Pioneer MSX PX-V60, Horror Round 2, Squeeze LDs

Recently picked up a really cool vintage computing item - the Pioneer PX-V60 which also came with a joystick, the keyboard, and 2 games. Hooked it up and it ran without a glitch! This system can play the standard MSX cartridge games and either an LD-7000 or LD-5000 unit can be hooked up to it in order to play MSX laserdisc games such as Strike Mission, Astron Belt, Badlands, etc.

Week two of horror discs on Ebay is coming to an end with a few more gems in there. Threw in some Thunderbirds and Star Wars items in there too.

Thunderbirds IR Boxes 1-4: BELL-533, BELL-534, BELL-535, BELL-536
Making of Star Wars PILF-2079
Thunderbirds 6 (sealed) PILF-2607
Zombie 2 (Sanguelia) 7" Vinyl Record EWR-20688
John Carpenters Vampires (sealed) PILF-7397
Lucio Fulci's Sanguelia (Zombi 2) Collector's Set 00LS15-16
Visitors 5-LD Box Set NJL-11443

Started some non-horror discs this week including some anamorphically squeezed titles and other late-pressed Dolby Digital AC-3 discs. I've recently obtained a ton of relatively common late-pressed LDs which were all in 'like-new' condition or still sealed. These will be auctioned off over the next couple weeks.

Fight Club (sealed) PILF-2835
Basic Instinct (Anamorphically Squeezed) PILF-2192
Terminator 2 (Anamorpically Squeezed) PILF-2187
Fargo PILF-2370
Thunderbirds Betamax Tapes
Small Soldiers (sealed) PILF-2768
David Lynch's Hotel Room PCLP-00506
Arlington Road (sealed) PCLH-00011
Dune LD-Box Set PILF-7297
The Avengers (sealed) PILF-2705

Repairing the Nintendo Famicom Disk System (HVC-022)

So the Famicom Disk System is really hard to get up and running again for a number of reasons. The most common reason is that the rubber belt needs to be replaced. This is a relatively easy and well documented fix. But after you get the belt on, the system still usually doesn't work. You will often get Errors 21, 22, or 27 when trying to get it to read discs. It can take hours of tinkering to get past these errors, and even at that point, some discs will load while others will not. I thought I'd make a post about what I have done with much success. I've gotten about 5 systems up and running using the process below, and it gets easier every time.

The first thing you want to do is adjust the motor speed. Use a thin, flat-head screw driver and insert it into motor as depicted above. If 10 is all the way counter-clockwise, and 0 is all the way clockwise, set it to around 7. It seems to be able to read most discs at that speed.

Note the little indention on the spindle. This is a cause of much consternation, as you must align the tip of the little black grub screw perfectly into this little hole. It can be tricky because it can't be too tight, too high, or too low. It has to be perfect. In my experience, if it's too tight, you will get a lot of Error 27s. I'm not sure if this being misaligned is THE cause for error 27s, but that's what I have observed. But I've also seen error 27s with bad discs, so who knows... You may have to realign it a few times. It's my personal belief that this is the source of the problem most of the time. If you try many times and it still doesn't work, you can try adjusting the drive head as described below.

The next thing you can try doing is adjusting the drive head. To do that, you need to turn the screw above 1/8th turns at a time to see if it makes a difference. Be careful not to strip this screw! If you strip it, game over.

The ideal position I have found is shown in the picture above. You want to have the top of the gold screw positioned slightly over the silver circle below it. While you're at it, swab the little silver thing with rubbing alcohol and let it air dry.

Lastly, there's one more grub screw which you can try adjusting. I don't know what it's supposed to do, but I always loosen it and re-tighten it just for kicks.

By the way, it is possible to use a drive from the standard red FDS system and transplant it into a Sharp Twin Famicom. On the Twin Famicom system I had, the drive head screw was stripped and therefore the drive was unfixable. So I put a regular FDS drive in there and it works great.

Splatter Splatter

Time to clear out all the horror discs that have been incubating over the past few weeks. Some gems including the very rare Zombi Dawn of the Dead: The Conclusion box set which is in near mint condition. First time for me to see the set in such beautiful shape. Also Lucio Fulci's Gates of Hell and Zombi 2 - both the single laserdisc release as well as the collector's set (not pictured here but hope to post it soon). Tons of discs and they will be spread out over two rounds on Ebay. First round started on Feb 3. Will have some movie program booklets, a 45 record, and some posters mixed in as well. Some highlights of the bunch include:

Dr. Butcher - NDH-111
John Carpenter's Halloween - AML-0040
Dellamorte Dellamore (Demons 95) - COLM-6131
Terror in the Aisles - SF098-5066
Creepshow - G98F5025
Friday the 13th - NJEL-11172
Snuff - LVB-1013
Gates of Hell - 00LS34-35
Zombi 2 aka Sanguelia - 00LS-32
Zombi 2 aka Sanguelia (Collector's set) - 00LS15-16
Maniac - NDH-007
Toxic Avenger -SF078-5184
Zombie Dawn of the Dead: The Conclusion - BILF-9003
John Carpenter's Vampires - PILF-7397
Hellraiser - TS-S008

Trying out a Nintendo Virtual Boy system as well. Was pretty cool to set it up and test it out. So clunky and only 2 colors - I can see why it never really caught on. Was able to find some rare games for a collector including SD Gundam Dimension War, Virtual Bowling, Space Invaders, and Virtual Lab.

Lastly, my friend called me up and said he had this cool vintage movie camera to auction off. It's a Canon Scoopic 16 from the early/mid 1970s!! The adventures never end here at Goodsquid.