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I took the liberty of modding the schematic for 256K. In the process I found that U20 pin 1 must go to ground. It might help to remove R25 too.

Dan Kramer (primarily known as the trak-ball guy) sent me his engineering notebook from his time at Atari. it's amazing. https://archive.org/details/dan-kramer-atari-engineering-notebook

Finally some good news: the latest factory samples work flawlessly on the Jaguar CD unit! Now they will gear up to build the entire run, and I hope to have working discs in my hands in a couple weeks. Almost there!

This game may or may not be under-rated but because of the slightly childlike element to it, it may well be..... Alley Cat from Synapse Software in 1983. Fantastic frenetic and varied gameplay with seemingly simple yet engaging mini sub games, great use of animation, colour and humour, not to mention sound effects. I played it for the first time in 30 years the other day and it brought back so many memories.

In this week's episode I discuss some rare and valuable Intellivision games. Many of these are late releases or homebrews. Any surprises? Let me know.

Back in my school days, some girl called me Christophen instead of Christopher because she said my lowercase Rs in cursive looked like Ns. So that's why my pen pal Curt never replied to my letters...

Today I stopped to help a wet&hurt cat that got hit by a car(?). While waiting, another wet cat showed up. I get the feeling I now own 3 cats, and/or I just kidnapped 2 outdoor cats.

Hi there, Here is another one by the Workstead Design group. This one is credited to Henry Will, IV. I've including switches to build NTSC, PAL50, and PAL60 versions. I did not include my code for the action button hack in this listing to try to keep it "pure". Enjoy Smurf - Rescue in Gargamel's Castle

Releasing a Collector edition of one of my games is in my bucket list for sure.

Over and over again.... Schreckenstein!!! Most underrated game on the A8. One man show made a n awesome multiplayer splitscreen game. Awesome graphics and perfect sfx.

It appears that the $2 AliExpress carbon contact paste worked beautifully. PET’s keyboard is completely operational now.

Which do you consider to be the most overlook game for Atari 8-bit computers? From my humble point of view, one of them is "The Infiltrator" (Mindscape, 1986). It doesn't show up in Atarimania's top listings. - Y -

To give you an update, I narrowed down the problem but no solution yet. I am pretty confident it is not just a timing problem; I have spent hours comparing logic analyzer and scope output for a variety of test programs and there is no significant difference between classic and QI in terms of the main signals that I can see (see attached logic analyzer comparison between QI and classic for a GROM set address / read data). One of the things I discovered is that ROM images load fine (you can test this by putting a single ROM image in the root of the SD). The problem lies with the GROM emulation, more specifically in setting and updating the GROM address. This is why you don't see a FG99 menu entry as it is GROM emulated. The GROM emulation is a mix of clever programming and unnecessary bits. For instance, the code that generates GROM Ready can be omitted completely (including freeing up the GR pin) and FG99 still works fine. My hope is that by updating the GROM emulation I can get the thing to work. It's slow going as the CPLD is pretty much fully used so it's hard to add any useful debugging code (slightly hampered by the fact that I haven't used VHDL before this adventure). One other aspect that might or might not play a role is that the data bus termination on the QI GROM port is different to the classic. It is held high by pull-ups while the classic seems to be able to switch between pull-up and pull-down depending on read or write. The GROM addresses I see generated within FG99 (what a pain it is to probe SMD BTW) are all >FFFFFFFFFFFFF so this might be something. I was thinking that this might be due to the CPLD being a 3.3V device (but 5V tolerant); but driving the data bus is obviously not a problem as we can load ROM images so probably another red herring. I'll keep you posted, Jochen

hi everyone, seems this has turned mostly to a discussion about the 1090XL, so I would like to see it move to the 1090xl remake thread at but if that would kill the discussion then here is ok. I also want everyone to know this whole project is not a reverse engineered or hacked out thing. I downloaded all the schematics and mechanicals from atarimuseum.com before it went offline. by downloaded I mean that I mirrored the site. I am going by all the original schematics and mechanical drawing to enter into kicad. that is what is available on my github. I have assembled a 1090XL board I had made and that seems to work fine as I posted earlier iin this thread. Currently waiting on more parts for the ram board and ribbon cable for xl to 1090 connection. if there are any questions you can feel free to ask. thanks for all the comments and viewpoints. Ken

All true, but I bet the TI99 is at least 1000 times cooler.

For me Lords of Conquest, it's something along the lines of Risk, but I played a ton of it, and it doesn't get mentioned a lot. Some honorable mentions: Spare Change - A wacky, unique concept: Maxwell Manor - A Creepy Haunted House / Adventure type game:

@computergui: a small request to help with thread readability: it would be greatly appreciated if you would please put logs or other long output beind a spoiler (the 'open eye' icon in the editor): Makes things easier to read, and cuts down on having hundreds of lines of logs quoted repeatedly

5200 controller by RetroGameBoyz.

I’ve created several “true” 16 bit versions of the TI99/4A in my FPGA designs. The 99105 CPU based version was my first venture into this direction - RAM, ROM, cartridge memory all are 16-bit wide in that design. It is about 7 times faster than the TMS9900 based normal computer, but as I wanted to be able run existing software the video subsystem still is 9918-like and using a 8-bit bus, as are the GROMs. Thus going 16-bit would have gained you more speed. But arguably a much bigger speed boost would have been reached by just dropping the GROMs and GPL stuff altogether and using bigger normal ROMs and machine code for the Basic etc. Dropping the GROMs would have destroyed their closed ecosystem model and increasing size of normal ROM could have increased the cost of the system (I assume the GROMs at least were cheap for TI). The plain vanilla 9900 is a pretty slow CPU even over 16 bit bus. Having said that I do wish they had provided a bit more 16-bit wide RAM. For instance using four 2114 static RAMs (also used in the VIC20 around the same time) would have provided a whopping 2 kilobytes of 16-bit wide RAM. Like @matthew180 and others said, the other decisions they made were the ones which killed the system, not crippling the system to access a lot of its memory and peripherals over an 8 bit bus, although that certainly did not help.

It's not playable beyond steering the ship, but it works very well to show off the tech proof-of-concept. Spectacularly well, in my estimation. What lesson do you think it can teach developers, as far as "what not to do"?

A thanks to @ClausB, Whose hand in so many projects over the years makes the time on AA worth it.

I'm only a province away from the Grand Theft Atari in a region known as Worse France lol

GTA.... Greater Than Amiga of course.

This and the two Beach Head games, I played endlessly as a kid. I still play them from time to time. In ROM just learning to get out of the space station seemed an accomplishment!

Years ago I added 32K to the 16 bit bus. I think the instructions came via a user group newsletter and they are probably the same as Matthew mentions above. As I remember there were 4 chips; 2-32K memory chips and 2 logic chips, plus a bunch of wires connecting everything. I installed a switch to restore the wait states for the rare cases where that is desireable. This works fine and usually speeds up assembly programs a noticeable amount. Spad13 MK 2 is much peppier. I don't think this does anything to the scratchpad ram. In any case, I never noticed any compatibility issues. I was hoping for a big boost in XB speed, but that is virtually the same, only around 1% faster.

No it's not a haunted doll. It's actually a Kabuki Lion Dancer doll. My wife loves all things Asian. it's too tall for her cabinet so it's taken residence in mine. She needs a new cabinet but she hasn't found one she likes. BTW...the haunted dolls are kept elsewhere. Thanks for your viewing!

here's my mini-review that I posted on a Discord server (so take it with a HUGE grain of salt): I was on the fence about whether or not it's worth $40 US because I'm cheap and that's a big ask for an arcade racer, but I feel like if you like that kind of game, it's money well-spent. The game runs pretty fluidly (I think I made that word up) docked, so I feel like you can ignore reviews that are pissing and moaning about 'framerates'. In my opinion the controls are pretty tight and responsive. It's more fun than Horizon Chase Turbo in my opinion, there's tons of stuff to do. The graphics are pretty smooth and over-the-top, the weather effects are neat. The soundtrack is pretty cool, and I like you can change it ingame. You have three different 'views' for the cars. Controls are decent and feel better than Horizon Chase Turbo. It's worth noting you can use d-pad instead of the left stick if you're all the time honking the horn like me. The AI gives you a run for your money on higher levels but doesn't feel overly cheap, especially in the beginning stages. The flipping and stuff takes some getting used to, but it's cool, too. Load times don't bother me overly, but it might some. I think if I had two main gripes about the game it's that I can't customize the controls and the colors of the cars are awful. lol

Absolutely great game. Fast, rammed with detail (a little too much at times?), controls well, runs beautifully (I installed the update before playing), plenty of content for the price, and does exactly what I wanted it to do - it's a big, dumb arcade racer in the 90's Midway style. Brilliant stuff.

4-channel, Mono, NTSC Will upload the XEX file later today.

I will hack the heck out of my 3DSes once a good Virtual Boy emulator is released. I’ve always wanted a Virtual Boy, but they are so unreliable and fragile and the games (which I have a small pile of) are all stratospheric. It seemed so tragic for preservation purposes that Jack Bros, Wario Land 3D, and even Waterworld were not preserved on Virtual Console.

579100 level five Intellivision hardware

Ooooaahh! It can't run Jaguar? Man it Can't run Jaguar! Damn! How are we ever gonna get a Jaguar Mini if nothing can ever run Jaguar? Jaguar?? Jaguar! Jaguar Jaguar J a g u a r JAAAgUauRRrrrrrr!

Found one of @Tickled_Pink Garfield request strip with Nermal. Still on the prowl for the other one.

Thanks and glad we got that issue resolved for you!

Happy Trails - Game 1 - 15,055 Loco-Motion - level 4 Disk- 29,415

I want to give a shout out to Carl at Songbird. I ordered the Codemasters Collection for Evercade and ended up with a faulty cartridge. Carl was polite and quickly replaced it. Great customer service and communication too. Thanks, I greatly appreciate it!

Why haven't you used any of them? Is it because whoever produced them didn't acquire rights to any games?

I forgot to mention, I also have 3 Jaguar Minis NIB.

And here's the XEX and zipped RMT, as promised. Had to get home from work first lol ForTheLoveOf01a.xex ForTheLoveOf01a.zip

Olivier Nallet Interview - Super Burnout - Jaguar Legend Olivier Nallet has had a career in video games more distinguished than most. From developing Atari Jaguar favourite Super Burnout, to Omikron, to churning out hits for the EA Sports machine, he’s been there and done it all. https://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/olivier-nallet-super-burnout/

Holy crap, either Number 5 is alive or this is Roberto, the crazy robot! Easy mistake to make, don't worry ...NO DISASSEMBLE.?️

Maybe the better suggestion is to create an adapter that would allow 5200 joysticks to be used with the 8-bit computers (what??? what in the world are you thinking!?!?) -- abomination that they are. Then the 5200 -> 8-bit conversions could updated to support it. I mean, that's all you're getting with a 5200 anyway; although I suppose you could include the gigantic 5200 trackball that most 5200 owners adore.

Just tested mine. Played a few games. Love Super Breakout and Kaboom with this stick (left trim knob). So far, so good. Need to try some maze games (Jawbreaker, Pac-Man etc.)

Nothing wrong in asking, or wanting this. In fact, you have 100% validated every Atari fan's issue with the machine. Tat being - why did you (Atari) split the damn userbase? We all wanted what you did back then. At least we can have it now with decently priced flash carts for every system under the sun!

Turns out I'd already used my brown case for something else, but I have more of them on order now, LOLOL Here's a nice pic of the cartridge that just had to be. . .all parts, including the case are new-manufacture parts. This is one pristine butt-plugger!

The game was built in C and Assembler, there is no such thing as RPG maker for the Lynx On a side-note, I screwed up the hyperlink in my previous post... this is the link to get the game: https://songbird-productions.com/product/wyvern-tales/

Probably be my last post in here for a while, since I blew my wad on this thing...

So I went through and tested all the connections between the 99/4A bus and the flex cable connector and then the flex cable connector to the ICs as well as everything on the PEB BUS. All tested just fine. The card did look like either someone replaced the LS244's or someone did not know how solder that well on a few pins of the 244's. Not all the pins, just a few or they had too much to drink. Re-heated those solder points and nada... still the same issue. pulled out my USB microscope and starting checking for anything that would glare out at me.. started looking at each IC and not something I could even see with my nice super magnification solder specs but the microscope picked it up. One of the LS244's pin #3 was (1/2 of the pin) was actually bent under the chip. And whoever put it on the board instead of taking it off and straightening the pin out just put a glob of solder down to make it look like the pin was soldered. removed the chip and decided to remove them all and socket them. plugged all the IC's back in and now another dead flex card has been brought back to life.

Spidex #53 from Songbird

I bought mine in December of 1993 at Electronics Boutique. I was a ST and Lynx owner at the time and after the summer reveal articles in EGM and Video Games magazines and the October issue of Diehard Gamefan, I was hyped for the Jag. With all the developers Atari announced for the Jag, it seemed like they were finally going to get their act together. I signed up in a pre-order notebook that my local EB used to have and got a call in December that they got three systems in. I went down and picked my system up. It was the last one and the manager got it out of the window display. I wanted another game and controller, but the manager said they only got three systems and nothing else. He said other people were asking to buy the Jaguar in the window, but it was already reserved. I went to the Babbages in the same mall and they actually had some controllers, AV cables and several copies each of Raiden and Trevor McFur. I bought some AV cables and a copy of Raiden. The clerk said their store only got one Jaguar system, along with the small amount of accessories and games. The clerk said that a steady amount of people were asking to buy the Jaguar because of the Diehard Gamefan cover story, but they just couldn't get any in to meet demand. Basically then, I knew it was going to be the Falcon launch all over again, except maybe on a slightly larger scale. Build a nice product, get some hype from the press and they blow it all by not meeting the initial hype demand and properly marketing the product.