Things you wanted to buy but could never find (price not an adequate reason!!)

[Pinball]

Inspired by the "Things you shouldn't have bought" thread...

When I was a tiddler at school they had Commodore Pet computers, and I loved programming them, especially when - wow! - disk drives replaced the tape cassette loader! I remember typing in all the crap games from computer mags (which later became mainstream with the ZX81 & Spectrum), and saved them all on 5.25 disk. Who remembers "Nightmare Park" containing "Abandon hope all ye who enters here" etc. I even went so far as to load up all my cassette games then re-save them on disk.

Now, 20 years later I discovered these disks and I want to buy a Commodore Pet machine - but where are they????

An even more obscure one. Years ago (early 80s) my mum was doing a degree course which involved using "talking pages" to tell stories to kids. Basically these are A4-sized white card sheets onto which you draw stories etc. What makes them neat is that there is a magnetic coating on the back, so you can record 10 minutes or so of speech. I did the sound effects and background music, and she & my dad did the stories (like mini-radio plays). Probably 40 or so pages were made, which took many hours to produce as you can imagine. The university provided the Ricoh Pagereader machine, and now of course I want one but again - CAN'T FIND ONE!!! These pages haven't been listened to for 20 years, and I'd love to scan & MP3 encode them for my kids (if & when I have any!).

Can anyone help, and has anyone else had similar frustrating experiences??

[Pinball]

Yep I checked ebay, but none of the machines have a disk drive :-(

Edit: Aww bless, you can see the seller's screen cleaner spray reflected in the monitor.

[Des Nilsen]

Ah, when I was about nine I once really wanted one of these old wind-up-and-go Dalek toys (an actual original, not the modern reissued versions) because they were technically innacurate.
The Dalek's dome was too narrow and the whole thing had a very cool 60's sci-fi 'naffness' that I really liked.
I went to an antiques fair at Granby Halls in Leicester with my mum (she dragged me along almost every sunday) and on one toy stall I saw *two* of them!
My mum tried to haggle with the bloke selling them (they were £40 each) but he wouldn't budge. He obviously saw my desperation and took the gamble that I might persuade my mum to buy it. She didn't, and I went home moping.
These innacurate Dalek toys are available as I said as reissues, but I haven't bothered to get one. Obviously because now I've no need for them, but they do still have a great naff look to them.

So I suppose price was sort of an issue, it's the fact that I never managed to get one that counts. *

Here's the Marx company Dalek I wanted.

Here's a more accurate Dalek by Dapol.

* - Yep, sorry. I keep doing that - going off topic or whatever. Nevermind.

-

[Partridge's Love Child]

That Clit Eastwood magazine with Dirty Harry on DVD for £3.99.  Can't find the ruddy thing anywhere.  After a fruitless search, I'm obviously not feeling very lucky, punk.

[fanny splendid]

That Clit Eastwood magazine with Dirty Harry on DVD for £3.99.  Can't find the ruddy thing anywhere.  After a fruitless search, I'm obviously not feeling very lucky, punk.

Heh, is that the porn version?

[smoker]

That Clit Eastwood magazine with Dirty Harry on DVD for £3.99.  Can't find the ruddy thing anywhere.  After a fruitless search, I'm obviously not feeling very lucky, punk.

you can pick it up for a skydiver on play. or just write to the company asking for a copy.

[Partridge's Love Child]

That Clit Eastwood magazine with Dirty Harry on DVD for £3.99.  Can't find the ruddy thing anywhere.  After a fruitless search, I'm obviously not feeling very lucky, punk.

Heh, is that the porn version?

[Sic.]

you can pick it up for a skydiver on play. or just write to the company asking for a copy.

That's a bit too much trouble int it?  I just want to pick it up whilst buying fags to sell to teenagers.

[Rubbish Monkey]

ROM the Space Knight.

One of them toys that i always wanted as a kid but parents never got me. As is the way with these things I was forced to play fround a friends house, whom i didn't like very much just because he had one. Bastard had a Big Trak too (which I have since purchased - take that parents! muahahaha oh and a Starbird Avenger)

Back to Rom....

Rom the Space Knight has two red LEDs for eyes that light up, two red LEDs in his chest that pulse, and two red LEDs in his rocket packs that pulse when his jets are turned on. He also has a utility cable with an LED on it that plugs into his tools to give them a glowing red light as well.
In addition to Rom's lights, he also makes sounds. On his back are two buttons. By pressing specific button combinations, Rom will make different sounds, including breathing, his jet pack thrusters, and sounds for his energy analyzer, translator and neutralizer.

When i get one i will have to move this post to the  things you shouldn't of bought thread - obviously.

edit > i haven't bought one because i cant find the bugger

[Ambient Sheep]

When I was a tiddler at school they had Commodore Pet computers, and I loved programming them, especially when - wow! - disk drives replaced the tape cassette loader!...Who remembers "Nightmare Park" containing "Abandon hope all ye who enters here" etc.

<sticks hand up>

Although I preferred the real machine-code Space Invaders you could get for it.  That, and the "snail-racing" games, using "@"s as snails.

It's funny this, I was looking up PETs on the web only the other day for some nostalgic reason or other.  I cut my computing teeth on one of these (a 16K new keyboard one) back in March 1980, when my maths teacher persuaded the headmaster to splash out £499 and buy one.  All the official school stuff with the BBC Micro was still a couple of years away, and our PET was kept in a little cupboard off of the Geography room, and was pulled out after school on Tuesdays and Fridays.  They never got as far as buying the disk drives before the Beebs came along, however we did have a printer.

Looking at that, and similar websites, it seems that you can get them, but expect to pay, and to have to get the soldering iron out!

I had the chance to buy one back in about 1991 or something, but the guy wanted something like £150 (I forget exactly how much) for it, and I couldn't justify that when I didn't really have the space for it either.

Still, memories...

EDIT: I got to that page above via the ever-excellent Wikipedia's article on the subject.

[Pinball]

Cool, AS! I wonder if there's an emulator for Commodore PET, as I guess that would be the easiest/cheapest way to relive old times. If not, I may buy one because I really want to explore these 20+ year old diskettes!!

I've still got my Amstrad 1512 BTW. I want to backup the 30MB hard disk, but there's no connection possible to make disk a slave disk. It has a DD 3.5 drive, but some files are too big so I'm gonna try to install a HD 3.5...

[fanny splendid]

Cool, AS! I wonder if there's an emulator for Commodore PET, as I guess that would be the easiest/cheapest way to relive old times. If not, I may buy one because I really want to explore these 20+ year old diskettes!!

http://www.viceteam.org/

[Lt Plonker]

I was searching high and low for the collected Sam and Max comics. Then I found them on Bit Torrent.

That wasn't a very good story. Sorry.

I'm now on a search for 80's Disney cartoon series like Ducktales and Rescue Rangers, and some 90's stuff like Rocko's Modern Life. I'd love them all on DVD, but they probably wouldn't sell very well.

[Ambient Sheep]

Cool, AS! I wonder if there's an emulator for Commodore PET, as I guess that would be the easiest/cheapest way to relive old times.

There are, I ran across some during my surfing (maybe even on that site).  I very much doubt it'll be able to read your disks though!  ;-)

[Pinball]

Fanny & Ambient are my heroes :-)

For years I've been meaning to access these disks, though realistically most of the progs (yes the space invaders & snail ones mainly, as well as nightmare park!) will be available anyway via emulation roms, so I'll give the emu a go!

On a related theme, MAME v.81 recently came out, totalling 6 DVDRs now. I've got them all, so if anyone wants them as a trade etc. let me know & I'll burn some DVDs! Due to the emulation of hard disk games in recent versions, the size of MAME is skyrocketing such that's it's almost undownloadable now. Mameburning is the way to go methinks ;-)

[Ambient Sheep]

Fanny & Ambient are my heroes :-)

Fanny?  Eh?  Ah.  Note to self: don't reply late at night when half-cut and managing to not notice someone else's far more informative post...

[fanny splendid]

Is it that unusual to here a bloke say that his hero is fanny?

[Pinball]

Is it that unusual to here a bloke say that his hero is fanny?

Not any more apparently ;-)

[MojoJojo]

Repeating what I put in the 2000AD thread, I'd like to get some more Zenith graphic novels.

But they are actually available on eBay, they just go for a friggin fortune.

[Ambient Sheep]

Is it that unusual to here a bloke say that his hero is fanny?

Heh!  No, all I meant was that because I'd skimmed the thread a bit last night while bleary I hadn't noticed your excellent contribution, and thus was initially puzzled by his namecheck of your good self, until I read back this morning.