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Suggestions for another vintage computer

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linuxlove

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I have a little want for another vintage computer.
The problem is, I currently have 9 desktops systems and two laptops all total and so that takes up a good chunk of space (though I am getting rid of a laptop).
I'd also like to try out something that's not IBM PC based, something like a C64 or Amiga 500?
What would you suggest that's small and doesn't cost an arm and a leg?
 
It depends on what you want it for. A nice machine, for display and occasional use would be the Radio Shack Model 4. If you're interested in also collecting software for the machine, and want to play with it a lot, yes the Amiga 500 or C-64 would be good choices. If you wanted a fascinating machine to fiddle with, a KIM 1 or Rockwell AIM 65 would be cool. A compact machine with 'the works' would be the small Epson HX20 with cassette and printer.
Everybody has their own ideas of just what they want in their stables. Those are just a few ideas :)
A 'small' word of warning. Amigas aren't for everybody. I bought an Amiga 600 back in the day and it had a difficult learning curve, (for me). I couldn't grasp the CLI business well, seemed very cryptic to me. I liked it - and I didn't like it. On the other hand I fell right into DOS and batch files - your mileage may very.
 
I'll have a look at the C64 or Amiga systems.
I'm looking for something that's different than an IBM PC system, so either one of those should do the trick.

The TRS-80 Model 4 looks pretty huge and probably costs a lot to ship.
The KIM-1 and Rockwell AIM 65 systems don't seem too common and as such are out of my (very) limited price range.
 
Yes, both the C64 and the Amiga 500 are cheap, light (for shipping), plentiful and well-supported.

Tez
 
You should also consider its forerunner, the VIC-20. While it is more limited than the C64 is, the two have a lot in common and perhaps feels a bit more "fresh".

There are a lot of Z80 game oriented systems, but most of those might only be found in Japan and Europe, which is a drawback for you. How about a Timex Sinclair 1000 if you want something a bit more primitive?

Then again, both the C64 and Amiga are good mainstream choices with plenty of support. You could also look at the Atari ST series, which might be a bit more floppy disk compatible with a PC than what the Amiga is.
 
PC floppy compatibility is a lot better on an ST than an Amiga, though an Amiga running AmigaDOS 2.0 or later had built in support for MS-DOS floppies. I'll admit Amiga is an acquired taste, but wow, once you like it, you're likely to like it a lot. I'm still bitter about how it all ended. Or didn't end...

Way back when, a 64, Amiga, or ST could all sprawl with the best of 'em, but if you stick with a dual floppy setup they won't be too bad. One way to save space with a 64 is to go with the 1541-II drives, rather than the original 1541s. The 1541-IIs were smaller, not to mention easier to configure for a dual-drive setup. And you could swap in a VIC for the 64 (use the same drives, cabling, and monitor/TV) to essentially get two systems for about the same amount of space that one takes up. Or if you like to tinker and want to save space, skip the drives altogether and set up one of your PCs to emulate a drive for the 64. The software is freely available.

I love the 64 and Amiga, so it's hard to go wrong with either of those. I'm sure the ST is nice too, I've just never owned one.
 
I don't quite understand what makes the Amiga hard to understand. Its desktop is similar to e.g. Mac, and it has a command line input that is quite similar both to DOS and Unix, modulo slightly different syntax sometimes.
 
C64's should be available from freecycle, and there are tons of websites that support it and have free downloads.

What you should do is try a few emulators for those other systems and once you find something interesting get the real hardware. You will not only need money for the original hardware, but misc extra hardware and cables to make them useful. Without a disk drive or games on carts a C64 is pretty useless. Even with a disk drive you need a supply of 5.25" disks and a cable from a pc to the 1541 drive to transfer images.

An amiga realy needs an Amiga monitor to be usefull and a null modem cable (and maybe an external floppy drive) to transfer images.
 
carlsson said:
I don't quite understand what makes the Amiga hard to understand. Its desktop is similar to e.g. Mac, and it has a command line input that is quite similar both to DOS and Unix, modulo slightly different syntax sometimes.
Click to expand...

Just like here in the states, there are some people that swear by Chevy and some that swear by Ford, as their preference. After using a Commodore VIC-20 and then many years with a C-64, I logically moved to an Amiga, while my friends were going with PC's featuring DOS. I was so very used to Commodore BASIC and even was a heavy GEOS user - but the Amiga was a whole new thing. Just as with the Commodore, some people fluidly move from writing programs in BASIC to learning assembly language, but that wasn't for me. I just didn't have the time to invest. Just like GWBASIC was simple after coming from Commodore BASIC, I really shied away from Visual Basic. Hey, where'd my line numbers go :)
The Amiga GUI was fine, similar to GEOS, but the CLI script business was baffling to say the least. I couldn't even find BASIC to program in. It was gone and replaced with some ARexx scripting thing, arrg! Sorry if I appear bull-headed :)
I think it's because the C-64 used a (Commodore owned), MOS 6510 chip, where the Amigas used the Motorola 68000 series chips, like a MAC. Well, I understood the Apple II and it's BASIC, for even it used Commodore made MOS 6502 chips. I've never understood MAC's. I have one, and for the life of me, I can't bring myself to learn all it's idiosyncrasies. It's just too different from DOS and Windows.
The Amiga was that way to me - so different from the Commodores I'd been using, I just didn't want to make the effort to learn all new stuff to accomplish the same stuff I'd been doing, even if it was far more efficient. Does that make any sense? I'm sure there are others out there like me that went from CBM to IBM and just left the MAC's and Amiga's to the 'other guys' :)
I don't want to leave out another 'innovator', Texas Instruments with their own TMS9900 chips for the TI994/A computers. I never had one 'back in the day', but I have several now, and although slow as molasses - it's an easily understood and kind of fun machine.
If you cut your teeth using computers with 6510's, or 6502's, Z80's, and 8088's - the Motorola chips were just too alien, I guess.
I suppose it's not so much the chips as the access to them. With the MOS, Zilog, Intel chips - you got MS BASIC or a form thereof and MS Windows. Whereas with the Motorola 68000's series chips you got the ARexx, AmigaDOS, Mac GUI and the like.
Now, if you 'start' with Motorola - you probably have no trouble, and the logic seems fine. It's when you learn one way (let's call it Microsoft's way), and you try to switch to the Amiga/MAC way - well it's like being right handed and trying to go left :)
Anybody agree that there is a world of difference between computers featuring those chips and operating systems?
I know I'm in a small minority of people that still find regular old BASIC just fine, with it's silly line numbers and slowness - but it's nostalgic and comfortable :)
 
Vint said:
Just like here in the states, there are some people that swear by Chevy and some that swear by Ford, as their preference. After using a Commodore VIC-20 and then many years with a C-64, I logically moved to an Amiga, while my friends were going with PC's featuring DOS. I was so very used to Commodore BASIC and even was a heavy GEOS user - but the Amiga was a whole new thing. Just as with the Commodore, some people fluidly move from writing programs in BASIC to learning assembly language, but that wasn't for me. I just didn't have the time to invest. Just like GWBASIC was simple after coming from Commodore BASIC, I really shied away from Visual Basic. Hey, where'd my line numbers go :)
The Amiga GUI was fine, similar to GEOS, but the CLI script business was baffling to say the least. I couldn't even find BASIC to program in. It was gone and replaced with some ARexx scripting thing, arrg! Sorry if I appear bull-headed :)
I think it's because the C-64 used a (Commodore owned), MOS 6510 chip, where the Amigas used the Motorola 68000 series chips, like a MAC. Well, I understood the Apple II and it's BASIC, for even it used Commodore made MOS 6502 chips. I've never understood MAC's. I have one, and for the life of me, I can't bring myself to learn all it's idiosyncrasies. It's just too different from DOS and Windows.
The Amiga was that way to me - so different from the Commodores I'd been using, I just didn't want to make the effort to learn all new stuff to accomplish the same stuff I'd been doing, even if it was far more efficient. Does that make any sense? I'm sure there are others out there like me that went from CBM to IBM and just left the MAC's and Amiga's to the 'other guys' :)
I don't want to leave out another 'innovator', Texas Instruments with their own TMS9900 chips for the TI994/A computers. I never had one 'back in the day', but I have several now, and although slow as molasses - it's an easily understood and kind of fun machine.
If you cut your teeth using computers with 6510's, or 6502's, Z80's, and 8088's - the Motorola chips were just too alien, I guess.
I suppose it's not so much the chips as the access to them. With the MOS, Zilog, Intel chips - you got MS BASIC or a form thereof and MS Windows. Whereas with the Motorola 68000's series chips you got the ARexx, AmigaDOS, Mac GUI and the like.
Now, if you 'start' with Motorola - you probably have no trouble, and the logic seems fine. It's when you learn one way (let's call it Microsoft's way), and you try to switch to the Amiga/MAC way - well it's like being right handed and trying to go left :)
Anybody agree that there is a world of difference between computers featuring those chips and operating systems?
I know I'm in a small minority of people that still find regular old BASIC just fine, with it's silly line numbers and slowness - but it's nostalgic and comfortable :)
Click to expand...
Amen Brother Vint!
 
At the expense of sounding like a stick in the mud, what do you want to use the "new" computer for? Some systems are pretty boring if you're a game player. Others have great games and very little productivity software. Some others are easy to create new peripherals for; others are interesting to program...you get the idea.

If it's just to have something to sit on a shelf, never used, then pick your most favorite computer and get a photo of it and put that on your shelf. I thought the IBM 7030 STRETCH was pretty cool, but there's no way I'd want a real one. I wouldn't know what to do with it.
 
When I had my Amiga 2000, the only thing I really liked about it was the CLI because it was REXX, a scripting language I had used for many years on the IBM mainframes. I always thought the Amiga GUI was clunky and ugly but the CLI was the best of any personal computer I have ever used.
 
strollin said:
When I had my Amiga 2000, the only thing I really liked about it was the CLI because it was REXX, a scripting language I had used for many years on the IBM mainframes. I always thought the Amiga GUI was clunky and ugly but the CLI was the best of any personal computer I have ever used.
Click to expand...

REXX was also available for the PC line. Somewhere, I've got REXX for OS.2...
 
Chuck(G) said:
REXX was also available for the PC line. Somewhere, I've got REXX for OS.2...
Click to expand...

Indeed it was. But I can't recall a single Amiga program that couldn't be controlled with REXX. REXX became a key part of the Amiga culture. I think most OS/2 apps could be controlled with REXX, but the problem was getting OS/2 apps. REXX on OS/2 didn't help you as much when you were running Windows 3.1 and DOS software.

The Amiga CLI did take some getting used to, since a lot of the commands were different from DOS or Unix. But there were a lot of nice things about it too. You could address your floppies by volume name (label), and not just by the drive name, so the system would find the disk regardless of which floppy drive you put it in. And you could assign the label to a subdirectory on a hard drive or ramdisk if you wanted, so the program could still find itself. Unix's mountpoints accomplish essentially the same thing, it's just a different way of handling it. I think Unix's approach is cleaner if you have a hard drive, and especially if you have multiple hard drives, but the Amiga approach was the nicest multiple-floppy system I've ever seen, and for most of the Amiga's heyday, hard drives were still a luxury.

There were some third-party ports of commands from other common operating systems. I remember loading a port of the Unix ls command, and probably a few others, once I started using Unix in college. Of course I had a lot of exposure to DOS in school too. I think I ended up using some command aliases to mask some of those differences between AmigaDOS and MS-DOS. When I get buried deep in a CLI, sometimes I have trouble remembering what OS I'm running and end up typing commands for the wrong OS. But since I last used an Amiga on an everyday basis in 1997 or so, it's probably been at least decade since I've typed an Amiga command into a PC or a Unix box. :)
 
Yeah but you gotta love a CLI where you get an error and you can actually type "why" and it will explain it. That and if you're young an Amiga 2000 with the built-in speech synthesis is a great time waster.

I agree with Chuck though, the big thing is what do you currently do with your vintage gear? What would you try to do if you got a new system? I would recommend getting something with a built-in basic ROM. C64 is a classic no matter what, although you'll see them going for a bunch here and there I think they're common enough you should still be able to get one for $20. Vic-20 isn't a bad idea either, it has cartridge, tape, and floppy games, built-in basic and if you really use it it'll go far and THEN you could upgrade to the c64 and be happy and experience that too.

The c64 was so mass used though there are tons of games and different apps for it. Quite a cult classic. An Apple IIe or IIc would be a good choice too. The IIe outlived it's successors and is a good significant system with built-in basic and also built-in micro assembler, plus lots of software out there also. Once you get a null modem cable and a serial card (you'll probably find one with one) you can also recreate disks from the PC as well.
 
Since it hasn't been mentioned yet, may I suggest the Atari 800XL as a decent choice for 'another' good vintage computer. Tons of software is available for it, and it still sells pretty cheaply.

You'll note my avatar is an Atari 1050 floppy drive with a 5.25" disk sitting on top :)
 
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I think I'll try out a C64. If I don't like it, I may try out some of the other computer suggestions listed here.
 
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