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Author Topic: Hello from Athens!! (Read 3362 times)

Offline kokkiklhs

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Hello from Athens!!
« on: 2021.January.04. 14:49:10 »
Hello Enterprise people of Hungary and from all over the world!
Freshly subscribed here, I wish you all a happy, healthy and creative 2021!!!
:smt001
Originally I'm mostly a Spectrum (since 1984), Amiga and Commodore guy, but I am also interested in anything 8 or 16bit which has a keyboard and is not PC compatible... I've been watching the forum from time to time, but hadn't joined so far...
I am an average EP128 user, without special knowledge, got my hands on a real machine some years ago and I like it very much from as far as I've sen it, so I decided to watch more closely!
I am particularly impressed by the advanced capabilities of the EP, highly underrated machine back in its days, I think it's the most powerful 8bit home computer of the eighties, along with the MSX2 computers (I'm leaving the SAM Coupe outside, as it appeared later...) and I liked very much the ability of this mighty home computer to successfully emulate other machines via software, with high compatibility rate!
Of course first come the programmer's skills, but the hardware underneath is really versatile!!!
You'll find out I'm a big emulators enthusiast, especially when the emulators run on older, non-Windoze or DOS machines...
Anyway, cheers from Athens, Greece!!!
:smt039

Offline szipucsu

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Re: Hello from Athens!!
« Reply #1 on: 2021.January.04. 15:40:04 »
It is great to see people from Greece here too!
Yes, the Enterprise has special capabilities. However it is often discussed if it is more powerful than the C64 or not. I think the EP knows a number of things that the C64 doesn't. (And the contrary is true too.) Unfortunately only very few programs appeared for this machine, they are mostly conversions from other machines and don't show what this machine is able to do. Nowadays new software is created and converted that shows more of what the EP can do.
Greece is a nice place but I haven't been there. The Greek language is also interesting with those letters. It might be a bit difficult for you to read and write in English. However all these retro machines use English letters so you may have some practice, more than other Greek people who have never used retro computers, I think.
We hope you will enjoy using this forum.
100 SOUND SOURCE 2,STYLE 128,PITCH 25.2,SYNC 1
110 SOUND PITCH 25,SYNC 1
120 ! Videos

Offline gflorez

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Re: Hello from Athens!!
« Reply #2 on: 2021.January.04. 16:04:48 »
Hello kokkiklhs! Also a good year for you.

I  have a similar history here in Spain, but on a different order, first Spectrum, then Enterprise, and Amiga at last(before the PC invasion).

If you are a Spectrum guy since 1984... then you are now probably as "young" as I am.... so I would like to ask you some questions:

-Do you remember if the EP64s or EP128s where offered on your country on the middle eighties?
-When and where do you started to know about the Enterprise existence?
-What method do you use to load programs on the machine?

I am glad to know that there are Enterprise users on almost all European countries, and on the rest of the world.

Gustavo.

Offline kokkiklhs

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Re: Hello from Athens!!
« Reply #3 on: 2021.January.04. 19:06:17 »
Thank you both for the warm welcome, lads!!
:smt023

@szipucsu:
The greek alphabet is the "mother" of the latin and also of the cyrillic, so it's rather easy for a greek person to read and write any european language! The difficult is to understand the various different languages, even when written in a readable way!! English is more ore less known by most people nowadays, I personally prefer english language menus in Windows, Office suite and any programs I use for work, rather than greek. A greek-speaking computer seems to me very odd!! :D

@gflorez:
I remember first seeing an Enterprise in home-computer related magazines of the era, in advertisements. But they weren't "first division" ads, just in the corner of the page. I then saw them exhibited in some central computer shops of Athens, but as we were kids at the time (born in 1973) we didn't pay much attention to this "alien" and expensive machine who had almost no games back then, we were only looking for the latest game hits on the Spectrum-Amstrad-Commodore triad...
I am not sure, though, if there was an "official" representative/dealer for Greece, or if the machines I saw live (and advertised by specific shops) were individual imports... Most likely the second, I will perform a more detailed check and I will tell you if I find something...
As for loading, I use Tapir on my Windoze Laptop and the traditional cassette (sound) lead and I am quite happy so far... I just wish there were some "turbo" loading option (like with proyecto O.T.L.A. for other Z80 machines), to spare some loading time...
:roll:
« Last Edit: 2021.January.04. 19:10:30 by kokkiklhs »

Offline Tuby128

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Re: Hello from Athens!!
« Reply #4 on: 2021.January.05. 01:13:20 »
Hello Kokkiklhs!

 I was reading your sentence "I just wish there were some "turbo" loading option (like with proyecto O.T.L.A. for other Z80 machines), to spare some loading time..." and some thoughts came into my mind.
 Me and my daugter was playing some games with the Enterprise on last Sunday. (She had her 3. birthday yesterday) We used the whole afternoon for that, because the weather was not that good, to play outside.
 We played games like Sorcery, Batman, Imposible mission II, Chuckie egg, Wriggler, Curse of Sherwood, Rocky horror show. She is learning how to use the joystick with games, for a young children there is always a learning phase to understand the eye-hand connection, to "drive" a character on the screen remotely. I think this is the best age of start doing this, because for example at her age of 2, she could not manage the Joystick that good, as she can do now. I am not sure how old I was, as I started to play the games on EP, it was also between 3 and 5.
 On Sunday I was loading the games from cassette as always, I never had a disk drive.

 What I wanted to say, the fact that we load a game from cassette, which takes about 5+ minutes, it makes differences compare to nowdays game machines (e.g PC or Smartphone).
Because of the long loading time, we have more time to prepare, or relax, or do something else, for example play with each other or speak with each other in the room.
 If we know, that we have to wait to load a game, we try to play longer with bad games, because we know, the changing to new game takes time.
 Because the changing needs time, the enterprise let's you leave the computer. Nowdays when a teenager, who has 20 games on the game console, he spends about the whole day to play, because there is no stop between.

 So my opinion, the Enterprise home computer with cassette player is the best gaming machine for family life without addiction.

Offline Zozosoft

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Re: Hello from Athens!!
« Reply #5 on: 2021.January.05. 09:14:11 »
I remember first seeing an Enterprise in home-computer related magazines of the era, in advertisements.
There is any available archives of that magazines, where possible to find some mention of Enterprise?
We collected lot of articles/advertistments from a many countries, but from Greece still missing :oops:

Offline kokkiklhs

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Re: Hello from Athens!!
« Reply #6 on: 2021.January.05. 12:48:39 »
Hi again, people!! :)

@Tuby128:
Yes, you are right, I know what you mean... When playing, it's really important to have a little break from time to time and to get away from the keyboard/joystick/screen...
It is most important for kids and for young people, who never learned to wait for such things and to leave the computer/console in order to do something else... I (we) know the procedure of loading delay from tape very well, since some 40 years! :D
On the other hand, when it comes to testing, it's really boring to have to wait 10+ times for the same thing to load again and again, as you want to see e.g. the results of an experiment... Of course there are the emulators for such things... ;)
Anyway, very nice of you to play with your little daughter indoors, showing her the EP, I imagine it, such a nice picture to see... I wish you many many more happy moments like these!!!

@Zozosoft:
The main greek magazines for such subjects during the early/mid/late eighties were "Pixel", "Computer Για Όλους" (=Computer For Everyone) and (less significant) "Micromad".

"Pixel" old issues can be found here:
http://www.e-compupress.gr/showmag.asp?ID=35
for online reading (no downloads, though, and it's slooooow)... The first 50 issues are more or less "pure" 8bit, later there was the 16bit (Atari/Amiga) invasion and the older machines fell into oblivion... If you have the time and patience to look among these, you will most probably find an ad of Enterprise... Pixel was the most popular of all... As for the other two mags, I am not sure if they are available online somewhere...
Unfortunately I can't remember where exactly I first saw these ads, as back in the time we were reading almost all of these 3 different mags (and from time to time some imported from England, like Your Computer, Your Sinclair). I'm pretty sure, though, that there were indeed small ads for Enterprise inside some greek mags, but I can't help much right now, as I don't have them any more...

In the late 80s - early 90s there were many other similar magazines as well, but they weren't home-micro oriented, or they came later, after the Enterprise and all 8-bit time, so they were mostly for 16bit home micros and PCs...

Offline Tuby128

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Re: Hello from Athens!!
« Reply #7 on: 2021.January.05. 19:52:10 »
About this website.
http://www.e-compupress.gr/showmag.asp?ID=35

 The engine of the newspaper viewer is adobe Flash, which from beginning this year is not supported anymore. :(

Offline Zozosoft

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Re: Hello from Athens!!
« Reply #8 on: 2021.January.05. 20:10:36 »
Still working in Internet Explorer :-)

Offline kokkiklhs

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Re: Hello from Athens!!
« Reply #9 on: 2021.January.05. 20:32:52 »
...and it's painfully slooooowwwwww....
I had a quick look in a couple of issues, I didn't see something where I thought it could be...
:roll:
What I can be 99.9% sure of, is the answer to the question of gflorez above, there wasn't an official representative in Greece... I saw the lists of the official importers/dealers of the time, in the pages of some of these magazines, Enterprise was NOT a supported name...
IIRC, the shops (1 or 2, not more) where we saw the real machine back then, may have had a relation with the official Amstrad importer...
I remember also having seen a Camputers Lynx somewhere, which was not officially imported, either...
The funny thing is that there were official importers in Greece for even more unusual machines, like the Newbrain, the Spectravideo or the Jupiter Ace...