RickR

Oh, dust will creep into any space!  The amazing thing is that the equipment still work!

Found a C64 at Goodwill and it actually works!  It  needs a cleaning badly.  Very dirty and smells of smoke.  So here are some pics of the unit in its original condition.  Please note the cardboard RF shield -- Commodore was notorious for cutting costs everywhere they could, but this is ridiculous.  Take some pride, Commodore!  Sheesh. 
 
 

On the bright side (or negative side from my wife's perspective), this gives me one more thing to hunt for at Goodwill.  Laserdisc movies. 

Found a C64 at Goodwill and it actually works!  It  needs a cleaning badly.  Very dirty and smells of smoke.  So here are some pics of the unit in its original condition.  Please note the cardboard RF shield -- Commodore was notorious for cutting costs everywhere they could, but this is ridiculous.  Take some pride, Commodore!  Sheesh. 
 
 

Found a C64 at Goodwill and it actually works!  It  needs a cleaning badly.  Very dirty and smells of smoke.  So here are some pics of the unit in its original condition.  Please note the cardboard RF shield -- Commodore was notorious for cutting costs everywhere they could, but this is ridiculous.  Take some pride, Commodore!  Sheesh. 
 
 

From Goodwill: 
A boxed Commodore 64.  Risky, but it actually works!  The picture doesn't really show, but it's got some weird discoloration.  Like part of it was in the sun.  It needs a bath badly, and that will be the next step.  Disassemble it, soak and clean the case, and careful cleaning of the keyboard and innards.  An Atari 2600.  Very diry, and with a taped up/cut RF cable.  My theory here is that it hasn't been used for a long time since the cord was cut.  Risky purchase, but worth a $10 gamble.   

I'm not implying they look bad in any way.  Good hair, mostly still thin and healthy looking.  But they do look different than they did. 
 
Awesome pic of you with the band. 

On the bright side (or negative side from my wife's perspective), this gives me one more thing to hunt for at Goodwill.  Laserdisc movies. 

From Goodwill: 
A boxed Commodore 64.  Risky, but it actually works!  The picture doesn't really show, but it's got some weird discoloration.  Like part of it was in the sun.  It needs a bath badly, and that will be the next step.  Disassemble it, soak and clean the case, and careful cleaning of the keyboard and innards.  An Atari 2600.  Very diry, and with a taped up/cut RF cable.  My theory here is that it hasn't been used for a long time since the cord was cut.  Risky purchase, but worth a $10 gamble.   

From Goodwill: 
A boxed Commodore 64.  Risky, but it actually works!  The picture doesn't really show, but it's got some weird discoloration.  Like part of it was in the sun.  It needs a bath badly, and that will be the next step.  Disassemble it, soak and clean the case, and careful cleaning of the keyboard and innards.  An Atari 2600.  Very diry, and with a taped up/cut RF cable.  My theory here is that it hasn't been used for a long time since the cord was cut.  Risky purchase, but worth a $10 gamble.   

I found this video...
 

 
So CEDs and LDs are pretty much made the same way.

Stryper!

 

The K-Mart in Portland that I went to as a kid closed a few years ago, and it is sad.  The most shocking thing was that they explained it as "losing their lease".  You'd think a store that's been in that spot for 50 years would OWN the property.  Probably some form of Enron accounting. 

That K-Mart in Portland was the place I purchased many Atari games and toys as a kid (and sadly, clothes and shoes -- I know now we weren't that well-off back then).  Lots of great memories.  Especially that silly little merry-go-round in front of the store. 

I don't have any games with price tags but my system boxes do. This is a store I got almost everything from besides Child World, both sadly gone.

YES!  Tetris for Gameboy was perfection.  Tetris and battery life were the two factors to hold off Lynx, GameGear, etc. 

And dude...get youself a copy of Wii Sports or Wii Sports Resort.  All the games are good, but the bowling game in particular is spectacularly fun. 

YES!  Tetris for Gameboy was perfection.  Tetris and battery life were the two factors to hold off Lynx, GameGear, etc. 

And dude...get youself a copy of Wii Sports or Wii Sports Resort.  All the games are good, but the bowling game in particular is spectacularly fun. 

It helps to look at the market at the time to get context.  For example, Combat was a good transitional choice at the time -- "Tank" games were new in the arcades then.  And Atari was inventing the industry.  Plus the original VCS lineup of games was pretty weak.  LV Poker and Blackjack showcased what Intellivision was capable of with nice graphics and a lot of game options. 
 
But "Super Breakout" with 5200 really stands out as an odd choice.  By that time, breakout games were several years old and really tired.  Why did they have a breakout game at all on the system?  And the competition of Colecovision, which came with "Donkey Kong", was almost a knockout punch right out of the gate.  I really think the 5200 would have had a better chance if it came with Pac Man as the pack-in game originally. 
 
One of my favorites was Dreamcast, which came with THREE excellent sports games. 
 
But I think the very best pack-in game of all time has to go to the Wii with "Wii Sports".  Talk about a perfect game to showcase what a system was all about.  My gosh, we still fire up Wii Sports when Grandma comes over for a few rounds of Wii Bowling. 
 
And then there's the phenomena of companies that switch the pack-in game during the life of a system, and it ends up being like flooring the gas pedal.  "Sonic" with Genesis, "Super Mario Brothers" with NES are two great examples. 

I'm not familiar with Wii Sports.  Never purchased a Wii new.    
 
I'm trying to think of my favorite pack-in game, and I guess it would be Tetris for the GameBoy.     It was just perfect, and the timing was too.

It helps to look at the market at the time to get context.  For example, Combat was a good transitional choice at the time -- "Tank" games were new in the arcades then.  And Atari was inventing the industry.  Plus the original VCS lineup of games was pretty weak.  LV Poker and Blackjack showcased what Intellivision was capable of with nice graphics and a lot of game options. 
 
But "Super Breakout" with 5200 really stands out as an odd choice.  By that time, breakout games were several years old and really tired.  Why did they have a breakout game at all on the system?  And the competition of Colecovision, which came with "Donkey Kong", was almost a knockout punch right out of the gate.  I really think the 5200 would have had a better chance if it came with Pac Man as the pack-in game originally. 
 
One of my favorites was Dreamcast, which came with THREE excellent sports games. 
 
But I think the very best pack-in game of all time has to go to the Wii with "Wii Sports".  Talk about a perfect game to showcase what a system was all about.  My gosh, we still fire up Wii Sports when Grandma comes over for a few rounds of Wii Bowling. 
 
And then there's the phenomena of companies that switch the pack-in game during the life of a system, and it ends up being like flooring the gas pedal.  "Sonic" with Genesis, "Super Mario Brothers" with NES are two great examples. 

Wow, I had forgotten that the 5200 went with Super Breakout as a pack-in.    I think that beats Las Vegas Poker&Blackjack for worst pack-in game ever.   What were they thinking? 
"Lets put in a game that could be played on a calculator as our pack in to really show people what the 5200 can do!"    

Intellivision deserves its own share of scorn for a poker game, but it was fun for my dad, I guess lol  Heck, Combat was a poor choice for the Atari 2600 if you ask me....they needed something an only child could enjoy.  Thankfully my Dad was smart enough to get us Space Battle when we got our Intellivision!

As much  as I love the Atari generation of gaming, NES and later gens did a MUCH better job with pack in games.

Very beautiful machine you have there!  And it was one of the first models I believe.  And if I'm not mistaken that model is closely related to the same players found in the arcade cabs Dragon's Lair and others.  
 
As for copy protection...it's there.  CEDs have it, too.  Some of them anyway.  The 200 plus CEDs I had in the past I tried to put on VHS before the player and movies gave out.  Only a handful of CEDs copied including Annie and couple of others.  A few MGM musicals and most of the Disney movies didn't.  It's hit and miss.  All you can do is try it and see.  
 
LaserDiscs are still analog.  They are not digital.  Basically what went on CED and VHS also went on LaserDiscs.  If copy-protection was in other formats they might be on the laserdisc versions as well.  
 
RickR sounds like me.  My player I paid for but it was damaged.  I had to literally remove the facing to fix the frame of the player.  It was badly dented (still has one dent in the rear which is not seen in the entertainment center), the door on the loading tray looked like someone kicked it in, and it simply refused to power on. It took me about an hour to rebuild it but once I did it worked just find.  It's been working ever since.  The Pioneer emblem is missing but that's about all that is.  No remote but almost every feature can be accessed on the front panel.  It even has a headphone jack and volume control.
 

 
This is what mine looks like.
 
And if you want more movies http://www.discountlaserdisc.com/
 
It is an interesting format with good picture and sound...just be prepared for laser rot.  Not all will but the LD format was bad about it.

As I mentioned above...quality in the Tramiel years was not very good.  It's amazing how many XEGS' are broken.  I got mine from Correagonzales because it was broken.  I also have an extra working motherboard if anyone needs it. 

Well, what can I say....it was free and I love old stuff....
 
There is a pretty lively Laserdisc collector community here, and recently a really nice person in the group offered up a player for free.  I've always been curious about the format.  I've owned a few discs over the years just for the cool giant label art.  And the player was slightly broken...I think you all know my fondness for fixing stuff. 
 
So now I'm the owner of a gigantic top-loader Pioneer Laserdisc player.  It's been fixed, and seems to work great.  Here are some pics along with 3 movies I also received. 
 
I've got to be honest, I don't know what to make of the technology.  I surely do appreciate the evolutionary steps for home video...but this player is absolutely enormous!  It must weigh 30 pounds easily.  Takes up my entire workbench.  These movies come on two discs, which means 2 side flips and 1 disc swap for one movie!
 
Anyways, I'm very thankful for the generosity of the guy who gave this to me, and I'm going to keep and enjoy it. 
 
Anyone else have any opinions or memories of this technology?
 
 

So I assume then that there's no copy protection...I could copy these films to VHS?  That's pretty cool! 

In doing limited research, this player I have is one of the very earliest models.  They must have gotten smaller and better over time. 

Join me, brother.