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What is the copyright situation, especially with the unreleased music? Did the Family/Executor of the Estate provide a formal assignment of copyright (in writing)? The absence of clear rights would make it impossible to to anything with this material other than quietly enjoy it in private. There may also be copyright/IP issues with the hardware too, but that I know somewhat less about that topic.

It would seem that one way to get around the various restrictions would be to simply recruit other people to order items on one's behalf. If each order is limited to three items, for example, then recruit 5 relatives or friends to each place an order of three items -- voila, 15 items are ordered all at once. Unless everyone has the same mailing address, Brad would have no way of knowing that these are not unique and independent orders. If someone gets blacklisted, so be it as they would not care.

With (most of) the Tandy 1000 series computers, there is a setup program that allows changes to the BIOS settings. There is no other way to access this menu (and change settings) without the setup program. Since the Deskmate kernel is a built-in ROM image, there is no way to completely remove it, short of making some significant hardware modifications.

Deskmate was a Tandy-specific GUI. In some models (I am not familiar with the TL/3), the kernel software was installed in ROM, but everything else was on a floppy disk. The hard drive was an extra-cost option, so your system may not include one. The original package included a word processor, spreadsheet, terminal emulator, basic database, and some other things. The original TL/2 disks have been dumped: http://www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/system.html. You presumably need a generic DOS boot disk. The BIOS can be set to not boot directly into Deskmate, but that requires an external program. DOS 6.22 should work on this hardware as it has a '286 processor. Tandy computers used a special version of GWBASIC, modified to support the custom graphics system. It is a bit out-of-date, but here is the Tandy 1000 FAQ page, and here is an archived version of the Tandy Support Site page for the 1000 TL/3.

I would like it to be in a location reasonably close to where I live! There are NEVER any events here in Eastern Canada, and almost none in New England. I am primarily interested in the historical aspects of gaming, so displays of unusual and/or prototype hardware would be great. I would also be interested in attending presentations -- this does not necessarily have to be a well-known industry veteran, but rather someone knowledgeable about a particular topic. Tournaments do not interest me at all, and I am unwilling to pay what most vendors would want for their merchandise.

Is buying a second set just to keep sealed as a collector's item an option? Given sufficient time, the outlay will be justified...

My recollection from my experience working in a museum/archival environment is that a Relative Humidity of around 40% is considered reasonable for most things. That is for a storage facility, however. Nobody is normally going to keep their living space that dry.

Once you sell the game (or a sealed but empty box) to the shop, the transaction is completed. It is up to the store to do its due diligence about the merchandise. If the item is not as described, the eventual purchaser has a recourse against the store not the person who provided it to the store. I have seen stores trying to sell obviously broken hardware; they just hope for an ignorant customer. In my experience, hoping to get 60% of the online price is extremely generous. The store has to pay overhead (renet, electricity, staff salaries) and then make a profit to still exist. They will be sitting on much of the stock for a long time. Unless there is a large quantity of high-value titles, I would expect to get closer to 25%-30% of the online price in cash (maybe more in store credit). Remember that selling something yourself will generate more revenue, but take significantly longer. Do not be surprised if a shop outright refuses to take common, low-value titles. The personal information requirement is going to vary widely by local jurisdiction (municipality or county). Some places regulate used game stores like pawnshops, others do not.

Created or just distributed? It would be practically impossible to know what someone does with the source code if they chose not to share the resulting project with anyone. Not everything needs to be shared publicly!

This is simultaneously both the saddest and the funniest thing that I have seen today!

It was probably not intentional by the publisher, but anything printed on wood pulp paper will eventually disintegrate into acidic dust. Of course purchasing a new replacement will present a challenge. Look a typical paperback from before the 1970s: the pages will be almost dark brown and extremely brittle. (There are some chemical processes that can halt this deterioration, but I am not aware of anything that can reverse it.)

Or it is just a scam to get customers into the store. "Yes, the ROTLA game was free, but we have given away all of the available copies. Why not buy something else since you're here?" Something like this happened to me once: a store tried a bait-and-switch tactic; I began speaking very loudly about how it was a scam, so the Manager gave me a substantial discount and then rushed me out the door before other customers noticed.

This is a really good point. I can recall looking at the Atari ST in a local shop when the system was new. The listed price was affordable for the computer. Then the salesman explained to me that the disk drive, which cost just as much as the computer itself, was also a "required accessory". I do not recall discussing the additional requirement/cost of a monitor as the computer and disk drive together already far exceeded my budget.

I understand that these books are based on a disassembly rather than original source code, but the Coco Basic Unravelled series is relevant here. https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Books/Unravelled Series/

Not quite the same thing, but a large arcade in the West Edmonton Mall partially transitioned into offering LAN/PC gaming shortly before it ultimately closed forever. This would have been around 2004 or 2005. If memory serves, they still had some big speciality arcade games with specialized or unique controls (e.g. DDR, racing games, light gun games) along with the PCs.

There is much interesting information buried in published Court decisions. In 1984, a Pennsylvania wholesaler unsuccessfully sued Mattel for the value of unsalable merchandise clogging its warehouse. The decision was finally rendered in 1988. M. Leff Radio Parts, Inc. v. Mattel, Inc. 706 F. Supp. 387

That type of argument is actually made on a regular basis -- invariably without success. I do not wish to violate the "no political discussion" rule, but there is a significant ideology/political movement supporting this approach. Similar arguments have been applied in Family and Criminal Law. It is more widespread in the United States, but it has its adherents in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and even Germany. I am not suggesting that Tommy is part of this movement, but he may be drawing from the arguments it presents.

Thank-you for posting this! There are many published court decisions from the 1980s that shed light onto the business side of the video game industry, yet this is a source that very few people are aware of. This is certainly not the only game-related tax shelter/scam from the era.

Exactly! Not all institutions use accession numbers as identifiers, but many places do. In Canada, we use the term "fonds" to describe the totality of material created by a particular individual or organization. A fonds may consist of multiple accessions received over the course of many years. Referring to e.g. the Texas Instruments fonds, box 5 would not be of much value as there would be a box 5 in each and every distinct accession; there could be 10 or 20 seperate accessions, each stored in a different physical place. Unlike libraries that organize books on the shelf by subject matter, archives keep bodies of material together. Therefore closely related records even from the same donor may be (physically) separated within the storage facility. Records donated in 1985 will be located nowhere close on the shelf to records donated in from the same creator 1990, even if the content is very closely related, etc. Broadly speaking, records are shelved in accession number order, so roughly in the sequence that they were received by the archives. Shelving normally starts at one end of the stacks and new acquisitions get the next available empty space. There are numerous exceptions and variations, of course, but this is the general idea.

I was recently reading about a Canadian property development firm that managed to secure mortgages for something like 125% of the total value of the property that was slated to be developed. Thus the firm was not required to invest/risk to any of the owners money. Sadly, not unlike the Amigo, the project failed with no development having actually occurred.

I do not know if it was released in a PAL version, but Epyx California Games has something like this in the surfing segment. Note that it is just shades of blue rather than cycling through the whole colour spectrum.

Does something qualify as a "find" if you already own it (but have forgotten its existence)? My Parents sold the house that I grew-up in more than twenty years ago. I was living far away at the time, but I came back to help pack the house, including many boxes of my books, video games, and some other things. My boxes then went into the first of several successive storage facilities. In 2021, I moved much closer to where my Family now lives. I have spent the last six months steadily reviewing the contents of my storage unit. In the course of doing so, I have found two Atari 2600 cartridges that I did not even know that I owned -- Fire Fighter and Trick Shot! Both of them still have thrift-shop price tags on them, so I very probably bought them during a visit home, and then put them directly into a random box. I still have more boxes to short through, so who knows what else I will find. I seem to recall having purchased River Raid II during one visit home, but I have not found it yet. (Earlier in the search, I found an NES Classic and an old Atari PNP, but I knew that I had those systems.)

At least in the United States, there are companies that will, for an exorbitant fee, cryogenically preserve one's head until the technology develops sufficiently to manufacture a new body. This opportunity practically demands a Go Fund Me page!

Well, there exists data compression software for the original PlayStation (it reduces the size of save files), so I suppose that there is an untapped market for utility software for other consoles.

Sadly, we do not have Big Lots here in Canada. (There was a similar retailer called XS Cargo, but that chain folded some years ago.) I was last in the Big Lots in Bangor, Maine perhaps 15 years ago. I do not remember seeing any video games in stock at that point, but I did purchase a pile of DVDs -- and I also clearly recall buying a package of instant grits. 🤔