RickR

Back in the 80's, they were very popular.  Lots of people and schools had them.  Apple II computers....whether they were the II, II+, IIe, IIc models.
 
But why are they so scarce now?  I've been hoping to find one to buy for many years, but I've rarely ever seen one for sale.  Why???
 
Is it because they were so large?  Were they fragile -- and thus broken and thrown away?  Where did they all go?
 
 

Back in the 80's, they were very popular.  Lots of people and schools had them.  Apple II computers....whether they were the II, II+, IIe, IIc models.
 
But why are they so scarce now?  I've been hoping to find one to buy for many years, but I've rarely ever seen one for sale.  Why???
 
Is it because they were so large?  Were they fragile -- and thus broken and thrown away?  Where did they all go?
 
 

I just made this up, will be on the box along with anything else I can think of, all retro related of course.

I just did, the professor will move it for me, I just gotta come up with the poster, no big deal, really excited about this, I should start shipping on Jan 15

Same to you and everyone else! 

Same to you and everyone else! 

Merry Christmas to yall too! Hope you all have a fun new years too

Same to you and everyone else! 

Just wanted to wish you all a very happy holidays tonight in the event I am not able to sneak in anymore this week. Regardless of what you may or may not celebrate I hope you and yours are doing well and enjoying this amazing time of the year. I feel very honored to have the IO team on my side, greatful to have met a group of kats such as yourselves. This is am amazing and welcoming community. Thank you for welcoming a filthy mouth hooligan like me to be part of this community!!! I know I am the better for it!!!

It isn't hard if you like to figure stuff out.  There are images you load onto an SD card that will boot right up.  The trouble comes in getting your ROM images on the device (use an FTP client), and in getting your controller set up (for both the menus and the emulators you choose).  If this is all done for you with the device above...it's definitely worth the $50.
 
The other issue is getting the right version of ROM files.  For example, the version of MAME may require a very specific rom set version.  And that can be painful. 

True story -- I often wish my last name was "Shaw"

That thing between the computer and boom box was an external CD-ROM drive.  It was so slow!  It ended up being used in my audio system after "King's Quest 5" and "Rebel Assault" made it go crying home to mama.  Just way too slow to do those two games. 
 
I think this PC was a 386-sx. 

I think I've posted this pic before...but here's the very computer I used for Doom...from 1991.  I had the sound card hooked up to a boom box, and it cranked!  And that wall behind is the adjoining wall to to my neighbor's house!  CRANK IT UP!

Hello,
 
i am an Atari Kid from Germany. I had gotten my first Atari 2600 on X-Mas 1981. After celebrating the Blog Shows, I was ready to become a member of Atari.io.
 
Seeing the shows was as meeting old friends of the old golden days. I am a collector of Atari Consoles and a writer of af a german Retro-Magazine called RETURN. We write about new Software and Hardware for old Systems like Atari XL/XE 2600, Colecovision and C64.
 
In the old day, Atari was THE anything-goes-company who had promised a utopic future for mankind. Only the sound of the word "Atari" brings back fond memories to , So i am glad to find a community which have similar feelings about Atari.
 
For now i wish all of you a merry christmas and a happy and successfull 2017!!!
 
Liebe Grüße aus Deutschland!
 
Martin Bay
 

So last night i attended a monthly Buy Sell Trade event that my buddy holds and he decided to hold an auction that anybody can sell their stuff in with no fees or charges. Someone put a nice Colecovision lot to sell.
 
Midway through its time for the colecovision. My buddy describes the lot then yells out "Starting bid is $30!"
 
Naturally, i yell out "$30 here!"
 
"Going once.....going twice.......SOLD FOR $30"
 
No opposition bidders. I was stoked. Heres what i got...
 

 
Keystone Kapers was well worth the price alone. Cables came with the console (rhis is coleco #2 for me so this one will be for sale) and All boxes have games and manuals. 2 Loose games were also included which i forgot to put in the picture were super action baseball and Donkey Kong.
 
But i have a question. If i remember correctly, the manual for Keystone kapers looked like a newspaper. Heres what was in mine.
 

 
Have any of you seen a manual that went with a game like this? The paper alone seems to be aged appropriately with the age of the game. And if someone were to type up instructions for their own reference, its strikes me as odd that one would put info included in the last 2 paragraphs of the page. Ive never seen instructions like this.

It should.

True story -- I often wish my last name was "Shaw"

Yes it does, although no 7800 game took advantage of it. Actually, as far as I know, there is no 2600 controller that won't on a 7800.
What they would've done with ROF is probably what they did with flight simulators: use the system switches including difficulty switches as part of the control scheme.
 
In my dream world any 2600 or 7800 game that used system switches would map the same functions to the Touchpad as well if the user had one.
In my dream dream world, those games would also come with overlays!
 
One of the biggest complaints I have heard about flight sims is using system switches. Using the Touchpad would have really helped in this area.

True story -- I often wish my last name was "Shaw"

Obviously a labor of love.  You did a nice job, and congratulations on finding a way to easily keep it up to date. 

Obviously a labor of love.  You did a nice job, and congratulations on finding a way to easily keep it up to date. 

True story -- I often wish my last name was "Shaw"

If it gets into an accident, does it play audio of the Pac-Man death sound? 

Just wanted to share this story...
 
In the summer of 2012 I had gotten laid off when the company I was working for decided to shut down our office. No big loss, as I hated that job with every fiber of my being. (True story: when we got the word from headquarters that they decided they no longer wanted to make money in Chicago, first thing I did was call my wife -- she's a teacher and is off during the summer -- and say, "Honey, would you like to take a road trip?" She knew that that meant that I had lost my job and ergo we had time to take a trip. Her response: "Well, the thing is...we just got back from a road trip! Where would we go this time? We need time to plan it out!")
 
Anyhoo...I was in grad school and working on a master's in software engineering. My wife had told me that at the point I'm at in my life with all the know-how and skills I've acquired, there was no reason I should not be able to land some kind of good-paying IT job. So I basically tried like hell to get some kind of IT job, focusing mainly on development.
 
Six months into my unemployment, I get a call from a recruiter who stumbled onto my LinkedIn account. I had some pretty wacky stuff on it, saying things like, "Look, people, I've been programming freelance for ten years. TEN YEARS. Yet none of you will interview me. WTF, people?" The recruiter told me that she had a lot of clients who would love someone with that kind of style. She asked me to send her an updated résumé. So I worked on it, and just for laughs added Amiga to my technical skills. I figured worst case scenario, hiring managers would get a good laugh; best case scenario, hiring managers would take it as an indication that I have the aptitude to learn new and/or unusual skills.
 
So I send my résumé to the recruiter. She calls me back a while later and told me of a few clients she wanted to send it to, including one company that "really prefers people who are super-super-senior" (which I most definitely was NOT; I was really kind of a noob), but she said it's worth at least trying. Well...she landed me a phone interview with that company. The next day, she calls me back and says they want to see me in person.
 
Why? Because the dev manager was "intrigued" by my Amiga experience!
 
So I go to the interview and meet with the dev manager, and then he has me meet with the development team and do a whiteboarding exercise. (That is, they give me a scenario, and they want me to write some code for it on a whiteboard so they can give me some feedback.)
 
As the dev manager was escorting me out after the interview, I asked him why he was "intrigued" by my Amiga experience. He laughed and said, "Quite simply, because I'm a child of the '80s!" And he told me he had fond memories of his Amiga 500.
 
So I meet with my niece and have lunch. While we're eating, I get a call from the recruiter, who tells me the company wanted me to start the next Monday. My exact words to her were, and I quote, "Holy s**t." heh. My first dev job. And the salary quoted was more money than I'd ever seen.
 
So....yeah...this, folks, is why the Amiga is important!
 
(And people laughed at me for being a die-hard Amigan for thirteen years.)