Sully70

I'm primarily an Atari collector, but a guy at work gave me his old Amiga 500 yesterday. It's got the plastic cover on it, power cord, and the mouse. Doesn't have the external hard drive though. Elite II, Madden, Stellar 7, Road Rash, TMNT, Powermonger, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Dragon's Lair(only disks 1, 5 and 6 though) are some of the games he gave me. It will actually go quite nicely next to my 800 XL. Just cool to get an Amiga, and free no less! He's looking for more of the disks so I'll see what he comes up with. Just realized it's actually a 600, not a 500.

I still have my original 5200 from X-mas of either 82 or 83. It came with Pac-Man and not Super Breakout. I'll never forget playing Pac-Man for the first time and being blown away by the graphics and the fact that it had cut scenes!! Especially after the Pac turkey that was released for the 2600. I remember a kid down the road showing me Smurf on the Colecovision, and still defending my beloved 5200. Back in the day I threw away or donated my 800XL and 2600 stuff, but felt the need to keep the 5200. Kangaroo, Galaxian, Space Invaders, Dig Dug, Vanguard, Centipede, and Defender are the only games I still have from then. Popeye and Congo Bongo got lost along the way. So, it is the only system that made it through the years and from Philly, to Fla., to Pittsburgh, and back to Fla. Not too bad considering all the years. Ironically, I got a Colecovision a couple years ago because I always felt I had missed out on not getting one. Both systems give me plenty of great gameplay!! I have a different 5200 in use now(because the sound went out on my original) and a greater selection of games. Pac-man still brings back the best memories though!!

Earlier I was playing Squish 'Em on the CV, and wondered why there are no homebrews of Crazy Climber. The 2600 version doesn't exactly cut it. Has anybody tried this for the CV or 5200?

Funny...mine talks to me, too. In fact, just yesterday it said "Why don't you play Congo Bongo". Then, after 10 minutes of playing and falling in the water 10 times it said "You fell for it again, you idiot". Great game, but not suited to the 5200 sticks. I quickly went to Pac-Man and Joust and all was right again. Those will never let me down.

I have a 5200 which has good video output, but the sound does not work. It's been a while since I plugged it in, but I believe that turning the volume up brings a sort of white noise and nothing else. It just cut out one day, about 10 years ago, and never came back. I have another one that works 100%, but the one I want to fix is the original I had as a kid and I would like to fix it. Any advice??

I took the top off one of my 810 drives, and noticed that it had the Happy Chip. I also have some Happy disks. What exactly does this do to make the drive better? Thanks Never mind..looked it up and got the info I needed.

Modest purchase today of a loose Jaguar with 1 controller, hook-ups, and Zool 2 in box for $15.00. Average price, very nice to find a Jaguar in the wild(no pun). I also purchased a Lynx a few months back for under $5.00, but no games.

Yes, the Atari 8-bit Donkey kong is virtually identical to the arcade game. Even the subtle way he jumps, it's got that floating and springing feel to it. So much more fluid than the CV version. The CV version I only play when I've got the CV hooked up and don't feel like changing over to the other system.

Thanks... Zylon had some good points about improvements, Pac-Man the most obvious one that I overlooked. I've yet to buy any homebrew carts, by DK may be worth getting. Tapper also.

I know that the Atari 8-bits are essentially the same hardware as a 5200. However, it's amusing that some 8-bit games are identical to the 5200 versions. Why didn't they at least make some improvements? On a side note, has anybody converted or played a conversion of Donkey Kong on a 5200, and if so, was it exactly like the 800 version? If the 5200 had Donkey Kong it would almost overtake the CV for having the best arcade port library. Of course, Ladybug, Mousetrap, Tapper and Spy Hunter will always give the CV a slight edge in completeness. Now I've got a thread that belongs in 3 different forums, so I'll stop there.

Thanks for the replies!! I got some more games to work recently, I have 50 or so floppies with a large variety of games. They all have games on both sides, usually 5 games per side. I'd have a great selection if they all worked!! To give more info, the ones that don't work do 1 of 2 things. 1) The drive beeps, lights come and it starts loading the games, and once the loading stops it goes to the Blue Screen with Prompt. or 2) It finishes loading and then brings up a Garbled screen of colors, as if it almost worked but not quite. My instinct tells me if i knew the right prompt, I could get some of them to work, but I don't know enough to be sure. It's just odd that on any given disk 1 game will load properly and play, yet the other 4 do not. None of the disks will load 100% of the games listed in the menu. I may invest in the SIO2PC, but would really like to get these damn things to work as they are. Some of the better games do load, such as Super Zaxxon, Tapper, and James Bond. Those carts seem to be a little uncommon, so I'm happy I have those games for free.

I've been frustrated by the fact that some games wont load from their floppies. For example, I have a Floppy with a 10 game Menu, and out of the the 10 games the only one which loads and can be played is Tapper(Lucky for that, it's one of the best!). I've tried both a 1050 and a 810 drive. I think the original owner had the Happy upgrade. Is it possible these games will only load with a Happy Drive? I'm pretty sure they were gotten from a BBS back in the day. Out of all the floppies I have, it seems that maybe 10% of the games actually load and run. The others just go to a black screen. I enjoy playing but am not much for the technical stuff, so any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

I use a TAC-2 for all my systems, besides the 5200 of course. I've gotten used to it and it has a good arcade feel to it.

While I will always view the 5200 version of Centipede as the ideal version to own, I've gotten hooked on the Colecovision version lately. It's like Centipede on cocaine. Just more frantic than any other version I've played. The graphics are a little more cartoonish, and the spider likes to hang out at the bottom and wait for you to run into him or go over him instead of jumping around alot. Maybe I just haven't played the 7800 or 5200 versions in a while, but the Colecovision version seems like a much faster paced game. Even so, the definitive version of Centipede(and Defender for that matter), will always be on the 5200.

Tac 2 is the best, for sure! I use it for my Atari's and Colecovision. On the CV you sometimes have to use the original controller, like on Mouse Trap, and the 2nd controller has to be used for game level selection. When I got back into vintage games, I gave up on the orginal Atari controllers after using them once or twice. The Tac 2 just feels 100 times better and is so much smoother, in my opinion.

I'm curious as to how much having the manual increases the worth of the games. Unlike most items, I've noticed having the manual doesn't really increase bid prices all that much on e-Bay, except for the rarer games. Nintendo games with manuals seen to go for at least 25% higher in most cases, but 2600 games do not follow this pattern. Anybody agree or disagree?

Modest find of a bare Atari Lynx for $3.00 at a thrift. Powered on fine, I searched high and low in the vicinity for any games, but no luck. Not even a game stuck in the console. I never bought a Lynx back in the day, so it was nice to finally find one! Gave me some thrifting optimism for about a day or two, then I fell back into the reality that finding good Atari stuff in thrifts is a rare event these days.

I've given up on these for now, and will fix them in the future.Thanks for the responses! Sully

Started pulling out some of my floppies today and played Canyon Climber. Not a bad game, at least it's somewhat challenging. Anyway, about floppies. I have several copied Menu disks with a hundred or so games, but most games will not load. The menu screen comes up, and I choose the # of the game I want, but once it's done loading all I get is a black screen. This happens on both an 810 drive and a 1050, and it happened with both an 800xl and an 800 with 48K. Maybe the disks just haven't stood the test of time. At least Tapper is one of the games that loads ok, so I'm happy with that one. Feedback would be great.

Thanks..I'LL take it apart and clean out the dust, put it back together, etc. I tried different power cords like someone else suggested, but to no avail.

Hi..I have both an Atari 400 and 800 that only show a red screen when hooked up and powered on. Can anybody give me some details on what to look for if I open them up? Is this a common problem? I'm hoping it may be easy to fix. First time poster, by the way. I've got a decent collection, the 8-bit's and 7800 are my current drug of choice. Hope I can get some advice. thanks!