Sculptured Software : The story of the giant sale Part 1. Not 56K safe.

[ASSEMbler]

The giant sale. It seemed like a painless and easy thing to do. Visit the
storage, pull out some items and sell them on ebay. Easy right? Hardly.

Some of the senior site members will remember that in the past, I have
acquired the assets of several game companies. There has been some
fifteen companies over the years, but with my busy life, I would usually
marel at the items, and then pack away the whole lot, untouched for some
day in the future.

I'll be the first to admit that I am a packrat verging on obsessive compulsive.
The sale was supposed to be the first attempt at thinning my collection.

So his was the plan: a few beers, some music and a camera. Prepackage the
items with for Ebay. Easy right? Wrong... The problem was that this stuff
had been sitting untouched since 2005. I didn't even remember what was in
the crates. So wednesday, I started sometime after dinner.

Three days passed.

http://assemblergames.com/images/collection/couchofdoom.jpg

What you're looking at is only the Sony assets of Sculptured Sculptors. I kept all the pre 1994 hardware, and to keep the mental torture to a
minimum, I won't go into detail. I'll just post some emoticons.

:oh: :drool: :pray:

What we have is a full range of hardware, from very early to last generation
dev cards. The most interesting is the early hardware:

http://assemblergames.com/images/collection/dtl-h2000.jpg
http://assemblergames.com/images/collection/DTL-H2000.jpg

This is a very early PSX dev card, there was only one of these in the whole
lot. It's so early that the Sony chip isn't even maked yet, it just has a fab
lot number on the chip. It's card number 606, and has numerous by hand
corrections to the board. It doesn't even have a proper Sony catalog
numbers.

http://assemblergames.com/images/collection/couchofdoompart2.jpg

Lots of drive boxes, some alpha hardware. Several sound artist cards,
and best of all some nice graphic artist boards.

http://assemblergames.com/images/collection/DTL-H201a.jpg

Also in the lot were some CD writer maserting cards for the sony 1x/2x
writer.

http://assemblergames.com/images/collection/cdh-2000.jpg

This represents about half of the first lot. Right now ebay is pretty weak,
and I don't think people understand how hard it is to get this hardware. I
wasn't able to sell them at a decent price to make a profit, so it's all going
back into storage. In short, it's hard to sell what no one knows about.
I can probably count on two hands the non industry people who know about
this hardware.

However for now I will offer one kit, just to keep something like this available to someone. What you will instead see coming up for sale is stuff like artwork and post 1995 hardware, which I haven't even touched yet. I hope the delay in the sale is now understood.

I decided to do a step by step article of my building up a psone
dev station using this hardware so that people can understand it more.
I already have the motherboard and other parts. It would be great to
have a community of sony amature developers.

More pictures to follow as I wrap up the Sony hardware and move onto Sega hardware.

I also made some nice wallpapers:
2560 pixels wallpaper (http://assemblergames.com/images/collection/psx_2560.jpg)
2560 pixels blue (http://assemblergames.com/images/collection/psx_2560_blue.jpg)
2560 pixels red (http://assemblergames.com/images/collection/psx_2560_red.jpg)
1900 pixels wallpaper (http://assemblergames.com/images/collection/psx_1900.jpg)
http://assemblergames.com/images/collection/dtl-h2000.jpg

[Tomcat]

Impressive lol if you need a hand sorting out your store you only have to ask....

[ConsoleFun]

Awesome stuff. Thx for sharing!!

CF

[kammedo]

Impressive, truly!
Ok, lets start with A :
Amazing

[ASSEMbler]

I'm moving on past psone as it was a failure on ebay, and will be putting up
xbox and sega saturn items.

[Bojay1997]

I appreciate your candor and willingness to share with all of us. Just two things though, could part of the problem on Ebay have been the fact that without a number of other components and software packages, the development boards are really of little interest to even the most hardcore development kit collectors? I've seen full dev kits on Ebay before and they always sell for a good amount. I've never seen the development cards go for much on their own and doubt they will go up much in value down the road unless other individual dev kit pieces start popping up.

What about deciding on what you think is a fair price and just listing the full packages you are talking about here on the forums? Obviously, if nobody is willing to pay those prices, you wouldn't have to sell. In reading your original post, I didn't see any reference to Ebay, so I just assumed this was going to be a sale for forum members. Isn't it still pretty hard to sell dev stuff on Ebay just because of their blanket policy against "possibly infringing items"?

I hope you understand that all of us appreciate everything you have done to build and maintain this site and for collectors of rare video games in general. I also hope you don't ever feel like we expect you to sell items or do anything more than you have already done for all of us. Having said that, I know some of us feel frustrated when we see these upcoming sale posts from time to time and then they end up not happening.

[ASSEMbler]

It's still happening I am working like crazy right now. It's just slower than expected. lots going up soon.

[babu]

nice :clap: :pray:
Is that the same sofa from the awesome acclaim pic you posted some year ago? I wish my sofa contained stuff like that :D

[smf]

This is a very early PSX dev card, there was only one of these in the whole
lot. It's so early that the Sony chip isn't even maked yet, it just has a fab
lot number on the chip. It's card number 606, and has numerous by hand
corrections to the board. It doesn't even have a proper Sony catalog
numbers.


I don't suppose you took a picture of the other board that went with it?
I'm quite interested in early PSX development stuff, mainly to help documenting bits and pieces for the MAME/MESS project.

[ASSEMbler]

I tried to scan it, but the shitty hp made a blurry mess.

[Festerfly]

Kev!

WOW!!!

End Of...

[karsten]

will you post the links of the items you'll be putting on ebay?

also what are those black cd readers behind the debug?

[Parris]

I don't think the prices were particularly high, in fact I was seriously interested, but from my point of view the recent 1mth wait (not your fault granted!) just put me off sending / buying from the US. Oh, that and I hit my PayPal limit lol.

There is some confusion here though as I initially thought that the sale was only on AG and not on eBay. I noticed immediately that it was you, however others didn't click and I think you might have missed a few sales because people thought that someone was lifting your images and using them on eBay!

If you have stuff on eBay then I think people will initially chance their arm on eBay because they will try to get the units at the cheapest price possible. It also put me off as I thought 'If I buy it at the fixed price on AG and someone gets (for example) the Nintendo for considerably less on eBay then I'd be miffed!'

It would be sad to see all of that material returned to cold storage, but it's your collection and your say at the end of the day. The sale had a couple of false starts, a few other AG members waited with baited breath and then it all seemed to go quiet. You were ill, and a MASS of items appeared in the Marketplace to fill the wake!

So, in other words...start again and the people will come! ;-)

I for one am interested in the CD writer mastering card & Sound artist board. If you are keen to offload then please post price here and I'll consider it.

[babu]

Well I for one wanted to buy one of them.. but I didn't havd the money at the moment, and wont until friday. That's why I didn't bid.

[ASSEMbler]

Well timing can't be helped.

[Borman]

Mind if I ask what the black boxes on the couch are?

[klarth]

I for one am interested in the CD writer mastering card & Sound artist board. If you are keen to offload then please post price here and I'll consider it.

ditto here :icon_bigg

borman - those black boxes are cd drives for the ISA cards. It lets them boot games off of cdr or retail discs.

[The Awoken One]

I think the problem was that everyone wanted to wait for what came next instead of buying psone stuff.
The sale was so overhyped that everyone expected golden debug units or something.
I for one would love some ps1 stuff but funds are limited


just my 2 cents

[Festerfly]

I think the problem was that everyone wanted to wait for what came next instead of buying psone stuff.
The sale was so overhyped that everyone expected golden debug units or something.
I for one would love some ps1 stuff but funds are limited


just my 2 cents

i wanted the PS1 kits but was keen to know what else there was....

[ASSEMbler]

I think the problem was that everyone wanted to wait for what came next instead of buying psone stuff.
The sale was so overhyped that everyone expected golden debug units or something.
I for one would love some ps1 stuff but funds are limited


just my 2 cents

Apologies but RL issues are more important than anything game related.

[smf]

I appreciate your candor and willingness to share with all of us. Just two things though, could part of the problem on Ebay have been the fact that without a number of other components and software packages, the development boards are really of little interest to even the most hardcore development kit collectors?.

Maybe hardcode development kit collectors didn't even know about the ebay auctions. In fact I still don't, I've only guessed they have come and gone without any noticeable trace.

Was there a thread?

[Parris]

Apologies but RL issues are more important than anything game related.
Kev, I genuinely think everyone is in agreement with you on this. It was terrible timing for you, so everyone backed off! Hence the lack of interest. I'd not dream of putting anyone out whilst they were ill, far or less expect them to answer several 100 PM's and emails from eBayers and AG members on the finer points, prices and details of particular items on auction / sales.

So if at present it is cancelled then fair enough, but if you wanted to perhaps start again now you are better then people are aware of the situation.

[The Awoken One]

Apologies but RL issues are more important than anything game related.

Absolutely !

Dont get me wrong i understand your situation but just gave my thoughts on why some stuff didnt sell.

[Christer-swe]

I am utterly impressed. I'm just glad to see this stuff. And I appreciate AG for letting me find out so much about these obscure machines.

[Segafreak_NL]

Nice pictures, looking forward to seeing the saturn stuff ;-)

[smf]

Absolutely !

Dont get me wrong i understand your situation but just gave my thoughts on why some stuff didnt sell.

Seriously, can someone point me in the direction of the auctions?

[Parris]

The eBay ones have been pulled and I don't think Kev is selling / auctioning the previous items any more going by the statements made here, and the lack of response to PM's.

[ASSEMbler]

I'm doing ebay this weekend.

[karsten]

remember to post links!

[madrigal]

Is the sofa on sale too? I need furnitures for my loft... :110:

Very nice stuff, I'm impressed at the amount of hardware, and am very curious about the CD-ROM writers. I suppose they're specific to burn the protected PSX CDs, are they? Or do they burn normal CD-R?

[retro]

Retail discs are pressed, not burnt.

We take CD writers for granted nowadays, but back then they were big, bulky, expensive pieces of equipment that were almost always external units.

[ASSEMbler]

This stuff is doing me no good in my basement. Once the drives are done being checked, I'll be bundling a working drive with source (hopefully)
and sell them as a set for homedev.

Keep your fingers crossed there's good stuff on those drives.

[AntiPasta]

Wait a minute... you chucked this stuff on ebay and you didn't tell us?
No wonder it wasn't sold. Heck, I'd love a set of dev cards, you can be sure I'll put them to good use!

[retro]

Kev knows what drive I want, heh!

Yes, let us know if they go up for sale.

[TOE-NEE]

If ASSEMbler wants to get rid of a Blue & Green Playstation Debugger Station, he's got a very interested buyer right here.