Keatah

For many it would seem. We're seeing more and more 1st time posters immediately asking the community what their stuff is worth. Then never hear from them again.

A problem I see is that there are so many programming and creation environments. Sure one size does not fit all here. With this many, what's the right one to choose. Heh. BITD I had like 4 or 5 languages open to me right off the bat. BASIC, Pascal, Fortran, Assembly/Machine. I went with BASIC. And my first infantile BASIC programs consisted of a lot of GOTO and PRINT statements. T'was all I could understand. All very linear and straight-through at first. But after a year I was re-writing BBS software and modding DOS. Making clock "drivers" and patches. Sorting routines. Writing editors for log files. Even visualizing mathematical formulae. Was BASIC a bad choice? Absolutely not. If it wasn't for BASIC I wouldn't have learned to program anything!

The issue I had was having to learn like 10 different kinds of DOS like TRS-DOS, AtariDOS 2.5, MS-DOS, C-64 & CBM DOS, and more..for their respective machines. Not forgetting the various replacement versions and hacker-improved versions. Fastloaders.. and all.. Now extend that to BASIC and even other languages. A lot of clutter in the head. A lot of minutiae. Definitely a lot of cross-confusion ensued. But make NO mistake. I did thoroughly enjoy the "mystery" of "how'd they do that?!?" when I got a new DOS for the Apple II. A new command, like TLIST, to display a text file right to the screen was near-magic. And that was so because I learned DOS at an early age way before I understood what an upgrade was. So I was of the mindset that DOS 3.3 was it and that was that. It was fixed in place, unchanging, unwavering. So imagine my even greater surprise when the same thing was done to ROM commands like from BASIC. Today I understand they're redirects/interceptions via the "&" command. But to a kid? WHOAAA!! Anyhow. You can begin to see how too many and too similar protocols/methods/languages contribute to the overload which saps fun and tempers enjoyment of the hobby. Doing this on one or two machines can be a fun intimate and exciting activity, but instantly becomes a chore when you need to make a chart to remember the same command across 10 platforms. 10 different ways of formatting and prepping a disk? Ughh..

You can add 10% to the average value of what you see. It's important to keep the prices high because when something gets too cheap it projects the wrong image. And videogames have a bad enough rap as it is. From causing crime to encouraging manchild behavior.

I still remain impressed by how valuable the fundamental concepts presented in the early books & manuals are to this very day. While small of scale and simple, back then, the underlying reasoning gives great results today. From backups, to clean programming, to best-practices and hardware maintenance.

It is worth exactly and precisely what someone will pay for it. Never more, never less.

On the importance of books, manuals, and documentation. Just how important is that "stuff" to you and the enjoyment of your personal collection or system(s)? Several years ago I took note of how valuable the original owner's manuals and 3rd party books are to owning, operating, and reminiscing-about a classic computer is. The manuals often go into detail about the finer points of firmware operation, like editing functions or the options on a command or its range. They also help you determine if a system is working correctly or not. They are the repository and memory aids for information you may have forgotten over the years. In thinking about the Apple II I found/find great comfort in the "book's voice" which talks to me the same way as it did when I was in grade school. The author's tutoring voice. I love the Apple II manuals published by Apple. Feels like there's an instructor right beside you. Information contained in them is suitable for a beginner and at the same time is a good reference for developers in some cases. They have register listings, monitor listings, example code, and well phrased lectures. When I got my Apple II+ it came with something like 800 pages of information spread across 4 or 5 manuals. It was the Family System, and it had a comprehensive "getting-started" guide that took you step-by-step for wiring everything up. These manuals not only had rote procedures, they also described how the product worked in layman's terms. And to a kid that was fantastic. It set the framework, the groundwork, for further self-paced learning. Today you struggle with online documentation, getting consistent and reliable access to it. With no guarantees it'll be there in the future. Let alone a 30 year future! Not to mention it's overly simplistic and tells you how to push a button by way of cryptic hieroglyphs. In fact not too long ago, Adobe killed the on-screen help files of Acrobat X through their Adobe Help Center. One day I went to reference it, look something up, you know, and POOF!! It said the product was no longer supported. And the documentation was gone! So immediately I restored from a backup and captured the help files and archived them away. And turned off the update process so they remain in-place for the future.

Don't rush it. Something will come to mind.

To answer the OP's question. Not quite. I'm sure I'll always like playing around with the systems I had years ago. There's more to it however. Something like that. It's always best to be involved with a coupla 2 or 3 systems at most. It is also important not collect tons of junk and filler material for any of your chosen systems. It just gets in the way, distracts you, bogs you down, takes away from the memories of the fun you had with the systems when you were a kid. I also don't know where the notion, the need, the drive, to have to have, many/multiple systems comes from in the first place. Some things I can think of is preservation and peer-competition. Maybe even bragging rights & peer acceptance. A need to feel important and such. But I think there's more to it still. I spent a lot of time this year and last fixing up, cleaning, polishing, and buttoning up all the odds and ends for my Gateway 486 DX2-50. Would I do another one? No. Did I have fun doing it? Absolutely thrilling! Great nostalgia digging through things and reliving old times. I am looking forward to giving my P3 the same TLC treatment sometime real soon.

It is important not to over-engineer emulators. Besides, would a real Atari 8-bit rig do that?

The good Lord above knows I dislike cheaply made low quality stuff. Especially when it's passed off as being the good stuff. But! In the case of the C64 (no pun intended) the low-cost basic materials and construction helped it become the #1 home computer of its time.

Well right now it's a nothing.

Very nicely done!

Large physical collections are falling out of favor as time goes on. Most everyone is going with aesthetically pleasing setups and downsizing. Whether the downsizing is enabled by Software Emulation only, original hardware + multicarts, FPGA recreation, or some combination of all three - it's simply becoming more and popular. It allows one to access the games and software so much more efficiently and pleasantly than a wall-of-cartridges and 50 different systems all contending for the same display.

I'm in the process of purging my excess Apple II stuff. And I don't want to go ebay. The wife wants me to get some money. So perhaps I'll do a low-cost giveaway. Postage + 10 or 20 bucks for good worthy items.

For B/W simulation I just turned down the Saturation Slider to zero. You can also tweak the brightness, contrast, intensity, and gamma, also. Whether it's accurate or realistic IDK, YMMV.

If the Stereo option is ticked then you get stereo, with older non-stereo games playing through the left speaker and drive motor sounds through the right speaker. If you un-tick it then all sounds play through L & R channels equally.

Drift clubs and StanceNation gotta love TOPO's camber!

Flashbacks may be wanted as hardware placement or the aforementioned HDMI connectivity. When the Flashback advertising says relive your childhood with the exact Atari games you grew up with, gamers instantly assume they get the exact experience with the hardware that they grew up with - when in fact the hardware is quite different from the 1977 release. And that affects the feel of the game. Hence even more bitching!

There isn't any appeal. You already have the games in their best consumer format. No need to downgrade to the crap always-something-missing, always-something-different flashbacks. All the bitching is just bitching to bitch.