JohnBuell

This just gets better and better. I'm sorry I'm no help at all with code or ideas, but I'm having a lot of fun watching the progress made in this thread. HA! Love the icons for the splash. Boy does THAT take me back.

The GE is Mono, which is why you don't get the audio tracks... And out of all my tape decks the 1010's all still work for me Well I figured that, I was just surprised it didn't SAY that anywhere.

Here's another vote for the 1010, orange label! Those are the ones made in Japan. It took me buying THREE different 410s before I could get one to work, recently, I got a silver label 1010 and it wasn't as good. The orange 1010 I've had since the 80s and it's not given me ANY trouble. You can find XC12s in great shape, but I don't like the lack of power adapter, and having to have them at the end of the SIO chain. I have also tried a GE DataRecorder, and found out something interesting - it doesn't play back voices on tapes that support it! So any of the educational tapes that exist for the Atari are unusable on the GE.

Just for giggles, I searched tonight for "atari" items on Etsy, which naturally brings up a bunch of unrelated stuff, but someone's making "atari chip pendants" out of...what looks to me like stripped 8-bit cart circuit boards! ARGH! How many carts have given their lives.... Of course there are other Etsy users out there making journals out of old game (2600/8-bit) manuals and catalogs....

I'd love to be able to find more of the 1984 Olympics stuff. I saw someone had an 800XL on ebay with the Olympics logo (although I can't find the listing now). I did manage to find a coffee cup with the '84 logo on Etsy last year though!

I know bumping old threads "isn't cool" but this one should be, if only for the releases of Lynx Poker, Hotdog, Relief Pitcher, and the copies of Solitaire that have already made it onto eBay.

As I expected, I didn't make it myself, but Jason Timmons gave me permission to share his Flickr album here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chiclassiccomp/sets/72157626387339506

Here we go. I did the best I could with the Macro function on my Olympus camera, and resized these in Picasa.

Sure, crappy though it is? I'll have to wrangle the camera back from the wife.

And adding here, for the sake of reference, that the 800XL I'm playing with is an NTSC Rev A2 board.

ARGH. I knew there was a reason I shouldn't be let around soldering irons. And the huge 2nd degree burn across my left knuckles proves it. I just tried this whole thing (as seen in post #1) this afternoon, having ordered 40/60 solder, the resistors, and wire from RadioShack.com. I started with a stock 800XL (not my original, one I got in an auction deal). Now I have an 800XL that outputs sound, and nothing else. I have everything connected, I just don't know if something got short-circuited or WTF happened. That'll teach me not to do one at a time. EDIT (to add): Going back through the photos, everything _looks_ ok - I took out C56 and L5, did a wire from the front of L5 to the front of C3, did the other resistors - the only thing I can think of is, do the directions of the resistors matter? It's been too long since I've played with electronics diagrams to try to remember.... Still only get sound though, dang it!

Wouldn't we have to give up the 6502s to get THAT to work?

I definitely want to give one a try!

I just won another set of cassettes for the education system, only this time the Dorsett branded ones, not the Atari ones. Photos and writeup to come!

THAT is just really cool! I hope whomever wins it does some video or something on it. Would be a great object to preserve.

You know, I just hope that whomever buys it leaves it as the collector's piece, and doesn't try to make a clock or things out of it. AIE!

Looking forward to this! Gives me a good reason to keep one XL and one XE out to play with!

<decided NOT to get in the middle of this side-conversation>

I don't know about the 7800's, mostly because I've never owned one But these keypads work fine on the 8bits. I found code not long ago that would help you confirm keypresses. I intended to use it for a little programming project that I never got around to...

I'll second what Orpheus said - SD cards are cheap, a dedicated SD-USB reader is equally cheap, it's hard to go wrong!

Gah, I don't know if I'll be able to come this year. The dates are a month before our baby is due.

1 for right now, a 2nd if I can manage it after the baby is born.

2 hours were the maximum time between charges for NiCd batteries, back in the day. Saved me a lot of money on alkalines!

I think the idea would be more along the lines of a Wii controller, in that you can combine the existing buttons and D-pad with motion control.

Got mine the other day, great great stuff! Hope you can keep the momentum going!