Hello, and welcome to the final unboxing video and some channel announcements. Now you might
be asking, why is this the final unboxing video? Well, for one thing most of the items
I’m going to be showing are things that have trickled in over the last 9 months and
they were items that I actually agreed to accept a long time ago before I actually ran
out of space.
The second thing is, I’ve had a bit of change in strategy. So, used to, I would hoard like
anything somebody would offer to donate to me because I might be able, or I might need
to use that thing in a video in the future. But, that was before we had this really good
interconnected group of collectors here in the Dallas/Ft.Worth area. So, now that I’m
really connected with these other people, it works out better for me just to borrow
things from those collectors to do my videos on and then return them, that way I don’t
have to store them here at the house.
So, does that mean I won’t be taking any donations anymore? Well, not exactly. What
it does mean is that I will only be taking donations of things that I’m going to use
more or less right away in a video that I have like immediate plans for. And also, I’ve
sort of made it clear to a lot of recent donors that have offered me things, I’ve said,
“Well, look, I don’t have the room to keep this, but I know these collectors in
the area that would like this or that or whatever, and if you want to send it to me, I will go
ahead and donate it to that person and then the upshot is, I get to use it whenever I
need it because I can just borrow it from that person who has it in their collection.
So, a lot of the things that people are donating to me now are actually, I’m just like an
intermediary. It’s coming to me and then I’m giving it to somebody else. Of course,
I make people aware of that, but it just means it won’t be staying here at my house. In
my own collection.
And the other announcement I needed to make has to do with the Coronavirus. So, it’s
actually had quite an effect on events scheduled for retro gaming and retro computing and things
like that.
For one thing, I had plans this year to appear at events in Dallas, New Jersey, Long Island,
and The Netherlands. Those have all been either cancelled or rescheduled. Many people are
asking me about appearances, and so I want to direct you to my website. I have always
had a little section called scheduled appearances which will detail my plans for the year. I
keep this updated with any changes as soon as I know them. So, please just check there
to see what the latest plans are.
The other thing I’ll mention is that I finally completed my video catalog on my website as
well, so you can see all episodes based on various topics. So this should make it easier
to lookup videos on your favorite topic, and I even have a section showing all of the videos
that have had guest stars or collaborations with other YouTubers.
And so, now let’s get to the unboxing.
The first package here is from Daniel in the Netherlands. And if you look at the post mark
you’ll see just how long ago this was sent. And what we have here is a small cosmetic
piece to a Compaq Portable III, which I plan to be restoring here eventually.
Next up, we have a package from Jacob in New Zealand. And what do we have here? Ah yes…
This is basically an XT-IDE card with a built-in compact flash reader. This is very handy and
I’ve actually been using this in my Commodore PC-20 for the last few months and it works
great. So, a big thanks to Jacob!
This next package is from Jacob Nelson. I also received this quite a while ago. So,
what we have here is a Casio QV-11, which is basically the first ever digital camera.
OK, maybe not the first, but you could say the first that actually takes the recognizable
form and design of a modern digital camera. LGR and I had planned to meet up do an episode
together on this before the whole coronavirus thing came along. So that’s been put on
hold for now. Nevertheless, thank you very much Jacob!
OK, here’s a package from The Future was 8-Bit. And again, this came in sometime last
year and I’m just getting around to showing you the unboxing. So, what we have here is
a SD2PET. Its basically an SD card reader that imitates a floppy drive for Commodore
PET computers. I’ve already tried it on my PET and it does work. So this is a great
device for PET owners.
We’ve got a pretty big box here. This is from Steven Yockey. That’s interesting.
A beetle mouse. It’s kind of weird because the box says it is for PC compatibles and
is a serial mouse, yet down here it says Amiga, which is totally incompatible. And…. And
RF shield? Looks like something bigger in here. So skipping forward here, I have everything
unboxed and he sent me a whole bunch of Amiga stuff including this Amiga 500 that needs
some restoration work. Also included is some sort of card for an Amiga 2000, perhaps? I
think its a SCSI card. And this looks like a RAM upgrade and real-time clock for an Amiga
500. With a lovely corroded battery, which is very typical. At least it isn’ t on the
motherboard where it can cause serious damage! And here we have a SCSI adapter for an Amiga
500. And of course an external floppy. All very cool stuff, thank you Steven!
Next up we have box from Mega Cat Studios. This is probably a game they are wanting me
to review. But, for the time being I don’t really plan on doing any more game review
videos since it seems nobody ever watches them. Looks like this is a game called Billionaire
Banshee for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Looks interesting.
And here we have a big box from Steven Lubars. I’m sure you are wondering what this could
possibly be. This predates most of the stuff I work with on my channel. This is a portable
teletype machine. This sort of pre-dates the dumb terminal. As its just a keyboard with
a printer built in. It’s actually called a miniterm. It definitely has the look of
the early 1970s, but I’m not really sure when it was made. On the rear it has a built-in
acoustic coupler so you can use this on the go, as well as a serial port. Very neat. Thank
you Steven!
And here is yet another box from Mega Cat Studios. I’m sure there is another game
in here. And since I probably won’t be reviewing it, I can at least show the box here. Looks
like he sent a little note. That’s some very nice handwriting. And the game is called…
I’m not sure how to pronounce this. Devwill too? It appears to be for the Sega Genesis.
Well, it looks interesting. But, like I said. I think I’m done with game reviews for a
while. Maybe I’ll get a chance to play around with some of these eventually.
Next up is a box from Robert Krenicki. OK. I think I remember this email. So what we
have here is another XT-IDe interface, but this one is designed specifically to fit into
a Tandy 1000 EX or HX on those proprietary slots in the back, and it has a compact flash
slot built right in! This is fantastic and I can’t wait to put this in my Tandy 1000HX.
I actually sold the EX a while back, so that’s the only one of that form factor I still have.
Thank you Robert!
And here’s something from Perifractic. So, it took me a moment to figure out what these
are for. They are designed to go into a Commodore 64 and allow you to alternate between a PAL
or NTSC system at the flick of a switch. I could certainly see that being handy. Thank
you Perifractic!
Next up is a box from James Grover. These look like regular 5.25” floppy disks, but
the are actually hard sectored. Which I’ll explain in a later video I am planning to
do on unusual media formats. And also a box of 8 inch floppy disks. Haha.. You can see
the size comparison. Thank you James!
And next we have a box from Benjamin Day. And what we have here are more floppy disks.
But these have one little unusual thing on them. Notice it says they are 500K disks,
but formatted capacity of 360K. Which is absolutely normal. But, if you look at the actual individual
disks, they are labelled as 500K. Which could be confusing to some people, so I thought
these would also be an interesting addition to the unusual media formats video.
Moving along, we have a box from Matti Reinikka in Finland. This is a very unusual box. I
think I’m supposed to cut along the curve here. All right, got that separated. Now,
let’s have a look. Keep up the good work. OK, I’ll try! So, what we have here is a
game from the 1990s, I think, called Barcode Battler. I’ve never heard of it before,
so maybe it was only sold in Europe and Scandinavia. Apparently it relies heavily on a barcode
scanner to play the game, I thought it might be a fun review. We’ll see. Thanks Matti!
And now we have a box from Johnathon Gosselin. What is all this? OK, I see cassette tapes.
These look like they are all for the Sinclair Spectrum, but the other one says Timex Sinclair.
Well, digging a little further I see that it isn’t all cassettes. In fact, there are
quite a few things here. Including what appears to be an entire Timex Sinclair 2068 unit.
I already had one of these, but I didn’t have any of these ROM cartridges, which are
pretty rare. These actually go into this little slot right here, like so. The other thing
I didn’t have was the users manual, or any of the software. So, now I am finally ready
to do a full documentary on this system. Thank you Johnathon!
OK, we have a big U-Haul box here from Michael Eggers. And here’s a note telling me everything
in this box. It appears to be a lot of Famicom stuff. So, after getting it all unpacked.
Here’s the Famicom, but you may notice it has this disk system cartridge installed.
And of course, here’s the actual disk drive. And there are also some included games that
load from disk. Oh look, it can run on batteries. That’s unexpected since the Famicom would
still need to be plugged into power. Anyway, thank you Michael for this rare item!
And this is the last box and it’s from John Siemonski. So, this will be the last unboxing
item ever, unless something changes with my storage situation. OK, so I’ll need to skip
forward a bit. So, what we have here is an Amiga 1200, which was sitting on top of an
Amiga 500, with a broken key apparently. I think both of these will need some pretty
serious cleanup and restoration work. So, don’t be surprised to see a restoration
video on the 1200 at some point. I do plan to finish the Commodore history series this
year with the Amiga being the final episode and I need a working 1200 to show. Oh, and
he also sent along a bunch of software on floppy disk. Thank you very much John!
And so that wraps up this final unboxing video and I did want to mention that I actually
do like these regular channel updates. Usually about once a month just for my Patreon supporters,
where I just kind of give a little bit of behind the scenes of what’s going on, videos
I’m planning to make, challenges I’m having, even some personal issues sometimes. So, if
you like seeing channel updates, one dollar will get you in the door to see all of those
videos. And to quote another famous YouTuber, but that’s it for the moment. So thanks
for watching!