What did you buy today?.........

[thetick1]

Great picture book! It could have more written details , but pictures are just the best.

 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Game-Console-Photographic-History-Atari/dp/1593277431

Edited March 12, 2019 by thetick1

[Skippy B. Coyote]

A physical copy of the original arcade version of Splatterhouse on a handheld? Yes please!

 

[4300]

Not a game, but picked up a Chinese "reissue" off of ebay.

[DragonGrafx-16]

 

Not the actual image... just didn't feel like taking pictures right now. But I bought this at my local game store. My 3rd running shmup (Psycho Chaser and Adventures of Dino Riki are the others).

[+CXK]

My purchases today (mostly from eBay)

 

Another Slik Stik controller

Two repair kits for my 5200 controllers

SIO2USB device

Smart Terminal cart for my 800

PacMan Collection (bought this from our store. ??)

[+CXK]

... and broke down last night and ordered an Atari Jaguar from eBay

[DragonGrafx-16]

Not a game, but picked up a Chinese "reissue" off of ebay.20190314_180124.jpg

I had the original back in the day... sadly it's all broken now.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

I got a pretty awesome package in the mail from Play-Asia today, and with this I've now got my Nintendo Switch set up just the way I want for both home and portable play!

 

 

 

 

[ClassicGMR]

Not a game, but picked up a Chinese "reissue" off of ebay.20190314_180124.jpg

 

I bought 3 of these a few years ago. Got the red, white and black versions from China. They were $30 each at the time. Didn't care they were knockoffs it beat paying someone $1000 for an original. (I wish I had also grabbed the clear one. It's over $70 now.)

 

 

 

 

I got a pretty awesome package in the mail from Play-Asia today, and with this I've now got my Nintendo Switch set up just the way I want for both home and portable play!

 

I love the D-pad! Wish I had seen that sooner!

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

I gave myself $200 out of the tax return this year to spend a little. Here's the last of it:

 

 

Edited March 19, 2019 by ClassicGMR

[4300]

 

I bought 3 of these a few years ago. Got the red, white and black versions from China. They were $30 each at the time. Didn't care they were knockoffs it beat paying someone $1000 for an original. (I wish I had also grabbed the clear one. It's over $70 now.)

 

 

 

 

 

I love the D-pad! Wish I had seen that sooner!

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've bought a couple of these knockoffs and they're all very decent and look great displayed. I wouldn't mind picking up that black OP at some point.

[ClassicGMR]

I've bought a couple of these knockoffs and they're all very decent and look great displayed. I wouldn't mind picking up that black OP at some point.

 

I bought these as well around the same time. They're also in the same display but I don't want to run back down 2 flights of stairs again just for a pic. They look great in the bookcase on display though

 

 

I was going to splurge for a KO Soundwave but the re-issue is coming out in Walmart stores soon. I'll grab one when it hits the shelves.

Edited March 19, 2019 by ClassicGMR

[4300]

 

I bought these as well around the same time. They're also in the same display but I don't want to run back down 2 flights of stairs again just for a pic. They look great in the bookcase on display though

 

 

I was going to splurge for a KO Soundwave but the re-issue is coming out in Walmart stores soon. I'll grab one when it hits the shelves.

How's the quality on the insecticons? I've actually got them on the way here from China.

[ClassicGMR]

How's the quality on the insecticons? I've actually got them on the way here from China.

 

I only opened Shrapnel but he seemed fine to me - I didn't get the impression it was low quality garbage like we usually see in knockoffs. Nothing loose. Didn't feel like it was going to go to hell or anything.

 

I opened the red Optimus as well when I got him and that also felt good. His gun was a true G1 mold since it wouldn't fit unless you turned it sideways a little bit.

[tschak909]

I do not really have a collection, just a few very carefully curated pieces.

 

I will be showing something _very_ special in the next two weeks. Am awaiting delivery from Russia

 

(a very special vintage laptop, of which there are less than 5 of them in the entire world)

 

-Thom

[Skippy B. Coyote]

I love the D-pad! Wish I had seen that sooner!

 

I've been really impressed by how nice the D-pad on that Hori left joy-con is. It's got a great squishy membrane contact underneath as opposed to the clicky microswitch contacts that a lot or modern D-pads use, so it feels just like a quality D-pad from the 16-bit era. I've been playing a lot of Pac-Man and Sonic Mania with it and I've never even once had a false input from it, which is just fantastic. The only complaints I could make about it is that the D-pad joy-con isn't wireless so it only works when connected to the Switch and it doesn't have any rumble vibration motor or gyro sensor for motion controls. That's alright though, since I've still got my 8BitDo SN30 Pro controller with a nice D-pad for playing on the big screen (though that one does give me a lot of false inputs when playing Pac-Man, but doesn't seem to have trouble with any other games strangely) and I can live without rumble or motion controls in the left joy-con when playing in portable mode.

Edited March 19, 2019 by Jin

[tschak909]

I'll upload a video once it gets here, but, for now...

 

(TL:DR: I bought a "Tempest" shielded GridCase 1537 that was not commercially available, but rather only sold to the US government in two capacities, either to the NSA to be used by intelligence operatives for intelligence gathering, or to NASA to use in space, due to its massive amount of shielding. Due to the fact that this is essentially classified hardware, it was supposed to be demolished upon decommissioning, and somehow a few of these were slipped away and not destroyed. These are not supposed to still exist, and yet somehow, I now have one being delivered to me from Russia.)

 

(I DO APOLOGIZE FOR THE FOLLOWING LONG WINDED POST, BUT THERE IS A _LOT_ OF CONTEXT)

 

I'm doing software development of a massive number of ports of a PLATO terminal to lots of different systems, and I needed a contemperaneous late 1980s-early 1990s laptop, mostly because I have very little desk space (I have more than a few active paying projects which demand desk space, I have to pick and choose what I put onto the bench for other work.)

 

and on a lark, I typed in GRiDCASE into eBay.

 

----

 

A bit about GRiD and Compass and GRiDCASE:

 

These were ridiculously high-end laptops, some of the very first, designed originally for corporate executives. A series of design decisions however, resulted in a very rugged clamshell laptop design, with some interesting characteristics, for the very first Compass 1100 model, which they started designing in 1979, eventually released in 1981:

 

* Black magnesium case

* Electroluminescent display, black/yellow 320x240 graphical resolution.

* Bubble memory for storage

* GPIB for I/O interfacing

* Built in modem on the 1100 and later Compass models

* File server and networking capabilities standard

 

All of this, in a revolutionary portable package for $8150 (in 1981 dollars, roughly $23,000, today)

 

This caught the interest of the White House Communications corps, who were tasked at finding the latest and greatest technology, who eventually managed to get GRiD hardware into GSA catalogs and units were purchased from the white house, on down (GRiD laptops were part of the President's "football" for over a decade, starting with the Compass 1101.), they were a favorite of the various military branches, as well.

 

GRiD would take the Compass through multiple iterations, and eventually eschew their own operating system (CCOS, which was amazing in its own right), for a wholly IBM compatible MS-DOS machine called the GRiDCASE, which included a higher resolution screen, and a battery.

 

The GRiDCASE was available with one of three types of displays (in order of lowest to highest price):

 

* LCD (originally blue/green, eventually black/white)

* Gas Plasma (black/orange)
* TEFL electroluminescent display (black/a yellow brighter than the surface of the sun)

 

The GRiDCASE also added a battery, to make it a truly portable system.

 

Over time, a lot of GRiDCASE models were made. I had a second hand 1530 in the mid 1990s, with a gas plasma display, which was a favorite at military bases, and mine was acquired in a military surplus auction. I sold it in 1998, and I hope it is in a nice home somewhere...but I digress..

 

---CAN I GET TO THE POINT, PLEASE?

 

One of the systems I had found in the aforementioned eBay search, was a model number I had only seen in the back of a pilfered GSCS catalog, GSCS being the specific sub-company that GRiD set up to sell specific tailor made models to the US Government, ...This was the GRiDCASE 1537.

 

The GRiDCASE 1537's picture in the catalog had in bold letters "CAN ONLY BE PURCHASED VIA EXEMPTION" which meant, that you had to have approval from your nearest joint-chief or state department head to even look at one of these.

 

It looks like this:

 

 

With the following specs:

 

 

 

This is a very special laptop.

 

It has the NSA's TEMPEST certification (and was the first laptop manufacturer to gain such certification), which adds a considerable amount of internal shielding to the system, not just for the boards and components, but also to each and every interconnect inside the system, which must also be shielded and mechanically isolated)

 

This in effect has three consequences:

 

* passive radio frequency infiltration is not possible, as the display emits very little RF, and any RF noise emitted by the keyboard is also shielded from introspection.

* It is highly resistant, if not immune, to the adverse effects of a burst from an electromagnetic pulse (EMP)

* These same characteristics, also make the laptop desirable to use in the electromagnetic wasteland of space, and these tempested laptops were used by NASA in every STS mission for over a decade and a half, as essentially orbital telemetry dash boards (running a piece of software called SPOCK)

 

This is a real life spy laptop.

 

Since these laptops were deemed classified hardware, they were supposed to be demolished via incineration (a positive benefit of a magnesium case) upon decommissioning. Somehow, a few of these weren't (they have sequential serial #s and thus were all part of the same batch)...

 

...and they wound up, after a fashion, in a laptop museum in Russia.

 

The hard drive was shot (thankfully the tempest cage that the hard drive was in, wasn't damaged adversely, so it could be re-used), so it had to be replaced with a matching model. Once the hard drive was replaced, the CMOS battery was also replaced, and the laptop was cleaned up, and refurbished by the museum, who have now decided to sell two of the units, and keep one of them. The other unit will be on sale on eBay shortly, should anyone want to pick it up.

 

Since I knew what this was, and because I am going to use it (and not just put it in a glass case), I went ahead and bought it. It will be here in a few weeks, and I will make a video about it.

 

But for now, if you want to see this guy running, the curator of the museum shot a video demonstrating the unit I just bought:

 

 

 

So now I have an honest to god cold war spy artifact.

 

-Thom

[evilevoix]

Just picked up a copy of a Japanese only game Ragnagard off the streets believe it or not, known in Japan as Shin-Oh-Ken (神凰拳 lit. "God Phoenix Fist"), is 2D arcade fighting game developed by System Vision and published by Saurus for the Neo Geo arcade, Neo Geo CD and Sega Saturn. The game's characters are all based on Shinto deities.


It tries really hard to be Killer instinct although it isn’t. I kind of like what they tried here but this is not a very good game. The only reason I got it because it was super cheap as it goes for $600-$1,200 on eBay and price charts have it around there as well. I was spooked as the PCB’s had two different color pin outs and after inspecting the cart it had some marks indicating it had been opened.


Turns out the board is legit and so are the chips so there was a good chance this was sent back to SNK at some point for repair and they used a different board.


I can’t say I recommend the game but it isn’t terrible, just not as good as it should be. It’s extremely hard and your opponents perform super desperation movies at will and their defense is so good that killing them fast is only reserved for expert players. Like all SNK games the depth is incredible and these types of games can be appreciated only after some serious practice as each character has specific moves and defenses that make not one more powerful than the other so it’s quite involved and a different style is needed to beat each character, spamming will get you killed right quick.

[bikeguychicago]

Received this in the mail today:

With this, I am now 2 away from the complete 5200 collection.

 

Rikki and Vikki for the 7800 should be here tomorrow!

[+stupus]

Cool, I just need a bounty bob cart to finish 5200 cib....oddly I have it's box and manual

[bikeguychicago]

Great picture book! It could have more written details , but pictures are just the best.

 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Game-Console-Photographic-History-Atari/dp/1593277431

Being a photographer myself, I appreciate it more for the photos than the words

[bikeguychicago]

Cool, I just need a bounty bob cart to finish 5200 cib....oddly I have it's box and manual

Bounty Bob is one of the two. In this case, I may have to settle for a ROM on an AtariMax.

 

I also had one of those I-have-the-box-but-not-the-game issues. I had a very badly worn Quintana Roo box but no game. I found a copy of the cart with manual on eBay for a decent price recently, picked that up, and shored up the box as best I could to contain the contents.

Edited March 22, 2019 by bikeguychicago

[+stupus]

I figured one of yours was bounty bob too

It's definitely the spiker of the 5200.

I knew it would be tuff so I got whatever pieces I could when I could....now just need to find the cart for hopefully a reasonable price.

[Jdubya]

 

Picked this up today...pretty happy with it

[Atari_Bill]

Nice! Id love to have the box for this.

[Omega-TI]

I did not not buy it today, but it arrived today. A 3.5" TFT LCD composite display for one of my unmodified TI's.