I went ahead and opened a stack of retro-related packages that had been piling up, and a lot of them tied back to projects where I either needed better media, a spare unit, or hardware for an upcoming repair. Right at the start I opened a pack of native 720K floppy disks, which I bought after running into read issues with reformatted 1.44 MB disks in 720K drives. I’d already seen that come up with my Tandy 1000, so having proper 720K media made sense.
A couple of the next items were less about repair parts and more about future projects. I opened Howard Scott Warshaw’s book Once Upon Atari, which I picked up because I like reading early industry history, especially around Atari. I also opened an Allsop disk cleaning system that included both 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch cleaning disks. I already had the 3.5-inch side covered, but I’d been looking for a 5.25-inch cleaner so I could do a quick head cleaning without tearing a drive apart.
One box held a Raspberry Pi 400 personal computer kit. I hadn’t planned to buy one at first, even after spending plenty of time with Raspberry Pi hardware already, but I had some retro-related ideas for it and decided to go ahead and get one. It looked like something I’d be putting to use in a later project rather than just leaving on the shelf.
The most bench-focused package came from Evie at BackBit. She sent over a BackBit chip tester along with a few related boards and accessories, including programmable ROM boards, jumpers, and an LCD-equipped tester unit. I took that one over to the bench for a closer look because there were several pieces in the box, and the tester appeared to support chip testing with additional adapters for in-circuit work. I’d previously used an earlier prototype to help diagnose a Commodore 64 without desoldering chips, so I was looking forward to spending more time with this version.
I also opened a Commodore datasette, which I bought because I wanted a second unit for comparison while working on re-recorded Commodore tapes. When you only have one cassette unit, it’s hard to know whether you’re chasing a transport issue, an audio level problem, or something else. This one even came with a tape, Introduction to BASIC, Part 1, which gave me another known piece of media to try.
A Famicom showed up next, along with several cartridges and the attached controllers. It was in rough shape and didn’t include a power adapter, but it looked complete otherwise. I’d never used an original Famicom before, so this one looked like a good candidate for either a play test or a repair project depending on how it behaved once powered properly.
There was also an AT&T KBD301 keyboard for an AT&T 6300 project I had coming up. The keyboard was heavy, filthy, and had clearly spent time in a smoky room, but it gave me a more complete option than the other keyboard I had on hand. Tom also dropped off a belated holiday gift, and inside were several Dreamcast games: Tech Romancer, Skies of Arcadia, and Border Down.
I finished by opening an Atari 5200 bundle with the console, one controller, power brick, and several games including Vanguard, Countermeasure, Super Cobra, Popeye, Super Breakout, and Space Dungeon. I hadn’t owned a 5200 before, so the main result was a bench full of new hardware to test, clean, and work into future episodes.
— Aaron
Links
Timestamps
00:00 – Intro
01:45 – Floppy Disks
02:57 – Once Upon Atari
04:19 – Floppy Disk Cleaner
05:21 – A New Raspberry Pi
06:25 – New Chip Tester
11:38 – Datasette
13:34 – Famicom
15:18 – ATT Keyboard
17:10 – A gift from Tom
19:10 – Atari 5200
22:44 – Wrap Up