by john (comments: 0)

So back in 2007 I made a menu driven multicart. Then I disappeared from the scene and only ~20 were ever sold at game markets. I just polished them up a bit so this is how the slimcarts look like:

M1 is the classic games cart and contains:

  • - all original games (even Animaction)
  • - all unreleased games
  • - all original game hacks

M2 is the modern games cart and contains:

  • - all John Dondzila games and demos (classicgamecreations.com)
  • - VecSports Boxing by Manu (gooddealgames.com)
  • - Thrust by Ville Krumlinde (emix8.org)
  • - Nebula Commander + Revector by Craig Aker

Both carts contain following minigames:

  • - Minigame Bombenhagel (luchs-soft.de)
  • - Minigame City Bomber (anonymous)

There is a detailed game list here.

The carts work on ALL Vectrexes, even the European debuzzed ones. And thanks to the graphic design skills of a friend you can buy a bundle of both carts in one of these nice looking boxes:

This is how the box looks from the inside:

So, to celebrate an upcoming release, the first 50 (the carts are numbered) orders will get the bundle for 79 EUR shipped anywhere in the world (no VAT on top, not even for Europeans) in these handmade envelopes with stamps instead of printed barcodes:

When using EU bank transfer (no Paypal fees) use the contact form.

For Paypal (+5% Paypal fees) click here:

Check out with PayPal.

Then of course for everyone just in for the games there's a budget version of both the classic games and the modern games multicart available through the order page.

These come without fancy handpainting, a simple b/w game list and a sticker so you can put it into the original Vectrex cart shells (I don't want to destroy old games for it and while the reproduction cases currently on the market work perfectly with my slimcarts, we're not allowed to use them for multicarts). Should I ever do that, you can always send in the carts for a free update. Oh yes and the Mail Plane carts are in stock aswell, 15 EUR, available through the order page.

That's it for today, more news in the next couple days:-)

by john (comments: 0)

Now thats cool:

An Imager unboxing, assembly, gaming, review video pizza party with Russia based hacker Viacheslav Slavinsky (svofski).

1:20 hours!

Apart from that repairing excavator electronics kept me quite busy under the weekend. The visors for the new batch of imagers are supposed to arrive today after my supplier forgot to ship them. DHL only delivers 2 days a week here, so if the DHL girl doesn't call soon it will be Thursday then.

I nearly answered all emails (just 5 missing now) and the current waiting time between payment and shipment is 7 days.

by john (comments: 0)

I was too busy sending out the shipping notes from yesterday. Sending out packages without stamps doesn't work again... And I don't want the supermarket girl to be searching computer keys for an hour, so I will send todays packages on Monday.

Otherwise it looks quite good, The next batch of Imager visors arrives hopefully tuesday which means all the remaining imagers will ship on Wednesday.

I'm very confident to finally have all emails answered by then. Sorry to all of you who had to wait long. If you ask questions I want to answer them in all detail, but it also takes some time.

Currently the time from payment to shipment is 7 days which I'm quite happy with. In the future it should be 3-7 days max.

As long as I haven't answered all emails, I won't raise the prices. At the current 79 EUR ends don't meet, but I want everyone of you to get the imager for that price till the website is fully running again. Of course everyone who inquired within the last 7 years willl get one for that price aswell. Then I'll go up to 89 EUR, and if it turns out ok, will leave it at that price. Current goal is having all emails answered, orders shipped and the website running in 8 days.

It has been a wonderful January full of Vectrex stuff.

Thanks to you!

by john (comments: 0)

... is the first association I get when thinking of Mail Plane.

Seems like in 1924 they made hundreds of these 18 meter long arrows from east to west coast in the US so that the mail plane pilots would find their way. How they found back though with the arrows pointing wrong direction, I don't know... ;-)

Anyways even though I should spraypaint some new imager wheels I just had to finish my Mail Plane cart (and the ones for the folks who helped Chris Romero from vectrex.com obtaining the cart+ROM in the first place) I think I'll go for the silver font.

Animaction is still my favourite LightPen "game" but now with 5 LightPen games already out maybe some skilled programmer could add Lightpen features to their game...

Here's a picture of my developers 512k carts with RAM. I had to find the program from 7 years ago to change some games on the multicart, now that Mail Plane is included:

I whish I had some free time now, I really really want to get started programming Vectrex games. There's stuff you can only do with vector screens...

The order backlog is 7 days now and I prefer not to have people waiting longer than 7 days between payment and shipment. All currently open and paid orders will ship latest Thursday. All new orders will be notified that the order ships 7 days after payment.

by john (comments: 0)

So somehow I figured out If I slam the harddisk the opposite direction and use it upside down I may be able to rescue the data and actually succeeded. phew:-)

Now back to Vectrex related stuff I upgraded the Starsling slimcart design this week. I tried several options but decided this suits the theme best so far:

If you bought starsling from me before and want to swap it for the new design for free, just contact me for a free switch. Or keep the old design which may have higher collective value as I recently learned from two ebay auctions of my old imagers which went for an average of 215 EUR

http://www.ebay.com/itm/151193517439

http://www.ebay.com/itm//131073965714

Guess I should've saved some old imagers and auctioned them off for $$$ ;-)

by john (comments: 0)

Today I finally wanted to backup my harddisk.

I use to completely mirror them so I always have one backup harddisk. Really practical when you're travelling.

Anyways: why on earth do this things break when they fall down 10 centimeters (!) when switched off?!?? And 15 Minutes earlier I explained Mrs. madtronix what a SSD is...

All work data from the last half years is lost, your emails are not lost though, I just have a bigger focus on sorting out this problem now.

The big question is should I open the harddisk or will just the dust totally destroy it? And: will a data recovery center be able to restore the (encrypted) data.

This is the moment when I whish I could just restart this day/level or maybe use an extra life. Like a dear friend recently wrote me: "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away".

Either way I guess I know more in 24h. Till then no emails, shipments, etc. Sorry.

No Harddisk, no games.

Welcome reeality!

by john (comments: 0)

Since the Vectrex itself can only address up to 32kB ROM on the cartdridge port you need to do some trickery called bankswitching if you want to have more. You can use several dedicated logic chips for that or just develop your ouwn logic circuit and program it on a PLD (programmable logic device). And that luckily still works fine on my old dusty windows machine:

Now I can finally produce my 512k carts (or bigger) again. Good for really big games or game collections like multicarts. If everything goes well, Friday is the day they are done:-)

Then I converted 5 cheap mega drive gamepads for Vectrex usage and made 20 colour wheels for the Imager. I have to see if the wheels are dried before the post arrives, otherwise the next imagers will leave on Tuesday.

by john (comments: 0)

... is a Swedish word which literally translated would be "back-drunk" - still drunk from yesterday, hungover.

So when I finally got up the Arnold Schwarzenegger of retro game reviews a.k.a. "VectrexRoli" striked again:

Then I got the CPLD developement environment running again. That was an important step towards making a new batch of my never officially released menu-driven multicarts. The programmable logic device handles the RAM/ROM combination that will be presented to the Vectrex. This allows Vectrex cartdridges with up to 512kB ROM and 32kBb RAM like this one here:

I have wrap-around stickers but after some feedback I got, I will propably go for a similar design as I used for the vectorzoa carts.

by john (comments: 0)

This morning I got a mail saying one 3D Imager arrived in The Netherlands - after just 48 hours o_O

Then I just got an unboxing video link from this crazy Austrian youtuber VectrexRoli

I was surprised he was not in his basement, maybe Mrs.VectrexRoli was asleep and he was allowed to do his video game business upstairs?

Or it has something to do with the girl in his basement...

I didn't include any manuals to challenge the tinkerer in you.

No that's actually because I need to make new photos, but the model is currently in India. Anyways, the "assembly" is quite self explainatory: Put the visor on the head mount and put the color wheel on the hub with the white sticker facing towards the Vectrex. Then you may need to apply the small metal distance wheel on top of the colour wheel with the side labeled "TOP" still visible:

by john (comments: 0)

Snowy season came late, but it came.

Vectrex is happyhappy.