CV Gus

But did it, really? From what I can sort out from Vigo's comments about the 7800, I'm not all that sure that it was really THAT much better than the CV or 5200. It would be interesting for an Opcode and his 5200 equal to tell us what the relative abilities actually were to the 7800. For example, Desert Falcon. We know about the choppy CV scrolling for Zaxxon, but if you designed the screens so no more than two colors (it would still look good) ever entered a space-line, wouldn't you have a smooth scrolling CV version? Maybe the enemies wouldn't be as colorful, but would that matter? And what kind of a version could the 5200 handle? By the way- Upon checking the 5200 version of Ms. Pac-Man, I noticed that the maze colors did not seem to match those of the arcade version at all, in two of the mazes, at least. But they were multi-colored. Why was this, a limitation of the 5200? I understand the mazes in the CV version, but not here. Still, we all can agree on one thing- with the Tramiels running things, the 7800 never had a chance. Hell, they would've doomed the NES.

Oh you're right! Atari never made bad decisions. The first bad one was making the 5200 an A8 based machine. It should have leapfrogged that technology. At very least the 5200 should have added another sprite chip with HW scrolling. At that time, I bought a CV instead. Why? Those controllers truly pissed me off and I already had an 8 bit with a good deal of the games at the 5200 release anyway. Well, bad decisions are one thing, but THIS? Nothing they did at this point really added up, unless Atari was so hopelessly disorganized that one section had no idea what the others were doing. They never had a unified plan. Even in a small company, this is bad; for a company as big as Atari back then, this is a recipe for sure-fire failure of massive proportions! Think about it- no matter what they did, something had to go down- for the count. Release the 7800? Betray the 5200 owners, and get a bad reputation for loyalty. Stick with the 5200? So much for the 7800, then. Release the Atarisoft CV games? They were better than the 5200 versions (not good, since Joust, Pac-Man, and Dig-Dug were popular games), so the CV would've sold better yet. Don't release them? A lot of time, money, and effort gone. Quite frankly, I'm beginning to believe in that rumor about how the 7800 was supposed to have been Atari's next system, but the 1982 release of the CV forced them to quickly come up with something to go against it- which is why the 5200 was "an Atari 400 without a keyboard." It might also explain why a 1984 system was compatable with the 2600, but not a 1982 system. Overall, I prefer the 5200 to the 7800.

Return it? Why? I like it just the way it is. I can choose one of three "regular" dot colors for PM amd PM+, albeit clumsily, I don't mind the Galaxian and key colors, and I like the skip-ahead option. It's great the way it is. This Pac-Man even blows the doors off of the NES version.

The unfinished Joust, maybe. Omega Race. Graphics are horrible, but the play is good. Snake-Pong on Bienvenu's/SET's Amazing Snake. Baseball and Football. Rocky Boxing. Opcode's CV version of Yi-Ar Kung Fu? Tournament Tennis (Imagic). I do not know if you can count Blackjack/Poker, since I'm not sure what exactly you mean.

Ten-Four, thanks- mine is yellow and purple for the Galaxians, and the keys are always different. With mine, you do not have to press both "0" buttons- just one. Since I can skip ahead, out of curiosity I skipped ahead about 256 screens in Pac-Man- it starts over, but with "garbage" on-screen. With Ms. Pac-Man, it was at about screen 134 or so. I recall the arcade version had odd things happen on screen 127, like the maze being upside-down, but with the dots in proper place- finish it, and 99 free games would come up, assuming you hadn't had enough of the game by then... . By the way- are the "holding positions" from the arcade versions here, too- the places where the ghosts will not go? It seems as if maybe I got a bit of an oddball cartridge here...and I am very, very happy with it, esp. the dot color "option" I have! (For some reason, I can't shake the feeling that something else is hidden in this game, too.)

Well, last week I went over those old magazines from 1982, 1983, and 1984, the only conclusion I can draw is that the 7800, which must've been in the works at least in 1983, was intended to go up against the CV. It was not supposed to go up against the NES, since again, there was absolutely no mention of it anywhere. Remember, Nintendo originally approached Atari to market it here in America, so Atari could not have thought much of it back when the 7800 was supposed to have been released, even if they had known of it beyond a mere abstract. The whole way Atari dealt with the 5200 and 7800 was doomed to failure. Once they released to 5200 to match the sudden threat of the CV, they sealed their own fates: either stay with the 5200 until the 7800 became pretty pointless, or release the 7800 and dump the 5200 (angering Atari owners- bad for business). Look at games like Robotron: 2084, Ms. Pac-Man, and Centipede- for crying out loud, Ms. Pac-Man and Robotron had only been released for the 5200 in 1983, and now they launch the 7800, dumping the 5200, with the same games in 1984 that weren't THAT much better? If the 5200 was so much better, why wasn't this reflected in the games? Why wouldn't Atari have just stuck with the 5200, instead of trying to match a third-generation CV with a fourth-generation system? Why were Pac-Man, Joust, Dig-Dug, and Galaxian obviously better? Who does that for an inferior rival system?

No, everything else seems to be o.k., except that the keys and Galaxian symbols are differently colored. The key colors, for example, never match; the ones on the side are different from the ones on-screen. The dot colors are the "regular" dots- the power pills don't seem to change. I don't consider this a "defect," since I LIKE the white dots! Also, I have my choice of the three colors. Maybe the Galaxian symbol is part yellow- hard to say- but the other color is purple, no doubt about it. On the side, though, it is red, yellow, and blue, very clearly. I don't care, though; it still looks good. And didn't that symbol in 7800 Dig Dug have similar colors? How about a screenshot of the screen, with the Galaxian symbol on the playfield? By the way- I love the skip-screen option (button 0)! It's great for practicing on the higher levels! This game just gets better. Thanks to the Lee Pattern, last night I broke 100,000 points, and I have managed to reach the Pancake levels. I haven't had a chance to do that since 1983!

Well, here it is, as I promised: J6: 9=BLACK 7=PURPLE 8=GREEN 6=BLUE 1=BROWN 2=RED 3=ORANGE 4=YELLOW J5 9=WHITE 7=PURPLE 1=BROWN 3=ORANGE 2=RED 4=YELLOW 5=GREEN 6=BLUE You'll notice that a number of points have the same color wires. No problem. All you have to do is use a multi-tester to see what wire goes where. Keeping in mind that J5 is controller port one on a CV and J6 is 2, you touch the end of the wire in the Roller Controller and see which of the two plugs going to the CV itself it goes to. For example, say both yellow wires are disconnected. You use a multi-tester on one of them and see that it leads to the plug that goes to player port 1 on the CV. That means you solder it to point J5-4. Obviously, the other must go to J6-4. If your multi-tester prong is too big to fit in a controller plug hole, just strip a metal garbage tie and wrap it a few times around one of the prongs (use an alligator clip or a bit of tape to hold it there), and use the other end for the holes. If you do not have a multi-tester then just take any 1.5V battery (like a flashlight battery), a bulb off of a set of Christmas tree lights, and wire it together. Cut one of the wires, attach a metal garbage tie to each cut end, and use those as prongs- if the bulb lights up, you found it. The current should not hurt the wires, as long as you do it quickly.

This is also the best version of Pac-Man and Plus I've ever played, and this includes the hand-held and NES versions, as well as the 2600, 5200, and others from long ago. Absolutely. Even the title screen is great. I intend to write a lengthy review for this game. Be assured already, it will be extremely favorable. Using the Lee pattern again for PM+ was unbelievable. Hell, I'd like to play it right now. Oh, since it's a bit hard to tell on my television: are all of the prizes multi-colored? How about Super Pac-Man in the future?

The Galaxian symbols in mine are either cyan or light blue (bit hard to tell on that old television), and purple. Actually, I like the white dots...the power pills are usually yellow; in the case of other dots, it's all of them.

What the heck, I've opened up my controller quite a few times. I'll do it tonight again, and see if I can map out what goes where. Do you know how to find PIN numbers on a chip? Maybe that can help you follow a schematic to figure out what goes where. Here's how: 1) With the part of the chip with the writing up, look for a half-circle "dent" on one end or the other; OR, a small dot in the corner. 2) With the dent side up, or the dot on the upper left, a 14-pin chip would go like this: ........DENT...... ..DOT 1-----------------14 2-----------------13 3-----------------12 4-----------------11 5-----------------10 6-----------------09 7-----------------08 You start from the upper left, then go around counter-clockwise. If you know the pin layout on a controller plug, then you can trace it that way. Good luck. I'll try to get the info as soon as possible.

Unless I'm mistaken, the bonus symbols on the side of the screen are made with background tiles, while those that appear in the maze are sprites. So any differences you see between the two reflect the limitations of the ColecoVision hardware. EDIT: CARTRIDGE STEALER, I would check my PMs if I were you... Don't come crying to me if you miss this opportunity! That I do not quite understand- why not use those background tile colors for the sprites, too? I noticed a bit of shimmer on the prizes; so I guessed sprites were involved, but couldn't they have had different colors? Oh, one other oddity- the dots in Pac-Man and Pac-Man Plus are sometimes yellow, sometimes light blue, sometimes white. Once this is the case, resetting the game, even on the CV, will not change this; only actually turning the CV off and on will (it seems to be random). Is there a trick to this?

There is no way this particular design can run a CV controller. It has to do with the diodes in the controller, and the fact that UP and LEFT in the module bypass the main potentiometer; this "switches" the polarity around. Even if you build it so the polarities are opposite, you won't succeed because then the other two directions will not work. 7800 controllers are the best by far for it so far. I do not know why, unless the switches in them are better than most others.

Finally received my copy. It's really great- esp. since the Lee Pattern works (mostly) for Pac-Man Plus. I'm curious- why are the Galaxian symbols Red, Blue, and Yellow on the side, but not on the playfield? And so the keys are different, too. The control is the best I've played yet. Even with my digital controller, the 5200 versions do not play as well. Great going, everyone!

No need- I solved the drift problem. Soon, it'll be built. Then...7800 controller for a 5200!

I usually go through the door on the right. I try to absolutely avoid the one on the bottom. My top score is about 25,000. Here are some tips: 1) Robots do not fire from the center. For example, if one is charging you from above and you are a bit to the left, then you can hit him before he can hit you. Likewise, you can fire over the tops of barriers when they cannot. Hence, Robots coming from below your level or from the left and above are more dangerous. Make a note of all of these things; note where you have advantages and disadvantages. 2) Screens with only 2, 3, 4, or 5 robots are the most dangerous. With 9-11 robots, most will destroy each other, and Otto will take longer to arrive- but with only a few, you'll likely have to destroy all of them yourself, and Otto comes in quickly, so get moving, first thing! 3) Practice precise control. There is a situation at the beginning of a screen with a robot above and/or below you, which you can only escape if you move just a bit to the left (this assumes you exit from the right) and shoot up and/or down. This is difficult with a regular 5200 stick. 4) If you cannot get all of the robots, forget it. Try, but it's not worth losing a life over.

I saw those screenshots for Mario Bros.- did you use the "flicker method" for the multi-colored characters? Don't forget that an arcade to home translation doesn't have to be 100% perfect, if a CV won't allow it. Your Ms. Pac-Man does not have multi-colored mazes, since getting the "exact" shape and numbers of dots would not have been possible, but none of us are complaining. Likewise for Rally-X; if it scrolls smoothly, it looks good enough as is. The flicker method you used already goes beyond what a CV can normally do. I just hope my copy of PMC finally gets here.

Thanks again! This is VERY VALUABLE for those of us trying to repair this stuff- it's fine for a schematic to show a "(####)" chip, but you can't test it if you don't know what it's supposed to be doing. This is what made the schematic for the CV Roller Controller so nifty; it DID tell you.

Well, it was inevitable, so it happened... A PROBLEM! The basics work just fine, but the neutral is not stable; it "drifts" and this can throw off the controls, maybe even causing unwanted motion. Over the past two days I've narrowed it down to one likely place, and it's possible that the 10,000,000 OHM resistor I'm using is just too much, since even the slightest variation in current can cause serious problems at that high a resistance. My 5200 controller also might have such fluctuations, but the reistors aren't high enough to cause any problems, really. So, when I can get them, I'll try (most likely again) 470,000 OHM resistors. Incidently, CV controllers do not work. Probably the diodes they use; 7800 and most others I have do not.

Absolutely awful. Almost all of the games on the 5200 were meant for digital controllers. Thanks to mine, I managed 25,000 points on Berzerk.

Obviously true, but you'll note that this was the problem for Player One, mainly- most of the trouble vanished after I desoldered/resoldered those components. So it was elsewhere, too. Did they rush them out, to better compete against the CV? The schematics helped indirectly. Now it works.

Oh, and yesterday I installed the horizontal circuits. So far, everything works as it's supposed to.

Right here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=119395 Scroll down for the diagrams, which are here courtesy of Big O.

Now that's something! Thanks a plenty!

Earlier, I posted information on my digital 5200 joystick. As you could see from the diagrams, it required tearing apart a regular joystick in order to install 2 "normally closed" switches for down and right. But, Sunday, I finally managed a new design that uses ALL FOUR open switches! There is no need to open the joystick. And so, the 9-pin digital joystick to 5200 adapter I'm building will not require the six relays and battery. So far, I finished the vertical. Today...the horizontal. So far, I'm using scrap parts, so progress is slow (some guesswork was involved, and trial and error- what do you want from parts from a 1970's VCR?). The fire might be a bit tricky, but we'll see. As for the 2600 paddles- yes, they work, but the fire buttons are actually left and right movement, so I'll have to install a switch for that. The "keypad" is on the adapter itself. This will be a nice little item.