Hi from Northamptonshire

[PeteW]

Hi all

My name's Pete and I'm living in Northamptonshire, originally from Brentwood, Essex (home of TOWIE but don't hold that against me!)

I'm old enough to have owned an ST when they were new. It was the first 16 bit computer I owned having gone through an Atari 800xl, Commodore 64 and finally a Spectrum +2. All of these were bought because other kids at school had them and back in the 80s, playground piracy was the norm.

I can't remember exactly what made me get an ST, but a few friends at school had them and once I saw the graphics and the fact that you didn't have to wait 15 minutes for a game to load, I had to have one!

I got a 520STFM and after a year or so upgraded it to 1mb. This was at a time when RAM was really expensive due to some global shortage - the upgrade cost me about £130 for 512kb, if I remember rightly. That was a lot in 1988, but at least then I got to listen to the 'Beat Dis' track in the Union Mega Demo :)

More recently I've got back into restoring some retro systems. A friend of mine gave me a dead 48k Spectrum which I got working again and connected to an sd card loader to play games on. That then spurred me on to buy a cheap Amiga 500 (don't hate me), fix that up, retrobright it and connect up a gotek drive. In the early 90s, the Amiga 600 was the machine that briefly followed my ST before I went to university and started my life with PCs instead, so I fixed up an Amiga to relive my memories of that time.

Then followed buying a very down on its luck Spectrum +2 and fixing that up, but I knew what I really wanted was to get an ST again.

My original plan was to buy a 520STFM like the one I had before, fit a 1mb upgrade and a gotek drive. But then I came across this site and my plans have changed slightly...

I still have a 520STFM, but I'm fitting 4mb rather than 1mb. I also plan to fit a 16mhz accelerator board and fast ROM. From the ST games I've tried so far on my basic system, they're good but not as good as I remember, so a little more speed on some of the titles that struggle a bit compared to the Amiga will help.

I also plan to link the Amiga and ST together via a null modem cable like I used to with a friend back in the day - networked Stunt Car Racer is good fun!

So that's my plan. I've ordered the 4mb RAM upgrade from Chris. I've also started a blog which I will post in the blog section (one day someone might read it!)

Thanks
Pete

[exxos]

My name's Pete and I'm living in Northamptonshire, originally from Brentwood, Essex (home of TOWIE but don't hold that against me!)

:welcomewave:

I can't remember exactly what made me get an ST, but a few friends at school had them and once I saw the graphics and the fact that you didn't have to wait 15 minutes for a game to load, I had to have one!

My friends when I was at school had all sorts, spectrums which took forever to load from tape, and mostly never worked anyway :lol: :lol:

I got a 520STFM and after a year or so upgraded it to 1mb. This was at a time when RAM was really expensive due to some global shortage - the upgrade cost me about £130 for 512kb, if I remember rightly. That was a lot in 1988, but at least then I got to listen to the 'Beat Dis' track in the Union Mega Demo :)

Yikes, Must have really wanted to watch that demo ;) :lol:

More recently I've got back into restoring some retro systems.

:bravo:

That then spurred me on to buy a cheap Amiga 500 (don't hate me)

Nah, haters not allowed on this forum. We all care for retro computing, or have other machines :)

My original plan was to buy a 520STFM like the one I had before, fit a 1mb upgrade and a gotek drive. But then I came across this site and my plans have changed slightly...

Ahh, we have that effect on people ;)

I still have a 520STFM, but I'm fitting 4mb rather than 1mb. I also plan to fit a 16mhz accelerator board and fast ROM. From the ST games I've tried so far on my basic system, they're good but not as good as I remember, so a little more speed on some of the titles that struggle a bit compared to the Amiga will help.

Mostly boost in games are 3D games as CPU runs at 16MHz for the maths. Though Desktop stuff gets the main boost in speed because of fast-rom access.

So that's my plan. I've ordered the 4mb RAM upgrade from Chris. I've also started a blog which I will post in the blog section (one day someone might read it!)

:cheers:

Yeah we are lacking member blog posts here. Would prefer the pages copied fully here, not just links. Basically because external links vanish over time and we are trying to avoid long term issues of a forum full of broken links :)

[PhilC]

Welcome Pete,

Northamptonshire too.

And as Chris says, no haters here, just lovers of retro computer equipment. Although no amiga for me at the present. They seem to fetch far too much money second hand at the mo.

[PeteW]

I know what you mean with the Amiga cost. A1200s seem to fetch ridiculous amounts. I just kept an eye out for a 'non working' a500 and never bid very high. Got lucky eventually.

I'm finding the same thing with STs though - sometimes they fetch silly money and other times they're fairly reasonably priced.

[exxos]

Bit off topic maybe, but I have 2 A500's paid £60 each for them some years ago, just been sat in loft. Don't know if prices gone up since then but I doubt I would be ever using these machines..

[rubber_jonnie]

I'm lucky enough to have collected for probably over 20 years now, so have an A1200 amongst other things.

But ST is where its at for me, it's just a bit more difficult to upgrade them, and more satisfying to do because of it.

A lot of stuff is up in price at the moment, but you can still get some bargains if you keep a close eye open :)

[PhilC]

Bit off topic maybe, but I have 2 A500's paid £60 each for them some years ago, just been sat in loft. Don't know if prices gone up since then but I doubt I would be ever using these machines..

Give me a chance to tidy up some of my other stuff and I may be interested in one of them.

We're they 500s or pluses?

[exxos]

We're they 500s or pluses?

What :) :stars: :shrug: :shrug:

[PhilC]

Lol. I guess they never left the loft then :P

That and I meant were they original amiga a500 or an a500plus.

Can't type on my phone.

[exxos]

Lol. I guess they never left the loft then :P

That and I meant were they original amiga a500 or an a500plus.

Oh, I have no idea, think they were just A500 with some RAM board in the thing. I only powered one up for like 10 mins, got bored, been in loft since :lol: