frogstar_robot
Members-
Posts
782 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Recent Profile Visitors
12,831 profile views
frogstar_robot's Achievements
Dragonstomper (6/9)
167
Reputation
-
Could you land on the Moon using an Atari computer?
frogstar_robot replied to JPF997's topic in Atari General
The Atari would work great up until the point a cosmic ray glitches some ram or crashes one of the custom chips. Do it NASA style with at least two out of three Ataris having to supply the same data then it might work. This is probably a bit blasphemy but an Apple II is probably a better choice given that they can interface to one off bespoke hardware more easily. The same need to run multiple redundant because of the harsh environment remains. Of course, if NASA had access to the off the shelf chips our beloved old micros were mostly made of 5 to 10 years later they would have built something more fitted to purpose as indeed they did later. This was especially true once rad hardened digital logic became more of a thing. That old 60s gear was running off core and rope memory. It used a lot of big discretes and extremely simple proto ICs which were more like modules of a few discretes. Chonky stuff like that stands up to radiation better. -
It occurs to me, the entire computer could be built as a backplane design. A card could have ANTIC, PIA, GTIA, and POKEY. Other cards can provide memory, etc. What more, the signals needed for things like VBXE could be brought out to headers on the card.
-
First impressions of Star Raiders/A8
frogstar_robot replied to Csolo's topic in Atari 8-Bit Computers
The thing is, much of the time the 2600 port could have sucked a lot less even back in the day. I know the Melody/Harmony "mapper" will be brought up but I'm not even talking about that. Here's a color and graphics hack of 2600 Space Invaders done here: https://atariage.com/hack_page.php?SystemID=2600&SoftwareHackID=6 No ARM chip. No ram in the cart. No anything. We could have had that back in the day. The story is even worse with Pac-Man. The 2600 got a port that was much worse than it had to be. Even Atari proved this themselves with a Ms. Pac-Man that was quite good. And again, the original Pac-Man code base has been hacked into games that "I think look much more like REAL Pac-Man don't you?" And it happened again with Defender. The Defender port looked like ass. The Stargate port looked really good. I think that may have been a SARA cart game but still..... And while I'm at it, check out the difference between Parker Brothers Frogger and SuperCharger Frogger. Yeah, yeah, the SuperCharger has RAM in the cart. Don't care. This was clearly a cricket move BITD. To be sure the 2600 is extremely limited hardware but it was often used in the quickest cheapest way possible to quickly throw something out the door. And I believe low effort releases both first and third party had more than a little to do the with the so-called Video Game Crash. -
First impressions of Star Raiders/A8
frogstar_robot replied to Csolo's topic in Atari 8-Bit Computers
In fairness, the failure modes of the Commodores are known and they've even been cooking up FPGA replacements for chips. C-64 CIA chips like to die and those were cloned first. The A8 community has been working on this as well but I really do have to admire what they've achieved in the C-64 land. It's possible to build a brand new C-64 boards, chips, and all. Some of our own here have done boards but we have a way to go on replacements for POKEY, ANTIC, and GTIA. The PIA wasn't custom but sources for those will dry up and may need replicating too. It's in the pipe but it isn't yet possible to populate an A8 motherboard with all new chips. So hats off to them in Commodore land. Neat stuff. I believe the wedge form factor machines were a little better made too though the rev of SID chip in them has a slightly different timbre that usually isn't preferred. 40 years on, all these classic platforms will tend to want maintenance. It's just the nature of the beast. Whilst on the subject, beware of the "ingot" power supply. The failure mode of those kills the machine with overvoltage. -
If we put hard work into it, this thread could hang about for years.
-
It could be played with this: https://boingboing.net/2009/02/09/joydick-atari-game-c.html
-
I had no idea the British Broadcasting Corporation was that spicy.
-
Well I hope you do but I promise I won't spend 20 years hoping. Wonder if we can get Devon to give Phillip a video call?
-
Sounds great. Hope you can work in beepy renditions of musical cues from the show. However, any ActualWork you do for a Knight Rider game won't stop us anticipating the pure awesome of a game that is the product of HardWork.
-
Just spitballing here but it may be possible to make an interface to connect 5200 controllers to an A8. A port to the A8 then "only" has to account for the different memory map and means of accessing the controller. The 5200 titles with proportional control could be brought over with this aspect of their play intact. In general, 5200 -> A8 seems easier than A8 -> 5200. There are any number of A8 titles that are never coming to the 5200. It's basically a reworked Atari 400 stuck with 16K. Of course, this too is pie in the sky that would need a lot of, ahem!, Hard Work.
-
A buddy of mine covered the 7800 Ballblazer Song Of The Grid. It's also pretty much the A8 Ballblazer Song Of The Grid as well.
-
A buddy of mine covered the Ballblazer Song Of The Grid:
-
For the Data East, I've seen this: From what I've seen, that one should be easier to work with. The OS isn't cut down as much and standard Android tools like Nova Launcher work.