Leaderboard

Final version posted, unless a breaking change is found.

As most of you are likely aware, TIA wasn't the first choice for 7800 audio. Originally the 7800 Maria chip was supposed to include advanced audio within it, but that was removed when die-space was needed for other functionality. At that time GCC pivoted to in-cart audio, coupled with TIA audio. Over the years there's been some speculation as to what GCC's proposed in-cart sound chip solution would have been like, and how cost-effective it may or may-not have been to have an in-cart chip. To help nail this speculation down, I reached out to Steve Golson. (GCC chip-designer extraordinaire, and friend of the community) Steve kindly searched through his archives for all of the docs he could find, and shared them with me. (and now you) When I received these docs, I was astonished to read about Minnie. This thing was no pokey-redux. Here we have a chip capable of basic WaveTable synthesis while still keeping things lean and cost-effective. I've written a 7800 Minnie Sound Chip article over at the 7800.8bitdev.org wiki, which also contains the original GCC docs. Steve is still seeing if there's anything else he can put his hands on, so the article may be updated as time goes on. If it is, I'll post an update here. Enjoy, and feel free to ask questions here, or discuss what may have been.

I've decided I'm selling everything 10 years from now. Going to post the sale thread now though, because if the necrobumps are an indication, future me is gonna be a millionaire!

Kings of Edom is approaching release, so I thought I might give you an update showing a little bit what the final game will be like:

Mine came in the mail today, too. Awesome stick, very responsive. Plays great with 2600 or 7800 games. Looks like a manufactured Atari accessory. Outstanding work!

I am quite happy with the way music sounds now, I will post a new update soon a very cool tune for the ice levels. A person called Sergio Enrique Nuñez Stolles is helping me with music, sound fx and graphics, also @SlidellMan has supported with some graphics.

The amount of effort that you put into this port is nothing short of amazing. I look forward to what you have in store, be it originals or ports.

Here is a tool that I wrote during the last days, but which I wished to have for decades (at least since I have a SCSI controller). Don't ask me why I did not think about it earlier. If you have a Geneve with Swan EPROM (0.98) and a modern card like SCSI, you had to use drive A: to boot the Geneve, even though your SCSI drive works perfectly after booting. The old EPROM could only detect different floppy controllers (TI, Myarc, and CorComp), the HFDC, and the Horizon card. So your way would be to burn the 1.00 EPROM. If you don't feel like swapping your EPROM, this program will be the alternative. It is a boot loader that can also be adapted to other devices if desired. I added the source code on the disk image. You need GenASM/GenLink to build it; just call "MYMAKE". Copy the resulting SCSILOAD on A: as "SYSTEM/SYS". You also need a AUTOEXEC on A:, since it is still loaded from there. I also found that I have to add a "PDMA ON" to make the SCSI card work. The idea is that the EPROM will attempt to load this very small SYSTEM/SYS and run it. Then, this program searches the DSR space for a SCSI card (by the name "SCS1") and the subprogram >24 (direct file input). Having found them, it loads a file "@SYSTEM" from the SCS1 drive into pages 0-15 and then starts the loaded program. This happens to be the real GeneveOS kernel file (originally named SYSTEM/SYS). Here is a short video that shows the program in action: http://www.mizapf.eu/files/genboot.mp4 The flashing border is just a way for me to see whether all pages (each 8K) are loaded. As you can see, the load time is really cool. (The SCSI drive is a SCSI2SD.) scsiload.dsk

Rasmus, you misunderstand. I don't feel that I to have to say that, it is just my feeling. Since 10 years on AtariAge, I think that I had said three times my preference for the 9918A rather than the F18A (but I have absolutely nothing against this VDP), each time I saluted your great work. Clearly these messages seems to be against the tide and stayed in some minds ^_^ I already saluted your work on this this Zaxxon demo, and I don't doubt that you make miracles in it with the powerful F18A (and you push it to its limits. I am sincerely happy with that. I am just a TI-99/4A and year 80 hardware nostalgic, and when I see a recent program that push its limits, I can't help thinking what my reaction could have been if this program was unveiled in years 80. Here is what is impress me. Mizapf has well understood one of my thoughts. At a time, I was worried, I thought that new software developments were slowly going to forget the original hardware of the 99/4A , but we have the proof that it is not the case. So, I am happy that everybody can find its pleasure in all the new developments ?

The EXO team have taken a little time off from saving the universe to record a cover of @Synthpopalooza 's fantastic EXO World 1 theme. Here for one night only, the EXO Band! (Fire to start/restart, fire 2 to stop). Please note : This doesn't play well under emulation on JS7800, A7800. BupSystem doesn't sound too bad, haven't tried Argon. For best results, use real hardware. Works fine on DF with Pokey/PokeyMax, I expect it will be fine on Concerto + Pokey. Maybe I'll include this as an option in E.X.O. so you can play through the in-game tunes like in Turrican EXO Band World 1a.78b.a78

I like @Muddyfunster's idea of having a topic to aggregate demos and game ideas that may or may not be developed into full projects eventually. No need to add anything here to the list of 7800 works-in-progress. Anyway, as I own both a QuadTari and a 7800, and knew that they should work together, I wanted to make a proof in concept game demo to see if it worked. The result is the 4-player game "Raindrops" below: Raindrops Instructions: You are a magical flying umbrella. Like all magical, flying umbrellas, you want to avoid raindrops, and catch flying rainbows. Collect 9 rainbows before your fellow magical flying umbrellas do the same. Getting the rainbow will get you one point, whereas colliding with a raindrop will kock you back to your starting position. Developer Notes: I know RevEng plans to add QuadTari support to 7800Basic, but I was impatient and wanted to take a stab at it myself. ? I set the active controllers in a topscreenroutine based on a bit set in the program. Pressing a joystick button to restart the game does not seem to work, but otherwise everything seems to work fine on hardware. Currently, there is no emulator support for the QuadTari, so it will only work properly on real hardware. Version 3 (corrects scoring issue): raindrops.78b.a78 raindrops.78b.bin

Thanks for sharing this Mike.

Honestly, reading through the specs made my heart ache more than a little, for what could have been.

Just received my LTO Flash! cart today. Going to play me some Intellivision games this weekend!

You are all totally wrong. Discuss.

Over the last year and a half I have written more code on A8 than you, but definitely you have talked about "how to do it" more then me

Anyone ever come across one of these? It’s a 5 page flip book on card stock that provides suggestions and help for retail sales on how to sell the product. 1982 date. You’d think they would have figured it out by then. Seemed pretty unique.

As I always say, go where the good games are, don't limit yourself ever...I love my Atari but there's very creative people who have different ideas on lots of platforms...

Yeah, Sam's Journey pushes the hardware as hard as anything released back in the day - if not more. It's the same on all the other 8-bit platforms (I assume Atari too), there are plenty of AAA quality modern games. Having 30+ years of time to improve coding skills & techniques certainly helps a bit with that But I think people sometimes get too hung up on squeezing the last bit of juice out of the tech (at least in threads like this). You don't need 100 sprites and 17 parallax layers to make a good game. Just think of Shadow Of the Beast for Amiga...very pretty, but the gameplay is not much to write home about. If you have a clever idea and good design you can make some amazing games without the fx fireworks, eg Millie & Molly.

[Fires up Sam's Journey]... ...Can't say I agree. There's plenty of good software still being released under a number of 8bit platforms including the C64.

There is that ultra tasty ROM hack Sonic 3 Complete, which lets you have everything from Sonic 3 while still allowing you to play Sonic 3 & Knuckles. It fixes a few things that I wish it didn't fix, like how it removed the ability to get Knux into Sonic's Ice Cap Zone Act 2 and the other glitches associated with that oversight, but overall, it's generally the best version of the game that can run on the Mega Genesis Drive. You can set the music to use either the Sonic 3 music or the Sonic & Knuckles music, you can put Flying Battery where it's supposed to be, you can use the horrible music from the PC version if you want (you don't), you can use the Sonic 3 level designs, you can re-enable the original Sonic 3 final boss that got removed from the Sonic/Tails part in 3&K and given only to Knuckles, you can change how Super/Hyper forms activate, you can play regular Sonic 3 or regular Sonic & Knuckles, and it has a ridiculous amount of changes. The list is WAY too long to list here. There is also a customizer thingy on the Sonic 3 Complete website that lets you change even more stuff and generate a custom ROM of the game with whatever options you selected, so you can do stuff like use the horrible Sonic 1 physics or completely remove the spin dash if you want.

This looks like a fun game. It kind of reminds me a little bit of Ikari Warriors for the NES when you get the tank. Nice to see you playing some NES this past week, especially one of my favorite puzzle games. This looks like a fun horror game to play. I like the different quotes at the top of the screen, and the vampire cutscene guy reminds me of Grandpa Munster. After looking at a video of this game, it looks like a very interesting take for a racing game. I don't know if I've ever seen a camera view like that one for a car game. I have never heard of this game or have seen in it the arcade, but it does look like a really fun beatem up to play. The only arcade games I have are Arcade collections on various console systems. One game that I really would like to try to play again in my life is The Simpsons Arcade Game because I remember that being allot of fun to play when I was a kid. These all look like fun games. Hellway kind of reminds me of Spy Hunter without guns and with allot of traffic. It looks like a really good game and challenging as well. I can understand how you related Sydney Hunter Sacred Tribe to Montezuma's Revenge. They both look like they have a similar type of layout, and I am going to try Montezuma's Revenge because I have that game. It is funny because I didn't even know there were two different versions of this game. It is really interesting to know that some of the level layouts and music are different between Sonic 3 and Sonic 3 and Knuckles. Thank you for that information, and hopefully I can finish Sonic 3 in the near future. That is a really cool story about how you helped out this person, and that was really nice of you to do so. Thank you as always for taking the time to add up the minutes for the week, I really do appreciate it.

Apparently you feel you have to say that every time I make something for the F18A. I can only guess about the reason... ? But you're missing my point about displaying the original 1982 graphics. Not even a V9958 could do that. We don't have the 80s hardware that Sega used, which had features directly targeted at this game, but it's a good challenge for the F18A that pushes it to its limit. https://segaretro.org/Sega_Zaxxon_hardware

About ten years ago I decided to resurrect Old #26, my rare pre-production 800. When it didn't boot up I tried the usual chip reseating bit. Those lovely, precious, white chips would not budge from their sockets. I pried harder, even though I feared I might snap one in half. I got lucky and it finally came loose, though it left half of one gold pin in the socket. Idiot! I left the other one alone and fashioned a way to make contact between the socket and the remaining stub. This happened after I took the photo below. After much troubleshooting I found the CPU was bad (the big black chip below) and the rest of the old girl worked fine. Hmm, it's about time to fire her up again. I hope I'll be a better curator this time.

Special Scoring Rogerpoco = 101,500; toiletunes = 36,800 ?

I scored a really nice pickup from Craigslist. Two Playstation 2s, a ton of games (most of which I don't already have), five controllers and a carry bag all for $60. I also got one of Bratwursts 7800 joysticks. I really like the feel of it and it was a fair price too. Thanks again Bratwurst!

I'm thinking you are right in that it wasn't implemented, as I seem to recall Tony and others using "CLS" a lot in their batch files, probably for this very reason. I have to imagine that adding the @ functionality would be relatively simple. I'll note it for the next time I'm in HCLIS unless you decide to poke at it; I'm guessing it would be a matter of checking the first character of a line for "@" and if in batch file mode, set a flag to disable the echo for that command/line, update the starting position of the input line +1, and let the interpreter at the remaining characters.

Well, I got this one some years ago.

1. Sign up for the Intellivision Revolution newsletter 2. Sign up for this club 3. I thought Collectorvision had a newsletter, but can't find it. 4. Be aware of these publishers. Some aren't currently active, but most advertise/announce here. 5. This is helpful too.

Congratulations Darryl!!!!! - James

I always get nervous when an ebay seller doesn't leave feedback for the buyer. It's almost like they're not confident in their product and waiting to see what feedback they receive from the buyer... I hope my friggen item is what i wanted and in working order. Too much money to be stuffed around.

Updated raindrops in the first post to add sounds borrowed from @RevEng's handy dandy sample sound collection. It's amazing how much just adding two different sound effects can change a game. ?

I just got an email from Joerg Warner over at Datamath.org - "OMG GOLDMINE". This reference with all these part numbers (and designers), once consolidated, is going to be pretty awesome.

Thanks. I also added a 2 year subscription to AtariAge this week.

Very cool and can't wait to hear more feedback! This game is a real treat for Lynx fans. Also don't give away spoilers! Not only do we want people to enjoy the game for themselves in these first couple months, but we plan on having a contest later in the year based on certain "achievements" in the game. So keep it secret; keep it safe!

Hey all. This place is dangerous. I had not unpacked my old atari gear for at least a decade, but then I stumbled on the Antic podcast. Now my 800xl is out and running and it was so much fun just programming some BASIC again. I’ve ordered an Sdrive max from vintagecomputercenter which I can’t wait to get - so I’m reading these forums to take my mind off waiting for it, but it is not helping :-] I still have a 130xe too that has a seized power switch that needs replacing (though I need to figure out how to test that it even works first - I know it did when it used to run a BBS of ramdisk way back). If it works, I think I might need to try out a fujinet for that machine.... I may be in trouble. AtariAge has been wealth of info, so thanks to all who are keeping the atari 8-bits alive.

When are "saggy pants" gonna join "mullets" and "parachute pants" and slowly fade away? It's time.

You're not wrong. I remain amazed that for all it's vaunted audiovisual capabilities, the C64 provides no way to USE them other than PEEK'n'POKE, and people to this day think there's nothing wrong with that

I'm betting you'll get it tomorrow. All out of sticks, buttons, plus running low on screws and cords, so I ordered much more and will be taking care of the rest of the list I compiled on the first post of everyone who expressed an interest. It may be a while before I can get them out though.

Excellent video. I'll update the OpenSCAD files to include the UnoCart in the PlusCart shell soon. Meanwhile, the yellow one in the photo, with the fluorescent look/feel.. is by far my favourite colour scheme for the UnoCart shell.

Fourth part of the Art Hunter binder. This is the last set of "loose" parts that aren't part of the TI-88 content. This appears to be some kind of checklist (70 pages worth) for TI Calculator chips. Enough for tonight ? 1970s-TI_Calculator_Chip_checklists.pdf

I got mine earlier this week. I decided to connect it in my media console during lunch today. The media console has room for six systems so one had to go temporarily (7800). I plan on installing an internal hard drive and using this as an emulation station vis PC Mode in addition to any VCS content the piques my interest and it's a good fit style-wise for my place.

Third part of the Art Hunter binder. Here's a bug report for the TI-55 Calculator in 1978. 1978_TMC-1503D-TI-55-Algorithm_Checkout_Bugs.pdf

Here is the second part of the Art Hunter binder. A late 1970's database of ROM numbers for Mainframe (Home Computer) and Calculator ROMs/GROMs/CROMs. 1970s-TI-Calculator_Div_Chip_Number_List_Art_Hunter.pdf

This is the first part of the Art Hunter ("TI-88 Alex binder"). Almost 80 pages of GPD/Chip designations and release dates, including some interesting ones for the Home Computer (referring to Pre-School, which was Early Learning Fun before they renamed it). There is also reference to TMC 1985 (Handheld Unit Transmitter), which is the only place I've seen that part SKU in print so far. 1970s-TI-Chip_GPD_Releases_Art_Hunter.pdf

You can now edit the first post indefinitely. If you need the ability to edit other posts, you can send me a PM directly and I can help you (links to specific posts are helpful, you can click on the post number to get a direct link to that post). ..Al

Don't know if it's what you would like to achieve, but, I give it a try and made some modification (search SCPCD tags) Seems working fine on real Jaguar, JagFPGA & VirtualJaguar. rasters_SCPCD.zip

Got my Dragonfly Cart today, several days before I expected it, and finally got a chance to hear this one with YM sound on real hardware. I sure hope more homebrew authors will take advance of YM sound in the future 'cause this sounds great.

Mister Oblivious chiming in here! G-type just brought to my attention that this is an Imagic game!!! Haven't played it yet, haven't checked the manual. I really do know a LOT about 2600 games, somehow this one slipped completely under my radar. Anyway. No random draw-you get the top score, you earn a patch and a Membership Card!!! Not shilling, but this is one I have a few of, holler if interested, if ya don't win the free one. Apologies, Vocelli, I should have asked, it's just late in the week already, and I really didn't think you'd mind, I know you've been working a lot, and you know I don't send sentences in PM's(lol!). So, Good Luck, Everyone!!!