So if you remember last months video I showed 3 boxes that had come in on the first day
of the month and you’d have to wait until March’s video to see what they were.
Well, here we go.
This first package is from Haze Anderson.
It’s covered in duct tape.
If LGR’s pet peeve is packing peanuts, then I’d have to say my pet peeve is covering
a package in duct tape like Fort Knox.
The real issue, is like in this case, I can’t actually figure out where to cut.
Nevertheless, I did eventually get it open.
Ah ha!
So, what this is is one of those 2-XL robots that use 8-track tapes.
I’ve seen these featured on several youtube channels before, I think these came out in
the 1970s.
Looks like it also came with a few tapes as well.
The thing is, I’m told this one doesn’t work, so I’m going to attempt to repair
it in a future episode.
Very cool.
This should be interesting!
Thank you Haze!
The next package, and this was also received on the 1st of the month, is from Evan Clanin.
And here’s a note.
Looks like something to do with an EPROM.
Ahh.. so what we have here is not just an EPROM, but an actual programmer as well.
Well, this will be nice if I can get it to work.
I actually bought a cheap EPROM programmer on eBay years ago but never could really get
it to work.
This one looks a lot nicer.
Hopefully I’ll have better luck, thank you Evan!
And this is the last of those 3 packages I got in on the first of the month.
This is from Steven Pasikowski.
And we have a little note here, apparently this is an odd piece of hardware.
Interesting.
HAWS automatic weather station.
Ahh.. for the VIC-20 or Commodore 64 computers.
Unfortunately, it looks like this floppy disk has seen better days.
It looks like some kind of oil or something was spilled on it.
It seems to have permeated through the entire disk.
Here’s the label.
Anyway, this is the actual weather station.
And it looks like it plugs into the user port on the VIC-20 or 64.
This is really cool.
If anyone has a copy of the software, let me know, as I can’t find it online.
And a big thanks to Steve.
Next up we have a package from Scott Rubin.
It appears to be a bunch of original game disks for the Commodore 64.
There’s quite a few here.
I’m familiar with some of these.
Ahh..
But this is the most interesting, a word processor for the Commodore 128 in 80-column mode.
OK, well, thank you Scott!
Here we have another little box, this one is from Ed Hurtley.
These appear to be Intellivision games.
Ahh.. but this one is the most interesting because it actually supports the voice synthesis
cartridge, which not many games did.
So yeah, I’ll be interested to try this out.
Thank you Ed!
Next we have a little package here from….
Allmacs?
Ahh looks like a magazine.
And here’s a note.
Ah yes, this is from Michael.
I remember this conversation.
So this is the first ever issue of a magazine devoted just to the IBM PCjr.
This should help with the upcoming documentary I’m working on for the PCJr.
Looks like this came out in 1984.
When I first opened it, I saw this advertisement for AST.
I used to work for AST back in the 90s, so thats cool.
And here’s an ad for the old Amdek monitors.
I used to have one of these back in the 80s and it was the sharpest CRT I ever had during
that time.
Cool, thank you Michael.
OK, here’s the next one.
This is from Shawn Ravenwolf.
That’s a cool last name.
But I should mention that my last name is not Murphy, although I’ve certainly been
called that hundreds of times in my life, so this isn’t the first.
Well, the instructions say to open here, so I guess I will open it there.
OK, this is really odd.
So it appears to wrapped in those air pocket things, but there’s not actually any air
in them.
So, that’s really bizarre.
Despite that, it appears to have arrived intact.
So this is a Casio PT-180, which is one I’ve wanted for a while.
I do remember the conversation with Shawn, though, and I understand this one doesn’t
work.
So I may need to do some repairs on it.
And what do we have here?
Ok, this is a ROM pack, and that goes right in there.
All right, well, I look forward to getting this working.
Thank you Shawn!
Here’s a little package form Andrew Koebbe.
If that name sounds familiar it’s because he donated an Atari Lynx to me a few months
ago.
And here’s a note.
Looks like he’s sending me another lynx game.
Here it is, Batman returns.
OK, thank you Andrew!
Next we have another little Fort Knox style box.
I’m not actually sure who this is from.
Interesting, it’s been X-Rayed according to the post office.
Haha..
The 8-Bit Guy.
Yeah, Okay these are a bunch of cassette games for the Sinclair Spectrum.
I may be able to use these on my Timex model eventually after some mods.
Anyway, I think I remember this conversation but I wasn’t able to find the email about
them, so thanks goes out to whomever sent these.
Next is a box from Stuart Chiplin at Koch Media.
Again, there’s instructions to open this end.
I love the 8-Bit font.
And inside is…
You may have already guess, a C64 Mini.
No need to go into any great detail on this as I actually released the review video on
this nifty device a few days ago.
So big thanks to Stuart for sending me this.
All right, next we have not one, but two boxes from Ted Munk.
Well, I’ll start with this one.
Interesting, here’s a note that looks like it was done on a real typewriter.
OK, so he’s sent me some Tandy disk drives.
Of course, these aren’t just any old disk drives, these are the portable drives for
the Tandy portable line of computers like the Model 100 and 200.
Hmm.
I can’t seem to get the travel protector out.
Well, I don’t want to break it, so I’ll just leave it in there for now.
Looks like he sent some software too.
And he sent the cables.
These are actually harder to find than the disk drives themselves.
And there’s one more little thing in here, a Compumate BASIC cartridge.. neat, we’ll
come back to this in a minute.
So the other box contains apparently another disk drive, but this one is in the original
box.
Cool, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the box for one of these before.
And inside is another drive.
And let’s see if the protector will eject.
OK, good, this one comes out.
Well, hopefully I can get one of these working.
So, I dug out my old Laser compumate because I wanted to try out that BASIC cartridge.
I only have two units that didn’t include BASIC in ROM and I wasn’t even aware they
could run BASIC.
So this will be interesting to try out.
I did a whole video on these before, so if you haven’t seen that, go check it out.
Looks like the cartridge goes in here.
I figured I wouldn’t likely be showing these again any time soon, so now would be the best
time to try this cartridge out.
OK, so let’s fire this thing up.
Well, this is the usual list of programs it has built in.
But looky there, it has BASIC in the menu now.
Let’s try it.
Well, there we go.
I’m not going to code anything right now, but the cartridge clearly works.
I thought I’d also try it on this compumate 1.
It has far less RAM and a smaller screen, so I’d be surprised if it works on this
too.
However, it looks like the cartridge will in fact fit.
Yep, like a glove.
Well, let’s fire this one up.
It only shows to have 3 options, just like before.
But, if I scroll through, sure enough, there is BASIC.
And trying it out, it does appear to work here as well.
Very cool, I had no idea this machine could run BASIC.
Neat, well, thank you Ted!
Up next I have a mysterious box from Japan.
This appears to be a company name.
I don’t recall ordering anything from Japan lately.
The customs section just says”GAME,” not very descriptive.
Well, let’s open it up and see what this game is.
Oh, look at that.
Somebody sent me a game cartridge for the Commodore MAX.
Now, while I don’t have a MAX to play it in, in theory it should work on the Commodore
64.
I think there’s something else in the box.
Ummm..
This kind of looks like.
Surely not.
I don’t want to get my hopes up, but this looks like an actual Commodore MAX machine.
I can see the Commodore logo through the packing material.
Wow..
Sure enough.
I never thought I would actually see one of these in person, much less own one.
It’s in pretty decent condition too!
There’s no power supply included, but I should be able to use a regular C64 power
supply.
A few days later I found out this package actually was donated by Todd from Maryland,
but he had it drop shipped from Japan.
So that explains the mysterious label situation.
Here’s the serial number, I am not sure how many of these were made.
All right, well, I’m sure you’ll be seeing this again in a future video, so no need to
spend a huge amount of time on it here.
And a big thanks goes out to Todd for this amazing donation!
OK, let’s have a look at this next box.
This is from, The Head Museum?
How odd.
Looks like they’ve included a note.
Looks like they have sent me a wax head replica of a famous programmer.
I’m almost afraid to look.
Wow, that is really realistic looking.
Unfortunately, I don’t recognize the face at this point.
Next I have a little box from Protovision.
I wouldn’t so much call this a donation as I did actually request this to be sent
to me, but since Protovision sent it to me for free, I guess it counts as a donation,
so I’ll show it.
Wow, that’s quite a few little provision advertisements.
Anyway, so this is the main attraction here, Sam’s Journey.
It seems this is the most celebrated Commodore 64 game in years and I can’t wait to try
this out!
Now, this is the North American release, so it works on NTSC machines and comes on floppy
disk.
I believe the European version comes on a cartridge.
And look it comes with a little treasure chest.
And some kind of cards.
And here’s the floppy disk..
no two floppy disks.
And it looks like both sides of the disks are used, so I guess this means there will
be some disk swapping.
THere’s a really interesting technical reason for the difference in this version vs. the
one for Europe, which I will be getting into in the very next episode.
So a big thanks to Protovision for sending me this!
All right, next up I have a package from Chris Lozaga.
I’m starting to get used to seeing his name show up on packages, as it seems he sends
me something every month.
Not that I’m complaining as it’s usually good stuff!
All right, this is a cassette game for the Timex Sinclair.
But I think this is for the later model that does color, which makes sense when looking
at the screenshot on the back.
Weird, this was made by Psion in 1983.
OK, so let’s have a look at this.
This is cool because I’m going to be covering this computer really soon, like in the next
few months and this is the only piece of commercial software I have for it.
Thank you Chris!
Next up I have a package from an anonymous sender.
By the way, when I say anonymous I actually mean that the person specifically doesn’t
want their name shown.
It’s crazy how sometimes I get hateful comments from people saying what a jerk I am for not
even trying to find out who sent me something.
So, just to be clear on this, I know who sent it, and they don’t want their name shown.
Here’s a little note.
It says these are Amstrad disks.
Interesting.
I’ve never seen these before.
I guess I have another bizarre floppy format to add to my little museum.
Wow, these feel really thick compared to even 3.5” floppies.
Another interesting thing is the actual media looks almost silver by comparison of traditional
floppy disks.
Well, I appreciate these, so thank you!
OK, here’s a package with no senders name on it, but on the side over here it says Gigatron
TTL microcomputer.
So I’ll tell you what this is.
I was contacted by the guy that makes these recently.
At first I was thinking, “not another home made computer.”
And well, it is, sort of.
But this one is very different from any that I have reviewed so far, and any that I have
planned to review.
You see, this computer runs entirely from TTL logic chips and has no microprocessor,
at least not in the traditional sense.
It comes with a game controller, as there are some video games in the onboard ROM chip.
And it appears to use the standard Atari style joystick connector.
And wow, I’m super impressed with this users manual.
Well, I decided not to open it any further for now.
I’ll do an assembly and demonstration video soon enough for this as I’m bumping this
to the top of the list of home-brew computers.
So stay tuned.
Next up is a package addressed to The iBook Guy?
What the heck?
Has this been lost in the mail for 3 years or something.
Anyway, this appears to be from Christopher Murphy from Ireland.
Well, let’s see what it contains.
It appears to be an NES cartridge, Bart vs. the Space Mutants.
I did not have this one, but being it is from Europe, I wonder if it will work on my NTSC
Nintendo.
Anyway, thank you Christopher.
Moving along, I have a package from Computer Service Badger.
Ok.
Oh look.
It says “Allergy Warning: May contain packing peanuts.”
Well, fortunately, I’m not as annoyed by packing peanuts as at least one certain woodgrain-loving
youtuber is.
And here they are, might as well get this over with.
Here’s a note.
Looks like this is from Endy.
OK, let me clean up this mess right quick..
All right, let’s see what we’ve got here.
It appears to be a little thermal printer of some kind.
I suspect it connects to whatever is in the other package here.
And yep, it’s another little pocket computer.
I have several of these now and intend to do a video at some point on them.
This is one I have not seen before.
I thought I’d stick some batteries in it, however, I realized this compartment is for
ROM chips, not batteries.
Apparently it has an internal rechargeable battery, which I am sure is long since dead.
But yeah, it looks like the printer attaches neatly like so.
Well, I’m sure I’ll come back to this eventually, so stay tuned!
OK, and the last package of the month comes from Caleb Lovett.
Whatever it is wasn’t packed so great, so I hope it survived.
Ahh..
Namco Museum for the Nintendo 64.
Cool, I did not have this one, and it appears to be intact.
So thank you Caleb!
OK, well, that about wraps it up.
This was again an amazing month.
I’m always amazed and humbled at the stuff that people send me.
I did want to mention something about this Commodore MAX.
It’s an amazing donation and I’m really happy to receive this.
There’s sort of a cruel irony behind it though, is that the video I really needed
it for was the last Commodore history video I did.
But, you know, because I want those videos to be kind of a documentary for future people
to watch, I think what I’m going to do is I’m going to go back and I’m going to
edit that documentary and put this in there instead of the still photos that I had and
maybe talk a little bit more about it.
And so, that video will be getting re-uploaded eventually and then shortly followed by the
next one in the documentary series.
In fact, I’ve even thought about merging them together so that the entire Commodore
64 episode is, instead of being like two 25 minute episodes, it might be like one maybe
hour-long episode or something like that.
Anyway, the point is, if you see me re-upload that video and you start scratching your head
going “well, I thought I’ve already seen this one before.”
Well, that’s the reason it’s because I wanted to add the content in for the Commodore
MAX, where it fits best.
So anyway, the other thing I wanted to do is give a big shout out to my friend Leo who
put his head in the box and he had to spend a lot more time in the box than we originally
planned because he couldn’t stop laughing.
Because it was very funny.
I hope at least some of you found it amusing.
So anyway, that’s it for now, so stick around for next time and thanks for watching!