Are People Crazy on Ebay???

[adam242]

2 hours ago, reifsnyderb said:

Unreal!  I haven't seen one in worse shape on ebay.  I am not sure if both were submerged in water or what happened.  Maybe worth $50 (with shipping included) for both due to the risk involved....

 

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/115818780799

 

 

"Comes with 1050 drive. The floppy drive is probably still good, no obvious damages to anything technical"

 

Are you kidding??

[IndusGT]

14 minutes ago, adam242 said:

"Comes with 1050 drive. The floppy drive is probably still good, no obvious damages to anything technical"

 

Are you kidding??

"probably"😆

[Beeblebrox]

Heads up. I'd advise y'all be cautious about this ebay seller. I've bought from them before as aside shockingly bad and inadequate packaging being used when shipping, they appeared to have started saying they are based in the US when in fact they ship from Egypt. 

 

They are a nightmare to deal with should you have any issues and the condition of most of their items often really doesn't justify the asking prices. Plus very often on A8's they sell the odd keys turn out to not be working. 

 

As an example here is a pretty battered 1050 drive (fair enough it's clearly indicated as such although they are pushing it asking as much as they are for it); but they are not US based as they claim:

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/125825910316

 

And again the same item,  different listing but shipped from Egypt:

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/125827122739

 

They also sell under a different shopfront name:

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/125827122739

 

I advise anyone buying from them video the parcel unboxing/unwrapping should any evidence be needed. Personally I avoid them now. 

 

Edit

 

They also go by this shopfront as well:

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/globalexporttrade

Edited May 30, 2023 by Beeblebrox

[leech]

7 hours ago, reifsnyderb said:

Unreal!  I haven't seen one in worse shape on ebay.  I am not sure if both were submerged in water or what happened.  Maybe worth $50 (with shipping included) for both due to the risk involved....

 

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/115818780799

 

 

Wow, that looks like an Apple fan shit on it!

[Beeblebrox]

15 minutes ago, leech said:

Wow, that looks like an Apple fan shit on it!

I'd have personally at least attempted to give it a bit of a clean.....doesn't take that much effort and the chances of someone buying it are pretty slim if it look like it's been stored in a septic tank for decades! Dread to think what the internals look like! The seller will be luckly if he gets half of the current asking price IMHO!

Edited May 30, 2023 by Beeblebrox

[leech]

2 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

I'd have personally at least attempted to give it a bit of a clean.....doesn't take that much effort and the chances of someone buying it are pretty slim if it look like it's been stored in a septic tank for decades! Dread to think what the internals look like! The seller will be luckly if he gets half of the current asking price IMHO!

Seriously.  I have seen some disgusting things on eBay and specifically have sworn off buying used keyboards because of it.  People can't be bothered with cleaning them up before shipping them off.

[Beeblebrox]

On 5/7/2023 at 8:28 PM, reifsnyderb said:

Ok.  Who on this board wrote up this description??  Maybe calling it a description is wrong.  This is more like a manifesto!   😄

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/175715952200

 

The seller has relisted  - with the same rant - and so far no bids after a few days running:

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175747424541?

 

Plus I clocked this at the end of the listing rant - which is almost definitely gonna ensure no-one will bid who has read it:

 

"For attorneys out there, the views expressed here are the truth and nothing but the truth and not necessarily my views.  So don't shove deductive logic or mathematically provable facts under the rug and try to over-ride it with your personal views which may be emotionally biased or tinged with a vested interest since you are being paid to support the opposite side."

[reifsnyderb]

21 minutes ago, Beeblebrox said:

The seller has relisted  - with the same rant - and so far no bids after a few days running:

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175747424541?

 

Plus I clocked this at the end of the listing rant - which is almost definitely gonna ensure no-one will bid who has read it:

 

"For attorneys out there, the views expressed here are the truth and nothing but the truth and not necessarily my views.  So don't shove deductive logic or mathematically provable facts under the rug and try to over-ride it with your personal views which may be emotionally biased or tinged with a vested interest since you are being paid to support the opposite side."

He's got it set to automatically deny offers, too.  I offered him $20.00 and was immediately declined.

[wildstar87]

34 minutes ago, Beeblebrox said:

The seller has relisted  - with the same rant - and so far no bids after a few days running:

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175747424541?

 

Plus I clocked this at the end of the listing rant - which is almost definitely gonna ensure no-one will bid who has read it:

 

"For attorneys out there, the views expressed here are the truth and nothing but the truth and not necessarily my views.  So don't shove deductive logic or mathematically provable facts under the rug and try to over-ride it with your personal views which may be emotionally biased or tinged with a vested interest since you are being paid to support the opposite side."

His entire description, kind of reminds me of Best Electronics website.. You get an entire backstory, and tangents, on the thing you want to purchase.

[Beeblebrox]

9 minutes ago, wildstar87 said:

His entire description, kind of reminds me of Best Electronics website.. You get an entire backstory, and tangents, on the thing you want to purchase.

I am UK based so don't ever really tend to buy from the States, but I once had to peruse the BE website and quite frankly was lost for words...... well actually I was lost several times. I am sure they could get a student/graduate in to rework their website and make it actually possible to navigate.

 

It's great they are still going and supporting the A8 community after all this time, but it could be a lot more user friendly with very little effort.

 

When you actually arrive on the landing page it tells you in quite a bit of detail to click on the index page:

 

If this is your 1st visit to the Best unique one of kind Atari Web site, like receiving a new book or manual it is best to click on the Index page / Site listing link below.  It is easy way to search thru the hundreds of pages of different Atari information on this site and find what you are looking for.
                  
...where if it was just contructed in a modern/simple layout this could be fairly obvious without all the text in the first place.

 

I am no website designer but still .... 

 

Edited May 30, 2023 by Beeblebrox

[wildstar87]

17 minutes ago, Beeblebrox said:

I am UK based so don't ever really tend to buy from the States, but I once had to peruse the BE website and quite frankly was lost for words...... well actually I was lost several times. I am sure they could get a student/graduate in to rework their website and make it actually possible to navigate.

 

It's great they are still going and supporting the A8 community after all this time, but it could be a lot more user friendly with very little effort.

 

When you actually arrive on the landing page it tells you in quite a bit of detail to click on the index page:

 

If this is your 1st visit to the Best unique one of kind Atari Web site, like receiving a new book or manual it is best to click on the Index page / Site listing link below.  It is easy way to search thru the hundreds of pages of different Atari information on this site and find what you are looking for.
                  
...where if it was just contructed in modern and simple layout this could be fairly obvious without all the text in the first place.

 

I am no website designer but still .... 

 

Yeah, I'm not sure why he does it that way, though based on anecdotes on Atariage, I think (this is just my opinion), is that he wants to sell stuff, but he doesn't want to sell THAT much stuff at once.  If the website was easier to navigate and find stuff, he would have more orders to process.  It's his business, so he gets to run it the way he wants it, but if nothing else, I wouldn't want to run it that way, I mean he does update it, with all the customer quotes, and his stories and everything, that just makes updating even more complex IMO.  I mean, I think it's all manual editing, nothing programmatically generated, though I could be wrong.  I'm an old curmudgeon now, and I have things that I want a certain way, that younger people think me strange about, so I can somewhat understand, but I find it hard to find stuff, having to literally read between the lines.  Don't get me wrong though, I'm glad he's still around, and you can find stuff for relatively reasonable prices, especially with the topic of this thread being the point.  I remember hearing about Best Electronics back when I was B.R.A.C.E. back in the 80's.

Edited May 30, 2023 by wildstar87

[Overange]

17 minutes ago, wildstar87 said:

His entire description, kind of reminds me of Best Electronics website.. You get an entire backstory, and tangents, on the thing you want to purchase.

Looks like CHATGPT got involved with this listing. 

[leech]

44 minutes ago, Beeblebrox said:

I am UK based so don't ever really tend to buy from the States, but I once had to peruse the BE website and quite frankly was lost for words...... well actually I was lost several times. I am sure they could get a student/graduate in to rework their website and make it actually possible to navigate.

 

It's great they are still going and supporting the A8 community after all this time, but it could be a lot more user friendly with very little effort.

 

When you actually arrive on the landing page it tells you in quite a bit of detail to click on the index page:

 

If this is your 1st visit to the Best unique one of kind Atari Web site, like receiving a new book or manual it is best to click on the Index page / Site listing link below.  It is easy way to search thru the hundreds of pages of different Atari information on this site and find what you are looking for.
                  
...where if it was just contructed in a modern/simple layout this could be fairly obvious without all the text in the first place.

 

I am no website designer but still .... 

 

Honestly, I think he edits / browses it on an Atari ST...

[+x=usr(1536)]

10 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

Plus I clocked this at the end of the listing rant - which is almost definitely gonna ensure no-one will bid who has read it:

 

"For attorneys out there, the views expressed here are the truth and nothing but the truth and not necessarily my views.  So don't shove deductive logic or mathematically provable facts under the rug and try to over-ride it with your personal views which may be emotionally biased or tinged with a vested interest since you are being paid to support the opposite side."

Oh, it's a thing of beauty.  Screw it; preserving it here for posterity.  Gonna stick it behind a spoiler tag so that nobody has to scroll past the entire thing.

 

Spoiler

  Atari 800 Video Game system and computer.   I had to relist this because there's one key that is broken on  this computer that I didn't put in the description in my previous listing.  I will lower the price once I figure out what's exactly wrong with this arrow key. 

 

 This has two cartridge slots and you can plug in your programming language like BASIC (which is included) or some other cartridge available on ebay or elsewhere. Now you can play games like Joust, Pacman, BBSB, Ms. Pacman, Donkey Kong, etc.  Or buy a disk drive and play thousands of games or run thousands of programs that are optimized for this machine to run in  16k-48K although disk drives are much slower than cartridges (read on for more on this). Most programmers these days write inefficient programs-- just look at glitched ebay-- takes up gigabytes and does not even run correctly.  Modern programmers need to study these vintage computers before they are allowed to upgrade/rewrite programs for modern computers-- most of the modern programs I have seen are just bad, bloated, and bugged (BBB).  I have used Ebay and Windows for more than 2 decades and seen some bugs in Ebay and Windows that have not been corrected for many years-- so they can't even find the bug or its out of their control to fix or nobody wants to spend the money/time to go through a millions of lines of code most of which is unused and irrelevant to the average user but you do need to upgrade to the latest machine when they add their latest security patch to take care of the latest virus that BLAME (Bin Laden's Anti-USA Malicious & Envious) society came up with after they found the details of the latest security patch on Microsoft's website.  They cannot get rid of the previous database of viruses so you need more storage and more horsepower  because they do NOT have a deductive algorithm to deal with viruses in general.  Where is AI (Artificial Intelligence) when you need it?  More on AI below. Atari cartridge games are the only task running so there cannot be possibility of getting viruses; they use up 100% of your CPU where as modern machines use up close to 100% of the CPU to fight viruses, spyware, etc. and you need specialized graphics cards to deal with games that require >=60Hz real-time graphics updates.  Some people sitting at home idly can write better virus prevention algorithms than what's out there.  And it's already done (krihnasoft.com) and others and done many years ago but people just want to go with the flow and with what the industry giants like HP, Intel, an Microsoft (HIM) develop.   

 

   So BBB-- bad design/concept, bloated, and bugged.  It's definitely not real-time down to the microsecond like Atari 800 unless you shut-down all the background tasks and write ring0 code and somehow figure out how to prevent various interrupts from hogging up more than a microsecond.  Most programs ASSUME computer will be fast enough to finish the code within the required time.  If you want pixel-exact programs, cycle-exact coding (where the worst case time of each procedure is exactly defined), and joysticks/controllers are direction-exact, you can literally count on the Atari 800.  You move exactly where you point your joystick and exactly at the exact cycle you want, now that's what I call a controlled and deterministic COMPUTER program.  Most of the games/modern software is hodge-podge and then you have your "favorite" virus scanners running that make worst case running time of any program running, hours instead of nanoseconds!  This Atari machine only runs at 1.79Mhz so it's cycle time is 558ns but you buy a 1.79Ghz modern machine that runs slower because your virus scanner and/or overhead of other tasks are hogging up the CPU time without telling you when and how much.  People are taught to just write their function like a black box and not worry about what the rest of the system does so you end up with highly bloated procedures-- no telling how many lines of code will run when you call an OS function.  It may be a hardware feature on some systems or require an emulator running in one of the layers of the OS.  Then you have no fixed storage speed-- some people have SSDs and some have HDs but SSDs are not speeding up your system because badly written software is constantly thrashing the storage device(s) that the MTBF which was suppose to take us into decades of reliable data storage life will be used up in a few months!  I can't believe they integrated virus scanner into the OS in Windows 10-- now they inefficiently use calls to virus scanner and thrash the disk drive (external and internal) and take a few minutes even when I switch folders!  Even the progress bar does NOT know how long its going to take that it finishes way before the task is done.  That's not all; I have seen good software disappear because virus scanner algorithm determined it's a threat or a virus.  Now you have to find where the OS hid your perfectly good software or trashed it.  This is because of BAD design not bugs.  Don't get me wrong though as I am sure Intel, AMD, and other chip makers can design a better computer than an Atari 800 but the software developers will not let them or they will write software that make them inexact, hodge-podge, and vulnerable to viruses.  They want hodge-podge inexact indeterminate coding because they want to promote their OOP (object-oriented programming) models and as a result they keep saying OOPs I goofed there.  Oops we forgot to take into the factor that the computer will be on a rocket going near the sun and the heat will change the dynamic frequency of the processor and slow down our calculations and make the rocket crash prior to reaching the sun; oops we forgot to tell the user to disable dynamic frequency in the BIOS setup; oops we forgot Windows 10 security prevents many systems from entering the BIOS setup; oops some BIOSes got rid of setting to disable dynamic frequency because it wasn't being used; Etc. (one last oops: a virus enabled dynamic frequency without requiring BIOS!)

 

I told them long time ago to Opt Out Permanently (OOP) from OOP (object-oriented programming); i.e., trying to optimize the processor to deal with OOP (the latter) with caching, speculative execution, and other hardware features that make the code more and more inexact so humans cannot determine its cycle time a priori.  There may be some use for it non-real time applications where you don't mind waiting a few minutes or an hour in the worst case, but it's better for programmers to know the hardware and have standardized hardware like Atari 800 so people can fully optimize their code.  It's EASIER to debug code if it's small in size.  So don't blame me for BBB, nor Him, but HIM.  I have stated my hymns but that may not be enough as most likely they are not going to see this listing or bother reading it even if they see it.  

 

GTIA chip which allowed for 16 shades of each of the 16 colors is inside this computer as shown in simple program written above in BASIC.  This is the same number of shades that the Amiga and Apple IIGS had in their computers that came out more than 5 years later.  And it's double the number of shades of the Atari 1040ST that came out 4 years later to try to supersede the Atari 800!  Talk about DEVOLVING rather than EVOLVING!  Darwin needs to revise and improve his theory to incorporate devolving of some species since he doesn't think nature is perfectly organized and even then his theory remains BBB like modern software written for Windows/Mac OSes!  Computers usually have even powers of 2 of things because they use bits as the basis of their architecture -- so you have kilobyte as 2^10 = 1024, gigabyte = 2^30, 6-bit color is 64 shades, and so on.  But Atari ST tried to change all this-- they had 3 sound channels (1 less  than Atari 800) and 3-bit color instead of 2 or 4!  They used odd numbers for some reason and ended up being the odd machine out in the computer race in the retro-machine era!   There's a second cartridge slot but not many programs use it since they didn't have it on the Atari 400 so for compatibility, most cartridges only use the Left Cartridge slot although Monkey Wrench cartridge threw a monkey wrench into this by making their cartridge run in the 2nd slot (Right Cartridge slot).  I thought people were monkeying around that it only runs on right cartridge slot but I went ape over it when I actually got this cartridge and it was incompatible on my Atari 800XL-- I mean the reason games didn't incorporate the 16-shade GTIA model was compatibility.  It didn't matter that many other people went bananas that Monkey Wrench used the right cartridge slot-- they had to put it out there in the market for Atari 800 only. 

 

Recently, I also tested the keyboard while I was writing the BASIC program.  All keys are working as we know "working"; that reminds of Carl Sagan-- "there's no life on other planets as we know it."  But the problem with that is that we do not know life on this planet yet-- they found species recently that only survive at high temperatures that humans cannot survive.  Consequently, why can't there be life on other planets as we know it here on earth.  Maybe our telescopes cannot spot them because they are too small or underneath the surface or in subtler form. Its hard enough to find ghosts on this planet so much so that many people don't believe in them except maybe those living in Amityville, NY or in a huge cemetery.  Ghosts seem to be hanging around burial grounds where stories go of ghosts attacking or trying to possess living bodies or even some undamaged dead ones.  Movies have feasted on this and mostly exaggerated it beyond belief but there is some truthful basis for it.  So there can be subtler forms of life on other planets-- maybe some sort of ultra-high frequency sensor or special sensor can detect the subtler forms. In addition, there can be life on other planets as we do NOT know it on this planet.

 

Any cartridge games shown are not included-- the BBSB (Bounty Bob Strikes Back) may be more valuable than a used modern laptop these days.  Atari computers technically were the first multimedia (MMPC) home computers in the market since they offered audio-visual hardware along with the normal computing processors.  I don't mean the crude beep noises offered by IBM PCs at that time but real DACs and 4 of them for 4-channel digital-to-analog conversion that could digitize voice, music, and other audio.  Unfortunately, storage was limited at that time due to cost.  They never developed an EEPROM in megabytes for general usage-- only a few kilobytes.  For storage, the computer industry took a detour of using motor-based disk drives which were too slow and inexact for cycle exact coding unless you load the program into RAM first..  To make things worse, they still use disk drive interface for SSDs.  Hello, is anyone alive out there?  SSDs are essentially like ROM/RAM/EEPROMs and should be able to be switched into the computer memory like a cartridge-- instantly no load time!  What are they doing loading chip data serially?  You will never see "Loading Ms. Pacman...", "Loading Donkey Kong..." or "Loading Miner 2049er..." when you insert a cartridge into a computer. I am pretty sure most people in the computer world know what is MEMORY MAPPING of a device.  At least the engineers know (new modern software-only coders may think they can do it in software with OOP!)  An example is almost every VGA card uses it.  To solidify that they will stick to the slower inefficient serial interface, they standardized on SATA with its similar offshoots MSATA/MSATA2/NVME/etc.  Then to speed up their inefficient interface, they come up with algorithms like caching and buffering.  Now you can go to a website and see old contents because you never pressed refresh or don't actually have internet access.  Then Intel/AMD/etc. take these software developer's advice and screwed up the exactness of their processors even further by caching memory/instructions.  Now you modify something you will never know how long it takes unless you flush the cache every time you write/read memory.  To sum up, loading a game like Ms. Pacman, Donkey Kong, and Miner 2049er on the Atari 800 cartridge is FASTER than loading the same amount of data for execution on  a modern machine.  That's assuming Ms. Pacman which is only 16 kilobytes can be coded in 16 kilobytes on modern PC.  The last I saw Pacman on a PC it was a few hundred kilobytes and screen flickered (it wasn't exactly 60Hz) and I had to use keys since the PC joystick was erroneous and too soft and slow for my rapid reflexes. Arrow keys are also too slow compared to an Atari digital joystick.  Well, even if I do a worst case analysis here and assume it's the same amount of data (16K) on the PC and assume it works similarly just to keep comparisons as apples to apples, you end up with an Atari 800 cartridge outperforming SATA/MSATA2/NVMe in load time.  Given the 64-bit address space of modern PCs, you could even memory map the entire SSD into the memory space rather than read it serially.  Or even with 32-bit address space, they could have used memory mapped based on banking.  Then all these layers of coding for security, platform independence, etc. has made execution of a piece of code require thousands of cycles whereas the equivalent on old Atari 800 computers requires only a few cycles.  Practically, just to modify a pixel on a screen, you have to go through hundreds and thousands of lines of code whereas on an Atari 800 it would be a few instructions.

 

This Atari 800 computer is perfectly working. I tested the joystick by playing some games like Ms. Pacman and also hooked up paddles to test the potentiometers.   I just tested the SIO port by hooking up the Atari 1025 printer to this computer.  This printer is listed in another of my auctions; see that listing of how PnP really suppose to work.  I also hooked up a 810 disk drive w/o any disks and it does show boot error screen which means it's communicating with the disk drive.  I could not test with floppy disks since someone threw away my stack of disks that I had in  recent moving or purposely misplaced them because they believe in Darwin's evolution or that we have rendered all these old machines obsolete with our modern machinery.  So the theory is we have to do away with the "old" stuff although it may have features that are not present in modern machines.  Just like butterflies have features that humans do not and there's no reason to think butterflies are obsolete nor do humans have the features present in butterflies.  Okay, so we invented airplanes/jets/rockets to fly that are supposed to be  "more advanced" in one sense than butterflies since we can fly at 600+mph but then when our computer algorithm  or sensor(s) fail on the flying machine, we fall 50,000 feet or blow up to pieces with practically no chance of surviving whereas we don't see butterflies crashing and even if they crash into something and/or fall, they survive.  They never blow up into pieces unless they ingest the rocket fuel and somebody lights a match next to them.  Also, butterflies are more beautiful, don't pollute the planet and can quickly maneuver around objects to avoid being caught or to avoid collisions.. They have better collision detection hardware and algorithms than airplanes and especially rockets.  So the Atari 800 also has hardware collision detection so you can read a register and know whether it collided into some object with one instruction that takes a fixed number of cycles (in exact amount of  nanoseconds not milliseconds worst case due to hodge-podge nature of various software running).  So Big Bang and Darwin's evolution claim butterflies came by chance but airplanes/rockets/jets require decades of research and we still have not perfected them with the latest research of AI (artificial intelligence) and other algorithms.  Maybe we should rely on chance rather than research if it can produce perfect flying machines like butterflies.  Oh, I forget "chance" is a meaningless word; there's always some causal relation to something according to many philosophers and our own observations so maybe all we need is someone with higher intelligence.  Oh my God, I can't think of anyone right at this moment.  Some people write better algorithms than others; some of the old Atari software has very good algorithms so much so that they can surpass a modern PC with a processor running at 1000X speed due to badly written software and overhead from OS/virus scanner/other background tasks.

 

   Speaking of AI, I called an Ebay representative recently as to why I can't see all my items I have listed or why I have to refresh the page to see who won the auction.  They told me that's because they upgraded to AI engine.  Really?  Before ebay would tell us who won the auction when it ended-- now they tell us to wait and refresh the page because it can't determine the winner.  The main thing on an auction site is to know who wins the auction so how can they not be able to determine that whereas in the older non-AI software they could.  Imagine in a live auction, the auctioneer saying: "$432001 for photo of Neil Armstrong's space-suit showing a reflection of some "alien" on the "moon" going once, $432001 for this photo going twice, wait, hold everything I need to go to the bathroom-- I'll be right back after these messages."  And now buyers are getting unpaid strikes and getting their account restricted without them realizing they didn't pay for something within the 4 days and without any notice/warnings from ebay.  It used to be there were unpaid cases and you had 4 extra days to pay.  Now it's a callous setup and moreover Ebay reps hardly ever remove the unpaid cases even if they are seller induced or due to bugs in their interface.  I buy hundreds of items on Ebay and they are NO LONGER in chronological order once some sellers send invoices or there are other glitches.  Ebay does not always show all the items you bought even if you hit refresh multiple times especially if you just paid for something, the summary page is all chaotic.  So you can end up with unpaid strikes because you were paying in order gradually and never saw one of the unpaid items.  Not being able to tell the winner of an auction or restricting accounts of people that buy more without notice is not AI-- this is mentally retarded intelligence (MRI) and callous as well.  It's like so-called "smart" watches-- they offer a ton  of features but the BASIC function for which we use a watch-- to tell time-- is not always available.  Sometimes I am doing something with my hands and I turn my wrist to look at the time and either it's blank/black to save battery life or in some other screen!  Ah, that explains a lot of cracked screens on smart watches.  Also, it has to be charged every few days whereas the original watch battery lasts for 10+ years.  It can't be "smart watch" if it's inferior at telling time to the original watch.  To have implemented an algorithm that's inferior at telling time than the "dumb" watch and call it "smart" watch, that's MRI (mentally retarded intelligence) not AI.  It's NOT smarter than the "dumb" watch as far as telling us time.  So we have these self-driving vehicles driving off the road (or off the road) but they are superior because they use the latest and greatest AI which is also BBB (as stated above).  At one time some scientists wanted come up with a grand-unified equation but now given all the imperfect software out there which most scientists are highly dependent on, only equation they can end up with is: AI + BBB = MRI.  Remember that equation as our future modernization depends on it.  More reason to accept retro machines and not toss them out and study these machines and see the unique exactness it has to offer rather than assume we have progressed past them and follow BBB AI like a BLIND cult.  I mean isn't this similar to what this blind cult fanatics do-- promise God or liberation without themselves having any real connection with God?  People have a right to stick to alternative methods or older methods or take up alternative methods until it's DEDUCTIVELY proven that they have surpassed the previous method.  You can build a computer that is EXACT AND fast without having to sacrifice one or the other.  A thousand year old recipe (algorithm) to cure a stomach ache naturally is better than going to surgery and having your intestines or stomach repaired (or ripped out because of a malignant tissue/organ) although the latter uses sophisticated technology and monitors your progress every millisecond.  There are deductive algorithms that AI should be able to determine exactly but they cannot even accomplish that currently yet they are making AI make decisions on subjective matters like what brightness the screen should be using "auto-brightness".  I was going blind once trying to setup a "smart' phone because it kept dimming the screen automatically that I had to get a flashlight and magnifying lens to see what I was doing.  Yet another MRI algorithm.  Another obvious one is auto-correct which is already bad being on by default when you are entering your email address during setup.  It kept correcting it to something that's completely unrelated.  This is during setup of a phone so settings are not available to turn off the auto-correction. I got away with it by writing the email address and pressing next simultaneously as soon as I entered it since auto-correct software is too slow anyway (slower than Atari 800). 

 

So Ebay is now hiding things that at least I find useful to see like it used to show.  Now you need to find things rather than everything being there in front of you.  Sometimes you need to be an expert to know how to access everything: (1) There are even POP-UPs that are hiding the very thing you are looking for and inquiring "Did you find what you were looking for?", (2) when an auction ends, it hides information about the listing and shows another listing that's really high in price to make you regret you missed out on that item, (3) you can't go to see other items from same seller since that's hidden until you click around, (3) when you bid on something it pops-up the very thing you just bid on on top of the menu that is the only way to go to My Ebay summary page (completely useless pop-up), (4) when you go to selling page the default page gives list of items that is NOT complete so makes you wonder what happened to your other items-- those are hidden, (5) when you check a seller's feedback, it sometimes shows nothing as if its blocking you from seeing the seller's feedback until you click around or it shows some feedback not in any particular order, etc.  Talk about GUIs and WYSIWYGs modernizing computers-- now they are back-tracking and more and more things are hidden and convoluted.  I just went to bank to find out how much I got paid or if I even got paid for all the items I sold since they are using some convoluted interface where it's hard to tell how much someone is getting paid for each item since sometimes they combine payments and sometimes they list them individually and you can get "payout" emails without getting paid.  I almost shipped out an item because I got "paid" message only to find out from my bank there's no money deposited in the bank.  How can they let software like that be out there to cause frustration to innocent ebayers?  Once again, I am using Ebay as an example but it's with other software as well.  Windows 10 HIDES scroll bars for some reason and you think there's no other content to look at.  And sometimes even when the scroll bar pops up you can't scroll it because of some bug/misalignment!  (This is happening to me right now-- I'm revising this listing and the scroll bars are NOT operational.) I know during Atari times (1970s/1980s),  people use to think of best possible way to implement an algorithm and best way to interface the human to the program/game since code had to fit into small memory space and there were not any big tools for coding/debugging.  Now each menu is overloaded and menus are dropped here and there and covering what you want to see or do.  Ebay pop-ups of things you just bid on to cover the very thing you want to click on so you waste time for pop-up to disappear.  You ever see Windows 10 boot-ing up or shutting down-- it shuts down the screen before it actually shuts down so you can't tell what it's doing or whether its even safe to pull plug or whether there's an error!   I once closed the screen on my laptop because the screen shut down only to find out later that that actually forced Windows 10 to go to suspend rather than shut down and it drained the battery!  And one time I found out there was actually an error AFTER the screen shut-down! Talk about suppressing the BSOD (blue screen of death) without fixing it.  That's like actors hiding their pimples on their face with heavy makeup.  It does not make you healthy or beautiful if you look healthy/beautiful with make-up because when you get married or when someone spots you at home with your real face, he/she will find out how you were fooling people.   Also, the side-effects of all the bad artificial make-up will eventually show up in giving you permanent scars by building up poisons in your skin.  Hey it could be worse, if you use the unnatural make-up when going out to eat you may ingest the make-up and build poisons inside the body.

 

I will be listing other atari stuff for collectors and users soon (see my other auctions for Atari 1050 Disk drive, Atari 400/800 parts, MPP 1150 Printer interface, digital joystick(s), etc. One note about direction-exactness, atari joysticks move in 8 directions-- E, W, N, S, SE, SW, NE, and NW so you can tell exactly where you are moving and you can be blind-folded and move whereas modern complex joysticks involve the user relying on feedback from screen to tell where he moved and how much he moved which is LESS EXACT and slower to react in real-time situations like games).  Oh, no I wanted to move east but I didn't realize I moved 5 degrees north of east and ended up with a vertical component to my motion vector which I did NOT want!  And there's no learning curve for using Atari digital joystick-- it's intuitive like a GUI.  Also, there is less of a learning curve or none and no confusion at a critical moment of the game or other real-time scenario;  there aren't 10 buttons-- which one do I use to fire; oh no, I just restarted the game-- I need to put some tape on that button so I don't press it next time, oh, no! I just fired a missile at the earth when I was suppose to drop the ladder to pick-up the survivors, etc.

 

This computer comes with AC adapter (9VAC), one Joystick and BASIC cartridge and 48K RAM.  Nothing else is included, but if you like my carpet and TV you see in  the picture you can have it but shipping will be more than they are worth.  Computer was made in 1979 and runs at 1.79Mhz made in Sunnyvale, CA and that was considered very fast since other computers from Apple and Commodore around the same time ran at 1.0Mhz  And it's still considered very fast given the modern OSes running on 3.0Ghz octa-core processors have integrated virus scanners and other background tasks stealing CPU time and constantly thrashing the hard drive (as already discussed above).  And do not forget BBB-- due to bad lazy coding and nonstandard hardware, you have 100X or more instructions to accomplish the same task on modern PCs.  

 

For attorneys out there, the views expressed here are the truth and nothing but the truth and not necessarily my views.  So don't shove deductive logic or mathematically provable facts under the rug and try to over-ride it with your personal views which may be emotionally biased or tinged with a vested interest since you are being paid to support the opposite side.

 

You can also pick-up items in Edison, NJ if you do NOT want to pay shipping.  I'm guessing at international shipping cost so it's up for negotiation if you prove it's lower or that it can shipped for lesser amount using some other official mailing method.  I can't use global shipping currently until my previous transactions have completely cleared as I can't tell what's taking place (where they are nor how much I am getting paid).  So pick-up, drop off for $5 within my vicinity, or pay the shipping for USA only; it's easier for me to ship to outerspace or another planet with tracking than use Global Shipping currently.

 

No international shipping unless you want me to ship directly at whatever it costs from USPS with tracking.

TBD (To Be Determined) at end of auction if winner happens to be international buyer.

 

Timecube, anyone? 

[Cebus Capucinis]

Seems very uhhh a person whose name rhymes with Benneth Fartin' Colon

[Beeblebrox]

Anyone for a boxed 1050 drive for near £300?!!

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/266254746180

[TGB1718]

2 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

Anyone for a boxed 1050 drive for near £300?!!

And it comes with a nice friendly copy of DOS3 🤮 Oh and a tatty box

[Geister]

Looks like somebody took a dump on that poor computer.

[+x=usr(1536)]

34 minutes ago, Geister said:

Looks like somebody took a dump on that poor computer.

In the gastrointestinal diseases wing of a research hospital.

[_The Doctor__]

It looked like a point of sale computer, or a computer that helped with mixes, formulas, maybe recipes

Edited June 1, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[reifsnyderb]

It's still out there.  Somebody had better snatch it up fast.    😄

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/115818780799

 

[+gnusto]

22 minutes ago, reifsnyderb said:

It's still out there

I hadn't looked at the detail photos...wow, the corrosion on that PBI. Was this thing stored in swampy salt water or something? Why on earth would the lister take the detail photos?

I need to go dig up a pile of dirt from my backyard and put an Atari label on it. Unique one of a kind, $4000!

[Geister]

The ad says "zero interest of paid in full in 6 months" & "breathe easy. returns accepted"

 

I already have zero interest in this computer and I wouldn't dare breathe around itl 

[+slx]

On 5/30/2023 at 8:38 AM, Beeblebrox said:

Heads up. I'd advise y'all be cautious about this ebay seller. I've bought from them before as aside shockingly bad and inadequate packaging being used when shipping, they appeared to have started saying they are based in the US when in fact they ship from Egypt. 

 

 

Some time ago I bought an Arabic 65XE described as tested & working from him and while it looked used but not too bad it only worked for about 15 minutes. 
 

When I opened it I found deposits like hard-baked sand and suspected it suffered from a short as there was no cardboard between the board and the lower shield. 
 

He offered a full refund on return which made no sense for me as I’d have to pay for shipping and had already paid import duties which I would never have been able to recover. PayPal was no help as his offer was deemed satisfactory and my request for a partial refund was denied. 
 

I got the machine working with the help of @tf_hh but would not buy from that seller again. 

[+x=usr(1536)]

7 minutes ago, slx said:

Some time ago I bought an Arabic 65XE described as tested & working from him and while it looked used but not too bad it only worked for about 15 minutes. 
 

When I opened it I found deposits like hard-baked sand and suspected it suffered from a short as there was no cardboard between the board and the lower shield. 
 

He offered a full refund on return which made no sense for me as I’d have to pay for shipping and had already paid import duties which I would never have been able to recover. PayPal was no help as his offer was deemed satisfactory and my request for a partial refund was denied. 
 

I got the machine working with the help of @tf_hh but would not buy from that seller again. 

Just mentioning that the eBay seller's name is tifsasa-0 for the benefit of anyone who may be searching.