I recombined the two broken 5200's into one good one. One had a good motherboard, bottom case, and storage compartment lid (and a smashed case top), while the other had a nice case top but a bad motherboard and missing lid. So I took 'em both apart, cleaned everything up, and then assembled the good stuff into a pretty nice looking console. Since I already had another good one (that I polished up nicely with Novus scratch remover and polish), that makes two -- one to use, and one to store in the big ol' 5200 box "just in case."

The stuff from Best made it to the post office yesterday. They attempted delivery, but since it was insured and no one was home to receive it, they just left a notice. I should be able to pick it all up today. Then, I'll be able to fix up a couple of controllers to store with the spare 5200. And I'll have two brand new gold controllers and a brand new trak-ball. Plus a dozen or so games and some other misc. stuff. Woo hoo!

The conundrum I'm having right now is how to fix the idle wheel in the other trak-ball I own. I can either spend $32 and get an all new set of bearings, shafts, and encoder wheels from Best, or I can spend $12 and just get the ball bearings. But if I do the latter, then I have to find some way to get the shaft out of the existing ball bearing for the idle wheel, then get that axle into the new one. I don't have a press, so I'll have to improvise.

I'm thinking that taking a piece of wood and drilling a hole slightly larger than the shaft would allow me to use a vice to press the shaft out.

It's not that I'm cheap; it's just that I hate 1) to throw things away that are still perfectly good (like the shaft), and 2) storing stuff that I will probably lose track of or never use.

Which reminds me; I have to gather together all my extra stuff and offer it up here on Atari Age. I have a bunch of CIB carts (some still sealed) that are dupelicates, plus other misc. stuff someone else might find useful. It's hard to pursue this hobby without ending up with slightly more stuff than you can use!

Oh, and I'm running out of shelf space for games again. I'm going to have to think long and hard about whether I really want to keep the not-really-fun games such as "Street Racer" any more. There's room to put them in a second row behind the other carts, but I really don't want to do that. It seems wasteful to hold onto something I know I'll never use or get any enjoyment out of, when there might be someone out there who has a real need for it.

My wife and I are going through all the games for all our systems, one by one, playing them. She's never played most of them, having started gaming in the NES era. So perhaps I'll leave it up to her as to what should be done with the games I consider not fun.