Denver, CO
Many years ago I purchased BattleTech Firestorm Tesla II simulators. Ended up with 12 (PODS) of them.
The arcade I had them in went through one onwner change aferr another. Eventually,they were moved into storage. Thought that when I retired, it would be great to open up a private Birthday Center and run it close to home. The good news is that my business took off so my plans changed.
On a Flight Cockpit site, an individual purchased 8 Battletech Tesla II Pods. He took out the C-20 Glass Mountain units. They consist of a large 40" Concave Mirror and a Beam-Splitter. Glass Mountain was purchased by Flight Safety International. Look up Colluminated Light. After tracking down the person that sold the orginal set to Tim Disney, they would still build these optical units for around $5,500.00 each (in a lot of 10). They had delivered around 115 to Disney.
The optical units are re-purposed for single seat Flight Simulators. There are about four places that keep these retro systems going. They seem to enjoy popularity at Sci-Fi conventions. However, an unknown number have most likely been dis-assembled for the incrediable graphics unit.
These are photos from my personal camera. There are 15 AlienWare Servers that came with BattleTech Pods.
While I hope that someone would buy them to set up an arcade I could visit, the reality is the C-20 mirrors may have more value with flight cockpit developers.
Tesla-II
Inactive member
6y 16,150 7
Just a quick follow-up. The posting of the units for sale helped me make some new friends. Appreciate the PMs. I have already sent some friends looking to purchase arcades around the country to some of you. This is generally a great group.
As expected, some of the few existing Battletech Pod owners that were self proclaimed "Tight Knit Group" were very proud of their own and passionate about how they feel things should be. Setting up a new website to replace one that was functionally dead for years to post on my advertisement was actually humorous. So were some of the member's comments and PM's in relation to the whole thing.
So, I went to eBay with the offering. Within a few weeks, there were over 1,600 views. I received multiple calls from eBay staff about the traffic. Probably 40 views were the staff there. They told me what a unique offering it was. The eBay staff was very personal, positive, and supportive.
In addition, the post for eBay links on the various flight simulator sites that used the C-20 optics systems was busy too.
I actually was invited and traveled to flight sim to sit in the pilot seat. Wow, the Microsoft Flight Simulator (now purchased and sold as a subscription service) has really grown up! There are flight avionics devices to plug in. So now, I have more friends in the flight sim community.