awhite2600

I used PETs quite a bit back in the early '80s. I've tinkered with the SuperPET that we have on display at the Personal Computer Museum but am not too familiar with the 6809 side of things. If removing the Waterloo board results in the computer still crashing then it sounds like a problem with either the 6502 itself or another component on the motherboard. Have you tried reseating all of the chips or checking for bad solder joints. I have an 8032 that I am in the process of getting back in shape. It worked well when I bought it about 20 years ago. Like yours, many of the keys are not working after many years in storage. Taking the keyboard apart and cleaning the keys may help. You often have to carefully resurface the rubber contacts on each key. That's what I need to do. A friend mentioned that a gentle scrub with a Magic Eraser will often restore the contacts. I still need to try this. A lower cost alternative to a Commodore disk drive is the PETdisk. I have one of these myself. It works great with 40xx and 80xx PETs and is reasonably priced. I don't know if it will support the language disks needed for the SuperPET.

I've been collecting since the systems were new. I limit my collection to what I can obtain locally - thrift stores, garage sales, local classifieds, etc. I have never bought or sold games on eBay. If I find something that I don't have and it's cheap I will pick it up. I don't go after extremely rare titles that go for big bucks. (Although I have obtained a few rare carts for cheap from unknowing thrift stores.) I don't worry too much about label variations. I collect boxes, manuals and sealed games when I can but don't consider them a must. I guess my goal is to pick up titles that I don't have as cheaply as possible. I also generally limit my collecting to pre-NES systems. This prevents my collection from getting out of hand. While I have several post-NES systems and games I only collect if the carts are inexpensive.

I will agree that my son is a bit of a minority. At the same time he evangelizes the older games to his friends. Yes, they all play PS4 and XBOX One. Some of them now collect for system like the N64 and the SNES. I limit the majority of my collecting to pre-NES systems. My son collects N64 and various flavors of GameBoy (GB, GBC, GBA). While there may be a shift in nostalgia, there will still be people that respect the 2600 and other systems of that era. Hopefully those of us that have collections today can find someone to preserve them in the future and to keep the memories alive.

I have to disagree. My 19 year old son has been playing my games since he learned to hold a joystick. He appreciates them and intends to take good care of my collection when I move to the big arcade in the sky. I can only hope that my games will be passed on for generations. My father is a collector - stamps, coins, banana stickers (he has thousands), ceramic figurines. I have every intention of honoring his collections when the time comes.

I finally found the time to work on my Vectrex. As suggested, I carefully pryed off the volume knob. I sprayed it with some electronics cleaner and worked the knob back and forth. I also took the back off and sprayed around the knob inside. While there, I also dusted out the inside with canned air and then the cleaner. Back together and working good as new now. Thanks again to everyone for their help and suggestions. Now, off to play some Star Hawk ... an old favorite from back in the day.

Most of the earlier cartridges ran directly from ROM. It was only the more advanced carts that used bank switching or games that were originally disk based that copied themselves to RAM. I installed a switch on my C-64 back in the day. The switch disabled the cartridge port. It also allowed me to easily dump carts. I would just boot up, reactivate the port and then save the cartridge address space to disk.

The NFER and XFER keys weren't used when I was there. The software primarily uses the function keys to operate based on on-screen prompts. Drawings are saved to a "numeric slot" on one of the two 3½" floppies. You specify a number by typing it and then type a name. Sending a drawing to the cutter involved selecting it from a menu and then pressing some more function keys. The software was very cryptic, even by 1980's standards. The guys that use the machine have been working with it for over 25 years so everything is second nature to them.

One of my clients has a Japanese NEC based PC that controls a wire cut EDM machine. The EDM machine uses an electrified wire to cut shapes into metal, plastic, etc for use in manufacturing. The patterns are designed on a modern PC using some sort of CAD program. They are then sent to the NEC PC via a serial cable. What makes this system unique is that the software is partially in English and partially in Japanese. Many commands are executed by pressing the function keys that correspond to Japanese labels on the screen. The PC boots and saves files from an external SCSI floppy drive. The interface to the EDM machine is from some internal expansion boards on the PC into a bunch of large modules in the cabinet below then to the actual cutter. The trackball feels and sounds a lot like my Wico trackball form the 80's. I'm told that the equipment was installed in the mid-80's to replace an earlier system that saved the drawings on cassette tapes.

I will try your suggestion. Sounds like an easy first step. Hopefully it works. That was my intention. Unfortunately getting at the pot "from the inside" is a fairly involved process requiring the unsoldering of lots of connections from the motherboard. Unlike other consoles, there aren't connectors attaching everything. I was looking for a simpler option to try first. I tried that and the knob wouldn't budge. I didn't want to force it and break anything. The service manual that I found online indicates that the knob pulls off. Perhaps I just need to be more forceful. Thanks for all of the suggestions.

I finally had the chance to pick up a Vectrex at a fair price. The system works well and came with 8 games (only one box - but it was Spike), 2 overlays and all game and system manuals. The only problem is the volume control. The volume is always at maximum no matter what position I set the control to. Does anyone know of a fix other than taking the entire console apart to get at the control? While I am comfortable with most electronics, I've never liked working near CRTs due to the high voltages. Is the knob supposed to be removable from the front? I tried, but it didn't budge easily. I had wanted to try a shot of electronics cleaner into the control as a "first attempt".

I have no issue with overly large packaging if the item is secure inside. I remember ordering a 3.5" hard drive for work in the early 1990's. The shipping dept just threw the bare drive into a 1 cubic foot box. No bubble wrap, foam peanuts - nothing. Needless to say the drive didn't survive the trip. I had a serious fight with the vendor's RMA dept who didn't want to believe that the drive was damaged in shipping.

Including feelies or bonus items is a great idea if they add some value to the package. We included a DVD with the limited edition boxed version of Extra Terrestrials. The DVD contained clips of the media coverage about the discovery of the game. A cart only release is still available from Good Deal Games. The ROM was also released for free after the boxed version sold out. I agree with the others that have stated that copy protection is both a waste of time and an annoyance. A determined individual can almost always crack the protection. (It was sort of a hobby for me back in the day.) Almost any protection scheme will do nothing more than piss off your legitimate purchasers.

While I generally suck at most games I like to play shooters. I have a short attention span for games, so I'm always happy when a "game" only lasts a few minutes.

Spider Maze and Vulture Attack - both R9. Mr. Do's Castle - R8.

The maximum length for normal string variables might be 32767 characters, but the communication buffers could be limited. It's been a long time since I have used Turbo BASIC. I do recall having a problem with communication buffer sizes. That was at least 20 years ago. Any code that I wrote would have been left with my employer and certainly long gone by now.

My parents were born in the early 1940's. I was born in 1966 and my brother in 1970. My parents bought an original Pong in the late 1970's. A week later they returned it and bought an APF TV Fun (pong clone) because it played 4 games. My parents would initially play pong but quickly became bored with it. In about 1982 our family got an Intellivision. I don't recall my father ever playing it. My mother purchased Horse Racing as she thought it might be a game that my Dad would play along with the included Poker / Blackjack. At first my mother would sometimes play Triple Action with my brother and I. After a month or two it was just my brother and I that would play. My parents even insisted that the Intellivision would break if I hooked it up to the Black & White TV in my room because all of the games said "For Color TV Viewing Only". About a year later I got a VIC-20. I think the final turn off for my father was when I convinced him to try a crappy Pinball game written in BASIC. He kept trying to "nudge" the computer like a real pinball machine. When the game didn't respond to his liking he decided that it was "defective" and never touched a videogame again. To this day he will use my mom's PC to play the occasional game of Solitare. He has absolutely no other interest in computers. My mom is an avid iPad user but will not play games. I can't even convince her to try casual or trivia games. Her reply is always, "I don't play games. I knit." My brother, now a magazine editor, was addicted to Astrosmash when it came out. He has no interest in games today.

Looks like the on/off and reset mods would be very simple on a standard cartridge. Both just require access to the various pins on the cart. I wouldn't be surprised if the activity LED is a mod that requires a software change.

Is it possible to modify a standard Epyx FastLoad cartridge to incorporate the reset, on/off switch and activity LED? If so, does anyone have a link to that info?

Take a look at http://atariage.com/2600/archives/consoles.html. The first console on the list is a Heavy Sizer. These were the first 2600 consoles to be manufactured. The plastic was thicker and there was internal metal shielding that made the console much heavier - hence the name. The second console on the list had changes made to reduce cost and is known as a Light Sizer.

The games arrived today. Packaging was perfect and contents are in excellent condition. There are several games that I already have. Once I have compared against my existing collection I will "pay it forward" with anything that I don't need. I'm thinking that I will either offer up the doubles via a similar contest or donate them to The Personal Computer Museum. I can't thank grips03 enough for his generosity.

I don't want to dwell on the fact that the computers that I used in high school are now at about 35 years old. (PET and VIC-20) Yikes!

It all boils down to knowing about the items. People think that common games are rare and valuable because they aren't made any longer. I know nothing about art. I see stories from time to time where an individual discovers that they have a rare painting by a famous painter worth millions. To me, it doesn't look any different from the ugly painting that I saw at a weekend garage sale.

Yay. I can't believe that I've won. I never win anything. PM sent to grips03 to arrange shipping. Big thanks!

I'm in. Thanks for being generous with these games.

I picked up a Micro Genius years ago when the NES was still a "current gen system". It works great. My only complaint is that the controllers aren't the greatest. They use a proprietary connector so I can't easily sub in a genuine Nintendo controller.