My rather messy game/computer collection

[Steven Pendleton]

5 hours ago, bluejay said:

The newest additions to my collection... Traded these for an Xbox Series X with @eightbit, which is funny, since it'll take like 12 of him to make up for all the bits included in the photo. Do the math!

 

Now I have something fun to play that isn't a stock trading game on a Commodore PET!

 

I have 2 Geneses (Genesises Genesii whatever) now; A Model 2 and a Non-TMSS Model 1. Most likely the former will be played and the latter will be displayed on a nice glass case I plan on getting.

 

I noticed you can barely see the boxed game in the photo; it's a CIB Checkered Flag. Really nice condition too!

 

Totally random, but does your Retro-Bit controller's d-pad squeak? Mine does and it's loud and super annoying.

[bluejay]

2 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Totally random, but does your Retro-Bit controller's d-pad squeak? Mine does and it's loud and super annoying.

Nope, it only makes the normal blunt clicking noise.

[Steven Pendleton]

9 minutes ago, bluejay said:

Nope, it only makes the normal blunt clicking noise.

Alright, thanks. I used my wired Retro-Bit controller for the first time in almost 2 years last night because I was using headphones, the wireless controllers that I have cause a lot of noise in the headphone jack, and the Japanese SJ-6000's cable is slightly too short to be comfortable. It was fine until I took off my headphones and noticed that the d-pad is super squeaky. I think I will try cleaning it later... I hope that fixes it, since it's a nice controller with a generous cable.

Edited January 30, 2021 by Steven Pendleton

[bluejay]

I do apologize for the lack of updates here, it’s just that I’ve been holding it back until I have my collection all sorted up in my new home. I’ve accumulated some neat new stuff since the last update that I will share in a few weeks, I promise  

 

Meanwhile, I dug up some photos of my stuff that I never posted here, so here they are. 

This boxed GBA that my dad bought back in the day. It must have been before Nintendo sold them officially here, as it’s the Japanese version with a sticker of some private distributor translating essential information in the box to Korean. 

Was blown away when I upgraded from a 2600 to this... in 2019. 

I acquired this at a flea market in Korea a very long time ago. Paid more than I should have but I had a lot of fun with it. 

The heavy sixer I got for my birthday as my first truly retro game console. I was actually given a choice between this and a NES edition GBASP, and I chose the Atari as I already owned the GBA above. 

Found at a flea market for $50. Broken, but it did come with a ton of other goodies including a TPDD. 

I replaced the 100 with this 200. A big plus is that it actually works. I upgraded the RAM to 2 banks of 24k, and its absolutely fabulous. I love this machine. 

16K Extended CoCo 2. This was a Christmas gift of 2019. Spent tons of time playing Dungeons of Daggorath on this thing, which still remains as my all time favorite video game.  

2 of my 3 Compaq LTE 5000 series laptops. I paid like $120 for the lot that included some really useful stuff. All the batteries are flat, so I do plan on rebuilding them in the future. 

Casio FX7000G, the first consumer graphing calculator, released in 1985. Its my “daily driver” calculator that I use at school. 

My relatively minuscule NES game collection. I plan on replacing it with an everdrive in the future. 

Edited June 2, 2021 by bluejay

[bluejay]

Here’s a quick teaser update. Expect large updates this July. Nothing is organized at this moment, and I’ve only opened a few boxes. Big exams are fast approaching, so I don’t have time to mess about right now.

Here’s a beige TI-99/4a that twoquickcapri generously gave me for free. Apparently it doesn’t work so I’ll see what I can do about that.

Mac SE FDHD, AEKII, and some kind of mouse. Floppy drive is behaving weirdly so I’ll have to take a look at that as well. 

M0100 mouse. The optical mouse that came with my Mac 512ke was missing the mousepad, which made it unusable. Now I can use it. 

Found on Facebook for cheap, so I snagged it. Haven’t tested it yet. 
 

So, that vow never to buy a computer after the PET wasn’t kept. Or maybe this stuff falls on the “found for cheap” category. Anyhoo, stay tuned for new updates. 

[bluejay]

Here are some computer manuals and documentation I own. I have a few more laying around here and there (Sears 2600, Apple Monitor II, a single issue of RAINBOW magazine, etc.) but these were what I could find at this moment. The Windows 3.1 user’s guide was found at a Goodwill in Sedona, AZ for $0.99. Was delighted to find it during a trip there. All the rest came with my computer purchases.

 

The Color Computer Learning Lab is really neat; it’s a 3 ring binder packaged with 8 cassette tapes with multiple sample and tutorial programs on each side of the tapes. The papers explain how each program works, so you can learn Extended Color BASIC in a more interactive way, if the manual that came with the computer wasn’t enough.

 

The lengthy supplement manuals for the Apple II are odd; why didn’t they just print a separate manual for it, instead of having you read both the original and supplement and get all confused?

 

The CCR-81 manual is very short and bare bones, but the interesting part is that it has the schematics for the circuitry on the back cover. Certainly something you don’t see today!

Edited June 25, 2021 by bluejay

[bluejay]

Apologies for yet another small update… The computer desk is coming in a couple days, so there SHOULD be that promised huge update by next week.

 

I found this ad for a Powermac G4 Graphite on online, and it was only 20 miles away from me. And it was only $45, and I managed to convince the seller to take that down to $35.

 

The seller also had a shed full of old electronics, in which I found some 486-pentium era computers and laptops, but they were all expensive. 

Here it is. Yeah, it has some scuffs and dings, but hey, $35. I could get rid of those with some wiping. 

It had a Zip disk in that drive… but I have no way to eject it without powering the thing up. Previous owner seems to have unplugged the Zip drive for some reason though; I wonder why. 

Maniac. The previous owner for whatever reason replaced the DVD drive for a CD drive. I’ll replace it sometime later and use that CD drive in a future project. 

Well, not much to see here. Just the rear of a Mac. 

Here are the insides. I really need to clean up those cables; they’re a mess. Also, to further prove that the previous owner was a maniac, he installed 3 256mb RAM sticks and one 64mb stick, resulting in a total 832mb RAM. Seriously, what the hell. Also interesting that it has an internal FireWire port. I wonder what it would be used for. 

Here are the cards that I found installed. The uppermost one is the SCSI card for the internal HDD. Middle one is the video card, which I assume is an ATI Rage 128 Pro. Last one seems to be yet another SCSI card? I’m not sure. 
 

I have not yet powered this up because I don’t have a VGA or DVI monitor, nor do I have any USB Mac keyboards and mice. However, the seller had powered it up and it booted to OS 9.2. 
 

I plan to get a USB controller and try out the Connectix Virtual Game Station. Because my actual PlayStation is so finicky, I plan to use this as my main way to play PS games if the emulation turns out to be any good. I also want to get an AirPort card installed in this thing, although I could just use Ethernet; that is, if I can find an AirPort card for cheap. 

 

I want to use this machine as the bridge between the internet and my SE FDHD, so I can keep Mac files within a Mac environment. I hope the 500MHz PPC is fast enough to handle it.

 

EDIT: didn’t want to do a new post, but it’s an update. I acquired this Samsung 19” CRT, and now I have a temporary usable Mac setup. It’s a heavy beast, but the picture is absolutely gorgeous. 

Edited July 5, 2021 by bluejay

[bluejay]

Part 1 of the room update

 

Here it is, it’s finally in a somewhat presentable state. Obviously, it isn’t 100% complete, and there are things that I need to smooth out. I obviously haven’t taken much care of the power cables, as they are dangling everywhere. However, I can assure you that none of them are tangled

 

The box labeled Silit contains all the games that I have that I want to display in the glass case, which I still don’t have. That mangled corner of systems also feature lots of things that I want displayed, such as the Genesis 1, PlayStation, and Okimate 10.

 

Here’s the left side. It has all the stuff that take up the most space, length wise. The white desk was the only one depth wise that could handle the C128 and 1702, and the large Samsung CRT too. I just put the Apple II there because I wanted my Apple stuff to stay together. There are also a bunch of floppy disks on top of that 1702, along with a Namco plug and play game. I need to put that away somewhere. 
 

The front side. It features both my Macs, my beloved PET, and all the stuff that I don’t need set up. There’s also a pile of laptops to the left of the 512Ke Mac. Speaking of which, the Macs were a complete pain in the ass. They need space for both the keyboard and the mouse, a problem that no other suffers from, apart from my Power G4. The SE FDHD was especially difficult due to its very long AEKII. I finally settled on putting the mouse in between the computers themselves. 
 

 

My apologies about the poor lighting. Here’s all the consoles I have set up; everything from the N64 to the CoCo are all set up and can easily be used. I plan on putting a shelf somewhere so I can vertically stack the consoles, so they don’t take up the whole desk. 
 

The white drawer contains a lot of neat stuff. The top layer is most of my game cartridges. Everything from ColecoVision to CoCo to Jaguar. I also have my 3ds xl, Gameboy, and GBA in here as well. 
 

The second layer contains some controllers. At first I didn’t have the non-Nintendo stuff in here, because my 4 N64 controllers were taking up all the space. I put 3 of them elsewhere, so I could fit the rest of the controllers inside. I like N64 controllers, but god they are annoying to store.  
 

Well, that’s part one of the big update. Part two will come when I have that shelf, glass case, and the Gameboy artwork on the wall. It will also most likely feature a Wii U. I promise, it will be the last video game thing I’ll buy until 2030. 

[Keatah]

58 minutes ago, bluejay said:

I promise, it will be the last video game thing I’ll buy until 2030. 

Tell us another loada BS!

[bluejay]

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

Tell us another loada BS!

We’ll see about that  

[Draxxon]

On 1/29/2021 at 8:57 PM, Steven Pendleton said:

Totally random, but does your Retro-Bit controller's d-pad squeak? Mine does and it's loud and super annoying.

No, I have a blue and a black one for my Legends Flashback. Squeak free.

[bluejay]

So, apparently I forgot to post that Wii U. It’s been a few months or so since I got it. Paid the equivalent of just under $100 for this more or less brand new Japanese Wii U, Premium Set. Modding it was tricky, but it’s now my favorite thing. 

I have it hooked up to my Samsung SyncMaster 927MB VGA CRT through a series of adapters. It looks great. The cable situation isn’t sorted out yet though. 

So, time for the big one. Acquired a glass display case from a office that was either moving or going out of business, I’m not sure. Anyways, they sold it to me for less money than I anticipated, although I had to hire a truck to get it to the house. Ended up costing like $100 in the end. It was also ridiculously filthy, but after a few dozen wet wipes and some windex, it looks great, and I’ve put in a bunch of stuff inside. The Lego stuff is a placeholder, although I might leave them there. 

The right side has the cartridges and boxes. It was rather difficult to find a way to arrange them, as I turned out to have more games than I thought. I only displayed the ones that I really wanted to and the others remain stacks to the side or drawers. 

The middle bit isn’t too interesting except for this little area where I put some miscellaneous items that I thought were interesting. Kept a first revision of the VIC-20 35k RAM/SD2IEC card PCB as a little souvenir. 

The left is a mini museum of the stuff that I don’t use, at least, not at the moment. The arrangement… well, I wanted to keep similar items together, but it turned out to look pretty bad. The bottom shelf is really tight (thanks Atari for making the 5200 so massive) but at least nothing is touching the walls or each other. I’ll rearrange this later. 

The closet in the bottom contains stuff that I don’t want rolling around outside, along with a painful reminder of how much I suck at retrobriting. It also includes five laptops. 

I got a cheap Chinese vertical shelf to stack the consoles, and my little TV ended up fitting nicely in the shelf. The shelf was of really poor quality, with metal pieces rattling inside and screws not fitting and everything. I managed to put it together eventually, and it actually matches the table quite nicely. Shame the 32x is a hair too tall to be stored on a lower shelf. 

And I also rearranged my computer setup. It’s a lot more… haphazard than my previous one, but it makes much better use of the space. Just gotta make sure that Mac doesn’t fall off the side, I guess. The little green thing is a mini amplifier I use because the 1702’s speaker doesn’t work all the time. Speaking of the 1702, props to Commodore for making its footprint the exact same size as a VCR’s. 
 

S’pose that’s everything for this update. I’ll post more as I clean up the setup and do something about this big mess of wires. See ya. 

Edited September 1, 2021 by bluejay

[Dopy25]

On 8/31/2021 at 12:55 AM, bluejay said:

I got a cheap Chinese vertical shelf to stack the consoles, and my little TV ended up fitting nicely in the shelf. The shelf was of really poor quality, with metal pieces rattling inside and screws not fitting and everything. I managed to put it together eventually, and it actually matches the table quite nicely. Shame the 32x is a hair too tall to be stored on a lower shelf. mess of wires. See ya. 

What's going on with this corner not lining up? That's driving me crazy.

 

 

Collection is looking outstanding! You have so many thing's I've never even heard of and many more I've never seen in person.

 

Also the WiiU is a bit tricky to mod but once done seems like it was super easy. Don't forget never to reset your console without un-modding it first or you end up with a brick if you have coldboot installed.

[bluejay]

5 hours ago, Dopy25 said:

What's going on with this corner not lining up? That's driving me crazy.

Hold on… I’ve actually never noticed that. I’ll have to go take a closer look in a moment. 

5 hours ago, Dopy25 said:

Collection is looking outstanding! You have so many thing's I've never even heard of and many more I've never seen in person.

Thanks! Glad to hear it’s shaping up to something that’s pleasing to look at. 

5 hours ago, Dopy25 said:

Also the WiiU is a bit tricky to mod but once done seems like it was super easy. Don't forget never to reset your console without un-modding it first or you end up with a brick if you have coldboot installed.

Didn’t want to spend $7 on a DS VC game so I installed Mocha. No cold boot, no bricking. Works well enough for me. 
 

Edit: took a pic, and, well, I’m not sure why they’ve built the ceiling like this, but what am I gonna do about it. 

Edited September 8, 2021 by bluejay

[Dopy25]

2 hours ago, bluejay said:

Edit: took a pic, and, well, I’m not sure why they’ve built the ceiling like this, but what am I gonna do about it. 

Haha. Fair enough. I didn't realize there was spacing for window blinds. That does make sense. The original angle just looked really weird. 

[Keatah]

Recessed lighting.

[bluejay]

Headstart Explorer. It’s, quite frankly, a useless computer, being a turbo XT clone with 512k of RAM, but that doesn’t stop it from being an extremely interesting computer! It has this weird fold out keyboard thing and the most proprietary mouse and floppy drive I have ever seen (wouldn’t be fun to lose those) and runs DOS 3.31 and a proprietary GUI from ROM. 
 

And just because I don’t really have much else to post, here are some of the more interesting stuff I found after a few minutes of digging in a box of dad’s old stuff. 

Hm, Diablo II Cinematic DVD… Special Limited Edition? I wonder what this is.

Original WoW installation discs, it’s on 4 CDs and requires a Pentium III@800 and an Nvidia GeForce 2. Jeez, how am I ever gonna afford a computer that powerful?

And this… E3 2004 disc from Vivendi? I can’t even remotely guess what might be inside here. Video of the presentation? Slide shows? Game demos?

Here’s the full set for the limited edition DVDs, except sealed this time. I wonder if WATA grades these ?

 

I suppose that’s it for this collection update… I recommend you don’t stick around as it might take a while. See ya. 

[bluejay]

It's been a long while, hasn't it? The last couple of years have been tremendously busy for me (as demonstrated my increasing lack of activity here in general) so my collection hasn't really changed much. I decided it would be for the best to spend what little's left of my free time enjoying the stuff I already own. That being said, there are just a few additions...

 

S'pose the most major of which is this Famicom Disk System. My FC had been sitting unused for years because I didn't own any games, so I couldn't pass up on this local deal. It's a pain in the ass to find games for, but it's pretty much just a Zelda machine for me anyways.

...and I acquired both of them. I actually tool the opportunity to beat the original Zelda for the first time, but Zelda 2 is proving to be a far tougher challenge. I'm currently tackling the Maze Palace (#4).

Next on the list is this monolith. I was getting tired of my existing PlayStation setup that consisted of a 20 year old Mac and a fat PS2 running composite to a 9" TV, so I figured it'd be neat to just replace the whole mess with a backwards compatible PS3. This one's a CECHE with the emulated emotion engine, so it doesn' suffer from the horrid reliability issues that plague CECHA and B systems at the expense of minor incompatibility issues.

Just a couple more pics of my mini-museum.

and finally my desk of random hardware.

 

That Olympia SM7 is one sweet typewriter though. Peak West German technology.

 

Guess that's it for this update, I'll catch ya up again in a couple of years.

Edited February 10 by bluejay

[RetroSonicHero]

That's a clean FDS and Famicom. Those are RF only, right? How do you get it working on your CRT?

[bluejay]

Yeah, I just use the stock RF output tuned to channel 96. I haven’t had the time to do a composite mod and RF about works well enough anyways.

Edited February 11 by bluejay

[Keir]

Great collection and cool to see how it's evolved over the years. The glass case makes it look especially nice!

[bluejay]

Thanks! That glass case was a huge pain in the butt though. Had to hire a truck and some men and everything to have that son of a bitch moved out of an ex-office and carried up 7 stories into my apartment complex. It was worth it!

Edited February 12 by bluejay

[RetroSonicHero]

Yeah, what he said. The glass casing looks really nice and professional. If I didn't have the context, I'd assume you were running a retro game store.