OldAtarian

I can see if he'd at least taken the trouble to burn it to a cart and made up a nice label for it he should get something for his trouble but selling a downloadable file that you can easily get anywhere makes me throw up in my mouth a little.

Wouldn't it be something if there was a warehouse filled with Crazy Climbers, Quadruns, and Swordquest Waterworlds out there somewhere waiting to be found? There would be a lot of angry people out there who paid hundreds or thousands for those "super rare" carts when their "investment" collapses overnight.

Get some Coleco Gemini Gemsticks. They are the best joysticks. I remember buying about 10 of them from Kaybee toys years ago when they were liquidating them for $2 each. I still have most of them.

it's you, buy this one ? http://rhodblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/25/atr-8000/ no money this week

Commodore monitors? Come on - I used to think you guys were cool... While I'm at it, maybe I should go buy a Chevy so I can go out and stick some Ford parts on it! Okay just just kidding! I do have a lot of Commodore, Amiga, and other monitors (see - there's one now!) with composite or Y/C input, but I'm looking for a perfect match for the Atari 130XE. I really want that prototype XE composite monitor, but I don't think anyone's selling or trading at this time... Barring that, I'd like to use an Atari SC1224, since the style is the same. I suppose I could gut one and install some other monitor's internals... Alternately, I could divest my XE stuff and just stick with an origianl 800. At least I do have the "matching" monitor for it, since they were noramally mated with Amdek color 1 displays. Since the thread's been necro'd already, I might as well address this. One of the few things Atari guys were ever willing to admit that Commodore did right (back when the war was still a real, shooting war) was that they sourced some very good monitors. There were a lot of Atari guys who used Commodore monitors back then and still do. I still have my 1702 from long ago and a few years back I got my hands on my first C64 and guess what? It's a very similar experience overall to using an Atari 8 bit with the added advantage of more mainstream support. I honestly don't see what all the fuss was about now.

Actually, I talked to a guy that worked with Jack at Commodore a couple of years ago. He did the conversion of Satan's Hollow for the C-64, and knew Jack personally. He said he would hold a grudge till hell froze over, over the slightest thing (apparently he sunk a lot of projects at Commodore just to get back at certain individuals). Again, take it for what it's worth. I personally don't give a flying shit about him one way or the other, I just mentioned that he is a hated individual, so there's really nothing to get over, since I don't care in the least. I do think, though, that if he has the Swordquest items, they should be put into a museum. Those are some of the most impressive pieces of gaming history ever made. Actually, we should all act like we just don't care about the Swordquest items. Things have value only because people become fanatical about having them. If nobody cares, then JT can't profit in any way from those items because nobody will buy them.

$42 shipped for a vintage monitor of any description is pretty good. Freight charges are usually more than that which is why I find it very hard to justify buying heavy objects like that that I can't pick up locally.

Hmmm..I got an ATR8000, a Compumate, River Raid II and Spider Fighter boxed. Also picked up some video cables and adapters for an experiment I want to try with my ST and Falcon.

NEVER, EVER try to format a HD floppy to single or double density. You are putting your data at risk. This is a problem that comes up in the Mac world all the time when people want to backup their 400k or 800k floppy disks and all they can find are 1.44mb floppies for sale. It doesn't usually work out for very long. Sooner or later you will try to access that floppy and it won't work. Your directory will be scrambled or your data will just be gone. It's hard to find lower density floppies of any size but you really do need them for reliable operation in low density drives.

I have what I believe to be a Taiwan heavy. It's the old woodgrain six switch, but it weighs a ton compared to my Darth Vader. I'll have to dig it out for the serial number. I was told heavy's were only made in Sunnyvale so my six switch shouldn't weigh any more than my Darth Vader but obviously that isn't true. Someone also mentioned something to me about the thick rubber grommet around the RF cable but I don't remember what that had to do with it being a heavy or not. Ok here it is T0009603

Mac OS 8.6 Mac OS 8.1 Mac OS 7.6.1 RISC OS GEOS GSOS

"c64 disk spped is probably similar to the A8" What?!? I don't recall ever needing a fast loader to load anything from disk on my A8.

Acorn RISC PC Sharp X68000

"It's also building out a licensing program that includes not just consumer products but also movies based on its classic games." Great. Just we need in 2010, Asteroids and Defender movies. Sigh. Do we have a facepalm smiley?

Is Jeff Minter still around? Does he still show up in any Atari forums?

You obviously never saw any of the more interesting products being developed in the Atari Labs division, then. Thought controlled video games? Yowzers! Why do you think I used bold in that sentence? Something sitting on an engineer's shelf is worthless until people can actually buy and use it. Many items could have been easily produced if they had just had the guts and foresight to take the chance. People were chomping at the bit for more/new Atari products. I really wanted to see the 1090 expansion box, CP/M module and a friggin 3.5" floppy drive. Even Commodore had one of those.

Actually, I would consider that a fairer way to "bash" a system, if bashing must be done. "On paper" means nothing. Theoretical or even actual technical specs mean very little when it comes to what was demonstrated in the games that were actually made and are available. With the Jaguar we always hear how "incorrectly" the Jaguar's games were programmed because they relied too much on the 68000, etc., but the reality is we have yet to see a game programmed "correctly" and that apparently takes full advantage of the inherent technology/capabilities. So all a non-technical gamer can base their impressions of the Jaguar and its capabilities on are the actual games. With that said, I'd say the Sega Master System was one of those lucky systems who, despite being an also-ran to a much more popular competitor, was in fact able to show off its full technical potential. The only reason more games weren't available is because Nintendo locked up all the developers into exclusivity agreements. That's the point I was trying to make. If developers had been allowed to make games for the SMS, it would have killed the NES. The NES didn't win because it was better, it won because nobody could make games for the competition.

I love the ones who bash the Sega Master System when on paper it should run rings around the NES. It's only the restrictive licensing agreement that Nintendo locked developers into that kept the SMS from kicking the NES to the curb but the NES fanboys won't hear any of that.

http://web.archive.org/web/20080420200144/http://www.whimsey.com/z26/ The links all seem to still work but are slow. Download everything while you can.

Considering there's nothing in there more rare than 4, $50 is too much. $20-$25 would be closer to the mark.

Yes. Details?

For really rare games like that, I usually try to find them on another platform that they weren't so rare on. BBSB was released on A8, C64, Spectrum, Acorn and maybe some others outside the US and not all of them are extremely hard to find or expensive when you do find them.

I never thought JT was ever really serious about running Atari successfully. My theory has always been that he only bought it to use as a club to bludgeon Commodore to death with after him and his family were ousted from the company.

Who other than Curt Vendel holds on to these things?

The only reason you should have duplicates is in the case of label variations or regional varieties of the same game, if your collecting goes that far. If you have 20 copies of Combat with text label and all are identical then you need to be selling or trading the extras away for something that you don't have yet. You also need to seriously consider whether buying that lot of 50 rarity 1-3 games is worth it just to get that one gem rarity 6-7 cart. Do that enough times and before you know it you have hundreds of worthless commons on your hands that are impossible to get rid of. Most people don't have the money to go after the 8-10 rarities, so I wouldn't even bother with those unless you come into a sudden windfall. What you can also do, if real estate is too expensive where you live to expand to house your collection is to seriously consider moving. How far away can you live from your work and still not increase your living expenses over what you're paying in NYC? You'd be surprised how much bigger accommodations you could afford for moving just 30 minutes outside the city. Another consideration (and should probably be the first one on your list of considerations) is if you are married or living with someone. Accumulating huge amounts of computer and video game stuff is a hobby that usually does not go over well with spouses, partners, roommates, parents, etc. because of all the space it takes up and the amount of time it keeps you away from things the other person wants you to do, annoying little things like going to work for a living, mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, cleaning the garage, patching up the leaky roof that dumps 50 gallons of water on your spouses side of the bed every time it rains, etc. Unimportant things like that.