Greetings from Cyprus

[glevas]

Hello,

I have an unhealthy interest in computers from the late 80s and early 90s. I consider them the first usable computers that are not commodity Intel PCs...

Back in the day I used to have an Electron and then got an Amiga 500 and, after that, an Amiga 1200. I am now discovering all the computers from that period that I used to drool over or that I generally find interesting. I fix them and then try to see how they can be upgraded today. Unfortunately, being based in Cyprus, means that the main source for my addiction is eBay...

My collection is getting a bit out of hand:

- An Electron with a GoSDC SD floppy emulator.
- A BBC Master 128, expanded as far as it can go with IDE CF Drives, VideoNuLA graphics upgrade, Sprow Ethernet interface and modern Coprocessor boards using Raspberry Pi for multi processor emulation (that is an 8-bit machine with a 1GHz ARM processor, 2GB HD space, accessing SMB shares, it is unbelievable how expandable the BBC Micro is...).
- A german plastic Commodore 128D, fully UK'd, with JiffyDOS, upgraded ROMs (inc. GEOS128) and Ultimate II+ floppy, tape and cartridge emulator.
- A french grey Spectrum 128 +2 with UK Spectrum 128 Toastrack ROM and ESXDOS DivIDE SD tape and floppy emulation card.
- A UK-spec Amstrad CPC 6128 with an external Gotek drive and drive switch.
- My original Amiga 500 with just an external Gotek drive in a Cumana external floppy case and drive switch, for nostalgia.
- An expanded Amiga 500 with a Kipper2K expansion board with 8MB of fast RAM, an 68010, 8GB CF IDE with WHDLoad and Plipbox Ethernet (browses the internet and accesses SMB shares...).
- My original Amiga 1200 with an 68030 50 MHz Blizzard II accelerator, 64MB fast RAM, switchable SD card IDE drives and PCMCIA Ethernet.

I always had an interest in the Atari ST, and I recently got an early model UK 520 STFM, which I am in the process of fixing and expanding. Plans for this machine:

- 1MB RAM expansion and, maybe later, 4MB.
- Replacement of the internal long-button single-sided floppy with a long-button double-sided one from a recently acquired SF314.
- Putting a Gotek in the SF314 and hacking a switcher to switch the internal and external drive.
- Booster 16MHz CPU.
- Switchable 1.02 and 1.04 ROMS.

I always try to keep my machines as stock-looking as possible and I avoid doing irreversible changes.

[exxos]