the official Channel F thread!

[+atari2600land]

Someone out there bid $750 for a cardboard box. It clearly states that no game comes with it. It's just the box. And it's apparently the most valuable box in all of box history.

[Mikebloke]

Still three days to add a bid lol. I'd be interested to see if it gets the same level of stupidity of bidders this time round.

 

I'll be honest if I was going to sell, I'd sell now. I forgot to check it out but I think there has been some SABA and the Swedish one going recently and I don't think they've been commanding the same prices. So what is it about the regular Fairchild/Zircon ones that seems to be attracting so much attention.

[Mzcarmendy]

On 8/24/2020 at 10:39 AM, Ashevent said:

If these start going for over a grand, i'm selling one of my extra model 1's!..lol

@Ashevent if your willing to sell your extra one without the absurd price I would be willing to buy it. If it’s a price I can afford. I’m looking for a model 1 as a wedding gift for my fiancé. My search ultimately led me to this forum. I haven’t had much luck yet. Lmk thanks.

[Ashevent]

52 minutes ago, Mzcarmendy said:

@Ashevent if your willing to sell your extra one without the absurd price I would be willing to buy it. If it’s a price I can afford. I’m looking for a model 1 as a wedding gift for my fiancé. My search ultimately led me to this forum. I haven’t had much luck yet. Lmk thanks.

So I have to pull one out of storage and make sure it still works. As of now the last 2 in box went for over $1200 on eBay. I realize what i want is still WAY over priced but i'm shooting for $600 in take home profit so I can buy a Jack Bros. That's really the only reason I wanted to sell one, I used to have 2 model 1's , 1 for backup but now I use my model 2 for gameplay and save my cherished model 1 (what I had as a kid). Again, i'm well away that price is too damn much, honestly it should be $150 plus shipping but it's hard for me to throw away that much potential profit..lol. I think most of us believe that the current prices are going to crash once COID settles down and people are back to work. 

[INTVCruise]

Hey guys, just picked up a system along with cart some cartridges, I wasn't able to find much information on cartridge numbers 11 and 15, can someone give me an idea of what loose copies go for. It seems like 15 is somewhat uncommon but haven't seen a price anywhere on ebay or otherwise, 11 I haven't been able to locate either. Both tested and work. Thank you! 

[Mikebloke]

On 9/4/2020 at 2:47 AM, INTVCruise said:

Hey guys, just picked up a system along with cart some cartridges, I wasn't able to find much information on cartridge numbers 11 and 15, can someone give me an idea of what loose copies go for. It seems like 15 is somewhat uncommon but haven't seen a price anywhere on ebay or otherwise, 11 I haven't been able to locate either. Both tested and work. Thank you! 

Edit: sorry I read it as 11 to 15 not 11 and 15... Ignore most of the below... Haha! 

 

About £10 a game loose for those numbers. Baseball is nearly as common as blackjack, and sonar/robot war doesn't tend to command much more. Backgammon sometimes gets more money. You might get more in the current climate but unboxed they won't command much more I would have thought. No. 15 as you say is rarer. However, it regularly flips from being low priced to higher priced. Unboxed you might start at £20 and do it as a bid. It's not as uncommon as people think, supply is low but so is demand. 

 

Again, current prices might be higher. If you sell put it as an auction and see how it goes. Could always take the risk of putting them in one sale and slap a $100  $50 starting bid. 

Edited September 5, 2020 by Mikebloke

[Mikebloke]

Just checked my own emails and apparently I sold acey deucey boxed for £5 last year. Sucks to be me! Lol!

[kleeder]

 

 

Edited September 8, 2020 by kleeder

[kleeder]

oh wow, this is a big embed, sorry.

just thought this was a cool thing to share

[+atari2600land]

Why does it use cart #28? That's Tetris, right?

[Mikebloke]

I did wonder if the recent recognition of Jerry Lawson has contributed to some of the price hikes. He's had his name mentioned a good number of times now. I'm still convinced it's all scalpers hoping to get some poor sucker to pay a few thousand dollars for a game that used to go for under 500 in a near complete library set. 

[e5frog]

28 was the next in line at the time. i seem to remember I posted some of those. 

Not bad, from a distance, they could have paid better attention to details. 

#40 would have been cool as Mr Lawson was born then. 

[Rob Mitchell]

The boxed Democart went for $865 on eBay.

Edited September 21, 2020 by Rob Mitchell

[Leeroy ST]

On 9/8/2020 at 3:46 PM, kleeder said:

 

 

 

Jerry Lawsons involvement vaporized once Fairchild started receiving less coverage and were about to pull Channel F "II" and if Fairchild was mentioned unrelated engineers would be brought up but often than not people buried fairchild for decades.

 

That + the question in this tweet are funny, it's very clear WHY he is not recognized as one of the industry giants. I'm not even going to answer that tweets question in this thread anyone could figure this out in seconds. The fact it's coming from Reggie baffles me.

 

But maybe if his name was OJ he would have gotten more press. Even Reggie is only really famous due to external Nintendo influence and the "confusion" of who he was initially. But he wasn't as important to video games as Lawson was so he gets a pass.

 

Shame even 50 years later people are still asking this silly question but say they want to fix things. Maybe I'll always be pessimistic I don't expect anything to change I have seen things get worse all these decades so I don't have any reason to think things will get better.

 

The articles at Lawsons death years ago (2011) were pandering and he was buried once again a few weeks after, some of those articles are deleted and don't even exist anymore.

 

Anyway that's a cool little gift.

 

 

Edited September 21, 2020 by Leeroy ST

[Atari_Bill]

9 hours ago, Rob Mitchell said:

The boxed Democart went for $865 on eBay.

Honestly cheaper than I expected.  

[kleeder]

Some of you might know about battleofthebits.org, which is probably the only place on the internet with a lot of active channelf-composers(?)

Anyway, there's a Channel F 4-Hour-Music-Battle happening tomorrow on Sep 24 (https://battleofthebits.org/arena/XHB/5118/), and due to that event, a few more people are suddenly interested in learning something about the console and music player routines.

That's why i started to share invites to a Channel F discord server in some of the main places to get as many f-interested people on there. I also tried to link back to some websites from there (like this thread, the subreddit and the wiki).

in case some of you have a discord-acc and are interested in taking a look, here's an invite-link: https://discord.gg/wBN4QVn

 

((but you dont have to))

 

[Mikebloke]

Cool ill join if I can

[Jorbus]

I recently acquired a Fairchild VES and 18 carts. The console appears to be working fine, and after testing most carts are working but 2 of them  (numbers 19 and 22) I cannot get to work. When I insert them into the console I don't get the color change from white to green on the G? Screen and when I hit the 1 button it just loads Hockey. Any ideas for a fix or are these carts toast?

[Mikebloke]

I'll buy 19 off you. 

[e5frog]

5 hours ago, Jorbus said:

... but 2 of them  (numbers 19 and 22) I cannot get to work...

The #19 and #22 usually haven't aged very well. They often have rubbery blobs poured over the chips instead of the usual plastic covers, #19 more (all of them?) more so than #22.
You can often see the bond wires through or going through that layer.

They often share the same hardware so a #19 can be re-jumpered to #22 and vice versa. If you're lucky they can both be changed into working carts - or at least one.

No need to open all your other carts, this is the only known board of this kind, Zircon where saving money or possibly intended for both games to be accessible.

On the blob type version, by the 74LS02 on the PCB, there's two jumper wires. If you want a double release, and it's working, there's a possibility to put a switch there.

 

 

The other version, with plastic covers have been factory modified but IIRC it doesn't switch games if original trace is restored.

 

On this #22 the trace is not rerouted, so probably no use trying to change anything:

 

I think Dennis (FND) had details on the jumpers, in my opinion - don't mess with it if the game is working.

There's of course the option to replace the board with a newly made PCB, at least the rest will be authentic.

 

 

Edited September 25, 2020 by e5frog

[e5frog]

Here's Dennis's image showing three types with blobs, showing the jumpers better.
Don't think all three games is on the same chip even though jumper settings may suggest that, I know 19/22 is an option.

http://fndcollectables.com/fairchild_early/pcb_time_line_4.jpg

 

 

Edited September 25, 2020 by e5frog

[Jorbus]

Thanks for the info @e5frog but I fear this is all well above my pay grade. I guess these 2 carts will be relegated to display until I get more confident with tinkering with them.

To clarify they're behavior it is a bit more nuanced than previously described. When inserted with the console on the (White) G? Screen will change the background to green and load a garbled version of the built-in games (19 does hockey and 22 does tennis) and selecting speed and other options will eventually freeze everything. Checkers also makes a single audio blip when attempting to load. (Attached is an image of the screen when I try checkers)

Slot Machine sometimes brings up a mess of lines and squares and pressing the number buttons starts an endless series of blips (the slot machine sound?) That won't stop until I turn off the console. 

Neither cart rattles when (gently) shaken so i dont think the "blobs" have come detached from the board, and neither has visible corrosion on the pins when I flip up the flap on the carts.

If inserted when the console is off and then powering it on will give me (more often than not) a plain white screen and the number buttons do nothing.

 

[e5frog]

Looks worrying, I assume you pressed reset after (while unit being powered on) insertion? This has been missed before by others. 

Console is not considered to run as it is supposed to unless reset has been pressed.

 

The blobs don't fall off, the plastic covers sometimes do. The connector part is very rarely a problem.
Not sure if the chip or bond wires are affected, just know that they fail - a lot more than other types, could be that one of them reacts with the blob material itself. Guess it could be a reason they aren't that common.

I've got a board I "de-blobbed" in the 90's, have had a conversation now and then for a couple of years with a wire bonding guy here in Sweden (there aren't too many) but I haven't really been able to afford the service, would have been interesting to see if they can be re-bonded or if it's the chip itself that has suffered damage.

 

 

[+atari2600land]

Trimerous update:

I finally got my butt over to the copy store and got some copies made of the manual. I got home and cut a few out. I have 18 manuals left to assemble. I think I did a good job on them. e5frog helped me out with the layout. I did the text and all the illustrations and stuff. I like it when my video game things work out well. It's an 8 page color manual.

[+stupus]

2 hours ago, atari2600land said:

Trimerous update:

I finally got my butt over to the copy store and got some copies made of the manual. I got home and cut a few out. I have 18 manuals left to assemble. I think I did a good job on them. e5frog helped me out with the layout. I did the text and all the illustrations and stuff. I like it when my video game things work out well. It's an 8 page color manual.

Cool, look forward to 1!