Stuff and Things.

[rubber_jonnie]

And it's a dumb idea.

The answer to a question nobody asked...

[rubber_jonnie]

So it seems that Commodore just launched a new phone:


The Callback


It claims to be somewhere between a smartphone and a dumb phone...

Have they lost the plot?

Apparently so. All the money from the C64 Ultimate sales has clearly gone to their heads and this is the result.

Mind you if the planned social media bans for under 16s work out then they'll have a target audience perhaps.

[rubber_jonnie]

A minor little project today.

I bought the game Beamrider years ago for my Atari 8Bit machine. It was a loose cartridge so no instructions, and whilst the cart appeared to work, I could never get the game to play.

I tried to pull it apart wanting to see if I could fix it and not realising it was screwed together under the label I managed to break the back shell badly.

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And of course once I got the back off it turned out to be a glop top so I couldn't do much anyway.

I later discovered the cart worked and that the game was started in a completely different way to most Atari games, and I'd damaged a perfectly good cartridge shell.

I wasn't so good at figuring these things out BITD and I've learned a lot since then.

Fast forward to today and this un-labeled Kaboom cart arrived:

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By un-labeled I mean it hasn't got a proper label unlike the hastily scrawled title somebody did before it came to me.

I'd tried for a long time to get a cheap Activision cart where I wasn't so bothered about the game in order to fix the Beamrider cart, a game I really enjoy. Unfortunately they seem to be the more expensive carts to buy, but I got this for £6, which I was more than happy to pay.

A little case swapping and Beamrider looks great again:

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A bit of a shame about the screw holes, but overall an improvement. Here it with it's compatriot Dreadnought Factor cart, also from Activision.

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Both great games. For those who are interested, Kaboom does work and I may one day fix that too, but for now it can sit on my shelf of Atari games.

[rubber_jonnie]

Teaser for you all....

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[stephen_usher]

It's a Flan, Elan Samarai!

[rubber_jonnie]

It's a Flan, Elan Samarai!

An Egypt special.

It's a bit beaten up and whether it's repairable Is another matter, but under £100 shipped.

I'll take a risk on that.

[PhilC]

It's a Flan, Elan Samarai!

An Egypt special.

It's a bit beaten up and whether it's repairable Is another matter, but under £100 shipped.

I'll take a risk on that.

That's pretty good Jon. Your photo reminds me I need to 3d print a new heat sink cover for mine

[rubber_jonnie]

An Egypt special.

It's a bit beaten up and whether it's repairable Is another matter, but under £100 shipped.

I'll take a risk on that.

That's pretty good Jon. Your photo reminds me I need to 3d print a new heat sink cover for mine

The seller hit me with a few offers before I broke...

To be fair the description is super accurate in terms of condition and the power LED does come on. The plastics aren't great, but acceptable for the price, and of course it has the obligatory broken/missing joystick, plus it is missing the ESC and 1 key, but unless you want to pay a lot more (Mine was £92) I think you have to accept some deficiencies and just get on with the repairs.

Overall view:

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[PhilC]

@rubber_jonnie looks fine to me. You'll be able to 3d print the joystick parts and possibly the keys too. If you can find some STLs for the keys I can probably resin print them for you.

[rubber_jonnie]

@rubber_jonnie looks fine to me. You'll be able to 3d print the joystick parts and possibly the keys too. If you can find some STLs for the keys I can probably resin print them for you.

You're reading my mind