Considering downsizing retro collection again

I know I've said this in the past, but I'm seriously considering downsizing my physical retro hardware collection again.

I tried to start doing this a couple of years ago, going through and working out which systems I never used any longer... in fact selling my Amiga A4000 and some A500's to reduce the number of Amiga's owned.. but since then people keep offering free collections of retro hardware I can't resist saying yes too as they are too good to turn down.. so I've now ended up owning 2 towered A4000's! with much higher spec than I ever had before, and more A500's and A1200's! :lol: It's mad.

I really have to resist more free retro gear offered to me and declutter.

I see photographs of people's gaming/room setups and they look so clean, tidy and uncluttered and I want mine to look like that, not a pile of consoles, controllers, a spaghetti tangle of 100s of cables.

Finally time to go completely emulation based for some I think. But can I actually do it? :lol:

The biggest problem with emulation in my opinion is that you're then using these old systems on HD displays. They all look terrible on them. I have kept an old CRT which I use to hook up all my old hardware to. Much prefer that. Of course, I don't own near as much as you do. I currently have a CD32 hooked up to it which I only recently got. I've never been that interested in acquiring other old consoles from Sega and Nintendo, but now that there are ways to run images on the original hardware it's more tempting. But haven't bothered yet. Have you looked at the RetroN 5? It's a console that emulates all the classic platforms, but it only accepts original cartridges. I wonder if the Everdrives will work on it. Also they make a big deal of it having HDMI output, can't find anything about it having a classic S-video or SCART which is what I would want.

I think the Retron's only have hdmi out, but they do have scanline emulation which makes games look much better on LCD displays. But they are emulating systems, and are not 100% compatible. People say the build quality isn't brilliant either, so you wonder how long they will keep working. And as they are Linux emulators I think I would rather just emulate on a PC with interfaces to use original controllers.

I've got Everdrives for a lot of my systems: SNES, N64, Megadrive and they are brilliant devices, allowing all game roms to run and game saves being saved directly back to the SD cards, which is brilliant. Highly recommend them to anyone wanting to use an original console these days.. and more Everdrive's in development for things like the GB.

But as you mentioned the other thing is display quality. A decent CRT TV takes up a lot of room compared to an LCD, but a lot of retro systems look rubbish on an HDTV via SCART or SVideo. But I don't have the room for a large CRT any longer. I do keep considering getting an XRGB-mini Framemeister as they are meant to be the best, with scanline generation and the best upscaling available. At the moment I feed my retro systems through a Sony AV Amp which has an upscaler built in. It does a good job, but still looks blurry and stetched. I also have an inline scanline generator but not had chance to really play around with that much. It does mean a lot of cables and devices in a chain from the console to the display though. Plus it starts costing once you have to buy extra cables and hardware just to get a decent image.

Why don't you start downsize the duplicated hardware? Why do you keep more then 1 A500 or A1200? For spare parts? Ok, but you can store then in a garage, loft or other, and just let it be a single A1200 in your retro room.
You can take the boards, floppys whatever out and store them in less space. Why would you need 3 or 4 A500 cases? Keep the best one, and sell the others.
2x A4000T ??? Boy, there are people killing to have one, and you have 2??? :lol: Keep one and sell the other. And so one...

Regarding Amiga's I am definitely going to be downsizing them greatly as I only really use an A600 and A1200 regularly, and sometimes a CD32.

For A500's I actually don't have any need for them as I don't use them at all so will definitely be selling them all.. some are even still boxed. Plus loads of extras like external HDDs. I've also got quite a few other thing like external floppy drives.. and now that I've got a Gotek floppy drive emulator in my A600 and can convert all disks quickly into ADFs using my Kryoflux I don't even really need floppy disks! :lol: So, yeah probably most of my Amiga collect will finally be going to new homes.

I was thinking more of consoles in my original post though. Definitely keeping anything that still can't be emulated perfectly such as Dreamcast, Xbox, Gamecube but not sure about older consoles with perfect emulation.

If possible post here first what you want to sell. Any C64 in there?

He's not into C64 ;)

It's a difficult one for me to give advice on as I have a vast collection like you (not as big I suspect lol) but vast to me. It's cluttered and all over the place and like you I want to get that resolved. Some years back I cleared out most of my systems I has doubles of and I felt relieved as did the wife lol.

Anyway whatever you decide needs to be right for you pal.
Oh and not wishing to jump on the ship before it sails. I would love chance at some of your Amiga gear.

I could ask my friend who bought everything from me, and perhaps, if shipping prices are reasonable, and he need's something, he would buy it, just give us a list of what's for sale.

Did you post it on Amibay?

I will try and sort out a rough list of hardware this week and will have everyone here on CA first refusal on it before I list on Amibay.

Shipping within Europe shouldn't be too expensive using couriers, and multiple items will obviously make shipping cheaper.

Off the top of my head I have the following which will be included for sale:

A500s:

• boxed A500 with KS1.2 and 512KB trapdoor expansion.
• loose A500 with KS1.3 and 512KB trapdoor expansion. Very yellow but perfect working condition.
• loose A500 Plus in great condition.
• boxed A500 Plus in good condition but not tested since I obtained it. Need to do so.

Other Hardware:

• A4000 case for desktop conversion with zorro busboard - great condition
• Power Computing Dual Floppy Disk Drive - Boxed in great condition.
• Some external Floppy Disk Drives
• Parallel Port MIDI interface

Zorro Cards:

• Oktagon 2008 Zorro SCSI 2 card
• MultiFaceCard III Zorro Card (high speed serial/parallel ports).
• Phase 5 Cybervision 64 Zorro Graphics Card
• Phase 5 Cybervision PPC Graphics Card for Cyberstorm accelerator boards

All A500's have their manuals, disks and PSUs I think but will again need to get everything together and check. Everything else is boxed with manuals and disks unless otherwise stated. But need to double check everything.

Any 600's or 1200's going fella. Always wanted a small Amiga. Lol. And a CD32

Sorry no. My A600 is one of the Amigas I will be keeping exactly for the reason that it is so small and can fit on my desk all the time tucked away in the corner. Other than for AGA I think it's a perfect Amiga for gaming. I've just finished upgrading it and will post a separate topic about that. :)

Although I do have a dead A600 motherboard you can have for free just for postage. I know what is wrong with it. A track is damaged under the kickstart rom chip holder and just needs someone with some soldering skills to repair the track or bypass it with a replacement wire.

Thanks for the offer and I will snap that up. What will I need once I fix it? Are cases easily found?

PM me and we can sort out postage costs.

I will include a kickstart rom chip with the motherboard for you.

I might have spares to build most or even all of a full A600 for you if interested. I think I might have a spare case and keyboard, but would need to check through my stuff. Will let you know what I can find. Would need to charge you if I do have other stuff for it though.

Brilliant. Sounds good to me if it's decent stuff then I am in fella.

Harrison, you do realise that if you downsize your collection, you'll have more room... and if you have more room, you'll be able to go and collect other people's surplus Amiga stuff :p:ninja:

:amiga:

You're downsizing and I'm increasing mine. Just got 2 N64's and will be getting a Sega Saturn soon.

Someone on Amibay is selling a nice transparent Saturn at the moment with a few games.

As much as I would the one I'm getting is free.

That's even better then! Is it region modded?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Stephen Coates

Harrison, you do realise that if you downsize your collection, you'll have more room... and if you have more room, you'll be able to go and collect other people's surplus Amiga stuff :p:ninja:

:amiga:

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Buleste

You're downsizing and I'm increasing mine..

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That is the danger. Has happened the last couple of times I've sold stuff.. ende dup with more than I began with! :lol:

It's impossible to turn down free retro gear though, isn't it?! :)

I think I need a house with a large barn. There would be no worried then! :lol:

Although it's very tempting to have as many Amigas as your space permits, as they are superb hardware, I find it a little bit odd. I've seen crazy signatures with 5 A500s, 3 A1200s and so on. The key to success is to have the Amigas you're really need and use of course. If you have so many Amigas, then you'll never have enough time to play with them, just turn them on and off and nothing more.

So, what I did, although I have 5 Amigas at home and nothing else? Easy, each Amiga for its purpose:

A600HD when I'm at the hotel in the summer period, small and portable.
A1200 which I use it mainly for WhdLoading, adventures, protracker, devpac and other things almost daily.
CD32 in the bedroom when I want to play some games.
CDTV in the living room, especially tuned and modified to sit down on the couch and watch some oldskool demos.
My AmigaOne X1000 which is my main computer of work.

Simple eh? :D

Remember though that most of my Amigas were offered to me in large bundle collections, where I was more interesting in other items included.. especially where A500s are concerned as I really don't have much use for any of them.

My own Amiga's, owned since new, are the main ones I will always keep (A600, A1200, CD32).

I fonder of my Amiga than any other system I own. Why I never expanded on the Amiga setup a is beyond me. I guess it's finances and not wanting to spare the little retro cash I have on one area. That needs to change somewhat as my A500 has yellowed sadly.

Would love a CD32 but again the retro scene is becoming full of money maker eBay sellers and slowly pushing us real fans out to people really looking to speculate to accumulate.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Harrison

Remember though that most of my Amigas were offered to me in large bundle collections, where I was more interesting in other items included.. especially where A500s are concerned as I really don't have much use for any of them.

My own Amiga's, owned since new, are the main ones I will always keep (A600, A1200, CD32).

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Sure, only a lunatic will not accept them. :lol:

On the other hand, we didn't mention any software, books etc, which I personally have a whole room of such stuff. :)

[QUOTE=Stephen Coates;52131]Harrison, you do realise that if you downsize your collection, you'll have more room... and if you have more room, you'll be able to go and collect other people's surplus Amiga stuff :p:ninja:

:lol: You are not the only one. I keep getting boxes and boxes of floppy disk collections every time I'm offered someone's stuff, plus I now have hundreds of boxed Amiga games from various peopel that I still need to sort though as I need to offer the duplicates up for others.

As for other stuff, as most of you know I also collect Star Wars vintage items as well as novels, books etc.. a whole loft full in fact.. I can't display any of the larger boxed vintage SW vehicles anywhere, or any of the 90's carded figures I collected.. but I do at least have space to display my complete vintage SW figure collection. :) And a whole book case full of SW novels! Then there are the console games.. hmm.. I need to bigger house!

Dave, when you start feeling that your collection is taking up to much space or costing to much it is an indication to get rid of some of your collected items, in the best case by selling.
But you shouldn't do stuff away just to collect the same or similar material again.

It is exciting to get boxes of discarded games and stuff, and I do recommend going through these for things you really want but your home shouldn't become some kind of dumping place for people's old home computers and software because they know they can probably get it rid off with you.

Earlier this year I did away with a lot of old PC games I knew I would never play or even sell as there would be no one interested in it these any more, despite the good conditions I kept them in.
I gave them to a store that sells goods for money that is used for humanitarian aid in third world countries.

It's never about spending money.. if you have the disposable income and enjoy collecting something then no issues. And I'm not giving up collecting retro hardware or software. However like many others in the retro scene I always collect stuff that I wished for at the time and can now suddenly own and smile that I finally have.. but times have moved on and other than as a curiosity to tinker with a lot of it really isn't that useful for productivity any more.. and there is a lot of retro hardware I no longer have a need for and will never use again.

And now we have Everdrive's for consoles, and USB floppy drive emulators for computers (Gotek and HxC) we really don't need to horde quite so many original games for them either.

Regarding PC games, as you mentioned, I've actually been grabbing older games I owned on physical media when they come up on sale on Steam. That way I will always own a copy of the games I enjoyed in the past, with an easy way to access and reinstall them if I ever want to play them again. I can then get rid of the original boxed versions and free some more space. It is the software more than anything else taking up the space.

Got an A4KD mobo available H?

You need another one Kin?

I do actually have one but it needs repairing as it's had battery leak damage.. not sure how bad yet as I've not had chance to access it. Let me know if interested.

@ Harrison

See PM. :thumbs:




@ Phantom

Hiya mate. I am now just clearing the room where your Black 1084-S is buried. Once I can get my hands on it, I'll be shipping it to you.
Be in touch soon. :)

H & I are discussing a Mirage Pro set up, dual External floppy & hopefully, a duff A4KD Mobo since my PM moments ago. :thumbs:

@harrison you still clearing some stuff out pal? Not heard back in a while?

I am, but it's very slow going because of loads of other stuff at the moment. I have most of my retro stuff stored at my parents house at the moment (2 of their spare rooms) so my house looks tidy whilst its up for sale, so its difficult to get over there (40 miles) to go through it. I do however have a few days off in the next couple of weeks, so will be spending at least a day there going through as much as possible, cataloguing it all, boxing up, taking pictures, measuring and weighing for postage costs etc.. and testing. I will then post a list of everything I'm selling, but will offer the list to those already interested first before going public so you have first pickings.

No worries pal, thanks for the update.