Hardware desk. If it has a cartridge slot, an FPGA board or a weird controller, Hank has opened it up and put it back together — usually better. Writes the gear reviews and hardware spotlights.
The VIC-20 shipped with 5K and a slot that could fix it — 3K, 8K and 16K expansions, a cartridge library of instant-loading classics, and an ecosystem that defined the machine.
Buy the pen first, test every page turn, and build the twenty-book American shelf in the right order: a complete, hedged-price guide to Pico collecting in 2026.
Clamshell variants from Tokyo to Seoul to São Paulo, the all-important Magic Pen, and the Advanced Pico Beena — the 2005 successor that kept the book-and-pen ritual alive in Japan.
A pen, a pad and a picture book that knows what page it is on: the Pico’s input system explained, and why it was years ahead of the stylus era.
Hedged prices, the PAL traps, the complete-box problem and the twenty cartridges to buy first. A practical 2026 guide to starting — or completing — an Odyssey 2 and Videopac collection without overpaying for the wrong plastic.
It was the only games console of its generation with a full keyboard built in — and Magnavox and Philips kept trying to make it a computer. From Computer Intro! in 1979 to a chess module carrying its own processor, this is the story of that ambition.
It sat on top of the console like a second machine, spoke through its own speaker, and turned maze games into game shows and spelling drills into conversations. The Voice is the Odyssey 2’s boldest accessory — this is how it worked and what to play on it.
Three consoles, one region-free library, a monkey’s worth of loading and thirty-year-old lasers: which model to buy, what to pay, how the SD loaders change everything, and how to keep the pads alive.
SNK’s 1996 upgrade halved the loading, shrank the box and hid a thermal flaw that can cook the machine from inside: the complete story of the Neo Geo CDZ, the format’s best and most fragile machine.
System I vs II, controller health, Fairchild vs Zircon cartridges, the multicart, RF video in 2026 and a five-check buying list for the first cartridge console.