Chris's Corner
So you want to know about me!
The above picture shows me on Christmas Day 1999 in a familiar pose - in front of my PC with a packet of Spicy Twiglets in my hand. Just out of shot is the usual pint of cider, my favourite drink when I'm relaxing on my computer. The PC case that you can see is empty and used to raise the monitor to a reasonable height - the real machine is a full tower system situated down by my feet.
Now for the history lesson!
I was born on November 26 1946 in Liverpool, England - an only child.
I have always been a collector-maniac, my first collections included Dinky Toys, Stamps and Cigarette/Tea Cards. All of these I have long since passed on to other collectors.
I went to St. Philips (CE) Junior School in Litherland, passed my 11+ and went on to Waterloo Grammar School where I got 4 GCEs and amassed a large collection of records in the 1960's (some of which I still have). I also had an interest in model railways (Hornby Dublo) together with my best friend at the time Graham Billington. Graham went on to become a school teacher in the Wirral and I joined the National Provincial Bank in Walton, Liverpool.
In 1967 I got the chance to get into computing with the Bank and moved to London in their "Automation Department". I worked with IBM 360/30's and then 360/50's until National Provincial merged with the Westminster Bank to become National Westminster Bank in the late '60s.
Whilst I worked my way through various positions to, eventually, become a Senior Shift Supervisor I was introduced to video games by way of a Breakout machine in a local Pub. This game was black and white but used coloured overlays to identify different brick values. I also got interested in 'games' that could be played on computers. Colossal Caves was available, if you knew where to find it, on the TSO system - and there were many other games that I and my colleagues used to pass away the 'exciting' hours on the night shift. In 1972 I moved to Chatham in Kent.
In the mid seventies I bought my first video game - a Binatone Pong machine, full colour with 4 games - I still have it! Then I got a ColourMaster game - 4 paddle games, 2 shooting games and 4 motorbike games - sadly I gave this one to my Dad when I bought a Grandstand (Fairchild) Video Entertainment Computer in 1978. I was courting at the time and went on to get married later in the year. My wife to be worked in the Pub adjacent to my work, there was an original Space Invaders machine there, and shared my love/addiction to video games. I could have bought that machine with the amount of cash I poured into it!
In 1979 Fairchild released the Pinball cartridge in the UK and I got my copy direct from Adam Imports in compensation for the Maths 2 cartridge which had a programming flaw in it. Pinball was Breakout and brought back the excitement of the original I had played many years before. Betty, my wife, played it almost as much as me and was playing it most of the night before our son, Iain, was born - I was working the night shift at the time and wouldn't believe that he was on the way when I returned home in the morning. Later in 1979 I bought a Philips G7000 Videopac Computer and we both had many hours of pleasure on this, in between looking after our new baby.
1980 saw the release of Space Invaders on the Atari VCS (packaged with the Combat cartridge) and I couldn't resist it. From then on I bought every Atari cartridge as it was released and caught up on the back issues when I could afford to. £25 - £30 was not unusual for a game with Video Chess costing £45 - an expensive but enjoyable business. When Activision and the others started to release games in the UK I fell way behind with my collection but eventually caught up thanks to Silica Shop and a few specialist shops I was able to visit in London. Some of the, now rare, games came from Woolworths (notably Carrere Video and Data Age) whilst the Gakken cartridges came from a stall in Rochester market.
I went on to become a Systems Analyst on the SWIFT Project (an International Funds Transfer system) which, in 1985 used Burroughs B20/B21 'desktop' computers to enhance the user interface. The floppies on these machines were 8" diameter and very floppy. These computers were, unofficially, able to play games. RATS was my favourite, but eventually a version of Super Cobra was produced "to show off the capabilities of the machine" as the salesman said! In 1986 I was introduced to PC's when it became necessary to define a major system upgrade. Olivetti's to start with, but then the good old IBM 8081 with a green screen monitor, 10mb hard disk and 5.25" floppy drive.
At home, I had ventured into the world of computers for gaming with the purchase of a Commodore 64. The graphics were amazing and the first few games that I bought kept Betty and I enthralled for hours. Later on I bought 2 disk drives and a Star printer and used the machine much like I use my current PC - cataloguing, writing, financial planning and occassional game playing. During this period I sold -( all the cartridges I had bought for the G7000. The base unit itself was broken (no video output) and there were no local dealers to arrange repair. I haven't, as yet, managed to find all the games I sold, although I do have some that I didn't buy first time around :=).
In 1991 I was made redundant from NatWest. With my redundancy cash I bought a Commodore PC, an 8080 with CGA graphics. I soon realised this was not 'state of the art' and had a 386 sx25 built by a local company. I attended an HNC course in computing whilst looking for work and then did a years voluntary work in a design and print shop at the local Scout resource centre. Eventually I landed a job at Lloyd's, the insurance people, and I currently work in the Desktop Operations team with around 200 people calling on our services.
My current PC is a Cyrix 200MMX with 128mb RAM and 16gb hard disk space which just about caters for my needs. Betty has her own machine with a flatbed scanner and a colour printer attached - she loves doing graphic design, in fact she prefers it to housework (I can't understand that!). She had a digital camera for Christmas 2000 so watch out for all sorts of odd pictures appearing on this site.
During this time I had kept all but my Phillips G7000 games and my Commodore 64 plus disks, tapes and accessories. Although I started going to Boot Fairs many years ago it was only around 1995 that I realised that people were selling the games that I had loved, so I decided to start collecting Video Games Systems and Games. This is where I'm at today. You can see the systems that I collect on my Consoles, Handhelds and Computers pages. I would dearly love to be able to collect all game and computer systems but money and space do not allow this - Betty already gets uptight about the endless stream of carrier bags that inhabit our lounge and about the amount of time I spend "testing" games and systems!
One thing that I will say is that I still get a buzz of excitement when I see an Atari logo on a game at a Boot Fair - even if I've got it already I still get a tingle inside - I guess I'm hooked on Video Games.
If you want to comment on this page, please eMail me.
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