Hornpipe2

I believe that Bear Game Demo (Paddle) (1983) (SEGA, Fred Mack) ~.bin should have (Prototype) added, see https://www.atariprotos.com/2600/software/beargame/beargame.htm

I worked as a cashier at Tuesday Morning for about 6-9 months in the mid-2000s and while I remember getting truckloads of stuff in, I don't ever remember shipping anything back or throwing it away (unless it was broken). They did go to extreme markdowns though and stuff ended up on a super-cheap clearance rack. What happens to all the junk that the third-party marketers don't sell? Was I just not around when management packed up boxes of 90% off stuff and put it back on the truck? Surely there are not really homes for all the stuff every store across America produces.

Thanks for all the replies, you guys. I understand a lot better about this now, and it seems like a worthy project - I love the Atari sound. Also - does RMT produce files with any kind of visualization, so they could be projected on a screen or something at a show?

I've got a short stack of 8-bits in the garage and I need to turn them into something useful. "A-ha!" I thought. "I love the 8-bit sound. Let's make them into music tools!" So who has advice on using the Atari 8-bits for music production and performance? Let's start with... * model recommendations? (are some noisier or less stable? does extra RAM provide much benefit? etc) * hardware and mods? I can add a mono audio-out jack easily. For stereo I've seen the standard piggyback mod which seems easiest, though I also know there are more advanced stereo out boards that do good things. What about MIDI control or...? * software? I see lots of references to RMT on the forums which seems like a good choice for music tracker - are there other alternatives? Also something I haven't seen that I would like is a way to "play" the Atari as a keyboard synthesizer. Any tools like that exist? -Greg

LUNIX RULEZ JOO

You know I would ordinarily never bid on this, but the free shipping makes it mighty tempting!

How closely tied are the UI/launcher and the emulator? I don't feel Stella itself should come with any sort of whitelist, nor should it even care about what is being played on it. The only reason it has to care would be knowing what kind of controllers or hardware are connected, and the bankswitch type to emulate... both of which could be supplied on command line. (One might contrast this approach to MAME (which does whitelist or at least track rom info), but remember that MAME is a giant duct-taped together collection of emulators and choosing a romset actually implies choosing a driver as well) Would it be a bad idea to make Stella into a command-line application which is called from a frontend, and in that frontend is where stella.pro (or in the distant future, stella.xml) lives? On GUI-based systems you could put them together into the single app. In my ideal world 2600 .bins would have a 128-byte header at the front which described bankswitch type, controller inputs, name, etc. thus rendering this entire discussion moot. : )

OutRun!

Well there you go. Ask and ye shall receive : ) Stephen - will this become a permanent change? Some emulator frontends use Mame's -listxml command to dynamically set themselves up with game lists at first run... probably exactly what neglectoru is trying to do with a static database file. A fully explained and parsable -listrominfo would be of great benefit to frontend authors everywhere.

Rom - I believe he is looking for a downloadable database or spreadsheet with game information. Atarimania provides the same info but is web-based and can't be saved locally for doing custom SQL queries, enhancing emulator frontends with lots of information, etc. neglectoru - Another option would be to download the entire Rom's Collection from Atarimania, list the filenames into a text file, and then try to use regexes on the filenames to produce a CSV of info. Most filenames include a rom name and manufacturer, and PAL releases have (PAL) appended... many others have a year (or even exact date) of release, controller info, programmer's names, AKA (for clones / pirates), prototype status, etc. Since version 4 (or is it 5?), Originals are marked with a ~ at the end. Link: http://www.atarimania.com/rom_collection_archive_atari_2600_roms.html

Let's suppose you want a high quality digitized version of an instruction manual or box, but you don't have a scanner handy. No problem: with a tripod, your camera, and way to set up the document you can get the image easily. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3aXW5ZKa9w This is a reasonable setup for one-time shots. Dedicated users needing multiple documents over and over should either * get a scanner for maximum quality * rig a setup like one of these: http://www.subchaser.org/photographing-documents

I haven't seen anything like that before, though I imagine it would be handy. You might try your hand at writing a script to parse the stella.pro file ("properties" file for the Stella emulator): http://stella.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/stella/trunk/src/emucore/stella.pro?revision=1870&view=markup It has at least Cartridge MD5, name, manufacturer, and sometimes additional info (model #, controller types, sparse rarity info, AKA for clones / rereleases). The release year is usually in parentheses in the Cartridge name.

Thanks for the corrections, hornpipe. I will correct Air Raiders and Atlantis (I just can't believe I forgot that one). Atlantis II is an official hack of Atlantis. Air Raid is an (un)official 'hack' of Space Jockey. And Pepsi Invaders is an official hack of Space Invaders. Therefore no true originals, IMO. Hey wait, I just tried Air Raid and it's not (very much) at all like Space Jockey...? How is this a hack?

Well now, it's not stated outright that it's a paddle game, just that it uses a non-joystick non-keypad controller. It could very well be Indy 500!

Here's what it says at the bottom: Essentially they have already determined the 300 winners and the wheel is just a gimmick to give you something to do. It's probably rigged to only give away one at certain times of day.