# Vintage computers, game consoles / Collectors?



## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

So do any members here still use old gaming consoles or other old computer systems just for fun?

I was first hooked way back in the early 80s when the Apple II came out. My brothers and I convinced my dad to buy one with two floppy drives, monitor dot matrix printer and joystick. We payed a whopping $2300 for that system!
Fast forward to 1986 and my brother won an Commodore Amiga 500 in a cereal box contest, That really got me hooked and I bought an Amiga 3000Tower in 1989 and upgraded that to The Amiga 4000 that I still own and use today. Games were so much fun back in those days, simple yet you could spend hours playing them (probably why I love the WiiU over any other gaming console). 

In 1992 The Amiga was way ahead of its time in terms of what it could do and was the number two selling computer in the world second only to the Mac. The 4000 was used extensively in television studios as the GoTo production switcher using the Video Toaster/Flyer package that was made by a company called Newtek (who are still around today) It was also the very first powerful 3D rendering computer (using software called Lightwave 3D) to be used by networks to make shows like Stargate, Sliders, Star trek (TNG, Voyager, DS9 and the rest of the spinoffs). Amazing for a system that came with only 2mb of chip RAM for video and 16mb of fast RAM for everything else. It was the very first true multi tasking computer that was available to the masses.

Just last week I fired it up again after it sitting in storage for a couple years and it still works. The non linear video editing still works as well even all 7 of the SCSI hard drives spun up and worked. 

Any body else have stories to tell of systems that still work.


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## Peter Loeser (Aug 11, 2012)

I'm still hanging on to an "ancient" Macbook from 2006. It still works, when it feels like it.

I've been itching lately to get my hands on a Super Nintendo again. It was the first new game console I got as a kid. Come to think of it, the only one. We had a hand-me-down Atari for a while too. We had a blast with both. Like you said, there was just something really appealing about those old games. I remember when the first Playstation was introduced. Nobody could believe computer graphics could be that realistic :gulp:


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## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

Oh for sure  my kids are even fascinated with this old computer.
Here are a photos, one of the two towers that house the Amiga ( I put the A4000 in a tower case because there is much more space) and the tower on top that houses the 7 SCSI drives for video and audio.










And a screenshot of the Workbench desktop










This is what it originally looked like.


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## nash211 (Jul 1, 2009)

tonyvdb said:


> Oh for sure  my kids are even fascinated with this old computer.
> Here are a photos, one of the two towers that house the Amiga ( I put the A4000 in a tower case because there is much more space) and the tower on top that houses the 7 SCSI drives for video and audio.
> 
> 
> ...



Nice that brings back a few memories.


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## Peter Loeser (Aug 11, 2012)

tonyvdb said:


>


With all due respect... you are a geek! 

I remember playing lemonade stand on an Apple II that we inherited somewhere along the line, and a Beetlejuice game on an IBM 486MHz machine my dad built when "PC" was first becoming a household word. What excitement it was going from the old Commodore monochrome monitor to a VGA monitor. Still running DOS though. Those were the days. A middle/high school friend's dad ran a graphic design business and they used Macs. PowerMacs I guess they were called at that point. Before the G3 and G4 and OS X. We used to play Asteroids on them. He had gigantic CRT monitors. And to think, now I carry a device around in my pocket capable of so much more.


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## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

Peter Loeser said:


> With all due respect... you are a geek!



I used my system to do wedding videos, I even did a couple commercials that aired on TV here as well as a few promotional videos and some projects for my daughters at school. It was good money while it lasted, Sadly this system is only NTSC so no HD capabilities so now its just there for fun.


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## Axiomite (Dec 18, 2013)

I still have my Tandy 1000 that I connect sometimes out of nostalgia and play Castle or King's Quest. Original NES also. It's easy to think that such old systems will not work anymore due to age or simply because of the fact that they are far from mainstream anymore. Just because the masses have long forgotten something doesn't mean you can't boot one up still. It does however make the systems a bit useless when you can get those same games from the internet now.


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