Turbo-Torch

I have both. Any sealed games I own for systems from Channel F to ColecoVision will be displayed and never opened as long as I own them. 98% of my collection is not sealed. Any games I own with boxes are displayed in their boxes. I wish I had the boxes for all my vintage consoles as I love seeing those displayed in others collections. I did save boxes from consoles I bought new in the 90s such as VB, X'eye and Jaguar but those are stored as I don't care much about anything from NES on up. My arcade games are kept as original as possible right down to their power supplies and taking quarters. Only exception is Clay's multi-pac kit but only because it's a simple add-on that uses all the original hardware and can be removed in 5 minutes. Family, friends, co-workers and pretty much anyone who has seen my collection seems to love it and I've helped a few start their own. Never once have I been called a hoarder or had to explain why I have them. Honestly, a comment like that would probably end in someone getting hurt. I also know quite a few millionaires (not in a lying sort of way either) and most have some sort of collection hobby. One who is well into the 9 figure net worth range has a 2500+ sq ft. hunting trophy room which is like a museum of taxidermy. Not my thing, but it's impressive to visit. My favorite is another who has several classic arcade games, pins and a pool table in one area. Go to the next room and it's a huge indoor in-ground pool made to look like a giant cave. Next room is hundreds of babyish model cars in custom recessed wall shelving. Go up a few stairs and a door opens to his garage filled with Porsches, Ferraries and AMGs worth nearly $3 million dollars. Hell, the owner of the company I work at has a model train collection he's been working on for 60 years. The lower level of his house is pretty much a giant train display. Yet, he's worth 10s of millions of dollars, has run a successful company for over 40 years and has 4 successful kids. If I accused him of having a mental issue for displaying babyish trains and never even putting most of them on a track, I'm sure my 23 year career would be done. Train collections, audiophile fanatics, gun collections, Beatles gurus...seen it all and even though it's stuff I'll never get into, I love talking to the owners and learning. I actually DO give a rat's ass about their collections. I would never stoop so low as to asking them to explain themselves or consider them mentally unstable. What some people need to understand is that just because they live in a shoe box size house where anything more than a toaster, hotplate and hard drive looks like a hoarder's mess, many others don't live that way and they have room to enjoy life.

Games like Ms. Pac-Man, Berzerk, Defender, Frogger, Donkey Kong, Moon Patrol, Centipede, Joust...basically any hot arcade title had to have sold well into the millions. And what about the early years when there were plenty of consoles but only a few dozen games to choose from? Who didn't have titles like Circus Atari, Outlaw, Surround, Warlords, Breakout, Night Driver or common sports titles like Home Run, Basketball, Football and Bowling? These were titles that sold very early on and then continued selling well into the early 80s because they were fun and had a dirt cheap price of $10 to $15 per game by then. There were many unique original games like Haunted House, Star Raiders and Yar's Revenge which are dirt common...in the mid 90s, you couldn't buy a bag of 2600 games at a thrift store without having several of those titles mixed in. I'm also sure TV show and movie tie-ins such as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ghostbusters, Tron, Starwars, etc. sold quite well. For Activision, I see Freeway and Laser Blast are on the list. Those two made it and yet Tennis, Boxing, Barnstorming, Dragster and Kaboom didn't make it? A rarity like the SuperCharger, no way. I bought mine at Camelot Music in the mall which was the only place in my area that sold it. Eventually Toys R Us picked it up too and then right after the crash hit. I'd never seen it sold anywhere else. When I was a kid and one of us received a great game, we all wanted our own copy and saved up for it. It was also a great way of knowing which games we didn't want. Not buying a certain title because a friend already had it didn't exist in our circle.

Amazing setup, especially the awesome arcade cabinets! You should do a video walk through. btw, was that you who scored a million points on Nibbler?

For NTSC, I find 28,30 or 26,20 easy on the eyes. 26,20 is a bit dark but with very little flicker. This is on my 4 switch with a 20" CRT TV.

Should be simple enough to diagnose with a multi-meter. Do you have a large transformer that sits under the bottom drive? That would be the first place I'd checking for primary and secondary voltage. I can't recall if the oem has that transformer or not.

You lost me on the "emulate" thing. Are you using a real supercharger with a real 2600? If so, what are you playing the wav file from? CD or directly from the PC? If you're plugging the supercharger directly into the audio output of your PC, you're probably getting enough background noise to screw things up. Original cassettes have a side B with a lower baud rate for poor quality tape players. It's probably been 20 years since created WAV files, but I think even back then there was an option to lower the baud rate. That may be worth a try. Also, as mentioned above, many games will not run without modifying the supercharger.

The caps you linked to are fine. That's the exact part # I used and my original made it 34 years before letting out the smoke.

The tech ref manual doesn't go into too much detail on the monitor. In the illustrated parts section, it looks like the pair is listed as item 120 Knob, Thumbwheel. Manufacturer part # 8719112 Radio Shack part # AK4298. I don't see any resistance ratings.

It sounds like your floppy drive power supply is completely dead as it also powers the controller board. Your system is acting like a standard cassette based system. With a working controller, you'd need to hold down BREAK while turning on the power to get the Cass prompt and go into BASIC. Fix the power supply and you'll probably be 100% functional. Controllers and power supplies can vary as there were a number of aftermarket kits. I installed an aftermarket J&M drive kit in mine back in the mid 80s as it was less than ½ the price of Radio Shack's. Also, if you need to replace a drive, install a double sided for twice the storage.

If the Cassette prompt is showing up, there is an issue with the disk controller board. Most likely the flex cable is corroded or has open traces. They were junk back in the day and I was always disassembling the computer to reseat the RS232 and disk controller cables. Eventually the fingers inside the connector on the motherboard started to break off, so last year I hard soldered a ribbon cable from the motherboard to the disk controller. I doubt I'll ever see an issue with that again. There is also a smaller jumper flex cable on the motherboard that I had to do the same to. Buy a can of Deoxit and use it on the cable connections, screen control pots and any socketed ICs that you can remove. Get those power supply X capacitors replaced ASAP. They will go out with a bang and you don't need to risk of further component damage or a fire.

It doesn't require a special Tandy boot disk. Get a copy of any version of msdos that you want and put it in drive A.

It's not like a car hobby where you can head to a different cruise night each day of the week or a few car shows/swap meets each month. I know of only a handful of people in my area who have small game rooms, and like me, it's more of a fun personal hobby that can entertain family and friends of all ages. Head over to Craigslist and start shopping. Once you get a game or two, there are an endless amount of dedicated sites, parts suppliers and vendors of new repro items to keep any games you buy running strong. There also used to be auctions like USAA which would travel all over the country and they were a ton of fun. Plenty of cool people would attend them and you could get some incredible deals. Unfortunately, those type of auction companies seemed to have disappeared...probably too much competition from Craigslist and eBay. Hit some of the dedicated arcade sites. You won't find much of anything on AA except a few who think a hard drive with some stickers on it is an arcade collection.

I guess those in the 70s and 80s had much better reflexes and timing as it didn't seem to matter back then....or you just suck at video games that require those skills. Nice of you to speak for everybody. I'm sure it was nothing but a fluke as to why certain games like Space Invaders, Pacman, Donkey Kong, Galaga etc. were insanely popular and causing coin shortages. It was just the environment and had nothing to do with the game play...right? But wait...I thought it was a great 80s social environment that made the games great? Would you mind citing some examples? Most videos I see are of fit and intelligent guys (can actually move and maintain the games) who enjoy a hobby and like to have a killer man-cave to entertain family and friends. They have jobs, commitments and other things going on in their lives and don't feel the need to obsess over one hobby by creating local "club meetings", attending events or making 10s of thousands of posts on internet forums.

I love this game! Easily within the top 10 best 2600 arcade ports. My only complaint is that my thumb is aching from playing it so much this evening.

Mod to play all 2K and 4K games? You convert a 2600 ROM file to a WAV file and load it like a normal SuperCharger game. It looks like someone started to mod it and never finished or botched it up bad and gave up. I remember adding a 7432 chip which isn't in your pics.

When my RAM failed, I just ordered a few off ebay for next to nothing. I piggybacked one RAM at a time until it passed the memory test and then removed the bad RAMs and soldered in the new. I think I had two that failed but the block test screen made it easy to see when I pinpointed the failed one. My 130xe was new in the box when I bought it and I was surprised to see several different brand RAMs installed which appeared to be hand soldered compared to the rest. I read that Atari used the crappiest of the crap memory back then and many had to be replaced right off the assembly line.

Obviously new to ebay and forgot to put local pickup only. Nothing odd about a low starting bid and no reserve. Might bite him in the ass though.

Wish I had bought a warehouse full when they were selling for $25 brand new at just about any local toy store. Same goes for the mountains of Virtual Boy systems for $20 bucks, TG16 for $20 and Dreamcasts for $50. Unfortunately I only bought one of each. Oh yea, 7800 with 5 game bundle for $20 at Big Lots...about what that abortion/downfall of Atari system was worth from day one. I miss the days of blow out prices on great systems and I think DC was the last. Maybe we'll see a $25 Wii U soon!

Check the DIN plug in back. It's possible a wire broke off when assembling the cabinet. Also look inside the sockets and make sure each metal prong is in place. I had one push in and pop out from the rear of the plug. You also may just need to pull the cassette cable plug out slightly from the speaker jack as you have a monaural plug going into a stereo jack.

Received my parts today and there was no mistaking it was from Best Electronics as the box is covered in "pilfer proof tape" with ATARI and the Fuji all over it. Screen and speaker were $38.45 including shipping...ordered Tuesday evening and today is Friday, so very quick. LCD is plug 'n play with no soldering but it is a bit involved. Takes about 30 minutes if you've had one apart before. Be sure to take off the protective film. I'm glad Brad mentioned it as I was ordering or else I would have never noticed. There is also another layer on the REAR of the screen! Very satisfied with the video and sound now. As time went by I kept thinking I was just getting spoiled by modern displays on tablets and phones but the Lynx screen was just crapping out more and more until it became unbearable this year. No more color bleed even in games like Ms. Pacman. One dead pixel which is barely noticeable...think my original had two or three from day one. Speaker clicked into place and came with the proper connector.

Just ordered a new LCD screen and speaker today from Best and can't wait to try them out. Last time I played my Lynx II everything was fine; didn't play it for a year or so and everything went to hell in a hand basket. LCD colors bleeding badly and crackly low volume sound. Seriously, how does a speaker just go bad? It's not like it has a foam surround that rotted out. First I recapped it and that didn't make any improvement in video or sound. Installed a modern speaker that's much smaller than the original but at least it sounds much better than the failed one. Thought about going with the upgraded modern LCD kit but decided I'd rather keep it original. I remember buying the Lynx II brand new as a bundle with a ton of new games and accessories for less than $100.00. Also, the game boxes all had some damage due to a tornado taking out a warehouse which I believe was owned by Telegames. Just gives them more history and cool factor.

Thanks for the info. I'll dig deeper into the site and if I can't find it, I'll give him a call Tuesday. Edit Found it with the part # you listed. Been looking for one for about 6 months and can't believe I missed it. That is one old school site. Thanks again!

Do you have a link or something? I have checked their site several times since last year and can't find anything more than a replacement speaker.

I owned a 2000. I bought it from the local Radio Shack in the mall for $100.00...it was either a display or something they actually used in the store. It had every option that RS offered including the high res graphics/color boards, 768K and the internal HD so that both floppies could remain. Adding everything up from the catalog prices, it was a $9,000+ system and that's not including all the software it came with. Technically, it was a powerhouse beast that blew away all other PCs at the time. I guess if you had a business and needed processing power and incredibly fast graphics, you couldn't ask for anything better. As a home PC, I was disappointed that I spent $100 on it. It was so damn close to being IBM compatible it was frustrating. I already owned a 1000 EX and loved that computer...mowed a lot of lawns to save up the $600.00. I wish I never sold it to buy a 1000 SL. I still scan CL every so often in hopes of finding another EX just for the heck of it. The SL was a good computer and was very easy to upgrade with standard XT stuff. First thing I did was upgrade the memory to 640K and then bought a 32mb RLL hard card. That was my last Tandy PC. After that I started buying parts out of Computer Shopper and attending Computer Shows (usually held at county fair grounds) to build my own PCs. I gave the 2000 to my best friend so that we could play Trade-Wars on all the local BBSs. He had a IIe but I don't think it even had a serial card to attach a modem to. I know for a fact he still has the IIe and I bet the 2000 may still be stashed away at his parents' house. Not sure if I'd even want that one back.

Very cool. I'd love to see one these in person one day.