Don't Piss Off Bradley, the Parts Seller Keeping Atari Machines Alive
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There have been unforseen delays, and it's been over a year with no progress. Everything is stable, and I'm trying to do the right thing for everyone, but there are some customers that are rightly annoyed by the delays.
I've had to tell some customers off... Basically you'll get your stuff when you get it, and not before. It's really an issue of I can't get their stuff out first no matter what they pay because it's buried somewhere in the middle of a container I can't unload.
It's frustrating on all sides, but my challenges are made more difficult sometimes when I feel like I can't ever satisfy some of the people I'm trying to help.
Maybe don't sell things to people until you have them in your hands? Seems like basic inventory management.
However everybody who has successfully ordered from him agree that his refurbishment jobs are the best you'll get, so everybody kind of puts up with it.
Consistent demand, med-high value: the business' inventory is bought up by a larger business that supplies a related niche as part of an expansion plan. This can result in poorer availability/service as the tribal knowledge of inventory organization and item details is lost in transition.
High value but demand is inconsistent/slow: parts bought up by a collector or restorer, they go off the market into storage in order to keep a specific collection going. They may in theory sell parts to others but usually difficult to deal with and almost always requires an "in".
Low demand low value: Scrapped, or stored in indifferent conditions (outside or piled up in storage units) until everything degrades.
Of course, if another "that guy" appears there is a possibility for a stable transition. But as other commenters alluded to, these folks tend to have idiosyncratic personalities and lifestyles so that happens very rarely in my experience.
If we don't like you, we'll make you hurt.
I guess the original proprietary ICs won't last literally forever, but probably long enough for anyone to still care.
To get a piece for a tool I'm restoring, I had to figure out the cell number of a guy who bought the property that had the warehouse from a defunct dealer on it, and beg him to go through it for me. He runs an actual business, and bought the warehouse as somewhere to store his day-job machinery, not realizing it was the go-to for this particular brand of vintage machinery.
It was legitimately interesting to hear his perspective when I had an issue with my shipment. He literally remembered my order off the top of his head and helped troubleshoot without any sort of reference material.
Woodworkers are an odd bunch.
Probably half of the rotary Mazda parts/car sales happen on Facebook now.
Sucks for those of us who choose not to have Facebook accounts.
So a week later, I called twice a day for three days and he didn't answer the phone. His answering machine says he'll return the call, but he never did.
The next week I got him on the phone and he wouldn't sell me the item I wanted unless I also bought some other things I don't need. It's not like I was trying to get a deal, or free shipping, or something. I just didn't want to feel cheated.
I ended up buying a cheap Chinese knock-off part online.
Was this an assembly perhaps? That happens a lot where a part in an assembly is prone to failure and cannot be purchased outside of the assembly which which is usually 10x the cost of the part itself.
The part was $x. His minimum purchase was $y+shipping. I told him that I was happy to pay $y+shipping for the single part. But he then insisted I also buy completely unrelated items $a and $b, which would have increased the price well beyond $y+shipping.
In my case the instructions were actually technically self contradictory and so I just emailed saying what I wanted as best I could resolve within those peculiar rules, and he of course told me I was not following the rules, so I said fine I'll take whatever you require me to take in order to get $x however you want to do it. But for the record your web site said x rule, and y rule, and I actually tried to do those as you can see.
His next email was to cancel the order, complete with a smarmy "I'm sure you will be able to find a source for those plotter gears somewhere else."
Well I fucking did as a matter of fact. And pens too. New ones, not dried out old stock.
I wasn't trying to get any thing special or get away with anything or buy up too much of a limited supply or anything like that. Just a set of plotter gears and one or two joystick cables and their new replacement joystick pcbs with better buttons. I think I only really needed a single pcb and either no cables or a single cable, but he insisted one sold in pairs and maybe the other limited to one, something. I didn't really care. I was willing to buy whatever and the prices were fine. There was absolutely no reason I can fathom to treat me like a dick.
The only reason I even tried to limit what I ordered was so as not to waste something someone else could have. I wasn't using an Atari joystick on an Atari. I was using it on a TRS-80 model 1 with an add-on that only provides a single joystick port. So I really only needed 1 of everything, and I really didn't even need that. My joystick actually worked fine, I just liked the sound of that upgraded new design PCB, and I was hoping maybe a new cable would be more flexible. I was just trying to patronize a business. I mean, I was trying to be as considerate as possible in every dimension possible, buy extra stuff just to make more of a sale, yet don't waste stuff I'm not actually going to use... I was not doing that much thinking for MY convenience.
Every time I see one of the comments that says they had a great experience, all that means is not only is the guy a dick, he's a capricious unfair dick.
Happy days!
I think this is their current website [1]. Certainly looks about right!
I grew up going to his shop, and getting their print catalog of several hundred pages.
When they went online, they spewed the print catalog onto web pages, and added animations. He sold the whole thing to someone who wanted make it into a more serious business - said acquirer ran it into the ground, and the original founder bought it back.
I love that amongst various gadgets and toys, there is not just one but _two_ Spanish holiday home rentals.
(But given the amount of CCTV equipment they carry, I might think twice before renting a villa from them…)
https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-5-the-atari-...
It would be a fascinating dive into his finances to understand how he makes it all work. The warehouse costs alone must be astronomical, and the addressable market is very small.
Each time I enjoy one, I am fascinated by how so many things connect, what it meant to people, how they think...
Thank you Kay. Seriously.
He also has his own system for ordering, where you select the items, then he weighs them, then he’ll give you a price and a payment link.
No better way to annoy him than to refuse to read his FAQ and ask for a total price including shipping, or anything outside the possibility of his rigid system.
Talked to him about helping him update his online shop 10 years ago or more. Clearly, judging by the layout and functionality that still didn’t happen yet.
He already talked back then to a generic shop builder that wanted to sell him a shop for about 500 bucks or something.
The problem of course was that his unique checkout system was sacred and they refused to implement it his way. I told him it was possible, but a custom checkout could cost up to 5000.
Clearly, I was out to defraud him charging such an outrageous rate for a small change to a 500 dollar website! We never became friends. And he never found a honest shop builder.
Of course, but then again, it seems a bit unreasonable to hold these grudges forever.
People make mistakes, forget appointments, have a busy life outside of their hobbies. Expecting perfection is unreasonable. Especially since this was a loyal customer for years.
Of course he has a monopoly so there's nothing to stop him.
He sounds like a cunt who gets off on making a cult out of holding this entire hobby hostage
Scroll past it then? Doesn't seem like a big hardship.
HN is only useful because of its tone.
But it is 100% achievable without using derogatory, inflammatory profanities.
The example of his email given seemed polite, if brusque. Demanding someone operate the way we want them to on our terms is a bit self-centered.
But I do recall that I had email exchanges where he seemed quite friendly. Looking through my archive I see that I had an interaction with him in 2014, and it was cordial, but slow. (1 month delay in reply).
People make mistakes. Penalizing people for arcane ordering snafus for prolonged periods of time seems like the classic definition of power tripping, nothing more. And penalizing people when you know they cannot get the part they need elsewhere is just cruelty.
Example: "No sound chip for you! Come back, one year!"
> Prior to Atari’s collapse in 1996, Koda’s catalog was 46 pages long. After Atari folded, he released a new version, with 228 pages. But none of this explains the endless rules and stipulations, the blacklisting, or the website.
1 order inventory catalogue 20 years of date + X pages of "updates". This person doesn't suffer fools and I would venture it's more of hobby than a business.
Having no objective reason to turn away customers would disappoint a person like that.
I wish I had had the foresight to get my own dragon hoard. It seems like anything I was ever interested in (and I'm not young) has become a 'collectors' item' in the last few decades.
It's a bummer to get bid out of everything over time.
I sold a car for 4k that's now selling for 30-40k just four years later, it's judicious. I am kicking myself, I may never own another because I wouldn't reasonably pay that much for something that's objectively not worth it, but that's the market.
Driving a 90s honda/nissan/toyota/mazda? Check the market price right now, you might be sitting on a cheeky house deposit.
No soup for you !
for the uninitiated: https://youtu.be/euLQOQNVzgY
The old man said the price was now 1.4 million. And he got it.
Sometimes people just like to do things their own way. I don't think you have to Neuro divergent to care more about your principles than money.
I’d to the same to anyone trying to short change me.
Haggling in the open as a counter offer, is hardly that.
I guess it really depends on what your local market looks like. In some places the price you list land or real estate for is highest you could possible hope of getting and you go in with realization that you will almost certainly get less. There it is common to start the 'bidding' ~20% under asking.
In other places the price you list is the lowest price you will consider selling for and you'll never seriously consider an offer under that. There you normally start bidding at 0-10% over asking.
If you are given an offer that is below what you would accept, a polite no will suffice.
It can be simple: thing that person is selling they personally value at X. If person buying wants to pay X, they get it.
If I can afford not to do some weird social negotiation dance - I won't. I do realise though that sometimes I really want the transaction to go ahead so I have to do the dance.
So while I am not about to endorse screaming "Did I fucking stutter!?" I can absolutely understand a person saying they want more now because you are making this process harder than it needs to be.
In general, I cannot condone punishing people for negotiating. It's not about business, it's making sure people feel small; making them feel your power and feel their powerlessness towards you. It's making people feel bad for the sake of making them feel bad.
I had one job offer where I absolutely nailed the interview and basically walked out with a verbal offer, and then the founder decided to offer me $10k less than what I asked for. I didn't respond for a week, and then he offered me what I asked for. But because of that, I didn't even respond to the second email, I don't want to work for someone who will screw things up over small points like that. Again, like you say it was just about them trying to screw me over because they felt like they could.
In the other cases discussed, the seller is in the position of power. And they rub their power in the face of the less powerful party because that party was operating on the assumption of equality of power and dared to negotiate.
MAME itself has some of this too despite basically being a GPL2/BSD codebase.
There are a lot of rare things that are completely unavailable only in the hands of a sole collector (usually Japanese). Then they'll mail it around to friends under a strict "no dumping rule". They like showing off what they have.
Now of course those "no dumping" rules have been violated over the years and usually to disastrous effect but also you have situations where the rom dump is ALSO only in the hands of a few people.
Like what? I honestly don't see why these collectors have enough leverage to impose any disastrous consequences. The rare stuff is in most cases merely a curiosity. In the long run it doesn't really matter if those things are preserved. It would be nice but it certainly doesn't justify bending over backwards for a collector and their "rules". Devkits for example would be extremely important items but I don't see people talking about stuff like that very often.
Keep in mind that a lot of the rare stuff ends up helping contribute to emulator development/accuracy.
The importance of devkits (and these are still hotly collected) only goes so far as decapping ICs is hard work. A finished game might show you new valid opcodes or undocumented system call you weren't aware of.
Keep in mind that the way collecting works in Japan is more about archiving and a rare few people get things into their collection because they are trusted. They're trusted to preserve it, but also entrusted not to make it available to everyone who wants to download it for free. Creators revisit prior works (or make available for resale) far more frequently than we tend to here.
In the end, none of these licenses matter anyway. I seriously doubt anyone in this community will ever sue somebody over license violations. People do nothing while corporations file DMCA claims against screenshots despite Sony vs. Connectix.
People releasing code GPL/MIT/MIT and then getting mad when someone they do not like using it is always going to happen. Not everyone agrees on everything. In the emu case it was more they just did not want to get sued.
What I think is more interesting is there are still devices being created that are using the older code before the switchover that has the restriction and the emulation is worse!
Also Before that Sony v. Connectix it was not very clear, with takedown notices every few months to the sites. Now you pretty much only see the notices on the rom sites. By the point the case was done the license was already mostly in place. Even switching over to the new one was a large undertaking that they put off for a long time. I think a small handful of drivers they could not find the orig authors to ask and they pulled them out and re-wrote them.
I recently switched from high-end Atari emulators to real hardware, and there's no comparison. Even the best emulators have latency issues, and compatibility issues.
When I switched from emulators to actual hardware, suddenly my paddles work perfectly, and the screen artifacts that appear in some games disappeared! I guess emulators just can't handle the A/D conversion well.