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Good morning! Welcome back to the ValorosoIT channel, the channel dedicated to vintage computers and electronics. For the first time on the ValorosoIT channel, Karl Voltolini, otherwise known as Vintanerd. You can also find him on Facebook, if you are interested.
What do you want to talk to us about?
Well, then, today we are here, I thank Amedeo for the invitation to this event, which is very well attended, I must say, very fun: Varese Retrocomputing 2024, here it is! So many people asking for information, trying... more than trying, trying! Then they stop with the joystick in their hands and you have to explain to them how to proceed.
Because we are here on the table dedicated to a myth of the 80s: Ghostbusters, the film. An image phenomenon that then clearly also arrives on the computers of the time, on various computers of the time, in various portings. Here we go, let's take a quick overview. These are some of the machines on which the Ghostbusters game was ported, and I thank Davide Giuffrida for the MSX2, which is a slightly more recent machine, but on which Ghostbusters, in its version identical to the original, runs and was ported. Then we have a ZX Spectrum, the Commodore 64, which is the machine on which the game was developed in the first place: it was born on this platform.
I remember this one very well, because I played Ghostbusters a lot as a child.
Oh yes, yes, yes. And the great thing is that I went as a teenager to watch the film at the cinema, and then I came home, and with the exchanges that were made... I send you a floppy with some games from my list and you send me a floppy with some games from your list that I choose... I finally managed to get hold of the game and I played it countless times. I remember that there were also these shops that sold you copied, pirated floppies, maybe they asked for 5,000 lire per disk and inside you could choose what you wanted. I think I found Ghostbusters in one of those.
It was a good game. It amused me.
Because you were lucky enough to be in a more populated area - towards Milan - where there were also shops like this. Up in Trento, in Trentino-Alto Adige, you made your beautiful envelope with your beautiful diskette and hoped that the other person would send you the diskette, because you could also send one and receive nothing. It's never happened to me, but it could have happened. Well, all honest people, I must say, I have always found all honest people.
Last in line is an Apple II. Am I wrong, or do you have a thing for these computers?
Yes, I have a soft spot for the Apple II, and I don't know why. I wasn't born with an Apple II at home, I was born with a Vic-20 first, then a Commodore 64. I remember, just before my parents bought me the Commodore 64, after having bored them for months and months, there was an Apple dealer near my house who had just put an Apple IIe on display, with double the price... not this one, the next model. Okay. With double floppy disk drive and green phosphor monitor. There wasn't a price, eh! And we know why he wasn't there.
Well, one day I didn't just look at it in the window and dream, I also went in, asked the price and I remember walking out a bit like a beaten dog. You said: They'll never buy this from me! No, because this person told me: The complete Apple II system costs several million lire. I still remember it.
Yes, at the time they had absurd costs. Then, I guess, particularly Apple for obvious reasons. So okay, that was my only intersection with these realities and then I started working in an IBM dealership a few years later. So something completely different.
I discovered this world by chance, buying one cheaply, 5-6 years ago.
Ok, so your dream has been on the back burner for n-thousand years?
Exact. Then, at a certain point, you woke up, you saw: Damn! There's this here, now I can afford it! I'm finally working!. But yes, come on, let's get it!
The great thing is that, when I turned on these machines, I immediately felt familiar, because, oh well, accustomed to the history of IBM, then IBM compatibles, PS/2, 286, 386, 486, Pentium, etc., here we find several of the principles that underlie the machines that we know much better.
For example, slots: do they need things? Cards are added. There are a series of slots, not a measly slot like in computers of this kind (Commodore 64). But even machines like, for example, the Amiga 500 and the Amiga 600, yes, they only had one expansion. Even the Atari Mega, which despite being nice and full-bodied, has only one slot, all of its own, inside. Here we have a series of slots: do you need a disk controller for the disks? Let's add the tab. Do you need a sound card? Let's add the tab. Do you need a modem? Let's add the tab. A parallel port, a serial port? Let's add the tabs. All things that we then find in the IBM family, which has evolved to the present day.
Another thing: we have a floppy disk, should we insert a nice operating system diskette into it? The machine turns on and boots from the floppy disk, which then becomes normal, becomes a fact, but at the time it absolutely wasn't. Being able to boot even with the Commodore 64: insert the diskette, then type the LOAD command and load afterwards. Exact. This type of machine, I stress, is not a game machine. That is, just look: it's the same game, regardless of whether it's in color or black and white, there's an interesting soundtrack, here there's no audio, even if you add an additional sound card, there's no audio, and much more. However, in my opinion, here we have before us the progenitor of professional computers, which started with the triad together with the Commodore PET, TRS-80, then evolved, in my opinion it still remains a machine more for, as we would say today, small business, which is the small and medium-sized business of the time that wants the computer for warehouse management, accounting or to use a tool, which was innovative at the time at the time, which was VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet. The current Microsoft Excel.
Exactly, exactly, exactly. Who among us today doesn't use Excel, even in a banal way, to do a series of sums, or some slightly more complex operation? Let's leave aside those who create macros and pivot tables, who are already power-users, but everything comes from machines like this. Today, this type of machine has little following in Italy, objectively, because it was already not very widespread at the time, mainly due to costs, but also for many other reasons. However, outside of Italy, there is a little something, in France, more than anything else in the United States and the United Kingdom, there are large communities of users and there are several small companies that still produce new expansion cards for these machines today. An example is a small Canadian company, which makes a 10 Mbit Ethernet card, that's good, and so you can network them. That's right, Ethernet connection, RJ45. It is a machine from the early '80s, but if you also want the previous version from the late '70s, today it can be on an Ethernet network with a TCP/IP stack, not with the usual serial modem. So, a car that I like because it's fun that never ends: you get to know it, you use it, you open it, you look on eBay, you find a new coupon that you've never seen, maybe a coupon that costs even 20-25-30 euros. You say: Come on, I'll try it!. An image acquisition card? I'll try it, come on!. Then I look for the driver, then I attach an old camera to it, then I see if it works. Now, it's endless fun. But, again, for games... maybe it's better to use something else. It's not so much for gamers, but more for geeks. Exactly, exactly.
Then this specific model, you were telling me, is 110 V, not 220, or am I wrong? Yes, this is a model that arrived in Italy from the United States. It's a US version, the whole thing. He was brought to Italy by a soldier who was assigned to an Italian base. He married an Italian, had a daughter, and at a certain point he needed the child's computer for school. He said: No, no, no, I'm bringing it from the United States! and it came here to us. By now the little girl will be our age, maybe even older! Maybe something more… And then it came to you. He used it very little, I must say, because even if you look at the keyboard, the details... I think it wasn't really to his taste, let's put it that way. Ok, maybe he's not in IT now. Exact. Or maybe yes, but who knows on what car!
So it has its own little particular story: from the United States to Northern Italy, for love and work. So, thanks so much Karl, Vintanerd, on Facebook. Thank you! For those interested in retrocomputers and vintage electronics, you can subscribe to the channel and activate the notification bell. See you in the next video. HI! HI!