17. Standing on the brink in the eve of destruction

You are listening to the Ericade Radio Network. Good evening and welcome to another hour of Amiga Retro music. And Amiga flashback. Today we remember the weird world that it was in the 80s and 90s. It's all about retro politics, but not in a political way. You know, I was five in 1980, so what did I know?

little 80s mix. There is a Swedish song by Swedish rap group Just D. It's called 87 87. That's 87 87 in English. It remembers the 80s or more specifically 1987. It was made in the early 90s and it's also a parody of an older song called 67 67. That's 67 67 in English.It had a lot of memorable lyrics. Among them it was, Reagan solved the crisis while Europe rocked the charts. Europe referred to the glam rock group, not the continent. The song tries to capture the feeling rather than the facts of the world. And that's what we're trying to do here as well. So no left or right wing politics are going on here. The 80s had us marvel over the cooler and cooler gaming machines we had.The amazing Nintendo NES, the inspired C64, the Amiga and Atari duking it out as the coolest machines. And we also had beautiful failures like the Texas instrument TI-99AH, the Altair, and of course the Swedish mistakes ABC-80 and ABC-800. All that deserved better fates than they actually got. But losers seldom do.Now do they? In politics, we heard about Star Wars. Not the movies, but rather the SDI. You know, the US Anti-Missile Defense. Was it ever meant to work, or just to force the Soviet Union to compete in a game called brinkmanship? I read an article about it in the Swedish magazine Teknikmagasinet, where my father was a regular contributor. But it was behind my understanding as to why it wouldn't work.something with there being not enough computing power and speed. My family fled to Sweden from an annexed Latvia in 1944 as the communists were closing in and the Nazis were leaving. So we feared the Soviet Union. It was hanging in the air so to speak. And the US and USSR both were linked together by a dedicated hotline that ran across Sweden on its way between West and East.

Let's talk more about all this and more in this hour.

youErik Zalitis

A side story. The NY Times reported on the 8th of January this year that retro computers are getting more and more popular and expensive. The ever prolific LGR or Clint Basinger as his real name is, he tells the paper this.You get into this mindset of what it must have been like to be someone in the late 70s having spent thousands of dollars on this thing that barely does anything more than a calculator. The paper also states that you will have to pay between 300 to 650 dollars for a working system. And that's a big problem for me, as it's only true if you don't know what you're doing.As I'm in Sweden, I've taken the liberty to convert what I paid in US dollars. I paid about 200 dollars for my Amiga 1200, 300 dollars for my CD-32, and 150 dollars for my C64 with a working 1541 diskette drive. However, the less common machines can set you back a lot. An Amiga 3000 can cost like$800 and the SX64 or Executive 64, yep, about the same. Just a few advices from yours truly. Do you really need a retro computer? An emulator can give you back many good memories. Start there before buying an Amiga 500 just because you used to own one. If you love the emulator experience then maybe, just go ahead. Don't buy stuff on eBay.They're generally extremely expensive. Find a local place for shopping stuff. It can be a Facebook group, of course, but it should be run by local enthusiasts in your country. Try to get an idea of what the stuff is really worth. Be ready to tinker, solder, and buy spare parts and aftermarket modifications. We're dealing with 25 to 40 years old hardware. Remember that.

In 1984, Reagan ran for re-election and as he was preparing for his weekly broadcast on NPR, that's National Public Radio, he was asked to say something so they could do a sound check. Knowing it would never be broadcast, he said this.that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes. This unheard part of the speech leaked and caused a worldwide shock reaction. Suffice to say, the Soviets were not amused. It ended up hurting his own campaign as well, although he did actually win it. A few days later, on the 15th of August 1984, an operatorin the Soviet Far Eastern Command sent a message stating that we now embark on a military action against the US forces. The world stood still for a while, but nothing happened. The Soviet Union did no official remark, but Pravda noted it as unprecedentedly hostile.

On the 26th of April 1986, one of the infamous reactors in Chernobyl exploded, throwing massive amounts of radioactive material into the air. Initially, not a word was said about this, and Sweden learned of it as the radiation monitor, the external ones in Forsmark, went off. But the staff couldn't understand why the internal monitors did not. The radiation thus could not have come from Forsmark itself.I remember Rapport, news broadcast, as I, my father, my stepmother and the then two brothers were watching. It was a bit exciting, but also very, very scary. The Swedish area around Gävle, north of Stockholm, was hit the worst, and people wondered if animals you would hunt could be safely eaten.The Swedish MED magazine invented a new animal called Becquerelj. That's a portmonee between the Swedish word for moose, elj, and Becquerelj, a measuring unit for radioactivity.

youErik Zalitis

youErik Zalitis

Me and my friends discussed the war Warsaw pact and the NATO forces and we had many arguments about who would win on the European battleground if it ever came to war. I said NATO was more high powered, high tech and more modern and would make short work of the Soviet Union. My friend laughed at this and spoke about the gigantic numbers of vastly superior tanks that would drive NATO troops into the Atlantic.None of us had any idea what we were talking about. But games such as Red Storm Rising and Theatre Europe on the Commodore 64 kept me busy for hours. They had Cold War themes and make you a pivotal piece in the crisis between the powers.

1989 saw the dissolution of the Berlin Wall and the total collapse of the Iron Curtain as more and more countries regained their freedom. The Soviet Union finally fell and the whole 90s the countries that were freed got a taste of the home computer revolution many years too late.A friend of mine hailing from the Czech Republic remembers owning a Commodore C64 in the 90s, just as they were by and large extinct in the western societies.

And that is as many stories as I have for you today. We got more music and as you probably understand we have been heavily inspired by the 80s when we chose songs. had the Canon father funk version and before that it was a Chernobyl pretty logic. And after this discussion about Ronald Reagan's gaff it was nuclear winter and before that nowhere to run. You can see the pattern can't you?

youErik Zalitis

I got politically interested in 1990s, the early ones that is, and I can tell you this since that day until today we have never politically had a boring day. As a matter of fact we may live in the most interesting times there ever been. At least it feels like that.

aptly named song, A Moment in Time, and that's all we have. We have a moment in time, our time, until our days are gone. I hope when you look back at everything, and remember when you get older, everything is gonna be pretty much retro, whether it's about computers. I hope you had a good time, I know I did.

So we're leaving this interesting Amiga flashback. We've been all about politics, except choosing a side, because we all have our ideas what's right and wrong in this world. But I do not want this to be part of this podcast. Other people can do that far better than I can.We're continuing with Raining Stars with AM FM, and before it, was Altmerth with their Planetary.

youErik Zalitis

This is DJ Demon saying Auf Wiedersehen. Maybe we should add like Monty?

We'll be back next Saturday at 9 p.m. Central European Time or on Sundays in your podcast player. That's how it is. Thank you for listening.