Retrocomputing. To be frank, every computer sooner or later becomes retro, but I find a lot of fun working with these 8-bit machines from the 80s and early 90s.

I started collecting my retro computers somehow by accident. My first game console was the Pegasus IQ-502 which I got from my parents around 1994. The console was technically a Nintendo Entertainment System clone produced by the Taiwanese company Micro Genius, and was very popular in the early 90s in Poland, before the anti-piracy law was introduced to the Polish legal system.

The main chip of the unit was the UA6527P which was a DIL-40 CPU clocked at 1.77 MHz. It was a copy of the Ricoh RP2A03 used in the Nintendo Family Computer (Famicom) and the RP2A07 in the NES console (PAL) using the MOS 6502. It had 2 KB of RAM and 2 KB of video RAM. The Pegasus was superior to the original Famicom in some ways. The original system has no composite video output, only RF, which, in theory, gives worse video quality. In reality, I saw no difference when I connected my Pegasus to our family Panasonic CRT TV using any of those. Actually, I kept it permanently connected to the TV via our VCR, which accepted a second RF signal because it required fewer cables.

The video and sound capabilities of this 8-bit system were a bit limited, but unlike systems like the MSX, it had smooth vertical scrolling, which was used in many platform games.

As a kid I considered home consoles to be devices of lower value compared to home computers. They had no keyboard and no way to write your own programs. My first personal computer was the Atari 800XL, which I got from my uncle because my cousins were already on the Commodore Amiga 500, so the old 8-bit machine was just gathering dust. I had no software, so I had to write my own programs to get any enjoyment out of them. The Atari 800XL is a continuation of Atari 8-bit systems designed in 1979 and uses the same CPU but has much more RAM, 64 KB. I could use a tape recorder to persist my own programs, which was super handy compared to the Pegasus, which used only read-only cartridges.

Atari’s main chips are: MOS 6502 clocked at 1.77 MHz (in PAL, the NTSC version was slightly faster), ROM containing the OS on 10 KB. It has two video chips: ANTIC (8 graphics modes with a resolution of 40×24 to 320×192 pixels in 2 or 4 colors) and GTIA (11 graphics modes with resolutions from 40×24 to 320×192 pixels in 2, 4 or 16 colors). It can render a huge number of 256 colors on the screen.

When I got my first PC around 2001, I packed everything and put it in the attic, so I found it back years later, around 2018, after approximately 17 years! My Atari works fine to this very day, and sometimes I connect it to my modern TV via some sort of video converter or to the HDMI monitor via my old Pioneer DVD Recorder. In 2020, I did a general cleaning of the inside of the computer with IPA alcohol.

The Commodore 64 is a brand-new purchase. Although I didn’t have a Commodore computer in the 1990s and I never even saw one in person, I had heard many tales from people who had. The variety of apps and games that were readily available for this system always astounded me. My C64, also known as the C64-C, is a later model from the early 1990s that is still fully compatible with the original “bread bin” Commodore 64 from 1982. The SID audio chip has been upgraded, and the motherboard has been slightly reconfigured and condensed (fewer RAM chips are used because a single component can hold more memory).

The video capabilities of the Atari 800XL and Commodore 64 are difficult to compare. On the one hand, Atari could render more colors: 256 vs. only 16 colors on the C64 and had more video modes. On the other hand, the C64 has better sprites, which are super helpful when we work on games. To tell what is better, more colorful graphics in higher resolution or less colorful but more detailed, is a matter for a never-ending discussion.

Both computers have the same CPU (Atari’s is slightly modified unit, and C64 has a bit slower clock) and the same amount of the RAM.

I love the sound of the SID chip. It features three voices, each of which may produce one of the four wave types: sawtooth, triangle, rectangle, and white noise. Because it makes use of several analog filters, each SID has a somewhat different sound.

I utilize two separate devices to load programs: Tapecart, which emulates a tape dataset, and SD2IEC, which emulates an IEC device. The Commodore disk drive isn’t entirely compatible with it, however many D64 images of C64 disks are fully functional or have been patched.

You can find the footage of me playing some C64 games below (I used my Pioneer DVR-645 to capture it).

Back in the 90s, there was a big competition between Atari and Commodore users (ZX Spectrum was not very popular when I was a kid, and new 16-bit and 32-bit computers were just around the corner), but I am fascinated by both of them. The Commodore’s tape loading mechanism was easier to improve without hardware modifications and was more reliable (Atari could not load programs every 1 of 10 attempts because of some issues in the design). The Atari sounds a bit more like the arcade machine, but Commodore’s fantastic sound capabilities allowed it to create music, which was a big breakthrough.

The Nintendo DSi is also a totally new buy. I bought it very cheaply and in very good condition. The only Nintendo handheld I knew from my childhood was the GameBoy. But back then, no one from my school had it, and we used some sort of PC emulator to play Pokemon Gold, but I have never used any real hardware to play these games. DSi can easily emulate GameBoy and can run games dedicated to the platform. The total number of sold Nintendo DS devices reached an impressive 150 million.

Maybe my collection of Famicom cartridges is not super huge, but I collected almost all my favorite games I played as a kid. Unfortunately, I don’t have the original cartridges I owned as a kid, so I had to buy them again. My favorite games are unquestionably Super Mario Bros. (the first game I ever played on a game console!) and Tiny Toon Adventures (which was on my very first cartridge purchased with my mom). I have a few Chinese “reproductions” from AliExpress that are a bit more similar to what we could buy in Polish stores in the early 90s.

The last but for sure not least, is my Raspberry Pi 3 model B+. This is not a retro computer (if you look closer, the board is from 2017), but I use it to emulate a number of different retro systems like: NES (the Pegasus runs games a bit slower than the original system), SNES, Sega Genesis, PC Engine, and Atari VCS.

What I like the most about these 8-bit machines is that, despite their limited video and sound capabilities, they can be used to create impressive games and demos. We still have a thriving community around these machines, and every year, new games are released. We now have instances of applications using the C64 and Atari 800XL’s more sophisticated graphic modes since our understanding of how to use the hardware has developed over the past 40 years.

I am very sentimental about these old computers. Since I still have some room for them, I won’t give them away for now, but I definitely won’t extend my collection anytime soon. 😄

Learn more…

Find out more interesting facts about retro computers in the videos listed below.