Finally, at long last, my lost child has come home. As chance would have it someone on Craigslist was having a garage sale Friday and one of the items they were selling was a Commodore 64 with all the cords AND a 1541 floppy drive! And as chance would also have it this guy just happen to be located right around the corner literally 11 houses down the road from my house! Never one to snub my nose at fate, I check my wallet to see how much cash I had - hmmm... $12. Not sure if that'll get the job done or not but I decide to put on some shoes and go check it out. Mrs. MP says "You can stay and finish your coffee. I'll go get it". "OK cool, thanks" and I hand her my $12. "What if they want more than that?" she asks. I shake my head - "All I have is 12 bucks, so we'll see if it's meant to be."
About 5 minutes later she comes back with a Huggies box full of Commodore goodness. The guy was actually asking $15, but she told him we only had $12 handy and he took it! And in addition to the C64 and floppy drive, he also included the user's manual for both pieces, 2 old-school joysticks (including a WICO BOSS), the book "How to Use the Commodore 64 Computer", 8 sealed blank 5 1/4" floppy disks (handy since I got rid of mine long ago), and a decent little pile of miscellaneous commercial software - Blue Max (I actually had a copy of this one back in the day), Star Trek Evolution, Alien, Bits Pieces and Clues (with African Adventure, Pirate Adventure, and King Tut's Tomb text adventures), My 64 a Computer Tutor (yawn), and Games I & Games II - 2 compilation disks of some sort. When the C64 was the new kid on the block back in 1982 this haul would've cost about $1000 new, but here in good ol' 2010 it's only $12 - not bad!
And I already have my existing C64 games that I slowly accumulated in the last year or two when I came across a good deal - Hardball! (sealed), Telengard (sealed), Deadline (sealed - got that one for $1 shipped!), Wheel of Fortune (sealed), Suspended, One on One: Julius Erving and Larry Bird, On-Court Tennis, On-Field Football, and Beyond the Forbidden Forest. Who knows there might even be a few others buried in my closet. I'll also be hooking up my old Commodore 1526 dot matrix printer. Surrounded by this much retro hardware I might accidentally slip back in time to 1983 like Christopher Reeve in Somewhere in Time. Hmm... that chick flick reference might be a little too obscure. Oh well.
I was a little too busy this weekend to hook everything up but don't be surprised if there is a spike in the number of Commodore 64 posts around here pretty soon.
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9 comments:
What an absolute bargain! A swift and excellently planned move too. Can't wait for the C64 post...
Twelve bucks? That's great! I'm really glad for you MP :)
@ gnome: Indeed - I got lucky as it involved very little money and virtually no effort on my part at all. My first C64 post will be a 10-part critical essay: "Space Taxi: Pad 1 or Pad 3?"
@ Mik: Thanks Mik! Next on my list is a Sega Master System so I can finally start playing some of those Master System games you've talked about. But so far I haven't stumbled across anyone selling one in my "wait for a deal" price range of < $20. They're less common over here than the C64s.
Wonderful! Too bad they're uncommon there, a MSII here in Italy is rather cheap (and by "rather" I mean "10 bucks or even less for the loose system"). But then again, shipping is way too expensive... Ever planned an european trip? :D
Picks up pen and jots down '11/29/2010: Mik offers free room and board for trip to Italy. Said welcome to stay as long as we like.' ;)
Actually my wife is Italian - or more accurately, her mother's parents were, so yeah a trip to her motherland is definitely on our someday to-do list.
Have you got the C64 hooked up yet? Of all game systems, this is the one I most associate with you.
Little effort on your part is right considering Mrs. Madplanet did all the work for you!
It is the one I associate myself with the most as well! That was back when computers had character - be they VIC-20, C64, Mac512, Apple II, Speccy, whatever. I've had quite a few PCs since my C64, but who the hell knows what kind they were other than a 286 here, a 486 there, a Pentium over there. Just nameless, faceless, soulless components. I have to look down at the logo of my laptop this very moment just to remind myself what brand it is (Fujitsu). Oh and I really only started paying attention to the console scene again maybe 3-4 years ago.
Yes, Mrs. MP is quite a gal. Think I'll keep her.
Nope - despite my excitement I still haven't had a chance to hook up Cici yet. Work work work!
Very creaative post
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