hookem

Speaking of which, check out who is the #3 wealthiest musician according to this site: http://www.therichest.com/top-lists/top-100-richest-musicians/

Other things every thrift store seems to have, like it's the law - Bread machines George Foreman grills Fondue sets Exercise equipment Juice machines Rotisseries Usually very slightly used. Don't know why anyone would buy those things new, so many people get them and use them once or twice and then decide the space is more valuable. I still do hit up the thrift shops regularly, since I'm into vinyl and vintage stereo equipment. That stuff you can still find, and with the price of vinyl these days, it's a steal (if you can find a decent rock record among the herb alpert, lawrence welk, and religious albums that make up 95% of a typical thrift shop stack). Here in Austin, it's definitely Goodwill territory; it's the only place where the inventory turns over frequently, and pricing is still reasonable. You don't have the stores packed with families picking up cheap clothes, either. It's probably at least 50% hipsters and pickers/resellers looking for cool vintage stuff. Goodwill used to have a computer museum here, and last year they closed it and sold everything. There was some amazing stuff, Apple, A8, Adam, Commodore, TI-99/4a, etc -- all in perfect condition and many with original boxes... but the asking prices were way too high. Still cool to see all that vintage stuff on the shelves for awhile. I still occasionally find a classic gaming gem, but it's exceedingly rare now. There was a good window a couple of years ago where you could pick up N64 stuff cheap all over the place, but that's dried up.

Those kids will probably look back on their memory of eating at Whole Foods and playing games on their idevices as one of the best memories of their lives... a special occasion to them. They'll even remember how cool the line cook was. They'll grow up and things will be different, and they'll long for how it was when they were kids. Like how some of us have fond memories of playing and exploring (basically unsupervised) at Chuck E Cheese, while our parents had pitchers of beer and just rounded us up when we had to leave. It's weird how that works. As long as they felt safe, had the contact they need from their parents and with their siblings at other times (like at home), it's probably just fine!

Since others have brought this up: do you ever open up and clean your systems? I know a lot of us who collect the older systems just do this out of habit, but to a collector of more recent stuff this might not be obvious. A high percentage of times, with an older system, non-working video or even a completely dead acting system can be something as simple as dirty contacts on one of the switches or a bad RF cable (those types of components don't go bad on newer systems, something else will go first). That's why every system I obtain will get at least a compressed-air and deoxit cleaning of the switches and cart port, pressing down on the socketed chips, and if the motherboard is gunky maybe a deoxit/contact cleaner qtip cleaning. If you are not technically inclined, how are you sure that you are having modulator, capacitor or TIA failures? Are you just making that judgement from the output or lack of it? Or are you swapping TIAs or using a multimeter to test things? Not saying you might not be on to something with the high-use issue, though. I honestly don't know, because I don't put nearly the hours on my systems that you do. I wouldn't expect it to be a problem, since they probably all had that kind of play time at some point in their existence, but I couldn't rule it out either. Getting back to your original question, yes you should give it another try! Hang in there. These systems are so common you can pick a good one up for less than a single homebrew game. And keep the ones that fail, with a little help you should be able to cobble together at least 2 working systems from the part of any 5 failed ones, even with very little technical ability.

If anyone could answer this question, it would be Albert. His video-modded systems are running all day long at classic gaming shows, probably putting in 20+ play hours including tournaments during a weekend. And they are running the latest homebrews, probably pushing the hardware to the limit. He'd probably know better than anyone whether high use consistently results in higher failure rates.

In my experience, they are incredibly reliable. I've had far more near-current HD based systems fail on me than 30-40 year old Atari ones. Granted, that comes with the territory on modern systems, but putting it in perspective... the old Atari systems are practically bulletproof. Yes, there are failures, and exactly the sort you describe. But 5 different systems after only a couple of months? I find that highly unusual.

I doubt it. I mean, what is down there isn't exactly rare. The only value in the items is nostalgia, and the story behind it all. In 40-50 years, the nostalgia is gone, and it's doubtful there will be any value in these as "antiques." The market for the dig carts is small, much like homebrew games, and easily oversaturated. According to eBay, they sold just under 900 items from the dig, and that probably covers all real collector interest, plus a few speculators and curiosity seekers. Digging up any more would have been pointless.

That Tod Frye video is awesome. So much info from a two minute video, it's better than an hour long interview! It really shows how porting some of these arcade games to a system basically designed to play Pong was an intellectual challenge, like a complex math problem. And like a math professor, he's both impressed and personally challenged by the fact someone figured out a more elegant solution. Of course, his work and so many other game designers back in the day laid the groundwork for what can be accomplished today. And, he did have the time constraints dictated by marketing forces and bosses who had millions of dollars on the line. Not exactly the best environment to make discoveries in new, optimal programming techniques that they didn't know existed. In short... I loved the video! Thanks!

I have a bunch of the Wico sticks, bat and ball handle, even the Boss ones (although I never liked them to actually use). I started hanging on to them and acquiring them even before I realized I was collecting... before retrogaming was even a thing. My logic was that they were worth saving/buying due to the incredibly high quality parts -- buttons, leaf switches, etc. I worked for awhile with a company that fabricated museum equipment, and those parts were super useful in all kinds of different applications. They were basically high quality general purpose parts bolted together, not proprietary/specially designed for cost savings like virtually all other controllers. The ball and bat handles were not meant to be interchangeable, although they basically were 95% the same parts. I have never personally seen the rust problems, but perhaps that is because I acquired them long ago and never stored them in a humid garage or attic...

Our parents bought our consoles until the crash. First thing I bought with my own money was a C64, followed by C128 and Amigas; I was out of the console arena until I got a Sega Saturn. So technically that was the first "game console" I bought with my own money.

Going for the One - Yes (1977)

Carefully cover the label (or work around it), and swab the entire cart (outside and as much of the inside as you can reach without opening it) with hand sanitizer. Keep in in a dry place (like one that gets good AC or heat to reduce humidity). Let it dry completely before using it -- days or weeks -- time will eventually get rid of the smell. It's bacteria, and once that is killed through the alcohol and lack of any moisture, the smell will be gone.

This thread has made me wonder about something. When the 5200 or 7800 were released, did Atari ever make any announcements that they were phasing out or eliminating the 2600? I honestly don't remember. The reason I ask is this: Once the games started appearing in bargain bins at your local drugstore for $5, that in itself contributed to the death spiral of the systems they ran on. My thoughts back then were never "wow, I can score a bunch of great games for $5/ea"... they were more along the lines of, "well, they must be pretty worthless for them to be selling that cheap". The computer games weren't in the bargain bin; so it must mean that my console is worthless or outdated. That may not have been the intent of Atari at the time, but the end result was the same. I wonder if the industry learned, after the crash, that each launch of a "new generation" console should also come with the announcement that the old console was being retired/no longer supported. Certainly there have been many instances of "bargain bin" games after the first crash, but the lowered prices match the message being sent out by the manufacturers: now is the time to upgrade to the latest console (the same now goes for computers, cell phones, tablets, etc). Did Atari at the time think that their newer consoles would simply add to their product range, creating a "good/better/best" type of situation? Obviously that is a powerful marketing tool if used right -- as in, a "good, better, best" bundle of the same platform -- but can fail if one of those categories includes a technologically inferior/lower quality product (possibly what happened to products like the IBM PCjr and iPhone 5C).

(Listen To The) Flower People: Spinal Tap (1984)

Any vertical shooter -- Galaga, Demon Attack, Space Invaders, Phoenix, Tac-Scan, Gyruss(ok, not vertical but in the same ballpark) ... 2600 through 7800. Especially Galaga for the music. Kaboom. Qix & Robotron (5200) Then horizontal shooters... Defender, Scramble, Choplifter, etc. MAME arcade ROMs: Tempest, Tron, 1942.

That's exactly how I remember it. I perceived no "crash" as a kid at the time, just a move to home computers. The games were better on the computers, all the arcade ports were being re-released on them (plus advanced RPG games) and it just seemed illogical to have a dedicated gaming system for awhile... until the NES came out and the younger kids started using them. It took me a while to warm back up to the idea of a dedicated gaming system.

Didn't realize there was a there to go to, but you went to it.

Thorn Tree in the Garden - Derek and the Dominos (off one of my favorite ever albums)

Any married man knows how this works. Maximize the guilt factor with her, then save that card for later when you screw up. As for the keyboard, I have no advice

Both these serial numbers challenge some of the assumptions we've made so far on decoding the serial numbers. If we assume the XX-NNN part of the serial number is FACTORYCODE-WEEKYEAR, and the other number is the "line count", then your El Paso 4-port built in the 9th week of '83 (EP-093) has a higher line count than my El Paso 2-port built the 23rd week of '83 (EP-233). It's also got a different font and the "No." prefix at the front. Did they reset the count and change the font on the serial #s as they went from 4-port to 2-port, in the same year? And your Sunnyvale unit - again, with the assumptions we've made so far - was produced in the 46th week of '82, and has a line count of what looks like in the 38000. Yet 3 weeks later, Retrogamer's 4-port SV unit has a number of 508874 (way too far ahead to be a unit count) and the factory code appears on the right while your unit has it on the left (and without hyphen maybe). So I guess our (or at least my) assumptions may be wrong at this point... OK so new working theory: On many of these labels, the 6-digit or 7-digit number seems to be printed at a different time (even different font) than the factory/week code. On the Taiwan ones, the "AT" letters even seem to be printed as part of the label itself, and not stamped on there later. So perhaps each factory just had rolls and rolls of these stickers, with a unique number (and in the case of the Taiwan ones, the letters AT) pre-printed on them. The only thing that was actually stamped as the unit came off the assembly line was factory-week/yr code. On the made-in-Taiwan ones, there was only one factory code "AT" - so they included that on the pre-printed labels, and they only stamped the week/yr code. And perhaps they pulled out the rolls of pre-printed numbered labels somewhat at random, so they weren't always in sequential order. That's a lot of speculation, I know. Just a theory I'm floating out there. Perhaps I'm just completely off base, or maybe there were mass counterfeits (not unheard of with manufacturing outsource to Taiwan at the time). Anyone have any other guesses?

Dream Police - Cheap Trick

Nothing's Shocking - Jane's Addiction

My 4-switch woody promo console: 81205352

Posted the serial #s of my two 5200s on the serial number thread.. they are very close in number, but different factories, proving I think that each factory had it's own independent count. Of course the real proof would be to find identical #s with a different factory/date code. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/171005-5200-serial-number-thread/?p=3304147 And with the EP-084 serial number posted by the OP, I'd say that the "yearly reset" of the numbers also must be true. We could probably even figure out when production ramped up or down at each factory... or phased out as Atari was dying. This is fun!

Here are my two 5200s: This one is a Taiwan 4 port And here is an El Paso 2 port, built just 4 weeks later (if we're interpreting the codes right).. Also with the closeness of the serial numbers, I'd say this is probably proof that each factory had their own independent count.