x=usr(1536)

This is more or less where it's sitting with me. Caveat: I am a bit of a sucker for backstory, but it absolutely needs to not feel forced or hokey, and being outright ignorant of established storyline is an instant noose around its neck for me. Given that the original storyline involved mutant houseflies from outer space as a central plot point, it'll be interesting to see how or if that gets worked in. I did catch the Qotech T-shirt that our protagonist wore, and that she went by 'Yar' online. OK, there's a couple of hints, but nothing concrete enough to go on - and, quite honestly, between that and the preview, it's not hooking me in a big way. It's very much wait and see, and I hope that my concerns about the final product are misfounded.

Wasn't that an offshoot of disgruntled settlers who had originally come in as part of the Great Minitel Migration? IIRC, they were trying to establish Minitel service ahead of its 1980 launch so that the network in the New World would be under their control, but it all fell apart somewhere in Missouri when they got into a heavy battle with the Teletext Pioneers; the casualties decimated their numbers and those who survived ceded the territory they had gained, moving southwards in near-total defeat. There are still some small pockets of Minitel adherents in scattered parts of Louisiana, from what I understand.

Got it. That's unfortunate for ERE Informatique, because I can't remember ever hearing them mentioned in any of the English-language reviews of the time - or, if they were, it was such a small mention that it didn't stick in my mind. Thinking about it, though, their name did appear somewhere on the title screen, IIRC. Looking a bit deeper, I can't recall ever playing Commander Blood and Big Bug Bang was one I'd never even heard of until now. I'll probably check them out at some point, but need to get a DOS VM running again first. North & South was pretty good. Never saw any of the sequels / remakes, though.

There's also Stern on the arcade side. I'm trying to dig up the current brand portfolio, but so far it's looking like 2021 is the most recently-published. It's also fun disentangling the brand portfolio from the Atari Portfolio

That will definitely do it Glad you caught the culprit!

This would make sense if the AtariVox had HSC compatilbility, but it only supports SaveKey. No preinitialisation should be necessary - at least, it wasn't on either of mine. @Phylax: One thing not mentioned earlier was the interference between the 7800's case and the Avox' case. This causes it to not sit completely flush against the joystick port, and at a downward angle potentially causing contact issues with the pins. There are a couple of things to try to see if maybe it's going out of alignment: Use a joystick extension cable (6' or less recommended) to place it away from the 7800 Place the 7800 on a book or similar, and let the Avox rest at a downward angle without touching the surface the book is on Remove the Avox' case (its two halves are held together with tabs that can be pressed in with a small flathead screwdriver) and see if that helps when it's plugged directly in Are you completely powering down the system when switching between 2600 and 7800 games, and is the Avox plugged in when this happens? Just as a general rule, it's better to have the Avox plugged in at powerup rather than after, and it may need a second or two between power cycles in order to come back up correctly.

The Infogrames name carries less weight than even the Atari name these days, but reviving it is a smart move: it opens up a lot of flexibility in terms of how titles can be released. This may be a way for Atari to get out of the 'all nostalgia, all the time' pit they've been firmly rooted in. And there is something appealing to me about Captain Blood redone for modern audiences and hardware. It was the only Infogrames game I ever really got into, and had the feeling of being crossed with Elite and Star Raiders.

And a SCART port plus IEC-standard antenna connector, both of which would have commonly been used in and around its apparent location of Willow Springs, Illinois, United States. Few people realise that Illinois is not just the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, but also SCART, which was used extensively throughout North America in the 1980s and 1990s.* That $1200 price is looking more and more like anyone who passes it up would be a fool for not seeing the inherent value and sure-to-appreciate nature of this gem. * I saw it on an episode of Sliders, so it must be true.

That's weird. Which 7800 titles have you been testing with, and can you get speech from it in 7800 games? FWIW, the AtariVox+ only uses six of the nine pins on the joystick port. More 7800-specific details can be found here, but I/O for the 32K of NVRAM that holds the high scores is on joystick port pins 3 & 4. Those pins also happen to correspond to joystick left and right - so if a 7800 game doesn't respond when a joystick plugged into that port is moved left or right, then the problem (probably) isn't unique to the Atarivox. Why it would work in 2600 mode and not 7800 mode isn't entirely clear to me since both modes use the TIA for joystick port I/O. If it works in one it should work in the other.

This is my suspicion as well. Just want to get photo confirmation and some idea of how the installation has been implemented in this case.

Living (mostly) in PAL territory at the time, I never got to see the 5200 blossom into a beautiful flower, wither, and die. That makes it perpetually springtime-fresh to me!

My last three: Bernie and the Tower of Doom (7800; WIP) Time Pilot (A8) Easter (7800)

Definitely double-check the installation on both the composite mod and 7800 sides for any cold joints, solder bridges, components out of spec, etc. Have to be honest here: my experience with the Best composite mod is nonexistent, and this is a failure mode I haven't seen before. Can you post the installation instructions for this thing? I have some idea of how it most likely attaches, but would like confirmation of how it really goes together and what's actually on the mod board. It can probably be figured out, but, as recommended, go back and double-check. I've caught obvious problems before on the 35th inspection simply because inspections 1 through 34 weren't where I saw it.

Holding down OPTION for about three seconds after the blue screen appears is generally a good habit to get into. It's an overkill amount of time, but doesn't hurt anything and at least ensures that the OS had time to read that it was held down and disables BASIC. All-Ubiquiti network environment here for the past seven or eight years, and no FujiNet networking issues. Fujinet-flasher is showing 2023-10-18 (v1.2.0) as the latest released firmware. Is this what you're running? Also, FujiNet uses UDP for transport. TCP support was added yesterday, and should help with stability. Out of curiosity, when you mention that it was dropping packets, how and where in the network were you measuring this, and which remote hosts were you trying to reach?

And if they did, would anyone at Jaguar Land-Rover even care?