What to do with irrepairable games?

Haku

What do people do with old games that are too far gone to be repaired or salvage bits from?

I recently got a 2nd Puck Monster cheap because it was in a bad state, luckily the mainboard worked so I swapped it over with the dead one in the good condition shell. Now I have a good condition working version and a messed up bad condition version sitting doing nothing.

Dan · Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2006 8:40 am Post subject:

Some people save them up until they have a good sized pile, then eBay off the pile hinting they may be repairable...

Rik · Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2006 12:11 pm Post subject:

Yeah, that works... Smile

When my pile gets too big, I pick out a few games and strip them for buttons, the rubber/metal contacts under the buttons, screws and battery terminals, and pitch the rest. (I might keep a few electronic compenents if I know they are okay like the little speakers, maybe a transistor or two...) I'll then put all the parts from any one game in a labelled bag so I always know exactly what game they came from in case I need that info.

If it's a VFD game, I'll keep the display just for the hell of it.

I've actually stripped a couple of Coleco Pac-Man games that were just in horrible shape, so now I have a couple of spare joysticks and battery contacts, and the VFD I took pictures of in my Coleco game repair section...

If the alternative is throwing it away, you can always send them to me. Mr. Green

I'll keep them or strip them, and then horde a cache of parts I can share with anyone that needs them... I always have an open offer to repair games (if I can) for anyone that needs it, and it can't hurt to have a few extra parts around...

Haku · Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 5:26 am Post subject:

Dan, that's evil, that's terrible, that's brilliant Wink

I've sometimes bought broken or (apparently) 'untested' games on the offchance it'll work or I can get it to work but generally I avoid those auctions, especially the ones that look fishy.

The bulk of my collection comes from car boot sales but that source pretty much dried up a couple of years ago (thanks a bunch eBay!) so my collection grows extremely slowly now because I'm not willing to fork out stupidly high prices for games off eBay. Best buy I got at a car boot sale was three boxed gameandwatches for ?1 each (Donkey Kong, Mario's Cement Factory, Spitball Sparky).

Anyone know how to fix a Pacman wristwatch? it just won't turn on when it's given a new battery.

I've also got a Simon game which is a bit beat-up, probably works but I want to put a PC inside it like the people do on http://www.mini-itx.com

Neil UK · Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2006 2:27 pm Post subject:

Some of those 'non working' lots are probably worth a bid or 2. I think this lot was definately worth the risk at $9.99 !!!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayI.....RK:MEWA:IT

I would have bid for them if I was in the USA Sad

Neil.