Started going through all my crap to move in a week, let's just say it has to do with the ongoing hell of mold in our apartment for the past few years getting worse and worse despite putting a gas truck of bleach on it over the years. No this is not a selling thread - I will be mentioning purge items just for the sake of telling the events of yesterdays insanity. I've also put the Game on hold for now.
I kicked it off by doing some sketches and Visio drawings of the new "Man Cave". The problem with my current one (where all my Retro PC and rock n' roll activity takes place), is it's too darned cluttered, I don't have enough desk space, and everything ends up out in the open anyway - I want to hide all the wires and crap and have it look nice. I plan to replace it with a school-type activity table.
I've been collecting/maintaining/tinkering with vintage video games since 95 (age 12), and vintage computers since 97 (age 14), I'm now 32, I've accumulated a lot of crap, so now I think it's time I make my stuff just a tad more cohesive. I look forward to having a new man cave that is in a building that won't leave me coughing up phlegm and in a bitter mood all the time - that's a part of what mold toxicity does to you.
The first lot was a ton of Halo toys and a pair of XT Motherboards. I don't play with toys, I tinkered with collecting for awhile (don't have that much), ended up throwing a set of Dodge Chargers my wife gave me from her job (never asked for em, I'm more of a Ford guy anyway). But amongst the items in the purge includes a pile of ISA cards, a anti-static bag of SIMMS, 2 PC-class motherboards from an IBM Industrial PC and an IBM Personal Computer Portable 5155, one of which has 256K, the other 640K that I upgraded myself. I just don't need em', my Tandy 1000a covers the gamut of 1980's vintage PC-DOS world goodness. Trying to decide weather or not to let go of some boxed software, some stuff like OS/2 2.1 with WIn OS/2 and OS/2 2.0, and stuff like FontMonger, and BASIC for the Macintosh I don't really want or need, but things like my original 1st Edition VGA copy of The Secret Of Monkey Island on 720K ain't goin nowhere (it's the VGA version with the text inventory menu)...then there's some in-betweens like Police Quest and a 3-pack of PQII, Hoyale Card Games, and Manhunter II (I believe). I also have about 70ish Atari 2600 games and 30-40ish NES games going to half-price books on the weekend so I can purge out all the games I don't play, I'm not a completest collector anymore.....then......
The wife goes in and "audits" everything on her own accord, and whilst you'd think she'd be mad because I was purging "not enough" stuff...nope, this is why I married her - she got mad because I was planning to send off NES games SHE wanted to play, and some Atari games that appealed to HER. She said "you're purging too much, remember, you'll probably never get them back, and I want to play some of this stuff too". So she pulled basically every movie title or edgy title she could find out of the stacks, still leaving around the same number area (though a good bit less in the NES case).
Tonight I need to post a ton of stuff on E-bay, and then start going through the game controllers I have, I have so much crap for the Atari 2600 it's insane, 2 TACs, 2 Pointmaster Discwashers, several CX-40 joysticks in varying condition including one original 1977 model that had the insert and leaf-switch action, a Gemini Gemstik, a Gemini flight stick I junked (because it was falling apart), some crazy neon blue and gray thing that looks like some kind of wacky kid's toy more than a serious game controller. I've decided to keep all the NES controllers (2NES Max gamepads, both versions of Zapper, the Advantage joystick, and the 4 gamepads I have).
as for making the PC collection cohesive, I've sorted out the PC's thus far accordingly, though more mrevision on this is going on tonight....I'm also looking at some keyboards to get rid of, amongst them are 2 XT keyboars - a IBM Model "F" which I wish I could adapt to my modern PC (that's my favorite buckling spring Keyboard of all time), and a generic Xt keyboard complete with a warning label on the bottom stating to NEVER use the keyboard with an AT computer.
Tandy 1000
- 1 white power cable
- Tandy 1000 Keyboard
GEM 286
- 1 Gray Power Cord
- Passthrough cord for Monitor
- I'm trying to decide between the 2 Microsoft Mice I have and a older 3-button Logitech Mouse I have, all serial
- Generic AT 101Key or Laser AT/XT Keyboard
- currently as-of-yet untested IBM 14" CRT
Home-Built 486 DX2
- POwer Cord
- Passthrough for Monitor
- PC-TRAC Trackball
- Chicony Keyboard
- Gameport/MIDI adapter
- omnihanded gamepad
- 1994 Color Monitor
Compaq Portable 486c
- beigy gray power cable
- Microsoft PS/2 Explorer Trackball
Apple Macintosh SE FDHD
- Mac SE Keyboard or Enhanced keyboard (not sure which yet)...
- Mac SE Mouse
- Pointing Devices Trackball (yes PD is the brand IIRCC)
- Beigy Power cord
- 800K External Floppy Drive
Either way, I have a lot of work cut out for me. I'm hoping $30 of the sales can go to getting a new screen for the Compaq Portable (p/n 128902-001) to replace the cracked one, that way then that project goes back on track. I'm even considering possibly making that the main DOS gaming PC after awhile once I figure out a few other things (turning a WAP into a WIFI device I can hide in the case, how to pass-through the audio from the intspkr output to the input on a SoundBlaster, then back out to the actual speaker inside the unit so all audio goes through the Compaq, and the voltage pinout for the hard disk so I can connect my 8GB drive for DOS/WFWG in there).