Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store  

e5frog

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    1,193

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by e5frog

  1. Posted

    I could use them, depending on location it often kills the deal when it comes to shipping.
    PCB:s are removed (got a desk drawer full of them) so only the plastic shell (and springs) are re-used.

    If they would be OK for you to get the shells in a "brand new" cartridge, they are probably OK.
    Do you happen to have about 20 carts and pay the shipping, then I'd be willing to send you a Pac-Man Multi-Cart as a trade.

    A completely different approach is that if the cartridges you have are pretty nice but the PCB looks bad, I can sell you replacement PCB:s, I have a bunch as I mentioned.

  3. Posted

    There's two clear screws, don't know if there are any under the cork plates, heat them up and they're easier to remove.
    The back has plastic pieces mating with holes in the top, cleverly to save screws so perhaps there's only those two.
    Haven't actually opened one of those myself.

    If they're like the model 1 the buttons are sealed and you have to cut them up to fix them.

  4. Posted

    Yes, it's Battleship basically, difference is that you get audio clue how far you are from the nearest ship.
    There's a two player game where the amount of shots depend on how many ships you have left and there's a one player version that starts with a bunch of shots... it's a random number between certain values.

    You can read instructions if you click "gallery" here:
    http://channelf.se
    Then click the "R" at the "VC 14" row to read instructions.

  8. Posted

    Aha, maybe I should adjust the peak voltage then.
    The Atari 2600 Longhorn mod has 75 Ohm to ground on the output and also 75 Ohm in serial after that before the output - but it's using the 6dB channel gain so I guess that's the explanation for that.

    If it needs 1Vp-p on Chroma in I guess that needs a separate amplifier.

  9. Posted

    Yes, that's it Carlsson, it worked fine on RF with mod removed, after reseating chips. I spent a good hour measuring various signals and swapping chips without finding anything wrong. With all original chips back in place it came to life. Image was just a mess in grayscales before that. The "graphics" chip was ceramic with gold pins, that wears the socket a bit extra over time.

    With mod back in I got a weak image and started balancing the signal imperically with the oscilloscope as visual aid.

    Came out pretty well with just a transistor and resistors (had to lift one pin of a resistor on the board as well) but only about half the proper amplitude.

    • Like 1

  11. Posted

    I bought a SABA Videplay 2 with half a composite mod, image was weak and all graphics was kind of purple-ish.

    I managed to balance the transistor hookup and improve the image, gives a near perfect image on two CRT:s and an LCD TV although the signal amplitude is about half of what it should be.

    It looks as if there's a possibility to get s-video from it, color sneaks through the Luma-signal but it can be filtered out and used as luma+sync and then have burst+color on a separate hookup.
    The FMS6400 used in the Longhorn s-video/ composite mod for the Atari 2600 seems like a good candidate for cleaning up the signal and get proper output - as soon as I clear the workbench...

    Audio was picked from speaker line and a resistor added to get about 0.9Vp-p, as consumer audio line in usually is (audio was pretty much the same level as when using RF).



    • Like 1

  14. Posted

    Not bad, not bad at all. But they look too good. ;-)
    Did you scan the originals?
    It's a pain to remove these if you want to get those loose plastic pins rattling inside the knob... and it looks terrible when they are worn.

    AFAIK the originals are a light yellow tint - a bit more like golden foil. Printed letters actually looks stamped/printed by the thin surrounding line, like a lot of the print on cartridge labels - old time printing process. That is the main part of character in gold color then a thin black line and an even thinner gold line.
    Original also has a plastic film on top - they built things to last back then. Sometimes you see tiny tiny golden dots where the black color didn't stick.

    But it looks very authentic as long as you don't compare them side to side.

    The bunch of unused controllers (NOS) I recently got (from a Swedish one man online electronics store - the entire stock of them) are the Channel F II / Luxor VEC type - so they don't have any print - just the gold foil (with plastic film on top). The Nordmende actually has silver colored stickers - placed on top of the original ones... lazy b*stards. :-D

    If you had some plastic film or tape with a nice yellow shade - it could look even more like the originals.

    Very well done, see if you can take it a step further.

  15. Posted

    Nice going!

    As they are cartridges without boxes there's no problem shipping them in "bubble bags" they are very sturdy cartridges. I have shipped a lot of them in bubble bags, there have never been any problems.
    But if you want to go for boxes, go for boxes. ;-)

  16. Posted

    I have labels, boxes and instruction booklets (and even some carts), in case someone misses anything send me a message.
    I have been bad at saving edge labels though, if they aren't almost falling off they're often hard to remove in descent condition.

  19. Posted · Edited by e5frog

    @Chris: Hang in there, don't forget to enjoy the summer as well.
    I once measure the edge label to 14.1mm in height, 101.2mm in width and the round area is part of a 44mm diameter circle - which should make perfect sense to an American (after some measurement translation in Google). But perhaps it's the motif that is changed?



    @Kurt:
    Yes, the old version of MESS with the old debugger (v 0.133 from 2009 for example) presents it the way I mentioned, I recall using (IS)+ etc some time in the beginning - whichever the compiler likes. I'm glad I can save up to four button presses using the macros S, D and I. ;-)
    Register 9 is also called J... yup, you need to keep track of what registers are used, especially when calling routines in internal ROM (sometimes referred to as BIOS) or ones written by others, it doesn't get easier with HU (r10), HL (r11), KU (r12), KL (r13), QU (r14), QL (r15) - as well as the option to call them using ISAR-addressing... I like it when (sub)routines are marked with what registers they affect in the code.

    The LIS x - COM will also use two bytes and is 0.5 cycle quicker - IMHO optimizations can be done if needed and one should keep to what makes sense, if using a method that's difficult to understand there's a bigger risk for errors. Myself as an example, I seem to be off by 1 a lot in every loop I write - either at the start or at the end.

    That's true, we wouldn't have assembly language at all if the human readable thing wasn't an "issue", it would all be machine code. ;-)
    Code that various AI outputs can be totally incomprehensible to a "normal" human - there's a lot that could be done if trying to go the most efficient route.
    I try to use a lot of comments - to explain to myself what I did or what was the plan and to easier edit it if I need to revisit the code. Sometimes I have no clue how I had thought in some cases. I don't get to do a lot of programming, takes a while of undisturbed time for me to get into it and if disturbed it's like starting over - so coding at nights when the family is sleeping is the best time for me, which is of course not so good for other reasons...

    Many thanks to you Kurt for the wonderful graphics converter: http://channelf.se/veswiki/index.php?title=For_full_screen
    I made a simpler one for converting smaller objects from .bmp files: http://channelf.se/veswiki/index.php?title=Graphics_converter
    (Indirectly telling Chris - and others that may visit in the future)

  20. Posted · Edited by e5frog

    Well, if you know the value beforehand, you can still write it shorter by loading the complemented value instead of loading 6 and then complementing it. So instead of

    LIS 6 ;loads 6

    COM ;complement it to $F9

    INC ;adds 1 to make it $FA

     

    you could write...

    LI $FA ;load FA so 6 gets subtracted

     

    This would be one byte and 2 lines shorter and probably faster to execute.

     

    I'm still puzzled about that S though... according to the VES wiki S can't be used as an argument directly. It's only affected by certain operations. If the compiler accepts the S in this place, I wonder what it's compiled to.

    I was looking in the thread to see if there was any news about shipping the KvsT cartridges, I know it's a lot of work cleaning off labels on those carts - and get the free time from the family to do it.

    Anyway, I read through the posts in the thread and thought the above was interesting.

     

    "S" (when using DASM) means the register that the ISAR is set to, you can also use "I" to increase ISAR after the operation or "D" to decrease it afterwards - it doesn't carry the octal number so if you're at 7 for example octal register 27 and use an "I" it will change to 20 - which can be cleverly used sometimes.

     

    In disassemblies you can see S be called (IS), D called (IS--) and I called (IS++)which makes a lot of sense but it's longer to type, I think DASM works with that as well.

    There's a "LR IS, A" opcode as well that sets the ISAR directly, it takes 1 cycle to run - but you usually have to use an "LI 'value' " first that takes 2.5 cycles (or "LIS '4 bit value' " which uses 1 cycle) so the LISU/LISL combination for a total of two cycles is not beaten by any other method when just setting up the ISAR.

    Remember though that you have registers 0-15 that can be used directly (of course also with ISAR).

     

    S is also a symbol for Sign in the op-code table of veswiki.com but that isn't part of the mnemonics nor arguments.

     

    When using subtraction in general the method is as described above:

    LI 'value'

    COM

    INC

    Then you have the initial value as an 8 bit signed negative number.

    AS r

    Would then add "r" (which is a directly usable register or one addressed with ISAR) to the negative number. You'll get "r - 'value' " in Accumulator.

    If subtracting the same number every time it will be a lot quicker to use the precalculated negative value.

    If we want to subtract 1 we can use "LI $FF" for 2.5 cycles or "CLR" followed by "COM" that will use 2 cycles.

    In the same spirit we can use "LIS 5" then "COM" for 2 cycles - to get "$FA" which is negative 6...

     

    The standard method will work fine, if it's a time critical part it can be worth to check other options as it takes as much as 4.5 cycles to use the basic way.

     

    In this particular case there was some programming already done, to fix the problem and get the data as Binary Coded Decimal numbers (that was used in the number drawing routine - or if it was the other way around) it was patched for normal behaviour. If rewritten from start BCD could have been used - you only have instructions ASD and AMD to use.

    http://channelf.se/veswiki/index.php?title=Binary_coded_decimal

  22. Posted

    Two carts left in this batch, as things look right now there's probably not going to be any more of these, for the rest of the year at least.

    These two last (?) carts will have my new menu which I have tried to keep the original look for, reason for making it was to easier add games as the current menu was pretty much full.
    While writing it I also added in menu control with console keys, longer jump, automatic centering of the text and a second line for the title.
    I haven't yet added the Easter Eggs that Sean Riddle has put in the menu used in the first 148 Multi-Carts, there's a clue in the eprom if you can't find it, if you are able to dump it - and must find it...

    Maybe I'll put a new one in there.

    So console keys:
    reset - still reset of course

    1 - move down a notch in menu
    2 - move up
    3 - move up 5 steps
    4 - start

    Moving hand controller forward or backward will jump five steps in either direction for quicker navigation, push/pull/twists all start the selected game.

    Here's how it looks:

    • Like 1

  23. Posted · Edited by e5frog

    Just wanted to say I forgot to update, all orders up to and including #148 were shipped earlier this week.

    @HoshiChori I have some labels and boxes, send me a PM with a list of what you need.

    If you like I can make copies of the 23 and 26 instructions - at least you have place holders in your album.

    I could actually reproduce just about any of the carts if needed - but we do want the originals, don't we? ;)

    If you need to read instructions I have all of them in text form on my web page, click link below.

AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2021 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...