ATARI 5200 Ultimate SD Wafer Drive (Up to 32GB of storage space)

[+Stephen]

So if one is getting 720,000 baud (90kBps which is also 0.09MB a second) over the cartridge slot. That is fairly fast for a 8 bit videogame system.

[HDTV1080P]

I wish we had a speed test program like that for the ColecoVision/ADAM system, maybe we do but I am not aware of it.

[+remowilliams]

I wish there was a reason for this topic continuing to exist.

[tep392]

This discussion is really going off track. There's no DOS on a 5200 reading files from cart. The 5200 thinks it's looking at a bank switched ROM cart. There's no I/O at the cart port. The cart's internal processor simply copies the game from the SD card to it's own internal memory which is then mapped into the computer's memory map. The only relevant transfer rate is how long it takes the carts internal processor to copy the game binary file from the SD card to it's internal memory, which is fast enough to not be worth talking about in my opinion.

[Kyle22]

Would you like a bucket, sir?

[sanny]

Ok, sorry for a stupid question.

 

What exactly are the differences between this device and the regular AtariMax one? Apart from the label.

[TMR]

Vladr... that's why SuperREU on c64 has memcopy DMA if I am right?

Sorry, the C64 was mentioned and i missed my cue...! =-) You're mixing two things up there, the SuperCPU and the REU; the former has a 65816 directly accessing the RAM, the latter uses a DMA to transfer data to and from the expansion RAM which takes one cycle per byte in either direction and the 6510 halted during said transfers.

 

As far as the original topic goes, some of the wall-of-text posts made me go slightly cross-eyed so i might have missed something, but did any coder from the 5200 camp actually ask for this solution in the first place...?

[Kyle22]

That's why I asked if he needs a bucket. He is just spewing irrelavent puke.

[Osgeld]

wonder how many 32 Gig SD cards I can fit in a bucket

Edited September 7, 2017 by Osgeld

[Kyle22]

Quite a few, I would think, but I really wouldn't want to use them after they made contact with the contents of the bucket.

[Keatah]

5. There are over 1.25 billion Windows PC’s in the world that can play Atari 5200 games with a software emulation program. An internal or external SDXC card reader can be purchased for under $5 that allows over a billion people to play the Atari 5200 SD Wafer rom images. Therefore distributing ones Atari 5200 games on SD Wafer media allows over 1.25 billion people to have the potential to play the game. Releasing the game on a physical cartridge limits the sales to a small amount of people with a 1982-1984 Atari 5200 game system.

 

6. SD Copy protection technology: Making a quality game for the Atari 5200 can take several months or years. There is technology that makes it impossible to copy a SD card so that the Atari 5200 game rom image cannot be duplicated with a simple copy and paste technique on a Windows PC. Game developers that want to protect their hard work from being copied can release all their games on copy protected SD media. Cartridges released today do not use copy protection, so SD media with copy protection is more secure to protect peoples hard work.

 

 

1st, I fixed the font problem.

 

2nd, despite the incredible potential of having1.25 billion virtual Atari 8-bit machines, there's only going to be a few thousand of those with an installed emulator. Atari 8-bit emulation is a very VERY niche activity from a bygone era. And potential is just potential, unless it's actually utilized, which it is not. So yeh..

 

3rd, any sort of copy protection is going to be short-lived and it conflicts with emulators. So what's the point?

 

4th, physically selling games on any Secure media automatically limits the audience to owners of the original 8-bit machines whom also have to have an SD-to-Atari adapter. That's ultra niche and fart in a hurricane compared to the "1.25 billion Windows PC's that can play Atari 5200 games with a software emulation program."

 

5th, and perhaps most important is this.. 8-bit enthusiasts like and expect a certain amount of simplicity when we sit down and play a game. Not necessarily simplicity in the game, but in how it is loaded, managed, saved, backed-up, copied, traded, whatever have you. Applying restrictions and hoops to those aspects limits the appeal. Limits the appeal to where many of the classic hobbyists just say no, and game or object of interest falls off the radar. The hobbyist then moves on to something more exciting and interactive. There's a reason why SD media failed to become a distribution vehicle. 99.999% of SD card sales are simply for storage and camera usage. And they are called SD cards, not "wafers".

[Keatah]

There is copy protection technology available for SD cards and there is also encryption technology that can be used with SD cards to prevent the image on the SD card from being copied. It’s also possible to change the firmware in the Ultimate SD Wafer drive so there is a serial number in the cartridge so a SD card will only run the ROM image if the cartridge serial number is exact match.

 

Irrelevant. If the game code touches the system bus, ram, or the 6502, it can be copied.

[Keatah]

However with a SDHC card you get 32GB of storage for under $10. Is there any ATARI 5200 cartridges that are even 8MB in ROM size? One could have over 10,000 game screens with a 32GB SDHC card. There is so much space for the game, a programmer can push the limits to the maximum.

 

Aside from FMV I'm not sure I'd be interested in a game with 10,000 screens. The number sounds impressive, but has little meaning. It's like telling an ichthyologist by wife has 2000 guppies in her aquarium. 2000! 2000!! I tell you!! That's Two-Thousand with Two capital "T"s! Who gives a rat's ass?

 

Just because some kind of tech allows for an impractical amount of something doesn't mean it has to be used as a selling point. Next..

[+Stephen]

Ok, sorry for a stupid question.

 

What exactly are the differences between this device and the regular AtariMax one? Apart from the label.

The AtariMax one does not use WAFER technology.

[Keatah]

So the best possible outcome for the TS is that we would all start collecting $10 SD cartridges and playing them in a Windows emulator? I think this is the wrong audience. Is there any audience for this?

 

That sounds rather unwieldy. I wouldn't bother. I can barely be bothered to dick with real hardware as it stands. Knocking it on all-fours with yet another format, an encrypted physical format, just doesn't turn me on.

Edited September 8, 2017 by Keatah

[Kyle22]

This wafer spewing flake doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. But I bet his buddy does.

 

Sick of this stupidity. If he does manage to convince anyone to do this stupid copy protection thing, I will release the CRACK on my BBS.

[Osgeld]

why release it on a bbs, you can buy 32 gig sd wafer card for less than 10 dollars from china, I doubt you could release a 32 gig cart for less than 10 dollars

 

wafer

Edited September 8, 2017 by Osgeld

[+wongojack]

[+remowilliams]

Is it you Sal/Petey, or Carmel perhaps?

[HDTV1080P]

Again, no one is forcing anyone to use copy protection or encryption. However, it would be nice if the option existed for a game developer that spent months or years making a high quality videogame.

 

In addition, the SD cards are just as easy to use as cartridges. A game distributed on SD wafer media is auto booting instantly, plus one can save high scores and game screens if the game designer made that feature available in the game.

 

A wafer is semiconductor material which can mean any electronic device that conducts electricity. For example Coleco was going to place a Wafer Drive based on tape technology in their unreleased Supergame module. Yes calling the cartridge “Ultimate SD Wafer Drive” for both the ATARI 5200 and ColecoVision/ADAM is just a fancy marketing term, however this product acts more like a SD Drive then a cartridge. The onboard CPU can load 4MB of data at a time from the 32GB SDHC wafer card and then a programmer if they want can make a videogame as large as 32GB.

 

People can still order the old “Ultimate SD Cartridge” label directly from ATARIMAX, if they do not like the new custom label that ATARIMAX made.

Edited September 8, 2017 by HDTV1080P

[flashjazzcat]

I thought the wafers were these things:

 

 

Not sure how this fits in the SD card slot.

 

[sanny]

The AtariMax one does not use WAFER technology.

 

With wafers I want ice cream. Is it included?

[TMR]

Again, no one is forcing anyone to use copy protection or encryption. However, it would be nice if the option existed for a game developer that spent months or years making a high quality videogame.

Okay, so why exactly would it be nice if that kind of protection or encryption existed? Do you understand how much extra donkey work would go into writing a game that even used a couple of megabytes in cartridge space? And again, has any developer stepped forward asking for the encryption/protection and is anybody even talking about developing for it?

 

Are you personally writing a game to take advantage of the extra storage space, protection or encryption?

 

Yes calling the cartridge "Ultimate SD Wafer Drive" for both the ATARI 5200 and ColecoVision/ADAM is just a fancy marketing term, however this product acts more like a SD Drive then a cartridge.

Then it's at best meaningless to use the term if it's not relevant to the device in question and at worst false advertising since said technology has nothing to do with the device... unless you're calling the new stickly label a "wafer" or something.

[Kyle22]

Only a poofter would think about wafers this much!

[Kyle22]

BTW, Please explain how one could release hardware on a BBS.

I am offering the SOFTWARE. Duh.

 

Edit: Poofters seem to like cakes as well: https://www.cakecentral.com/gallery/i/21174/boy-george

 

A Chameleon looks nice in red gold and green, don't you think?

 

Karma's a bitch

Edited September 9, 2017 by Kyle22