Everdrive GB GameBoy smartcard

Finally there is a good flash cartridge for classic GameBoy. Store roms on the Micro-SD card, you can use both GBC and GB roms on it and it kicks ass.

As you know Everdrive cartridges are totally awesome and the Everdrive GB does not fail to live up to the expectations of Everdrives! Get one!

Rotring 600 back at Rotring store

Rotring 600 is one of the most amazing drafting pencils available. It was made by the German company Rotring during the 80ies and 90ies until they stopped making it.

You could still during these years after the 90'ies get a Rotring 600, either on the eBay or through Japan where the pencil was still availble (but it was not 100% same internally).

Now the pencil with the sharp look is back in Rotring shop again, very nice. It is however not the original German version but the Japanese version, however the text on the pen is changed to German style (mechanical font and Rotring logo).

I actually ordered a black Rotring 600 to replace mine from 1991 and a silver Rotring 800.

You should too!

Expect to find a link to a proper review of the Rotring 600 and detailed comparison with the German made original classic from 1991.

New hardware for the Amiga in 2008 - Indivision AGA scandoubler

The last couple of years have brought some very nice hardware for the Amiga enthusiasts still remaining. Everything from USB cards, new operating systems and other devices have been offered on the exclusive market for the hi-end Amiga club of the world.

So it is especially nice that we finally have a good solution for connecting our Amiga 1200 computers to a normal VGA screen and can have crystal clear display quality in applications and games!

This is a nice scandoubler for the Amiga 1200 that I just tested on my Amiga blog where I occasionally write some pieces about hardware I purchase for my Amiga systems. If you are interested in the Amiga and have an A1200 I bet you already heard about the Indivision scandoubler, it really does not depend if you have or have not heard anything about it, I suggest you head on over to read my Individual Computers Indivision AGA scandoubler review now to find out some of the best bits of the best scandoubler and flicker fixer solution for the A1200!

Gaming laptop - new blog about portable gaming notebooks

I just launched my new blog which will cover gaming laptops, a niche I thing will grow a lot in the future.

We will cover both middle ground and the top of the line dual GPU laptop which will run 20 minutes on a full charge.

Be sure to come along and enjoy the ride!

Gaming Laptop - portable gaming on a notebook

Vintage Amiga Hardware Blog v2

Vintage Amiga Hardware Blog was a small hobby blog I started during beginning of fall 2007. The blog contains information and pictures of vintage Amiga hardware such as Amiga 4000, Amiga 4000. Various graphic cards, accelerator cards and other interesting things.

Lately I have begun posting information about my different Amiga projects I have begun working on. If things like tuned A500 with scan doublers, turbo boards and SCSI controllers sounds like fun be sure to check it out ASAP!

Vintage Amiga Hardware Blog - information and facts about Commodore Amiga hardware

Bridgestone MB2 from 1990

Bridgestone was a nice bike company (that still lives on in Japan). They where fairly popular in western part of world during the 80ies and 90ies.
Some of their bikes are very sought after because they where built with high quality and had a unique mix of components.
Recently I found an old 1990 Bridgestone MB2 mountainbike in excellent condition complete with Suntour XC-comp components. I am thinking about restoring this bike to former glory.
Find out more about the Bridgestone MB2 vintage Mountain Bike at my site!

Amiga Zorro slot bus type

Amiga computers had their own proprietary bus type called the Zorro slot. Think of the Zorro slot as a more advanced ISA slot but 50 pins in length (100 pin total).

Lots of interesting Zorro cards where made like graphic cards, network cards and even sound cards. If you where a serious Amiga user you had have Zorro slots in your favorite computer.

To find out more information about the Zorro slots, like the difference between Zorro 2 and Zorro 3, read my article about Zorro slots on the Commodore Amiga!

Amiga articles published on erkan.se

I have written quite a lot of Amiga articles in the past days.

Read about the Alfapower IDE harddrive controller for Amiga 500 here:
>Alfadata Alfapower A500 IDE harddrive and memory expansion for Amiga 500.

Or read about the professional Amiga - the A2000 here:
>Amiga 2000

And yes, there is another article about the Amiga 2000 here (actually about my own A2000 I work with sometimes):
>My own Amiga 2000 lab computer

As usual do not forget about my blog about vintage Amiga hardware! check it out here:
>Vintage Amiga hardware blog

Check it out!

Red anodized aluminium parts for Mini-Z Overland

I have been having quite some fun with a small radio controlled car lately. My daughter is also very entertained by watching and chasing the car -a small Kyosho Mini-Z Overland car- in our apartment.

So there are a lot of hop-up options for the Mini-Z cars by Kyosho that makes them stronger by replacing weak plastic parts with aluminium, in reality plastic parts are good but aluminium parts are much prettier.

Rcxmini.com was having a sale on Overland parts so I decided to get all option parts in red so I could be sure the little car would hold up for years to come thinking my daughter would perhaps want to play with it when she is a bit older. Check out the GPM aluminium Mini Z Overland parts in this picture, how nice:

Old BBS screen

There was quite a long time ago I saw a nice BBS screen so this image feels really nostalgic. I used to be really good at making ASCII drawings, sadly that is one computer related interest you can never make ANY money on anytime soon, but it was a fun hobby for some years.

This screenshot is taken on an Amiga and the font is substituted to a cooler looking one, perhaps the stock font called "Topaz" rings a bell.

Old VS new style of web development

I have been doing homepages for a couple of years now and the need for dynamic sites with custom solutions is increasing, gone are the days of designing a template in Photoshop, getting an approval and exporting it to a cut and past table in ImageReady, all in one evening - todays clients have bigger demands.

But dynamic sites means a lot of work, or it used to mean that...

I got the same sence of rush and finish style of work when I worked on a community based site with Drupal tonight. It is amazing to think that 4 hours ago I did not have a CMS, a Blog system, internal PM, secure login system, file upload, profile page. Now it is almost ready to ship.

How amazing!

Horace strikes back - Cool article about the Horace games on the ZX-Spectrum

Horace was a figure from a line of well known ZX-Spectrum games. In an epic game line of three games, Horace skiied, ran over streets, escaped guards watching plants and stomped on spiders, enough material to fill any hardcore gamers 3 hour podcast with lots of in depth analysis.

I dont do podcasts but why not write a cool little article about these games from the 80'es?

I know you want to read it!

Check it out at: http://www.erkan.se/hungry-skiing-spiders-horace.asp

So I started an Amiga hardware blog

Back in 1998 I had this cool idea to create a database driven website where I could collect info and pictures of different Amiga hardware. The site Big Book of Amiga Hardware had the same idea so I did not invest time in my own project because I did not want to compete.

So today I decided to start a small Amiga blog about the hardware I have collected and occasionally buy and sell. Check it out, I am sure you are going to find something cool if you are into Amiga or retro computers. I am thinking about updating it a couple of times a month so bookmark it now!

So I present to you: Vintage Amiga hardware blog

The problem with owning and running a website.

The big problem with owning and running a popular website like mine is that you have to constantly add content in order to not let the page slow down. This can be tough to do if you have work and family as I found out during the year. But thankfully today I added to pieces to my homepage about Amiga icons and how a webshop works.

In the future I think that I am going to do some more short and fast tutorial on web development because I know there are many out there who wants to find out how things are done and not exactly how with the code presented etc....

so here are the articles and check back on www.erkan.se to find more exciting stuff in the future!

Thanks!

History of Amiga icons
Construction of a webshop in a modern web development environment

10 signs that you are a gaming noob

I have just created a short list called "10 signs that you are a gaming noob". I came up with the list after spending 30 minutes at a so called "gaming forum".

>>Read the list now, I know you want to!

Change a site from ASP to PHP

I have written a short guide I used today to convert one of my sites from ASP to PHP.

You can find it here -> How can I convert a static ASP site to PHP fast and easy?

From now on I am going with PHP only but I will keep some of my old sites in ASP.

"Doom clones" on the Commodore Amiga

Did you know that John Carmack of ID software once told that the Amiga was not powerful enough to play Doom?

Years later Doom was ported and became playable on the Amiga after lots of “Doom-clones” had been made by fans. Proving that if not Doom could run on the Amiga, and then Amiga users could create their own Doom game just to prove even geniuses could be wrong.

Read more about FPS games on the Commodore Amiga on my new article at erkan.se

I have written a short (fun) article about how the timeline of a web designer is.

You can read it on my homepage http://www.erkan.se/the-timeline-of-a-web-designer.asp

My Game Boy collection. Check it out now!

Wow I just re-launched my Game Boy collection site! I spent quite some time on the design of this page so I hope you will like it. Oh and it is completely made in CSS, no tables for the layout. Check it out!

My Game Boy collection

XBOX RoXxXorS

Wow… I bought an XBOX in the middle of 2004 and finally yesterday I upgraded the stock harddrive from 8 to 320 GB! What an improvement!

I also got myself a wireless controller since I prefer to use a joypad in XBOX Media Center. Got me remembering those articles about the original XBOX joypad, many claimed it was too big, and Microsoft released a smaller version of it. I never had any problems with the big XBOX controller, I think it was perfect.

The XBOX is now dead and replaced by the XBOX360 but I predict that the first generation of the console will live on amongst home brewers and non-gamers.