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The Collection

SV-603 Coleco-Vision Game Adapter

9/16/2016

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SV-603 - ColecoVision Game Adapter is an accessory that could be purchased with SpectraVideo computer. I enables you to play ColecoVision cartridge games, but ColecoVision console was considered the best home option to play computer games at Arcade quality.  This adapter easily hooks up to the SV-318 og SV-329.

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Spectravideo Cartridges

9/14/2016

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Here are some cartridges that was used in Spectravideo computers and we got them with our SV-328mkII. Three games : Sector Alpha, Flipper Slipper and Frantic Freddy.
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Also we got JustWrite Jr which is a Word Processor program and with a Norwegian language addon.
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And this is what an Cartridge looks like inside, just two small chips :)
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Spectravideo Cassettes (Games & Software)

9/13/2016

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With our Spectravideo SV-328 computer we got alot of various games and software on cassettes. Some of them are in their original package with the manuals, but most are just the cassettes themselves. Spectravideo used both cassettes and cartridges for their games. Their selection of titles where not as good as Commodore 64, Atari, Apple and others, but you can still find some gems hidden in there. The first year though only a handful of various games and other programs was available.
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Spectravideo SV-328 mkII

9/12/2016

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​The SV-328 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Spectravideo in June 1983. It was the business-targeted model of the Spectravideo range, sporting a rather crowded full-travel keyboard with numeric keypad. It had 80 kB RAM (64 kB available for software, remaining 16 kB video memory), a respectable amount for its time. Other than the keyboard and RAM, this machine was identical to its little brother, the SV-318.
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​The SV-328 is the design on which the MSX standard was based. Spectravideo's MSX-compliant successor to the 328, the SV-728, looks almost identical, the only immediately noticeable differences being a larger cartridge slot in the central position (to fit MSX standard cartridges), lighter shaded keyboard and the MSX badging.
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​Reference to the operating system Microsoft Extended BASIC is not to be confused with MSX BASIC, although some marketing at the time claimed that Microsoft Extended is what MSX stood for.
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​Specifications

Developer
Type
Release date
Media
Operating system​

CPU
Memory
Display
Input
Predecessor
Successor

​Spectravideo
​Home computer
​1983 (Summer CES, Chicago)
​ROM Cartridge, Cassette tape
​Microsoft Extended BASIC
CP/M
Zilog Z80A @ 3.6 MHz
​64 KB (+16 KB VRAM)
​256×192 resolution, 16 colours
​Keyboard
​SV-318
​SV-728
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Amstrad CPC 464

9/10/2016

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The CPC 464 was the first personal home computer built by Amstrad in 1984. It was one of the bestselling and best produced microcomputers, with more than 2 million units sold in Europe. The British microcomputer boom had already peaked before Amstrad announced the CPC 464 (which stood for Color Personal Computer) which they then released a mere 9 months later.
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Amstrad was known for cheap hi-fi products but had not broken into the home computer market until the CPC 464. Their consumer electronic sales were starting to plateau and Owner and Founder Alan Sugar stated “We needed to move on and find another sector or product to bring us back to profit growth”. Work started on the Amstrad home computer in 1983 with engineer Ivor Spital who concluded that Amstrad should enter the home computer market, offering a product that integrated low-cost hardware to be sold at an affordable “impulse-purchase price”.

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Spital wanted to offer a device that would not commandeer the family TV but instead be an all-in-one computer with its own monitor, thus freeing up the TV and allowing others to play video games at the same time.

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The Sinclair QL

9/10/2016

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​The Sinclair QL (for Quantum leap), is a personal computer launched by Sinclair Research in 1984, as an upper-end counterpart to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. The QL was aimed at the serious home user and professional and executive users markets from small to large businesses and higher educational establishments, but failed to achieve commercial success.

Based on a Motorola 68008 processor clocked at 7.5 MHz, the QL included 128 kB of RAM (officially expandable to 640 kB; in practice, 896 kB) and could be connected to a monitor or TV for display. Two built-in Microdrive tape-loop cartridge drives provided mass storage, in place of the more expensive floppy disk drives found on similar systems of the era. (Microdrives had been introduced for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum in July 1983, although the QL used a different logical tape format.) Interfaces included an expansion slot, ROM cartridge socket, dual RS-232 ports, proprietary QLAN local area network ports, dual joystick ports and an external Microdrive bus. Two video modes were available, 256×256 pixels with 8 out of 256 RGB colours and per-pixel flashing, or 512×256 pixels with four colours (black, red, green and white). Both screen modes used a 32 kB framebuffer in main memory. The hardware is capable of switching between two different areas of memory for the framebuffer, thus allowing double buffering. However, this would have used 64 KB of the standard machine's 128 kB of RAM and there is no support for this feature in the QL's original firmware. The alternative and much improved operating system Minerva does provide full support for the second framebuffer. When connected to a normally-adjusted TV or monitor, the QL's video output would overscan horizontally. This was reputed to have been due to the timing constants in the ZX8301 chip being optimised for the flat-screen CRT display originally intended for the QL.

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    Yngvi Th. Johannsson

    Retro gaming enthusiast and all around computer collector. 

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