BigO

I'd forgotten until this recent posting, but I had a 2600 cartridge that was labeled as belonging to a doctor's office. I'm not even sure if I still have that one. Now I'm going to have to hunt for my old post about it...

I think it's a fine idea, by the way. That wasn't meant as criticism. If I were sitting on a hoard of dead Microvisions, I'd be tempted at least. My piddly collection of 3 units including the deconstructed one (that I use for testing and development - never finished) just won't yield much profit. Back when I was spending time looking at every LCD toy in every thrift store for a usable replacement screen, Microvisions were cheap. I found a receipt from 2010 the other day for a dead unit with several games for $15. I expected the introduction of new screens to bump up the value of existing screen rot victims. Maybe that hasn't happened. I see a "parts only" unit on eBay with 4 games with starting bid of $10 so there might still be some margin to be had even if one hadn't cornered the market on dead units a few years ago.

Heh. That's funny. In case you forget? I actually like carts with people's names and labels and such on them. Feels like history. I bought a collection of Odyssey2 carts that had handwritten, masking tape labels on them. Sadly, the adhesive has dried up and many of the labels are gone. But I do have an O2 game catalog with handwritten reviews and comments about some of the games.

Listen kids! That sound could be made only by an adult human sitting on a pile of dead Microvisions. 😜

Back In The Day

The controller ports are also a little bit subject to damage from repeated connect/disconnect actions. I've seen more of those than failed cartridge ports (but a very small sample size). If extension cables are used (with or without a pretty panel), the controller could be connected/disconnected at an easily, externally replaceable junction point. Some might also find it convenient to be able to swap controllers without accessing the back side of the console. As far as how the connectors would be solidly presented at the front, I can think of at least a couple of options so I'm sure that you could come up with something workable. (Side note: I've found some wood-look vinyl plank flooring that makes a passable woodgrain panel overlay. Though not exactly Atari, it's way better than contact paper). Just a thought. Ignore without concern.

If you could work out a way to extend the controller ports to the front of the console with (short) cables and a panel of some sort, that might make a nice companion piece to this product. (Relevance: protecting the console controller ports)

To re-say another way what others have already said, the limit would depend on how you define the rooms in your code.

If there's room, I was wondering if it would richen the game play to have a maybe once-per-level last ditch possible-panic-save feature. Assuming that you don't already use the up/down directions: Since the joystick has 2 dimensions and the normal game play is 1 dimensional, maybe pushing the joystick up could give a brief, temporary speed boost to outrun the ghost when it's just barely going to catch you. - Sorta kinda like shields in Asteroids that deplete when used. - Or, like the for sure lesser-known, Colony 7 which has a once per level panic button that kills all of the enemies on the screen at once (I've only played the 2600 version). - Or, with a bit more complexity, like the Turbo Boost button in Galaxy Quest (movie) where holding the button down too long incurs dire consequences. "You don't hold the turbo down, it's for quick boosts!" Though, I'm not really sure what the Pac-Man equivalent would be for a cracked beryllium sphere. Maybe he is a beryllium sphere... (I suppose in the alternate don't-get-a-C&D-from-Namco version, this feature might be "a hit of catnip". 🙂)

When I first saw the game reveal on the ZPH YouTube channel, it occurred to me that this concept could probably be turned into a 1 Dimensional LED array game with different colors, brightness level, and flashing representing the various playfield elements and their various states: Pac, dots, power pellets, ghost. I'm not much of a Pac-Man player, but I'll have to give this a try.

I imagine that, from an operator perspective, the primary question would be about the cost, and terms, of leasing vs financing.

To quote the great Ralph Malph, "I still got it".

No. And I think I haven't thrown it out yet. I'll check when I get home.

I came here just now looking for the exact same functionality. I was thinking that if there were a filter list of forums to select under the Create Stream screen, that would do what I want. Or, in a more streamlined UI, a filter option for "Forums I follow" on the Create Steam screen.

Interesting.

A digital voltmeter takes x amount of time to sample and read what the voltage is. If there's an intermittent signal (or rapidly changing), the voltmeter may well just not be fast enough to know it's happening. Have you set a trigger on the logic probe to capture a small window of time and view that waveform stretched out to see if there are a bunch of high/low alternations in a short period of time? Probably more properly done with an oscilloscope. Caveat: I don't know off hand what the RIOT considers to be a LO input, but it's likely not clear down to 0 volts with respect to ground. If your logic probe has a lower threshold for LO than the RIOT chip, the logic analyzer may not even trigger even though the RIOT does see the signal as a LO. Desoldering the switch, or physically manipulating the switch still seems like a decent troubleshooting idea given the described symptoms. Maybe just turn the circuit board over so gravity isn't pulling downward (toward the active position) on the mechanical bits in the switch?

Yeah, I like that idea. Maybe it's just barely making contact when in the allegedly open position. Maybe just lifting up on the stem of the switch or pulling it outward or some other manipulation could indicate the mechanics of the switch to be the problem.

Just speculating, since I don't really have the answer. Maybe when it's in input mode there's an internal pullup on that RIOT pin that's failing? But you've changed the RIOT. I don't have the schematic available at the moment and haven't ever seen this problem myself. But, if I were trying to troubleshoot it, I might be tempted to try attaching a pullup resistor (10K or something pretty big) on that input line to see if that settles it down. I have no idea what you should do, but that's what I think I would do. As always, proceed at your own risk. Given that the line in question can't be attached to any peripheral devices through any ports, I would think its role should be pretty well nailed down to just an input, so I can't see how an external pullup would break any game functionality or how a pullup resistor would accidentally drive some transistor circuit unexpectedly. Still, why is it behaving this way? An oscilloscope or logic probe applied to the RIOT pin would show if some weird signal is getting applied. Maybe hit the RIOT with freezer spray while it's acting up? (Upside down "canned air" works for me on the rare occasion that I need it. Keep your appendages out of the stream.) Good luck.

I've used mine a fair amount for testing ICs while repairing old arcade machines.

I have connected the RF from my 2600 into the F connector on my HD TV. The lag through the digital tuner was much, much greater than demodulating/tuning the RF down to baseband video and using the RCA A/V inputs on the HD TV. Through the TV's built-in tuner, I could not play paddle games (Kaboom!, Circus) due to the delay. Using the external analog tuner to feed A/V into the same TV, the paddle games were playable. Just barely, but playable. An old school VCR is probably going to provide a video signal with much less lag than any modern digital tuner/demodulator. Of course, you still have to do something with that baseband video to get it to play nicely with HDMI. I currently wish I'd bought every one of those external analog tuners that I ever saw (which really wasn't more than a handful).

If your 2600 is unmodified, the RCA connector supplies an RF Modulated analog signal that has to be demodulated or "tuned" at some point, which is likely what your VCR was doing. After that, there seems to be a number of converters available that will convert the baseband video and audio signals (A/V) to HDMI. In lieu of the VCR or other analog tuner/demodulator, one could modify their 2600 to output the A/V, bypassing the RF modulator so that tuning/demodulation is not necessary to arrive at the signal that a to-HDMI converter could accept as input.

Having seen a general theme running through a number of Atari2600land's homebrew games, I can't help but wonder if he suggested changing the name to something like "Pot of Stew" or "Bowl of Canteloupe". 😁

For that authentic Activision vibe.

When I read this, I think "Supercharger". Scan and decode 2D barcode (QR, DataMatrix, what have you) Encode as audio (FSK?) compatible with supercharger. Stream decoded audio out through a Supercharger compatible phone plug. Supercharger allowed for multi-tape game loads, so the scanning of multiple 2D barcodes should be workable. Superchargers seem to be fairly rare so probably not an ideal solution. I don't know the architecture well enough to answer myself, but I wonder if an alternate firmware for a multicart (e.g. Harmony) could make it receive a digital stream via the USB port and load the stream contents to RAM like it would otherwise do with a file from an SD card. I know this is kind of circumventing/bypassing/ignoring the StellaRT as real hardware angle, but I thought I'd ramble it out here anyway.

The quick and dirty "fix" is to get a controller extension cable. Either you remove the risk of damaging the console by plugging/unplugging at the cable end instead, or you reduce the risk of damage by plugging/unplugging a better fitting extension cable at the console port. Close examination of the joystick plug may show some place where the outer part of the plug is dragging on the inner part of the socket. In that case, you might be able to whittle away the offending material. If the problem is more directly related to the contacts, you could also consider replacing the joystick cable. Determining the root cause of the problem may suggest some other way to address the issue. (I don't know how/if the Quadtari supports other controller types.)