Hello and welcome to this months episode of 8-Bit unboxing, where I’m going to unbox
all of the things that you guys have sent me during the month of November 2017.
So, let’s get right on it.
All right, the first package of the month is from Eric Halstead.
He included a little note.
Looks like he’s giving me some modems.
Let’s have a look.
Yep, I see 3 modems in here.
You know, modems were a big deal back in the 1980s.
However, today they don’t seem to hold people’s interest much since there’s essentially
no way to use them anymore, at least not how they were originally intended.
But I still like to collect them.
This first one here is an Aprotek 1200 baud, which was an aftermarket modem but is apparently
designed just for the Commodore machines.
And here’s the 1660 modem.
I used to use one of these back in the 1980s.
And this.. is actually not a modem at all.
This appears to be a parallel printer adapter, allowing the use of IBM compatible printers
on your Commodore.
Thank you Erik!
Moving on, here’s a package from Jerome, from Quebec Canada.
The customs paperwork does give away the secret of its contents, however.
Wow, there appear to be a lot of Commodore goodies in here.
Let’s see, a VIC-20 manual, a video cable, a datasette, although I think I already have
one of these.
Let me just double check that’s what’s in the box.
Yep.
And then, of course, a bunch of boxed VIC-20 games.
And interestingly enough, I don’t have any boxed VIC-20 games.
In fact, I was probably 6 or 7 years old the last time I saw a boxed VIC-20 game.
So, this is interesting seeing how they are packaged.
It’s kind of neat that they all have a standardized appearance.
At the same time, if you have them on a shelf you can’t tell them apart.
OK, so the manual also doubles as the front artwork of the box.
That’s neat, I think the TRS-80 games did that too.
Anyway, thank you very much Jerome!
Next up we have a really big box that says Fender on it.
But, I doubt there is a guitar in there.
It’s from David Dachenhaus.
My guess is there’s a keyboard in here.
And this is a big one too.
Definitely an eighties style keyboard.
I don’t know much about this, but stay tuned as I’m sure it will be covered in a video!
Thank you very much David!
And we have another package from Quebec Canada, this time from, what a coincidence another
person named David.
And I’m pretty sure this is also a keyboard, since the customs paperwork gives that away!
OK, so I have to show you this.
This is how you pack a keyboard.
Most people would never spend this much time, but look how he did this!
Filled with Air Packing Peanuts!
ahaha.
Look how he made these custom cardboard pieces.
Very nice.
OK, after removing the little sign here, you might be wondering where the keys are on this
thing.
Well, let me show you.
It opens up like so.
And this keyboard has some other technological oddities, which I’m going to love showing
you.
And, for those who are wondering, no, I have not abandoned 8-Bit Keys.
I know it’s been two months since I’ve posted anything on that channel.
The reason is the last two months have just been crazy between the various conventions
I was invited to speak at, and then the launching of my video game, I’ve barely been able
to keep up with putting videos on this channel, but I expect everything to return to business
as usual this month, so stick around for those videos, and back to unboxing!
OK, next up, we have a large box from….
Staples, apparently.
Although I later found out it was from Timothy.
OK, lot of stuff in there including an old 386 laptop from a brand I’m not familiar
with called Ultra, a bunch of TI-99 cartridges, three Apple II floppy drives, and two mysterious
cards.
This one is a Macintosh SE-Bus PC Drive Card.
I actually have no idea what this does, but I’m thinking maybe it allowed use of PC
floppy drives on a Macintosh SE?
And here’s an Appletalk networking card which is designed to fit in an IBM PC.
Didn’t even know such a think existed.
I bet this is quite rare.
Next one was delivered in person by Jackson Wymer, it’s a vintage TI Calculator.
So yeah, this is an old TI-2550 calculator, pretty cool, I think this is from the 1970s
and look it was actually made right here in Dallas, Texas.
Here’s a little package from Henry Webster.
Ah yes!
I would have killed for these when I was like 7 years old.
I had one of the Casio keyboards that used these ROMs, but they were terribly expensive,
at least I remember them being expensive.
So, I never had any besides the one that came with my keyboard.
Now I have quite a few of them, so I’ll have to stick these in a keyboard and see
how these songs sound.
Thank you Henry!
Next up we have a box from Ryan.
Let’s see what mysteries it holds.
OK, looks like some Vectrex Games.
I seem to be collecting more and more of these games but I have yet to repair my Vectrex
so I can try them out!
Looks like there’s a note here.
All right, thank you Ryan!
The next donation was also delivered in person by Matt Penn.
He donated an old Powerbook.
All right, so this is a PowerBook 540c.
I think the most amazing thing about it is it actually still works and boots right up.
You know, those old SCSI hard drives, they don’t tend to last this long.
So, that’s pretty cool!
Moving along, I have a small package from Chase Austin.
Seems to be several things in here.
Here’s a note..
Oh cool, he watched Techmoan too.
Certainly one of my favorite channels.
Alright let’s see…
Here’s an Atari 2600 cartridge that I didn’t have.
And a dreamcast game.
I do own a dreamcast, but I don’t really collect for it.
Now, I thought this was interesting.
It’s just a regular audio cassette, but it’s been packaged and marketed as a specialized
data storage product, and I’m not sure what computer is depicted there on the picture,
but it looks like a CP/M computer of some kind.
Anyway, very neat!
And there were a couple more Atari cartridges.
All right!
Thank you Chase!
Speaking of my favorite youtube channels, I have a package here from LGR, as in from
Clint Basinger himself.
I feel quite honored.
If I could imitate his voice, I’d probably say something funny here, but I can’t..
So let’s see what’s in the box.
Hahah.. he sent a note printed from Printshop Deluxe.
I wonder if It was the Commodore, Apple, or DOS version.. knowing him, probably MS-DOS.
Still, very cool!
So, apparently he sent me a Pi-DP8, which I think is a play on words for a PDP-8.
Notice there are no packing peanuts in here.
If there were, I’d never let him live it down!
So yeah, this is a do-it yourself kit that is partially assembled from the factory.
Here’s some more parts.
And a power supply.
And this looks like a raspberry Pi, but it’s smaller than any I’ve seen before.
Wow.. this thing is really compact.
I think my raspberry Pi is 3 times bigger than this.
Anyway, I guess this must be what runs the things it must be some sort of emulation.
OK, well, thank you Clint.
And I hope you enjoy the little package I sent you this month as well!
OK, next up we have a sort of heavy package.
This one is from Chris Lozaga.
It’s a box in a box.
OK, there are quite a few things in here as well!
There’s an Apple IIgs in here.
I already had one, but this one is really yellowed and he thought I could use it for
another Retrobrite experiment or something.
So we’ll see!
So the first thing appears to be a bag full of Commodore 64 cartridges, none of which
I already had.
And this next bag apparently has some interesting Commodore 128 upgrades.
Let’s have a look, shall we?
Yeah, so this is a solder-less RAM upgrade for the video memory on the Commodore 128.
You just pull the video chip, stick it in here, and plop it all down back on the board.
And it’s that simple.
I’ll have to give this a shot in a future episode.
And this is a BASIC 8 ROM upgrade.
You see the C128 comes with Basic version 7 in ROM.
This, I believe, adds additional graphics commands to the 80-column video screen.
And there’s apparently a software disk that comes with it.
And then there’s this, which is a memory upgrade for the 1571 disk drive.
While cool, I’m not currently aware of anything that makes use of this.
But I’ll check into it.
All very cool, thank you Chris!
Here’s a little box from Dylan Cooke.
Looks like some cartridge games.
Ah yes..
More TI99 games.
I seem to be getting a bunch of those lately.
And, someday I’ll be doing a video on the TI99.
Anyway, thank you Dylan!
Here’s a box from Ernie Malago, he’s actually donated some neat stuff in the past.
OK, it’s an old Toshiba laptop.
This one uses a standard 3 prong power cord.
Let me see if it will power on.
Indeed it does..
And check it out, it has a gas plasma screen.
These are really hard to find.
I’ll be amazed if it actually boots….
Then, I guess I’ll be amazed, look at that.
It IS booting!
I can’t believe the old hard drive is still working.
This is very cool.
Thank you Ernie!
Believe it or not, I found this on my front porch.
With a note attached.
Let’s see what it says.
I actually remember seeing commercials for these on TV back in the 80s but I’ve never
seen one in person.
These are essentially little dumb terminals with a built in modem.
They were designed to connect to a proprietary online service.
They are quite compact.
I can see the appeal of something like this as it would have been easy to setup and use.
This would have been the online service that even Grandma could have used back in the day.
So very cool.
This unit appears to be fully functional.
I’ll have to see if I can figure out a better way to demonstrate it later.
Thank you Jonathan!
Next up is a box from Kenny Primas.
Ahhh.. this is the fabled Commodore 1650 auto modem.
I say fabled, because I remember every terminal program having an option for it, but I’ve
never actually seen one until today.
I seem to recall most of the modems that used that setting were in fact clones of this one.
So very cool.
I’ll add this to my modem collection!
Thank you Kenny!
All right.
This last package for the month comes from Krykov Maksim.. and let’s hope I said that
correctly, as he’s located in Moscow, apparently.
Now, I know what he is sending.
It’s a replica he has created of something really rare and interesting.
However, there appears to be a lot of other stuff included.
So apparently he sent me a whole Pentium 3 motherboard, along with CPU, and some RAM,
and an S3 video card, and a flash card with an IDE adapter, presumably preloaded with
some software.
However, the main attraction is in here.
This is a product he’s either already selling or about to be selling.
So, if you’ll notice, it has a spot for a SID chip, the same sound chip used in the
Commodore 64.
This is a clone of an old sound card called the SSI-2001, which did in fact use the SID
chip but it was meant for MS-DOS computers and believe it or not a handful of early MS-DOS
games actually do support it.
So I’ll definitely be trying this out in a future episode!
Thank you Krykov!
All right, I guess that about wraps it up for all of the donations for November.
And, I got some pretty cool things and definitely some of those things are going to translate
into episodes into the future.
So, stick around for those and thanks for watching!