krslam's collection: If I had 38, make that 46, bookcases....

[Omega-TI]

It's sad to see all this TI hardware on a shelf....

[krslam]

If it makes you feel any better, the TI99 with PEB and Ksarul's brilliant 2048k cart is one of the systems I keep always ready for play.

[krslam]

Took almost a year, but here's bookcase #44. All new acquisitions this time, though some are merely boxed copies of items previously shown loose. A carload of computers, including the shown Tandy 200 and 4P, Apple IIc+, and Franklin Ace 1000EX as well as a bunch of boxed C64 & VIC20 games, all obtained from a storage locker sale, helped fill this out.

 

Edited July 14, 2017 by krslam

[+Ksarul]

As an interesting note, take a very close look at your Navarone "Speed Reading A" cartridge for the TI. You will notice that the cartridge case is similar to, but not exactly the same as a TI-style cartridge case. For a very short time, Navarone was putting a group of their cartridges (I've been able to verify six titles, but there may be one or two more) into cases that were usually used for the Personal Peripherals Super Sketch. I've only seen 15-20 examples of all six known titles combined in that case style in 30 years of collecting.

 

Your collection also confirms the physical existence of Typoman cartridges.

 

You've got a nice selection of Tomy Tutor/Pyuuta stuff too. I'm down to trying to find a boxed copy of Rescue Copter, a BASIC1 cartridge for the Pyuuta MkII, and a US Demonstration Cartridge.

[krslam]

I'm pretty sure the Typoman cart is some sort of home made thing. I vaguely remember, when I got it as part of a lot several years ago, asking the previous owner about that one and he said he'd bought it from someone online who made TI carts to order. I was never able to track that person down.

 

In addition to Speed Reading A (which I have in both case styles), I also have Database Management (also in both styles) and Console Writer in that smaller case style.

 

I really like the Tomy Tutor - shame it didn't catch on. The small stack of Japanese games were found for me by a friend who used to live there. I asked them to keep an eye out for a Pyuuta or Jr but sadly they never found either. I know there's a bunch of titles I don't have.

[+Ksarul]

Look at your Console Writer and your Speed Reading A cartridges. Both are smaller cases--but look at the screw hole on the bottom (Spped Reading A will be different than any other TI-style case you've seen), the corners of the thick part of the cartridge case (Speed Reading A has a squared-off top, while most cases have the TI-Style angled top at the front), and lastly, look at the depression for the label (it goes all the way under the cartridge on the Speed Reading A case). Speed Reading A (and B), Data Base Management, Super Duper, Console Writer, and Disk Fixer have been seen in the Personal Peripherals cases. They sort of went under the radar for a long time because they do so closely resemble the TI cases. When I first described them a few years ago, Bill Gaskill asked me for pictures of one. About two months later I bought a Database Management cartridge from him--and it was in a PPI case. He had one all along and didn't know it. Since then, I've been carefully observing every Navarone auction out there to try and get a feel for how many of these are out there. As noted, they are not at all common. Ciro Barile and I have several different titles each, but most of the time we find only one title in a collection, if any.

 

On your Typoman being a made-to-order cartridge, one of two answers is probably correct: Tex-Comp did that with a lot of the third-party cartridges once DataBiotics folded, and Competition Computer may have also done so (or they may have purchased a lot of stock from Tex-Comp for resale instead of manufacturing more of their own). The label on yours strongly resembles a DBT type. Is there a aquare box with all of the normal TI stamping on the bottom or is it just a square outline with the inside the same pebbled surface as the rest of the case? If it is the latter, it may actually BE an original from DBT, as they also made their cartridges to order (and they used newly manufactured shells with the square outline, as did Triton and CorComp). Note that later cartridges form all three sometimes had the TI stamped bottom, but the date field and serial number field were never stamped on those. Later (unofficial copes) usually used recycled TI cases that were fully stamped, to include manufacture dates and serial numbers.

[+Ksarul]

On Pyuuta machines, I have a Pyuuta, a Pyuuta Jr., and a Pyuuta Mk II. All three of them show up pretty regularly on Yahoo! Japan. The link takes you straight to a Pyuuta search there. I found a lot of my missing items that way (and Buyee is a pretty reliable way to place bids there once you register with them, as they place bids up to your maximum as a proxy, receive the item, and ship it to you in the US (for a fee, of course)). The Mk II is probably the hardest to find, as something in the vicinity of 5-6 thousand of them were built, about a tenth of what was built for each of the other Japanese Pyuuta and US Tutor models. I read somewhere that about 56 thousand US Tutors were sold, and the serial number ranges for the Pyuuta and the Pyuuta Jr indicate similar numbers of each were sold in Japan.

 

26 games were released in Japan, along with a Demonstration cartridge and a BASIC1 cartridge for the Mk II. A few interesting bits of hardware were also released (and you can find a pretty comprehensive catalog of what's out there at Cameron Kaiser's website on the Tutor). A few of the games are really hard to find (and expensive), but most can be had for under $50 each, even with shipping to the US--especially if you find a larger group of them for sale, as these tend to be a much better price per cartridge.

[krslam]

Typoman is in a standard TI case but with no stamping on the bottom, just a square outline with usual pebbled surface inside the square. It also has no dust shield.

 

I see now the difference in the Navarone cases. My small-cased Data Base Management is in the same PPI case as Speed Reading A, while Console Writer is in a standard beveled case (but with no stamping on the bottom).

 

Thanks for the tip on the Tutor items.

[+Ksarul]

Your description of the Typoman case would indicate that it is an early DataBioTics release, which also matches the style of the label. As noted, your cartridge seems to confirm the existence of an original physical release. The cartridge could also be purchased as a ROMOX ECPC version using their blank cartridges and one of their in-store cartridge programmers, but those weren't all that common either--and the cartridges programmed in them are even more difficult to find.

[doctor_x]

WOW!!!! Love that astra dual drive in your atari 8 bit cabinet.. Or at least I think its an astra..

[krslam]

WOW!!!! Love that astra dual drive in your atari 8 bit cabinet.. Or at least I think its an astra..

It is indeed, and it even works.

[krslam]

Bookcase 45 finally filled! Given my current acquisition rate, I'm fairly certain this will be the last full bookcase I show - any future updates will probably be a shelf at a time.

 

Lots of Xbox, PS2, Wii, NDS, and GBA stuff still to be had in the wild, but very few 'classic' items. None of this came from ebay. Everything shown here is newly acquired except the X'eye (forgot that one when shooting the Genesis collection), and the calculator. Calculators are a sidebar collection of mine and this old Friden electro-mechanical is one of my favorites. Not a lot of play value to it, although asking it to divide by zero can be exciting (ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk ad infinitum).

 

Edited July 14, 2017 by krslam

[krslam]

I'm switching to updating every time I fill a shelf, rather than waiting until I've acquired a full bookcase worth of stuff. So here's shelf 1 of what might eventually be bookcase #46.

 

Garage sale season is off to a pretty good start, as I picked up almost all this stuff in the last 3 weeks or so.

 

[krslam]

I see I've been bit by photobucket's cash grab attempt. I'll repost the pix once I figure out how to edit the older posts.

[Keatah]

Al is gonna need to grant extended editing time to a lot of people in the "Show us your collection!" subforum. I'm sure a lot of people used 3rd party hosting. God how I hate those things. It's just another example of how cloud services can ruin your day.

 

And so many posts are going to be less interesting because of this.

Edited July 14, 2017 by Keatah

[krslam]

As it happens, the 'Show Us Your Collection' forum already allows unlimited editing so people can update thier photos, so we don't have to bother Al with this this.

 

Good riddance, photobucket. I've uploaded all the pix directly to AA so I think it's all working now. The photobucket issue also affected some other collection images I'd posted prior to starting this stick-it-on-a-bookcase system, so just to get them all in one basket, here are pictures of my Pong systems, handhelds/tabletops, and 3rd party joysticks. A few of these items were duplicated on one of the bookcase photos, but that's the way life goes.

 

Pong:

 

Handhelds:

 

Joysticks:

 

[krslam]

With garage sale season winding down, it's time for another update. Two more shelves full, getting me halfway to completing bookcase #46. One shelf is all garage/yard/estate/rummage/thrift finds, while the other is all stuff I got from people here on AA. Actually, I've got enough other new games to fill another shelf, but have misplaced a box of recent finds. I hate it when I do that.

 

 

 

[krslam]

Bookcase 46 filled! New finds plus the previously shown shelf-at-a-time images combined into one. Not much new on the hardware front, although this Sinclair clone from Spain was an odd thing to find.

 

[krslam]

First shelf of bookcase 47 filled.

 

[Captain_Combat]

Very nice deceptive collection you have, keep up the good work. You should definitely get some vertical shelves and at least display some of it or you could put in shelves around the whole room.

[krslam]

Shelf 2 of case 47 filled.

[krslam]

Two more shelves filled, more than half of it WiiU games. These have started showing up at thrifts, fleas, and garage sales, so along with Toys-Were-Us closeouts, the recent buy-2-get-1-free gamestop sale, and some other lucky finds I've managed to get about 2/3 of the library for not much money.