Atarileaf

I'll echo this sentiment. Although I do love some longer game sessions whether playing one of the older Sims games on the PC or a couple of hours of Star Wars Battlefront II on the PS4, I primarily prefer the shortness of the older games. When I have some down time I may dedicate a half an hour to play a few 2600 or NES arcade ports and have a blast in that time and then put it away. 
 
I'm 48 now so closing on 50 in less than a year and a half and I do find that as I get older and particularly in the last year or so that collecting is a lot less important to me than playing is. I don't know if it is a coincidence of age or not but having a small, compact out of the way collection is much more appealing to me now as a 48 year old than a room of doom in my 20's and I actually find that the less I own, the more I play. I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense but as I age the playing is definitely more important than hunting and collecting. I used to be so focused on hunting that I hardly ever actually played anything.
 
I'm sure part of that is because I've owned almost every console that I've wanted to try at one point in the last 25 years of being in this hobby and I've already experienced so much that the pull to get more just isn't there. I'm very happy with this change in my viewpoint as the experience is now so much more important than the physical thing. Getting old still sucks but I'm glad to have a hobby that continues to help me feel young.
 
I still miss my hair though

I would love to get into real Neo Geo, but it’s more expensive now than it was when it released! Emulation seems like the smart choice for that system.

Console-wise I started with dedicated pong unit, and moved into the VCS on release day. Since then I owned practically every cartridge based system of the day. But I had always wanted an all-in-one system that'd play every game ever made. Today that is possible through a standard emulation box. And that means yes, despite it being virtual consoles.
 
This enables me to sample and enjoy NeoGeo. Something I didn't like bitd, but do now.

I had a new VCS when I was a kid in 1977-1978. And today I still enjoy playing the original games, maybe not for as long, but enjoying them all the same. I eventually acquired many many other cartridge based systems and the same holds true for them as well.
 
In the 90's I got into PC gaming and that continues to be my platform of choice. Today currently I enjoy complex simulations, but haven't really moved away from the simplistic games of the 80's either. Combat, VideoPinball, Phoenix.. Love'em all the same.
 
The passing of time has added MORE richness and variety to the hobby. But the desire to simplify is stronger than ever. Modern hardware and emulation allows one to do just that. Most people dislike emulation, that much is clear. But it's just a vehicle and a means to an end. As nostalgia gestates we become more interested in the software. It's the essence of the game.
 
If anything i've grown totally and utterly impatient in dealing with physical hardware. So it's going to be emulation all the way. Not to mention the easy portability factor. I clearly recall having and hating to lug consoles and carts to sleepovers and " game conferences". Today it's different it all fits on a microSD card, and yet its still a novelty for me to bring an entire library of VCS and Apple II games with me to the north cabin. Still amazing.
 
As we age I think people will start to value convenience and reliability. Those two points are really invaluable. And without such "features" I doubt I'd be in the hobby or play as much as I do.

I'll echo this sentiment. Although I do love some longer game sessions whether playing one of the older Sims games on the PC or a couple of hours of Star Wars Battlefront II on the PS4, I primarily prefer the shortness of the older games. When I have some down time I may dedicate a half an hour to play a few 2600 or NES arcade ports and have a blast in that time and then put it away. 
 
I'm 48 now so closing on 50 in less than a year and a half and I do find that as I get older and particularly in the last year or so that collecting is a lot less important to me than playing is. I don't know if it is a coincidence of age or not but having a small, compact out of the way collection is much more appealing to me now as a 48 year old than a room of doom in my 20's and I actually find that the less I own, the more I play. I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense but as I age the playing is definitely more important than hunting and collecting. I used to be so focused on hunting that I hardly ever actually played anything.
 
I'm sure part of that is because I've owned almost every console that I've wanted to try at one point in the last 25 years of being in this hobby and I've already experienced so much that the pull to get more just isn't there. I'm very happy with this change in my viewpoint as the experience is now so much more important than the physical thing. Getting old still sucks but I'm glad to have a hobby that continues to help me feel young.
 
I still miss my hair though

I'm not counting, for fear of depressing myself. My number dropped off precipitously after giving away so many games prior to moving. 
 
If you ask my wife, the number is "too many". 

I feel nobody asked for or wanted the titles on offer. They should have taken a poll or something offering titles unique to Colecovision or perhaps titles the original coleco had planned but never released. I have no doubt there are very specific reasons they are offering Robo-tech GBA port and Strawberry Shortcake 8bit title but nothing besides the mini cabinets says "COLECO" to me. Just comes off as another cash on marketed to the retro collector crowd because "NOSTALGIA" with zero understanding of what made the originals so cool. To that end I am mostly in agreement with THIS video. 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZxsJQzTMFY

They look cool but the two titles on offer don't really speak to me. I might have picked up arcade perfect versions of the titles in the original line.

These look real cool but DAMN it is bugging me that these old retro companies, I know they have very little to nothing to do with the original and are mostly just acquired brands / IP's but the fact they keep trying to use crowd funding just screams red flag to me. 

I'll echo this sentiment. Although I do love some longer game sessions whether playing one of the older Sims games on the PC or a couple of hours of Star Wars Battlefront II on the PS4, I primarily prefer the shortness of the older games. When I have some down time I may dedicate a half an hour to play a few 2600 or NES arcade ports and have a blast in that time and then put it away. 
 
I'm 48 now so closing on 50 in less than a year and a half and I do find that as I get older and particularly in the last year or so that collecting is a lot less important to me than playing is. I don't know if it is a coincidence of age or not but having a small, compact out of the way collection is much more appealing to me now as a 48 year old than a room of doom in my 20's and I actually find that the less I own, the more I play. I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense but as I age the playing is definitely more important than hunting and collecting. I used to be so focused on hunting that I hardly ever actually played anything.
 
I'm sure part of that is because I've owned almost every console that I've wanted to try at one point in the last 25 years of being in this hobby and I've already experienced so much that the pull to get more just isn't there. I'm very happy with this change in my viewpoint as the experience is now so much more important than the physical thing. Getting old still sucks but I'm glad to have a hobby that continues to help me feel young.
 
I still miss my hair though

I'll echo this sentiment. Although I do love some longer game sessions whether playing one of the older Sims games on the PC or a couple of hours of Star Wars Battlefront II on the PS4, I primarily prefer the shortness of the older games. When I have some down time I may dedicate a half an hour to play a few 2600 or NES arcade ports and have a blast in that time and then put it away. 
 
I'm 48 now so closing on 50 in less than a year and a half and I do find that as I get older and particularly in the last year or so that collecting is a lot less important to me than playing is. I don't know if it is a coincidence of age or not but having a small, compact out of the way collection is much more appealing to me now as a 48 year old than a room of doom in my 20's and I actually find that the less I own, the more I play. I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense but as I age the playing is definitely more important than hunting and collecting. I used to be so focused on hunting that I hardly ever actually played anything.
 
I'm sure part of that is because I've owned almost every console that I've wanted to try at one point in the last 25 years of being in this hobby and I've already experienced so much that the pull to get more just isn't there. I'm very happy with this change in my viewpoint as the experience is now so much more important than the physical thing. Getting old still sucks but I'm glad to have a hobby that continues to help me feel young.
 
I still miss my hair though

I hit 40 in the last year. For me, the main appeal of retro gaming is that many classic games are relatively short affairs. This is particularly true of the earliest consoles, where arcade ports were the norm. Balancing family life, work life and other commitments leaves little free time for long adventures. I do manage a modern RPG or two a year, but that's it and it takes me weeks of late evening playing. Also, I injured my shoulder last summer and it still isn't back to where it was. This can make longer gaming sessions uncomfortable.
 
I did notice that a lot of the VR titles are relatively short too. I picked a PSVR up at the end of last year and have been spending most of my gaming time on it. Moss, for example, was just a few hours and it was one of the best gaming experiences I've had in recent years. Rebellion's Battlezone reboot is easy to pick up and play for a short time. If you're on a time budget, this might be a good way to play modern games without have a tremendous time commitment.

The Amiga just screams "cool". I owned one very briefly in the late 90's, the A500 I believe. I found it in a thrift store but not the way you'd think. It was sitting in a shopping cart by the office door with the monitor. I asked if it was for sale and the woman said it was there to get it out of the way because the Amiga was their thrift stores office computer but they had just replaced it with a Windows PC so although they hadn't intended on selling it she actually said that sure, she'd sell it and I was floored when she said I could have it for $10. 

BITD, A friend of mine with a Christian mother refused to buy this game for my buddy because it had "Demon" in the title

Its funny, I have lots of systems that I didn't own BITD, but I played them either at a console arcade next to my house, or at my friends and cousins houses on a constant basis.
 
The only consoles I owned as a kid are:
 
Atari 2600
NES
 
The consoles I own now that I never really played before are:
 
Intellivision
Atari 5200
Atari 7800
Colecovision
 
The consoles I own now that I played a ton of when I was younger (pre-20) are:
 
SNES
Sega Genesis
Playstation
N64
Turbografx 16
 
Dreamcast on up I've owned myself, although I usually don't buy them on release. The exception for that rule was the Wii, Wii U, and Switch. Wii I got launch day, Wii U and Switch I got within 3 months of release.
 
My wife got me into the CV; she played it a lot when she was a kid because her folks left it at her grandparents house after they upgraded to the NES. Some of the best pre crash graphics and arcade ports are on this system, and I'm glad we have one now!
 
SNES and Genesis were no brainers for me; I played these things almost every weekend. I had two cousins that had the Genesis, and my best friend owned a SNES and his stepbrother had a Genesis which we borrowed pretty much whenever we felt like it. The SNES we have is actually my wife's original one she got for Christmas in the 90's, yellowed case and all!
 
I had played the Playstation a lot at same best friends house; he bought one shortly after it launched. My brother in law also had one, and I played it a lot while I was dating my wife.
 
Another one of my best friends had the N64 at launch, and I was at his house playing it a lot, or there were times when he would let me borrow it for a week, usually when I was on school break. He had already graduated and was working full time, so he was cool with me playing it when I was off school. The N64 we have is also my wife's original one she received for Christmas in 1999.
 
None of my friends had the Turbo, but the console arcade next door to my house did, and it was one of my favorite things to play, mainly because none of my friends or relatives had one. I played the heck out of Bonk's Adventure, Galaga 90, and Blazing Lasers.

That put me off a lot of really great stuff for years. I enjoy a lot of 8 and 16-bit era platformers but it seemed like so much time and work to make any progress, just to have it scrubbed at the end of each play. Those games didn't become viable for me until emulation allowed save states.
 
 
 
I really begrudged the first PlayStation back in the day. At the time I perceived it as a force for corporate power overwhelming creativity, where Sony were using their massive resources to swamp a market and drive out a lot of innovative players. At the same time wider consolidation in the industry meant many smaller game developers were being bought out, home micro-computers stopped being viable platforms, bad/early 3D muscled out really great 2D styled games and the rising cost of development led to commercially safe games being the ones which received the funding and marketing attention. Basically, I blamed Sony for all the problems of the modern gaming industry by starting those trends.
 
In retrospect I was being very unfair, especially now I know a lot more about the internal management problems at Atari, Sega and Commodore. Now I'm revisiting the library a little bit and am discovering just how good the port of Doom was, and how good Symphony of The Night is, for instance, I can't attribute the console's success to corporate bullying. There's a lot there which earned success.
 
 
 
The economics are definitely in the collectors' favour. Running for so many years, selling so many units, and getting such good developer support has resulted in a flooded second-hand market.

BITD, A friend of mine with a Christian mother refused to buy this game for my buddy because it had "Demon" in the title

Good thing they never ported Satan's Hollow!

An Atari Flashback 2 modded to have a cartridge port!
 
Did I need it?  No.  But I've wanted one for a long time.  Shocking how good the video quality is on this. 

A couple of R5 Atari games, and Colecovision Frogger 2
 
 

Mother-load
 
 

An R5 Atari cartridge from a nice fellow on Facebook.
 
 

I've had my eye out for a 600XL for a  long time.  Well, I finally found one for a nice price via Facebook.  The cool XL tape drive was a nice bonus. 
 
The 600XL works, and I've made project plans to expand it's memory to 64k. 
 
The only 8-bit computer left now on my "want" list is a 1200XL. 
 

The mod board I like to use looks like this:
 

 
And yes...you use ground and power from the RF board pins, and then ground goes out to the jacks from the little board.  
 
PS - one other thing -- when you mentioned you don't have wire.  Do you have a "Harbor Freight Tools" near you?  I'm not sure if they are in Canada or not.  But they sell a variety pack of wire spools in a nice stand for cheap.  
 
 

Defintely a grounding issue... I can tell from when you are touching the side of it there at the beginning. Or at least that is what it looks like to me.