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Finally, I am getting back to sorting out the issues with Concerto and working toward a re-release. I built two Concertos the other day and I am putting together about 20 total for now. More will be assembled down the road if the problems can be fixed (I think many can be.) It took a while to find all of the parts, and especially, to get my device programmer going again (it's a parallel port model and requires an older version of Windows, so I had to get an old laptop put together for it, but finally it's going!) I got my 12 consoles out of storage, am ordering a new POKEY chip and some power supplies from Best (currently using one that has been repaired too many times.) None of my consoles have a video mod so I am going to get one (prefferrably the same kind that others reporting problems have, to rule that out.) I do apologize for the delay, but I always knew I would get back to this eventually when my life got back to something resembling normal. Without getting into boring detail, there was a lot to unravel in my life to make this possible. Part of it was that in order for me to be able to do difficult tasks (like, debug flashcart BIOS!) I need to be in a certain state of mind to be able to think deeply enough and process. I got pretty overwhelmed years ago when people reported some issues and at the time wasn't in the right state of mind to solve the problem. But now I feel I am back and ready to tackle the issues once again with a fresh set of eyes. And, in particular, the integrity test results from RevEng's Utility Cart reveals some useful information. Yesterday, I tested all 12 of my consoles and ALL of them are 100% green on the integrity test, every time. So I need help from the community from someone reporting issues: I see a lot of posts where people reported integrity errors at 80, 84, 90, 94, C0, C4, etc. There is some variation but there is also a pattern here that might help reveal the exact cause. Problem is, each square represents 256 bytes, and just knowing the 256-byte range isn't enough to reveal a cause. But, the utility cart can show any area of memory in Memory explorer in 128 byte chunks, so: Run the integrity test, and recall the red areas. Then, open the Memory Explorer in the Utility cart, then scroll down to problem areas. Say, if you are getting 80, this means locations $8000-$80FF, so scroll down to 8000, take a picture, then to 8080 and take another, and post a picture of each screen here. This may pinpoint the exact byte(s) not being loaded correctly and what values are loaded in their place, and that could very well reveal a probable source if loading issues. Once I have this information, I will hopefully be able to solve this problem and post up a test BIOS for you all to try! Thanks!

I acquired what appears to be a complete OSCAR Optical Scanning Reader by Databar Corp. that has never been used! The box is in pretty good shape. The device itself is still in the factory sealed plastic. It includes a separate sealed plastic bag containing the RCA to Atari SIO plug. Also, appears to have all the original paperwork and inserts including the 'Premier Issue' of 'DATABAR The Monthly Bar Code Software Magazine' (for Atari), the OSCAR User's Manual, a couple separate/individual programs for scanning, a 'Your Important First Step (For Atari)' guide and a plastic 'guide' that you place over the printed barcodes when you are using the scanner. Pictures to follow.

Antarctic Tales A game by Cmadruga Coming soon for the Mattel Intellivision. Summer 2020. For one player. For use on color TV only. Published by IntellivisionRevolution. Gatefold box Game Cartridge Instruction manual 2 controller overlays $60.00 plus s+h Join the newsletter for updates: Newsletter Work in progress video of gameplay

A software developers guide for the HRD4000B. Special thanks to Ksarul, InsaneMultitasker, Retroclouds and BeeryMiller for their inputs. Software Developers Guide to the Horizon HDR4000B_ver 1-0.pdf

I wrote a small shellscript to automate encoding videos. It has been published on github https://github.com/senorrossie/sh-avf-encode it was mentioned in this thread earlier, IIRC

I have such a high failure rate with the shark after 90K that I started just going after smaller fish and avoiding the shark just to get some points. But I have to use dash continuously just to stay away from him. On the run all the time!

Hi, I have not seen a dump of this program, but if you have it just ignore it. This post is about 'The Backup Master' by Allan Reeve. Allan Reeve is well known in the Atari community for his Diamond Operating System Cartridge. The following Disk Picture and PDF File are from Atarimania. Backup Master Reeve Software.pdf This program is a 'Software Only' solution to backing up protected disks. This program might be compared to 'The Miracle' by CSS' (a disk only version of the Impossible), the same company that manufactured 'The Impossible'. I did a demo on the 'Impossible' (Here) and that is a Hardware Solution to Backups. The Backup Master will not work on disks that check for an alt. Operating System(ex. Electronic Arts), but the disks that do work don't need any special hardware to run. The backups have no protection and can be sector copied. You don't have to use a Disk Drive, just use ATX files with RespeQt. Read the PDF file before attempting to use. Here are a couple of disks that I created with 'The Backup Master'. Syncalc (1985)(Backup Master 2.0 Reeve).atr Starbowl Football (1982)(Gamestar) (Backup Master 2.0 Reeve).atr Blue Max (1983)(Synapse)(Backup Master 2.0 Reeve).atr And here are 'The Backup Master' Program Disk Images. Back-Up Master (Main)(Side A).atr Back-Up Master (Data)(Side B).atr I do not have an original disk of 'The Backup Master', so I don't know if this was cracked or not protected.

My daughter has decided that sorthing then counting my lynx games is a fun activity, counting to 82 is pretty good for her age as well, then she usually adds a little bit then asks if she can play pac man girl or pac man boy

You spelled the first program name incorrectly... it was ASTEROIDS... I should know as I was the programmer for the game. Hi... Rick Rothstein here. I just stopped by to reminisce a little and saw this thread. It is nice to see people are still appreciating the programs we (FFF Software) created. You are still appreciating them, right??

Alright Spartan, here you go. ?. Was in the zone tonight: 147,550 New site record

After fixing a mask it looks like this. js99er-20200807201725.webm

My first attempt to add real textures to the raycaster. It looked like chaos at first, but wait, there is a shield on that wall! js99er-20200807185454.webm Now I have some debugging to do.

The former Actimite (as Activision employees called themselves) from whom I got the pictures told me that she still might have her "Family Vacation" and "Beach Olympiad" t-shirts. She's looking for them. If she finds them, I'll be sure to post pictures. Fingers crossed...

Here's how the Courses look heading into the final weekend of play, a little under 3 days to go for Auto Racing scores, both Courses have broken records great racing, best we seen in this game! If Biff and SPARTAN times hold until the deadline, they receive +2 Bonus total for each record set. Course 1 1. 3:01 BiffMan (Blue Car) +1 Bonus 2. 3:07 INTELLIVISION SPARTAN (Blue Car) 3. 3:11 Rickster8 (Blue Car) 4. 3:13 IntyFanMatt (Red Car) 5. 3:17 JacobZu7zu7 (Red Car) 5. 3:17 mr_me (Red Car) 7. 3:28 Ace24 (Red Car) 8. 3:36 hoosierdadee78 (Red Car) 9. 3:56 Intelligentleman (Red Car) 10. 4:17 fakecortex (Red Car) 11. 4:37 gar0u (Green Car) Course 2 1. 5:45 INTELLIVISION SPARTAN (Blue Car) +1 Bonus 2. 5:51 BiffMan (Blue Car) 3. 5:55 Rickster8 (Blue Car) 4. 6:15 mr_me (Red Car) 5. 6.46 hoosierdadee78 (Red Car) 6. 6:48 JacobZu7zu7 (Green Car) 7. 6:57 Ace24 (Red Car) 8. 7:24 IntyFanMatt (Green Car) 9. 9:33 fakecortex (Red Car) 10. 11:21 gar0u (Green Car)

That last iteration printed OK. I haven't scraped off all the various strings etc., but it's good enough to show. There are a few things I'm going to change but for now I was able to put it alongside the previous iteration so I could see what a "full board" would look like. Pretty good. In this iteration I re-added the surrounding border, but the biggest change is the gold chesspieces on the side of the board. At first I wasn't terribly happy with the result, but on reflection these don't look half-bad. I'm going to reduce them to just 6 or maybe 4 pieces. And on the other half of the box, not sure what I'll have yet - maybe an ident of the game. The two halves fit nicely (vertically) inside a standard '2600 box, so that's good. I may reduce layer size just a fraction to give the cartridge just a little more room. In all, it's extremely tight packing to expect a box to hold a cart, pieces, and a folding-out chessboard, but I think this will end up workable. There's a bit of an offset in the pic (inside the box) because the two halves are different designs and internally hold the cart (which IS inside) slightly different positions. That won't happen when I'm using two of the same parts. This one took me about 6 hours to print, so it's very slow going and I haven't yet done two of the same (which would give me a completed print). The hole for the 'hinge' didn't come out large enough, and I've thought of a different ("invisible" way to mount the magnets in the corner, so I'll be changing those things at the very least. I may make the spine for the hinge area a bit larger, the walls on the cart cradle a bit thicker. It all depends now on what chess pieces I use, and if they're going to fit. Well, I guess they *have to*. So, perhaps time to buy my favourite(s) and see how they go. Will take about 6 weeks to arrive, at a guess. These are all being printed with a very low-cost printer using an 0.4mm nozzle, and just a single colour at a time. I'm "hot-swapping" filament during prints to achieve the multiple colours shown. I do this by splitting prints into multiple parts and printing all of one colour at a time. It's not terribly difficult, but you do need to have your technique down solid to get good results.

106,350

I vote invisible robot. I have a hard time killing something if I can't see it.

DID YOU KNOW the Atari 2600 was the first video game system ever? DID YOU KNOW that Pitfall was the most popular video game Atari ever made? DID YOU KNOW the Jaguar shell was eventually turned into a housing for Black and Decker Weed-Eaters?* *granted, this could still happen

New Shark! Shark! 100,000 point club member here!! ? I don’t see myself going much higher. My brain so far hasn’t been able to adapt to the game speed at this point.

There will be enough for everyone eventually, assuming the most egregious issues can be solved. But for now, priority for the remaining 20 is for game developers first, as there are several who are making 7800 games but have no way to test on hardware, so I'd like all game developers who want to buy a Concerto to get one. I am sure there are less than 20 game developers out there, so if you want to help test and have a number of consoles to test on, I am also willing to sell you one of the 20. The price for Concerto is $99. I would knock off $10 if you just want a bare board, not in a cart shell. There isn't a label for Concerto yet. I will of course have a label eventually. I am also still working on Concertino, by the way, if $99 is too much and you are willing to wait a bit!

FWIW when we were developing 3-platform games for those generations back in the day, extra optimisation was needed on both N64 and GameCube over what it took on PlayStation. They may have been more powerful by some metrics, but there were trade offs.

Here's how Shark! Shark! looks as the half-way point hits this weekend, if IntyFanMatt can keep this record until the deadline, its +2 Bonus total, any players able to break the old record by Bamse will also earn +1. HIGH SCORES: 1. 147,550 IntyFanMatt +1 Bonus 2. 129,600 INTELLIVISION SPARTAN 3. 118,750 JacobZu7zu7 4. 100,000 BiffMan 5. 98,900 Ace24 6. 91,200 S.BAZ 7. 90,500 Intelligentleman 8. 29,000 fakecortex 9. 24,250 gar0u 10. 13,250 jblenkle

118,750 100 points away from my Personal Best at HSC, 10 years ago now. I hope to get 120ks for first time in 2020. Sunday, 04-18-2010 at 1:00 AM eastern. 1. cparsley 124,800 [+10] 2. JacobZu7zu7 118,850 [+9] 3. patbb 104,400 [+8] 4. rgw825 103,200 [+6] 5. ClassicGMR 57,550 [+4] 6. atariron82 45,550 [+2] 7. zylon 43,350 [+1] 8. accousticguitar 31,700 [+1] 9. roadrunner 16,950 [+1]

Condor Attack-4266 First attempt, still probably way better than I should have hoped for, I just can't really "shoot stuff" too well...

Nice score man. I would do back-flips if I could score that high.... ?

45,210 I like 2600 Pole Position & thought it looked & sounded great esp. compared with Night Rider. One thing I miss about it though is that killer corner early in the lap from the arcade game! The corners are all really easy on this one. @Scrabbler15 Aw, sorry to hear. You've been a major fixture here & one of my internet-land friends for 7 or so years now. It was SO much fun getting into the HSC back in 2012 or '13 & I really appreciate all of you guys! Thank you for signing out, it means a lot! It always feels a little weird when people I've been hanging with online just aren't appearing any more. I'm having a hard time participating for other reasons. (mostly tired from financial hardship and beer habit, not to mention no internet at home since February) I think this is the first season where I've missed rounds! :( I was wondering if I'm fading out of the HSC. @nads That is one strange looking copy of H.E.R.O. !

Freaking PB !!!!!! I'm in serious pain... my dashing-thumb feels like it's been run over.

Tank from Tron. 26 colors. TronTank.xex

This is the upgrade. It can be uninstalled just be desoldering the 4 wires but the 1010 works with normal tapes anyway with this inside. And yes its normal for the loading noise to be silent during the turbo part.

In 1982, Activision took all of its employees (and a guest) on an all-expenses paid 4-day vacation to Maui, to celebrate the company's success. The event was called the Activision Family Vacation. I was able to acquire pictures from the event and would like to share them with all of you. You'll see the guests wearing "Beach Olympiad" t-shirts. This was a competition comprised of the following events: sandcastle building, lei relay, canoe race, balloon walk, swimming relay, beach volleyball, sack race, egg toss, hula hoop, tug-o-war & pool volleyball. There were 12 teams made up of 18 to 20 participants each. Every team was named after a fruit or nut, to go with the tropical theme. I'm sure you guys will recognize the game designers in the pictures, but I'll point them out, just in case. Other activities included: a golf tournament, tennis tournament, snorkeling, surfing & horseback riding. Enjoy the pictures! Garry Kitchen Guests stayed at the Kapalua Bay Hotel Dan Kitchen, sporting a Chopper Command promotional cap The winning entry in the sandcastle building contest Alan Miller Carol Shaw David Crane, Bob Whitehead and Steve Cartwright David Crane and Jim Levy

What this tells me is that aside from the backers, there is virtually no one buying this console. You don't see Analogue extending "pre-sale savings" or offering installation plans. Pitiful.

@Vocelli Some participants need better clarification about the game Condor Attack in order to avoid confusion, because Game 0 is the DEFAULT GAME MODE (Skill Easy and slow bomb speed). Here are the screenshots of each game mode in Condor Attack (notice that the enemy shape changes each time the Select button is pressed): Until Vocelli gives the final word, I will choose Game 1 in Condor Attack (NORMAL skill level / MEDIUM bomb speed).

First Time playing any of these Espial : 16,000 Rescue Terra I : 37,525 Condor Attack : 2,569

there's different emphasis in our replies, so both are helpful. ?

Savescreen doesn't store the data that's been drawn, it saves the instructions on how to draw it. When you give the name of your data to a plot function your actually saying "draw stuff at this address" and that address is what's saved, but when you change banks the values at that address won't be the same values they were before so when the screen is drawn it won't draw what you're expecting. You can either duplicate the data so it's at the same address in the bank you're in when the screen draws (not easy), have the data in the bank it's going to be drawn in and use that for the plot command, or have the data in a location accessible for both banks (either ROM or RAM). RevEng beat me to the punch. Next time.....

But none of those systems i mentioned were designed by the “original” atari from the 1970s... they were all outsourced.. essentially hardware designed by someone else with an atari logo on them sold by whoever currently owned the company at that time. Tell me, how is VCS any different? Somebody rightfully and legally bought the atari brand, and made a piece of hardware. It doesn’t seem much different to me. but people here absolutely refuse to accept that atari is under new ownership, many times over in fact.. they’d rather atari not exist than someone else have a go at it.. i think yall are in denial. Just sayin.

I don't have an automated shell script but I use the following as my guideline: #NTSC video mencoder -nosound -of rawvideo -ovc raw -vf hue=0:1.5,scale=157:190,expand=160:192,format=yv12,harddup,swapuv -sws 6 -ofps 59.9227 'robot_spy.mp4' -o robot_spy.raw ffmpeg -i robot_spy.mp4 robot_spy.wav sox robot_spy.wav -C 0.5 -c 1 -b 8 -r 15700 robot_spy.u8 gain -l 10 ./encvideo60n <robot_spy.raw robot_spy.mov ./encaudio60n <robot_spy.u8 robot_spy.aud ./mux60n robot_spy.mov robot_spy.aud robot_spy.dd # PAL video #mencoder -nosound -of rawvideo -ovc raw -vf hue=0:1,scale=169:192,expand=160:192,format=yv12,harddup,swapuv -sws 6 -ofps 49.86 robot_spy.mp4 -o robot_spy-pal.raw #### ffmpeg -i robot_spy.mp4 robot_spy.wav ; not need if NTSC video is already processed #sox robot_spy.wav -C 0.5 -c 1 -b 8 -r 15558 robot_spy-pal.u8 gain -l 10 #./encvideo50n <robot_spy-pal.raw robot_spy-pal.mov #./encaudio60n <robot_spy-pal.u8 robot_spy-pal.aud #./mux50n robot_spy-pal.mov robot_spy-pal.aud robot_spy-pal.dd I only have NTSC hardware so with the exception of doing some conversions for ndary years ago I only work with the NTSC standard. Unfortunately I can't recall how I arrived at some of the parameters that I used in my script. I'm terrible about taking notes. Below is what I do remember. frame rates (-ofps switch of mencoder) and sample rates (-r switch of sox) are required by Phaeron's movie format based on video standard. Mencoder switches -vf hue=0:1.5 increases NTSC saturation. IIRC every 2nd scanline hasn't color information so this is how I correct the washed out appearence. TVs might not display all 128 colors. My scan converter does. -sws 6 (sofware scaler type). 6 represents luma bicubic / chroma bilinear. Subjective but I thought this looked the best. Feel free to experiment. swapuv. Phaeron found this for me. U and V planes were generated in the wrong order by default. -vf scale=157:190,expand=160,192: This is a workaround. 160x192 is the rendered canvas size however when I scaled directly to this size I get a terrible high pitched whistle throughout the audio. Using these parameters leaves a blank line at both the top and the bottom. Somehow this eliminates the whistle. I don't understand why. The 157x190 size makes Atari reproduce an original 4:3 aspect (on the 160x192 canvas). I usually run the script, editing the file name the go back and play with the gain (-l switch of sox). Sox will report how much clipping you get. Depending the the video you might leave a some clipping and keep a higher average volume. Clipping is more objectionable if it happens during music. If the audio is too dynamic I usually use Audacity to either do compression or adjust amplitude. There's a way to test the amount of clipping in Audacity but I've forgotten. I can't remember if generate the .U8 file straight from Audacity or not. Sorry I wish I remembered more of the process. -SteveS [EDIT] p.s. I found the following notes to myself NTSC > 160/190 = 0.8421 ; 190 instead of 192 because of "green line" <-- This is the real reason why I changed the scaled size. Did I accidently solve the *whistle* problem? I don't remember. PAL > 160/240 = 0.6667 above ratio * video aspect ratio will yield the horizontal number for mencoder "-vf scale" (e.g "158:190") filter use mplayer -vo null -ao null -identify -frames 0 foo.avi to obtain video's width and height calculate original aspect ratio from those when writing the CF card use dd's conv=direct,notrunc parameters

Attention indie studios and aspiring developers: don't give people overlong cutscenes that can just be covered in two minutes or less. Avoid repeating the mistakes made during the CD-ROM era.

That sure would be easier for me to print!! ..Al

I am finally done with the additional disk routines. The filenames can be a string constant such as "DSK1.FILE" or a string variable such as A$: CALL LFONT(filename) Loads a font CALL SFONT(filename) Saves a font CALL SAVEIV(filename) Saves an XB program in IV254 format CALL RUN(filename) Runs an XB program CALL RUNL1(filename) Used to chain XB programs together. With RUNL1 you can chain together a very large XB program of almost any size and way larger than the normal 24K limit. The video below shows this capability with two very short programs. Notice how the variables A and B$ are carried into the new program and used by it. RUNL1A - the first part of program 5 CALL LOAD(9458,0,0) 10 PRINT "SEGMENT 1 OF THE PROGRAM" 20 A=3.14 :: B$="HELLO WORLD" 30 CALL RUNL1("DSK9.RUNL1B") RUNL1B - the second part of program 40 PRINT "SEGMENT 2 OF THE PROGRAM" 50 PRINT A:B$ (The comments in line #1 are inserted by SAVEIV. This is only needed for programs less than 256 bytes long.

I didn't realize that someone on this forum had made Conan into a cartridge until you mentioned it ? Here's the cartridge version of Conan Joy2B. Luckily, the memory mapping of the input code is the exact same as in the disk version, so it was just a matter of copy/pasting in the hex editor... Conan - Joy2B.car

Couldn’t resist. I played a couple games. Made it to Room 60 with one life and died on the flame. The rocky boss looks cool.

Love the polish work regarding the cosmetic changes. Those 'small' platforms especially look better than ever and have such beautiful detail. The additional wall and 'floor' enhancements look excellent as well. 'Springboards' also received a very nice upgrade. The new boss looks really good, but honestly found myself a tad bit disappointed it was relatively easy to conqueror; especially, following that awesome octopus challenge. Trying not to give too much away here; however, perhaps the 'pitch and delivery' could be sped up a bit or/and be more frequent (?) A couple of minor things to report...something new and something old... "New" issue ROOM 60: When re-entering from the top right, if you die (Hit the flame in the center), Knight Guy reappears in the middle of the stone slab at the bottom left. He does automatically slide through it though, so he's not stuck: "Old" issue ROOM 45: When jumping over the treasure chest to the left, Knight Guy can walk through it to the right. Behavior of when a treasure chest is present in other rooms is either Knight Guy can't jump over to the other side of it, as if there is an invisible wall present. Or, if Knight Guy can jump over it, he would need to jump over it again similarly to pass it; Knight Guy cannot walk through it: Suggestion: Death Penalty...Player looses a life +2 minutes to total time. Motivation to acquire more lives...For every life remaining when the game is beaten -1 minute to total time.

This is what I get for responding to an early part of the thread. The song from both Spelunker and the Atari XL/XE self test... It's the opening notes of the Promenade from Modest Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" (1874) One of my favorite all time classical suites. (and the back story on it is very touching as well, he wrote it for his friend, an artist who died before his work was exhibited.) and one of my favorite recordings of it was done by Isao Tomita. -Thom

Coming together nicely Vlad ?

Pagination starting to work in the CONFIG rewrite:

The difference is, I believe the Amico is a sincere effort to release hardware and build a sustainable platform around it. The resulting platform isn't of much interest to me, so I don't really talk about it, but I don't doubt the intent to build something that could actually be sold to people. With l'Atari, I doubt that all day long. Their decisions do not reflect any path a company would take in order to build a gaming platform. It harkens back to the Coleco Chameleon dilemma of "They're either scamming liars or inexcusably stupid." There's no third option.

Jesus christ @tripled79 how many more threads are you going to necrobump?

@ZeroPage HomebrewCaught today’s replay. Glad to see you mention Venture Reloaded and its beautiful box. The ZPH fan base needs to know about this game. I know it’s a hack, but really, this is the 2600 version of Venture that we’ve all been waiting for and Nathan’s box art is spot-on. Great looking CIB! @Omegamatrix @Nathan Strum Well done gentlemen, well done.?