Bruce Tomlin

That sounds like a classic case of laser rot. No S-video mod in the world is going to fix that. (It's also possible that it was just a bad pressing... a true case of laser rot gets worse over time, and doesn't stop at a few speckles in the picture.) Ah, laserdisc, the format that was going to be extremely cheap to press copies of... except that when they said that, they didn't understand that they needed a clean room and humidity control at the factory.

The PSP's web browser is basically a cell phone browser with a slightly bigger screen. No way does it support even a tiny fraction of what is expected from modern web browsers. You have to use "mobile" versions of web sites (when available) with it.

And again, I have seen no serial numbers posted anywhere of actual Dreamcast units that have been confirmed to not work with bootable CD-Rs.

I'm slowly getting rid of any F-connector coax cables I have that don't have those inch-long professional crimp connectors on the end. I find them all the time for a dollar each, and they're the most reliable you can get. The only minor problem is that most of them are handmade by the cable guy when setting up someone's TV set, so they'll be whatever length was needed at the time.

Use one of these on the 2600 (and the 5200 if it's 2-port): Use one of these on the CV: Switch them to the TV's antenna input with a cable A/B switch, or two if you have a 4-port 5200 (I can't find any switches with 3 or more ports, maybe they exist): If the 5200 is 4-port, rig it inline on the RF. Run the NES and Genesis (Genesis only supports composite and RGB) through a switch box to the TV's composite input. For the rest, get the appropriate S-video cable and run them through a switch box to the TV's S-video input.

If you see any that specify LAN play, all you need is a cheap 10/100 switch and some Ethernet cables. If the games support online play but not LAN play, their servers may or may not still be active. And then there's FFXI, which also needs a genuine Sony hard drive. (If you really want to play FFXI at this point, your best bet will probably be the PC or 360 version. They just released a new 360 version, too.) But what it's really best for is adding an ordinary IDE hard drive. With a Free McBoot memory card loaded with a copy of HD Loader, you can "jukebox" your PS2. Google for "Free McBoot" and "WinHIIP" (the PC ripper program) for more info.

It was supposed to be November or December 2000 and later that removed the "Mil-CD" loophole, but I have never seen anyone post the serial number and manufacture date of an actual unit that wouldn't boot a bootleg. So apparently if Sega did fix it, those units are rare as hell.

There are more than a few +5/+12 supplies that you can find, but the -5 is what keeps you from just using one of those multi-voltage bricks. If you used a DC/DC converter to get -5, there would be a bonus in that the -5 would be switched when you turned the power off. I guess an old TRS-80 Model I supply has -5 for the same reasons that the CV needs it. An old PC power supply could probably used after regulating the -12 to -5, but it would be hard to find one small enough. The cool part is that if you found a small enough power brick to go inside the unit, you could probably put an AC jack in place of the existing power jack with only a little work.

Could they have been sold in Canada?

Without seeing the innards, I can't say for sure, but I'm betting it's a bus terminator of some sort. It probably just has some resistor packs and maybe a couple of capacitors.

Fixed. (And I have three Nomads.)

If what you care about is imports, getting a stealth or no-piracy chip would probably be a better option. The code for progamming an 8-pin PIC is out in the open, so it's not like you have to order from some crazy place in Hong Kong. Apparently the keywords to search for are "mayumi stealth v4.0" for stealth and "ap508usa" for no-piracy. (You get no help here beyond that, though.) I was always amused how Sony made region protection based on copy protection, such that the latter had to be broken to break the former. Naturally, the result was rampant piracy. EDIT: Hmm, seems the needed 12C508/12C509 chips have gone obsolete and are harder to obtain now. Go figure.

The 6809 can really move some data if you disable the interrupts and use multiple PULS/PSHU instructions that copy 6 or 7 bytes at a time. It's not quite as good as the Z-80's LDIR, but it's a lot better than anything the 6502 can do. This is from a graphics mode screen driver that I wrote for OS9. SCRUP PSHS U,Y,D LDX #0 BSR SCRADR LEAU 6,Y LEAX $1800,Y CLR ENDSCR STS SPSAV LEAS 256,Y SCRUP1 PULS D,X,Y PSHU Y,X,D LEAU 12,U PULS D,X,Y PSHU Y,X,D LEAU 12,U PULS D,X,Y PSHU Y,X,D LEAU 11,U PULS A,X,Y PSHU Y,X,A LEAU 11,U DEC ENDSCR BNE SCRUP1 LEAY -256,S LDS SPSAV LDU 4,S LBSR CLRLN0 PULS D,Y,U,PC ...of course if you have a 6309 you can use the TFM instruction instead.

Just got a PSP-100 power supply, a Sony 7.5V power supply (presumably for a Slim PS2), and a Gamecube power supply for $1.50 each. Also a PS2 S-video cable for a buck, and an old Sega Genesis (rear port installed) with no cables for $4. Also, a couple of multi-tools. One was a hammer/saw tool commemorating AMD shipping 5000 of their "Hammer" CPUs ($1), and the other was a pliers/screwdriver tool (75 cents).

The main problem is that any potential fun of playing emulators quickly goes away when you realize you have to burn a new CD-R every time you want to change your collection of games. And you can forget about CD-RW. I seem to recall that only CD-R works on the DC. As for trouble burning a disc, there seems to be a +/- 2 block difference in the spacer track depending on what you burn with. You just have to know the right number of blocks for your specific setup. I've even had the same drive give different results depending on whether I burned it under Mac OS X or Mac OS 9. IMHO, your money is better spent on an Xbox hardmod chip and a big (500-1000GB) hard drive. If something ever happens to your Xbox, a properly installed chip is not difficult to move to another unit, as long as the new Xbox has an older board revision. Second best is a fat PS2 with a Free McBoot card and large HD, but the PS2 hasn't been much of an emulation system because until recently you had to either install a hardmod (not trivial) or use the PS1 boot hack (too fiddly), so it was too much of a pain for anybody to bother.

I always just used a switch myself. Though I did eventually learn not to stick the switch out the battery door, because the wires would break inside after a few months of dangling like that. I eventually found a switch small enough to peek between a grille slot in back and did mods with that.

I just noticed something about the 2600 boards... they have traces going off the edge of the board. This is most definitely not something an amateur board maker would do, so that's got to be Coleco's board design. The reason to do this is to connect all the edge pins together before the board is routed to shape, so that the edge contacts can be gold plated. (Nintendo's favorite method was to cross wires together all over the board, then drill out the junctions, and I've seen 2600 games where all the traces continue up off the top edge of the board.) One of the games has soldered EPROMs with just a number on the sticker. Also, the stickers seems to show multiple handwriting, though many seem to be the same hand. Yeah, someone who worked at Coleco made a buttload of copy carts. For all we know, they could have been for a "rec room" collection at the company itself.

Oh, one more thing... go into the regular set-up menu and set the Sharpness to the middle position on the bar. That is the zero position, because these sets can do negative sharpness. "Sharpness" is a BS option which messes up the picture to make it look better in sales showrooms by adding edge enhancement noise. And negative sharpness just makes things blurry. My set's video menu settings are: Picture, Color, Hue, and Sharpness all at the middle of the bar, Brightness at about 75% of the bar, Color Temp=Neutral, ClearEdge VM=Off, DRC Mode=Progressive

What's interesting is that the Ms. Pac-Man is on a Coleco-style (4-chip) 2600 bank switch board. Also, it has no green soldermask on it, which means either it's a spare board or someone had their own made. I suspect that it's a copy cart made by someone who had access to Coleco's equipment (empty boards, EPROM burners, etc.) The other games are on socket carts, and they also have handwritten labels. I'm guessing they may just be copy carts too. The Ms. Pac-Man is definitely a copy cart, not a proto, but was probably probably made by someone who worked at Coleco. The other boards could very well be dev test boards, though, which would explain having 2-chip and 3-chip boards with less chips than the game needs. The DK has different labels and dates on the stickers. And it appears to be soldered down, so I guess it would be a proto. They should all be dumped just in case one of them is a pre-release version, even the Ms. Pac-Man, but that one is not likely to be so.

Great TV, great boat anchor. I have one (a 32HS model, not the XBR) that I got discounted at the end of its model year. The 32" model is like 175 pounds, and it takes two strong men to lift it. When I have to move mine around, I sit on the ground and push it around with my feet. I don't even want to know about the 36" model. Be sure to enable its 480P upconversion mode. This TV has about the best quality picture you can get from an S-video system. When I was playing FFXI, the picture quality difference between it and regular TVs was significant. Also, its service menu can allow you to adjust for minimum overscan, except for 20 or so pixels at the top. Its DVI input only syncs to 640x480 VGA in 4:3 mode, but it's awesome for watching anime fansubs. (But when I hooked a Powerbook up to it, it only wanted to sync to 16:9 HD squeeze mode.) It wouldn't even take text mode from the PC until my ATI video card died, and I got another ATI card which had a text mode it would sync to.

Ummmm, yeah. You do realize that it's not as simple as throwing a simple RF modulator circuit onto a video output, right? It requires a full MPEG-2 encoder at the very least. And as a result, you still end up with a picture that has less detail than if you hooked it up to component inputs. Also, the modulation is a lot more complicated than simple AM/FM. You also induce lag (on the order of a whole second) because of the MPEG encoding and decoding, which would make gameplay rather difficult. I remember a few years ago I could tune in the analog and digital of a TV channel, and the digital channel noticeably lagged behind. Oh, and have you actually gone looking for an "ATSC modulator" yet? Trust me, baseband video inputs are NOT going away any time soon, even with HDMI infesting everything these days. RF modulators existed in the first place ONLY because of the lack of baseband inputs in TV sets back in the '70s, since there wasn't anything to hook up other than an antenna. Once VCRs (and stereo TV) took off, they became standard.

But it could only use Sony's hard drive, with the special Magic Gate extensions for FFXI or memory card functionality. Those drives aren't getting any younger. Free McBoot + big hard drive = jukebox, that's where it's at

ROMs don't die very easily. That's why 2600 carts don't die easily. At the very worst, they might need to be pushed back into their sockets.

I'll just call out what I see... Left side going down: 74LS139 - probably used for address decoding RP2A03 - the CPU, and it has the sound hardware built in, right? 6116 - CPU RAM Second column, below the expansion port: RP2C02 - that's the VDP chip, right? 74LS373 - some sort of input buffer, maybe for talking to the VDP MCM2018 - video RAM Third column: 40H368 - for the controller port I/O 40H368 - for the controller port I/O the resistor packs are also for the controller port I/O 74HC04 - it's just a bunch of inverter gates, could be used for anything and then there's the lockout chip, with pin 4 ripped out

So the TV is from the UK... but is the 7800 an NTSC or PAL model? And what exactly have you tried and what happened?