AtariAge Forums: BigO - Viewing Profile

One thing I sold had a deficiency that I didn't know about. The other thing had a deficiency that didn't show up in my testing but showed up when the purchaser tested it. I packed it very well and yet there still must have been shipping damage.

It's discouraging. Not trying to make money off the stuff, just get it into the hands of people who will use it. This ended up costing me money. I'm thinking the stuff I have left that I need to get rid of before I move is going to end up either at Goodwill, in my dumpster, or in Goodwill's dumpster.

I just got a classic gaming Christmas gift. It wasn't given as a Christmas gift, but since I'm hemorrhaging cash on the new house, I'll take it as my Christmas gift.

A member of an online group I subscribe to was giving away a bunch of stuff. Among other things, he was offering several Virtual Boy systems, boxed. I jumped in line, wary of there being a catch. There was no catch. This individual was even paying the shipping. I requested the system I was most interested in. Well, it showed up today: complete in box including all of the original plastic bags for the components and pack-in game and two additional games, Mario Clash and Galactic Pinball. I'd call it new in box. Even came with the original receipt from Toys R Us, Duracell battery coupon and proof of purchase tag still affixed to the outside of the box.

This system is too good for me. I don't even want to unpack it to play it.

If you received something from me recently for $0.00 shipped, you can at least partially blame the generous individual who is giving away so much great classic gaming stuff. He started it.

Merry Christmas.

It's kinda sad that I have had enough unfavorable transactions now with AA members that I now have a list of people I won't transact business with. There was only one until I decided today to give up on another transaction that's been dragging on for months and months. Granted, it's only two people, but now it's a list.

The first one was a couple of years ago when I took part of a Saturday and a 20 mile round trip to buy some very obscure, thought-to-be-unavailable (though almost valueless) parts I'd found to then ship to someone for the same price I paid. Add postage and the cost of a padded mailer onto that and the total bill was somewhere in the five dollar neighborhood. It's only five bucks, so it's not a financially significant amount, which is I think what bugs me about not getting paid. One reminder was all I could muster.

The second one cost me the shipping charges and two pieces of equipment. The deal was that I'd loan a piece of equipment to somebody for them to use to develop and test some customizations on and in return I'd get the customized equipment back. I had two such pieces of relatively low-value equipment so I sent another along for the person to customize and keep for themselves or sell to make a few bucks or grind up in the garbage disposal or whatever. I think I'm up to 3 polite reminders now, the last of which has gone unanswered for some time now. Lesson learned, writing it off, moving on.

It makes me wonder, though, if I've done this to anyone and just somehow became completely oblivious to it.

I'm finding that I enjoy messing with the peripheral stuff more than actually playing video games. My last controller mod is really the only reliably functioning 5200 joystick that controller that I have. My other controllers are a trackball and a couple of flaky stock 5200 controllers.
(Previous modded controller was a 5200 trackball converted to a joystick. I've decided to sell it if you're interested: http://www.atariage....?s...117017&hl=)

Anyway, I'm not a fan of the 5200 stock controller so didn't want to invest in rebuilding my "real" controllers. I've been accumulating bits and pieces that I thought would be useful for this project, so I finally decided to start on it.

Here's the first mockup:





I placed the controls based on the best guess I could make using my own hands. Once it's working, I'll probably have to make adjustments before the final version.

It remains to be seen if there's enough range in the potentiometers of the thumbstick to work with 5200 games properly. If it doesn't work, I have a less extensive fallback plan. Either way, I have additional plans for it eventually.

The beige faceplate is a chunk I hacked out of the back of an old PC/XT keyboard. I had been visualizing black, but surprisingly I like the look with the beige. The keypad is a surplus piece I got cheap. The red fire buttons were extracted from a generic PC game controller. The silver start/pause/reset buttons were donated from a discarded Sudoku handheld. The case was a surplus piece I picked up cheap.

(This was hacked together with simple hand tools so don't get too carried away with scrutinizing the work. )



Edit 12/8/07 - updated picture with the alternate thumbstick

I was looking through my local Craigslist listings and ran across somebody selling a "Bombs Away" video arcade game from 1976. It was made by Meadows.

It was missing the main circuit board, so didn't seem too interesting. I had a vague recollection of this machine from the bowling alley where I occasionally hung out when I was a kid. So, I did a little research at all the standard online arcade game databases and such. There is almost no information about this machine. The databases seem to know of the existence of the machine, but no actual instances of the machine seem to be recorded in anyone's collections.

Now it's getting interesting. I check out eBay and find no machines for sale, doesn't seem like any ever have been listed there, according to my Google search. I did happen to find in one of the eBay stores that somebody was selling a board for the Bombs Away machine. Okay, now I had to go check out the machine.

What a beat up piece of crap. The cabinet has seen better days. I was encouraged to see that other than the logic board, the machine was apparently complete, including the monitor and video circuitry.

They probably should have paid me to haul it off, but I handed them $40.00 and loaded it up. I bought the board from eBay on my cell phone while my buddy drove us back to our plant in his truck. The board comes with the "operators manual" which should contain significant technical information to bring this thing to life.

It might take me years...and with controls consisting solely of one button, how fun can it actually be?













I'll probably try to sell of a few little things I have laying around to get money and space for this project. So, if you see me selling something, support your local psycho and buy it.