Wait , what

LOl, I was acting as if I didn’t know already that you brought it home and was working on it after all these years 😁

Goed for you my friend and remember any woman not loving that cab isn’t good enough.... (man, I’m SOOOO lucky)

Anyway, Etienne and I already talked about it, we are planning a day of Hantarex trouble shooting.....but.....I still have a Hantarex here which should be in working condition so if things are really messed up (Hantarex raster monitors aren’t the nicest to work on) we can always go that route.

I’m not even going to comment about the LCD...... 😁😁😁

Some more pics...

Very true but he didn't really was that old.....IMHO....

I loved Reactor on the 2600..... I don't remember ever playing the arcade machine.

Just looked up "Armor Attack" because I just played it on my Vectrex.

Love the game. Sadly the Vectrex has a flaw in that it is very easy too make one (or even two) tanks move up and down all the time without being a threat to you....and simply shoot off the helicopters all the time...which makes it very boring if you do this

There are some developments in the Vectrex world where MAME could actually be run from a multi-cartridge which opens up the Vectrex to playing all arcade vector games !

Still epic !

I'm still alive  

All cabs sold to Tyrem and Jochen (by the way, you forgot Jochen has the best SW cockpit in Europe   )

Do I miss them ? Sometimes a bit yes.

But it was a necessary thing in several ways.

I finally divorced exactly a year ago and well...the plus-minus 4 years before that were not the best of my life. Let's put it mildly that my ex didn't make it easy on me. I realize that after 27 years of marriage where one wants to quit, it's not easy for the other, but there are some limits to what you can do to another person.....but I won't bore you with this...

At the moment I live still in the same house and I am lucky enough to have found the most amazing woman walking on this planet who now lives with me here (some of you guys have met her   ). I seriously couldn't be happier and fall in love with her again every single day (yes that sounds cheesy, but I can highly recommend it).

As a bonus, I now also have a wonderful extra daughter (18) and son (15) who sometimes sleep over a night here but live mostly with their dad (but this could change slowly). All these changes naturally have some getting used to for the kids, but my son Mark and my girlfriends kids get along just fine.

I am still collecting a bit of Atari, mostly A8 stuff and the occasional oddity (just added a 2600jr. and earlier scored an Atari Touch-Me hand-held) but that's about it. As you can imagine my time was mostly taken by other things the last years.
I also recently picked up a nice 1975 Zanussi Pong console, I may open a thread about it....love it.
I also managed to find some time to create a nice little PCB for the A8 which makes it possible to switch between PAL and NTSC. This has been fully developed now, now I need some time to get the Chinese to produce a good number of them....(I even won a price a the ABBUC hardware contest with it  )

Following those changes in my life I needed to create a bit of "room" in the house. So we cleaned out one room that used to be storage only and is now a nice sleeping room for my bonus-son. Currently I'm making a new room in my attic (placed a dry-wall, it's nice to learn new stuff) where my son will move to (promised this ages ago). Then his old room will be "refurbished" for my bonus-daughter.
It's a good thing I have the extra large shed (former game room) now so I can use it as temporary storage.
After all these changes are done, the plan is to turn the former game room into a "man-cave".....there will be my 2600/A8/ST stuff playable all the time, hopefully something like a little bar, beamer etc.
All of this also depends on financial stuff......divorcing isn't a cheap hobby guys !

Oh forgot to mention that I also changed jobs. I still do the same work but at a competing company now. I already knew I didn't want to stay at the previous employer because the way things worked there but I really had to get the divorce behind me first before I could think about changing jobs. I started this new job last september.

So all is well !!! (well almost all, read on)....

I still love arcade games and was very happy to finally be able to make it to Thorsten & Dirk's this year.....man I loved every second there....so many awesome old-friends....too little time and oh yeah, there were also some amazing games.....

This year I had planned to go there for an extra night to visit the town and the surrounding are for a change, but this didn't happen because shortly before the weekend my dad suffered a stroke. He had surgery on my birthday (nov. 19th) to open one of his vanes in his neck which was successful but he lost almost all speech and his right arm and hand are hard to control. He can still walk though and definitly knows what's going on. At 85, you can't be picky I guess but it's hard to see your dad like that when not a few days earlier he was still playing tennis...
Anyway, we're a few months further now and he's been in a revalidation home ever since and is definitly making progress. Speech is slowly coming back (very slowly) and his arm is still so-so but he will return home February the 14th. With a little help (also from my mum) he can still enjoy life even though not like it used to be.

Sadly, all of the above had some impact in keeping contact with some of my best friends here, they know who they are, but rest assure we will pick it back up once things are a bit more stable again  

Anyway....lots of text as you are used to from me.....

Sorry to see a lot of guys "follow my example".... I can only hope the machines are in good hands now (I know mine are) and they will live "forever". But life is about changing and moving on. And most important in finding what makes you happy. I know I found it.
 

Geez......nice memories !