CrossBow

I would try and participate, but I'm pretty book with service requests through this month currently and with my current wait queue,... I don't get much time to actually game myself these days LOL!

Here are two pics I just shot since I actually did remember to do so... Here are the diecast Hot Wheels of the 1701-A and Reliant ships: And here is the Metal world model of the 1701 next to one of the Space Shuttle and my Lego R2: And yes, besides video games, I've a passion for Legos and architecture as well.

I'm a fan of the TOS and did watch TNG when it was on. Once I got into high school and started working and driving, I didn't watch much of any TV. So I never watched DS9, Voyager, or anything after that. Having said that I will try and remember to get some pics later. I only have a few ST related items. I have the Hot Wheels diecast of the 1701-A refit and one of the Reliant from Wrath of Kahn (Still my fave Trek film). I also have one of those metal world models you put together of the original NCC-1701. I have a coffee mug I use frequently with just the Star Trek logo on it. When I was in my early teens, I put together quite a few of those plastic type model kits. My two best were my 1701-A refit model that was quite large, and the one I did of the Space Shuttle that included the external tank and SRBs. That space shuttle model stood about 3ft tall as I recall and took me quite sometime to put together back then. Sadley I know longer have those and I assume my step dad tossed them out at some point.

Could do what I did with my TG-16. Wasn't the 'cheap' option no..but it was the easiest and gives me all the outputs I would need. I bought a DB grafix booster from Castlemania to stick off the back of my TG-16 to provide me with RGB, s-video, and composite + audio. https://castlemaniagames.com/collections/turbo-grafx-16/products/dbgrafx-booster-ttp

I did not know that?! And when I reached out to the folks at AtariMax I was told to use a standard controller in port 1 to select the game and then swap out. I only state this because on my Amax cart, the trak-ball causes it to go crazy and that is why I reached out to them. Maybe I have an old one or something that doesn't look for it properly or something? I first encountered it when the Xari Arena completed version was released through AtariAge and couldn't figure out how to get my trak-ball to work through the Amax cart. I even bought the game because of my frustrations with this LOL!

Vector Pilot and Vector Patrol are pretty much reasons along to own a Vectrex! Especially Vector Pilot as I still find secrets in that game it seems each time I figure it up. Vectroblade is very cool but I think I have an earlier version of the game that still suffers from some game breaking bugs. I bought mine from Sean Kelly before Packrat was selling them and sending them out so pretty sure it is an early release.

It is an older model from like 4 or 5 years ago. But it has 16gb of RAM and I went ahead and installed a 500gb m.2 SSD internally so along with the 500gb spinner it already had it has a full 1TB of storage in it. And it seems to be decent enough at streaming 1080p provided my upstream on the ISP is good. And yes, it is very TINY and pretty quiet although mine can get to being heard once I've been streaming for a few minutes.

To be fair, if you have an AtariMax SD cart you kinda are forced to do this if you want to play trakball games. Because the menu doesn't work with the trakball so you have to first have a standard controller plugged in to select the game you want and then swap out the controller with the system powered on of course to play the game with a trakball at that point. Can't fault the console for this because Atari never imagined we would have flash carts in the future.

Hmm... this is tough for me because I don't really plan on anything I get for my game room. Just kinda find something that interest me and get it if I'm able at that time. But... I do have some recent stuff I've bought that I haven't mentioned here. I did mention the little Dell opti 9020 micro PC I picked up for cheap and currently have in a temp location in the game room for streaming and recording game footage. I also got one of the Zelda game and watches and that is in the display case in the game room with other Zelda related stuff. But that is it for the game room.

I know some games actually do a calibration check on the controller when power on the system. I believe even the AtariMax SD does this to a degree and that is why without a controller plugged into it, it just moves down on its own and keeps beeping is because it senses an infinite direction during controller check. I would never swap controllers with the system powered on btw. That is how the 4052 MUX chips end up getting fried.

Maybe when they were brand new? But no, I don't recall ever having one sent to me that worked properly controller Bob on the screen. Usually he will have no issues moving right, up/down but going back to the left can be the challenge. More annoying, is that I have the game give me those control problems but then all other games played will control just fine without issue. So that is why I use BBSB as the main game to test controller calibration with.

It can be a struggle for sure. I have one of the loopback test boards and that makes adjusting the pokey trimmer MUCH easier. From there it usually works pretty well as is but on the rare occasion, it might require me to pop that game up with the top cover removed on the controller so I can manually adjust the throw of the pots internally. But if you can get a stock controller working with BBSB and Gyruss without issue, then you have about as perfectly a calibrated controller and 5200 set as you can get.

I'm largely in the same mindset. However, that doesn't mean I still don't end up getting a physical copy of a game at some point in time. For me flashcarts have mainly been a tool for me to use so that I can check out games before I buy them to determine if I really want to plunk down the coin needed to get a physical copy of the game. I don't think any of my flash carts really have a complete library on them except for perhaps my VecMulti, Dragonfly, and AgaCarts as they all came preloaded with the entire library at the time on them. But most of my flash carts are used to play WIP games or demos that you can't really get in physical form. Or to play fan translated versions of games never released here in the states. Even then, I usually buy a physical of the game. Such was he case with my actual Saturn purchases of both Policenauts and Grandia. I play them translated through my systems, but own the actual games too. BBSB is a really fun game, but I honestly suck at it. I can get through the first level easy, but I've yet to complete the second level ever LOL! I mainly use that game on my AtariMax to help test controller calibration with stock CX52s.

I think I've said this here before, the most I've paid for any older games was the $250 I spent for my near mint Magic Knight Rayearth for the Saturn. It came with a foam insert, the sticker sheet etc. The seller also threw in the JPN Saturn version of the game complete with the OBI strip and a NIB copy of the game for the Game Gear. So really at the time, I only spent like $200 for the Saturn game. It was the most I've spent for any single game and it was the first time my wife thought I was a little crazy. However, fast forward about 4 years and it ended up being a good call for me to buy it when I did as the game alone in less shape than I bought mine is easily around $700 and up currently. It is quite tempting sometimes when I look around the game room and think.. Hmm. I don't have any room for more cool stuff. Wonder if I should think about thinning out parts of the collection I don't play?... And then I talk myself out of that because I know that later on down the line I would likely want whatever I sold and it would cost me way more in the future to get it again.

Yeah... that is just what the market is demanding and apparently getting these days. My wife was with me while we were visiting a few of the local retro video game stores here in town. They have a 1200xl at one of them and asking like $600 for? But she was more surprised by the asking price on used Wii games. She was specifically looking for a copy of Wii Sports: Resort for her grandson and was surprised it was being offered everywhere locally for $35 for a loose disc in most cases. BB for the 5200 is the last of high price 'grail' games I need for my 5200 collection. Sure there are other games I don't own for the 5200 yet, but they aren't hard to find either and I just haven't bothered to get them. I didn't want the video but was that $570 just for BB or was that for the whole lot? Because if for the whole lot, that is actually a pretty stellar deal in that case.

Be curious to know if your copy of this works in that 7800 of yours? I'm still in a battle with the devs over my copy of this game.

I got the exact same score that @- Ω - did. Exactly the same results LOL. I can remember when that other benchmark we were playing with...Userbenchmark I think it was? I used to get awesome scores on that. Not so much anymore with the release of newer hardware since then LOL!

Yeah, when I bought my RTX 2070, it was only a few months after the they had been released. But I ended up buying it because I was actually in the process of building a new gaming PC for my youngest son and was going to buy him a GTX 1070 as I had in my current PC at that time. But when I saw that GTX 1070s were only like $50 less than the current gen 2070 at the time, I went ahead and bought the 2070 and then put my old GTX 1070 into his computer. So I ended up paying like $325 for this 2070 super I have right now. Guess I bought it at the right time because there is NO way you can get something like that now for near that price with the current bit mining craze and general shortages taking place.

I can be of no help here I'm afraid. I do NOT like wireless mice or keyboards. I do use a wireless at work but that is because as we stated I use a matched combo that only needs one dongle and sadly the laptop we use at work (Instead of legit desktops), only have about 4 USB ports on them to begin with and those are occupied with other stuff we need like an Ethernet adapter, printer, our phone system. At home, I've always used wired keyboards and mice. Always... and I have a semi mechanical one I'm using now from Steelseries that I quite like. Although if I had my preference, I would use my actual model M IBM from 1987 as it does have a PS2 plug on it and even my current motherboard came with a PS2 port on it. But my wife cannot handle the sound of that model M as it is a noisy keyboard being fully old school mechanical.

I built my current PC back in the summer of 2019 I believe it was . It is an Intel i7-9900k that I have running at about 4.7ghz constant. I say about because I originally had it running at 4.9ghz steady and then it appears this is my first CPU to suffer some internal damage from overclocking it in all my years. It started to cause random resets on the system and other odd stuff I couldn't figure out. Although the temps on it never exceeded 80C that I could ever find. Anyway, I then reset the BIOS to auto across the board as would be normal when first putting one together, and for some odd reason the CPU now stays clocked between 4.3 - 4.8ghz on its own even with the clock speed set to auto in the BIOS. So it would seem my CPU and or motherboard have issues. But it still gets the job done. I'm running 3600mhz DDR4 with all 4 slots filled for a current total of 32gb. I've got an RTX 2070Super running at stock speeds for graphics and still use a discreet soundcard. A Soundblaster Zxr that I've had for a number of years. As for my storage that would likely show an even faster score except that I'm still running 2 WS black caviar 7800rpm spinners in a RAID 0 stripe as part of my storage. But the main OS resides on a 970 pro NVMe with a second set of 960pro SSDs in another RAID 0 stripe configuration. The bulk of the important stuff I need is on the NVMe but all the games, scratch disk space, and not nearly as critical stuff resides on the striped arrays. Oh...my motherboard is an MSI z390 series which, at the time was pretty high end but is several generations behind currently.

I got one as a late B-day present to myself. My wife has the Super Mario Bros. one and I have the Zelda one. I never even opened it and put it straight into the glass display case with other Zelda memorabilia LOL!

That is all good info to know. I'm sure I will pick up a concerto at some point in the future although I don't really need one at this time. I've had a few pickups, although they are very minor things although video game related to be sure. Another thing I picked up recently from the local electronics recycler place here is this cute little micro PC that I've got setup for streaming from the game room currently. Been using it past few nights. Only set me back $150 but I feel for what it can do, that it was very reasonable.

Awesome, be curious to get your take on it. I've not yet tried to purchase one since my DF cart does everything I need for the time being on the 7800.

Someone quoted a post from HSW earlier where Howard stated he is working on an official sequel for Yars' and it will kick ass on the 2600. So, pretty sure he is developing it for the beloved 2600. I'm sure it will end up on the VCS as well.