This is the culimnation of an idea that started a few months ago, with me finding my old Bigtrak collecting dust in my loft. As a avid collector of old computers, I could not belive I had forgotten a toy that had brought me so much pleasure over the years, so it was brought down, cleaned off, had new batteries installed...

And it worked! (Boo be bo be bo be boo!)

However I realise I'm quite lucky. There must be many people out there whose Bigtraks are either, like mine was, sitting in a loft, forgotten or worse like the one my buddy Andy Partridge has kindly lent me (with the promise of a full restoration!) for this article, in a bad state of repair.

Andy's quite lucky, his Bigtrak is an early model, serial number 3091 so that makes it very worthwhile repairing. Mine however is much newer, serial number 23567 but then it looks like I took heed of the warning on page 3 of the manual that tells :

"Don't send Bigtrak down steps, or run it though water, dust or sand."

*Shudder!* ^_^

In closing, I hope this manual will help many a Bigtrak owner get his or her old friend "back on the road", or will just serve as a memorial to one of the few good computer programming toys of an era.

Here's to ya Bigtrak, they don't make 'em like you no more!

Click go to continue!