galax

And from my perspective:

That was a very good idea. I tried to quit several times but it kept sucking me back in. I think that's key- it was totally unrealistic. Without finding someone skilled to work for nothing (a.k.a. 'equity') it had no chance of success. For the money Mike wanted to pay the only way to do it would be to base it on off-the-shelf or at least already designed hardware and software: MiST, FPGA Arcade, BeagleBone, Raspberry Pi, etc.

Somewhat ironically the only one of his legitimate clients I could find is actually a lawyer: http://www.pjdlaw.com http://www.coachapproachlawyers.com - I wonder what this guy would think of his website being run by a crook? http://www.whois.com/whois/pjdlaw.com Tech Name: Sean Robinson Tech Organization: Sean Robinson Tech Street: 484-B Washington Street #316 Tech City: Monterey Tech State/Province: California Tech Postal Code: 93940 Tech Country: US Tech Phone: 1-831-8698836 Tech Email: [email protected] Washington Street, Monterey is of course a UPS Store where Sean has a box

If Sean deleted those images within minutes, then we know that he's doing that old trick of anonymously following and acting on posts in this thread. Sean, why not come out of hiding and give your side of the story? If not we just have to assume you are the criminal fraudster that you are accused of being. Sean does indeed claim to do website design and SEO work, although I wouldn't have confidence employing someone whose site was already out of date 20 years ago: http://www.seanhq.com He wanted to cash the cheque not to avoid the $7.50, but to avoid any paper trail leading to him. I'm almost surprised he didn't ask to be paid in a brown envelope of unmarked non-consecutive bills.

The latest of the 3 cheques was dated February 29th. The DVR images were posted to Facebook at about 7:40pm EST on Friday 26th February: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/247145-coleco-chameleon-hardware-speculations/?p=3451455 The DVR card in the prototype was identified on Monday 29th February at 10:49pm EST: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/247145-coleco-chameleon-hardware-speculations/page-151 This doesn't completely match the timing in Mike's version of events, as the cheque is dated after the images were posted and on the same day (not after the day) that they were identified:

By the time I looked the images had gone but the text was still there: I kind of liked that fighting talk, a boaa fight with the villain who was behind it all was just what the next level of this epic needed.

Hopefully it should at least work for high resolution, even if it can't handle low and medium. Still not a bad deal at $7

"Brothers, brothers, we should be struggling together!" "We Are!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHHitXxH-us&t=45s

A couple of suggestions for anyone who is sick of seeing this thread, instead of complaining about it:

Just don't store them anyway near that Pet Sematary in the woods, nothing good could come of that.

Thanks for the reply- that independently confirms that Sean was involved in the project, so Mike didn't just find his name on Google as some people suspected, but it's strange that Mike has such a different recollection about how Sean got involved: your account is basically the opposite of his. From our perspective on the outside, given how often features were added/changed it didn't look like there was ever a specification nailed down, other than the obvious carts and jag case.

Well he does give an explanation about how he met the mysterious Mr. Sean 'Lee' Robinson: As Clay is reading the thread at the moment maybe he could throw some light on Sean's involvement?

How cool would it be to live in Homer, Nebraska? https://www.google.com/maps/place/Homer,+NE+68030/

So Mike is back to breathe new life into the zombie corpse of this thread. I'm glad he had the guts to come back into the vipers nest of us skeptical haters, and there may be some truth to his story, but I'm not ready to believe every word of it yet. We have all wondered this at length, but not having a good answer is a different thing from thinking that it didn't happen. You did all of these things on the basis of at best the promises of a very shady character with no known address, and who had never demonstrated anything to you, even if your story is completely true. I think that you started off with good intentions, and at some point things went South and you thought you could lie and bluff your way through to getting funding (a.k.a. our money), at which point you could magically just pay some worker to make this a reality while you were crowned king of the world and walked away with the profits. Your attitude towards people who have the actual ability and dedication to build a project like this has shown through. You seem to see the actual hardware and software as a minor undertaking that can be performed by any chump you can find for a measly few thousand bucks. There are people out there who can build incredible hardware and software products, but they don't do it to get rich themselves, and they don't do it to make you rich, they do it because they enjoy it. At least Coleco are honest about the fact that they want to team up with these people who can bring them a finished product. The video that you helped to make in John Carlsen's kitchen was an attempt to deceive. You also lied about how you found out about the video, pretending that you weren't aware of it until Steve woke you up the morning after it had been posted. No, because Kickstarter wouldn't let you, so you went to Indiegogo instead, and spun it that Indiegogo 'courted' you. You did try to crowdfund a fake prototype once, and only stopped saying that you would do it a second time after we had proved that the second prototype was a fake. More spin; we've seen people deserting the magazine, and all reports are that the latest issue is the worst so far. Story for Mike is of course things have never been better. Breaking the silence, apologising, and admitting (some of) your mistakes is a good first step, but you've got to stop with the lies and the spin. It would be a whole lot easier to see you as the victim in some of this if you would come clean about the lies that you have been caught in.

You have a C070789-001 Rev B motherboard. Atari-wiki shows this motherboard for both the 1040STF and 520STFM; the same board could be used for different models by leaving out half of the RAM and adding a modulator to make your 1040STF into a 520STFM: http://www.atari-wiki.com/index.php/Atari_ST_motherboard_revisions You'll be able to determine the TOS version as soon as you get a display hooked up; just look at the years listed in the desktop's about box. My guess would be 1.02 but you never know, could have been upgraded: http://www.avtandil.narod.ru/tose.html Metallic blue paint sounds awful to me but it's your machine. Give it a good clean and see how it looks.

Make sure to check that wiki page I linked to, not the monitor's specifications, which are sometimes incorrect (e.g. the NEC 1970 specs say 31kHz but it does 15 just fine)

You may be able to get away with supplying just the 5v, the +/- 12v seems to only be needed for the RS-232 port: http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=28472

Today's special edition of Retro Gaming Roundup's had interview with a very special guest: http://www.retrogamingroundup.com/shownotes/2016/roundup101_2016.04.php

It seems like a spur of the moment "scam of opportunity", not very well planned. Hopefully he'll see the error of his ways and just return the money.

Having looked up up Chase Fleming's wife (mentioned in the announcement above), it seems that they are not together and she now has nothing to do with him, best not to drag her name into the BS that he has created. There is a real person with the name that he used for his 'girlfriend' (who is engaged to someone else) and a real woman (who looks about 60) with name he used on that Paypal. Both are friends with his parents. I doubt that they are involved either, nice of him to drag their names into this.

It's an ST to VGA colour/mono switchable cable; I could make them for less too but soldering cables gets pretty boring after the first couple. I also add a composite out to mine (for STs with modulators) just because I may as well while I'm in there. Best seems to have updated their list based on the information that we have collected at http://www.atari-wiki.com/index.php/Flat_Panel_Displays- you might want to take a look at the more detailed information there before choosing a monitor. No the video conversion box is required if you don't have a multisync monitor, you can use the conversion box (or a different model, there are a few by Extron, Micomsoft, Gonbes, etc.) with any modern monitor. People are practically giving away CRT monitors if you can find them locally, ignore eBay's pricing. The ~10 year old 4:3 and 5:4 Multisync LCD monitors that can still natively display the ST's low/medium res are very out of fashion now, and can be picked up for next to nothing.

You may want to make sure the TOS version is at least 1.4 if you plan to use a hard drive or Ultrasatan, other than that the only thing that an STE will offer you is the easier memory upgrades.

According to a discussion about it on Reddit, Sega was joking about releasing a new console next year, RetroVGS humour is the new universal language: https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/comments/4csupj

Chase Fleming matches Kefka15's profile information: http://atariage.com/forums/user/31127-kefka15/ Not smart to leave all that there when scamming people, a 24-year old Jazz Trombonist from Lexington Kentucky if that page is correct.

Doesn't a person's real name usually appear on the receipt email that PayPal sends you?