FlatPress

I’ve thrown this site up to document one of my hobbies, for I have many. This particular one centers around computers. Now they would mostly be called classic computers, old computers, vintage computers, or maybe retro computers, depending on your leaning. To me though, they are just computers. They are what I grew up with, they are, in part what I am using now. “Modern” computers interest me to some extent, but they have become too standardised that any one of them holds much fascination to me right now.

So, where did this begin? Well, I’m as young as some of my favourite computers, born in the late 80s. We’ve always had computers in the house. To begin with, it was an Atari 520 ST (possibly an STFM or STE, but I cannot find a photo to confirm) which we’d had upgraded to a 1040 ST. We also had a couple of IBM PS/2 machines, one of which I had in my own bedroom from the age of 5. Based on photos, these look like they were Model 30 machines.

My current goal is to attempt to recreate my childhood by re-aquiring the computers I had at the time, using them for the games and utilities that I used then, and find new and interesting uses for them now, that I didn’t have the knowledge or money to do when I was younger. As I am a game developer in my daily life, a lot of this will be focused around programming, and specifically trying to develop games for these machines. I don’t expect to have the time to complete (m)any projects like this, but it will be fun to play around with, and set up development environments.

Along the way I’ll definitely also be playing with computers and games consoles that I didn’t have as a child, for various reasons, some for the games and software available on them, some for the hardware they have, and some just because I think they are interesting machines.