Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDEDjUsPzw8
Why Do I Own These Things?
Introduction
The video I had planned for this week isn’t quite ready yet - so let’s have a fun look at some interesting stuff from my collection instead.
Script
[Sighs]
Alright, I’ll level with you: the project that I was working on for this week’s video isn’t quite going to be ready in time - I’ve had some technical difficulties and due to commitments in my other job, unfortunately, I’m not going to have time to get that video out of the door this week. But as you may know, I am now a part-time content creator and that means that I am partly reliant on the income from this channel to pay my bills! So I thought I would handpick some of my favorite things from my collection here in the studio and tell you the stories behind them and share a bit of information about them.
Some of it you will have seen on the channel before, for example, this very, very rare Atari Sparrow prototype motherboard, and some of it you most certainly won’t have done.
So let’s go on a bit of a journey and check out some of my favorite things.
…and indeed what better place to start than with this Atari Sparrow motherboard prototype - so what exactly is this thing? Well, this is a prototype of the Atari Falcon030, their home computer from 1992, and indeed the successor to the ST - their hugely popular home computer that was released back in 1985, and as mentioned, this was previously featured on a video on this channel all the way back in November 2020 when the channel looked and sounded very, very different indeed.
[Hi everyone, Rees here and welcome to a very special episode of ctrl-alt-rees]
[In this video, we’re going to be taking a close look at this incredibly rare Atari Sparrow prototype motherboard from 1992]
So what exactly is the story behind this? Well, these prototypes were picked up by a New York based company called WizzTronics when Atari went bust in 1996, and there are only actually 21 known examples of these in the wild. Mine is in pretty poor condition - as you can see, most of the components are missing, and presumably they have been cannibalized by an Atari engineer to build a future revision of this prototype because this is one of the first Revision A prototypes of this motherboard, which I guess makes it a little bit more interesting.
But the full story is in that video, and I did go over the board and kind of pick it apart and identify all of the missing components, and I did actually start sourcing those components, but I decided it was best to stop short of actually rebuilding this thing and trying to get it back into working order, because to be honest with you, there are a couple of working examples out there anyway, if I did get it working, there isn’t really anything that you can run on it because it’s a prototype and ultimately I think it tells a much better story in its current state.
…and with that out of the way we turn our attention to the Japanese auction sites, which if you’re a member of the retro computing community, you’ll no doubt be aware, have quite a lot to answer for, and that’s certainly true in my case: it’s a love affair that started way back in 2019 with buyee.jp - and this was the very first thing that I bought from buyee.jp, which of course is a frontend for Yahoo Auctions Japan.
So what is it? Well, it’s a Pac-Man branded version of a Tomy game from 1976 called Mr. Mouth. Of course, Pac-Man itself wasn’t released until 1980, so I guess that dates this thing - and as you can see, it uses the original Japanese name for Pac-Man, which was Puckman.
The game itself is pretty simple: Pac-Man himself spins around in the middle with his mouth opening and closing, and up to four players can try to flick various objects into his mouth, with the winner presumably being the person that’s gets the most things in there.
Now, unfortunately, this isn’t working today: I think there’s probably a loose connection inside, which I have previously fixed, but I did briefly get it working for a YouTube Short, which I released a while ago - so at least you can see a little bit of footage of Puckmangame in action.
Speaking of those Japanese auction sites and their rather terrible influence on the retro gaming and retro computing communities - here’s something else that I bought around that same time, and as you can probably see, this is a control panel from an arcade machine - an actual arcade machine that presumably served for years in an actual Japanese arcade. Now, this is from a cab called the SEGA Astro City, which was released in 1993, and perhaps is the quintessential example of the sit down Japanese candy cab style of arcade cabinet.
It’s a JAMMA cabinet so everything is completely interchangeable, the screen is rotatable, and as you can see, the control panels are also designed to be modular and very easily replaceable to make arcade operator’s’ lives as easy as possible - and that’s how I came to be in possession of this.
But why? Why did I buy it? Well, the reason I bought this was because I’ve always dreamed of owning an Astro City arcade cab, and I thought at the time that perhaps I could ship all of the components over from Japan individually and build one myself - and I very quickly realized that that was a very stupid idea indeed.
But I have this as a souvenir of that particular folly: it’s a Sega Astro City arcade control panel - and if we just flip it over and take a look at the rather lovely wiring on the back, as you can see, as mentioned, this is all modular, so these sticks can be swapped out very easily just with a basic screwdriver, as can the buttons, and this just plugs into kind of the main wiring loom of the cabinet.
And now for something completely different: You see, a while back I decided to get into film photography, but not the good kind of film photography, no, 110 film photography. Now, if you’re not familiar with one 110 film cartridges, the actual image size on the actual film is 13 millimeters by 17 millimeters so they are absolutely tiny, and as you might imagine, the end result is pretty poor quality, especially when it’s from a super, super cheap and basic camera with a plastic lens like my Kodak Pocket Instamatic collection here. These were released alongside that film format back in 1972 by Kodak - who I should mention also invented the 110 film format - and the whole point of these cameras and this film was to make photography as cheap and as accessible as possible, and that just really appealed to me.
Now I do have an Instagram account where I post photos from this camera - in fact, this is the one that I always have with me wherever I go: this is the Pocket Instamatic 200 - and the reason I went with this specific model is because my grandparents actually had one of these when I was a kid, and I had many a fun hour playing with this, and they even put film in it sometimes for me as well, which was very, very kind of them.
But yeah, a particular nostalgic connection to this specific model, which is why this is the one that I use.
And surprisingly, I have actually got some half decent photos out of it, which I think is part of the appeal and part of the challenge for me. It also has a detachable flash, which comes in the form of these flash cubes - they have like a magnesium filament inside, which is ignited mechanically by a rotating thing on top of the camera, which is absolutely fascinating. Of course, they haven’t made these for years, so I have to be very, very careful and very sparing about when I use them. But yeah, something that you probably didn’t know about me - I collect Kodak Pocket Instamatic 110 cameras from the 1970s and also quite regularly use one of them.
So there we have it - something a little bit different for the channel this week, I must admit, but hopefully you’ve enjoyed joining me on this journey and learning a little bit about some of the bits and pieces that I’ve picked up over the past 20-odd years of collecting. I can only assume that you have enjoyed it because you’ve made it to the end of the video - and if that’s the case, maybe give it a little thumbs up as well, it gives me a good boost in the YouTube algorithm.
But that’s all I have for you for this video - big thanks as always to my supporters on Patreon, Ko-Fi, and indeed my YouTube channel members as well. They get videos a little bit early and also ad-free.
That’s all I have for you for this one, so thank you ever so much for watching and hopefully I’ll see you next time.
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