Loose carts storage

[+karri]

I have a nice briefcase made of black leatherish material. Today I got some wood and decided to craft supports for the carts 

 

 

I worked for 4 hours today. Still about 3 hours needed to finish my briefcase with place for 6 rows of 33 carts. That makes 198 carts. Mainly cool homebrew stuff like cool demos, competition entries and tons of almost finished games.

[42bs]

Only problem: not enough space on the grip to put some text.

 

[+karri]

1 hour ago, 42bs said:

Only problem: not enough space on the grip to put some text.

 

I am planning to put the carts there in chronological order. This means that competition entries are close to each other. It also takes away the burden maintain alphabetic order when new games appear. So I will have a rough idea where every game is.

It could also be handy to keep carts for sale in the briefcase when I attend retro events.

[battleman13]

What are you using to burn carts! That looks very cool... digging the copy of timeloop sitting there. It's an interesting game, given how simple it can appear. 

Neat idea on the cart storage system

[+karri]

8 hours ago, battleman13 said:

What are you using to burn carts! That looks very cool... digging the copy of timeloop sitting there. It's an interesting game, given how simple it can appear. 

Neat idea on the cart storage system

I am using a RaspberryPi 4 and the Lynx HAT designed by me and Igor. The latest Pi4 has really good performance today so I also use it for developing Lynx games. I named my Pi4 "burningpi" as I burn all the carts with it. All the essential tools for doing graphics and music work on a Pi4 also.

 

With a little over-clocking I was able to emulate DOS machines good enough for running old pinball code on Pi4 without frame drops.

Well, I did have to hack the dosbox-staging sources to show the whole pinball table instead of just a scrolling window. But GOG.com sells these old pinball software for just about $3 each so I bought about 30 different tables. I really enjoyed playing pinball at PRGE last year. As all events are cancelled in 2020 I have been playing things at home instead.

 

 

I have even been thinking about building a small wooden (oak) cabinet around an extra monitor to make a permanent pinball arcade at home. It is trivial to run Pi4 in portrait mode without the desktop.

 

[+karri]

The bag is slowly taking shape. For some carts I plan to use plastic holders to keep SD adapters with the cart in the same package.

[+karri]

I started to add better labels to my old hobby carts. They look so nice after new covers.

 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I use old gameboy cartridge cases. You can put two Lynx games in one of those cartridge cases so I've got all of my loose carts in a bunch of those. 

 

[+karri]

I also have these Gameboy boxes for the SD carts. But they take too much space so I went for minimalistic slots.

[MTR]

Niiiiice.. we'll let's hope this case has working locks.. because it's a case worth a million  ???

[+karri]

40 minutes ago, MTR said:

Niiiiice.. we'll let's hope this case has working locks.. because it's a case worth a million  ???

Of course it has locks! With key-holes and combination numbers.

... But I have no keys and don't know how to set the combination to lock it. I did find the case when cleaning up old trash at the company I work for. Nobody knew anything about this case. So I got it for FREE!!!

[Turbo Laser Lynx]

Couldn't... resist... linking this:
https://youtu.be/a6iW-8xPw3k
(I hope this video clip doesn't reveal my own phone pin too).

Edited October 7, 2020 by Turbo Laser Lynx

[unoclay]

you can usually easy "Crack" the combination code on those old suitcases---i did it with one i got from the thrift store.  Involves basically putting pressure on the "opening" button while spinning each dial.  If you push against the "release/open" button while turning dials, when it hits the right #, it will sort of pop into place and you know you got the number.  Far easier than most lynx games.

[+karri]

Thanks. I don't even know how the locks work. Right now it opens and closes with all dials at 000. The lock is so flimsy that anyone could just bend it open. So I just keep it as it is. For the looks.