Tag Archives: console

Nintendo DSi XL burgundy

Nintendo DSi XL (2008)

As I’m now short on space for all my retro stuff, I’m focusing on maintaining and repairing what I already have or looking for small items.

I recently bought a pair of non-working Nintendo DSi XLs with the intention of repairing them; the price obviously reflected the consoles‘ condition. The seller wrote in the ad that both consoles would eventually display a generic error screen prompting the user to turn off the console.

Once I had received the consoles, I verified that the error occurred at different times on the two consoles: on one, it appeared only when launching a game from a cartridge (the internal applications worked fine), while on the other, the error appeared when launching any application or game.

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NEC TurboGrafx

NEC TurboGrafx (1990)

I was familiar with a couple of variants of this console: the original Japanese PC Engine from 1987 and the American version from 1989 called TurboGrafx-16. I have the version intended for the European market, simply called TurboGrafx, from 1990: it was based on the American model, with a few adjustments to make it work with the PAL standard. The launch of the console in Europe was cancelled, and those already produced were sold to various distributors.

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Nintendo Entertainment System / NES - Zelda

Nintendo Entertainment System / NES (1985)

Last December a friend of mine came back from the UK for a vacation and brought me this NES, with a few cartridges, as a gift. When I saw Zelda and Zelda II I told him that those could sell for a nice price, and after looking for loose cartridges sold in similar conditions, I made him a reasonable offer.

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Sportron

Sportron (~1978)

I found this console a couple of weeks ago at the usual flea market; usually I don’t look for these items (you need a warehouse to collect all the variants), but I liked it and for 5 euros I decided that it was worth the risk – flea market findings are often cheap but nobody guarantees that what you buy will work. At the end it was working fine. Continue reading →

Sega Master System (1986)

Sega Master System

Once a month I go to a local flea market where sometimes – not very often – I find something on the junk dealers’ market stalls. I have “rebuilt” the complete system in two months: the first month I found the main unit, a broken control pad and the power supply unit; the second month, from the same seller, I got the light phaser, a working control pad, and a classic cartridge of Sonic The Hedgehog. Continue reading →

Donation from Enrico F.

Apple Macintosh IIfx - complete system

Last year I found an online classified from a person in Milan that was giving away for free a Macintosh IIfx, collection only. I called him and we had a nice chat on the phone, and he added a few other items to the lot after asking me if I was interested. But since I live in the opposite part of Italy, I asked a friend (Thanks Daniele!) who lives in Milan to pick up the items and keep them until he was coming back home. Continue reading →

Atari VCS (1977)

Atari 2600

Last Sunday, like every second Sunday of the month, I went to the flea market of Udine (I live 10 minutes away from the city). I hadn’t found anything interesting in months, but this time I brought home an Atari VCS, renamed “2600” a few years later, with a dozen games and some instruction booklets, but without joysticks or paddles. Continue reading →