Most liked posts in thread: What's new Pussycat too?

I did have one other order out that I forgot about, it arrived Friday or Saturday. I just let them sit until last night. It was four new CX40 boards, with contact bubbles, to properly repair my 2 Atari joysticks, the only two I have, both were painted to match my 1200XL system. My 800 has some good after market ones I use, modified to Joy2B+, one two-button the other three. I'll show them soon as they were just painted to match my 800CX.

I ordered 4 of the CX40 boards for future repairs. I still need to get a couple original CX40's for my Atari VCS, all I have for it atm is an Atari flashback 2 joystick, which is compatible, but not as durable or as good a feel to them with their rubber bubbles inside instead of metal contact bubbles. The boards on the left are the ones I replaced, the ones on the right are two extra new ones.

I'll save the old boards with the warn out bubbles, in case I can find the bubbles separately somewhere, which I haven't yet (If BEST E. only has them then I'll do without)

I also have to order an new Starmaster joystick from Video 61, as I was modifying it for my 7800 (the other is one I have was modified for the 800CX), to make both buttons on it work as left/right 7800 buttons (a success there of course) and painting it to match the 7800 better as it's "red" was more of an orange and my 7800 stuff was recently painted Apple red.

Anyway, one of the fire buttons (unique) fell to the floor next to my workbench, to the carpet and I was unaware...until I heard my dog munching on something and looked down to see a ruinous piece of plastic that was once a button! Atleast I'll have more spare parts for both my other Stamaster's.

At least they are only $12 and I had only ordered one the last time from Video 61, along with some other items, and Lance very kindly sent me a second Starmaster controller for free. So I'll order a couple other things from him and see if he throws another in for free too.

And what the hell, here is a pic of my other Starmaster and Megadrive controllers with Joy2B+ upgrades curing after painting to match the 800CX...I will still be painting the Starmaster text and arrows around the joystick blue too, I'll buy more Atari Fuji&name chrome logos and put one of them on the Genesis controller and a CX45 designation like I did with my CX35 mouse I made from the TRS-80 Coco mouse.

This and working on the house is what I'm doing to keep busy and give my mind a rest of dealing with my mother and her condition and most likely imminent passing. I'm a little to down to feel like taking on an deeper or more involved projects at the moment. I don't even really feel like doing these controller mods and repairs, but sitting around feeling depressed and sorry for my mother and myself isn't any good, so I force myself to do this, and even posting the stuff, is all just for my mind's own good...a break from the reality.



Dammit! I just noticed myself looking at the picture I took! You see that crack on the desktop next to my Atari 400 mouse pad in the first pic? I JUST fixed that last week and I see it's back! It's where to pieces of plywood join, and I guess I'm going to have to try using something other than wood putty since it keeps cracking when the desk is used...maybe just some silicon in the crack and paint over it. It was reinforced from the beginning with a board underneath holding both boards "tight" and that's also where I installed a support leg, but it cracks anyway.

I think because I made the hole apparatus out of scrap wood, and the two pieces of plywood have their grain running perpendicular to each other and flex differently along those grain lines when weight is applied. But that's the only way I could make the scrap pieces fit.

 

Though this was last week, and I shared on my profile update on AA and added pics to my blog over there on the Bally Professional Arcade, I did finish repairing the broken controller (details, before/after/process pics in my blog in my AA profile) and repainting it, including the gold badge trim with 18Kt gold paint pen by Krylon that another Bally restorer recommended for areas I couldn't use auto pin-stripe gold trim. You can still see a slight blemish where I fixed the controller at the top by the stick&paddle head, it would have been perfect but there was a delay between repair and painting, and I forgot to do a final sanding there, but it was the first test subject and my other one and two I'm repairing for the other guy will be perfect. I used Rust-oleum's Canyon Black, in satin, painter's choice spray paint for the controller to match the original color and sheen.

I also received a Bally Basic cart, ready to hook up to a recorder, which apparently you have to swap between mic and headphone/aux out to load and save. No disk drives were ever made since this cartridge was the only thing to be officially released by Bally toward upgrading to a real computer. Since DIY & Homebrew stuff has come along, which I plan to jump on the bandwagon for though to full fill the original marketing promises for yourself with the machine.

And my first DIY cartridge. I payed $5 for a Space Fortress rom&board from the same person that has been helping me with tips and parts (I'm buying a 32K ram expansion and multi-cart from him soon). I printed the cassette looking cartridge out with my Ender 3 printer, in white, then painted it Canyon Black, satin, to match official carts. I then found a clear picture of the original cartridge online and after resizing and cropping, I printed out my own label on premium satin photo paper, just like I did with my Atari 800CX computer badge, and glued it in place matching the Basic cartridge's label placement.

 

I went off on my video output tangent and forgot to talk about the DC and it's color some more. Yes, I did paint it black to match the older Sega consoles better, and there was a black sports edition released in the states at least, of the DC, but it has what I consider a very ugly 'Sega Sports' logo on it and the controllers that I never cared for unfortunately. But my next vintage console purchase will be replacing my Sega Saturn I sold years ago, and it will match it's black.

I don't know if I'll get another Sega Megadrive/CD/32X system combo again or not, if I do, it has to be the model 1 and the first model CD with the sliding door that goes underneath and they tend to cost more. But for the Megadrive/Genesis, I'm only interested in a few games made for each of the add-ons. The Road Rash games on the Genesis and a few others, the Core design games like Battle Corp. and Soul Star for the Sega CD, and there are a couple favorites of mine on the 32X too, even with it's tiny library. I can count the games I want for the entire system on both my hands though. Saturn and DC have many more games I like.

I also have emulators for the Master System, Genesis and Game Gear on my Dreamcast. And though I haven't checked the seen lately, I don't think they ever did, or even be possible, to do a good Saturn emulator even on the DC, it had custom chips and even though I think the DC's chips are next-gen of those, I don't know enough about it and how easy it would be to emulate a Saturn on it. As far as I know, no Genesis emulator was made to include the 32X emulation either, again, possibly too much for the Dreamcast to emulate well.

So it may end up just being the physical Saturn and Dreamcast in my collection, but at least they will match! I already have my Jaguar, 3DO and PS2 that runs PS1 software from the era. I never was a Nintendo fan, but the one system I did like (except for the retched controllers) was the N64. I may get another one of them again someday. The the next gen of vintage consoles is covered with my DC, PS2 and original Xbox as well. I briefly owned a PS3 and sold it (given to me used), nothing I wanted that wasn't on my 360. I have not owned anything newer myself, my brother has the Xbox One S I play sometimes.

 

My Megadrive/Genesis controller, converted to 3-button Joy2B+ for my 800CX is re-assembled and nearly complete. I still have to add an Atari decal and maybe some text under the buttons like it had before (TRIGGER), I'm not sure though, the buttons have their designations on them, but the controller looks pretty empty. Maybe I should paint the circle and "oval" around the pad and buttons grey? What do you guys think?

And since the controller start/pause button (I forget which it was) was no longer being used, and the fact that I seemed to have misplaced or lost it during the painting process , I decided to turn it into an LED light display for the buttons when they are pressed. 2 blue and one white LED in the middle. I do plan to still mask that oval with something white with just holes for the LED's to barely poke through.



Yes, there are a few tiny black specks that got on the controller case during re-assembly somehow, that's not on your screen. I didn't notice until I saw them in the photo. I cleaned it.

 

I think I may also use a gray mask for the LED's...what do you think @nysavant ? White or gray around the LED's? I did have the missing button painted gray before I lost it...

 

looking a second time after you agreed, I will paint it gray there, but only the concave oval part on the case, directly around the LED's will be white. And I think I'll install the white mask on the inside of the case with the LED's poking through, and I'll leave the oval "shaft" inside walls white as well, to better reflect the LED lights.

But around the buttons and pad will be just gray.

 

I won't be doing much but making it work from point A to point B as it's not a quality mountain bike. It's one of those $100 department store Chinese made crap you buy a kid for Christmas that doesn't take care of their possessions.

 

They are about 1.5 inches square.

Where I get all my decals & Badges from, at least until later this year when I get an upgrade for my 3D printer; a laser egraving head for all types of surfaces...

https://www.etsy.com/listing/910936754/cyberdyne-corporation-logo-label-decal?ref=yr_purchases

 

I've no idea how fast a laser engraver works compared to a 3D printer and it's extruder and printing head, but swapping out the the extruder and print head and replacing it with the engraver laser head would probably be about a 15 minute job once I got familiar, maybe a half hour to hour setting it up the first time. But not bad compared to the average print I make taking 24-48 hours.

I would imagine that detailed engraving like I've seen in the pic I posted and other examples, using the same basic axis apparatus to move as the printer, that good engraving might take similar amounts of time to complete. Of course with new printer upgrades I think I'll be able to speed up the printer twice as fast as I print at now for good results, so those times should cut in half too. But right now set my printer at about 40-50mmps and it's top speed is 150mmps, so the laser engraver may be able to run faster than the plastic printing. I hope to double that 40-50 speed with printing now that I have a glass bed plate and other improvements I made, to help the extrusion process. Yes, any plastic parts printed on the glass have glass smooth and shiny plastic surface. What you see printing is a Bally cartridge case, top and bottom halves and so both outside faces are smooth and shiny as glass.

Once I get an auto-leveler (comes before the laser engraver) specs and tolerances should get much tighter and better too. But it will be soon, the Laser engraver kit is only about $75 and the auto leveler upgrade kit is only about $35. The tempered glass bed plate I got for $15 and my other upgrades I printed on the printer, or my filament pulley system I made myself from a real pulley (from a dog-run cable system I bought and never used). Obviously all the white bits I made with the printer itself.

 

Matt, with all the handle grip joysticks I always had one issue with them, the handle creaked as it was moved, and not just a little creak, it felt like it was about to snap off.

Is that new one you have doing that?

And yes, sending a disk and manual in a plastic sleeve is a bit cheap, I know we had some titles that were shipped like that but they were few and far between as the makers soon realised they were getting damaged in transit.

 

No creaking on this pistol grip, it has three screws that hold it to a black shaft otherwise very similar to a CX40 shaft, and it is good and tight/solid. Though it is a "loud" joystick due to the heavy metal bubble contacts plunging, just like the sound of micro-switches in the Konix SpeedKing. But no creaking, strong plastic and properly snug. I'm not claiming this is the best controller I ever had or anything, or even that I'd recommend it for say $30 (I wouldn't pay that for the 7800 converted ones, but then I can convert myself) But for $12.95 it is very much worth it, and now even more so if you have the skilz to convert it to a 7800 or Joy2B+ yourself.

I am really amazed he only sells them for $12. I don't know what they cost retail back in the day for these NOS controllers, but I think Video 61 much have purchased a lot of left over stock of them from somewhere and is desperately trying to get rid of them at the $12 mark and now even converting them to 2 button 7800 use to push more out the door. I think this would have been about a $25-30 controller in the mid 80's.

Lance has no description of them in his listing and doesn't even refer to them as Starmaster's, just "new joystick" and I was expecting a knock-off CX40, I did ask Lance if they were any good and he replied "people seem to like them." Originally intended as a alternative way for me to get replacement contact bubbles for my CX40's. Which I did salvage from one of them to use in a CX40, until I recently got the CX40 replacement boards then I put the SM contact bubble back in the original and converted it to 7800 use. Now it is the one I'm replacing a button on from this parts joystick.

By the way, the price is actually $12.95, I just looked again.

As to the Artworx game, it never came in anything but the original cardboard box, this is a repackaging Video 61 did themselves, even folding the manual in half to fit (which I don't like either). The original box(s) must have been damaged in some way. But with NOS games from Video 61 they are usually in original packaging and collectible. I'm just going to have to ask more questions about game packaging and condition in the future, especially for the discount games like this. He also has NOS games that he sells for more than you can get them on Ebay, like the Avalon Hill games I buy NOS off ebay and from Poly-Play for about $30, he sells them for $40. But it averages out for me because generally shipping is less from V61 than Ebay.

 

Another new gadget arrived today, something I looked into because of all the cables I have running up the wall and across a bit of ceiling then down to my projector. A portable Bluetooth transmitter/reciever to turn any non BT audio source (any vintage audio/video with an audio out of either L/R RCA or mini headphone jack or an adapter to make it so) That way I can get rid of the long audio cable running from my projector to my amplifier, as I have to use the Projector's audio out for my media machines using HDMI.

So to get rid of those, and only have the VGA and HDMI lines to hide with cable covers, smaller ones.
Of course it's portable and so I can use it with any of my vintage equipment to send the audio to my rack stereo unit if I want.

Less than $10 on on ebay with free shipping...so hopefully it works! My Amplifier says it's connected now...time to test it out...the signal only has to go about 1 meter...otherwise it's 3-4 meters of audio cable.

 

As far as the console side of this coin, I'm set. For the computer, I still need a keyboard as I will never program anything for it or even learn it's BASIC and machine until I have a real keyboard. If it was a keypad the the Atari CX85 full-stoke keys maybe, but not on a calculator keypad!

There are actually a couple dozen games that use the extended memory on the multi cart, so I'm excited to check them out, see what this baby can do with all the memory and custom chips the original Bally arcade cabinets in the real arcades had. I know for one thing it has a high resolution mode around 320x200 but I forget exactly, that couldn't be accessed by the stock console because it's only 4K and at least 8K (Like the Atari 8-bit) is needed to generate a high-res bitmap screen. So the stock games always used a medium resolution 4K mode, quite similar to the Atari's Antic mode 7 160x96. Yes mode 7+ 160x192 is 4K and mode 7 2K, but the Bally needed ram for the OS still! Just like Atari 8-bit OS steals 2K from 64K so technically Atari's have 62K ram for programming.

On the ram expansion you can see a switch for 2K and 6K, this is how much ram the OS uses (there's and expanded OS on board to switch too). So depending on the OS I choose, I'll have either 26K or 30K of programmable ram...I think that's how it works. I still need to download the manual.And then the RAM or ROM switch too, which all has to do with the OS too...but that may just be choosing between running a program rom on cart or loading a program to ram from a tape deck...or from the ulti-multi cart.

 

Some decals and badges arrived today that I'm using on modified and DIY cases. One was suppose to be a high-quality replacement badge for my friends 800XL I'm just finishing up. But I must have accidentally ordered 3 of them.

I have no use at all for the other 2. Anyone need/want a new 800XL badge? 2 extras (one per person unless only one person asks), free, just pay for shipping. I'd have to look, which I don't feel like bothering, doesn't matter to me, but IIRC these sell for about $5 each.

I can send it in a regular letter envelope first class or air mail, whatever you want, protected between some cardboard, that's how they were sent to me, second or third order from them and they have arrived fine every time.

 

Nice badges, look just like the ones I got from Poland for my 130XE.. I'm ok for badges but kind to offer them out to folks..

 

Actually Paul, they probably are from the same seller as the badges you bought from Poland. As I looked at the envelope again and they are were sent from Poland. I mixed up the source of two orders I made at the same time. It's my 'Terminator' Cyberdyne Systems badges for my robot that are coming from Germany. I expect them to arrive any day now too. It sort of fits, since Arnold Schwarzenegger is Germanic, though from Austria...

 

Wonderful, Daz... as they always say, one good turn deserves another and you relate this tale so well and Carlo, like Manu, is worth his weight/wait in gold! Lovely to hear these retro stories have such a happy ending where everyone wins - what a guy - keep it up, Daz. Hope your video lead reaches Cris soon in Roma. Please let me know when it does. Cheers, buddy.

 

RESULT!!! Get in there, Matt.

Extremely good things come to those who wait!

 

PMSL!!!

I second and third that last proposal, pal.

Have a superb time out and about visiting Blackpool, Al.

I'll look forward to a run through your itinerary when you return from your marvellous missions, mate.

 

Absolutely euphORIC over that splendid sexy red and black Bally keyboard colour scheme, Matt. What a Bobby Dazzler you've got on your retro hands now, my old muckah. ENJOY!!

 

Very very smart.
Nice cover operation there, Matt.
They certainly do the biz and have that quality uniform look.
The price of these dust covers these days can be eye-watering (some dudes wanting £30+ per item).
Hope you got them at a reasonable price, matey.

 

They certainly look the part and worth every cent, Matt - the extras like the piped/raised Dreamcast swirl finish etc show the extra quality that the covers ooze. I think it's been one of those outlays we sometimes have to make in order to protect our investments and these beauties need protecting as some of them are rare specimens whilst others are unique.
Well done, fella - the (excellent) results speak for themselves.

 

Not yet Andy, but I have a friend helping me figure it out. Who?.....

 

You've got me there, Al.

Fiona Bruce meets X Files' Agent Scully?!

(That's the one on the right!)

 

My new laser engraving head arrived yesterday, to turn my 3D printer into a laser engraver. It came with safety glasses to protect the eyes from the laser and 3 sample wood plates I presume to practice engraving.Of course it supposedly can be used with more than wood, including metal, plastic, etc., but we all know about "truth in advertising." so only time and attempts using it on other materials will reveal if the claims are true.

Apparently set-up should be easier than I thought, as I thought I'd have to remove the 3D print head and attach this in it's place, but the guide says it just attaches to the fan cover of print head itself and apparently I may even be able to leave it in place so I can still print or engrave without need of swapping out heads. But of course only trying will reveal if both will still work fine with both attached to the printer. I am supposed to either put a metal or thick wood base on top of the print bed to avoid damage to the print bed itself.

Supposedly I just connect it to the motherboard of my printer (there are several connections to attach different upgrades), download the software (Creality brand software just like I use for the 3D printer already) and I'll get a new front menu to choose between printing and engraving software.