Nico de Jong wrote: I am not nearly old enough to really be a member of this list. :-) My father was a tech writer with teletype and he would bring home various toys, like a vt100 line/signal analyzer (hope I'm remembering that properly) and various computer-like things. In 1980, I played Adventure on an Osborne luggable; in 1983 I connected to BBSes and Compuserve using a (rich) friend's IBM PC Model 5150; also did much (MUCH) Apple II stuff in school from 1980-1985. In 1985 I got my very own PC clone and, being an antisocial nerd, I went crazy with it. Maybe a better way to understand myself and my background is to look at my collection, which is mostly 1980-era personal computers, including stuff like: 2 5150s 1 5160 clone 1 XT/286 (NOT AT, the XT/286, can't remember exact model number) 2 C64s (NTSC) 1 Timex Sinclair 1000 with various tapes and expansions 1 Mac 512 1 Mac SE 6 Amigas (2 A500s, 1 A1200, 2 A4000s, 1 A3000) I also tend to like wacko x86 hardware: 2 PS/2 Model 25s 2 Panasonic Sr. Partners (luggables with built-in thermal printers) 1 AT&T PC 6300 (my first clone, still works, upgraded in crazy ways) 2 PCjrs with various sidecars, ROM carts, add-ons Various Tandys (Tandy 1000, 1000HD, TL/2, maybe others) I still program for x86 and last year I won a competition for programming a stock IBM 5150 (4.77Mhz, 8088, 640K RAM, Sound Blaster Pro, CGA, 10MB MFM) to display 30 frame-per-second full-screen video sync'd with 22Khz sound. This same program is up for an award in March at Breakpoint 2005 for Best Original Production. I am still developing the technology (up to 60fps now and 44KHz audio) and hopefully will have something even more impressive for next year. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/