thrax

If there is an old game anyone has that you can't finish on a vintage system you might be able to finish it using an emulator if it is really fustrating you. With the advent of emulators, many include a "save state" feature. You can save the state every time you finish a level/section/etc. so you can get to the end. There was an apple ii game called Sea Dragon that was a pain in the butt to get to the bottom but with state saving it was do-able. I was finally able to see what was at teh bottom of those caverns with my submarine :-)

http://www.best-electronics-ca.com/ I have not personally bought from here but others have mentioned it. They'll probably have it and they do ship international.

Same with me. I bought a 2mb 1040 ste and it runs everything i tried. I won't consider getting any of the later models unless i happen to see one dirt cheap on CL or a thrift store. I think a 1040ST set of systems is the best for first time buyers. The 1mb min memory means it has enough to run the majority of software without the higher cost and/or potential incompatibility issues of the later systems.

In fairness to Atari, most competing systems had issues with software when going from 68000 to 030 or 040 systems.

I would say the HIGH COST OF GAS keeps me from buying. I've used craigslist before and i don't even bother looking at ads for outside the city or even the other side of my city. Also i only go to the closer thirft stores and usually if i happen to be going that way.

Intellivision. SInce I had intellivision back in the day and a major fan i can recall some movies that very briefly had it. In the movie 'Easy Money' with Rodney Dangerfield they showed their living room and in one scene you can see an intellivision sitting on a table. In the movie 'Private School for Girls' (one of those 80s Phobe Cates teen movies) I recall a scene where they are in an arcade and in the background you can clearly hear the sound effects of the Intellivision version of Donkey Kong. I also recall very vaguely the Canadian TV show SCTV doing a parity of the Intellivision commercials.

When i got my first ST (and first atari for that matter) a while back, i found the program 'sysinfo' to be useful in telling me some hardware specs. Turns out I had 2 MB instead of 1!

Yeah i remember that game but for the IIGS. I recall the music playing in the background too which in those days was not as common. Here's a review from a vintage iigs site. http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/the_...ragon_wars.html

I check out CL and thriftshops myself but more for vintage computer hardware than video games. I've found the last few months to be a bit of a drought too. I personally never use ebay (for similar reasons lance mentioned). I found from my own experience that spring is good and post Christmas is good. Spring because of people literally spring cleaning and x-mas because people get new hardware and out goes the old. @Lance, a lot of people have similar views and often prefere things like Craigslist. I bought a vintage system once from an owner who was more interested in selling it to someone who would appreciate it and give it a good home than to someone who simply resell it to the highest bidder.

WOW Winning bid: C $1,526.00 Is that a record for a Falcon? Given that this system is like new there were probably few like it. Note: the Canadian dollar is roughly par with the US for comparitative purposes.

Thanks for giving the info. I got the idea from people trying to obtain a "Cannon" computer workstation that runs the NeXT operating system. THere was a manufacturer called 'skout' which made a security system using said computers so people have just as much luck finding the Cannon searching for used skout systems as they would looking for Cannon directly. Maybe now people can also search for "HOST" or Hobbytown if they are seeking falcons!

THere's a hand held portable game system with something like 20+ intellvision games in a "modern" style hand controller. Its called "tv play power" it is bad! The graphics are the same as the orginial system but it doesn't have the same sound effects, background music and is missing levels. found a link http://www.intellivisionlives.com/retrotopia/direct2tv.shtml

That's crazy if they are just using raw numbers. First of all there were less people on Earth 20+ years ago so the pool of buyers was smaller. Also back then you didn't have countries like China which has 1.5 billion people with significant entertainment spending money like they do today (or at least 300 million of them).

My favourite was definately Sword & Serpants. It was unique because it was a 2 player game in which each side had completely different characters (1 knight and 1 wizard). It also made use of the keypad too. THe bad knews is that it is a bit more rare than most.

What I like about your story also is that it was an "alternative way" to obtaining a vintage computer. Most people get vintage stuff from ebay/craigslist/thrifting. In one of my other vintage forums a member obtained a rare hard to find computer not by searching for that computer but by searching for a used "security surveillance" system that happened to use that rare CPU. What was the name of the POS software used in that Atari? Maybe members here can keep an eye out for that POS system's company name while doing searches in order to obtain a vintage Atari that way! For example if the company is called hypothetically 'ABC POS Systems' then maybe searching sites like ebay for that name might yeild some fruit....

That's awesome, i'm really happy for you!

Wow! Nice find! Let me know if you ever decide to sell one of those Mega ST systems. Congratulations that is quite a find!

I don't think that it is a case of intellivision sites being bad while atari sites are good. I think its a case of Atari sites being signifcantly better than most other vintage/classic systems.

I've didn't have either Atari or Amiga in the day and only after being here on this forum a few months it is obvious that any thread with words "Atari" and "Amiga" will grow rather quickly. The store I bought my Mac from was selling Atari/spectre systems and i recall the cost savings being dramatic. Also there were people who wanted an Atari but used the mac software because the ST had very limited software when it first came out. Another reason people liked it was because you would of had greater resolution with the mono ST mode rather than the 512h pixels of the mac. (For the record, i bought the mac since i already had apple peripherals from the 8 bit days, was doing heavy DTP, and a mega sale at the store coupled with apple's educational discount cut teh price gap enough for me to pay extra.)

Also check out any local "Thrift" stores. I picked up my ste for dirt cheap from one. I've had better luck with Thrift stores for vintage systems than Craig's recently but of course the key is to be lucky and patient.

One time i brought a USB stick containing numerous emulators with ROMs. The people at the places I brought it too couldn't get enough of it.

I got S&S for my Intellivision way back when it first came out and it definately seemed so state of the art! Converting it to the 2600 would be difficult to make use of the wizards spells. Half of the fun was the anticipation of using a new found spell. THe keypad on the Intellivision was great for such things. Back in the day we would "trade" games temporarily with other owners. S&S was probably the most requested of my collection

I saw both the movie and remember playing the arcade game as well. I do not recall the video game being great despite it having "realistic" images. One of the things I remember about the arcade game IIRC is that it had a port to plug in headphones from your "walkman" which was unusual. The movie itself did pretty well. Most Clint Eastwood movies due well since he has a cult following. He's one of the few actors considered to be "living legends."

I remember atari pencils. I also remember that "personalized" pencils were the 'in' thing to have.

that's awesome I'm happy for you. That's a good idea that he added a zip drive to the Atari. May I ask what kind of zip drive is it (i.e. Parallel, SCSI) and to which port on the Atari it is connected to?