You get what you pay for
Entry posted by Nathan Strum
1,193 views
Update: The domain info is now fixed! To be fair, the IT people where I work are desperately over-worked and under-staffed. Sure, it's annoying when something gets messed up, but they've been pretty good to me about fixing things when that happens. I didn't expect anything until next week, since they're off Fridays during the Summer months. So you can ignore most of the snarky comments in this entry... 
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As part of where I work, I have free webspace for my CheepTech site. That's the good part.
The bad part is, it's currently down, because they moved everything to a new server, and didn't put in the correct directory info for my domain name to point to.
So once again, all of the images in my blog (and many that I've posted throughout AtariAge) are broken, because they all rely on CheepTech.com working properly.
Which means I can't post what I wanted to tonight, since it had links to a page on my CheepTech site, plus a picture that I was going to upload to the site. But now you don't get to see it until the site's fixed.
It was a super-cool, neat-o keen picture of something so incredible it would have blown your minds, too. Your lives would all have been better for having seen it. But no... now you have to wait until the problem gets fixed. So if you go through the entire weekend, depressed by the fact that you didn't get to bask in the awesomeness of this amazing, life-changing picture, well, don't blame me.
Well, okay... it's probably not all that great. But maybe somebody would have liked it. It had buttons on it and everything.
Besides all that, even though I can access the site directly by typing in the server name, the cgi scripts aren't working, so some pages (and frames) won't load. Something to do with permission problems on the new server is my guess. So that's something else that has to be fixed. One of these days, I need to go through and gut the entire site and re-design it.
But for all you know right now... maybe I already did. 
In the meantime, here's a fill-in blog entry...
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I ordered some stuff from Best Electronics for the first time. They may have one of the ugliest websites in the world, but if you're looking for Atari-related stuff, they've got a ton of it.
So I bought:
- The rev. 10 Best Catalog
- 1 embroidered Atari golf hat
- 2 Atari CX-40 Joystick Rebuild Kits (with upgraded handle and Best's "Gold" circuit board)
On the plus side, all of it got here very fast. On the downside, I'm not thrilled with their minimum purchase requirement for PayPal, and the catalog didn't count towards my total, so I ended up having to pay a surcharge for being under the minimum. Plus, you have to buy a minimum of two joystick rebuild kits.
That said, the catalog is a pretty amazing resource (spelling errors notwithstanding). There's a ton of stuff in it about Atari parts, trivia, history and tech tips. It's well worth the price, despite it not counting towards my PayPal total. It's too bad their website isn't nearly as well laid-out.
The hat is very cool. The pictures don't quite do it justice. It's very high quality, and comfortably fits even my over-sized noggin.
But my main reason for ordering were the joystick upgrade kits. I'd purchased some NOS Atari joystick repair kits from B&C Computervisions a few years ago, and they worked great. But recently, the dome switches on the circuit boards had begun to fail. Typical for 2600 'sticks.
So I'd read about Best's kits, and decided to try them. These are modern-day, re-designed circuit boards, not Atari leftovers. And I have to say - I like them quite a lot. I installed one in my shortstick modded CX-40 and it worked great! The joystick response is especially solid, with each dome switch making a very satisfying "click". The best thing is that the responsiveness of the joystick is just as fast, if not faster, than before. The extra sturdiness built into the dome switches doesn't hurt the joystick at all. The louder clicking sound takes a little getting used to, but the joystick is much improved.
The fire button though... that's a slightly different matter. The problem there isn't with the dome switch, but the extra thick plastic that covers the entire circuit board. While the plastic on the Atari board was as thin as very flimsy Scotch tape, the plastic on the Best circuit board is as thick as a two layers of heavy-duty plastic mailing tape. So what happens is, depending on your particular fire button (or even the spring that holds it up) you may have to press harder than normal to get it to make contact. The post in the center of the button doesn't protrude very far, so the rest of the button might bottom out on the plastic covering, before the switch gets fully pressed. I had one joystick spring that prevented any of several fire buttons I tried from working at all on the new circuit boards. Eventually, I found a spring and button combination that works perfectly on my modded joystick. On my other joystick though, you have to press a bit harder than normal to get contact. Hopefully, it will wear in after awhile. We'll see. The tolerances are just a bit too tight, so your mileage may vary. I think they should have either made the plastic covering a tiny bit thinner, or included a re-designed button with a slightly longer center post.
At any rate, once I got it dialed in, the upgraded circuit board was worth getting. It has a very reassuring and responsive feel to it. Different from a standard Atari joystick, yet still familiar. Just better. I'd recommend getting one, if you've got an Atari joystick on its last leg. Or rather, I'd recommend getting two, since that's the minimum for a rebuild kit. (Three, if you're just buying the circuit board.) The joystick handles included with the kits also work very well, although I didn't actually need to get them, since it turned out the NOS kits I got a few years ago had the exact same handles.
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