Old school consoles

[markt]

After seeing the post from wfg97079 in the buy/sell/trade forum about the sears telegames, I did a little digging around.
Several years ago I got into a phase where I was buying old consoles & cartridges at yard sales, flea markets, ect.
I have 5 or 6 large totes full of consoles and cartridges.
I have atari 2600's, 7800's 5200's 800 and 800xl computers with disc and tape drives.
Several colecovisions and atari adapter units.
I have one large box full of joysticks, paddles, and ac adapters.
I am going to pick up an adapter so I can hook these up to a t.v. to see what works and what doesnt.
After I go through them I will probably put some of it up for sale.
In the meantime check out these pics this Magnavox Odyssey and carts.
 

[ChadTower]

I have 5 Odyssey2 units I can see just from my desk.   

[markt]

I never played the odyssey system even as a kid.
I had a Atari 2600, an 800 computer with the tape drive.
A friend of mine had a colecovision, I always thought that system was the cats meow.
Of course now when I hook up one of the old atari's my kids just laugh.

[Loki]

I can't stop feeling young when I'm on this forum haha
The oldest console I have here is a NES ^^;
I did had an MSX though, but sold it about a month ago.

[missioncontrol]

I'll be interested in seeing what's put up for sale.....

[shardian]

I had a Coleco and loved it. That brassknuckles thing with the joystick on top was the ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.

[ChadTower]

I'll be interested in seeing what's put up for sale.....

I have tons of stuff sitting around and I'm in the middle of trying to clear space.  If there is something specific you are looking for, let me know, I may have it to spare.

[somunny]

After I go through them I will probably put some of it up for sale.
In the meantime check out these pics this Magnavox Odyssey and carts.
 

Where's Pick-Axe Pete?!  I was one of the kids that thought he was ahead of the curve getting an Odyssey 2.  While my friends were playing Adventure and Asteroids, I was stuck with Crypto-Logic.    Ah well, I'm still a little nostalgic for the old thing.

[ChadTower]

The o2 voice module still rocks.  There are still quality o2 games being released.

[RayB]

If you Google, you'll find many old consoles can be modded to output S-Video. Not only does this negate having to find an RF convertor, but you get a cleaner, crisper picture too.

[ChadTower]

You don't even have to do that, you can use a $3 coax-rca adapter and get 95% of the benefit of a mod.

[Ed_McCarron]

You don't even have to do that, you can use a $3 coax-rca adapter and get 95% of the benefit of a mod.

Well, you won't have difficulty connecting it, but the video will still suck.

I guess thats subjective, how much crisper do you need the character in, say, Atari 2600 Adventure to be???

[ChadTower]

I always find a marked improvement in the video when switching from a 25 year old low quality switchbox to a coax-rca adapter.  It eliminates the degradation from that old crappy inline part.  Every time.  This holds true over probably 100 instances of the consoles that this works with.

[RayB]

Keep in mind that RF output has all video signals AND audio signals combined into one, with all the inherent signal bleed. I believe you a modern converter may look better than in the old days, but it still won't hold a candle to true S-Video output from the source.

[ChadTower]

You mean S-video, yes?  Not the same as S-VHS, which is a specific standard for video cassettes.

Most of those old consoles don't have a place where you can pull the raw signals needed to put together a quality s-video signal.  They're not putting out a modern lum/chrom signal from anywhere in the circuit.  There are one or two of them you can get a decent S-video from but on most of them you're going to top out with a composite signal that requires a decent mod to get.

Now, you could construct a converter board to sit inside the case if you really wanted to, but given the simplicity of the graphics, it's not going to give you much more than you'll get from a clean native signal.

[RayB]

Yes, S-video. I've corrected my posts.

[MYX]

I had a Coleco and loved it. That brassknuckles thing with the joystick on top was the ---Cleveland steamer---.

Coleco was great. I felt that it came closest to the real thing at the time. If I remember correctly, on Donkey Kong, you could actually climb down the broken ladders to avoid the getting hit.

On the odyssey, My brother and I played the pack man rip off to no end. (Name?). Liked it because you could make your own mazes. But if you turned it off...Poof it was gone.

[horseboy]

KC Munchkin.

[missioncontrol]

I'll be interested in seeing what's put up for sale.....

I have tons of stuff sitting around and I'm in the middle of trying to clear space.  If there is something specific you are looking for, let me know, I may have it to spare.

I'm looking for a Colecovision, Odyssey and Intellivision to eventually add to my retro console collection, I'm in no real hurry though.....

[skim36]

I have a colecovision adam system I picked up at a yard sale.  Has the tape drive and cartridge slot.  I used it mainly to play my colecovision games after the console stopped working but it's a pain cause you have to plug in the bulky printer and everything else plugs into that.....lol.  But I have alot of the accessories for the coleco like the rollerball, extra controllers, sport controllers,
it's nice.....I should dig that out of storage.......

[ChadTower]

I'm looking for a Colecovision, Odyssey and Intellivision to eventually add to my retro console collection, I'm in no real hurry though.....

I have a bunch of Odyssey2 units and could part with one without a ton of convincing.  I don't know what I have for spare known working Intellivisions and ColecoVisions but I know I have at least a couple of each in the "unknown" pile to either test or test and fix.

[NiN^_^NiN]

For RF to be used they output a composite signal so all these consoles can be modded to atleast a clean video and audio signal into 2 RCA out's (all where mono no true stereo)

I still play my Commodore 64 and love it i've hacked up a old dead cassette player with an old mp3 player i had and used programs to transform disk and tap images into wav files which i dumped onto the mp3 player

It's alot handier but this is true for any system that uses tapes all you need is one of them mp3 tape adapters and load the wav files onto the mp3 player (it has to be wav cause mp3 strips out the data) and select what game u want on the mp3 then hit play ont he cassette player then on the mp3 player and ur done

I pull my c64 out from time to time to play it on my projector gotta love great giana sister and wizard of wor and hopping mad is one of the great simple games

[boykster]

I pull my c64 out from time to time to play it on my projector gotta love great giana sister and wizard of wor and hopping mad is one of the great simple games

Wow, I can't even imagine playing M.U.L.E. on my projector, that would be teh kewl!

[ChadTower]

Pixels a foot across!   

[boykster]

I'll have to fire up an emu and play a game of MULE and take some pics.....

I setup the c64 emu on my PSP just so I could play MULE.....and Archon.....