This is a post which I have written before. Unfortunately, due to stupidity I have lost all of my posts to date and so I am starting from scratch. The time for self-flagellation has passed and the time for the rewrites is at hand. I started this blog to document for my own satisfaction a few interesting projects I am undertaking. Let me start with the motivation for those projects.

When I was a child, of age around 6-7 I think, my dad came home with something he had bought off of another guy at work. A Commodore VIC-20. He showed me how to load a game or two from a tape datacassette. Later on that day he left on an errand and so I had to repeat that process myself. I still remember that day like it was yesterday. In this day and age when computers are ubiquitous and children are playing with smart phones before they can read it’s difficult to describe the impact that day had on me. To type on a keyboard and see the letters appear on a TV screen was like magic. It was one of the seminal moments of my life.

Later I upgraded to a Commodore 64, and then a Commodore Amiga 500+. Both of these were incredible machines for their time: milestones in the journey towards the computer in every home. And then, like everyone else, I moved to IBM compatible PCs when IBM and Microsoft won the computer war. Commodore went bust: this wasn’t entirely my fault but I played my part in their downfall. I’ve owned many PCs over the years, but none of them had what those Commodore machines had. Something special, something indefinable. Soul. I understood and interacted those machines in a way that I don’t with my modern tools. I POKEd and PEEKed my C64 – not like the high-level languages I use today..

My love affair with my Commodore machines never ended. I’ve continued to use them through the medium of emulators. My old machines were consigned to my parent’s loft, and then when I bought my first house, my loft.

But then a couple of years ago I did a terrible thing. I’m not sure why I did it. I was a father by then, and I was cleaning house. Getting rid of a load of old junk to make way for all the new stuff that comes with a family. I was making space in the loft, and so I took my boxes of retro computer gear and took the whole lot down the tip. The machines, the peripherals, all the games. Everything.

I don’t know why I did it. I kept a load of other crap, boxes of books and toys, which had much less meaning to me. I’ve regretted it ever since. Not least because I now know I could have made a few quid flogging the stuff on eBay if I really wanted rid of it. More importantly, as my children have grown older and I’ve wanted to show them the things that were important to me as a child. I’ve kept important toys like the G1 Transformers and passed them on. Soon they will be at an age when we can sit down and watch Star Wars together for the first time. But those classic machines that made such an impact on my life? Gone.

But those classic computers? Gone. I deeply regret that.

One of my favourite blogs is RetroManCave, in which a lovely chap called Neil takes the viewer on an enjoyable nostalgic journey through the machines of yesteryear. In a fairly recent video he described something pretty amazing. The building of a brand new Amiga 500+, using a new, fan made PCB which replicates the original board.

This caught my imagination. This was a project I really wanted to take on. Partly for the fun of it, but perhaps also because this was a chance of redemption. To my shame I threw my old machine away: if I build a replacement it goes some way to atone for that mistake. A few weeks later and £50 lighter, I was the owner of my own purple A500++ PCB.

Thus begins a series of projects in which I will recreate the machines of my youth. Emulation is all well and good, but I want to feel the tactile reality of those machines again. I want those three machines on my desk again: the VIC-20, the 64 and the Amiga. I want to recapture and relive what was great about them. I want to show them to my children.

When I say ‘recreate’ for the Amiga this is clear – I’m going to build a new machine using my new PCB. For the other two machines the process may be simpler. Secondhand machines are commonplace. Some work is required to make them fit for purpose in these modern days. I will have to put my hand in my pocket, but hey, this is a process of atonement, so damn the expense.

It’s possible this is some form of mid-life crisis. If so, fair enough. it’s damn cheaper than a sports car and a divorce.