bobotech

I don't have anything of my original 8 bit stuff. I still sorely regret trading all of my atari 8bit stuff off back when I got bored of it. I got my 400 back in 80 or 81 when I was 12 or 13 in the winter of 80 just before xmas time. My parents got it for 550 at Macy's and the Educator kit. God how I loved that machine. Got subscriptions for Creative Computing, Softside, Compute!, and others. I lived breathed and ate my 400. I didn't have money for cool stuff like a disc drive or modem or a good monitor so i just used my 410 recorder and my little b/w tv. I did upgrade to 48k or 32k a year later. My step-dad was highly impressed that I had no qualms about opening up my 400 and installing the "no user serviceable parts" memory upgrade. I had my 400 as my sole computer right up until 83 I think when I flew to DC to visit my dad (I lived in CT at the time) and brought the money I saved up so I could buy a used 1200xl off of the classified ads. Bargained the seller down from his asking price to like 190 or something by showing him ads for new 1200xls that were being dumped. In 85 or 86, I finally bought a BUNCH of atari 8bit accessories like dual Indus GT drives, 850 interface, some sort of printer, a Radio Shack 300baud direct connection modem, and a ton of floppies and games from someone on our local classifieds. We had a paper back then called the Bargain News that was awesome. It was free to place ads so it was very popular. I bought the Bargain News every thursday when it came out. Found someone close to me who was selling all that Atari stuff and bought it all from him. Had all that stuff until like 87 or 88 when I got the idea for trading off my Atari computer stuff for a motorcycle. I traded it all. All of my magazines, computers, accessories, everything for a motorcycle. In retrospect, it wasn't a bad trade, it was just one that I regretted doing mainly for nostalgia's sake in the future. So I have nothing of my old computer stuff which still saddens me. I have since replaced ALL of it and much more except for one thing that still eludes me, an 850 interface. I don't need one but I would like to have one just because I had one back then. I even have the Atari 400 of my dreams now. I found an Atari 400 that has a full real keyboard, 48k upgrade, and other stuff. I so wanted a real keyboard for my 400. I also have 4 or 5 1200XLs, that is my favorite system mainly because I just love the look and style of it. I also have a few of the new fangled XE systems, a couple of 130xes, a 65xe, and a two or three XEGS systems and a bunch of floppy drives. No 810 drives but I think 6 1050 drives (2 are still in the original boxes and then they are in the original shipper box). I also have 2 or 3 Rana dirves, 4 Indus GT drives and one of those XE floppy drives (XF551?). Oh yeah, a 600xl and a few 800xls, never cared much for those models. Just didn't like the compact styling, they reminded me of the C64 which I always though of as being seriously ugly. But I still MISS my original stuff! Oh how I would love to have my original 400 and that 1200xl that I bargained for from some stranger when i was a kid. Impressed the hell out of my dad that I was able to do something like that. So how much of your original hardware and/or software do you have still?

I'm bored and started typing it in NOTEPAD. Once I'm done tomorrow, I will upload it here so you can grab it.

Spokane, WA. I wasn't sure about posting it here or just doing the ebay route. I Have a few people interested in a few things so I might do that route first before I start ebaying.

Well the money will be used to pimp out my 1991 Honda Civic with dubs and underglow and a bumpin' system. LOL It is going to go towards my home. I want to buy a storage shed for the side of my new home, do some home improvements, etc.

I already sold my vectrex and haven't regretted it in the least. I probably used it once in the last 5 years

That is the thing.I'm not collecting anymore just to see how much I can get. There are people with far more stuff that I could ever imagine to have. I don't care about boxed stuff so why hang onto stuff like my boxed Chromo Cross. I don't even like rpg games. I just don't need all this stuff when I see myself being happy with emulation for the majority of my game playing. Heck the system that gets the most use is my og xbox with coin ops 5 on it.

You guys have valid points. I haven't been actively collecting for years now. I mean I will buy something if I see something cheap and intriguing but for the most part,the extent of my active collecting is searching craigslist about once a month for the keyword ATARI and looking for 8 bit stuff which I never see anymore. I might keep a 7800 and a bunch of the popular games though. I certainly don't eat, drink, sleep videogames anymore.

A common theme is that people end up regretting selling their collection later on. I'm curious why that is. At this point, I'm moving to a much smaller place and won't have the space to store all of my collection. I never play ANY of my collection at this point. My goal right now would be to reduce my entire collection to just Atari 8-bit which is my first and true love. My first video game system was an Atari 2600 but I lost interest in it soon after I got my Atari 8 bit. I never had any other systems other than an Atari 8bit computer right up until 88 or 89 when I bought a cheap Compuadd IBM XT clone. Heck, I never bought a NES until around 91 or so when my ex and I bought one. Then we got a Genesis as well. So I really never had any of the other popular systems so I don't seem to feel a kinship towards them. I have a TON of apple 2 stuff, commodore stuff, and a lot of other game systems and software. Do you think I will regret parting ways with 90 percent of my collection down the road? I am contemplating building a MAME cabinet that will also be used for all of the popular other systems like Colecovision, NES, Genesis, etc.

Ironically, I went to Salvation Army today and saw that they had 2 Sony WEGA Trinton models. They were the bigger ones, probably 32 or 36 but they were 4:3 aspect ratio. Perfect for gaming I imagine. ONe of them had a huge amount of inputs including DVI/hdcp and the matching base. 100 bux. Too much money but man, if I had a big place, I would be tempted.

I am moving to a much smaller place and will have zero room for any cool CRT monitors. I see nice flat face CRT tube monitors all the time cheap. 32" and so on. I just wish I had room for one and that they aren't so heavy. That is why I posted recently asking if LCD tvs could have decent pictures for classic video games.

What about older early LCD monitors? The older 14-17 inch 4:3 LCD monitors with VGA only inputs? I imagine they would be supported under win95/dos. The problem is that when WIn 95 (why not Windows 98SE, so much better than Win95?) was created, I don't think that widescreen was even a thought so none of the widescreen modes were implemented under the OS settings. That is just a theory though. But an old 14 inch LCD should support 640x480 @60hz with no problem. Native resolution was probably 1024x768 but it should still work enough. I even remember Windows 3.1 supported 1024x768 @60hz back in the day with proper drivers for your Trident or S3 video cards. In a nutshell, older LCD monitors should have enough overlap with the earlier VESA standards so they should work.

Yeah, it was entertaining. I never had any other cartridges for it though. I actually traded it for a yamaha branded bike frame back around 80/81 to a friend. My step-dad was pissed and made me trade it back though. LOL

Very sorry for your loss.

What about those cheap s-video/composite to vga converters? Do they work okay for game systems? I got one at a thrift store a while back but have never used it yet.

I was born in 1967. In the early seventies (can't remember exactly when), my mom took me to Disney World in Orlando, FL. We stayed at the Hyatt (again, I think) and they had 3 games in the main lobby that left a life long impression on me. They were just arcade cocktail pongs. All I remember of them is that they were black cocktail games and were pong style. I wanted to play them as much as possible. I was about 6-8 years old. When I got home, I remember looking through the Sears or JC Penney catalogs and seeing the original Odyssey 1 system with the overlays in it and wanting my parents to buy it for me. I told them, "Look, it only says like 9.99 s/h". I didn't know that the s/h was shipping and handling. LOL Never got it. Was way too expensive. The next year or two, I asked and got a Telstar pong. The first Coleco model with the woodgrained cabinet. Loved that stupid thing. Then soon after, I got a typical pong with more games including a light gun system. Enjoyed that but got bored of it quickly. It was only fun because it had that lightgun. Around 1978 or so, I used to love getting the Consumers Distributing and Service Merchandise catalogs (stores in the N.E. that were catalog showrooms) and browsing them wanting all sorts of stuff. I remember seeing the Channel F and the 2600 near the back. The 2600 was on the top of the page and the channel F was on the bottom. I wanted that 2600 so badly. I remember going to Consumers Distributing and Service Merchandise and seeing the 2600 in them. They also had that weird but cool Coleco(?) pong system with replaceable cartridges that was shaped like a triangle and had a gun on one side and a steering wheel on the other. I wanted that system too. I think at the time it was on clearance. Never got it. My mom and step dad did buy me a RCA Studio 2 at Radio Shack when Radio Shack was blowing them out at clearance prices. Yes, I liked that horrible system. But shortly after, my dad broke down and got me an early 2600. That was my system. I loved it. My first games were Air/Sea battle and Canyon Bomber and my favorite, Breakout. Got Asteroids and Space Invaders and Missile Command soon after when they came out for xmas and birthdays. I had used the Teletypes in my jr high school to write simple programs that were punched out on paper tape that we would then upload via an acoustic modem at 110baud to the PDP system at the highschool. I was hooked. The following year, we got Apple 2 and TRS 80 model 1s at the jr high. I used to read Creative Computing ALL the time and read almost all issues possible. The school library even had the early issues that were like news letters. David Ahl was my idol back then. I remember reading a story about a guy who went to an early computer show and went with someone because they were looking for computers for use with education. The author of the article saw an atari computer and it was showing Star Raiders. He was blown away by how it was even possible to have graphics like that. I then researched computers that I would liked to have had. I used to compare things like amount of colors displayed on the screen along with the resolution. Everyone touted the Apple 2 but I knew from research that the Atari's video capabilities were far better than the Apple 2 so that was what I wanted. But remember, that was in the days of $600+ Atari 400s and $1200 Apple 2 systems. That xmas, I finally convinced my parents that getting me an Atari 400 with the programmer kit was the best thing for a budding nerd like me. They bought the 400 at Macy's. It was 499 or 549 I think. They also got me the programmers kit. Soon after, I got Star Raiders and that was my game playing machine. I got subscriptions to Compute! and other magazines. I loved typing into those programs, even on the horrible 400 keyboard. I loved this one defender like game that was in Softside. Oh the days of using an Atari 410 recorder with a 400. I lost interest in my 2600 after that point. It was pointless. I got the Atari 8-bit pacman and scoffed at my friends who had 2600 pacman. Ouch. I ended up getting a 1200xl soon after when I visited my dad in DC. My dad was blown away by my pre-teen bargaining powers. I really wanted the 1200xl. I found one for sale in the classifieds in the paper but I knew the guy was asking too much because the price was dropping. I had saved up 250 dollars (I think) and had brought it with me. I called the guy up and my dad drove me to him and I had brought along a couple of magazines showing the prices of the 1200xl and how cheap they were getting due to being considered a bastard by the public. I then bargained him down to 200 dollars if I remember correctly. Mind you, I was around 14 years old at the time and here I am bargaining like a seasoned flea market veteran. My dad was impressed. LOL I ended up trading the 1200 and 400 and all of the accessories I had bought in years after that around 1987 or so for a motorcycle and got married. Ex-wife and I bought a NES around 1989 and we loved that thing. Next system we got was a Genesis. We got an Atari Lynx too. I still have the Lynx but it doesn't work anymore. Early model Lynx. Got divorced in 97 and moved. THe next systems I bought new were a PS1 for the kids, then an N64, Dreamcast, and Xbox 1. After that, Xbox 360 and PS3 and PSP. I'm excluding all the system I collected for collecting reasons rather than buying as new. The kids had gotten thoughout the years, various incarnations of Gameboys and they even got those horrible Tiger portable game systems with the touchpad. I think I still have one of them. LOL

Very interesting info. I will have several LCD monitors to play with. An old SD only 17 inch 4:3 TV (that one would be nice since its smaller for the bar between the kitchen and living room), the pair of 21" widescreen Samsungs, and a 24" widescreen Samsung as well. Plus my main DLP tv in the living room. And of course, I always could dig out one of the old 1084 Commodore moniters from my stash.

So the picture quality is nice? For example, I just bought a pair of Samsung 215TW monitors from our local recycling yard that have bad capacitors which I am going to refurbish. They are typical 21" widescreen monitors with composite, component, dvi, and vga inputs. I figure I was going to use one of them for my classic games and computers. I was thinking of using an old vcr for demodulating the RF only games.

I still have a bunch of old school CRT tube monitors but honestly, I would not mind just using modern LCD tvs with them. No i haven't tried it but I wonder how others feel about using their old composite games or even RF based games with LCD tvs?

Man, what a blast from the past. My parents bought me one brand new in 1979/1980 when Radio Shack was blowing them out. I did actually enjoy that bowling game. No idea what ever happened to it, tossed out long ago I assume.

I forget, can this machine use a standard VGA monitor? I seem to remember hooking it up to a regular VGA monitor 9-10 years ago when I last powered it up.

So in other words, keeping my 1040st(e?) would probably be better for games anyway. I don't do desktop publishing, graphic arts, music, etc so it is a machine that would be wasted on me. Can you easily add hard drives or other forms of mass storage to the 1040 class of machines? That is the one appealing feature of the TT030, is that it has the internal hard drive.

I just bypassed the whole ST era back in the late eighties. I didn't have money for fancy computers so I ended up going with a low end entry level Compuadd XT clone around 1988 or so and left my atari stuff behind. I collect to mainly play games. Like recreating my childhood with stuff that I could only dream of and now can afford cheaply. Found a lot of nice stuff in my basement that I have long forgotten about (15 years worth of collecting, but I'm moving to a much smaller place). Sega Nomad, 3 Indus GT drives for my 8 bit stuff, couple of 1200XLs, couple of Virtual Boys, lots of Apple 2 stuff, an Amiga (never ever had an interest in them), and my TT030 and a customized 1040st (has a bunch of added on chips and stuff), a few Commodore monitors, and a pair of Atari SC1224 monitors and my Northstar Horizon. The key is that I like to play games, not really use applications. Honestly, what do people use the TT030 for when you say applications? Sounds like it really isn't geared for video games though.

I have a TT030 system in my basement. Powered it up about 9 years ago and it apparently worked fine. Had a hard drive, forgot what size though. Anyway, I am thinking of getting rid of it but what should I look for in the system? I don't have any software for any ST class machine other than what is on the hard drive. I just never used an ST machine when I was growing up. It was all 8-bit atari for me as a young one. But this TT030 thing intrigues me. Was it made before or after the Falcon?

Doesn't everyone need to run Wordstar and Dbase to be able to be productive?

Aha, Looked at the faq, I have a couple of those Rana 1000 drives.