frogstar_robot

I did a quick and dirty job on this to use it with Debian Linux (this should work with derivatives like Ubuntu as well): As root : apt install python3-venv virtualenv python3-virtualenv As user mkdir agsp Copy or save the agsp_enhance_v1.00.1.zip to this directory. cd agsp unzip agsp_enhance_v1.00.1.zip mkdir venv python3 -m venv venv/ source venv/bin/activate python3 -m pip install psutil python3 -m pip install pandas python3 -m pip install pillow python3 -m pip install openpyxl edit agsp_enhance.py find the lines that read: else: print("Unsupported Operation System '" + platform_text + "' found.") return None change them to read: else: print("Unsupported Operation System '" + platform_text + "' found.") return "/path/to/sd_card" The "/path/to/sd_card" should actually be where the custom firmware sd-card is mounted. There is doubtless a better way to do this but I'm no python coder. Then run: python3 agsp_enhance.py enhance It'll spew a bunch of "Unsupported Operation System ..." to the console but this worked for me. One thing I did find. Pitfall! isn't set up as a paddle game and uses the stick. Won't get very far that way.

Bet the model has to wipe the seat a lot......

Wake up next to a horse's head? Geez!

Sorry about the way that came off. Perfect compatibility is itself idle wishlisting.

For sure! Keeping the functionality to a core minimum at least minimizes the testing surface. I suspect a POKEY that doesn't try to be more than a straight re-implementation is probably easier to debug than an all singing all dancing device that's had every passing fancy crammed into it like stereo or SID or an FM synth.......... Not that anything is easy about this which is the point.

Chiming in to agree that core functionality and compatibility is king. Enhancements like VBXE, dual POKEY, 65816, etc can be just that. They can be enhancements done down the road with the core functionality made as good as it can be. Since this is be an open core, modders can go nuts later. I also like the idea of drop in replacements for the Atari ASICS like POKEY. Again, compatibility is king. An enhanced POKEY with stereo and maybe even SID!! thrown in does little good if it refuses to correctly talk to the storage device I'm trying to load a game from. This would be a storage device that works fine with real hardware regardless of how "correct" it's design is. I've been following the the 400 Mini threads and I've noticed that the bulk of complaints with that are in the compatibility department. I'm not running it down! And I'll think it'll get better but the great things it brings to the table like state saves and rewinding aren't helpful if the thing you wanted most to run......just won't. True it's apples and oranges. One is an emulation box and the other is a re-implementation of hardware. But as an end user, I may have the same complaint: my programs won't necessarily run.

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.

https://www.flamewarriorsguide.com/warriorshtm/necromancer.htm I'll just leave that here.

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.

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.

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?