DrVenkman

Don't worry though...Crinkled box or not...Like, man,  their website busted my brain so much I was no longer thinking when it came to "select shipping" OK?  I forgot to even process it in my head,,,Pretty sure I selected Creased box, padded envelope if you're lucky, and to have a guy named Roy who works in the back go ahead and sit on it before putting it in there...   But the day will come I hold it high, crack open a beer and get down to business with a smile on my mush cuz I got it!  

@GoldLeader I never got the e-mail, even though I registered on Friday. Not in inbox or spam. I guess that would have helped with the confusion, such as clearing the cache, which has never solved any problem where its been suggested in the past. Most of my "whinging" was trying to figure out what was going on in real time, so I could actually get to the store. I'll live, it was just 30 minutes of frustration.

Despite what my status post may sound like, I really do get @Swami's frustration. And I do fully understand the value of a good venting. I'm sorry you had a rough time with their site - and yes, it could use some good usability improvements in a couple areas. I hope they get that corrected for future issues.

As for cache clearing, believe it or not this was actually relevant to me professionally as recently as Friday. My work in recent years is exclusively performed via very specialized web-apps running inside a secure browser session. In the middle of my workday on Friday, I suddenly started getting site errors and corrupted data out of nowhere. And bear in mind, the browser in question isn't even local! It runs on a virtual Windows 10 machine running on a server farm somewhere inside a distant data center that I access via a secure remote connection. On a lark and so I could truthfully tell the Help Desk I had already tried before I submitted the ticket, I cleared my browser cache and restarted the stupid thing. Sure as shit, for the first time in my life that procedure actually worked. 

So tl;dr: It's not often, but sometimes it really does help.

Yeah, I'm probably going to buy one of those in a few weeks. I don't want to kill the 64C and I'd like to have something trustworthy when tackle fixing this Breadbin. 

The Commodore machines are shoddy all around, both in the architecture and in the workmanship that went into building them.  I still think it's a tragedy that the C64 supplanted the more deserving Atari machines in the marketplace.

(Speaking of the Marketplace, I know someone with a C64 breadbin machine who is looking to sell it for parts, so I'll see if I can get him to list it here on AtariAge.)

I've only got the ones I have because the Breadbin is like one my wife had as a kid and she wanted one, and the 64C I found at a Goodwill about 15 years ago and couldn't pass up. It and the matching 1541-II plus PSUs for both were a whopping $9.99 each. They still have Goodwill price stickers on them. ? Anyway, getting the Breadbin working will be an educational experience I'm sure. But yeah, NOT well-made in the slightest. 

The Trak-Balls seem to hold up pretty well over time. I wouldn't assume it to have problems. Aside from that, they're pretty easy to fix anyway.

I know this TB has issues but not worried. Dan has already told me the likely causes and how to track them down.

I scooped up THREE NIB 5200 trackballs from Venezuela during the tiny window when there were lots of them available relatively cheaply. One has mysteriously stopped working (probably something simple), but the others look and work great. Big, beautiful, luxurious controllers.

Tonight I took off from my local municipal airport and flew over my own house ... this is more than a game for sure. 

It nice to see people taking an interested in this genre, finally, after 40 years! Gosh did it take that long!?!?!?

I think the last version of MS Flight Simulator I bought before this was in the early-mid 00’s. 2002? 2006? I don’t remember. My kids were busy growing up and I didn’t spend nearly as much time with it as I wanted. But I’d been flying sims casually for decades up until then. And since then, I’ve flown lots of aircraft in Kerbal Space Program, plus combat flight and space simulation in many other games. Speaking of which, Star Wars: Squadrons will be a lot of fun this fall.

But that's it. The touchscreen just plugs straight down into the female headers on the Arduino board. Connect to your computer and run a batch script to program the Arduino with the SDrive-MAX firmware and that's it.

Wow, that sounds fairly easy. I do have a temperamental 1010 SIO cable, so I just need to meter which end it is and use that.

Did you use the Elegoo UNO touch screen ? These are the only ones I can find in the UK that work with the Arduino.

Yes, I bought the suggested Elegoo touchscreen/microSD card module from Amazon (US) for $15.84. I plugs right down into the Arduino & once you update the Arduino firmware (automated by the script provided), when you boot the system the first time, you use the include stylus to calibrate the screen & you're basically done with that part.

I used scissors myself, found out it was cheaper to buy one double sided disk than two single sided ones.

I always just used a hole punch.

I used to as well. But the only hole punch here in the house is a solid-core punch. It won’t cut through the tough plastic sleeve of a floppy disk. As a kid, we had one that actually had a hollow punch - the edges served as cutters and could easily notch a disk.

Yeah, I went to Ebert's and Gerbert's after each shot for Mac and Cheese and Wild Rice soup. At a week after second shot now. A week to full potency.

A couple of weeks away for me...I wish Dunkin would give me a free Donut!  Also I wish we had a Dunkin.  (sigh)....We don't have a krispy kreme either, though they carry them at Mini Mart (errr now it's called Loaf & Jug,  dumbest convenience store name ever!)... But not even a chocolate?   Bah! 

@GoldLeader I had a convenience store called the A&T Shop down the street (if you don't get it, try reversing the letters). Then the T left and it became Adam's Shop. HAHA.

OG Halo is one of the few FPS games I've ever finished all the way through. The graphics and control were good, and I really liked some of the levels. Seeing these old games in their original resolution totally looks like retro-gaming to me, even if it has the same bones as modern games. Especially if you're like me and don't care about multiplayer. 

Of course, this is true, too. 

Maybe I'll Finally, after all these years, try some Halo haha...My friend gave me an XBOX, but I haven't tried it yet.  There's games he gave me too, pretty sure I have Halo and Fable and I don't remember without looking...Then I was at a yard sale the other day and bought an XBOX, 2 controllers and more...All for $5!  Don't know if it works, but I've cleaned it all up and confidence is high

It's a good game, to be sure, there's nothing wrong with it.  It looks good and controls well, and the score is pretty epic.  There are definitely fun bits.  The plot and characters are rather generic, though, and I didn't find it particularly better than 100 other FPSs.  I enjoyed it, but it wasn't the second coming.  I played the series through Halo 3, and it felt like it got worse with each iteration.  Of course YMMV.

I use a tile as well but when I am done I point mine up, the air doesnt make it too far past the box 

My holder is designed for it to point up.

This holder is shown in the eBay ads as pointing down. The handle can just as easily point up but as you can see, I've got a pegboard on the back of my workbench. I really don't like the idea of several hundred degree C air blowing up at it while the heating element cools down. Maybe if I attach some foil or tiles up there? For now, this will do.

Why admit you may be wrong, when you can let the court decide that for you later on?

They just like playing Twister...

...with reality

Who determines what's right and wrong? Often times it all boils down to personal belief. Some people sure do a lot of typing trying to force their own personal beliefs on others.

"IGNORE TOPIC", one of the worst ideas for any forum....

@Joe C. Why do you say that?

I put emkay on ignore years ago, never understood the guy.

Congrats on that repair!  I wonder why the pots froze solid like that?  Looking forward to your power up test seeing some VBXE goodness on another CRT!

Yeah, I don't know. I started a thread in the ST forum about this a couple days ago asking if anyone had pics or a service manual but no dice. Another forum member said the same had happened to the knobs on the one he had gotten a few years ago. I wonder if there was dielectric grease inside the pots that dried out over time? And given the very, very small surface area to move them when they're installed, it might just be that there's not enough leverage to get any torque. The pots also all have a center-detent position, which is where all three appeared to have gotten stuck.  

How funny, I discharged a CRT for the first time fairly recently as well. Extremely underwhelming, not even a snap. I'm pretty sure the tube discharged itself after I unplugged it, I jabbed my discharge tool right on the anode clip several times and got nothing.

It happens ???

Sorry to hear, wow, that sucks.

Yeah sorry to hear...When I was in High School, my friend 5 houses away killed himself...

E3 made it worthwhile to follow for a little while just to see what if anything of substance would be shown. But since it's still just so much vaporware, I'm going to just stop paying any attention again. I've got plenty of real Atari and other vintage hardware to play with. Tomorrow it will desoldering a super-hot DRAM from a dead C64 mobo, socketing it and replacing it.  

My God- by distracting the guys with the tech knowledge, all the old Ataris will break down, & we'll be FORCED to buy the TacoBox! We've discovered their true plan- they aren't stalling, it's a siege!

This is true, no one offered to fix my VCS, my actual Atari VCS 2600...

Indeed it apparently is for DOOM (2016). The disc-installed content is about 700MB. The network-installed content is about 61GB. Conversely, when I installed FO4 upstairs, the disc-installed content was about 32GB, plus another 8GB of updates and patches from the network. Even with wireless speeds up there of 75 - 160 mbps, all that took awhile. I need to run Cat6 up there someday.

Yeah gone is the days you can buy a game and play without internet connection. Kinda sad really because not everyone wants to sit there and wait for their game to download for an hour before playing. Especially when excited to play or have limited time in the day. I mean i understand for updates and patches considering the complexity of games these days, the need bug fixes ect. However when some companies are only offering basically the key in physical form it sucks. I remember GTA5 on PC being like 6 discs and as annoying as it was atleast you could play singleplayer straight out the box. On the other hand Arma3 was a few hundred MB on the physical disc and another odd 60GB download. Couldn't even start the game without downloading the full 60GB... There is also the issue with consoles having limited HDD space and installing a game requires uninstalling previous software. Reminds me of the old DOS days having a 30MB HDD and only having the space for a few games.

Yep. This used console only has a 500GB disc. I’ve filled up 90% of it already with a handful of games. I’ll be buying a 2 - 4TB external drive in a week or two for some breathing room. 

It's such a pleasure to use that I was seriously tempted to crack open all my classic systems and socket every single chip, just because I could.

Hakko Desoldering tools are the cream of the crop. You will never regret this investment.

Nice. If I still did enough soldering to justify it, I'd buy one.

@nanochess - that Star Trek x-ray scanner is great! Did your Nano come with an SD card slot to hold the image files? I didn't see mention of the actual card interface anywhere in the writeup. Once I get the hang of this thing, I intend to experiment with a 5200 digital joystick adapter for maze-games and such. Eventually I'll build a custom enclosure with a project box and place to mount the keypad on top.

I used the SD card slot in the LCD display to contain the images.

sounds fun, I have a flora arduino compatible wareable.

How do I buy one of these controllers for my 5200?

https://www.maker-matrix.com/category/retro-gaming

Thank you

I got my hair cut a couple of days ago for the first time since Thanksgiving.

I'm just going for the ultra shaggy look until I can get back to my barber.  Thankfully I got my hair cut right before all this hit and a bit shorter than usual.  My wife keeps threatening to cut it anyway though...

I normally keep my hair pretty short and it was a bit overdue for a cut before we went into isolation. My best guess is it had been 13 - 14 weeks since my last cut. These clippers are pretty great, btw. My wife bought these based on reviews vs. price vs. availability and I gotta say, they had zero trouble with my mop: 

Hatteker Mens Beard Trimmer Cordless Hair Trimmer Hair Clipper Detail Trimmer 3 In 1 for Men Hair Cutting Kit Men's Grooming Kit Waterproof https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07R6RG5FD/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_cCaTEb4TMPYGE

However, friends do let friends cold solder drunk.

Also, don't solder with a 15 watt iron. It'll melt your skin just fine, but solder? Heh, nope.

I've used 15-watt irons with 60/40 solder just fine, but with lead-free solder, you'll want something a little hotter.

Poor poor Antic.

Save it for the day we can cost-effectively repair chip substrates.

Store it in a cold freezer for a few years. Test again in 2020. Might alter those substrates.

I find that "wanting" is more fun than "having" in many cases ... low resolution graphics puts a hurt on my brain. But some of those game designs are so completely classic!

DOS was a great era. Still looking for Ski Free, commander Keen, and Kings quest for modern platforms.

You can run skifree on 32-bit windows, and there is a 32-bit version that works with win64.

Seems like the usual places, topics and people to me!  lol

I wish I could ignore the entire Jaguar forum.

I guess I'm lucky I don't own a Jag then. ? 

Yeah, usually the case here. 16 years in the same house, no issues ‘til recently. USPS says they traced last one to the incorrect address the carrier left it at, but so far the deliveree hasn’t coughed it up. Not sure what a $15 item is worth in terms of time/effort to get back. *shrug*

Our post office is good, too. It might be worth popping in and speaking to a supervisor if this is a recurring issue.

Never had a problem with my local post office, though I've noticed that the mail truck has been running a bit slow lately.

Love the picture quality and especially the rich colors from a 1702.

Yup.

I've got one and wired a s-video jack on the back panel, tied into the luma & chroma! Now I can plug any s-video into it!