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Well I jumped headfirst into Amiga hell after buying a claimed-good 500 locally. North America is like 3+ weeks eBay shipping away from anything, so I’ve owned this thing for half a month now and I can’t verify it even works until my RGB-SCART cable arrives from middle of nowhere Germany, along with my Gotek. I pulled the trapdoor 512k expansion and desoldered the battery but I guess time will tell whether the board is dead or not. I was ready to play old games but the waiting game wasn’t one of them  Hopefully it’s a good news story because I’ve got Amiga games on the brain. Still need to source a good joystick.
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Feb 28, 2021 04:08
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You Am I posted:Here's a nice cheap way of having a SD Card HDD on a 500, which don't come with IDE or SCSI on board: I’ve got a Gotek in the mail but I’m already thinking down the road for some sort of more permanent storage so this is intriguing, thanks! Other than the Gotek I’m trying to keep this one as stock as I can so this is a great option for that too. I also ordered an A500++ motherboard PCB that I’ll try to assemble this summer (and hopefully the A1200NET A500 case run will be available to the public by then. That one I plan to deck out with an accelerator, HDMI output, and throw internal storage into for some WHDLoader action and generally to muck around as a retrobattlestation. The Voice of Labor posted:mister fpga does a pretty good fpga amiga emulation. This would ultimately have been a much more economical solution but I’ve got this notion in my head that I want to own the actual hardware. Thankfully the Amiga is the only retro computing hole I’ve fallen down other than my SE/30 
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Feb 28, 2021 14:44
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Got my Gotek in and immediately regretting not just going the "external" route. It looks so janky in my A500. I should have bought the DF0/DF1 toggle board while I was on the site. Don't even need to worry about routing a select cable out of the case as I doubt I'll ever actually use the legit floppy drive as DF0. That said, I'd need to find an external floppy enclosure for the Amiga first so I guess I'd have to wait either way. E: OK well 30 seconds rummaging through the University’s e-waste bin has me optimistic I can right this visual calamity 
some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Mar 2, 2021 |
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Mar 2, 2021 18:27
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The Kins posted:A good friend of mine wrote a lengthy article about some real weird PC game boxes, and the designer who created them, that I think a bunch of people in this thread will get a kick out of. The Spectre box make me crave some panettone all of a sudden.
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Mar 4, 2021 13:34
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I got a few bits in today: A Tom v2 USB mouse adapter A Dsub 23-15 VGA adapter I found a fairly modern 22” Dell LCD that can sync 15khz and can be forced into 4:3/5:4 mode at a local thrift shop last week to tide me over until I can decide what my endgame retro display is going to be. Plugged the mouse and video in and it was such a pleasure to finally see the A500 come to life. Gaudy as it may be, I kind of want to add a VGA scanline injector between the Amiga and the LCD to take some of the crispness off the video.
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Mar 11, 2021 04:03
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EBay is flooded with Chinese OSSC knockoffs now so the price seems to be coming down slightly from when I bought my genuine article a few years ago. If you have the space for a rack mount scan converter and don’t need HDMI I guess that the old Sony might be a decent option though.
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Mar 13, 2021 14:11
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I always understood that they would send a weird pseudo NTSC or PAL if you forced them to their non-native encoding. Like a PAL Amiga would send PAL60 and an NTSC amiga would send NTSC50.
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Mar 18, 2021 18:04
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Man, what a bummer, looks like my A501 did get trashed by the battery leakage (workbench reports nothing aside from on-board 512k). Replacements are plentiful and cheap but the most annoying thing is that just about everything is shipped slow-boat from Europe so yet another two weeks of waiting. I'm not sure if it's the lovely A501 which I guess I need to remove now, but I've had a terrible time just loading up random ADFs. 3/4 of them just hang after the screne intro or throw a "Software Failure" blinking screen. Granted my sample size has been ridiculously low since I've only just now started playing with it in earnest. Maybe I'm just finding crappy corrupted ADFs or something. I guess I should also not rule out that there may be something wrong with the Amiga 500 in general, but so far nothing screams trouble.
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Mar 23, 2021 15:53
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I’m sorry for your loss but it’s pretty rad that you have this cool stuff as an extra memory of him now.
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Mar 23, 2021 22:12
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I blame RetroManCave >:|
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Mar 31, 2021 12:18
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Man that would be so ace if someone could come up with a wedge shaped all-in-one keyboard case for it. I’d be all over a modern Laser Compact XT-style DOS box.
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Apr 17, 2021 00:38
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I think it’s probably that the tooling required to make molds is not insignificant compared to the potential payoff. Like I don’t think there’s enough demand for DIY mini-PCs to make it worthwhile. Though I guess if you made it modular enough where you can make a standard mount and make adapters for RPi, MISTer, or PC/104 available to 3D print and make it clear that “you’re just getting a standard keyboard layout shaped punchout” for a self-provided keyboard PCB then maybe you could get a small market for these. I’d be all about that. Like it’s taking the A1200NET guys an age to get the A500 case out (obv because of COVID and things too) and that’s just one use, though it does have the components I mentioned above where you can pop in a RPi or Vampire or actual A500(+/++) board if you want.
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Apr 17, 2021 15:02
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That is so rad. Makes me wish I hadn't ditched my old FDM printer :[
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Apr 17, 2021 18:17
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Bonobos posted:I’m aware that the bone stock Amiga a1200 has no battery to leak, but is it generally recommended to switch out the caps on the machine even if the machine is currently working fine? What do you want to do with it, is the real question I guess. If you just want to play Amiga games then they were all designed for that era hardware so IMO just stick with what you have (but I guess more memory and a bigger hd for WHDload would be useful). If you just want to build the most powerful A1200 you can for the sake of a fun project then that's different and there's like a hundred ways you can branch off.
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Apr 26, 2021 20:19
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NP, also I should qualify that while games were designed for hardware of the time there are obviously SOME games that will definitely see benefits from a faster processor. I can’t think of a specific title off the top of my head, but there is for sure one that is always used as a visual indicator of better 3D framerates in a bunch of YouTube videos. I don’t really know the state of A1200 accelerators, but if you can find a single board that will give you more fast/chip RAM *and* a 2-3x CPU boost then I mean it’s probably a no brainer. But if you want to piecemeal your upgrades then I’d probably prioritize RAM and storage first. My plan is to do nothing with the A500 until I can get a decent accelerator that will do all three (RAM, CPU, IDE). Until then I’m just enjoying games with the GoTek  I’m also VERY MUCH a “come lately” to the Amiga so I 100% defer to anyone with more experience to give advice.
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Apr 27, 2021 03:50
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I find myself in need of a PPC Mac with a SCSI port to interface with a specific piece of old hardware. Having a really hard time deciding between a Wallstreet G3 because I can just slam the lid down and stow it away nice and compact when I'm not using it 364 days of the year, but on the other hand I've always wanted an old beige tower G3 because I've never owned a beige Mac that wasn't my SE/30. The perils of retro collecting I'll probably go with the laptop just because I don't really want to deal with a monitor and keyboard and can't really spare the extra space 
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Oct 25, 2021 20:15
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Oh neat, I wasn't sure these existed. That's pretty cool. My minimalist heart says I'll probably still end up with the Wallstreet but this is a really good option to know about.
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Oct 25, 2021 21:34
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legooolas posted:You could probably also use a G4 PowerBook with a PCMCIA SCSI card if any are supported in MacOS 9 on that? (Looks like the Adaptec 1480 Slim is, from a quick Googling, but I've not used that myself) Just in case you already have other similar hardware or could use a quicker OS9 machine for more stuff later. Man this is a really good call, actually. I was about to pull the trigger on a Wallstreet but now maybe TiBook for collector’s value. Ah geez, options.
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Oct 26, 2021 00:28
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I mean value is relative but I gather it is one of the more sought after PPC portables. It is probably the best OS9-capable portableyou can get without messing with weird Aluminum G4 hacks. E: I mean it is worthless and I will dispose of it as a personal favour to you.
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Oct 27, 2021 00:14
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Anyone have any hot tips for an ADB to MIDI adapter? I have a hankering to install Cubase on my SE/30.
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Nov 13, 2021 05:13
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I threw out ADB but I probably meant Serial so good catch. Good lead to start on, thanks!
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Nov 13, 2021 17:07
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Unrelated to MIDI discussion above, does anyone know of an OS9 app to make a tool-independent binary image of a floppy disk? Whatever the OS9 equivalent of doing a dd dump in linux would be. My G3 Powerbook is the only machine I have left with a floppy drive and I want to back up a stack of physical media I just found. I've had very poor luck with USB floppy drives so I guess if I can do it on this actual drive that's ideal. I actually bought a greaseweazel a while back which is probably exactly what I SHOULD be using, but it's stuck in shipping limbo somewhere so maybe I can get by with the next best thing. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Nov 16, 2021 |
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Nov 16, 2021 14:29
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Thanks for the assist on this one! My weird 90s sound sample collection will live thanks to you
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Nov 16, 2021 18:48
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What’s the hotness for cleaning 3.5” floppy heads these days? I have a project to binary dump a ton of Akai sample floppies coming up. Want to make sure that both the drive I’m using to dump is clean, given I pulled a bunch of them from an e-waste bin, but also would love to clean the drives in both my Akai samplers regardless since I have no real desire to upgrade them to goteks. Prepared to hear the answer is something invasive like disassembly and cotton buds on a stick, but I’d rather not pull things apart just yet. I might not have much of a choice if I have to clean and grease the linear bearings eventually but just the same I’d rather do that later since all the drives seem to be working well mechanically. E: Oh eh uh, I didn’t realize this was the retro gaming thread and not general retro. Though if there’s no better place to ask I’ll leave my question in here. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Nov 23, 2021 |
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Nov 23, 2021 03:44
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Do you have a parallel port? If so maybe something like this would work? https://www.serdashop.com/S2P
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Nov 23, 2021 17:56
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e: nvm I should be doing my own research
some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Dec 1, 2021 |
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Dec 1, 2021 14:19
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I've got an A500 that's collecting dust because I'm frustrated with video display options. I should just invest in that RGB2HDMI raspberry pi board mod and call it a day tbh. Also have an A500++ that I am waiting for parts shortage to finish assembling. Who knew that 2021 would be the year that common components are harder to source than old Amiga chipsets. But the upside here is that maybe by the time they all come back in stock the A500 replica cases kickstarter I've been following will have finally made it to tooling. I didn't manage to get in on the first KS but if they're investing in all this tooling I'm praying they just start small runs to consumers at some point. I've scavenged most of the components from various dead A500 motherboards I've sniped on eBay over the past year and change so it'll be nice to finally put a bow on that project. What I'd really love is an A500+++ that takes the A500 motherboard layout and integrates a few bespoke mods directly onto the motherboard. Like maybe integrating that HDMI raspberry pi header right on board, or one of the terrible fire accelerators or something. I love the idea of a mostly original motherboard with OEM components but re-engineered to be plug and play with modern updates.
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Dec 21, 2021 13:56
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What's the least hassle way to get HDMI out of a stock Amiga 500 without butchering any plastic? Is it still something like RGBtoHDMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8brkYFoO9I with maybe a flat ribbon cable with HDMI port on either side and slide that through the 500's top vents to an external box or hanging adapter for a somewhat seamless exit? I'm also considering using a PiStorm to get RAM expansion & disk capability on my 500 for cheap. Kind of amusing that I might have two devices in the Amiga 500 soon which are like much much more powerful than the device they're assisting  I don't particularly care about speed increases for the 500, but the PiStorm seems to be the cheapest way to get a hard disk in there so I can stop futzing with ADFs and my gotek.
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Jan 5, 2022 15:20
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Good info, thanks! Yeah, HDload is one of my goals, but the other is I just want to boot and have my trackers and samples and things handy without worrying about flipping disks often so mostly just quality of life. Gaming is one thing I want to use this for, but I'd like it to be a "working" Amiga for music production and MIDI tracking, where I'm hoping for more of a plug and play approach rather than fiddling with ADF images. I might still opt for one of the TF expansions just for ease of operation TBH, they're just a little pricey for impulse buys -- especially now with tech shortages etc. w/r/t Zero soldering: I had the EXACT same issue flowing the GPIO pins on my Zero W2 I am using for my RaSCSI -- they just won't take. Eventually I fluxed them up enough, cranked up the heat, and added enough leaded solder that they look "acceptable" but there was something about that specific solder job that gave me more trouble than ANY I'd done in the past five years since I started soldering on the reg. Not sure what it was, but after I was finished I was like.. "man, do I actually know how to solder or what is going on here?" some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 14:35 on Jan 10, 2022 |
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Jan 10, 2022 14:32
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My own personal experience with 20+ years being a computer toucher has left me with an inescapable bias against uncleanly cutting power to a running Linux system in any way, shape or form, and that’s honestly something that’s been keeping me from just slapping a PiStorm in from day one. I’m fighting that bias every time I have to implement a Pi for anything IoT or embedded where a hard power-cut is a possibility so it’s not just the PiStorm. I think given the price it’s probably the fastest and cheapest route to get me to a working octamed “workstation” A500, and I guess if I’m really that concerned about SD corruption I can just route the SD card out to the expansion bay with a flatflex SD extender to replace it if it ever goes tits up without having to pry the whole thing apart  This is definitely one of those cases where I’m probably making a big deal out of nothing, and waiting for a better solution is keeping me from just doing the available/cheap thing and dealing with any side effects down the road in the event they happen. But I mean that’s basically me in a nutshell
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Jan 28, 2022 13:39
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You Am I posted:Maybe places like AmigaStore.eu ( https://amigastore.eu/en/3-amiga-1200 ) can get you most of the parts you need to build an A1200, however I have yet to see a third party motherboard made for them, unlike the A500, 2000, 3000 and 4000. I think another issue is most of the chips on an A1200 (same for A600) were soldered directly on the board, not socketed. I believe the CIAs are particular to the A1200, so you can't just swap in an earlier Amiga's parts. There’s an unpopulated clone PCB right on the page you linked, but I think most of what you say rings true. I’m quarter way through collecting the BOM for my A500++ and it’s been a nightmare of scouring old dead boards on eBay and paying ridiculous chip markups. I’m at the point where I actually regret starting, but I’ve already collected most of the rare ICs, connectors, and components so I may as well see it through. Chip shortage is making all the OTHER parts annoying to source now, so it’ll probably be a bit before I finish it. Ideally the A500 reproduction cases will have finally become available from that kickstarter group.
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Feb 22, 2022 03:07
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I got an Atari ST 520 with a 1040 mobo for the price of shipping, but the catch is that the floppy drive is non functional or at least “wonky”. Presumably the fact that the mobo and case are mismatch means it’s open to more speculation about condition but the fact that I got it for free plus ship means I can afford to take a gamble. Anyway assuming it’s not a mobo problem I have plenty of spare Goteks to throw in there, but I DO have a few 1.44mb floppies I’d like to try and read so a working HD drive would be useful, at least for a few days. General googling seems to say that I can use most any standard PC drive right now, but should be careful about disk corruption if I swap disks and don’t refresh the directory because standard floppy drives won’t send a proper disk change signal. Is this an accurate reading of what’s up, or is there some big nuance I’m missing because I’m just now starting to read about Ataris. In any event, excited to see this baby pump out MIDI with Cubase, and the floppies I want to investigate are marked Cubase so I’d be curious to see if they have someone’s song projects 
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Feb 24, 2022 22:50
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If your use case is more intricate than "I want to plug it in and see contents in explorer" you might want to consider a standard internal shugart floppy drive and a USB greaseweazle. A lot of (or possibly all?) USB drives won't give you low level access to the hardware so if you want to do anything like binary dumps of the disk you might be out of luck. I used my GW to do flux dumps of a ton of old floppies I inherited and it was super painless, disk errors aside. But tbh if they were dos formatted I could just as easily have dragged the files off, which would have been easier But if you just want to ka-chunk a floppy in and drag some files around, a USB is probably fine. And also I might not know what I'm talking about and be entirely wrong
some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 11:56 on Jun 7, 2022 |
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Jun 7, 2022 11:53
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Not sure if there's a more relevant thread, but for anyone looking to get in on the new-old-stock of NABU Z80 hardware, the original seller just put more up yesterday. Snagged one this morning. https://www.ebay.ca/itm/394456877962
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Feb 11, 2023 15:01
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It’s a fairly recent development in the retro space IIRC. Originally it was a Canadian set-top-box in the 80s, fairly similar to the MSX. A good amount of the games (my understanding) have now been archived and are available via a “network emulator” you can hook the original hardware into. I was big into following when the stock first dropped on eBay but since I missed out on the first wave I kind of dropped off. Looks like it has a lot of progress behind it, but ultimately it’s a fairly limited use case once you have all the existing games. Expecting some new games will be ported to it, but it seems like one of those things that will be fairly niche going forward. A floppy controller board has now been reverse engineered and is in testing, CP/M boots over the network, games can be served to it from the emulator and from an online adapter IIRC. I jumped on this just because once the original stock is gone there won’t be any more, though presumably it’ll get a MiSTer core or MAME core at some point soon. E: ADB did a pretty good video on it, and there’s a guy who’s constantly uploading little 5-10 min progess videos he’s making on the emulator. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLYjZoShjy0 some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Feb 11, 2023 |
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Feb 11, 2023 16:18
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One HUUUUUNDRED percent the reason I am now $200CDN poorer. But rich in
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Feb 11, 2023 22:00
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TheMadMilkman posted:Well the NABU looks to be sold out. Which is honestly for the best for me. I don’t have the space, and I have a full set of Commodore machines (PET, VIC20, C64, and Amiga 500) that cover the history of early gaming pretty well. The good news is that the seller is batching these out, apparently has 800-something, so there’s definitely more to come. They’re just pacing the sales to have a realistic chance of shipping these in a sensible manner. The bad news is that the seller is batching these out, apparently has 800-something, so there’s definitely more to come I pretty much agree with folks, the NABU is probably inconsequential in the retro scene, pretty niche, but I’m now justifying it by preserving my national computing heritage  — that sounds much better than “I want it because FOMO”
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Feb 12, 2023 15:43
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 Mine just shipped, so I grabbed that RS422 USB adapter until I can figure out a way to elegantly shove a RasPi with some kind of RS422 hat inside the thing to negate extra cables/etc.
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Feb 21, 2023 14:43
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So I never actually played A-Train back in the day and now all I can think when I see it is that it looks like Transport Tycoon Deluxe minus all the other modes of transport.. I still fire up OpenTTD every now and then; One of my favourite games.
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Feb 27, 2023 01:19
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Same. Even the box from the 80s is in pristine condition. I’m so conflicted recycling it, even though I don’t have room for a box lying around doing nothing 
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Mar 2, 2023 22:27
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