HoshiChiri

Putting aside all concerns of emulation vs. real hardware, video preferences, etc. the two things I value most in a setup are organization & accessibilty. If getting to a system involves going to a closest, moving boxes to get to a specific box, getting the system out of the box, finding the other box with the cables, finding yet another box for controllers, moving stuff to get behind the TV to hook up- yeah I already don't want to play anymore. Alternatively, if an emulation setup involves input commands that feel like an arcane ritual to decipher what s%!2mb&es.exe is, I'm not gonna bother. I know depending on a person's specific situation some concessions must be made, but the more idiot-proof a setup is the better. All my consoles post-1983, save the TurboDuo, are hooked up & plugged in at all times. The buttons on 2 of my 3 switchboxes are labeled, the one that isn't is an autoswitching HDMI box. So using my setup is "turn on tv. Select the name of the switchbox from the source list. Hit the right button (if applicable). Turn on system". I'd like to find a better solution for the older machines, since they all have to be setup every time you want to use them- but I don't have the space. At the very least, they're out on a bookshelf for easy access, and I have switches/extension cables to move the connections forward so you don't have to get behind the TV.

I got my Amazon Basics cable in the mail the other day, as well as locating what I now recognize as my original cable (I used to keep cables in this blue boho box... turns out there was one still in it!). Both cables work just fine, so there is apparently a subset of USB mini cables that don't work. Now, I just have to figure out where the heck these other cables came from! I've only owned 3 things with USB mini- my Wii U pro controller (I have that cable), a guitar hero battery charger (keep that cable connected), and the PS3 controllers. Where'd the rest come from? Ah well, I'll remember someday.

Exactly. In fact, going over my system failures for my entire lifetime, we have: 1 NES, given to me painted black with cheap acrylic and with a replacement AC running too high for the system... in other words, basically fried before I got it. 1 Genesis/Sega CD combo that was all but dead when I bought it... we're talking snowy video & manually spinning the disc to get the motor to catch. 1 Atari 2600 Vader that was bought as-is & turned out to be dead 1 PS2 with laser death, repaired for free by Sony 1 SNES that stopped giving a picture- but fixed with a disassembly & some cleaning 1 Intellivision with unusably unstable picture- but fixed by disassembly & just wiggling wires 1 Channel F that works save for a broken button- repair pending finding someone to work on it 1 Atari 7800 that works but needs a color adjustment- repair pending finding someone to work on it So in 20-ish years of collecting, we have 3 dead, 3 fixed, and 2 pending. And all 3 of the actually dead systems were very early in my collecting days, and all expected to not work. The last time I bought I system that broke & stayed broken, Gamestop still sold cartridges. There's nothing wrong with a little preparedness, but don't sweat it too much- you're probably doing fine with basic maintenance and not keeping your stuff in a garage/attic/basement.

Considering that so far, no one in this thread has expressed an extreme 'physical sucks, join the Digital Master Race' opinion- yeah, it would have helped. Sarcasm reads very poorly in text form, y'know. Personally, I'm just loving the irony that the physical collector is advocating for digital while the digital collector does the same for physical. It's a wonderfully odd way to talk about the whole thing! What could be interesting to watch, is what the physical collectors move to have as we reach a more & more digital era- after all, we know that there are people who measure their collection volume against another, but that's pretty hard to do on a digital front when meeting or exceeding someone else's gigs is only a matter of your download speed. Will people cling to useless discs & long dead carts as physical icons of their data? Will custom-made tat become a trend ("I put each game on an individual custom memory stick, stored in a homemade case")? Will some other object take over the space of the actual game in the collector's mind? Could we see a future where Funko Pops come to represent game ownership? I mean, maybe Gamestop is just ahead of its time!

But that's the thing, it's not the battery- if I use the Nintendo cable, it charges just fine & holds that charge. I just can't use any of my other cables. I've managed to find a couple hits on Google saying you can't use any cable, it has to be a data cable- ever hear anything about that? I really thought I had my original cable, but maybe I don't- it was pretty short.

I don't know about you, but I can't afford to fly to France, so I'm pretty darn glad for the photos & jpegs- otherwise I wouldn't know what the Mona Lisa looked like. I'm also glad for the museum that keeps the original safe for those who can go see it. I'm very firmly in the Physical Media camp, to the point that up to this year I largely avoided any digital only games (I still don't have a Steam account). On the flip side, I can't fault anyone for preferring the space-saving, low maintenance digital option. It's not an anti-social thing either- instead of going to someone's house to discuss what they have on their bookshelf, you can chat online or look over a digital collection on a phone at school/work/etc, and make plans for a multiplayer session later. You & me might not care too much about a Steam screenshot- but other people might. And it's perfectly fine for them to- as long as everyone's having fun with their games, why worry about how they play them?

So, I was testing my new thrift store ps3 slim, but ran into issues when I went to sync a controller. The system didn't react to it, even plugged in directly. So, just to see, I plugged the controller into my fat ps3- and same thing. At first, I wasn't concerned- cable went bad, it happens, right? Thing is- of 4 USB mini cables I own, only the Nintendo branded one for the Wii U pro controller is charging my PS3 controllers! I find it unlikely that 75% of my cables- which have just been in storage- all crapped out. Any reason why my controllers wouldn't be charging? (I have tried pressing the reset button on the controller- it did nothing.)

The thing is- pretty much all of this applied 20-30 years ago. Blockbuster and other rental chains made it clear you didn't need to own media, you could just borrow it awhile cheap. The cartridge clone systems we have today didn't exist & weren't wanted. Tape-based media was being destroyed by cheap players and poor storage (left your casettes in the car on a hot day? Too bad!) The average hobbist couldn't get replacement parts without ripping them from other equipment- it's not like radio shack sold silicone button pads, for example. When the CD-based market comes into its own, I fully expect people to find ways to make their own devices to fill the gaps left by old, failing equipment. The Seedi console may have failed, but another one will come along that won't. Mods to get light guns working on modern displays are already coming into existence. I'm sure there's some guy in china who'll start churning out aftermarket parts when the demand warrants a profit. (You're right on that front ) What I love is, everyone is handling their take on future preservation, so there's a wonderful amount of redundancy going on. One guy repairs old machines to run stock, another makes computer programs to run ripped software. Other folks get the old machines to run the modern ROM rips, sometimes retaining original functionality, sometimes not. Others still make brand-new machines and brand-new games- your old NES and copy of Mario 3 may rot away, but your new analogue nt & modern repro cart still work fine! It doesn't matter what happens down the line- someone's going to have a way to let us play the games. (And those who care will find a way to measure their worth against others by some volume of possessions.)

As far as the likes of Stadia & the idea of streaming only games goes- I'm not worried about that yet for one simple reason... the American internet infrastructure SUCKS. If half the country can't get a good enough signal to stream their games, then it's not going to be successful. At least, not successful enough to take over the market. The cable companies who control the internet connections have no reason to help the likes of Google by improving service, becuase then people will just stream TV and not subscribe to cable anymore. We've got a few years of businessmen butting heads before game streaming can really settle in. This is a very important sentiment! Just becuase the specific folks in collecting today value a physical collection doesn't mean everyone does. I guarantee there's plenty of parents, spouses, siblings and friends who don't see an amazing collection of gaming goodness... they see a pile of junk that cost way too much money. Someone with tubs of rare, vintage shoes would look like a hoarder to me if not for my understanding of their passion (the feeling, not the subject of.) Collectors of the future may very well indeed enthusiastically show off their digital curations, with custom HDD holders and digital frames cycling through boxart or such, and other collectors will get it becuase they recognize the love of games- even if the form of expression's changed. It's about what matters to YOU, not someone else. This makes me laugh becuase my Atari games literally used to be in a shoebox. My Colecovision games still are! Exactly- no system was ever meant to be hacked. It happens anyway- either becuase people want to access these older, unsupported games, or just for the thrill of seeing if they can. Even if Sony somehow tried to forcibly remove data from people's machines, they can't. I just bought a used PS3 from a thrift store cheap. Here's what I did with it: Step 1: Hook up machine & make sure it turns on. Step 2: Put in a game and make sure it loads discs. Step 3: Check the hard drive's content for cool stuff. Step 4: Upon finding personal data but no cool stuff, reformat system out of politeness to former owner. Step 5: Connect to wifi to make sure it works. I guarantee you, if there'd been something amazing on that system ("This guy downloaded P.T.!") step 5 would NEVER have happened- and Sony couldn't do anything about it. That's the collecting of the future- raiding used systems for data saved to hard drives back when it was available from the source, and putting it back out there for everyone to find. I could imagine people keeping two of each system- one to use stock & connected to the net, and one strictly offline to prevent any forced data removal. Depending on the hacks available, maybe 3 or 4 to allow access to different pirate servers for online play. Collecting won't go away, the valuable part will just change.

This- collecting will shift from actual games to hard drives. Multiple systems will be common, at least until there's a solid database of the ripped information. Just like how today is full of retro fanatics who prefer using flash carts & ROMs,future collectors will simply grab patches from other fans.

Several months ago, my local thrift had a PS3 for $25, 30 (I don't remember exactly). I passed- it's a bit much for me for a likely broken system (it was in rough shape, and no cables/controller.) Yesterday, I found this one: Seven bucks for a cosmetically sound (if dirty) machine is more my kind of gamble! No accessories still, but digging through the bins I found a $4 hdmi cable, which is better than I can do on Amazon for a good cable. Surprisingly, it seems to be perfectly functional- I really thought it would have been hacked or something, but no- the HDMI port is loose, but works. Google suggests that could be an easy (if fiddly) thing to fix. It's got a 320gb hard drive, and since it still had old user data on it, I've currently got it going through a full system restore to get back to factory settings before I try connecting it to the wifi. Got a power cable for a buck from an Ebay guy I trust, and took a gamble on a $10 untested dualshock- if all works out, I'll have a full setup for $25. Plus the copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 left in the disc drive.

One of the first games I picked up for my switch was Super Bomberman R. I went up to the first happy lil' monster, dropped a bomb- and watched in horror as his eyes shot wide & rolled back while he let out a massive, final scream. Oh god- I'm a monster! He wasn't hurting anyone, he was just a happy trash-bag monster living his life. He didn't care what I was doing! This was supposed to be a happy game! Why, developers?! Why go through such lengths to make it clear I'm painfully, violently murdering innocents? This is why I prefer Katamari Damacy- at least I know all the people I'm ripping from their homes and sending into the cold depths of space are pretty much fine with it.

I'm sure it's outside of my price range, but I am interested in the Chess cart.

Your converter choice really matters- I originally had one similar to what you've got pictured ('musou' brand) & I thought it was fine... then it quit working so I replaced it with an enKo converter- it's so much better it's not funny. Better color, better clarity, better activation speed (the old one took so long to take I never saw the N64 logo while I was using it.) I mean, it's still composite- it's not gonna be great. But, as long as you can get the picture to 4:3 like Outdoormongoose said, it's perfectly serviceable.

I was afraid of that- the only person I know who solders is my fiancé, and he flat-out does not have the time to try and figure out a 40+ year old console, let alone sneaking the gear to do it out of work. I'm probably just going to have to let it be for awhile.

I went ahead and tried out my NES cleaner- I have a top loader, so a stuck cart cleaner is easier for me to get out. It didn't get stuck, but it was definitely a tight fit & fairly hard to pull out on the first pass. Looking at it before & after, I can see where the connector actually re-shaped the cleaner... it seems they put the insert into a sort of 'loop' that got smushed flat in my machine. This actually makes a lot of sense- seeing as NESes are notorious for bent pin issues, the design allows the cleaner to conform to the specific connector in the system it's cleaning for maximum contact. It also means individuals who care enough about their machines to repair/replace their connectors- the kind of people who'd want a system cleaner- could have issues with their connectors being so snug they catch the intentionally-overwide cleaner. On the other hand- thing works! One pull produced a series of perfect dark grey pin markings. I'm honestly kind of embarrassed that my system was that dirty- but it's always worked fine & I keep them fairly clean, so I had no idea!

That would be lovely, I'm deathly afraid of accidentally killing the unit by opening the wrong thing or breaking something trying to get the button off. I'm not sure what broke- the button does stay up/bounce back when pressed, but there's no resistance anymore & nothing happens. It was working last year, so I'm assuming something inside that actually made the connection has gone bad/come loose. Since nothing else is wrong, I doubt it's a circuitry issue.

Just a quick bump, hoping someone has answer- I've tried looking up videos/articles online, but anyone's who opening the system up doesn't show the actual teardown, so I have no idea how to remove/repair the buttons!

Mine's never had a hum problem- and I know my setup can have it, I had to use an adapter on my PS3 becuase the hum was so bad.

I'm guessing company change- like Zircon putting their labels over inherited Fairchild stock so they're advertising the right company.

What, no 3D Sonic games?

So I learned the other day that the '2' button on my model 1 Channel F has ceased to function. Everything else is fine, just the one button's gone. How easy is it to fix such a thing? I'm very much a system repair novice- and I can't solder- but I'm hoping since it's a mechincal issue it's an easier fix. Anybody have any experience on this issue?

1UP's stuff is great- the cards are much faster/easier than q-tips. I haven't yet tried out the system cleaners (I bought the lot of 'em, but haven't used any yet), but I doubt they'll work poorly. These guys do seem to know what they're doing.