Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store  

joesmooth

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    363

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by joesmooth

  3. Posted

    The keyboard controllers (and all the variants, which electrically are the same, such as the Kid's Controller) will not work with the Stelladaptor.  Only Atari 2600 (and compatible) joysticks, paddles, and driving controllers are supported.  This was done to allow the Stelladaptor to detect the type of controller plugged in without the need for external drivers.  

     

    ..Al

     

    And, in addition, we wanted to support the three most popular and used controllers - joysticks, paddles, and driving controllers - that could not be easily emulated with a keyboard or mouse.

     

    Joe

  5. Posted

    I am a HUGE Decathlon fan, but I have never heard of this!!! Do you have any pictures available?! I would love to get a look at this glove.  :D

     

     

    I picked up one of these gloves at PhillyClassic 4. Decathlon came with a mail-in form for you to send in some money to get the glove - I'm travelling for the next month so I can't take a picture, so I know I'm not helping much. The glove is yellow and white and sort of looks like a glove for golf. I also have the original mail in form. I paid $50 for it, which may be high, but I'm a huge track & field fan :)

     

    Joe

  9. Posted

    Yet more spring cleaning!

     

    Complete Nintendo NES system w/ 3 games - MODIFIED!

    http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=8128653305

     

    This is an NES that I did some modifications on for my upcoming book entitled "Game Console Hacking." It has a blue LED (done the right way with the proper current-limiting resistor value to prevent the LED from burning out), lock-out chip disabled, and a new 72-pin connector.

     

    Atari 2600 6-switch woodgrain console

    http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=8128653641

     

    Nintendo Gameboy Tetris

    http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=8128651849

     

    There are a few non-videogame-related items that you guys should check out, too, but not worth wasting previous message space for them (http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewSellersOtherItems&userid=joesm00th)

     

    Enjoy!

     

    Joe

  13. Posted

    I have followed this saga since the beginning.

     

    If that were true, you would have read the part where the store owner didn't even plan to sell the goddam thing yet, but couldn't resist Tempest's offer, thereby invalidating almost everything you just said.

     

    If he wasn't planning to sell it, it shouldn't have been in the box with the rest of the carts to begin with. Mistake or not, it's a nice tale.

     

    Joe

  14. Posted

    Joe, the Emic Text-to-Speech Module is a way cool device! Can it do different voices too? This would really make for a cool project with the joystick port - no limitations on recording sizes. I didn't go the text to speech route mainly because of cost. As it stands, I can make one of these modules now for about $25, not including the joystick housing. (Of course, I try not to cannibalize working joysticks!) This includes the sound chip which can be reprogrammed.

     

    Nope, it can't do different voices. You can adjust the speed and pitch of the output, though, so you could switch between different sounding speech, but I wouldn't really classify that as different voices. It is a little pricey compared to your solution. :)

     

    Joe

  15. Posted

    Hi Steve. Welcome to AtariAge. I'm glad you joined for the sole purpose of defending yourself.

     

    However you spin the tale really doesn't matter. The fact that the prototype is in the good hands of my friend Matt (who would likely have ended up with it anyway if you had sold it to me) is the important part. Sure I was bummed that I couldn't buy the cartridge, but I mentioned it to you then and it hasn't changed since last week - I don't own any prototypes and I'm too cheap to spend a lot for one. As far as you might have "hooked him up if he didn’t try so hard to take me for a fool" is a nice tale considering I left the first time immediately after you said you couldn't sell it to me and I left the second time after you raised the price again (after a fairly normal conversation - and no, I wasn't trying to butter you up as your clever mind may have thought). Also, I don't recall ever saying the box of Atari cartridges had a label with the $1 price on it - you're the one that told me that was the cost. Well, until you saw the prototype. We could go on and on about who's right, but I really don't care, and I'm sure no one else does, either.

     

    I'm sorry I don't have 4 degrees to compete with your academic prowess, but I'm not sure what "brains" has to do with this situation. I called your store today to try and give you some advice that they don't teach you in school. Unfortunately, you weren't available. If you were as smart as you'd like us all to believe, you would have done some research on who you were talking to (Matt and Frank) before you start talking about people (me) behind their backs. You can try to discredit me as much as you'd like, but I challenge you to find someone who would question my contributions to this hobby. And if you had asked nicely, I would have gladly fixed those bent pins for you.

     

    Anyway, enjoy your store and enjoy Japan, and thanks for being such a valuable contributor to the Atari community.

     

    Sincerely,

     

    Joe

  16. Posted

    What kind of Idiot is this store owner?? He takes a perfect label and rips it, then he opens the cart and mangles the chip. It's a shame that he is getting rewarded for his stupidity.

     

    Congrats to joesmooth on the find. Too bad you didn't get it the first time.

     

    Then he proceeds to talk shit to Tempest about me, trying to discredit my story, cover his ass, say my story was "full of shit", that I was "dumb", etc. People should think before they speak (and make sure they know who they're talking to before they do)...

     

    Joe

  21. Posted

    I admit, I don't know much about prototype prices.

     

    And if the seller is going to be an ass, it's possible that he's not selling a genuine prototype.  

     

    I personally wouldn't pay more than $50 for a game I wanted. I am grateful that there are people out there who do this and maintain websites where we can see these prototypes up close. That alone, takes big cojones to do.

     

    Re-read my original post. The store owner didn't even know he HAD a prototype until I pulled it out of his $1 Atari 2600 cart box. It was at that point when he took it into the back, decided he wouldn't sell it (even after I offered him the $50), etc. So, now that he knows he has something good (or at least, we THINK it is something good), chances are it's going to require teeth pulling to get him to let go of it.

     

    Joe

  23. Posted

    Is there any chance of getting the guy to just plug it in so you can see what it really is? He can only benefit from having a confirmed Meltdown.

     

    But based on label alone, for all we know that cart had Deady Duck in it.

     

    Possibly, I assume he has a 2600 system in the store. But, I'm back in San Diego now and I don't plan on ever returning to his store.

     

    Joe

  25. Posted

    The main problem is that he saw that I was interested in a game he had for sale and proceeded to jack up the price. When I offered him what he wanted the second time around, it didn't matter. He still refused to sell it. I don't know if it is illegal for a retail store to do such a thing, but I doubt it and it really just seems unethical to me.

     

    Oh, actually, he also mentioned that he had been to CGE a few times (in Vegas) and that most of the people there were geeks. No, I'm not just making that up. I took it with a grain of salt, considering the guy that actually -said- that, but it was sort of insulting. But, he seemed confident that he could go to the show or unload it somewhere else for more money (I'm sure he could..)

     

    @StanJr: The place is Game World in Las Vegas, NV at the mall at the corner of Durango and Spring Mountain. So if people live locally, feel free to either boycott or stop by the store and say "hello" :roll:

     

    @Cap5750: There won't be a next time :|

     

    @AtariLeaf: He'll probably just keep jacking up the price given the more people that show interest. It seems to me that he'll never let it go, though he did say that he "didn't care about Atari 2600 and would just sell or trade it to get more NES stuff".

     

    @Thomas: The case was the 20th Century Fox style with the sets of "ribs" on each side, like Activision cases, but more ribs. The sticker was a white sticker, probably 1.5" wide by 2.5" long and just wrapped slightly around the front case and onto part of the end-label section. The "Meltdown" was written in blue ballpoint pen in script. Until the store owner broke the label, it was in perfect intact condition, nice and white, with no tearing or anything like that. But, he obviously didn't care to keep it nice.

     

    @keilbaca: Yeah, he was searching online. He didn't mention if and where he went, as he just came out and said he couldn't sell it, etc. He did that last time I went in a little over a year ago for some Intellivision stuff. I didn't buy anything from him that day, either. I don't think he's going to put it back into his $1 box, either. :)

     

    @CPUWIZ: Given that I've never bought a prototype before (mostly because I am so cheap), I didn't have and/or want to go spend $200 for the prototype, especially without being able to -verify- that it was actually Meltdown. Since all I saw was the PCB (no label on the EPROM) and case, it's not like it was verified or certified in any way. Also, the dude probably wouldn't have sold it to me, as others have referenced to in this post, if I offered him $200, he would have asked for more. I'm sure this type of shit happens all the time, just not with a 2600 prototype sitting 5 feet in front of me. Curt seemed to think it was worth going back in and trying to get the $70 he originally wanted (even though the guy dropped the price down to $50 while we were talking again, but balked later). $200 for someone "like me" seems excessive unless the cartridge came from a known reputable source.

     

    @NovaXPress: The guy didn't plug in the game, so I could only -assume- it was the Meltdown. The PCB was definitely an EPROM-based board, commonly used for prototypes. The EPROM was brand new, as was common from "back in the day", but most any 2K or 4K EPROMs you get these days are used and reused and their packaging is scratched and worn. The fact that it was a 2600 board (and not a 7800) led me to believe that it was a prototype for the 2600. The label said Meltdown, so I can only assume it was. The cartridge case was also brand new, with no sticker residue on the front label, which the shop owner kindly pointed out to me. So, whether or not it was actually Meltdown, I guess we'll never know, but it was a prototype! :x

     

    @homerwannabe: Yeah, I had thought about that after-the-fact. In all honesty, I went into the store on the way to do some other things and really wasn't expecting to see anything at all. So, I was caught totally unprepared. Since I was looking through the other boxes of classic stuff (that they had to bring out from behind the counter one by one), it must have been obvious that I knew what I was looking for. If I was smart, I would have stopped looking once I found the proto (though I wasn't exactly sure that it WAS one right when I saw it), picked up Pitfall, Combat, and Missile Command, and handed them to him all at once. I'm kicking myself about it now, but I'm just not that slick, I guess!

     

    Joe

AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2021 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...