In the mid-80’s, my dad purchased an Amdek color monitor for our Franklin Ace 1000 computer (an Apple II clone). It’s a big plastic monster with an RCA input for video and an eighth-inch input (headphone jack) for audio. One thing I’ve always loved about this monitor is that on the top-rear portion it has a built in handle. After dad sold our Franklin, I inherited the monitor and used it on my Commodore 64 for almost a decade. The handle came in “handy” every time I lugged my system to a copyfest or over to one of my friends’ houses, which was quite often back then.
I still have the monitor, and despite what some people think of its looks (Ice Breaker once referred to it as “the ugliest monitor he’d ever seen”), I still use it. The year before last I took it with me to OVGE and hooked up my Super Nintendo to it. The year before that, I hooked up a Genesis to it. When not on the road, the monitor sits upstairs, rotating between systems. For the past few months I’ve had my Amiga CD32 hooked up to it.
A couple of weeks ago, my four-year-old son started asking about getting an Xbox for his room. I don’t have a spare Xbox to put in there, but I do have a spare NES. Last week I purchased 40 loose NES games from a fellow Digital Press collector, and when they arrived Mason and I opened the boxes together. He was quite excited, so I seized the moment and asked him if he wanted an old Nintendo in his room instead. He said yes, and so I went upstairs to find one for him. (I ended up giving him a Famiclone since I didn’t care if it got abused.) Mason doesn’t have a television in his room; the minute I remembered that, the Amdek monitor caught my eye.
Even though I know the monitor’s only going downstairs, I also know how four-year-olds can treat things. This monitor and I have been through a lot together. I know it sounds stupid, but when I think about things like the fact that the entire time I used my Commodore 64 I was staring at this thing, it makes me not want to give it up. In the end, I decided that I’d already had 21 years of loyal service out of the thing, and it was time to hand it down. And so, without as much as a little ceremony, the monitor and NES were carried downstairs and hooked up in my son’s bedroom, at the foot of his bed so he can lie in his bottom bunk and play Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros. 3 to his heart’s content.
Today at lunch, I decided to hit a couple of thrift stores in search of some more NES games for my son. I was thinking how neat it would be for the two of us to hunt together for games and stuff. What a fun way to spend the weekend!
The first thrift store I walked into didn’t have any NES games, so I wandered over to the computer area and there it was. Another Amdek monitor, identical to the one I’d just given Mason. I’ve had that thing for 21 years and never seen another one like it, but here was its twin. On the screen, $29.95 had been crossed out as had $19.95 and $9.95. The final price on the monitor was $4.95.
Although the two are essentially identical, I put the new one in Mason’s room and took my old one back. I think it was desperately trying to tell me not to get rid of it.