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80s_Atari_Guy

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Posts posted by 80s_Atari_Guy

    is there a non-greedy person selling the atari 2600 for it's actual price?

    in Atari 2600

    Posted

    Everything Kosmic Stardust, said. Spot on.

    It's getting mental, now. Prices for things that once sold for next to nothing, now sell for prices close to, or even more, than the system sold in it's heyday. Empty boxes now sell for mad prices, as collectors try to put value to their collections by adding a box. Kind of makes you wonder why no-one has a business selling repro boxes, and polys.

     

    The Atari 2600 6-shooter woody, is now very desirable and actually sells easily and for high prices, especially boxed. The 4-shooter is getting close, while the Jnr isn't as desitable. So perhaps look for a Jnr ? Here in the UK they go for peanuts, so it might be similar over in the US.

    • Like 1

    Annoying things about your favorite systems?

    in Classic Console Discussion

    Posted

    Commodore 16 / Plus4 - Why take industry standard 9-pin joystick ports, and change them for mini din sockets ? And why change the cassette port to a mini din ?


    Intellivision - The joypads being wired to the system. And that Disc will always divide opinion. I hated it.


    Colecovision - That massive PSU, with non-standard socket. Those awful controllers.


    Atari 7800 - All Atari''s previous hardware had fairly standard PSU sockets, so it was easier to get replacement PSUs. Cue the 7800, with it's weird PSU socket.


    Acorn Electron - Really nice computer, Acorn's cheap BBC Micro alternative. But when you wanted to expand it, Plus 1, Plus 3, Roms, etc.. you ended up with a computer now bigger than a BBC B.



    Commodore 64 - The Joysticks ports 1 & 2 were great if you wanted some 2-player action. But for one player, you never knew if the game wanted Port 1 or Port 2, so you would have to keep swapping ports. If you left 2 joysticks in at all times, you sometimes had problems, including weird characters appearing on the home screen.

    • Like 2

    What's the coolest new thing that you've found for the Atari?

    in Atari 8-Bit Computers

    Posted · Edited by 80s_Atari_Guy

    Did you also know that ebay actually edits your By-It-Now sells, puts in their own price, and will often change the ad from a BIN ad to a bidding ad ?

     

    I had a lot of 1970s Tomy plastic mini games called Pocketeers. I knew their value, and also knew the more desirable and rarer ones - 2 of which I had. I listed them as By-It-Now ads with a fixed price and postage for each, and NO offers.

    Within a week, ebay changed the lot, all of them. So I now had 20 ads changed from By-It-Now NO Offer, to Bidding starting at a low offer, and "Make Offer" was now available. They also changed my fixed postage, which simply covered my costs, to FREE Postage.

    And their message to me was something like "We have changed your ads because they were not selling, and offered free postage." - I mean, unbelievable. So I had to manually change 20 ads, quickly, before anyone started bidding.

     

    Edit: Wow, don't see a 1025, very often.

    • Like 2

    What's the coolest new thing that you've found for the Atari?

    in Atari 8-Bit Computers

    Posted

    Right. All of what you are saying, I understand. It is specifically the accusation of price fixing by eBay that I am asking about; even to the extent that you believe it might reach the level of illegal activity.

     

    pixelmischief, I can't speak for The Doctor, but I kind of see what he might be getting at. When you advertise on ebay, say a retro item, ebay tries to influence the price by saying something along the lines of "This item recently sold for xx.xx amount", they then fill in automatically the price for your item, and it's down to the seller to change this and put their own price in. The same goes for postage, ebay seems to want to dictate how much you post it for and who the postal service is. Again, you have to manually edit this and put your own price in.

     

    So, a lot of prices on ebay, from sellers who might not know the real value, are influenced by ebay's "This item recently sold for".

    For example, a Commodore 64 might have recently sold for £150 ($198). But what the seller isn't told is that the C64 may have been boxed and had a 1541 included. So the seller thinks their C64, unboxed, yellowed, and no games or 1541, is now worth £150. And this is what is driving prices up, because that C64 would have only been worth less than half the price recommended by ebay.

    • Like 2

    What's the coolest new thing that you've found for the Atari?

    in Atari 8-Bit Computers

    Posted

    All my local second-hand shops, charity shops, and pre-owned games stores, all now use ebay to price their retro stuff.

    But what is annoying is that most of them use BIN sales, and the more expensive BINs, not what those items actually sold for. So, for example, they might have a nice boxed SNES for sale. They will price it the same as a high-priced BIN, not prices of actual sold boxed SNES.

    I often ask them about the condition, has it yellowed, does it have the polys/manuals/PSU/cables. etc.. But I don't think they care or understand. I have told one of the guys there that you won't sell that yellowed SNES, unless the buyer either doesn't care, or is prepared to put some graft in and de-yellow it.

     

    Here in the UK, we have Car-Boot sales where people take their cars to large open spaces - normally a massive grass field. And sell their stuff from their cars. These are the places to get retro on the cheap. Problem is, the one near me is massive - the size of a football pitch - and you need to be there early, very early. It takes about 1 hour, just to walk every isle, and you need to be on your game. The downside, is often the sellers just take really poor quality stuff there. Often filthy, and unboxed, and no way of telling if it's working.

    • Like 3

    Thinking of selling or just getting rid of the 486. Suggestions?

    in Classic Computing Discussion

    Posted

    Yeah, I read about DOM write lifespan. Thing is, my current HD has had it. It's clicking on boot-up, and occasionally sticking, so I need to remove it and gently tap it. I don't mind losing everything on it because it's only 500Mb, it's just getting a working mechanical replacement, without errors, is in the lap of the gods.

    Most who I have spoken to have said DOMs are better and faster than a SDCard solution, but obviously less reliable over a longer lifespan.

    What's the coolest new thing that you've found for the Atari?

    in Atari 8-Bit Computers

    Posted · Edited by 80s_Atari_Guy

    Back in the spring, I saw a Atari disk version of Koronis Rift going for £75 (about $100), and the pictures clearly showed lots of mould on the disk. When I asked him if it worked, he said he didn't know - i.e. He tested it, it didn't work, so he pretends not to understand what he has. It reminds me of THE most annoying ebay thing, and that is this. "Untested". Because, untested means it didn't work. Also, "I lost the power supply", or "I lost the tv cables". Some are genuine, because they move into a house and find these things left in the roof space.

     

    I suspect most here are clued up now on what to spot. But there are many who are now just getting back into retro, and it's these I feel sorry for.

     

    Another annoying thing being sold on ebay is this. Empty Boxes. I see empty boxes from systems that, a few years ago, came with everything - Box, System, PSU, Cables, Games. Not today. I wouldn't mind if the prices were what they should be, but they're mental prices.

    Just as a example, look at this listing, it's just nuts.

     

    https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Nintendo-Game-Boy-Advance-SP-Tribal-Limited-Edition-Silver-Empty-Box/332716787703?epid=110620675&hash=item4d777747f7:g:i9gAAOSwWV9bRdTq

     

    I can't believe they actually have the balls to post that. Hopefully, nobody pays that for a empty box. I got my tribal for half that, boxed, and with the manuals, charger, and the SP.

     

     

     

    I've been wanting to collect original Infocom games, but the Atari versions prices are insane

     

    Ha, yes, same here. I want them on Disk, but the prices are nuts. I have nearly 50 disks, and some of mine go for absolutely mental prices, especially the Datasoft/ USGold Disk titles.

    • Like 2

    What's the coolest new thing that you've found for the Atari?

    in Atari 8-Bit Computers

    Posted

     

    Most uncool thing about Atari sometime selfish greedy eBay pricks with over inflated prices for common as muck Atari items

     

    Yep. Particularly Atari (And C64) Disk-based games. I see, even now, C64 disk games going for hundreds of pounds, 2 - 3x the price of the actual hardware. I regularly see Atari disk games go for anything upto £100 ($132). Nuts.

    Stick "Rare", after everything, and you can magically inflate the price.

     

    And, I still don't get why Secam Rose motherboards go for much higher prices than a normal atari board. What do they do different from a normal regular board ?

    • Like 1

    What's the coolest new thing that you've found for the Atari?

    in Atari 8-Bit Computers

    Posted

     

     

    or simply to educate the Android tablet generation - the living history of the Atari 400/800 etc hardware - that these videogames remain playable and fun - just like they did back in the day.

     

    But it doesn't educate them of the following.

    Memories.

    The feel and feedback you get from real hardware.

    The feel of using the joysticks we were using.

    The feel of the keyboard.

    What is inside the machine, and plugging in a 1010/1050, or a cartridge.

     

    Most teens I know think the tablet itself is running the game, natively, not a software emulator. If you try to explain what Altirra is actually doing, they look at me as if I'm talking in Chinese. They have no idea what a 6502 is, Pokey, a PIA, or Antic. Most simply don't care. I have even been asked if a 6502 is a early Intel CPU, and how many cores did it have.

    If my mate sits his own kids down infront of a CRT, a C64 or Atari 800XL, a 1010 or a 1050, a Competition Pro joystick, and sits in the background watching them. They are fascinated by the hardware. He has to intervene, now and then, because they need to be told how to load a tape or disk, but they learn quick and are soon doing it all on their own. Back in the 80s, both me and my mate typed in a Vic-20 game called City Crusher. So last November, we setup a Vic-20 and a sd2iec and got them to load up the game we typed out back in the early 80s. They loved it, and had to keep playing until they landed the plane. When we sat round a table for some lunch, his kids were buzzing. They kept saying, "Did you really make that game from a magazine?" - I don't think they quite understood what, typing out a listing, actually meant. But the connection they made had me and my mate close to tears. They don't even mind the time it takes to load a tape because they either watch the visual border effects you get from a tape loading, or they read the tape inlay.

    • Like 4

    The Official Game Boy Thread

    in Classic Console Discussion

    Posted

    Tanooki, if you have any questions about the Omega, or want me to test anything, just let me know and I'll do my best to answer them.

     

    I own a real PC Engine, and a Turbo EverDrive v2. Not sure if the Everdrive plays CD ISOs, haven't got that far, yet. I also have too many. N64, NES, SNES, Megadrive, Gameboy. They're all older models, though. Can never have enough Everdrives, SDCard solutions, Floppy drive emulators. :)

    The Official Game Boy Thread

    in Classic Console Discussion

    Posted

    Yeah, I couldn't believe the price of the Omega. I also didn't know it plays NES, GB, and GBC games. I guess, like you said, there is a software emulator built in.

    So easy to use, just press a shoulder button and up pops a nice menu. Great support for multiple sizes and speeds of micro sdcards. Incredibly fast loading, and the save-states to the sdcard is another bonus. Love it.

     

    And I love the NES themed SP. I might just end up getting a battered SP and a new NES case for it.

    The Official Game Boy Thread

    in Classic Console Discussion

    Posted · Edited by 80s_Atari_Guy

     

     

    The last GG I had was a blue one which had the usual problems, so I had what you're talking about done and was able to source a kit well below market out of sheer luck. It had like 2 or 4 white LED lights in a strip inside of a repurposed old original Sega LCD frame and the light distribution on it was fantastic while not compromising the screen, yet removing that unsteady annoying blue glow. A nice bonus perk was like 2-3x the battery life as the internal CFL in there sucked

     

    Yeah, that is what I am looking forward to. The seller claimed to almost triple his battery life from around 2 hours, to about 5+ hours.

     

     

     

    I wouldn't bother really with your tribal, they're harder to come by I'd just leave it be unless you have some personal attachment to it to do that. You could just easily stuff the panel into a repop of another color, special pattern, or even NES style frame. Another choice I once did which is awesome since you can run off the rack AA batteries is the 101 in a GBA. All the comfort of a game pad with the 101 quality and a regular power source.

     

    I do worry about ruining it by making a mistake. I think the hardest part is getting it to fit inside that plastic frame, I see some do make slight modifications to the frame to make it fit. My Tribal is in nice condition, and it's rare to find one without any scratches to the main body, or screen. I think it would be best to buy a old battered one, replace the screen, and get a new case.

     

    Just to edit.

    Here is my Tribal, and my newly purchased EZ Flash Omega.

     

    Z0SOl2.jpg
    5aPqw3.jpg
    SZYQR3.jpg
    amJtMM.jpg

    SDrive-MAX ATX support

    in Atari 8-Bit Computers

    Posted

    Thanks, looks great.

     

    I think I have found a temporary case. A TI99/4a plastic RF Modulator box. These were the cheap and nasty boxes, unlike the metal ones which can be composite modded easily - The plastic ones require a lot more work.

    • Like 1

    Sore fingers and hands?

    in Classic Console Discussion

    Posted

    Here in the UK, we have pills that are great for Arthritis. Methotrexate. My arthritis started about 2 years ago, and until this Methotrexate prescription came up, I was often in agony after a few hours using a gamepad. I'm now on 6 tablets a week, followed by Frolic Acid tablets a few days later, the difference is amazing.

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