Hi everyone, my name is Chris Dymond and, as Derek Andrews already mentioned in his intro, I stream and create content as DeadFleshRetro (a nod to the venerable and beloved ZX Spectrum keyboard, of course 
I started trying to fix up and repair old 8 bit computers about 3 years ago, as a fun hobby to do with my son Flynn. Neither of us knew anything about micro-electronics really (I was always more of a software guy than hardware), and so it was fun for us to learn together, for a while. We refurbished a couple of Acorn Electrons, my old ZX Spectrum, a few Commodore 64s, and a bunch of consoles as well - some Atari 2600s, a Videopac G7000, a Nintendo DS, a Playstation 2, etc. As I've learned more over the years, it's really gripped me!
Flynn's interest has always been sporadic - he's only just 11 years old now, and has ADHD, and so naturally flits between interests rapidly - but when the lockdown started last year we thought it would be a fun thing to begin streaming old games running on original hardware that we had worked on. We had just finished building a house extension with a videogames "snug" when the first lockdown started, so we bought some gear and started figuring out how to stream. We ended up doing over 20 livestreams together, usually on Sunday mornings from 11am (UK time).
We stopped doing it last October, as Flynn wasn't into it any more, and I was concentrating on other things, but I decided to start it up again about a month ago, as I'd begun to get increasingly interested in the Signetics 2650 family of consoles, and the realisation that there was an entire British videogame console industry in the late 1970s and early 80s that is largely forgotten. I started collecting (broken) APVS 1292 consoles to try to assemble a complete set of British produced machines, from Radofin, Acetronic, Prinztronic, Rowtron/Teleng and Videomaster/Voltmace. I then also discovered the Hanimex HMG2650, which is a British/Australian clone of the Emerson Arcadia 2001, which uses an evolution of the APVS architecture.
The Hanimex is the first machine that I've been able to convert to Composite output, and can now livestream through my AV stack in the "Snug". I'm working to get other machines converted so I can show those as well.
In the process of doing this, and streaming on Sunday mornings I got in touch with Derek, who is working on ways to make it realistic to begin coding on these platforms again, and I really want to help him do this - it would be great to take some of the existing games which were produced at breakneck speed to hit a market that was beign disrupted by much more capabile machinery, and see what they could have been and what the underlying platforms are really capable of delivering.
And so we looking for anyone who collects these platforms, codes on them (or would like to), and especially anyone who used to work for any of the firms involved! And if anyone has something they would like to contribute to our work and content, please get in touch!
Let me know here or at DeadFleshRetro@gmail.com and go check the streams out if you're into this stuff - it's niche, but I think it's really fascinating to explore
Cheers everyone, I'm really looking forward to being part of this community and seeing if anyone else is as interested in these machines as we are!
CD
DeadFleshRetro is on...
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC21J52nwWMdnsBUyk2sXn8A
Twitch: http://twitch.tv/DeadFleshRetro
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DeadFleshRetro
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DeadFleshRetro
I started trying to fix up and repair old 8 bit computers about 3 years ago, as a fun hobby to do with my son Flynn. Neither of us knew anything about micro-electronics really (I was always more of a software guy than hardware), and so it was fun for us to learn together, for a while. We refurbished a couple of Acorn Electrons, my old ZX Spectrum, a few Commodore 64s, and a bunch of consoles as well - some Atari 2600s, a Videopac G7000, a Nintendo DS, a Playstation 2, etc. As I've learned more over the years, it's really gripped me!
Flynn's interest has always been sporadic - he's only just 11 years old now, and has ADHD, and so naturally flits between interests rapidly - but when the lockdown started last year we thought it would be a fun thing to begin streaming old games running on original hardware that we had worked on. We had just finished building a house extension with a videogames "snug" when the first lockdown started, so we bought some gear and started figuring out how to stream. We ended up doing over 20 livestreams together, usually on Sunday mornings from 11am (UK time).
We stopped doing it last October, as Flynn wasn't into it any more, and I was concentrating on other things, but I decided to start it up again about a month ago, as I'd begun to get increasingly interested in the Signetics 2650 family of consoles, and the realisation that there was an entire British videogame console industry in the late 1970s and early 80s that is largely forgotten. I started collecting (broken) APVS 1292 consoles to try to assemble a complete set of British produced machines, from Radofin, Acetronic, Prinztronic, Rowtron/Teleng and Videomaster/Voltmace. I then also discovered the Hanimex HMG2650, which is a British/Australian clone of the Emerson Arcadia 2001, which uses an evolution of the APVS architecture.
The Hanimex is the first machine that I've been able to convert to Composite output, and can now livestream through my AV stack in the "Snug". I'm working to get other machines converted so I can show those as well.
In the process of doing this, and streaming on Sunday mornings I got in touch with Derek, who is working on ways to make it realistic to begin coding on these platforms again, and I really want to help him do this - it would be great to take some of the existing games which were produced at breakneck speed to hit a market that was beign disrupted by much more capabile machinery, and see what they could have been and what the underlying platforms are really capable of delivering.
And so we looking for anyone who collects these platforms, codes on them (or would like to), and especially anyone who used to work for any of the firms involved! And if anyone has something they would like to contribute to our work and content, please get in touch!
Let me know here or at DeadFleshRetro@gmail.com and go check the streams out if you're into this stuff - it's niche, but I think it's really fascinating to explore
Cheers everyone, I'm really looking forward to being part of this community and seeing if anyone else is as interested in these machines as we are!
CD
DeadFleshRetro is on...
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC21J52nwWMdnsBUyk2sXn8A
Twitch: http://twitch.tv/DeadFleshRetro
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DeadFleshRetro
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DeadFleshRetro