Frotz

In Bakersfield, California: *"High Voltage" at Valley Plaza. This one went through several incarnations before culminating in a huge suite in one corner of the mall. Closed about five years ago. *"Tilt" at the Toy's R Us shopping center, right next to a mattress store. Closed three years ago, I think. *"Jimmy's Arcade" in the Mervyn's shopping center. Moved to Niles around five years ago. Now known as Rocky's Arcade and Pizza. *"DJ's Arcade". Gone at least ten years ago. The strip mall shop it was in has never been rented out since. There's still a coin-op basketball game in there. *"Peter Piper Pizza". Now known as King Leo's Pizza. All the ajoining strip malls are gone now, replaced with a Lowes hardware store. But King Leo's is still there. They had well-maintained older games before that was considered cool. There's a relatively new arcade, maybe six years old, at the East Hills Mall. It never was very interesting.

I was going to supply double sided sticky tape foam stuff like I did for the V1 kits Ah... I should have thought of that. Could you add holes to the artwork for the next time you send out for boards? Could but it would make it bigger There's plenty of room in a pre-junior to accomodate a couple few more millimeters. Not sure about the junior, but I'm sure it wouldn't hurt.

I was going to supply double sided sticky tape foam stuff like I did for the V1 kits Ah... I should have thought of that. Could you add holes to the artwork for the next time you send out for boards?

Uh oh. I assumed there would be mounting holes in the corners. I think I see some places where I could drill my own. My intention was to epoxy or bolt some threaded standoffs to the inside of the chassis.

What's the shelf life of this peroxide mixture, that is, how long before it decays into water?

I second that Sega mess..also as handhelds go the Tiger Game.com is damn ugly That is pretty ugly, however the base console is my favorite Genesis design. That poor Genesis It looks like a vacuum cleaner.

I would have kept the cartridge slot to allow for homebrewed games.

I'd start looking at the little cartridge connectors to the sides of the main one. I'd wager that at least one of those is pulled high or low when a 7800 cart is inserted. Look at 7800 cart guts.

So, has anyone tried this on a sacrificial SNES case yet? I know the mechanism of discoloration is different, but I'm just hoping.

I tend to polish off the rust, apply some primer, and top with rustoleum.

The Wii looks too weird. The PS3 is a good piece of hardware, but the curved top bugs me. I would rather it be flat so things like controllers could be easily placed on top. I liked the look of the SNES. It's the one-half-or-the-other discoloration that made it turn ugly.

I thought I preordered four of these, but never got an invoice. If somehow I didn't get in, might there be any spares?

Good questions. The chip defaults to high when the output is not connected to ground. It operates fine with it disconnected and I haven't seem any adverse affects from all the TVs and hours I have tested the board. The chip can be both AC or DC coupled outputs. It has to have AC coupled inputs. From what I have seen having AC coupling does nothing in terms of video quality. 220uF caps are fairly large in size and took up 25% of the space on the board before removing them. The big reason to stay with through hole is the Unassembled Kits and Bare PCBs. Plus I really dislike soldering SMD parts. If it's not too late, do you think you could tie that wire high for completeness and just in case it turns out that something starts oscillating that shouldn't?

Every single part has been carefully chosen to give the best bang for the buck. I'm not planning to make a profit on this and yes, I plan on building them myself on a hotplate. How much is your time and sanity worth? I would never have been able to hand-mount the 200+ QFPs it would have taken for the run of P112 boards I did. You could sell one or two hundred Chimeras very easily. For quantities like that, it's well-worth springing for machine-mounting. I doubt you'd be interested in soldering all those boards yourself.

So... Does anyone have any suggestions on where to buy and sell non-video-game stuff? I still have loads of classic computer stuff I need to liquidate, and yes, the ever increasing slices that Ebay bites off is pissing me off.

Hey Frotz- First off, are you the one responsible for Frotz in the IPhone/Touch applications? I am guessing so, nice job if that's the case To address some of your issues: 1) Not sure about this one? When you start an auction it will ask you if you want to sell a similar item. Then there is a pretty prominent gray box you click on to take you to a fresh auction page that is already filled in the way it was on the previous auction. Also, keep in mind that you can fill in default shipping/payment instructions so you don't need to do it within the auction listing every time. To do this simple click on Seller Tools in your members area, then along the right side of the page you will see some Preferences. Click the Default Shipping/Payment link to set that. Also in this tool area you can set your paypal payment address to it will then imbed a paypal button into the invoices you send your buyers. Also, there is a clever seller promotional tool in the bottom left corner of the screen titles "Lists for Promotions". This creates a sweet, clickable list of your auctions you can post in the forums you frequent to advertise your auctions. I hope this clears this one up regarding the "sell similar" function. Please try it again and see if you missed it 2) That is correct. Eastern Time is our official time. 3) After you list a few items you will get used to this. Essentially, once you add your photos, then the link is in the middle of the page. From there on, however, I believe it's at the lower portion of the page. The only reason is that after your photos get attached, you really don't need to scroll down. Just click the link that appears in the middle of the page right after your photos load and you will be briskly taken to the next page. It actually will seem more normal the more you list 4) That is correct. Once you start the auction you can't change ending time. Since you are generally not charged to list it, you could end it and then relist and adjust your ending time then. Keep in mind that you have nice freedom in choosing your ending time and date up to 10-days to run your auctions. 5) True, but nothing I can do with that now that it's all in place. Again, it gets a bit easier after a few listings are under your belt. Doesn't take to much time to cycle through the categories. 6) Unsure about this one? It is kind of there to catch something that may not have a specific category. Kind of like Ebay uses "Vintage Games". But I see what you are saying there. 7) Agreed. I will see if there is a way to implement that change in a future upgrade. All unfinished listings will automatically get saved in your "Pending Listings" area under My Listings in your member page - you don't need to save it as it will do this automatically. Try it and see how it works. You will like it. 9) They are a way to promote ones auctions. Kind of like a highlighted listing for Ebay. I hope some of these address your concerns and appreciate your input. Please feel free to join us over on the Chuckwagon forums as well. We have a specific area to discuss site suggestions and improvements. Welcome aboard the Chuckwagon I'm the one responsible for the Frotz core and the Unix and Dumb ports. I moved its webpage to Sourceforge to allow for more people to participate in its development. I have varying input on other ports, mostly limited to random questions. Until someone asked me if I did the iPhone port, I had no knowledge of it. I don't even have an iPhone or iPod touch. 1) I know about the system asking me if I want to sell something similar when I start an auction. What I'm missing is the ability to sometime after I've started an auction, then closed my browser, to click on one of my running auctions and sell something similar to that. 2) Hmm... No chance of doing time localization? 3) I still don't like it. 4) Now that I think about it, it's probably makes sense to not allow this. I can see some kinds of tomfoolery that can be done with monkeying with ending times. 5) Is there any particular reason why this cannot be changed? 6) Under "games" there's a category for "other games" which seems to be the appropriate place for games that don't fit elsewhere. You reminded me of something else that doesn't seem to make sense. All video games are under "games": Do you really need a top-level category "vintage games"? 7) <shrug> Could you do highlighting then instead?

Krazy Glue or any other cyanoacrylate is exactly the wrong thing to use for bonding paper. 3M 77 spray adhesive is the best I've found. Lay the label face down on a sheet of cardboard and make a quick pass of the spray. Carefully align one edge, then smooth down the rest of it.

I liked Zaxxon on the 2600. A big headscratcher for me was Fatal Fury on NES.

"Saturday Supercade" included "Kangaroo". The others at the top of my mind are Activision or Nintendo (Pitfall and Donkey Kong).

I'm finding more video games to liquidate, so I decided to finally go ahead and list a couple Atari Lynx games on Chase the Chuckwagon rather than Ebay. Overall, the interface feels nicer than Ebay. The latter has an unpleasant habit of trying to do too much and forgetting about simplicity. There are a few warts though. 1) After you push the button to start an auction, you're asked if you want to list something similar. After this, there is no apparent way to access this functionality. 2) Site doesn't do local timezone correction. 3) The button to push to go to the next step in listing something seems to jump around. First it's at the bottom looking like a button, then it's in the middle looking like an ordinary link... 4) No way to change the ending time of an auction after it has started. 5) When selecting a category in which to list an item, it would be much easier if a hierarchy of spin boxes was used instead of one big spin box listing all categories. 6) Something listed simply under the category "games" is unhelpful. It should not be possible to do that. 7) It would be nice to see who the seller is before clicking on the auction. There ought to be an explicit "save for later" sort of button at the bottom of the fourth step of creating a listing. 9) Those "LOOK!" arrows are annoying. Now for some things that Chase the Chuckwagon gets right that Ebay does wrong. 1) Creating an auction goes much faster. 2) It's hard to get a complete and clear picture of what the fees are on Ebay. Not so with CtC. All the fees are listed on ONE page, are very agreeable, and simple to understand. 3) It seems impossible, or at least very hard, to create an annoying mess of an auction page. Too many sellers on Ebay do this and I wonder how they manage to sell stuff... Or do they? These are my initial feelings on things. I'll have more to say when I see some bids, the auctions end, and when I deal with the after-the-sale stuff.

What was Elvira's reaction to being presented with her namesake video game?

Does anyone know anything about replacing cords on joysticks and paddles? I find a lot of them have their connector ends have been chewed up by forcing them into their sockets upside down or right side up but slightly off. Still others have been chewed up by babies, animals, or vacuum cleaners. Making a cord with a female D9 on the end is no problem, but I can't seem to find those nifty black molded plugs.

.....a VERY finicky lock-out chip. Yep, If you disable the lock-out chip you have no more problems. So, what do you do? Open up the console and cut some line or add a jumper?

Yummy!

How is that any different then the Hollywood of today? Just for the record, I copied that blurb from the Amazon page.