gulag picture radio

SNES systems are pretty rare here in Chicago for some reason. I've only ever found three of them, and they were mostly too much money. Last year I finally found one at a garage sale with a bunch of Intellivision carts (!) for $20. Not too bad. Turned out to be a great "investment" as later that day I found MarioPaint for .99 and the mouse for 1.99 at the local Funcoland. I'm a musician and my primary interest was in playing with the cheesy music sequencer inside MarioPaint. I also use a homebrew music cart for GameBoy, but it's a pig doing all the work on the GB itself, so it's really nice being able to do work using the Super Game Boy adaptor. Oh, and I hope that no one thinks that I'm evil for keeping both of the Atari's that are part of this exceedingly generous offer. I've got a couple friends who are getting married, and I already bought them wedding gifts... you know, stuff that a couple would want. I don't have any more dough to spend on them, so am happy to be able to give them each an Atari and some games out of my collection. I've also got some busted Atari's, so I'm hoping to cobble together enough pieces to get a few more to work. I've also had a pretty crappy couple of months with work, so I don't mind saying that this has really helped perk me up! Thanks Robert. Oh and as for recent finds in the wild, I recently found a complete Sega Master System in its box. It's the giant assortment that includes the gun and the 3D specs and a 3D game. It doesn't look like it was played much as the clear protective stickers are still on the game unit. I played it today for the first time. It was pretty fun, especially at $25. I also found an old Magnavox Oddyssey Pong for $5. Oh yeah- and at the Midwest Classic I bought a few little things- like I found the little tripod for a Virtual Boy for $3. I had found the VB controller six months ago at a thrift in a bag of other junk for $1. Couple weeks later found the main unit for another $3. So I've got a working VB for less than $10! I can't believe it, especially piecemeal like this. What was really great was hitting a local thrift store in Milwaukee. I found a KC Munchman (that had been for sale at the show out of its packaging for $30) for $2 in box. I also found one of those Atari joysticks (I think that they're made by Champ) that coils its cord into its own base. That cost $1, and we also got a C64 for $4. Oh, and a TI99 (in beige-odd) for $1. I haven't had such a haul in a long time, so it looks likei might be on the road to recovery! Thanks again!

Okay... this is going to sound nuts... A friend of mine and I both have a pair of Paul Slocum's Synthcarts. We're putting a set of songs together using the 2600 and Gameboy to do most of the music (along wit Casio keyboards, Speak & Spells, etc.). I'd like to do a couple of all-videogame songs, and there's one more piece of gear that could really help. I've got the synthesizer add-on for Intellivision II and the game unit itself, but I don't have the computer add-on. I'm not looking for collectability here, just one that works so that we can jam out on an Intellivision on stage. I don't have a lot of cash for this project (blew a lot of it on the keyboard! ), so if any of you have a badly scratched or flawed one that still works, maybe we can talk! Oh, and if anybody has the Intellivision II AC adaptor, that would also be helpful. C'mon, how cool would a CD of music produced by your favorite video game units be? Thanks, everybody!

WHen I've seen C64's in the wild, they usually range from $2.50 to $5.00. Weird, eh? A whole computer for a fin... Needless to say I bought one! I just need to find the hookup cables someplace.

I'm your man. I could use those systems for parts for my own little collection. I'll email you my address. OH, and thanks!

I'm not sure if this program ever came out for the Mac, but there are PC & Amiga versions of Deluxe Paint. YOu can choose from several video-game like resolutions, and it can work in a restricted register color palette- that's how I did most of my graphic work in the early 90's.

Just out of curiosity, where did you find your plastic carrying case? Oh, and as for the Speak & Spell Atari, I can tell you a little more about it. The guy who built it also created Video Simon and his own homebrew 3D glasses for the Vectrex- I can tell you about that sometime if you're interested... they were cool! The guy's name escapes me, but I really liked him- I enjoy hanging with clever people. Anyway, he attatched on of those LCD televisions intended for the PSone to the Speak & Math, so it actually has a folding screen! He replaced all the switches with flatter switches. It all folded down into a pretty compact package with built-in handle. He built it for testing carts "in the field". As for the Speak & Spell line of toys, I have a number of them including the add-on carts for them. I have always been fascinated by artificial speech, and have begun the laborious process of sampling the Speak toys for use in songs. I even found a one that speaks in French! There is a whole Yahoo group devoted to modifying these and other electronic toys to create noisy and weird instruments.

Yeah, but as compact as it is, it's still gotta go someplace! Unless you wear bib overalls, I would gamble that youdon't have a pocket big enough for the thing. Are you talking about one of Ben's portable Atari's? Or is it one that you made yourself? I saw two portables last year at a swap party- one was Ben's, the other was cleverly hacked into a Speak & Spell (Speak & Math, really). Way cool. I gotta get me some of that action.

Okay, so they were domestic and not so rare. I guess I could have just waited for another one to come up on Ebay instead of jumping the gun for the one that's going to cost me $30 to get here. Though now that I've looked at completed auctions, it looks like the "atari" branded ones go for a lot of scratch. I guess that fear of high shipping is why so few bid on this one. I'm not a hardcore collector, so this still seems like quite a bit of dough, especially since the rest of my Atari collection was purchased for nickels... So I guess that I'm feeling better as I seem to have saved a couple of bucks getting it from Australia rather than getting it domestically. thanks for setting me straight... I feel a lot better!

Hi. I've got one of Paul Slocum's SynthCarts and a modified Atari so that I can play the thing out at bars & clubs or whatever. Now I need a stylin' way to transport the 2600. I've seen lots of woodgrain storage units that are meant to sit next to your TV and house the 2600 and its accessories, but never a branded carrying case. I just won one on Ebay off a guy in Australia and the shipping is going to be murder. It would make me feel better to know that it's mega-rare or something. It's a hard shelled plastic case like the ones they use at video rental places for the game units that go out. Any clue about this thing? Here's the auction with a picture: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=1358556614 The guy said that its marked as an item made in USA, but why have I never seen one before? Thanks for any help!

Any details on this mod? I'd be a bit spooked to do it on such an expensive and rare piece of gear, but the added quality might be worth it. Anyone else here perform the mod?

I got an AVM a year back off of Ebay. I paid a bit much for it, but they never show up in thrift stores around here, and I'd just made a killing selling some non-Atari stuff- I splurged! I've fired it up at several parties, and while the graphics are _very_ primitive, it still makes people happy. Oddly, it seems to react best to 70's music, i.e. the time period in which it was manufactured. It really goes nuts over Zeppelin and other rock records that I had lying around to try it with. It also reacts especially well to the music of this band called Optiganally Yours (www.optigan.com) which is a band that uses this 70's manufactured instrument called an Optigan. One cool thing that I've done with it is to run the output (through a VCR to give me a composite output to use) into a Chromakeyer to knock out the black. Then you can aim a camera at something and superimpose the strange undulating patterns over it. I plan on doing this at the next party where we have live music. All in all, it has been a very worthwhile thing to have around. I'd like to get a Jag CD someday- not necessarily for the games, but for the cool light show! The AVM is pretty cool for retro freaks, but likely not worth the dough that I paid for it (though I have no regrets).

Ahh, thanks- you rule! That is indeed what it looks like. Doesn't seem to really be worth $25 anymore! Wasn't there a unit called "TVboy" or something similar that hat more than 100 Atari 2600 games in a similar Playstation-like controller? Any ideas where to find such a thing? Thanks!

heyas, If you go to http://www.baysoftgames.com/gamstatar.html they've got a unit for $25 that hooks up to your TV and plays games. The guys there said that they think that the games are old Atari 2600 classics, but I can't find any details about the unit online anywhere. Any idea what games might be in there? THanks everybody!