Lendorien

I personally love necrobumps. The revival of old threads with interesting content I missed originally is sort of convenient.

In video game heaven, You go to Goodwill and regularly find desirable stuff for cheap before the resellers get there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APF-MP1000

I did the rocker switch mod on my first CV (which ended up with vram issues) and I know I didn't spend 20 bucks on it (no way in heck I would ever pay that much). It wasn't an illuminated one but it fit well enough. I did have to mod the case though, mostly by trimming the plastic guides inside the case. I probably got it at radio shack, but I'm sure you could find something on digikey. The size needed is fairly common so I'd be surprised if you had to pay more than 5 dollars for it.

Like others, I don't collect the manuals, unless it's a CD based game. Dreamcast, PS1, Ps2, etc. For me, half the fun of owning a ps1 or a dreamcast game is how it looks in the case with the game. I do try to get CIB on those items. But for carts, aside from a few exceptions, I'm ok with not having them

The NES is a great system to collect for. The games are pretty common and there are a lot of pretty good titles that can be gotten relatively cheaply. I like that TV. Nice and compact.

I have all my cables twist tied up to shorten their lengths, but given that I do occasionally move things, the cable routing option wouldn't work for me. But I can totally see how it would make your setup so very much cleaner. The Pelican switches are great. Mine is the System Selector Pro (linky). It's a bit higher end than the standard one and has both Ethernet and component ports in addition to composite and S-video. That was a wonderful Goodwill find, I'll tell you. I've used it for years. I think Pelican still makes a product like it, but it's all HDMI now. This one went out of production back when the Gamecube was still around. The nice thing is it looks more like AV receiver equipment than your standard composite switches, so it looks nice in a good setup. I love that WEGA stand. Wicked cool looking . I love the design. I assume the TV came with it. I have a 32" Triniton in a MASSIVE wood TV stand from the 90's. When I bought my house, we moved in and it was there in the basement. The previous owner didn't want to deal with getting it up the steps or taking it apart it so just left it behind for us to deal with. (Guy turns out to have been a bit of a jack according to pretty much all the neighbors). But it worked out in my favor because it's just right for a 32" TV. Where did you find said power strip. I'd love something like that. Right now, I just unplug the whole setup when I'm not using it. Since I'm not using it most of the time, I suppose it works out anyway because there's less power being used. Yay for a lower electrical bill!

So here's an interesting question that I haven't seen a lot of discussion on. How many consoles do you have hooked up to your television(s) and what method do you use to hook them up? * Game/AV Switch - Less commonly available now than a few years ago, AV switches come in electronic and mechanical versions allowing you to hook multiple consoles up to one device which then outputs to your TV or AV receiver. I personally have a very nice Pelican System Selector Pro with 8 switches capable of outputting S-video and Composite. It's been off the market for years. I got mine by luck at a thrift store. I had to get a Radio shack AC adapter for it, but I've used it now for 7 years. I also have a cheaper 4 switch RCA brand Video Selector that I use on another TV. * AV Receiver. - I own a high end (as of about 4 years ago) Denon AV receiver which inputs composite, HDMI and Component. It outputs HDMI on all inputs. Nice receiver, but only my newer stuff is hooked up to it... Wii. PS2, PS3, Xbox, etc.). My CRT is outfitted with the above gameswitch, though I intend to switch it out with a high end 15 year old Yamaha RX-V992 Receiver I just bought at Goodwill (for 10 dollars. What a steal. It goes for 100 on Ebay). It has no less than 6 Inputs for Composite and S-video, not including the V-Aux on front. * Y cables. - For RF signals, this is what I have ended up falling back on. Systems like the Intellivision, 2600, 5200, Collection, etc. Are all hooked up to my CRT with a crap ton of y-cables. The down side is that you do get some interference as a result. I've done Y-cables for Composite too, but you end up buying a lot of y-cables that way! * Ground Loops. When you have all sorts of crap hooked up through game switches and into a receiver, you'll probably end up dealing with that obnoxious hum from your speakers that signifies a ground loop. Not always easy to solve. * Rat Nests. - I always worry about fire hazards. I use higher end power strips for my systems, but behind the TV it always looks like a rat nest of wires and such. Cable management is always a struggle. So. How many systems do you have hooked up to a single TV and what methods are you using to do so? I have 7 on my 32" triniton CRT and 4 on my LCD. Another 4 on my backup CRT I use for testing new acquisitions.

Good presentation. Took a look at your tool. I'm not a programmer or a musician, so it's use to me is limited to curiosity, but I have to say, You have done a fantastic job with both presenting your design and creating the design. I can see how it would be useful. I mean, a guy like me, who knows next to nothing about music was able to putter around and make a simple, if mostly crummy tune after about an hour's work of just fooling around with it, with no manual to go by. That speaks well of your GUI design approach in that someone with only a basic understanding of the VCS and its limitations can sit down and use it with zero instruction. This simple fact will surely make music creation for the VCS a lot more approachable for everyone from folks in the demoscene to game programmers. There is one GUI suggestion I have that would help make doing things a little easier. Specifically, changing the drop down menu in the tracks to a toolbar of icons (on the side or top) that influences the selected track item when pressed. Given that things like adding rows, pauses, etc. is probably going to happen a lot for complex tunes, a toolbar would be a lot quicker and intuitive than a drop down menu. Things like mute channel could still be in a dropdown menu perhaps, or you could put a select box above each channel that would mute it if selected. From a UI standpoint, toolbars would be a lot easier to use than left click, moving your mouse and clicking again. The less clicks a user has to make, the better, because it speeds up the process and makes the program easier to use. That said, I love the clean simplicity of your design. Anyway, I'm not a musician or a programmer and my time using it was limited, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.

Oh man. That blows. I hope there's a solid rom image already available, for future use when the old carts are all datarotted out.

Yeah, but at least Air Raid's back story is somewhat interesting/mysterious.

Phew. Seems like a real turkey. Poor Quality Control and bad engineering. You can't help comparing it to contemporaries like the VCS and Intellivsion. As a counterpoint to the Astrocade, both are rock solid systems that rarely fail. Overheating because of the RF shield? Custom chips randomly failing? Yeah, bad engineering for sure. I don't have the money to muck around with something with so many pitfalls. Passing on this one. Yikes. Sadly, it won't be long before there are none left because of it. Sad story. Thanks for the link!

My Serial Number for my 2 port is AT 333 0312020.

That spreadsheet is awesome! It's a fantastic bit of research. Way to go on doing it! You should start a new serial # thread to supercede this one and ask Al to give you editing rights to it ao the first post can contain the insights and discoveries found so far. It would be great to have a Serial thread stickied too. That way people don't have to dig through pages of serial Number photos to find the meat of what we're finding out through sharing these numbers. I started to do this (based on the 7800 thread) and got a pretty big list together before I got to your post. Haha. I am willing to do it and maintain the post if you're not up for it.

I can't say I've seen this console on e-bay very much. I've looked, mostly out of interest and I've never seen one for that much money. Even new in box, 600 dollars seems awfully high. But then it is an uncommon system that has gotten some notoriety of late because of things like the AVGN review, so who knows. Maybe it is worth that. I personally think that it's a terrible system. The control isn't nearly fine enough. If the control was more responsive and didn't always try to be vertical/horizontal or diagonal, it wouldn't be a bad machine, but as it is, it's pretty much unusable. I base that on my own use. I like the aesthetic design of it with the white case and controller that fits in at an angle and so, when I saw it at a Goodwill for 6 dollars with three cartridges, I had to buy it. But aside from trying it out quite a bit when I got it and having it hooked up during a video game party a couple years ago, I have yet to turn it on again. I'll probably sell it eventually. It really doesn't have much value other than as a curiosity from the late 80's if you ask me. But it sure does look nice on my display shelf.

That's pretty ingenious to get it into such a small container. You really have to do some good layout design to get it to fit so nicely. And what a fun thing to have in your collection!

WTF. Talk about involved with a heck of a lot of possibilities for failure. What an accomplishment... What a super geeky accomplishment.

I've long heard about the unreliability of the Astrocade. What contributes to its poor reliability? Was it the components used? Bad design? What are the most common causes of failures and what are the easy things to fix and what are the brick type ones? I've thought about picking one of these up, but I want to know more about it before I do. Is it worth picking up a cheap broken one if you have some amount of electronics ability? Or is a broken one just good to keep a door open? Plus, having all the info in one place might be helpful to others who might jump in someday.

Am I lame if my favorite GG game is Columns?

All great questions. I'd love to know too.

I took a look at his Star Wars Animation and if that's anything to go by, this one is going to be amazing. What a talented animator!

Missed this topic. I have a Kaypro 2x that belonged to my Dad. I am afraid that I haven't used it in some time. It has Epson half height drives that probably need new belts. I should really pull it out and try and fix it, but I have no idea where to get new belts! I still have all my games for it.

I still hit the goodwills, but it's slim picking these days. In the past year or so, I've found a few decent finds here and there, Like Chibi-robo for GC for under 20 bucks, and Adventures of Lomax for ps1 for 2 dollars (Brand new practically. You can imagine my happy dance on that one!). But the finds are few and far between these days. The resellers hitting up Goodwills make it hard to find things unless you happen to be there when they're putting stuff out. I have had some luck with PC games though. For whatever reason, PC games, including valuable ones are less desirable. I hit them up a couple times a week. It's the only way to succeed, but most of the time I leave empty handed. I haven't ever tried to make relationships with Goodwill staff. Just seems shady to me. That and Goodwill, at least in my area, has jacked up the price of games now. They've gotten wise. Just the other day I saw Adventures of Link in a beat up old box in their showcase for 49 dollars. And don't get me started on the sports games that are priced at 6 bucks. Stuff like that just drives me bonkers. But now that everyone has internet on their phones, it's easy to look up prices. Of course, some Goodwills still are not bad. I find the slower ones that are a bit more rural tend to be a little less picked over. Back when I started collecting about 8 years ago and even as recently as 4 years ago, you still got some great finds. I have a bunch of games I got at goodwills for reasonable or steal prices and a few systems too, like my 5200, my 3DO, my Intellivision, my Master system, and several Sega Genisi. I have lots of fairly valuable games across numerous systems that I got at Goodwill, not to mention a bunch of aftermarket controllers. Then there are the other options. Sadly, the age of the rummage sale is waning as people just donate to Goodwill these days and take the tax write off, so those are hard to find wins for too. So you end up stuck with e-bay or amazon and often overpaying unless you get lucky on an auction.

I have a videoart, though it's loose. Is it really that valuable? Or is it the box that gives it the price? Honestly, it's really an awful console. Controls are terrible and nearly impossible to use well.

Wow. I love the character design and how colorful it is. I look forward to seeing more.