e5frog

We'll see for how long it's allowed... http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=230319999681 Bid if you're interested.

Yes, NOS, I hardly think anyone still makes them. The ones I bought last were from 1986 made by Mostek. If I get to the point where I can order a batch of them from a professional manufacturer - yes that would be possible.

I buy them from the US, I've only found one supplier (well, actually a friend of mine found them) with reasonable prices, and if I can sell the two carts and get pre-orders (paid ones) to a sum of $250 I can buy enough to get them at half the price - so double the amount of circuits for the $200 - well, the postage might be a little more. Without those there would be no carts at all for (probably) a long long time... Sean was working on a solution, it included one of the latest PIC32, no other circuits were fast enough or had enough I/O, of course it might have been feasable using an FPGA circuit of some sort, but that's not the way he wanted to go. It's a bit tricky making a VHDL (or Verilog) description of it since the documentation is poor on some ROMC-states, I don't know if Sean has done some extensive study on those - but he´s pretty good with these things, a technical wiz' if you like - he's on my list of admired people at least. I'm a little interested in how the built-in timer works, I'll explore that some time, it seems the Chess-cartridge might use the timer since the interrupt has been enabled on the SMI.

I'd say the major expense is shipping costs, gathering all parts at very low amounts are costly not because the parts are very expensive but the shipping on them. That's why I hoped to get a long list of interested people - to be able to make one big buy, I don't dare order a bunch of parts that I can't sell at a later point. Starting costs for making PCB:s, boxes, instructions are also a great expense, I'll see if we can get there eventually. I know this is a system with very little interest, I also hope to increase that interest by releasing new games for all to enjoy on their real units. If you know anyone with a Channel F - tell them to get on the list for a Pac-Man cart - the more who wants to buy the better they'll get.

If I understand correctly Crazy Climber does also want to be on the list.

As I have mentioned it's an initial price just to be able to get more parts. Price will probably change but I can't promise it will be cheaper as it's a very small market, not like Vectrex or Atari 2600...

Those are only there to compare the originals to my own build, and from my personal collection - not for sale. However, with my current platform I could make replicas of those...

SOLD OUT! There's a cart reserved for sale on eBay, all money from that auction will be used to make the Multi-Cart box. I promised to start taking pre-orders on Pac-Man after the first working prototype - so let me know if you want one. I guess there are two types of pre-orders, pre-paid and then simply a queue (line) of interested people. Those who are pre-paid are considered pre-orders here and others are put on a list of interested people. All pre-orders will of course be shipped in order of made payments and the queue will be handled one at a time from first one on the list to the last. I will offer the first person on the list a cartridge at the best price I can currently give and if declined at that price I'll ask the next one. All pre-orders will be shipped, but I make no promise on those in queue. I'm just adding up a number out of my head, an approximate amount of what all parts cost and what the postage is outside EC (as I imagine most of you are). For a pre-order I currently charge $120, that includes postage to anywhere in the world and all other types of fees that I might come across. Price is subject to change if there are additional costs or changes in currency conversions etc. If you have made a payment of the current charge you will however not be asked for more money - I'll take that loss. I'll also issue a part-of-the-money-back if I am able to build them at a significantly lower price, let's say $15 lower or more. The more orders I get the more parts I can order at the same time and the price will of course be lower - I'm sure you're familiar with the concept. No cartridges will be sold until the current two "raise-some-money"-carts have been sold or until I have two pre-orders. I need that money to order parts. Here's the first one auctioned out: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=137441 Box and instructions are currently not included, if I do decide to make instructions and/or box I will send these out asap to all buyers (give-away). Payments are welcome via Paypal.com, just click below to make a pre-payment: Other payment options are perhaps welcome as well, send me a message. If you need to read more about it, there's a thread here. Answer here and I'll make a list below. Pre-ordered: Two Pre-orders (paid) - gets Pac-Man #6 and #7. "Interested in buying"-list: * Cart has been sent + Payment has been received - Denied current offer . Have been asked but no reply/ no payment ~ Finished but not shipped * chuys450 * retrogmr * Godzilla - BassGuitari * Numan * cvga - Segataritensofti... * toymailman . jeffgamer * Bill_Loguidice Crazy Climber (at a price around $50) * AtariRx * Disco Scottie * j_eits (not on this forum) . FABombjoy . brucebidder * Nick Frazee (not on this forum) doug0909 (at a price around $50) - Atari2008 . Rob Mitchell * swlovinist * Howard Frazee (not on this forum) atarinut76 Update, the whole owner's list: Made from SABA #20 carts: 1 Conny 2 Dennis 3 Ian Made from large home made PCBs: 4 Claes 5 Rikard 6 Jose 7 Larry 8 Mikael 9 Mark 10 Kai 11 James 12 Charles 13 Peter Professional PCBs 14 Kevin 15 Bill 16 Scottie 17 Jens 18 John 19 Nickolas 20 Howard 21 Matt T 22 PingvinBlueJeans 23 Jose M 24 Jeffrey O'C Smaller PCB, prototyped version, SMD circuits where possible 25 Kevin C 26 GreatGuy 27 Freiztan New pro PCB, similar to the one above 28 Rob 29 Jeff R 30 Emmanuel D 31 Jason S 32 Anthony W 33 Luke S 34 Michael C 35 Jason B 36 Russ P 37 Dennis 38 Scott S +39 Rick M 40 Christopher W 41 Mattias P --------- End of 2010 --------- +42 Kimmo P +43 Lance B +44 Jan-Erik +45 T.B.C. 46 VGE 47 Zeela 48 -reserved- +49 Tim Ryan +50 For myself, I think I'll call it #0 though. END - no more Pac-Man carts.

I promised to start taking pre-orders after the first working prototype - so let me know if you want one. Link to Marketplace

I have finally managed to build an entire Fairchild cart from scratch, new PCB and new (well, NOS at least) circuits. I'm selling the first of these as an auction to raise money to buy parts to be able to build more carts - also for other future games. This is the first release of a Fairchild cartridge not built from a modified Chess-cart since I don't know when - 1982 or something!? I'm offering one of these - Pac-Man: The buyer can have his/her name (or a name of his/her choice) on the back label: Screenshots: It plays something like this in MESS or on a Channel F II (or other generation 2 Fairchild console): This is from a real system playing: (Pardon the video quality and that the sound gets out of sync near the end) On a Fairchild Video Entertainment System (Channel F, or other first generation Fairchild consoles) it plays just the same but audio is not as good. There's ofcourse already a thread about it and the progress: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=132055 If you would like to test it in MESS, please download this version: http://w5.nuinternet.com/s660100106/files/...elf/pac-man.bin ... and use this version of MESS that has proper audio: http://veswiki.com/images/3/3a/Devel.zip If you already have MESS it will play fine there as well, but with less than perfect sound... BTW, this is Pac-Man cartridge #4 of 5 so far, but as I mentioned, the first one built from scratch - not by modifying a Chess-cartridge (SABA#20). Cartridge #5 is currently on eBay. I'm going to use the money to buy more parts to be able to release other games as well, I've already started working on "IK": Downloadable and playable binary for MESS: http://w5.nuinternet.com/s660100106/files/...f/IK-test_5.bin The thread: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=129210 Bid here or bid via message to me or e-mail, I will update the thread with the highest bid. I suggest the bidding starts at $40, feel free though to start bidding where you feel comfortable. Current highest bid: From other forum $120

There are loads of low-value, worn and ugly looking carts out there, stuff that noone would be interested in buying even for a penny (because the postage would be more than it's worth). So for now I'll settle on using that types of carts as donors, if I run out I might consider manufacturing new cart shells - but I probably need to sell a whole lot of carts to be able to afford that... Especially SABA-carts with their paper-only labels are often in very bad condition...

So the only RAM you have (unless there's extra RAM in the cartridge) are the 64 bytes that are internal to the CPU. Which is not very much. Found this old quote and I just wanted to add that Pac-Man has 2kB extra RAM, and without using bank switching you can have 63487 bytes of RAM on a cartridge, not that it would be useful unless you already had something programmed into it. But let's say you have a game of 16kB, you could have as much as 47103 bytes of RAM if you'd like to. Why? The first $0000-$07FF is used by BIOS, so there's "only" $F7FF left for ROM and RAM of your choice. But as demonstrated in Sean Riddle's Multi-Cart build - it's quite easy to add a bank-switcher to use even more memory for a game, a whole '040-circuit could be used using the proper switching (that's 512 kB)!

The first three Pac-Man cartridges were built on modified SABA#20 (Chess) carts, all the upcoming carts will be built from scratch on brand new PCB:s and new components (well as new as they come, NOS would perhaps be more correct). The game is still the same. Perhaps I should make a post in "Marketplace" instead.

First working prototype: Now there are two finished PCB:s that I'm going to build Pac-Man cartridges of, I'm planning on getting as much money for these two as possible to be able to buy parts to build more. The first and second all-new Pac-Man built from scratch! Are you interested in buying one of these, please reply in thread or via message/e-mail with your bid. I might put them on eBay or similar but I thought I should ask here first. In the total series so far this will be #4 and #5, and as before I'll add the buyer's name on the back label (or any name the buyer prefers), see previous posts.

Almost ready for manufacture... I'll build the first prototype tonight, if it all works out OK I'll start taking pre-orders.

And now there's three of them:

Sean Riddle built a dumper for the Channel F carts and also the 3851 program storage units that are usually used with the CPU-circuit. I'm guessing the Videobrain has at least a CPU and one of these 3851-circuits unless they have a 3850 (CPU), a 3853 Static Memory Interface and plain Eproms... I have looked into making a manual and box for the Pac-Man game as well. We'll see how it comes out. Main priority is however to make the PCB.

I noticed I'm missing the box for my Fairchild cartridge number 15. If you have a spare one let me know, pictures are most welcome.

My first guess is a bad RF-cable.

I only miss cartridge #19 now - and I guess that's the hardest one to find except for Democart 2... I could use a better looking #18, let me know if you've got one.

That's a good question, I don't know, I haven't checked, as I can get the original interface circuits I don't really care about that right now. If I was to make a replacement I'd make sure it works like the original one to make sure that it would work with any future programs as well.

Well... mass-production is perhaps a bit exaggerated, but I'll probably build them on demand as soon as I've sorted out the details.

What's CTCW?

It's running as fast as possible, I've put a lot of effort in trying to shorten code and speed things up (counting cycle times of routines) and currently that's the best I could do. The most time consuming are the necessary delays in graphics plotting, these have been shorten as much as possible. In MESS there's no need for them, but a real unit will get distorted graphics if it's set to small. For a "professional" Pac-Man player it should be no great effort to play through all levels... A mediocre player like myself runs out of lives after a few levels and set high score around 50000 perhaps. To be able to run your own programs you need a memory interface circuit, it's a co-processor of the F8 that gives you a full address bus that the F8 processor system doesn't originally have. Communication between CPU an co-processors uses five control lines and an 8 bit data in/out-put, the control lines makes the built in registers (like the program counter) in all co-processors change according to set rules. Sending 00000 on the control lines makes something happen in all chips and so on up to 11111... There are fairly detailed information about this on http://www.veswiki.com in one of the pdf-files. You could of course get a "Program Storage Unit"-chip and thereby eliminate the need for a memory interface, but I don't think these exist in a programmable version, only as "masked roms". Another option is to use a FPGA-circuit or similar to emulate the function of the memory interface, a large enough FPGA-circuit will probably hold all available programs as well. As there aren't any detailed information (in the pdf mentioned above) what exactly happens at all control line states this option is a bit tricky - not that anyone tried it (yet) as far as I know. It's a little tricky.

Now there's two of them: