I have become interested lately in the history of computers before the mid 70s when I first got into them. Maybe it's because I sort of exhausted my curiosity about computers during the 70s and 80s and always thought of anything earlier as the dark ages and not worth spending any time learning. But this hit a fever pitch lately with the project I picked up on via Youtube to restore an Apollo guidance computer. That actual AGC then went on tour and I got to see it in action at the MIT Museum a
While I can't bring myself to declare my animation aspirations dead, I've had a series of setbacks resulting in burnout and a need to turn away from it, so I went back to my guitar hobby. My hobbies tend to ride at the intersection point between two. Like with classic videogames I used my film degree background to make the Stella at 20 documentary. With the guitar stuff I was always fascinated with gear, most specifically, the tiny niche of guitar modeling and synthesis. Well, not that tiny
I've actually felt for a LONG time that consoles as anything Generation-X would classify as such are an obsolete concept. It's not that hardware is dead, but consoles are dead. Technically speaking the current XBox and Playstation are consoles, but are they really? They're both x86 boxes with PC-derived graphics hardware are they not? Plus, most games are built using authoring environments like Unreal or Unity, which can often compile be directly ported out to different platforms. Nintendo
I'm not sure if it's appropriate or not to mention it here, but I'm in the process of starting a company and I'm looking for co-founders.
I know that within the videogame scene there are those who have gone on to work in programming or the modern game industry. I would like to network with the right people and I'm not able to do do this at my dayjob.
I'm specifically looking for people with Unity3D experience.
If anyone reads this and gets curious, PM me.
I just sent all remaining parts that go into the Atarivox+ plus chip-programmers over to Albert.
I'm crossing my fingers that if and when he needs to assemble more boards that he'll be able to do it, but I don't see myself being able to spend time on it in the future.
There should be enough speakjets alone to supply all future demand. Beyond that there are even more extra PCBs than the scene could ever realistically need.
I live in pretty cramped conditions, and I don't really like soldering with my daughter around. Right now I'm soldering on a table in her room, so when she comes back in September I really will have no good place to do it separate from her room. But I am getting kind of a mini-nostalgia thing going doing the AtariVox+ soldering. I feel a real sense of accomplishment when I finish a board. It's really a lot like knitting sweaters or basket-weaving. Making a physical, tangible thing, is a nic
I hesitate to post a blog entry but I know a few people here have some interest in knowing what's going on in my life beyond classic gaming, so I'll offer this update.
Last summer I freaked out because Xtranormal went out of business and I thought that was my E-ticket ride to a career-change. Well, here we are entering the following summer, and even though I helped with the liquidation, I don't have a job with the buyer, so I dragged my tail between my legs and I have another web dev job to
I've found it difficult to stay focused on some of these forum threads because I feel the need to kind of review over the past whether it's warranted or not. I've now reread my original bowing-out of the hobby from two years ago and I thought I'd kind of list all the project I wanted to do, but never did.
First, I had Death Derby. The goal of Death Derby was to port a bronze-age game that is not supported by emulators, and was popular enough that in some alternate universe, Atari might hav
I'm happy to report that I shipped out 190 cased AtariVox+ units and all the cables I had on-hand to GoldenAx.
I don't really need any pats on the back over it, considering how long I made people wait for it, and really for no good reason. It only took me a couple of hours to case the boards and box them and get them to the post office. I could have done this ages ago, but I had some kind of mental block. I think I've got to concede that I have some form of OCD. It's good for really focu
http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/184943-star-castle-2600-2011-at-video-game-summit/page__st__275
"I miss [stella] more and more every time another would-be Ebivision pops up. What happened to open collaboration?"
Well folks, this blog post is a long time coming.
I'm formally announcing that I'm bowing out of the classic gaming scene.
Well, I am kind of describing what I've already done by default. Over the last few years I've become increasingly distant from the hobby. My involvement has waxed and waned. Chimera was going to be the big epic swan song and when Delicon disappeared, it was like all the air going out of the balloon. What I think is really informing me that "it's time" is the fact
The irony of this is unreal.
I mean, falling off his own ship called Yamato. I guess that's the way to go, albeit tragic, like so much of his life after he found fame with the show.
After shutting down my MySpace page, and in recognition of the nonexistent blogging potential at Facebook, I thought I'd use this blog as my dumping ground for observations about gadgets and pop culture, especially when they tie into nostalgic themes.
Last year when "JJ Trek" came out, I was quite merciless in my criticism of it, both aesthetically and storywise. I also never warmed up to the new Battlestar Galactica. And I am not a fan of the Star Wars prequels, to put it mildly.
And
I was a little hesitant to try building my own PC. Every time I do it, I run into some snag somewhere, but this was the only way for me to really be choosy about components. The ASUS H57 motherboard has a lot more slots in it than the Gateway and Dell systems I considered. Anyway, sure enough, I've hit a snag. Because graphics cards keep sucking more juice, the ATX power supply standards have changed. All this in the last few years apparently. So I go down to the electronics store and buy
Last year I got sucked up in the hype over the E-Fix dongle to effortlessly build hackintoshes. This was after the boot drive on my main XP machine bit the dust and I didn't want to restore it because it's an old AGP/PCI motherboard that will never be HD-ready. When I got my business laptop I decided to hold off on building out a system since, as you know, motherboard and CPU technology changes at the drop of a hat, and the product was still very new. Periodically I would "check in" on the pr
I'm about to ship out the AtariVoxes I built for the 25th anniversary 7800 project.The problems we were having with the PIC turned out to be firmware-related. So after we got the firmware resolved, I went back and fixed all of the boards that seemed not to work by soldering on the 10-pin headers and reprogramming the PICs with the good firmware. Since then I haven't looked back. I now have, oh, about 75 AtariVox+ boards built, and another 60 in progress. I have enough parts on hand to probab
This is the first batch of 25 AtariVox boards earmarked for the 25th anniversary 7800 project.All the boards are assembled. They still need to be individually tested, and I am 4 Speakjets shy. Also, I'm troubleshooting a custom startup speech line.These are using the new PCB that Richard designed that I'm calling "AtariVox+" The + part is the ability to switch to VecVox or VecVoice mode. However, since these are meant to be installed internally in 7800s, I am hardwiring it for AtariVox.Once t
I think one of the reasons I'm still into classic videogames is I've always stayed on the sidelines of the computer hardware treadmill. I had a Playstation 1 when it first came out, and then proceeded to get very few games for it. I had a PS2 as well and didn't buy many games for it. And don't get me started on PC games. My rig has never been where it should have been to facilitate cutting edge gaming, and so I keep procrastinating on getting into games. The most recent PC upgrade was a Pen
I think I'm a little late to the party and my instincts tell me this startup may not be around too much longer but man, this is the most fun I've had since Software Automatic Mouth.
LINK
I swear I've laughed more in the last couple days than I have in the last 20 years combined.
A news article on it.
If this company goes out of business I am going to be so pissed. After all these years I've finally found a way to make movies in a way that gives me near instant gratification. If
I tried scouring youtube and couldn't find any clips of people playing the Death Race that was there. This is the best I could find online:
Photostream
If anyone finds a youtube clip with it, let me know.
I think Steve Jobs is not long for this earth. He seems to want to ignore or be in denial of his medical problems, and I wonder whether this hasn't just magnified his medical problems rather than taking time off earlier for treatment. The case of Jim Henson's hesitation to seek treatment for pneumonia comes to mind. I really think Jobs' attitude towards his own health will be his undoing, and the company's privacy shield around him only further enables this dysfunction.
So iPhone 3.0 OS is here, and I can finally cut, copy, and paste. Great. One of the things that annoyed me was replying to email messages. There was no way to get rid of the quoted text. So now you can select all and clear out the old message including the "sent from iphone" footer. It's about damn time. However, they added the tethering feature only to have AT&T keep it disabled. So I screw around with the hacks that supposedly enable this and was not able to get it going despite fol
I was going to wait until June for this, but I was checking my PM history and noticed a shout out I gave over two years ago when Delicon did a previous disappearing act and well, I figure enough is enough. If Delicon does appear again, I have a clear conscience in telling him I'm washing my hands of it. The project started around Hurricane Katrina back in the fall of 2005. Ample time has been given for it to come to maturity. We've been at the current stage of development for close to a year
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord