Hello, folks.
As you may have guessed from my username, I'm Gary. I live in Nottingham, and until recently, had a small collection until a strange man named Andy came to take it all away!
I'm not what you might call a 'hardcore' retro fan, just someone who 'grew-up' on a diet of Acorn Electrons, Commodore64s and a few Atari STs (I did, eventually, get hold of an Amiga too!).
I got into the retro scene mostly through my love of the SID chip (preferably the 6581, of course!). Again, I'm no expert, but being a musician (sort of), I simply liked the sounds that SID could produce, and wanted to use them in my music. Searching for emulators and getting hold of a HardSID ISA card led me to things like SIDPlay, CCS64 and eventually things like BeebEm, WinSTOn / STEem, and WinUAE. Of course, emulators were never enough, so taking advantage of the notice board at work, I set about building a collection of real machines. Unfortunaley, this was about the first thing I had to stop when I lost my job. Thus, after my collection spent a couple of years gathering dust, when it came time to do some redecorating, I searched online for somewhere that may be able to make better use than I out of the things I had.
Seeing that RCM was quite local, I decided to contact via email, and eventually arranged to part with my modest collection, but always with the intention to 'follow' it and actually visit the museum at some point. Andy told me about the pre-Christmas event at the end of November, which seems like a rather goood excuse to make my first visit, so hopefully, I'll be able to annoy a few of you with my distinct lack of knowledge in person before the month is out!
Cheers
Gary
