The bench filled up with boxes, and the immediate problem was simple: I needed to get this stuff unpacked and off the floor while I kept working on the new set. I also had a new Retro Hack Shack sign up in the background, which my wife got me for Christmas, so I went ahead and used that while opening everything. Most of what I unpacked was either channel project material I had bought earlier or items viewers had sent in.
The roughest items were two Zenith Data Systems SupersPort 286 laptops from a viewer swap. They arrived in very poor shape, with loose pieces all through the box, and I kept finding more bits as I unpacked them. One seemed to have a usable keyboard and the other looked like it might at least offer a display, but both were badly crumbled, so I set them aside to be used as parts machines.
Another viewer had sent parts for my Packard Bell laptop project, and those were much more straightforward. The package included an old hard drive still in its caddy and a very unusual memory module from the same type of machine. That memory board used a custom edge-style connection with the chips mounted directly on it, which matched the odd setup in my laptop and gave me useful parts for that machine.
I also unpacked a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A with its original power supply, RF modulator, and a BurgerTime cartridge. A couple of keys had come loose in shipping, and it was missing some feet, but it was a complete enough system to put on the shelf for later. The original power brick was nice to have since the TI uses a less common square-style supply.
The game console pile kept growing. I opened up an Intellivision II with its original power supply, RF switch, and the Intellivoice voice synthesis module, plus the Chess cartridge and keypad overlays. I already had an original Intellivision, but not the II, and this one even came with the joystick cap for the controller. Then I unpacked the Atari 5200 cartridge adapter for playing 2600 games on a 5200, which is one of those accessories that really belongs in any broader look at that system.
That led right into another 5200 item: the trackball controller, boxed with Missile Command, the manual, and the controller inserts. The trackball itself still moved, although the unit clearly needed restoration work. It was a good find, since Missile Command on the 5200 really calls for the trackball, and these controllers are not nearly as common now.
One of the longer boxes held a piece of Blonder Tongue rack equipment for a separate TV broadcasting project I had already started setting up. The idea there was to use old televisions the way they were meant to be used and distribute a signal around the house without leaning on a stack of modern converters. I didn’t dig into the hardware in detail yet, but I got it unpacked and ready for that future build.
The last two big items were a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128K +2 and a Commodore MPS 802 printer. The Spectrum came from Egypt, had the built-in cassette deck, and the tape eject mechanism still worked, but it didn’t include a power supply. The Commodore printer was covered in sticky tape residue, though it still had a handwritten-style label on the side with disk formatting instructions, and it gave me a Commodore-branded printer to try alongside the other dot matrix units I already had.
By the end, everything was out of the boxes and turned into a stack of future projects, but that fine with me.
— Aaron
Links
Timestamps
00:00 – Intro
01:36 – Crumbly Laptops
03:44 – Packard Bell Laptop Parts
06:22 – TI99/4A
09:30 – Intellivision II
11:32 – Atari 5200 Cartridge Adaptor
12:36 – Atari 5200 Trackball
14:11 – Blonder Tongue
15:48 – Spectrum 128K +2
18:01 – Commodore Printer
20:00 – Wrap Up