CrossBow

Interestingly, I don't recall ever buying any games from Sears bitd. I bought most of my Atari games from Service Merchandise and Toys R Us. Although I do remember buying Ms. Pac-man, Sneak N Peak, Space Jockey, and maybe one other game back in like '83/'84 from the TG&Y that we had near us back then. 
 
Otherwise most of my games were purchased from Service Merchandise and TRU as I said before. Or...pawn shops as I found a pawn shop only about a mile from my house I could get to easily in the mid to late 80s that had tons of 2600 games for a $1 each back then. That was how the bulk of my collection came about on the 2600 side to be honest. 
 
But what I do remember about Sears, is that I bought my first Laserdisc player from them and Laserdiscs in '93. The last major purchase I made at a Sears was back in like 2010 when I bought my sons each a small Toshiba flatpanel TV to use in their rooms at their Mom's for their game consoles they had back then. (Wii and Xbox 360 I believe).
 
The last remaining Sears here in Fantasia is on that list of closings. So it looks just like Radio Shack, there will no longer be any Sears presence in Oklahoma.

You are correct on this Rick..

What upsets me way more is that the local retro game stores around here used to have plenty of Genny model 1 adapters for sale for like $3 - $5 each. Then the retrobit replacements come along and they have suddenly been impossible to find? 
 
I asked one of the store employees about it and they told me they cut the cords and toss the original adapters when they get them with the systems because they are old and feel that providing new replacements is better for their 30 day warranty policy they provide?! I was not happy to learn this as the model 1 genny supply can be used with so many other consoles!!!
 
We all know that the original adapters are going to live on for far longer than these cheap crappy ones they sell now. 
 
Sorry...It kills me a little inside everytime I think about it.

Yeah...I don't trust any wall warts that are less than 1amp for the Genesis. I'm still not sure how on earth those Retrobit adapters sell?! They are only 350ma?! that is .35amps.. Those adapters should be screaming in pain when the Genesis is rocking on a game with that full blast processing kicking in...

No idea what year they were from but long ago when I was about 10 or 11 we lived in my grandmothers house. She had another house she had built and lived in and so we lived in this old house of hers. Anyway, my stepdad and his brothers rooms were still left largely as they were when they were boys. I found in my stepdads old stuff an original pet rock and quite a few old viewmaster reels along with an older viewmaster.
 
The one thing I remember about this was that the pictures were way more vivid than any I had seen before and as a kid I had certainly seen viewmaster before. But these older ones had much bolder color and the 3D effect seemed to pop more. I also remember the reels were metal and not paper/plastic. Some of them has suffered a bit due to age because some of the slides were starting to fall out of them if I wasn't careful.
 
But yeah, that was the one and only time I had seen metal view master discs. And they were things like ship wecks of the ocean..there was one of the Great Barrier reef that was amazing to look through. Lots of reels on airplanes as my stepdad was and still is a huge plane buff and flies planes whenever he can. Wonder what happened to those old viewmaster reels when we finally moved out of there? I know that several years after my mom and my stepdad divorced that the house was sold but no idea what happened to the stuff that was in it.

No idea what year they were from but long ago when I was about 10 or 11 we lived in my grandmothers house. She had another house she had built and lived in and so we lived in this old house of hers. Anyway, my stepdad and his brothers rooms were still left largely as they were when they were boys. I found in my stepdads old stuff an original pet rock and quite a few old viewmaster reels along with an older viewmaster.
 
The one thing I remember about this was that the pictures were way more vivid than any I had seen before and as a kid I had certainly seen viewmaster before. But these older ones had much bolder color and the 3D effect seemed to pop more. I also remember the reels were metal and not paper/plastic. Some of them has suffered a bit due to age because some of the slides were starting to fall out of them if I wasn't careful.
 
But yeah, that was the one and only time I had seen metal view master discs. And they were things like ship wecks of the ocean..there was one of the Great Barrier reef that was amazing to look through. Lots of reels on airplanes as my stepdad was and still is a huge plane buff and flies planes whenever he can. Wonder what happened to those old viewmaster reels when we finally moved out of there? I know that several years after my mom and my stepdad divorced that the house was sold but no idea what happened to the stuff that was in it.

5 Goodwills?! 
 
There are only like 3 near me. The others are in neighboring towns and would be 30min drives separately to visit. Even then, they haven't had anything good in several years as they were instructed some time ago to send most of the video game stuff to corp to be placed on the auction site.
 
In fact I would say that at least half of the thrift stores we used to have are now closed up and those buildings are different businesses completely in the past 3 or 4 years now. 
 
We have a decent flea market each weekend, but those vendors look up the value of the stuff and still think they can get ebay pricing for it. Sad thing is that some people must be buying the items or else they wouldn't continue to keep them priced that way.

I actually bought reproduction labels for my DK and Q-bert tabletops a few years back off ebay. They weren't cheap, but they were printed to the exact size and where vinyl laminated stickers. So once I cut them out with an x-acto blade and applied them, they looked stock.

That is an excellent and easy fix! Glad you got it working again. The SMS is left out of things too much and while I never owned one originally back in the day, that doesn't mean it doesn't have good games for it! 
 
Now you need to stick an FM board in that bad boy!

I could see that in places that maybe they wouldn't face competition from? And that is the puzzling part of it. Aside from Wal-Mart and Target, there aren't any other toy chains in Oklahoma that Toys R Us had to worry about. They were the ONLY real toy stores we had and they up and closed practically overnight with their store fixtures etc... even being sold out to the highest bidders. I know because a lot of the OKLA area retro gamers were posting their brag photos of the signage and cabinets they were able to score from the store liquidations here.
 
And most of the buildings have been bought by other companies and turned into something else already. So yeah..for TRU to come back in Oklahoma would mean they would have to spend some serious capital to build or buy buildings back and then have to stock them and hire employees..etc. Again it would cost them quite a lot to start over in my neck of the world. 
 
I think they should go with an online presence to compete again Amazon starting off. Way less overhead to deal with in that case but they would need a solid infrastructure in place for online sales and ordering.

My guess is that they will open and adopt an online only store option similar to what Circuit City and Radio Shack do now. All the stores here in Oklahoma closed as well so it wouldn't make sense to have closed them all out and liquidated them to only have to reopen and restock etc. That would be a huge waste of money and that is part of the problem to begin with isn't it?
 
So yeah, it if they do come back, I'm sure it will be in online only form.

A bunch of recent finds from a variety of sources. 
Coleco Pac Man came from a toy show (see my post in the "Tabletops" forum if you can help with replacing those missing stickers).  The Atari carts came via a trade with nosweargamer American Chopper 2 came from goodwill (I know...it's probably terrible...but I like yelling.  My money says this game has a lot of yelling) Boxed Blue Max came from a facebook purchase.  One of my favorite games of all-time.  Getting a complete copy is very exciting for me. 

ITC# 51 is now online and documents the process to installing a very interesting new mod PCB that has been developed and hopefully will soon be released to the masses. It is called the M1 Double Mega. It is a plug in pcb board specifically designed for the model 1 HDG genesis systems that have separate YM2612 synth ICs in them (Most model 1s do as only the va7 doesn't have one). It allows you to use both the stock YM2612 and CMOS improved pin compatible YM3438 with the ability to switch between them. The YM3438 improves upon the 2612's stereo separation field and has an improved DAC circuit to provide cleaner PCM samples from the Genesis/Megadrive. There are some small audio comparisons at the end where I switch between the two chips on the fly.
 
Enjoy!
 

Just picked this beauty up for a great price. Given that im in ATL ive got a friend that works in tv and i had him look at this thing and he said no doubt this thing was probably hanging in the Turner Broadcast studios. Somehow im gonna try to prove this with paperwork (not sure how to do that) but man im stoked!

The missus and I will also be attending PRGE for the first time. I've attended CGE in the past and of course until 2 years ago had been hosting my own much smaller con here in Oklahoma for 12 years.
 
We will be arriving on Thursday and staying through the weekend. I believe we are in a hotel just a block from the event so we aren't planning to get a rental car or anything. Hopefully we don't have a real need for one.

Yes, you would still need to cut a small notch out of the RF shielding for the audio input wire you have there. (I assume the yellow is audio input since it is tied to two resistors, one for each TIA channel?)
 
Unless there is just enough space to wedge that wire between the audio tuning coil? But you would have to desolder it from the resistors, thread the wire through the RF opening for that coil to come through and then solder it back down. Things like that are why I solder on header connectors to most of the wiring so I can easily take it loose for full disassembly without have to desolder stuff.

Also you can literally grab your ground for these AV mods from anywhere. Take any multimeter and you will see that all grounds have continuity with each other in these old systems. So..to make it easier I will usually just find the nearest ground point around the circuit I'm grabbing my signals from to be sure it is proper. In the case of the 7800 UAV mod I use the grounds off the UAV board itself. But honestly you could just grab the ground off of any part of the large ground plane around the main board and attach that to to your RCA connections and be fine.

Yes the metal strips where you placed them should be fine. I still would have tried to solder on some wire instead to make sure it was all grounded properly. I still think part of the issue is that you don't have actual RF shielding on the system anymore. I see this kind of thing even on modded consoles like my Colecovision, Intellivision, and especially the 7800 if I don't find ways to put the RF shielding back on. 
 
And yes I believe console5 only has 1amp and up output VRs that he sells. I bought my 2amp output versions from him last time I believe and that is what I have running in my sega Genesis.

I hadn't thought of power...but could be. The original VRs are only like what.. 500ma rated? And that could have been pushing it already to near that limit with all the components installed. Wonder if a newer and higher output 1amp version 7805 would help?
 
Especially when the newer homebrew games also take up some juice to power the additional chips in them that they have. 

Funny as I just recently picked up an Extron 7SC to replace out my older JVC S-700 I've been using for years...
 

I believe part of the reason the 5200 trak-ball controller is so large was to make it sturdier when using it as compared to the 2600 trak-ball controllers. I also like the fact that the trak-ball in the 5200 controller is just a standard cue ball so you could replace it with any other billiard ball if you so wanted.
 
With the intellivision controllers, I never understood why they went backwards with the model 2 in that regard? The Intelly 2 controllers are just so hard on the hands and the buttons are ridiculous. The best controller I've found to use with the Intellivision is my modded flashback controllers I have. They work better than the original 2609 model controllers. I've also used one of the controllers that has the Stickler installed and I thought was pretty darn good as well. Though I could see in some games that use the intelly disc more for movement where that wouldn't be the best. Still for quite a few games I thought the sticklers were great.

I believe part of the reason the 5200 trak-ball controller is so large was to make it sturdier when using it as compared to the 2600 trak-ball controllers. I also like the fact that the trak-ball in the 5200 controller is just a standard cue ball so you could replace it with any other billiard ball if you so wanted.
 
With the intellivision controllers, I never understood why they went backwards with the model 2 in that regard? The Intelly 2 controllers are just so hard on the hands and the buttons are ridiculous. The best controller I've found to use with the Intellivision is my modded flashback controllers I have. They work better than the original 2609 model controllers. I've also used one of the controllers that has the Stickler installed and I thought was pretty darn good as well. Though I could see in some games that use the intelly disc more for movement where that wouldn't be the best. Still for quite a few games I thought the sticklers were great.

Funny as I just recently picked up an Extron 7SC to replace out my older JVC S-700 I've been using for years...
 

I completely agree with Chas10e.  It's great for a lot of the games.  Space Invaders, Galaxian, Super Breakout too.  It just feels so much higher quality than the stock joysticks.  What I don't like is how freakin' big they made it.  Just like the 5200.  So big for no good reason. 
 
I always imagine Atari releasing a much more compact 5200 with improved controllers.  That would have been awesome. 
 
Seems to me that Intellivision should have also improved their controller over time.  Like when the INTV 2 was released.  Such a wasted opportunity. 

I believe the main issue with JPN games is just the difference in the pinouts and PCB boards that were used initially. But yes you can use any of the other regions just fine in most cases. Although there are a few games that were setup for 50hz PAL mode that will play too fast on the US versions. But I don't know which titles that would be. I do know the Sonic games work just fine as does Master of Darkness, but the pricing on these lately has started to climb into ranges I'm not okay with paying for just yet.