[It’s like the Yugo of 2600s]

2 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Not only Fiat was affected, in the 1970s and 1980s almost all European cars were affected by the cheap Soviet recycled steel. For example, the first VW Golf (Rabbit) had serious problems with rust, as did Mercedes and BMWs. However, the most famous is the Alfasud, a great small car, but it started to rust during production.

True, and this is what nearly killed Lancia completely.  And you're dead right about the Alfasud.  Same with the Alfa 33 that replaced it.

 

One exception: most British cars.  They just rusted because of shit build quality at the time.  I could go into some of the reasons why, but that would absolutely be politics.

 

The French sort-of escaped that association, but still had cars that would rust though not as badly as others.

[It’s like the Yugo of 2600s]

The car that I learned to drive in was the Fiat 127, which provided a significant chunk of its drivetrain in order for Zastava to be able to build the Yugo under licence.  It came my way when my mother replaced it with a Honda Civic.

 

Courtesy of Fiat having ended up with crap Soviet iron ore in lieu of actual payment for the Lada factory that they more or less built for the Soviets (who defaulted on repayments, instead effectively bartering iron ore for it), the car would just about rust out around you.  Mine wasn't bad in that regard, though, and mechanically was utterly bulletproof.

 

I don't know what was going on in Kragujevac, but the Yugo equivalent would rust out around you and be mechanically-unreliable.  I remember seeing them on dealers' lots with telltale bubbling under the paint when new.  The convertibles were particularly bad, having even more ways for moisture to get in.

[It’s like the Yugo of 2600s]

"After losing the two previous vehicles we had been issued, the only car the department was willing to release to us at this point was an unmarked 1987 Yugo, a Yugoslavian import donated to the department as a test vehicle by the government of that country and reflecting the cutting edge of Serbo-Croatian technology."

[It's a thing]

It's the Atari CX78 Mushroom Replacement stick 

 

Serious guess, though: Emerson Arcadia and clones?

[Twenty-three Skid-to-doo]

Elevator Agent is very much on my radar.  Looking forward to the release.

[Experiments with CX-55 audio and video plus UAVs]

Yep, those were pretty much my thoughts exactly

 

I'm going to put together the skeleton version of the standalone adapter in a few days and see what exactly the thing is outputting by default.  With any luck I'll have another CX-55 coming my way soon-ish, so that will help immeasurably in terms of comparison testing.

[Baron Lovejoy Game Project Introduction]

Very cool!  If there's one thing the 7800 can use more of, it's platformers.  Really looking forward to seeing how this progresses.  Thank you!