Mux

Hi There! I did a search and while cartridge repro's came up, those were from a galaxy, far far away.. Sooo, the question I have is whether or not anyone knows a link or two of people that still sell repro cartridge shells? TIA, -Mux

Would love to hear more! If it's stalled / abandoned, any chance you'll open source it?

As compared to getting throwing a scanlines + NTSC filter on the HDMI signal to make it look more 'real' ?

Damn! 88 bucks???? SOLD!

You'd be surprised how many TV's still have a composite-in! Sometimes they masquerade as regular headphone type plugs, but there's actually quite a few still out there.. But yeah, I generally agree.. It's definitely narrowing down your audience if it's composite only.

I'm not talking about HD games on SD. Basically stuff like the standalone paceman and what not. There's really no need (other than convenience) to have HDMI for games that are essentially 256x224. Ironically, people will then try to emulate a CRT by putting a filter / scanlines over it ?

How big a deal is it for a new game console to only have composite rather than HDMI? Would that be a dealbreaker for buying one? A lot of 'tabletop' games still have composite, presumably to keep the price down.. Personally, I don't really care as I have a bunch of CRT's at home but... -Mux

WRT bits -vs- bytes.. It's still mapped as a byte but, as pointed out earlier, some bits don't physically exist. Usually they're marked with an 'x' or '-' or something similar. Think of it as having 4 wires on a bus rather than 8. The non-connected wires contain 'junk' as well, they're not connected. The copy mode is supposed to help you speed up updating VDP registers although I don't really see the advantage as it's still a MOV instruction. I guess it helps you don't have to switch back and forth. -Mux

Although I (personally) haven't used it, according to the doc there are 128 bytes external to the CPU. Besides that RAM that is internal to the processor there are 128 bytes of RAMexternal to the processor. To enable the external ram set P14 low and P13 high. The memory can now be read and written to using the MOVX command. Looking at the PCB, it's an external IC..

You can find it here: http://www.atarihq.com/danb/o2.shtml It does state there are 64 bytes but some of them are taken up by the BIOS (collision bits for instance). Hope this helps! -Mux

It's got 32 bytes of internal ram and another 128 bytes of extra ram you can enable using one of the ports. Check out the O2 doc for more info..

Judging by the lack of demand I've told the manufacturer to put the project on hold. I've got a tentative order of around 200 units but that would leave me with 800 carts, which isn't great.. @ozyr - I contacted a manufacturer in China and sent them a cartridge shell to get a quote. Most of the cost goes to the initial mold (which you'd get send as well if there's ever more demand) and shipping, which comes in at around $500. The carts themselves are about 50 cents. *IF* there was a lot of demand the price would go down to about $2.50/cart or so but at this point, there is.. err, no point... -Mux

Actually, it'd be $5/cart and, if there's enough demand, the price goes down to about $3/cart. Most of the cost is in shipping and the upfront cost of the mould. If you wanted to go all-out, you'd probably (again, in volume although a lot lower) come to about $10 for COG's (cart, pub, eprom, inlay and printed box).

Anyone? Anyone interested? If not, recommendations for cross-posting on other forums (already posted on videopac.nl) would be appreciated. I really would like to get this off the ground but can't spot the entire amount up front...

The O2 is a niche system for sure. There are quite a few home-brews though but all devs tend to canibalize carts which is a bit unfortunate IMO. As for your idea, you'd need to make sure that it would accommodate different size PCB's as well.. The 7800 PCB *just* about manages to fit into a standard 2600 by utilizing the original plastic tab cutouts.. -Mux