ThumpNugget

Hey there, no problem with buying at all! I was able to get all of the Antics (well, the vol 2-1 will probably fall through). Though if anyone has analogs/softsides/computes to sell I'm fine with purchasing as well.

Greetings... recently I've been working on collecting Atari Magazines. I am "this* close to finishing off an ANTIC magazine collection. In trying to get them all I've accumulated about 40 duplicates.. I'm hoping some others our there collecting these might have some duplicates to swap.. I am missing the following: Vol 2 No 1 April 1983 Vol 6 No 8 December 1987 Vol 6 No 10 February 1988 Vol 6 No 11 March 1988 Vol 6 No 12 April 1988 Vol 8 No 8 Feb/Mar 1990 My ANTIC Duplicates: Vol 1 No 4 (some light water damage on it) Vol 2 No 3 Vol 2 No 6 Vol 2 No 7 Vol 2 No 8 Vol 2 No 9 Vol 2 No 10 Vol 3 No 2 Vol 3 No 3 Vol 3 No 4 Vol 3 No 5 Vol 3 No 7 Vol 3 No 8 Vol 3 No 10 Vol 3 No 11 Vol 3 No 12 (Article cut out on page 19/20) Vol 4 No 5 Vol 4 No 7 Vol 4 No 9 Vol 5 No 3 Vol 5 No 5 Vol 5 No 6 (2 extra copies) Vol 5 No 8 Vol 5 No 12 Vol 7 No 1 Vol 7 No 3 Vol 7 No 5 Vol 7 No 7 Vol 7 No 9 (2 extra copies) Vol 7 No 10 Vol 7 No 11 Vol 7 No 12 Vol 8 No 1 Vol 8 No 2 Vol 8 No 3 Vol 8 No 4 (2 extra copies) Vol 8 No 5 (2 extra copies) Vol 8 No 6 Vol 8 No 7 If you don't have antics to trade I'm also looking for: Analogs (I need 1-7,9,10,12-16,22,42-46,48,49,50,54,59,62,63,64,66,67,70-76,78,79) I have dups of Analogs as well (18,31,33,34,60,68) Atari Connection (I need All Vol 1, Vol 2 No 3, Vol 3 No 4, Vol 4 No1, Vol 4 No 3) Hi-Res (I need any of them, mine are in bad shape) SoftSide (I have everything from Vol 2 No 11 to Vol 5 No 12.. also have Vol 6 no 2, Vol 6 No 4, Vol 6 No 6 .. So anything no those I want!) Compute! (so far I just have Vol 5 1-12, need any through vol 10) Also looking for any groups newsletters and journals.. So lets trade!

I have to laugh that you actually have a picture on hand of the place. I had never noticed that sign, the one I was talking about was on the other half of the store all in giant dot matrix printout. Unfortunatly that part of the store is all blocked out so I couldn't see into it to see what other interesting stuff was there. I don't think it is used for anything other than storage anymore.. What with the motorcycles in there and everything The huge window actually is plastic and pops right out (my girlfriend leaned on it when I was taking the pictures and almost fell in). It may be time to contact the guy before someone walks off with the stash one night. I saw an early PET that looks like it could use a new home.

I only get to Portland at best once per year and I've never checked out whats available. I do head south from there (the Eugene area - actually a bit farther to Roseburg) and there seems to be a lot of stuff coming from there for some reason even though its not exactly a high population area. I went by the Commodore store today to snap a few pictures. I wish I had done it last year. Lots of stuff is gone, all the signs on the windows are gone.. and there is a trailer in front of the outside sign but I did snap a few pictures through the windows:

As small of town as it is there are actually some interesting stores still around from back in the day. The store I used to get my 8-bits repaired at is still in business and looks as old as it did back then (BASIC computing out on Orchard). Also near that location there is an old Commodore dealer that still was in business not too long ago.. He still has the big commodore sign on the building and the dot matrix printouts from the 80's in the windows saying "WE FIX ALL COMMODORE 64's and 128's" The dot matrix printouts were finally removed about three months ago but the big C= sign is still on the side of the building (I need to get a picture). I think the only place left selling anything Atari is the video game place on Fairview.. They had a Jaguar and a few 2600s for sale when I went in a few months ago. They had maybe 500 or so 2600 carts as well. I moved here from Salt Lake in late 1983. I didn't really get into any of the user group stuff until 85 and it was like being in a sea of Commodore here though we did have an Atari user group here.. It never seemed to make the move from 8-bit to the ST (or I didn't, maybe they did) but it just kinda faded away... Sorry off topic I know! It's great to see another local!

Sorry to take so long in responding to this.. The POS software was written in GFA Basic and was used in all of the Hobby Towns. It was called H.O.S.T. (HobbyTown Ordering SysTem). I booted up the Mega STE and took a couple of photos in case someone wants to call a few of them up to see if they still have them laying around: This is what is burned into the screen: The Mega STE was about the same as the falcon as far as setup. The hard drive was smaller (there were 4 logical hard drives, two 16 megs, and two 8 megs) and the machine was upgraded to 4 megs (originally it had just one). If you are looking around remember I already got the ones from the Boise store It looks like from the HobbyTown site that there are at least a couple hundred stores though so who knows.. maybe some of the others held onto them as well. Good luck...

I booted the Falcon today and I am embarrassed to say it did have a hard drive in it. It was divided into four logical drives (C,D,E,F) each with 32 Megs so.. 128 Megs total. The Mega STE has the exact same four logical drives. The STE says it is a 1 Meg model on the bottom (I have not verified this), the falcon showed 3,799,000 bytes free so four megs is correct! I assume the hard drive is an after market add on as the back of the unit does not have anything listed by the hard Disk label: ... I'd be happy to get a copy of the POS software to you. I'm not exactly sure how to get it off of the machine yet

Falcon after the cleanup:

Thanks for the site. That looks like the way to go. I took the falcon apart today to clean it up. Lots of dust on the inside but all of the keys had a piece of tape over them so they are in very good shape when the tape was removed.. I was surprised there was no hard drive (at least I think there was not, there is a lot of shielding). I am curious how they booted up the Point-of-sale on this one. Actually I'm surprised they would run a POS on machines this expensive in the first place. Seems to me that a 1040ST of a 520ST would be a better bet... or a machine with a smaller footprint Talking with my son he said the reason these were retired was because of the monitors. They could not get replacements and had gone through quite a few in the time they had the machines.

Sorry for the bragging but in Idaho you don't get many finds out in the field Two weeks ago I was bugging this guy I work with who has a mother that worked at Atari. He has a drawer full of chips (Eproms or Roms I am assuming) from when he was a kid that she had brought home over time that he stuck in a cart and placed in his 2600. I've been working on him to get out to his shed and find them and bring them to work for inspection.. Anyways a person overheard our conversation mentioned that a local store just recently replaced two Ataris that they were using as point of sale systems. It just so happens that my son (teenager) was doing some work for the store owner and was able to rescue the machines for me. I was assuming these would be 800XL or 130Xe or another of the 8-bits which is what I mostly collect. This is what my son brought home: I don't know a lot about the ST series.. I had a 520ST years ago and don’t remember much. I know the Falcon was the last that of this model that was made. The Mega STE I thought was a TT when I pulled it out. I had no idea the Megas looked like the TTs. I have not tried to boot the Falcon yet. The STE booted fine from the hard drive directly into the Point Of Sale software but it was easy to exit out into TOS. The hard drive says it is a Supra drive. The monitor is an Atari monochrome monitor with some severe screen burn unfortunately. Beyond that and a couple of mice I have nothing for these systems. No floppies, documentation, anything. I'm not sure where to start.. The falcon doesn't have a port for the monitor I have so I guess it is the TV or nothing for now.. What are the monitor options for these beasties?

I was hoping I'd have an interesting number on mine but it looks to be right in the middle: Taiwan 72R DA 07155 183

I was surprised as well.. I thought the EPROM was the only possible loss when it happened but it was fine. The 2600jr is fine (played a quick game of space invaders afterwards and all was well). I just ordered a new PCB so I guess I'll know soon enough... I should have just assumed that the one thing that I only have one of would be the thing I toast!

As the title says, I think I may have done something really stupid. I've been working on a game for the 2600 in my spare time for the last couple of months. It is working on an emulater and is far enough along that I wanted to try it on a real machine. I burned an EPROM and placed it in a PCB I purchased from AtariAge (the bank switching fully socketed type for developers to test). I then handed the PCB with EPROM installed to my son and asked him to stick it in the 2600 jr. nothing... I asked to look at the PCB and said "Oh, its in backwards! flip it and try it again". I was referring to the EPROM in the socket however my son assumed I meant the PCB so we walked over to the machine and placed the PCB in the wrong direction. It was only like that for a few second but it become very hot in those few seconds! I flipped the EPROM so it was in correctly and tried again but again it did not work. I put the EPROM back in the burner and was able to read the data just fine and it mached my BIN file so the EPROM is fine and correct... So the only conclusion I have at this point is that I've destroyed the PCB but this is out of my area... Is it possible to destroy a PCB if its put in a machine backwards? (or if the EPROM was put in backwards?)

I have not had time to try the latest one out, hope to this evening.. But I won't let a little thing liek not having tried the latest version stop me from throwing out suggestions! The Halloween theme: What about making the pumpkin a vampire and the candy a coffin. Then the goal is to get to the coffin before daylight.. you could even slowly lighten the background as time is running out. On the number of moved.. instead of running forwards i think it should run backwards, then if you run through the mazes again you can increase the difficulty by starting at a lower number (as long as it is still doable with that many moves of course). This way you know exactly how many moves until daylight (or whatever the endpoint is defined as). anyways I look forward to trying out the new version tonight.....

I like the game. I was able to get through the first maze after about five tries, the second maze after two tries, and after the first try on the third maze I blew my first try and the game had an issue pop up. By issue I mean the little smiley face went into the position to start the maze ofter, moved all the way to the left edge of the screen then continuously moved down the side of the screen over and over. I think I would make the first maze just a tad easier so slow folk like me can be eased into the game Good job so far.

I would agree the seller deserves neg. feedback At the very least he should have explained himself and waited for a reply to relist it. I had a (somewhat) similar experience with a BIN this week: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...Name=Action:MPS I paid immediately then two days later was told that the stated shipping was going to be 15 dollars more than the auction stated (which he had clearly marked in the auction as well as the header). To be fair he also offered a refund (which I took).

Currently living in Boise, Idaho and I just turned 40 (ack). My First Atari was a 400 when I was in Jr. High. I remember it had the CTIA chip in it. Moved from there to an 800 which I fried and was lucky enough to get a 600xl from sears for $50.00 which I expanded to 64K (my first mod job!). The local computer place that used to fix Ataris is still here in the same spot and still selling older computers though all PC based now. There actually is a Commodore shop that has been open here since the 80's that still has a big commodore sign out front and several giant dot matrix printouts in their window saying they service commodore computers.. at least it was still there the last time I drove by a few months ago.

Not sure if its ever been mentioned in here before, but there is a weekly podcast on old machines called "retrobits". Done by a guy out in Portland... anyway just received my download today and this weeks episode is on Star Raiders! If you don't do the podcast thing you can download the mp3 here: http://retrobits.libsyn.com/

There was a "Judge Judy" episode not too long ago where the couple were auctioning cell phones and actually sent a pictures of the cell phones instead. They were absolutely crucified by the judge (well the one that showed up anyway).. I'm sure it's on youtube... checking... yip! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJDK6ctRjqw

I hate to admit it but I fell for this scam. I was watching an auction for a PDP-8 computer on eBay and in the section below the auction where users can leave questions there was the "I am interested in your auction but I saw the same picture on another auction <url here> and I want to know which one is real". I clicked on the link without thinking and I got the common eBay username/password section so I filled them in to continue. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary and I did not use eBay for another week (nor did I check the email account I have with eBay in that week). I went onto eBay after that week and attempted to bid on an auction and was unable to because my password would not work. I requested eBay to mail me my password... I went to check my email and I saw that I had a good dozen messages from other eBay users replying to email they had received from me asking me what the heck I was talking about. It turns out that they used my account to send the exact same "I am interested in your auction but I found the same one here <url>" message until eBay froze the account (to their credit on the same day and after only a dozen or so messages were sent out). They sent me a (non-deletable) message telling me my account had been hijacked and that I needed to reset my password. I was able to reset my password (also did my Pay Pal and email which were not the same thank god!). It could have been much worse. Luckily they did not bid or post any auctions. I went through the emails and only ONE of the users out of the dozen that replied knew it was a scam. The rest clicked the link and I presume fell for it the same as I did. I used to make fun of people that fell for these things. BTW Hello everyone, my first post here I've been lurking for a few weeks, nice to be out of the shadows.