Major_Tom_coming_home

I will be happy to do so. It's clean now and was actually much worse when I got it than what you see in the photo. It was in a guys basement in Maine for an unknown number of years. I guess that is either really good or really bad, I'm a life long Florida resident and we don't have basements since the water table is only a few feet from the surface.

There was an external disk drive available for $675 or it can use audio cassettes for storage.

You are correct about the four cards - and I am impressed. I don't know much about computing before the PET / Apple II / TRS-80 were released. I didn't think it was intended for home use at first partly because it was such a big, heavy, expensive in 1977 beast

Perseverance, my friend, My two hobbies are yard sales and old computers The CPU is an 8080 and it is on one of the cards. There is an 8KB and a 16KB Memory board, the last one is for the terminal interface. It uses a propriety bus that is similar to the s-100

I will prey to the yard sale gods to send one your way.

I had this fall into my lap at a garage sale for $20. It is a Heathkit H8 Computer and H9 terminal. I thought at first it was some sort of specialty computer for business / industrial use, but it was actually an early home computer sold to hobbiests like the Altair 8080. I have all of the documentation and diagrams that came with it. The H8 unit doesn't power up, but I got some advice in vintage computer groups on facebook from people who are familiar with it and it probably just has a blown power supply fuse. I plan to investigate further when I get the time to do so. I plan to keep it and add it to my collection. Hopefully my Amiga 1200 won't be jealous of me spending time with another computer.

I have a dead Atari 7800 ac adapter, and I was wondering if it is safe to cut the connector odd and splice it onto a functional AC adapter that uses the same voltage and amps as the original. I have drawers full of various adapters, but I haven't seen the one from the 7800 used in anything else. I'd expect that out of Apple or Nintendo but Atari??? Thanks much

I was just watching a game play video of Mappy and if someone told me it was an early NES game I would have believed them. Would it have been possible to make a VCS game like this using the development tools available circa 1980?

So the update is I now have Moon Patrol and the Multicart 3.0. I'll buy Time Pilot at some point since it is another of my favorites. I also noticed that a Gyruss clone may be in the works. If it is released I wouldn't be able to get to my wallet out fast enough. That is my all time favorite arcade game!

I'm curious to know what kind of advantages / disadvantages modern programmers have when it comes to developing games for the 2600 and other older systems. For example you have computing power at your disposal that could have only been dreamed about in 1981 as well as solid state media, but you don't have Gary Kitchen working in the next cubicle. I'm under the impression that between 1977 and 1992 there must have been lots of programming tricks dreamed up to take full advantage of the 2600s limited, difficult to work with, yet flexible hardware. I have always found it fascinating how Atari 2600 Combat would have looked right at home on a dedicated home pong type console in 1977, while Solaris could almost pass as an early NES title in 1987 and seems like it should have been manufactured with heat sinks integrated into the cartridge. Thanks!!! PS (actually, I think the Atari 2600 does some things with Solaris that would cause the NES to slowdown, flicker, choke, crash, and catch fire. IMO that game is bat shit insane in the graphics department like a Sega Genesis running Halo LOL )

a few weeks ago I decided to buy a new game console. After deliberation I narrowed the candidates to the PlayStation 4 or Vectrex. Methinks I made the right choice with the Vectrex. I love being a part of user groups who share my interest of classic game consoles and computers. It's much more fun than waiting 3 hours for Destiny 2 to install and being called a 'fag' every 3 minutes as a for the trouble.

Hopefully I will get the chance to try moon patrol, I've emailed Kristof some days ago and haven't heard back. Hopefully he's just on holiday and still selling copies of the game. Time Pilot and Moon Patrol are among my favorite arcade games of all time. I'm also eagerly awaiting trying out Pole Position, Scramble, and anything like a Lunar Lander / Gravitar. So what would be the other 2 (or more) 'amazing examples of "I cannot believe the Vectrex is able to do this”?

Hopefully I will get the chance to try moon patrol, I've emailed Kristof some days ago and haven't heard back. Hopefully he's just on holiday and still selling copies of the game. Time Pilot and Moon Patrol are among my favorite arcade games of all time. I'm also eagerly awaiting trying out Pole Position, Scramble, and anything like a Lunar Lander / Gravitar. So what would be the other 2 (or more) 'amazing examples of "I cannot believe the Vectrex is able to do this”?

Just dropped in to say I'm a new Vectrex owner and this will be the first time I've ever bought a homebrew for any of my vintage computer or console. I've ordered the 3.0 multicart as well. I've always wanted to own one of the unobtainium second gen consoles (like the Fairchild, Astrocade, Arcadia, Vectrex, etc.) and chose the Vectrex since there is nothing else like it, has a loyal following, and has a good library of original and homebrew games. It also didn't hurt my local indie game store had a reasonably priced Vectrex for sale and I was able to extensively playtest before buying.

This is a very interesting point to me, even though it was made 5 years ago ...I agree that It wasn't hardware capabilities that made the NES the more successful console. IMO On many it came due to innovation: The flagship and pack-in game for the Colecovision was an arcade port. It was a great port, but it was yet another attempt at selling systems based on what was popular in the arcades. The Pack-in for the NES most people got was Super Mario Brothers and holy shit...it blew away preconceived notions about what a video game could be. Sure there were platformers before SMB, but they could not compare or compete. Nintendo had arcade ports available, but it also provided us with an experiences that weren't anything like the arcade or what was available at home at the time. Also, I think people around my age would say the scrolling capability on the NES was a huge deal. AFAIK no other popular console or computer could scroll like a Super Mario, and it was a game changer. Then there were the controls. The 5200, Intellivision, Coleco, and even Emerson Arcadia 2001 all had very similar controllers that were not comfortable for a lot of people, were not usually well made, and could actually be difficult to use with their shitty keypad you needed to look at instead of the screen. The NES somehow got by with 4 buttons including start and select and could be used by feel, and the directional pad was superior to a joystick for 95% of games. Nintendo also innovated the design of their console, but the engineering was very flawed and I have to give that point to Coleco. Nintendo got it right otherwise, and changed everything in the process. Gaming at home was no longer all about arcade games and ports of arcade games at home, instead 'home'. replaced the arcade as the focus.