b3ta.com qotw
Hebtro make trousers and shirts and boots and jumpers, and will sell them to you using this internet hyperlink. All made in the UK and ideal as gifts for blokes. JUST BUY A JUMPER OK?
You are not logged in. Login or Signup
Home » Question of the Week » Crap Gadgets » Post 1375227 | Search
This is a question Crap Gadgets

We wanted a monkey butler and bought one off eBay. Imagine our surprise when we found it was just an ordinary monkey with rabies. Worse: It had no butler training at all. Tell us about your duff technology purchases.

Thanks to Moonbadger for the suggestion

(, Thu 29 Sep 2011, 12:51)
Pages: Popular, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

« Go Back

Commodore plus4
I wanted a commodore 64. I got a commodore plus4
the commodore plus4 was just like a commodore 64, except that, while the 64 had hundred, if not thousands of games written for it, the plus 4 had.... well, probably about 4.

whereas you could get books and advice on how to do exciting 'projects' on your 64.... there was nothing available for the plus 4.

going into a shop to get a game for the plus 4 either elicited blank looks, or a smirk from a salesman who was thinking 'what clever salesman sold someone one of those lemons'

IIRC the common nickname for it was 'the minus 60'
(, Fri 30 Sep 2011, 21:10, 7 replies)
Oh dear...
...The plus 4 really was a head scratcher. If you had money to burn, you had an Amiga, if not then a 64 was fine. A plus 4 cost about the same to make as a 64 yet without the cult following.

The same reasoning was applied shortly after when Commodore PCs were actively marketed against Amiga 3000s.
(, Fri 30 Sep 2011, 23:15, closed)
I can honestly say with hand on heart I never sold one of those useless things
But hold my hands up to flogging a few Oric Atmos machines and quite a few MSX computers a few years later (but at least the Yamaha ones had an extra life as synths)
(, Sat 1 Oct 2011, 2:31, closed)

I think they'd run Commodore C16 software and had some built in 'productivity' applications, I vaguely recall that mine was obtained by some subterfuge and returned for a profitable refund when Commodore sharply bailed on supporting them to the point that even the pinouts on the ports was unobtainable information.
(, Sat 1 Oct 2011, 3:11, closed)
nope
nope, they wouldn't run C16 games.

did have fire ant tho... and come on, there were loads of games for 1.99...

and it had a built in spreadsheet and word processor! every kids dream!

yeah, they were shit, the +4's...
(, Mon 3 Oct 2011, 8:22, closed)

b3ta.com/questions/betamax/post958048
(, Sat 1 Oct 2011, 8:48, closed)
The Commodore 64 was truly a work of genius
That sound chip was just incredible. Loading games got be be fun. I've never heard better in-game music that for the C64 version of Tetris.
(, Mon 3 Oct 2011, 2:05, closed)
I too wanted
a Commodore 64 and ended up with one of these dog turds of computers. They have 64k of memory the salesman eagerly gushed to my Dad who had the same amount of computer savvy as Genghis Khan had of whale juggling in the outer Hebrides so that obviously meant they were the same computer. I remember some of the games fondly and it DID play C16 games which were... well crap (mission mars was a particular none highlight).
Being vaguely aware as a little pieman that my computer was really not all that awesome compared to its better brother or even a ZX Spectrum i committed the cardinal sin of persuading a couple of friends to purchase one to share games along with the misery.
(, Mon 3 Oct 2011, 16:03, closed)

« Go Back

Pages: Popular, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1