Hello, it’s been over 4 months since I’ve done an unboxing video.
And, as you probably guessed, the reason for that is because I’ve been turning down like
99.9% of everything offered to me because I don’t have any space to store it.
Nevertheless, what you are about to see are some donations that I did accept over the
last few months because they are things that I actually need to use in upcoming videos.
And, probably about half of what you are going to see is actually stuff that I agreed to
accept a long time ago, that’s just now tricking in.
So, anyway, let’s dig in.
The first box here came in at the end of October.
And it was from Sarah Sullivan.
And low and behold, it was another C64 mini.
This shouldn’t be a huge surprise for you, because I already did the episode on this.
This was the North American version of the mini, which worked quite a bit better for
me than the European version.
The next box was from Jed, and I’m sorry I don’t know how to pronounce that last
name.
At first this would appear to be a box of useless disks.
And, I think some of these are as I can’t even tell for sure what they are.
However, the main attraction is that these are copies of the Hyperion system disks, which
I’ll need in order to do a proper demonstration on that computer once I get it fixed.
Thank you Jed.
Moving along, this next box is from Scott Carter.
OK, so what we have here are some HiFD floppy disks.
I’ll forgive you if you’ve never heard of them, because I had never heard of them
either.
In fact, he sent me more than just the disks, but also a drive that can read and write to
them.
And one of the things I find interesting about this drive is that it has connectors for both
floppy and hard drive on the back.
Ok, thank you Scott!
Next up we have another box here from The Future was 8-Bit.
And what we have here is a video game called Rodman.
I think what makes this one interesting is that it runs on so many different systems,
as you may notice looking at the bottom there.
On the back it appears to have screenshots from various different systems.
Ahh.. and it appears to be on multiple cassettes, which makes sense.
Each cassette has a few different versions on it.
So, this one here has the Spectrum and Amstrad versions.
And here were have a bunch of other ones.
And this one be the one I’d probably use since it has all Commodore versions on it.
Anyway, neat, I’ll try this out later.
Moving along, we have a box here from Ton Nekkers.
I hope I said that right.
The customs label says it contains 6 computer disks.
OK, so these aren’t ordinary computer disks.
These are a very early Iomega Bernoulli cartridges.
Each of these giant disks holds exactly 20 MB of data.
These predate the Zip disk, of course.
Neat.
I love collecting various old types of media.
Thank you Ton.
Next up, this is a package from Hachette Book Group..
I think this is a drop-shipment from somebody else.
Let’s open it and find out.
Ahhh..
So what we have here is the Nostalgia Nerd’s Retro Tech.
Yeah, so it talks a bit about each and every computer and game console from the past.
Neat.
It’s a really well made hard-back book.
I’ll have to sit down with it sometime and browse through it.
Thank you to the Nostalgia Nerd.
Next up I have a package here from Giants software.
It says it contains a video game.
Big surprise from a software company.
And what we have here is Farming Simulator, C64 edition.
Oh, and it comes on a cartridge, even better!
So, yeah, I look forward to reviewing this!
In fact, I’ll give you a little hint, you’re going to be seeing this sooner rather than
later, like possibly in the next video on my channel.
Inside, it comes with what looks like a floppy disk, but is actually not.
What it actually is, is just a cleverly designed CD sleeve, which has the PC version of the
game on it.
And last but not least, here’s the cartridge.
Very neat.
Next up, is a big ole’ heavy box.
And this is from Mike Sheridan.
I love the Commodore 64 font used on the label.
And what we have here is a box of floppy disks.
These are double sided, double density.
So they should work for Planet X3, which is one of the reasons I accepted this donation.
There’s probably a couple of hundred disks here.
Of course, I have to make 10 times this many, but it’s good to have extra disks.
There were also a few other surprises in the box.
Including this note.
And here’s something I haven’t seen in a while.
Brand new boxes of 3 and a half inch disks.
Unfortunately these are high density so I can’t use them for Planet X3.
Oh, and at the bottom I found this certificate.
I say bottom, but I think I opened the box from the bottom, so this was probably the
first thing I was supposed to see.
Anyway, thank you Mike.
Moving along, this box here is from….
Augie?
I have no idea how to say that.
Here’s a note.
Sorry this is ridiculously late….
So it appears this box is showing up about 10 months after we discussed it.
Ah yes.. an Etch-a-sketch Animator.
Unfortunately, somebody else already sent me one of these a few months ago.
However, this one looks like it is better shape, at leas the box anyway.
I still haven’t gotten around to doing a video on this yet, though.
Anyway, thank you very much.
Next up we have a little box here from Indonesia.
It’s from Eiffel Valentino.
This is another one of those covered in duct tape, so I have no idea where to even cut.
So I’ll just take a guess.
Ok, this is odd.
This isn’t packing peanuts.
It looks like styrofoam that somebody broke into tiny pieces.
OK, looks like we have some gameboy cartridges.
And here’s a little note.
Let me dig the foam out of the cartridge ends here.
OK, so what have we got.
This is a Sega game gear cartridge.
I’m not familiar with Pengo.
And we have a six in one game of some kind.
Spiderman, Batman, Power Rangers, and Tiny Toons.
OK, Well, thank you Eiffel.
All right, next up we have a ox from Matt Bartlett.
And what do we have here?
OK, if you are thinking this is a mouse, you’re wrong.
Haha.
This is called a Cue Cat.
They were all the rage back in the 1990s.
It is a barcode scanner, actually.
These were designed to read barcodes and open a corresponding website.
But they never really caught on, despite huge hype and investment.
You’ll probably be seeing this again.
So, thank you Matt.
Next up, I have a box here from…
Penguinet?
Ok, well let’s see what mystery it contains.
Read Me!
Ahh yes..
This is my review copy of a new game called Rikky and Vikky.
Here we go.
This is a brand-new game for the Atari 7800.
I never thought I’d see the day.
And the box design is spot on accurate for the console.
In fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d think I was looking at an original game from
the era that maybe I’d just never heard of.
But also in the box was another little surprise.
These are converters to allow you to use NES controllers on your Atari 7800.
Of course, they work on an entirely different principle, but presumably that is why there
is a little micro controller on the board to translate for us.
Let’s have a look at the screenshots.
It’s some sort of platform game.
Here’s the user manual.
Ok, this is not a book, rather it is one of those fold-out guides, that I really hate.
But that’s ok.
It looks like you get two complimentary tickets to misery land.
Lovely.
And here’s the actual cartridge.
Being this is translucent I’m guessing this is a brand-new cartridge design.
They can probably re-use the same design for the 2600 cartridges.
Who knows.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to reviewing this..
Expect to see it shortly.
Moving along, and we’re almost done here.
This is a box from Robert Van Etta.
All right!
I’ve been waiting for this!
This is the Speech and Sound Program Pak for the Tandy Color computer.
Let’s open it up and have a look.
OK, to start with, it comes it a nice manual.
Let’s flip it over here.
And yep, here’s the cartridge.
What’s this?
It comes with a warning - remove before operating.
Yeah, I think you’d have to be pretty thick to try to stick this in the computer with
that cardboard over the end.
And here it is.
I look forward to showing this in a future video.
So, thank you Robert!
And here comes the climax to this episode.
It’s not every day I receive a big wooden box.
This is from Dan Radke.
So, I tried various methods to get the top off of this thing.
Nothing seemed to be really working.
But then I realized it said “open this side” and while I originally thought that the arrows
meant to open from the top, I realized he meant to literally open it from the side.
So I tried prying it open until I realized this side is held on with screws, not nails
like the other sides.
But then I realized the darned screws were using a square bit, which I had to run to
the store and buy.
So, now, hopefully, I can make some progress here.
And about 20 screws later, here we go.
And let’s see what we’ve got here.
Well, this is certainly an interesting packing job.
But from what I can tell, everything is in one piece and nothing is broken.
Here’s the monitor, and now the computer.
And the last item is the keyboard.
And here’s a little note from Dan.
I’m not going to do a full restoration video since this thing is in such good condition.
But I am going to clean it off a little bit.
So, if you are wondering what this is, it is a Commodore PC-20, which is one of the
series of IBM compatible or MS-DOS computers made by Commodore.
I’ve been trying to get one of these for a while.
OK, so time for the smoke test.
Low and behold.
It works.
It appears the hard drive is dead, but that’s no surprise.
I tried starting Planet X3, but it doesn’t seem to want to load for some reason.
I decided to take it apart right quick and I did discover the battery has leaked onto
the motherboard so I’ll need to remove this battery and clean that up.
And, so that about wraps it up for the unboxing.
I’m probably going to spend the next couple of days working on this Commodore PC-20 and
trying to get it fixed up for the documentary that I’m going to do about it.
In the meantime, I’ve got some other videos that I’m partially done with that you’re
going to be seeing in a week or so.
And I think you’re going to like those.
So, as always, thanks for watching and stick around for the next episode.