Probably the thing I miss most is a real MIDI equipment, which actually I'm not an expert about it, not having been able to buy it at the time... I'd like to have and feel in all its glory the Roland MT-32, along with an MPU-401 adapter.

King_Corduroy wrote:

Amiga (I'll take any model, I'm not picky lol) 1997 or earlier beige macintosh of some sort Packard Bell corner computer Packard […]
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Amiga (I'll take any model, I'm not picky 🤣)
1997 or earlier beige macintosh of some sort
Packard Bell corner computer
Packard Bell 4x4 style case
a working 386 or 486 would also be nice, at the moment I have a fist full of 286 computers. 😜
MCA Sound Card

As for games I currently am looking for a copy of Man Of War that won't break the bank. 🤣

Get one with a HDD, or a big ass men upgrade for writing and creating ADF images.
Shure you can use mem-disk for it, a HDD is just more convenient for the process.

Go for A600 (last kick start version) or an A1200.
Remember that the first A600 kickrom had no HDD support.

Good mainboards with socket 7, socket 370 and socket 462
Voodoo 2 or 3
More harddisks
Good case with fans on front or two of them
Diamond Monster Sound MX300
Full 486 or 386 PC
Riva TNT and TNT2, S3 Savage4

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Voodoo4 pci, Asus 486 board with pci, 586 cpu, NV fx5800, G400max.

My collection is pretty much complete, but i can't live without a wishlist, love the hunt 🤣

Been getting the bug for vintage systems again. The PCjr. has been singing it's siren song in my ear lately. I'll probably be forced to break down and buy one soon if the right deal comes along.

Just avoid it, the PCjr was my first retro system and I own it complete in the boxes. It's a waste of time, it's compatible with almost nothing and everything is proprietary that it uses. 🤣

The PCjr is fine when you use it with PCjr software. It is actually really cool and a part of history. It spawned the Tandy 1000: PCjr clone.

Yeah I have a few titles that came with it (Although I cannot get Lotus 123 to work for some reason), it still doesn't really justify grabbing. I mean it's cool in that it's different but if you want a computer that works 10000X better than get a Tandy 1000. I got a few Tandy machines now and they basically answer all the complaints I had with the PCjr including a HDD in the ones I have (I have the Tandy 1000 TL/2 and Tandy 3000 HD).

Ha, I'm still casually looking for a boxed Pro Audio Spectrum 16. I was offered one by a dude over at Amibay but the box wasn't in great shape, and the documentation was in German.

badmojo wrote:

Ha, I'm still casually looking for a boxed Pro Audio Spectrum 16. I was offered one by a dude over at Amibay but the box wasn't in great shape, and the documentation was in German.

Good luck mate, myself i'm looking for the much more rare 8bit Pro Audio Spectrum. I'm starting to realize that i'm just fighting a losing battle, there aren't enough cards out there and i can't compete financially with the also looking deep pocket collectors out there. 🤣

2x pentium 3 xeon 900mhz with 2MB cache (2.8v)
rendition verite v1000
socket 8 atx board
athlon xp 3200+ fsb166
quantum3D cards of all sorts

I have so much cool stuff to trade but never got an offer 🙁

King_Corduroy wrote:

Just avoid it, the PCjr was my first retro system and I own it complete in the boxes. It's a waste of time, it's compatible with almost nothing and everything is proprietary that it uses. 🤣

What? Yes, the peripherals are non-standard. There are adapters to let you use standard serial devices and displays, keyboards, etc. The others have to be PCjr specific. (Sidecars in particular.)

But it runs most DOS software right out of the box with no modifications. It runs DOS 2.1 to 3.3 perfectly, and DOS 5 and DOS 6 will run on it with a minor tweak to correct the amount of memory reported to DOS. For the most part, it behaves like a PC clone - not a perfect clone, but very close.

The biggest problems will come from older games that were made before clones became common; if the game assumed that everything is a 4.77Mhz 8088 with CGA then it's going to be borked whether it is on a PCjr, a PC AT, or a 386. And self booting games that don't give you a chance to fix up the memory addressing are a problem too. But there were many games of the era that were PCjr aware and took advantage of the PCjr extras.

Of course Mike would call me out. 🤣 Hello mike, I didn't even know you were registered on here!

Seriously though you have to admit the Tandy 1000 is better for the average collector, it can run tons of games and utils with no tweaking and later versions of the 1000 computers had Hard disks (without modern things, I know there are kits for the PCjr but who is going to spend 60 dollars for a HDD on a computer that isn't compatible with most games). The games I've tried to run on it from around it's time (games that were compatible with the Tandy 1000 and other clones) and later have all either been too demanding for it or not compatible with it at all since they boot up as complete unplayable garbage. Don't get me wrong I like my PCjr, but is it worth paying current ebay prices for such a machine? Not really, it's just going to be a disappointing PC clone.

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King_Corduroy wrote:

Of course Mike would call me out. 🤣 Hello mike, I didn't even know you were registered on here!

Seriously though you have to admit the Tandy 1000 is better for the average collector, it can run tons of games and utils with no tweaking and later versions of the 1000 computers had Hard disks (without modern things, I know there are kits for the PCjr but who is going to spend 60 dollars for a HDD on a computer that isn't compatible with most games). The games I've tried to run on it from around it's time (games that were compatible with the Tandy 1000 and other clones) and later have all either been too demanding for it or not compatible with it at all since they boot up as complete unplayable garbage. Don't get me wrong I like my PCjr, but is it worth paying current ebay prices for such a machine? Not really, it's just going to be a disappointing PC clone.

Called out, in a friendly way. ; - 0

And yes, there is no doubt that the Tandy 1000 series was a better implementation. The biggest pain in the rear with the PCjr is the memory hole; it just about requires a DOS boot disk with CONFIG.SYS or a booter that is aware that it is running on the PCjr. The Tandy machines did this better by not limiting the shared video memory area to the first 128K. On those machines you still have the advantages of the shared memory and the improvement over CGA, without the dreaded memory hole.

Tandy also had a much better dealer network, and they didn't just drop the machine after the first model. The 1000 series lived on long past the PCjr.

On the other hand, the limits of the PCjr are partially responsible for why I am the programmer I am today. Constantly trying to debug and work around its faults certainly helped my skills.

I'm still looking for an original version (BOX) of Ultima VI.

As a collector of "classic PC's" I'm trying to find :

1. the original Compaq Deskpro 386 - the first pc on that CPU...

2. Kaypro 10 - my father had such a machine in the early 1990s... Also, my first PC was Amstrad PCW8512 - so I'm happy to find any Z80/CP-m machine with green-glowin monitor.

3. ES 1863 - Post-Soviet х-86 desktop with a 386SX CPU. Bellarussian AT clone, were made around 1993-94...)

4. any Aplle-II computer - they are extremely rare and expensive in Russia)

STILL looking for a boxed PAS16 over here. Either my eBay sk1lls really suck or these things are rare.

I've been bumping my forlorn thread over at Amibay since 2014!

badmojo wrote:

STILL looking for a boxed PAS16 over here. Either my eBay sk1lls really suck or these things are rare.

Got one on eBay in last June, boxed and everything for a decent price.
There are generally PAS16s on eBay, but that was the only one I ever saw with a box.

There was another one, boxed and complete a few months back... but the seller never hinted that it was for NUBUS apart from the pictures. Almost fell for it and bought a nice paperweight.