festival at @computinghistory.org.uk this weekend!

Day 313 - #retrorandom - So I presume everyone here still uses their 80s micro to handle their company accounts? It's 2018 and the Dragon is showing its serious side here - with the period Compusense Dragon Plus upgrade. This gives you 128K and a nifty 80 column display ... 1/2

Day 312 - #retrorandom - All the way back to 2017 here and the first ever Dragon Meetup at @computinghistory.org.uk - here's a Dragon drawing the house picture shown on the Dragon's box ... 1/2

Day 312 - #retrorandom - If you were serious about programming the Dragon back in the day (heck, even now), you had to have this book. Written by Duncan Smeed, who'd also written the Dragon's BIOS, there was no man better qualified to write this bible. And my copy is signed by the man himself!

Day 311 - #retrorandom - It's a Radofin pong console that I picked up in 2018. Radofin are an interesting company though - they made the Aquarius you see behind (for Mattel) and the mythical Dragon MSX too. Plus a whole bunch of peripherals as well.

Day 310 - #retrorandom - It's 2018 ... and it's the first retro festival I helped organise for @computinghistory.org.uk - gosh didn't we all look so young? :)

Day 309 - #retrorandom - Another picture of Newbrain chaos ... surely one must work? Actually, back then in 2019, I think a few did. But do they still? I almost don't want to plug them in to find out ...

Day 308 - #retrorandom - Don't you just love it when you open a computer and find almost nothing inside? I love this super minimal motherboard inside a quite advanced computer - bonus points if you can tell me what it is!

Day 307 - #retrorandom - This photo might date back to 2017, but I'll never get bored of it! Multi-user Unix on a 6809 (albeit with 512K of memory) ...