The Retro Collective

What is an Apple Mac? From the Apple Mac pro to the Mac Mini to the Mac Air these are easily identifiable devices in the modern day but this wasn't always so. Today we discover why Apple allowed Officially Licensed Macintosh clones in the '90s? We're going to look at some examples from my collection and we'll explore the history behind the decisions made by Apple at the time, and why the idea came crashing to an end.

The new YouTube studio is huge and we've got so much to do to create the perfect production space, exhibition, editing suite and podcast recording area, all within the budget available thanks to the wonderful supporters of the channel. Today we're building walls, upcycling furniture and talking lighting.

Did European gamers miss out with PAL 50hz gaming on the #Sega Megadrive? Did our NTSC cousins have all the fun at 60hz in the USA and beyond? Let's find out as we tear down and mod the Sega console to region mod it, then compare the difference with some gameplay captures.

Trip Hawkins is a video game pioneer whose experience dates back to the very birth of the industry. An employee of Apple Computers reporting to Steve Jobs with a big idea for the video games industry, but not until the time was right to strike. And when he did he created one of the most valuable and well recognised game publishers on the planet. In our chat today we cover EA, The 3DO Company, the competition and what makes up the man with the vision and drive to create it all.

The Commodore Amiga CDTV, or Commodore CDTV as it was originally known is a bit of retro tech that I've wanted to research and restore for decades. This new Trash to Treasure ™ series does just that. This old computer sounds odd at first, appearing like a hifi music system it wouldn't look out of place sat on a VCR in your living room. But inside it's a full-blown Commodore Amiga 500 with extra bells and whistles. Designed to compete with similar devices such as the Philips CDi, the CDTV was championed by Atari VCS and Atari founder Nolan Bushnell and released in 1991. Dive into some more computer history and vintage computer restoration with me for the start of a new T2T series.

Building the Colossal Cave continues today as RMC becomes a DIY channel for the week and we venture into DIY room decor once again. I try to create my dream retro tech space and YouTube studio. A new home for you, the Cave Dwellers to enjoy and visit. We'll be undertaking more reclaimed wood projects including upcycled workbenches and tables, laying garage flooring, building walls and cladding walls, moving furniture and boxes from the old Cave, varnishing walls and a whole lot more. I'm especially pleased with the reclaimed scaffold workbenches and big box game shelving I'm hoping to mount above them. The end goal is to create the perfect retro gaming room and retro computer room for you to visit or enjoy videos and streaming from if you're too far away for a visit. I hope you like what I've done with the place!

It's finally here in The Cave, the light gun that promises to end all of our problems. Light gun games are a special gaming genre. I've always been a huge fan of them, especially light gun arcade games like Time Crisis, Mad Dog McCree and Point Blank. Light gun signals from classic devices which require a CRT are not compatible with modern displays and solutions such as the Aimtrak Light Gun just haven't felt up to the job of delivering an arcade perfect light gun experience. In my Sinden Lightgun review today we find out it works as well as the prototype we first saw in 2019 on a range of arcade emulators including American Laserdiscs classic shooting games.

CDTV repairs are the order of the day today. How do we take the CDTV apart, does it go back together!? And how do we repair the CDTV CDROM drive? In this RMC Trash to Treasure restoration series I'm hoping to get to the bottm of all these questions and with any luck, have a working Commodore Amiga CDTV at the end of it! We're also joined by Jane Whittaker for an interview from a developers perspective and some fun stories of Commodore history.

All in one arcade sticks are everywhere. Fight sticks, arcade sticks, joypads and joysticks with thousands of built in game ROMS and emulators from Street Fighter to Mortal Kombat. But are they any good? Today we visit such a device, a Pandora arcade stick for two players and Mark and I give it a test drive, a review and a tear down. You'll find these on Amazon or Ebay under names including Kulukula 3003, TAPDRA 3D, ZEHNHASE 3D and MEANSMORE but they are all the same stick.

Richard Kay is a founder of Software Creations, one of the most innovative British game studios of the '80s and '90s. Famous for conversions such as Bubble Bobble and Bionic Commando from Taito, Capcom and other big name arcade machine creators of the era Richard and his team created the games others said weren't possible. Early success forged a partnership with Nintendo and a series of firsts for a games company outside of Japan in their relations with the big N.

What did the CDTV evolve to become? Today I look at the story of the Commodore CDTV from set-top box to fully fledged desktop computer. We upgrade my CDTV using some modern upgrades to see if we can make it into a more useful device, and we explore some of the original CDTV titles. You've probably seen "The Town with No Name" over on AVGN, but it gets a lot worse!

Building the Colossal Cave continues today as RMC becomes a DIY channel for the week and we venture into DIY room decor once again. I try to create my dream retro tech space and YouTube studio. A new home for you, the Cave Dwellers to enjoy and visit. We'll be undertaking more reclaimed wood projects including upcycled workbenches and tables, ,building walls and cladding walls, securing our scaffold workbench and making it even larger! The end goal is to create the perfect retro gaming room and retro computer room for you to visit or enjoy videos and streaming from if you're too far away for a visit. I hope you like what I've done with the place!

The Atari 2600, originally known as the Atari VCS is an iconic video games console and always deserved to be restored when one comes to RMC. Today we have a bucket of Atari VCS which needs to be cleaned, restored, tested and repaired. We learn how to clean metal switches, how to restore black plastics and how to restore paint from the bezel which is so often missing. We also throw in some mods and take it for a test drive.

Unboxing retro tech is one of my favourite things to do, especially when retro games and Apple goodies are in the generous pile of donations you've been so kind to send in. Ebay purchases also feature as I've been doing a little of my own ebay buying and selling this month to fuel my video game addiction. Enjoy!

The Amstrad CPC was my first ever computer, a British 8bit classic that found popularity home and abroad, especially in France and Spain. A machine that is steeped in nostalgia and retro computer memories for me, but like all old computers, they are slowly failing. We can spend all our time recapping, repairing and restoring them, but sometimes you just want a reliable retro gaming experience, and that's where the Just CPC4ATX comes in. Let's take a look at what it is. Please note: No Amstrads were harmed in the making of this board. The creator has asked me to highlight that only NOS (New Old Stock) chips were used, CPC's were not sacrificed for its creation.

The Sharp X68000 Expert is a firm favourite here in The Cave. A workstation used by gaming greats such as Capcom and Taito to create huge arcade hits, and as a result it is home to some of the most perfect arcade game ports. It is of course a hugely capable workstation computer as well, but that's a bit difficult to explore when you don't speak Japanese! Today I face the challenges of using a Japanese exclusive machine here in the UK and figuring out how to make it accessible to visitors to The Cave.

The ZX Spectrum, the low cost British micro computer from Sir Clive Sinclair which took the UK and many other countries by storm in the '80s. The later +2 model was released by Alan Sugar's Amstrad when he bought the rights to the Sinclair computer division, and that's what we're dealing with today. A machine that needs a lot of TLC inside and out, and Mark and I are set to tackle it today with a full restoration.

Another month, another push to build the Colossal Cave today as RMC becomes a DIY channel for the week and we venture into DIY room décor once again. I try to create my dream retro tech space and YouTube studio. A new home for you, the Cave Dwellers to enjoy and visit. Today we're building and hanging a door, building bars, hanging lights and doing a huge amount of tidying and organising. The end goal is to create the perfect retro gaming room and retro computer room for you to visit or enjoy videos and streaming from if you're too far away for a visit. I hope you like what I've done with the place!

The Acorn Electron ticked almost all of the low cost computer boxes, a solid keyboard, a tried and tested CPU, a great BASIC and a hungry audience, but it just didn't catch a break against the strength of the ZX Spectrum sales and missing its Christmas release date cost it dearly. That's not to say we shouldn't give it some TLC though. In today's restoration we revive it inside and out in a joint effort to take this computer from Trash to Treasure.

A Pi Storm is coming! This Raspberry Pi based retro accelerator for the Commodore Amiga promises to deliver everything you could possibly want. Acceleration, SCSI hard disk emulation, RTG, RAM and a lot more all for the low price of a Pi and the PiStorm PCB. But does it live up to the promises? Here's my first impression of the new project.

Game developers don't come much more legendary than Brenda and John Romero. From Wizardry to Doom, Commander Keen to Quake, between them they have over 80 years of experience in the video game industry. Today they share their memories of what attracted them to it, how they got their first break and a whole lot more. Pour yourself a cuppa and enjoy the chat.

The outpouring of support for the channel in recent months has been incredible, and it's no more obvious than the boxes arriving daily here at The Cave. Today it's time to unbox the retro you've kindly sent in, and it's the most astonishing unboxing experience I've ever had the pleasure of filming. Thank you.

NEC's PC-FX was the successor to it's popular PC Engine, taking on the Sega Saturn, Atari Jaguar, Sony PlayStation and 3DO video game consoles. Commercially the PC-FX flopped, never selling outside of Japan. Today we fix and restore a celebrity console sent in by a very special game dev after he had a barbeque with it. Can we fix the PC-FX, and if we can, are the games worth it? Let's find out.

The Commodore Amiga has always had a compatibility problem with floppy disks on other platforms, we just can't read them easily. Emulation fans are used to the ADF format and we can rip disks within the Amiga OS ourselves on real hardware or by using additional hardware on a modern PC. But ripping disks isn't the same as just popping them in the drive and running them. Thanks to the hard work of Rob Smith that gap has now been bridged.

The Sharp X68000 or X68k is a gaming powerhouse with amazing ports by Capcom, Taito and all the Japanese greats. Today we are upgrading the x68k with MIDI and more to see if it's the very best you can experience in MIDI gaming.

ITX PC Cases are plentiful, but are they as stylish as this? A desktop case for ITX motherboards, Raspberry Pi's, FPGA devices and more thanks to Stephen Jones Checkmate A1500 mini case. Today we get the very first look at the case in the wild and I install my Vampire V4 standalone in it. Let's take a look!

Building a Computer Exhibition is no small task as we've learned during this build series, and this month is no different. Big progress has been made with the handheld gaming area, the lighting, electrics and ambient audio. I'm already looking forward to the next one!

The Atari ST was one of the best value micro computers money could buy on release in 1985. The Apple Macintosh, IBM PC, Commodore Amiga and other competitors struggled to beat it on price, at least until they had time to cost reduce and revise their own designs. Today I finally get to meet an Atari ST up close, outside of a computer shop or a sealed bag! And start the process of restoring it so that I might own a pristine Atari ST once again.

Ken and Roberta Williams created Sierra On-Line in 1979 with their first graphical adventure game for the Apple II compute "Mystery House". From these humble beginnings the world opened up for them and with games such as Police Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry and Kings Quest, Sierra rocketed to the top of the charts and became one of the biggest game publishers in the world. Today we meet Ken and discuss those early days, and find out a little more about his history and his exciting new game.

The sinclair ZX81 from 1981 is an iconic retro computer in the history of home computing. The follow up to the ZX80 Sir Clive Sinclair consolidated many chips into a ULA to further cost reduce the computer and help get it into our homes from under £50. A truly low cost computer. Today we take a look at one, repair it and try it out to see how it holds up today.

One of my favourite parts of exploring and restoring old systems is finding software that hasn't been seen before, and isn't archived even on the furthest corners of the internet. Today we have just such a collection of disks with thanks to game developer Mike Dailly, and we've managed to capture the images to explore today!

In an era of failed console and computer releases the CD32 is up there. It had potential but ultimately was too little, too late. What's even more obscure than failed consoles is failed peripherals for failed consoles and this FMV module is just such an example. Costing nearly the same price as the console itself it promised smooth MPEG1 playback of videos. Looking at the condition of it however that's unlikely. Lets see if we can repair it.

This building of The Cave continues with our July update. A retro computer, console and gaming space for all to enjoy. This month we work on a new space, I find a fun way to display cassette tapes, and I launch a special Kickstarter to try and help us keep on target for our September completion date. Can we do it!?

Back to book and build The Cave at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/retroteabreaks/the-colouring-book-of-retro-computers

What upgrades can we get for the Atari 520STFM? Today we try to max out the Atari ST to make it as powerful and convenient to use as possible. Then we get to enjoy some Atari ST games and consider our first impressions. How did the ST stack up against the competition, would we have been pleased with this in the '80s instead of a Macintosh, PC, Archimedes or...it's nemesis, an Amiga? Let's find out!

The MiSTer and FPGA gaming has been one of the most exciting things in retro gaming in recent years in my opinion. I've been enjoying it in all its forms, from the stacked bare bones style system to the MiSTer Fusion desktop I built, but I've always wanted a console style model that consolodates all of those boards into one, and makes the point of entry into the MiSTer world nice and simple for potential users. So we made it! This is the MiSTer Multisystem.

Can we fix the Commodore Amiga CD32 FMV module with our 2nd attempt? This FMV module was consigned to the scrap heap so we decided we'd try whatever it takes to get it working again. It might not be pretty, but if it gets the job done then we'll be over the moon.

This is it, the big push to finish building The Cave begins and it's all thanks to an incredible fundraising effort on the Colouring Book Kickstarter. I can now afford the cabinets we need for the museum but also so much more, and today I'll take you through our plans.

Building a retro computer exhibition , The Cave, continues with our big push into week 2 of September and it's all happening now, including a recreation of a retro computer shop for an extra tier of nostalgia!

Find out more about the Multisystem on its official page at: http://www.heber.co.uk/product/multisystem/ Chapters 00:00 Intro 02:57 What is the MiSTer Multisystem? 05:57 What changed on the final Multisystem board? 09:47 How did the beta testing go? 11:33 When can I buy the MiSTer Multisystem? 11:46 Will the MiSTer Multisystem ship internationally? 14:11 What cases will be available? 14:24 Does the case come as standard? 15:28 Can you buy the Multisystem without a case? 16:16 Who is producing the cases? 17:54 Will there be a yellowed case option? 19:10 Will an injection moulded case be made? 21:20 What does the case feel like? 22:16 What's included in the Multisystem kit? 24:56 Is software included with the Multisystem? 26:53 What does the 2 year warranty cover? 28:25 Can I buy the Multisystem without RAM? 29:35 How many units will be available at launch? 31:18 Will the case withstand the heat? 36:22 Can you mount the MiSTer Multisystem in a PC Case? 39:28 What's the big orange

Step back in time to our video game store timewarp! As part of The Cave build, and thanks to your support, we've expanded the exhibition into this recreation of an old videogame store, just as I remember it in the '80s and '90s. Take a trip with me today into the store and enjoy the build process.

The ColecoVision really did deserve better. Born into the North American video games crash it got off to a blinding start before events caught up with it and it was quickly retired. But this console deserves a 2nd look. The quality of the arcade ports and its add on capabilities mean that this really should be remembered as one of the best of its era, and this example needs some TLC to restore it to its former glory so we can try it out.

Our dream retro computer and gaming exhibition space is complete! Thank you so much to everyone who made this possible, it feels great to have got the space to a point where I'm happy to let you come and visit, and return to our normal videos.

The Commodore 64 was a hit in the UK and cheap, pocket money priced games on cassette tape (and perhaps some piracy) allowed us to build a healthy games library. But what if we could use a compact disc to put many games on one disc instead of filling our drawers with tapes? Enter, the Rainbow Arts 1st CD Edition. A rare collectors item and perhaps the first ever example of commercially released games on an 8bit micro computer (not a console) on CD. Lets try it out!

The day has come to launch The Cave! A hands on, retro computer, console and gaming exhibition for all to enjoy. Today we held a private party to launch the space and get a feel for how it works with people in it.

The Amstrad Mega PC is a curious thing, part PC, part Sega Mega Drive, all wrapped up in Amstrad cost efficiency. Who wanted this thing? Well not many people as we discovered in the T2T series on the channel, but now someone has gone above and beyond in getting the absolute best out of the machine with a quite amazing upgrade, the Mega Card.

The choice of rare computers from the '80s is abundant in the UK. The Enterprise 64 is one such computer. It promised the world, it had the potential to take on the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro and others, but it fell flat on its face. Why? Was it the hardware, was it the management? This new old stock Enterprise 64 gives us the chance to explore that question, and the machine.