jhd

It's been more than two years. Can the news be revealed yet?

People die, and (eventually) things are donated. I regularly see lots of items from the 1970s and 1980s turn-up at thrift shops. Some processes move very slowly. My Grandfather died in 1983, but most of his personal effects did not actually get disposed of (i.e. sold or donated to local charities) until almost twenty years later. A friend of the family inherited his Parents' house in the 1970s. He placed everything into storage where it all remained until he himself died several decades later. Ultimately it was disposed of by his nephew. There are very probably many more vintage computers and game consoles languishing in a similar state of limbo in storage, waiting for an estate to finally be settled.

🤣 Thank-you for improving my Tuesday morning!

We Canadians can see the video, but my inability to understand Portuguese seriously limits my ability to enjoy it.

My eyesight is not great, so I have never had any desire to own a handheld game system of any sort. I played the store demo of the original Gameboy when it was new, and I found the screen to be far too low-contrast for me to see comfortably.

Maybe I'm weird, but I prefer the Gemini -- mainly because of the very small form-factor. I understand that it has some incompatibilities, but I never encountered them.

The Touch Pad is quite rare; I only ever saw coverage of it in the in-house TRS-80 Microcomputer Newsletter. I never actually saw one in person. That said, I do not know if there is any commercial software that supports it. Overall, that is a very reasonable price for the amount of hardware.

Hardware for things like the Sega Channel are very similar. It was rented from the cable company, and supposed to be returned at the end of the service. I have literally only seen one such device for sale, and it bore a property tag from a long-defunct cable TV company. Presumably the majority were destroyed when the Sega Channel ceased to exist. I moved cross-country a few years ago. I contacted the local cable TV company about their hardware when I terminated service. I was told that since it was due for replacement (it was some 10 or 12 years old and it did not support HDTV), they did not want it back. I could have kept it, but as it served no useful purpose I just tossed it in the dumpster. Personally, I do not remember ever encountering any in-room game systems. I'm guessing that these tended to be found in higher-end hotels. I do recall staying in a few (expensive) places in the early-2000s with wireless keyboards and set-top boxes for Internet access, which is a later evolution of the same concept.

And I finally placed my pre-order yesterday. Happily I was able to pay with accumulated rewards points so it was essentially "free" to me. The total cost with tax was Cdn$172.49 (US$128.67).

This is a great project! There was a BASIC version of this in a book of games for the Coco (and, IIRC, the TRS-80 Model III) in the early-1980s. I had so very much fun with it. Sadly, I do not own an original NES console -- just the NES Classic and several Famiclones.

After recent events, does Coleco still have any value as a brand (at least in the context of video games)? I know that the name/license was ultimately pulled from the Chameleon, but it still really badly tarnished that brand. Has the ownership of the Commodore brand been sorted? I seem to recall that there were multiple parties claiming to own it (or having a share in it).

I'd like to know how easy is is to undertake such a project without the ability to read Japanese. In the handful of videos that I have seen, the exterior store signage may be in English, but nothing else is. Personally, I would find this overwhelming and confusing.

Does anyone yet know if the 2600+ will ever be available for sale here in Canada? The list of international retailers has been posted, but there is no vendor listed for Canada. My interest in purchasing this console is rapidly declining as it appears that Atari does not wish to sell me one.

The situation was broadly the same here in Canada. In 1998 I moved cross-country to attend University and while I had a TV in my room, I did not have cable. 🙂 I had the "rabbit ears" antenna for the usual VHF channels, but I remember being surprised at also finding a local UHF channel (which required the loop antenna) as we did not have that back home.

It is still good to be very cautious, even with local, in-person sales. I once encountered a seller at a community flea market with a set of DVDs for a niche television series. The price was very reasonable, but, suspiciously, everything was swathed in multiple layers of packing tape. There was no mechanism to check the condition -- or even the presence -- of the disks. Had he been selling an empty box, there would be no recourse.

I Robot -- full 3D graphics in 1984! Ok, gameplay is rather lacking and the game was a commercial failure, but it was still innovative, unique, and different.

This seems more like the work of a foreign state or a security/intelligence service rather than just a single individual "hacker". I would be very reluctant to investigate too deeply for fear of drawing unwanted attention to myself.

Well, I was interested but, "As of this time Atari does not ship orders outside of the USA". Clearly they do not want my money.

One of the reasons that I do not collect vintage computer hardware is my inability to make repairs. I do not own a soldering iron, much less a multimeter, and I have no space to set-up a workbench even if I did. If something does not work, I have no option but to pass it along to a thrift shop as I am unable to execute the repairs myself, and there is nobody around here who operates such a business. Shipping hardware long-distances across an international border quickly exceeds the value of the item itself. I see many posts from individuals in a similar situation who have spent significant money to purchase vintage hardware that needs repairs that they are incapable of doing themselves. Has anyone else chosen to not collect something just because of the repair issue?

While I am not a huge fan of the gameplay, I think the graphics of the footbag section of California Games are quite amazing. In 1978, who would have guessed that the hardware could display (almost) 3D graphics.

Space is certainly an issue, but there are other important considerations too: Personally, I completely refuse to use eBay, and it is extremely difficult to find original hardware and software at local retail. There are no specialist shops within a few hundred miles of here. Related to this is the issue of price -- my entertainment budget is very limited as early-retirement is looming. I am simply unwilling to pay the current market price for vintage game systems. I may yet sell my entire collection as prices rise and I get closer to that magical birthday. I do own an original 2600 console (several, actually, including a Jr. and a Gemini), approximately 150 cartridges, and a CRT TV, but I much prefer to play games on my laptop using Stella or another emulator. In the alternative, I also have all of the vintage game compilations released for the PlayStation 2.

I donate all of my duplicate and unwanted games (and hardware) to a thrift shop. I just need the space, and someone has to support the local resellers.

I am fairly certain that IR requires line-of-sight between the source and target to work. I feel confident that it will not work through a wall... Rather than replace the entire power supply, what about just putting in a new fan? I had to do that to a PC once. There were many MANY screws to remove and I had to splice the power supply (as the new fan had a connector that the old fan did not), but it worked just fine -- and more quietly -- afterwards.

Perhaps look at the technical specifications document (that was suggested in a previous thread): TANDY 1000 TL/3 (250-1603) Specifications Faxback Doc. # 1241 Floppy: 720K 3.5" https://web.archive.org/web/20080811024419/http://support.radioshack.com/support_computer/doc1/1241.htm In theory, the system could have been upgraded by a previous owner, but I cannot imagine someone replacing the floppy drive without also installing a hard drive.

I remember playing the 5200 store demo one time. It was very probably in early-Spring 1983, somewhere in New England (likely Massachusetts). There was a demo kiosk in some department store, but there was a line-up to play, so my Father and I found another store in the same mall that did not have a line-up. The only game available was Breakout. I do not recall the joysticks being any different from the standard controllers, but this memory is admittedly very foggy. I had played the 2600 and various arcade games to this point. As this console received limited distribution here in Canada, that was my only experience with the 5200.