Pretty delighted at these recent acquisitions

[pixelpedant]

My childhood TI cart collection (which is still with me) is a bit lackluster, in a somewhat odd way. I got into the TI game a bit late, so instead of Atari's or Sega's 82/83 classics, I've mostly got a bunch of 87/88 Databiotics carts (e.g., Barrage, Black Hole, Midnight Mason, QMaze). No Tunnels of Doom or Centipede or Jungle Hunt or Star Trek: SOS or Buck Rogers or Burgertime for me. Anyway, this week, I think I finally righted that long-term wrong with this acquisition.

 

 

The highlight here for me is a near-mint Star Trek: SOS and near-mint Return to Pirate Isle. Both were opened non-destructively, and (curiously) there is no evidence at all that the cart or manual were ever handled or used. And since they were apparently left inside the package, there's little to no yellowing/discolouration.

 

I'm not normally one for game collecting for the sake of game collecting. Flashcarts are fantastic, as far as I'm concerned. And I own hitherto almost no CIB games (out of hundreds) and zero Sealed games. But even I got giddy opening up (carefully) the pages of a brand-new-looking Star Trek: SOS manual and picking up a brand-new-looking Return to Pirate Isle cart. Felt like Christmas '83. Or in my case, a somewhat less lackluster Christmas 88

[+Ksarul]

Actually, though your childhood cartridge collection is a bit different, it is also a collection of a lot of harder-to-find cartridges. I count that as a nice super bonus!

[pixelpedant]

Actually, though your childhood cartridge collection is a bit different, it is also a collection of a lot of harder-to-find cartridges. I count that as a nice super bonus!

 

It's true, adult me finds it kind of neat that I've got a bunch of oddball late 80s mail-order Databiotics cartridges, instead of the more common early 80s ones. But for the sake of childhood me who just wanted to play some fun games, I'd still have preferred them to be the classics

 

Another thing about these cartridges, though - gosh, they sure went cheap on the labels, late in the game:

 

[seebert42]

Wow, actual old-new stock. Any chance you have a navarone so that you can save these carts to Rom Image?

[pixelpedant]

Wow, actual old-new stock. Any chance you have a navarone so that you can save these carts to Rom Image?

 

I do have the cartridge expander (for the purpose of a trick involving Speecoder and reading speech synth from GROMs). I assume the ROM dump procedure is similar? If I have anything folks would have a use for a dump of, I'm happy to do it. I'd just need instructions. I've got a NanoPEB, RS232 to my desktop, FinalGROM and XB2.7 Suite cart, so any requirements for such a process should be satisfied.

 

I just figured most things had been dumped satisfactorily well already. Are bad dumps an issue in some cases?

[+Ksarul]

We have good dumps of almost every cartridge out there (TI and third-party). There are a few that still need to be dumped, but I think they could probably be counted on one hand. . .I don't think I've ever seen a dump of the Prestel (a European Videotext service) cartridge prototype. I'm not sure there are good dumps of all of the different Logo cartridges either (the ones in other than English). Some of those are out there, but not all.

Edited July 13, 2018 by Ksarul

[pixelpedant]

We have good dumps of almost every cartridge out there (TI and third-party). There are a few that still need to be dumped, but I think they could probably be counted on one hand. . .I don't think I've ever seen a dump of the Prestel (a European Videotext service) cartridge prototype. I'm not sure there are good dumps of all of the different Logo cartridges either (the ones in other than English). Some of those are out there, but not all.

 

Yeah, makes sense. I mean, I've never had much trouble with the dumps I've used for FlashROM99 or FinalGROM. Though I was having some trouble with a tape dump recently. Which makes sense. I mean, magnetic storage being what it is.