townparkradio

Safecracker's surprisingly good.

And keeping in with my other post of the day... Does anyone have a fully working Intv 1,3, or Tandyvision they'd part with for a reasonable price? I'm tired of getting shafted on ebay and you folks are more trusted by me.

Much MUCH more choosing than forced. We were planning on doing this about 5 years down the road with a LOT more money saved up, but I lost my job and given the economy we decided to go ahead and do it. Next year the garden should be ready to roll and we should be able to self-sustain. It actually all feels more secure than scrambling for a job in Montana would have been. We've basically cut our living expenses to, not counting the Internet, about $70 a month. There's more free time for gaming, to boot, especially as the winter comes in. The way I see it is this will be 9 months of really busting our butts farming, woodcutting, canning, and hunting and whatnot, then three months of screwing off while it snows outside.

Err reverse that. no controllers work at all on the right. Curse you, lysdexia!

Some of you folks may remember about 6 months ago I was talking about Intellivision games, how much I enjoyed them; asked for recommendations of what else to get. I then promised I'd be back to report on my venture... building a cabin for under $2000 and then living on solar power. Well, firstly, the cabin cost us twice the initial presumed price and still isn't quite done (needs exterior trim), but the solar system? The solar system is done and in place. What we have is 3 130-watt panels and 1 135 watt panel, 12 volt, hooked up in parallel in order to generate more wattage but keep the voltage consistent. We have 4 220 amp/hour golf cart batteries connected in series and parallel in order to provide 440 amp/hours at 12 volts. We get about 3 hours of sun directly on the panels, affording us, on average, 520 watt hours per hour into the batteries. Now you know what we have going into the system, time to talk about what's coming out, as well as boring details of day to day life. Firstly let's list the most mundane thing: lights. Our lighting is in the form of a single 6.5 watt LED light bulb in an overhead, another identical bulb in a small end-table lamp upstairs, and two 1.5 watt LED desk lamps. We also have our broadband modem (10 watt hours per hour) and wireless router (another 15). We have these because while you cannot get running water or power up here... DSL is a go-go! We have a netbook and a laptop. The Laptop draws between 8 and 40 watts depending on the activity level, and the netbook draws a steady 22 for some odd reason. As for water, we haul it, and we use a little camp stove with propane to feed ourselves in our lovely 12x16 foot two story... palace. Heat? Wood, baby. Whatever I chainsaw down and split for the stove. Bathroom? A small box constructed over a bucket which we empty every day. Bathing? We have a bathtub on the first floor udner the stairs with a caulked up stopper over the drain hole. we sit in it and use heated water poured over our heads to take mini-showers. Food? Well that's a bit different. We take bi-weekly trips into town in addition to whatever I can kill with the Ruger 10/22 or the Hi-Point .45 carbine (or it's little brother the Hi-Point .45 pistol). With my erratic and low-paying online work schedule we may have to either go on food stamps or I'll have to get WAY better at hunting. Our three cats have reduced themselves to two because one decided he'd try to catch an owl; but the other two aren't nearly so full of themselves. Enough of that mundane crap, how about the GAMES? Firstly, for modern systems we have a 32 inch LCD TV. Unfortunately, it draws about 70 watts. We have a Nintendo Wii, which draws PEAK of 22 watts. We also have a Microsoft Xbox 360 (we used to make a decent amount of money), which draws a minimum of 190 watts and peak of dang near 400. Anyone care to guess which system is collecting dust? For our older systems we have a small TV/VCR combo unit which claims to use 56 watts, but in practice draws nearer to 25. We have an Atari 2600 and an Intellivision and their power draws are absolutely inconsequential. I can;t even get the 2600 to read on my power consumption meter, and the Intellivision only seems to occasionally spike above 7 watts. As you can tell, our house is now retrogaming paradise. Well, it would be if I could get a working Intellivision other than the INTV 2 model, anyway. I kept buying controllers and systems off eBay and never managed to get a fully working system. As it is now we use an INTV two for short periods of time... (the 2 doesn't seem to like the impure power generated by our inverter) or the Franken-Tandyvision with some intv caps and resistors, with Intellivision controllers; no bottom right button on any controllers plugged into the right side, and no controllers work at all on the left. With the last of our fun money for the forseeable future we did research and welcomed a new member to our family; the Nintendo 3DS! At maximum draw, it's 10 watts. It averages unreadable it's so low. It was purchased primarily for it's ability to web-surf and listen to music; but the Resident Evil game it came with is rather fun as well. All in all, it's a good life. We get up when we want, go to bed when we want, and nobody owns a piece of our time. Donations trickle into the radio station slowly but tend to nearly always cover the operating cost, and we still have residual monthly payments from selling our trailer for the next two years, so our only bill will be taken care of. Homesteading has been rough in spots but I think the song "Draggin' the Line" covers it nicely. If anyone has any questions.. well.. I'll be around.

Yeah, I've learned not to order from them anymore either. It was really fun to order Intellivision Lives DS, and then have to walk into Wal-Mart and see it on the shelves for almost 2 months before they finally got around to sending me mine.

I've actually decided not to mess with the "guts" of the controllers at all if they're working, I can deal with some poor color coordination, I'm just so frustrated about the first set not working that I'm not going to risk anything going wrong. This whole exercise began because the Inty 2 we bought had a wonky second controller, and it looked like opening it would break it, so the wife authorized my buying 2 new controllers. I saw the Tandyvision for only a bit more than 2 new controllers, so went for that instead and... lo and behold.. non working controllers. if I screwed up a new set it would eat.. figuratively speaking.. our food budget to buy yet another pair. Solar panels are FRIGHTENINGLY expensive, so it's come down to less than double digit dollar margins in some of the budget areas. Blah blah blah don't you hate it when people insist on babbling about their trials and tribulations? If things get that close we'll sell the frickin' 360. It's not like we ever really play the thing except Red Dead Redemption, or are going to be able to without running a generator anyway. You wouldn't believe what an astounding power hog those things are. And a PS3 draws almost twice as much, heh. Mmm.. and I'm babbling again. That aside... thanks for letting me know they were not keyed. That's important information, and I'm glad to know the replacements won;t be major surgery.

If the stock INTV controllers aren't any different than the Tandyvision ones I don't forsee that being too difficult.

Woo hoo! I won the controllers... the other person bidding did try to last-second sniper bid the item, but their bid was the same size as my maximum bid so I won. Any advice I should know about opening up a Tandyvision before I do it?

Barring last minute sniping, looks like I'm going to win the bid. I am irrationally excited about this, lol.

I'll get back to you on that. If I promise to buy it from you and then win the auction on the controllers, my wife will kill me. She's already pissed enough that I bought one and the controllers don't work.

I guess it doesn't really matter. It fell into a bidding war and I can't spare more than $25. Argh. Not losing yet but give it three days.

Hi folks. I recently acquired a Tandyvision 1 but the controllers are just.. in awful shape. Insects in them, contact cleaning does nothing to help; their corpses and feces are everywhere. The controllers are just not salvageable. I am seeing a pair of Inty 1 controllers for sale, can you replace the Tandyvision controllers with Inty 1? I'm not afraid of opening the system to do so, of course, I just want to make sure I'm not setting more money I do not have on fire.

She/He has an Inty 2, I thought Venture wasn't compatible?

It does look extremely beautiful, but that was the last $50 I'm gonna be able to spend for a VERY long time. Gotta build a cabin and assemble the solar system, and for some odd reason my wife seems to think I'm going to be able to build 2 stories tall 20x20 for under 3 thousand dollars. This should be quite an adventure, lol.

Yessir I have! I saw that in a second-run drivein in Romeoville, Illinois. It was 1983, and the B movie was Inframan, then some fun stuff including this commercial, and then TRON! I was so young.. 5 or 6 at the time, and seeing this actually brought the memories fresh to my mind. Saw a preview for Flash Gordon the same night! (second run driveins were fun like that)

I might have seen that auction. Thing is I already have an inty 2, got the system and 4 games for $15. I wanted one of the first gen Intys because the controllers don't have that awful cavity in the back. That and they're easier to open and repair. Although if you don't want that DK, I'd be happy to take it off your hands. I know it's awful but... I liked the 2600 version, why not give the Inty one a try? I have some doubles I can offer you, though they're only loose, some have manuals and such.

I've got a Tandyvision on the way. Landed one with 13 commons in box for $58 (this includes shipping)... 7 of which I didn't have before. A couple are those multiplayer-only sports games but.. who cares? Collectible! Are Tandyvisions as reliable as I've heard? Some friends of mine who may or may not know better have told me they're better than anything except a System III for reliability.... figured I'd ask you fine folks about it.

I happened upon Pac-Man for a decent price and got it, for anyone keeping track of me.

That's Pauline, not Peach.

Am I understanding this right? Some guy used Ebay's system in an attempt to lowball an auction that didn't sell and make a side deal, without Ebay getting their cut. Now he's complaining about the "honor" of someone who relisted the item and sold it to the highest bidder, as per the rules they both agreed to follow in order to use Ebay's system? That's a strange definition of "honor" there. Since when is it okay to rip off a corporation because you don't like the price they charge for their product? That's infantile. If you don't like the price, don't use the system at all. Halfway in skirting the system isn't exactly honorable, and frankly if I were the seller I'd be smelling "scam" all over it. It's the same with piracy "we don't like their anti-piracy measures, so we'll steal their product to boycott it!" No. That's not a boycott. A boycott is a matter of principle, and it has to cost YOU something, show you are willing to make sacrifices to redress a grievance. I'm serious about what I said above. If I were the seller on ebay, the whole thing would start instantly smelling like a scam to me. Why is this person so intent on me not using Ebay to do this? Why is this person complaining that I re-listed my property and got a better offer than theirs? Character and honor is what you do when you think you can get away with it. What was done here is this person tried to get away with shafting Ebay, and is angry that another person decided to just smile and humor them while continuing to do the right and honorable thing. It's not like this was a deal on the Atariage forums that the seller backed out of, this was a person who decided not to do the wrong thing, and then re-listed the item. More power to him for doing it the right way; he got the extra money he deserved for not trying to scam anyone.

Honestly anyone who has it is not likely to let it go. As I understand it, $120 is actually pretty cheap for the game.

In Chicago we had it on some show or other with Rich Koz. I believe Svengoolie, when they showed amazingly crap spooky movies and he came on before commercial breaks to make fun of the movie. I also remember very late nights Grandpa from The Munsters hosting such a show, which also used it once or twice. That show was great, you could TELL Grampa was drunk as heck most of the time.

This place REALLY needs an automated method for sorting out quote spam. Anyway, yeah, we'll be sure to keep in touch and tell y'all how it's going. A lot of you can cut back more than you think as well. You'll find that almost all of the energy spent in your home will be your water heater, fridge, and if you have en electric stove, that has to go as well. Get yourself a wood heater, maybe cook with propane.

Intentional decision given that my wife's piling up too many injuries at work and my own job has been sporadic at best and there's 15% unemployment here. We know how to hunt and farm, as well as how to can meats and vegetables, we've found a way to get our total living expenses down to $80 a month. We're both quitting our jobs and I'm going to be going for part time work as a rural bus driver until we find a way (through winemaking, soapmaking, or other such organic products) to become completely independent.