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BigO

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About BigO

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    http://atariage.com/forums/topic/262372-closedone-trak-play-atari-2600vcs-games-with-your-5200-trak-ball/

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  1. BigO
    I found these desoldering irons to work significantly better than the squeezy-bulb type. Not terribly expensive.
  2. BigO

    Kinda liking "Resident Alien".

    1. ls650

      ls650

      I think the show would be very ordinary, but Alan Tudyk is great at playing an alien "fish out of water" character.

    2. BigO

      BigO

      Agreed. It's his acting talent that makes it work.

       

      The voice he uses in the narration is extremely familiar, but I can't place where else I've heard it. Not sure it was him but very similar. Somewhere.

  3. BigO
    Sheesh. No wonder I didn't have one back when I was free-school-lunch eating, poor rural kid. That would have been multiple summers' worth of picking and selling wild blackberries and "pop bottle hunting". I have three of these things now. I have arrived!
  4. BigO

    Since I last flew, I've had titanium implants in my neck, my right knee, then my left knee. Will be interesting next week when I fly.

    1. Show previous comments  4 more
    2. Rogerpoco

      Rogerpoco

      I have titanium implants in both ears-I actually have two cards I keep in my wallet, one for each, and they are "passes", so to speak, I believe my Doc said they *might* help me out, but not guaranteed.

      Had cholesteotomas in both ears, they burst open, their enzymes "melted" my ear bones, ugh.

      Still, the implant itself isn't a "structure", it's a "machine"(a "bell", with a pin that hits it), so I insist that I am bionic!!!

      :D

      (Not too concerned with ID theft[could only help my credit...], and I don't think there's anything too revealing here).

       

       

      imp.jpg

    3. BigO

      BigO

      Those tiny little bones were replaced with titanium? Interesting.

       

      I knew a guy who had been deaf in one hear for many years. Then they fixed it by, as I understood, replacing the bones. This must have been what they did. 

    4. Rogerpoco

      Rogerpoco

      Haha, yes, @BigO -

      I had hearing difficulty my whole life, but the problem actually really surfaced when I was playing guitar with a Friend one day, got dizzy and tried to stand up and just fell over, my equilibrium was shot.

      So it was almost, but not quite, "emergency surgery", the enzymes were gonna eat their way into my brain(my left cochlea had to be "patched"), which would have really sucked, I suspect, but yes, it destroyed my ossicles in both ears, was odd to have it bilaterally, at the same time, but is how it happened.

      Yes, it's like a tiny cone, with a needle inside that vibrates, and I guess it emulates the vibrations one would get from real ear bones-TBH, I really don't notice ANY difference whatsoever, I just "don't hear that well", never did, never will, the titanium replacements are perfectly fine really, I CAN hear.

      I just don't like to listen.

      :D

      (Kidding).

       

       

  5. BigO
    I had a lot of mechanical drag and roughness in the paddle control on one unit. It was due to wear and crud between the knob and the other piece of plastic that the knob passes through. Cleaned the area and applied a very light coat of silicone grease to fix the issue. I've seen at least one other person post the same issue.
  6. BigO
    That isn't what I meant. I know it's a matrix. I'm talking about which face of the glass the zebra strip is contacting, not the polarity of the connection. I should have used the term face instead of side, I suppose. (As a matter of trivia, according to my research, the polarity of the connection is reversed frequently under normal operating conditions to prevent damage to the display. There's a specific pattern/timing fed from the processor to the controller that causes the controller to reverse the polarity of the signals.) If the reflective material were attached to the wrong surface, then the conductive traces would be on the top faces of the pads instead of the bottom side when the LCD is installed with the reflective surface down. I think the symmetry would let that happen. I don't have one of the LCD's in front of me at the moment. Again, it's a very unlikely scenario. But, it's not expensive to check.
  7. BigO
    A really dumb, far-fetched, out-of-left-field question: did they assemble the LCD backwards, with the reflective surface stuck on what should be the front? If that were the case, I believe the symmetry of the display would allow it to be physically installed. It's pretty hard to see those transparent conductive traces, but held in the light a certain way and watching the parallax as you move the display does let you see which side they're on (at least on one of the OEM displays that I de-installed and other bare glass LCD's I've tinkered with). However, if 5-11 tested every unit, then this unlikely scenario would be rendered un-possible.
  8. BigO
    Got mine swapped out today. Nice, crisp and clean display. Functions perfectly.
  9. BigO
    No, the one in the Atari paddle is 1,000,000 ohms The one in the Microvision is 10,000 ohms. Okay, technically it would electrically function and wouldn't hurt anything. But for every degree of rotation you would get 1000 times the movement that you would get with the original. It would be unplayable. The pot in the Microvision is probably okay, or salvageable by cleaning. I use Deoxit that is made for cleaning and lubricating potentiometers.
  10. BigO
    Got my screen today. Hoping to have time to open it and swap it into my main unit this weekend.
  11. BigO
    https://www.amazon.com/Analog-NTSC-Tuner-Demodulator-Output/dp/B01KC03BQ2/ Not an endorsement of this unit, but I have a much older analog "demodulator" that works great. Connecting it between my 2600 and Sharp Aquos 60" composite input yielded *a lot* less lag than connecting the 2600 to the NTSC tuner in the TV. I think mine may have been made by RCA. Using the TV's tuner, I was completely unable to play Circus and Kaboom due to the lag. Using my external "demodulator" (because it sounds more important than "tuner") hooked up to the TV's composite input I was able to play both games. Still some visible lag, but much better than the direct option.
  12. BigO
    It seems like, according to my email notifications, I miss everything. I've been in a couple of times and there was no visible activity. But I get emails that tell me what i missed. Then i read the emails of disjointed pieces of conversations and realize I'm still not missing anything. Gotta figure out how to shut down those emails so I don't know about what I'm not missing.
  13. BigO
    Kind of off topic but, "This site contains technical information about the Atari 260 game system." S/b 2600.
  14. BigO
    Just stumbled across this old post while looking for something else. Since the OP didn't report back, I thought I'd comment with my experience for anyone looking at this down the road. The outputs of the 4538's would be equivalent signals to what trackball joystick emulators use as joystick signals. I tried to pick these signals off to add joystick emulation capability to a CX53 enhancement kit I built years ago. The attempt was essentially a failure. The retriggerable one-shot configuration results in a minimum pulse width that is too short compared to a typical JS emulator, so the movement is choppy and you have to spin the ball really fast to get it to steady out. If you want a workout, it might be fine. Otherwise, you'd have to change the RC timing component values in the circuit to get it to behave as a workable joystick emulator. If I recall correctly, I looked into externally paralleling in some components to change the timing and I found that I'd have to actually break into the circuitry. As I was going for easily reversible, no-solder adaptation, I bailed on that idea. (I don't like playing JS games with a trackball anyway).
  15. BigO

    Galagon arrived. Hope to get some quality time with it later today.

    1. johnnywc

      johnnywc

      Thanks for the support, I hope you enjoy it! :) If you do and feel inspired, please consider leaving a review in the AA store, we developers love that sort of stuff. ;)    Have fun!

    2. BigO

      BigO

      I'm not particularly good at it. And I wasn't a Galaga player in the arcades. I liked playing the WIP, and was really impressed by the visuals achieved on the 2600, so it really was almost as much about supporting the homebrewers as it was a love of the game.

       

      On the other hand, I wouldn't buy a game I didn't like just to support the cause. I mean, I'll buy multiple boxes of Thin Mints, but I'm not spending good money on those nasty coconut things. :)

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