Issue 26: Dec 2002
Features
- | Foreword
- | ARAnyM: Atari Running on Any Machine
- | Tip of the day
- | The Future of Atari Computing
- | Back There...
- | MyIDE Interface Part 2
- | Christmas Labels
- | Pulsar: Pulse to a different drummer
- | Atari UK 3
- | Festive Networking
- | A Room with a View
News
M@ilbox
| Tip of the day Mamma Mia! The overwhelming squalor of David Wyn Davies' computer room takes the proverbial biscuit and dunks it in the sewer. Surely this was deliberately messed up for the camera? Closer inspection seems to confirm it's definitely the real deal though. Hats off to David for a superb tip, it's as fascinating as it's disorientating!
David pretending to be at work.
This shows my main Atari XL computing console. As you can see, the computer likes to read about itself (it's rather egotistical).
This shows the mess I have to contend with. Here are two ST disk drawers doing what comes natural... Err...
Here we see the entire desk (almost). It's just two kitchen units put at either end of the room with a kitchen worktop on top. What you don't see is the uneven cut that splits the worktop in two when we couldn't get it around the banister at the top of the stairs. So out came my trusty new saw! For video-gaming afficionados, there's a nice 1984 Vectrex unit (working ever since I bought it 18 years ago) to the left where the Mega 1 usually sits. That's been lent to my sister for her to do some college work but she's just "inherited" my parents' old PC and printer so I should be seeing the machine again soon. What you don't see to the left of the Vectrex is an ST CD-ROM drive and a 500 MB ST hard drive.
This is what the inside of one of the kitchen units looks like. More ST disks than you can shake a disk at. There are also several more boxes in the landing at the top of the stairs and in the bedroom! Anyone short on disks?
Note: Picture should be rotated by 90 degrees clockwise. (Do you honestly think anyone can tell what way up any of these are, David?! - Ed) Here we see the wall units on the other side of the room containing some 2600 systems and a few games. There are many more games in the bedroom.
Under the desk is a CSS Black Box unit that was given to me, along with a hard drive and a couple of floppy drives. All for the 8-bit. Sadly, it doesn't work. One day I'll get round to getting it fixed.
More Atari gear and a couple of Spectrums can be seen at the top of the wall unit. The Atari box contains an ST. Several have been lent out to make room!
Inside the other kitchen unit is even more gear! A couple of Jaguars, 8-bit systems and 2600/7800 consoles.
This is the floor directly behind the chair. At least I assume there's a floor. I'm too afraid to move them to find out.
Here is another close-up view of the main work area. Here you have a few bits 'n' bobs including an opened XL, a couple of stripped Speccy PCBs and... wait for it... a rare Issue One 16 KB Spectrum at the top-right corner complete with hand-drawn PCB. Sadly it hasn't worked since 1983 when I beat it to death. Beneath all this are numerous ICs and other bits that I managed to cadge off the likes of Maxim and National Semiconductor for nowt. One day I'll use them for something.
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