don't recall ever coming across this whilst growing up in England: http://www.vilecha.com/Neo/images/AmstradMegaPC.jpg
Yup. They also released an IBM PC / Megadrive combo in Japan. There's information on both of them on the old ASSEMbler site: http://assembler.roarvgm.com/Amstrad_megadrive_computer_1/amstrad_megadrive_computer_1.html http://assembler.roarvgm.com/teradrive/teradrive.html
I had one when they were around - good console, fairly rubbish computer. They were down to £399 by late 1994. What was cool was it was quite uncommon (mostly sold through mail-order) so you could brag about it to your mates - although they wouldn't believe you. Also, you could pull off the little panel at the front and add a MegaCD to it (although, because it was an expensive and mildly useless add-on, I never bothered). Unlike the Terradrive, they didn't have any interaction between the console and the PC, and you had to really use their custom monitor to get the most out of them (although it was liney and whistley at certain popular resolutions). So many fond memories... Still, I loved it to bits until the lack of upgradability (and a CD drive) meant that I sadly parted ways with it by 1996. Whilst it's quite a rarity, the rubbish PC side means that it's only really a 'collectors piece' nowadays as it offered nothing of huge benefit other than a better picture over a standard MD.
the Japanese one , the TeraDrive is a beast! I almost purchased one when I was a kid, but my parents wouldn't have it since it was a big bulk (including the sexy black monitor). That said, the Amstrad/Mega Drive isn't in any way related to the TeraDrive
No, due to it having no passthrough/"graphic overlay" connection. Remember that the 32X works by overlaying graphics over the Mega Drive graphics feed, but the MegaPC only offers the monitor connection and the speaker socket, so it wouldn't work. Could hack it, I suppose EDIT: On a side note, my brother had an Amiga, and after that point I envied it so badly because the games felt very backward in comparison (on the PC front). This thing only had Adlib sound, so no sampled sounds until I got a Sound Blaster card for it, at a reasonable cost. Didn't even have Windows - had to install a copy on it. You really didn't miss out, 8bitplus - I still have my brother's old Amiga.
I remember the Teradrive from when it came out and was featured in a then current magazine (Mean Machine I think it was)
I saw a couple of ads for this thing, but thought it was a commercial failure. Does anyone here has one of those AIWA MD/MCD boombox?
I had one that I bought in Hard Off but the Mega CD section was dead thanks to the CD player being dead Quite a nice idea really and surprisingly compact for it's age. Yakumo
me thinking outside of the common box. Hmmm why am I thinking, let us upgrade the PC side of this fucker..... it would be an awesome thing to do. maybe it is because in an old thread, I mentioned it and it was about such a machine.
Thats like putting a RS4 engine into an old Bettle, the thing is too old for a major upgrade. The components are barely compatible with today's standards, and I think you cant even upgrade it to a 486, which while a difference back then, its nothing when you think how far both processors are from even the lowend computers we have now.
... because whilst it's not accessible by the PC, the MD half of the machine was custom built to work off the Amstrad boards. You couldn't just slap in a new PC and expect it to work, because it has to pass the picture onto the graphics port, the power from (AFAIR) a custom interface, etc. etc... The TerraDrive would be worse due to all it's 'crazy' wiring and cross-system interoperability. You *could* do it, but it wouldn't be worth the hassle as you'd still have a PC and a Mega Drive - and both could be made so much better.
I have a PC tha can play mega drive games too.... (somebody had to say it so why not Assembler's resident asshole)
I've had a PDA that can play Genesis games since 2004, big deal... We arent talking about emulation here.
Yeah, I've seen a few PC with Mega drive slots in them. Mostly Japanese, never from europe. 40 MB HDD........ we've come a long way in 16 years now we have 1 TB HDDs
