Yes, thanks to one Billy Coore, I have discovered the existence of another Compudyne computer! I'm really excited. (Also, sorry, no Magic Touch Books today...)
Unfortunately, I have found no information on this particular Compudyne, because (as usual) nobody has ever heard of it. The model is PT66HB, and... all I can tell from that is that it had a 66 MHz Intel 486. Yeah, this is only the second Compudyne I've ever seen the model number of, and as such, I don't know how to interpret Compudyne model numbers yet. That, however, is why I want to collect as many Compudynes as possible!
So, I have no idea what the original hard drive size was or how mach RAM it had, but I do know the following. It has the same sound card (Acer Magic S20). Its graphics card is a Cirrus Logic CL-GD5428, whereas mine is a Cirrus Logic 5434. The PT66HB also has a dual-speed CD-ROM drive (unknown manufacturer, but judging from the picture I saw, probably Mitsumi like my dying quad-speed).
Do I want it? Of course! It's another Compudyne! Unfortunately, I have neither the space nor the money, so I will not be purchasing it. Ah well, maybe I'll find another one someday. Here's hoping!
-Johnny
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Monday, February 4, 2013
Long Overdue: Anything
Yes, I have been gone for quite a while now. I am very sorry about that. However, please note that I am very busy. I am now officially a college student. An honors college student, at that. So I probably won't have a lot of time to write stuff here.
My next post, when I do have time, will finally be more on the Magic Touch Books! Keep an eye out for that.
Other than that, this post was just to remind anyone who views the blog that it has not died! Yay!
-Johnny
My next post, when I do have time, will finally be more on the Magic Touch Books! Keep an eye out for that.
Other than that, this post was just to remind anyone who views the blog that it has not died! Yay!
-Johnny
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Long overdue: video of the Compudyne 575HD
Here's a video I made of the beloved Compudyne 575HD. This should give you a better idea of what the thing can do. Also, I test out my $30 mic on this computer. I love how it sounds better than it does on my main computer.
-Johnny
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
NOT Playskool Magic Touch Books: CompUSA's "Compudyne" Computer Line
So I know I said I would talk about Playskool's Magic Touch Books today, but I figured instead that I would talk about a line of computers known as Compudyne.
The name is still used for a completely different business today and is not related in any way to the computers I am going to talk about. With that, let us begin.
Back in the 90s, you didn't only have to get computers from an electronics store, and the Internet was... very young. Too young to handle shopping. You had mail-order instead. But if you really wanted to get it from a store, there were plenty of stores that specialized in computers. Notable computer stores included Computer City and, my personal favorite, CompUSA.
At CompUSA, you had your Packard Bells, your HPs, your Compaqs... but if you were really on a budget, you went with their store brand, Compudyne. And really, like a lot of store-brand products in general, Compudyne computers were as simple as re-branded computers from other companies (in this case, Acer).
The Compudyne 575HD was the second home personal computer we had in this house, but it was the first that I remember using. As such, it means very much to me. It still works, surprisingly, and because of these factors I will never--never--get rid of it. Ever.
Sadly, there is not a whole lot that I know about Compudyne, as there is not a whole lot that anybody knows about Compudyne. But from what I have found out, Compudynes were simply re-branded Acers, complete with original Acer-branded parts. My computer, for example, comes with an AcerMagic S20 sound card, which is one of the many Sound Blaster clones of the time (1995).
Mine originally came with Windows 3.1, but soon the hard drive died (I do not remember this happening) and my dad went back to CompUSA to get it replaced. At that time, Windows 95 was the big deal and Windows 3.1 was obsolete, so he had the guy install 95 on it as well. As a result, some DOS games didn't work like they should have. SimCity Enhanced CD-ROM Edition, for example, always said "Insufficient funds to build that" after building a residential zone, a road, and a railroad. Either we (my sister and I) had spent too much time and money building those without realizing it, or the game was just broken in general.
And as of now, I have ruled out the latter. I bought SimCity Enhanced at a toy fair, but it was an earlier release, and it was not the Compudyne or Acer OEM version (which is the rarest of all of the versions of SimCity Enhanced). It also works perfectly on the Compudyne. The memories came flooding back for me and my sister.
Sadly, I don't remember what other kind of games came with ours. I do remember having a very strange collection of edutainment games, including "The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis," but I'm not sure if this was OEM software or what. There was also a Disney Gamebreak! Sampler, which included demos for both Timon and Pumbaa's Jungle Games and The Hunchback of Notre Dame Topsy-Turvy Games, but again, I'm not sure where it came from.
Most of the pre-installed software was uninstalled, so I don't really know what all else came with it. But if anybody else owned a Compudyne or Acer of that time, please, please, please let me know what kind of things came with it! I really want to restore my Compudyne to the way it used to be, but I can't do it without the original software and restore media. If anybody can help, I would really appreciate it!
-Johnny
The name is still used for a completely different business today and is not related in any way to the computers I am going to talk about. With that, let us begin.
Back in the 90s, you didn't only have to get computers from an electronics store, and the Internet was... very young. Too young to handle shopping. You had mail-order instead. But if you really wanted to get it from a store, there were plenty of stores that specialized in computers. Notable computer stores included Computer City and, my personal favorite, CompUSA.
At CompUSA, you had your Packard Bells, your HPs, your Compaqs... but if you were really on a budget, you went with their store brand, Compudyne. And really, like a lot of store-brand products in general, Compudyne computers were as simple as re-branded computers from other companies (in this case, Acer).
The Compudyne 575HD was the second home personal computer we had in this house, but it was the first that I remember using. As such, it means very much to me. It still works, surprisingly, and because of these factors I will never--never--get rid of it. Ever.
Sadly, there is not a whole lot that I know about Compudyne, as there is not a whole lot that anybody knows about Compudyne. But from what I have found out, Compudynes were simply re-branded Acers, complete with original Acer-branded parts. My computer, for example, comes with an AcerMagic S20 sound card, which is one of the many Sound Blaster clones of the time (1995).
Mine originally came with Windows 3.1, but soon the hard drive died (I do not remember this happening) and my dad went back to CompUSA to get it replaced. At that time, Windows 95 was the big deal and Windows 3.1 was obsolete, so he had the guy install 95 on it as well. As a result, some DOS games didn't work like they should have. SimCity Enhanced CD-ROM Edition, for example, always said "Insufficient funds to build that" after building a residential zone, a road, and a railroad. Either we (my sister and I) had spent too much time and money building those without realizing it, or the game was just broken in general.
And as of now, I have ruled out the latter. I bought SimCity Enhanced at a toy fair, but it was an earlier release, and it was not the Compudyne or Acer OEM version (which is the rarest of all of the versions of SimCity Enhanced). It also works perfectly on the Compudyne. The memories came flooding back for me and my sister.
Sadly, I don't remember what other kind of games came with ours. I do remember having a very strange collection of edutainment games, including "The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis," but I'm not sure if this was OEM software or what. There was also a Disney Gamebreak! Sampler, which included demos for both Timon and Pumbaa's Jungle Games and The Hunchback of Notre Dame Topsy-Turvy Games, but again, I'm not sure where it came from.
Most of the pre-installed software was uninstalled, so I don't really know what all else came with it. But if anybody else owned a Compudyne or Acer of that time, please, please, please let me know what kind of things came with it! I really want to restore my Compudyne to the way it used to be, but I can't do it without the original software and restore media. If anybody can help, I would really appreciate it!
-Johnny
Monday, December 31, 2012
Apologies
Hey, all. Sorry I haven't written anything here in a while. The holiday season has been really hectic, plus I've been distracted by other stuff (such as indie games, TV Tropes, and Digimon). I promise I will talk about the next obscure thing soon...ish. I'll even say a little bit about it now.
As I said, it was made by Playskool, but it wasn't really a toy. It was a bunch of books called Magic Touch Books (no, not the book series called Magic Touch, those are completely different).
I sadly don't have mine anymore, but I can't really say I miss as much as, say, a book I loved when I was little and my wonderful sister got for me on PaperbackSwap. But the thing about these was they were like the Living Books series, which was insanely popular at the time, but these were actual, physical books!
Again, I'll have more to say on these books relatively soon, but really, at the moment it's more important that I spend time with my family. See ya!
-Johnny
As I said, it was made by Playskool, but it wasn't really a toy. It was a bunch of books called Magic Touch Books (no, not the book series called Magic Touch, those are completely different).
I sadly don't have mine anymore, but I can't really say I miss as much as, say, a book I loved when I was little and my wonderful sister got for me on PaperbackSwap. But the thing about these was they were like the Living Books series, which was insanely popular at the time, but these were actual, physical books!
Again, I'll have more to say on these books relatively soon, but really, at the moment it's more important that I spend time with my family. See ya!
-Johnny
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Playskool Talkback Voice Recorder
Sorry, no video today. Like I said, I don't actually have what I'm talking about anymore, so I can't really show it. And since nobody else seems to have had one, I don't have any pictures or other videos.
Anyway, what I'm talking about is the Talkback Voice Recorder from Playskool. It was, of course, a voice recorder, but it was actually more than that. See, on the top of the thing was a little wheel that you could use to change the speed of your voice. And you could change the speed while the sound was playing, too. You really can't do that anymore (not even in Audacity).
OK, to be fair, the DSi and 3DS can do that, too, but... let's not get into that.
Instead, I'll talk about a few other things that I loved about it. For one, if you pressed the Record button but remained completely silent, it would actually buzz when you held down the Play button. Yes, it would play a buzz that you could change the pitch of with the speed wheel.
I guess I should explain something: I really don't like sudden loud noises, especially buzzing. That is, unless I can do it myself. When I first discovered this feature, I didn't like it and so didn't use it. However, I eventually grew out of my dislike for that particular noise, and I used it more frequently (when it worked, because it would more often record background noise or just be totally silent). And it also helped that I could change the pitch, because random pitch changing is something that I especially love, for some reason.
Another cool thing was that it included some goofy stock sound effects: there was a telephone, a monkey, a "boing", and... something else, but I can't remember now. I used to like randomly pressing the buttons over and over again, and the funny thing is that by doing that, it would occasionally play the wrong sound effect. Like, you'd hear the "boing" a lot of times, and then all of a sudden the monkey, and then back to the "boing".
The audio quality wasn't total crap, surprisingly. Usually cheap voice recorders sound absolutely terrible. Case in point, I have a voice recorder / refrigerator magnet that my brother-in-law and I use to make pop culture references. Only problem is: it sounds absolutely horrid. You can barely understand what the other person is trying to say.
Not with the Talkback! The cost of the Talkback was probably lower than the voice recording refrigerator magnet, and it sounded a thousand times better. Especially acoustic coupling (holding it right up to a speaker to record from it). Of course, this was long before the days of digital voice recorders that you can connect to your computer via USB (which didn't even exist back then), so that's even more impressive. If only I still had it...
Actually, I can't really say that it isn't in the house anymore. My mom took it away a long time ago, and I haven't seen it since. Now I'm wondering if she still has it, or what the deal is with it. I don't want to know.
Tomorrow, another Playskool thing! See you then!
-Johnny
Anyway, what I'm talking about is the Talkback Voice Recorder from Playskool. It was, of course, a voice recorder, but it was actually more than that. See, on the top of the thing was a little wheel that you could use to change the speed of your voice. And you could change the speed while the sound was playing, too. You really can't do that anymore (not even in Audacity).
OK, to be fair, the DSi and 3DS can do that, too, but... let's not get into that.
Instead, I'll talk about a few other things that I loved about it. For one, if you pressed the Record button but remained completely silent, it would actually buzz when you held down the Play button. Yes, it would play a buzz that you could change the pitch of with the speed wheel.
I guess I should explain something: I really don't like sudden loud noises, especially buzzing. That is, unless I can do it myself. When I first discovered this feature, I didn't like it and so didn't use it. However, I eventually grew out of my dislike for that particular noise, and I used it more frequently (when it worked, because it would more often record background noise or just be totally silent). And it also helped that I could change the pitch, because random pitch changing is something that I especially love, for some reason.
Another cool thing was that it included some goofy stock sound effects: there was a telephone, a monkey, a "boing", and... something else, but I can't remember now. I used to like randomly pressing the buttons over and over again, and the funny thing is that by doing that, it would occasionally play the wrong sound effect. Like, you'd hear the "boing" a lot of times, and then all of a sudden the monkey, and then back to the "boing".
The audio quality wasn't total crap, surprisingly. Usually cheap voice recorders sound absolutely terrible. Case in point, I have a voice recorder / refrigerator magnet that my brother-in-law and I use to make pop culture references. Only problem is: it sounds absolutely horrid. You can barely understand what the other person is trying to say.
Not with the Talkback! The cost of the Talkback was probably lower than the voice recording refrigerator magnet, and it sounded a thousand times better. Especially acoustic coupling (holding it right up to a speaker to record from it). Of course, this was long before the days of digital voice recorders that you can connect to your computer via USB (which didn't even exist back then), so that's even more impressive. If only I still had it...
Actually, I can't really say that it isn't in the house anymore. My mom took it away a long time ago, and I haven't seen it since. Now I'm wondering if she still has it, or what the deal is with it. I don't want to know.
Tomorrow, another Playskool thing! See you then!
-Johnny
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Video: Tranzformin' Z-hicles
As promised, here is the video:
Tomorrow I will talk about something obscure that, unfortunately, I don't still have. I may make a webcam video about it anyway, though. Til then!
-Johnny
Tomorrow I will talk about something obscure that, unfortunately, I don't still have. I may make a webcam video about it anyway, though. Til then!
-Johnny
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