BigO

Once y'all have that circuit worked out ("Dejittifier", "Dejitterator" ?) it should definitely be posted in its own standalone article. I think the ideal jitter reduction solution would be something pre-fab that would plug in between the console and the paddle controller. (Admittedly, I haven't studied the circuit in enough detail to see if it can even possibly address that scenario.) That was my original intent which is different from the original original intent of this thread which I derailed. There are quite a few interesting tangents going on here (which make the discussion all the more interesting). In retrospect, I should have started a new thread for my specific issue. It is my goal to be able to create an input to the 2600 from a solid state device which will for all intents and purposes act like a paddle controller. The jitter reduction was a side effect to my needs and a most interesting tangent. I probably muddied the waters by discussing my initial application which included the pot as an input. I worked out a mechanical arrangement to satisfy the immediate need to have a variable gain and centering to allow my controller with hard travel limits to work with existing paddle controller games. A more robust and universal solution would be to have a microcontroller determining the position of the input device (e.g. D/A conversion for a potentiometer in voltage mode) and translating that position to a pulsing output of some flavor which would charge the console's internal cap at a rate proportional to the position of the input device. Using the microcontroller would allow me to readily vary the gain and set the min/max points so that the controller would work effectively with any paddle game even given the physical constraints of the input device. I ultimately want to be able to simulate a paddle controller's "output" using any number of different position sensing devices as inputs. Though this is not quite what I'm planning, you might think of it as making a paddle controller using an absolute rotary encoder as an input device. The natural progression would be to add functionality to emulate a joystick, which should be a much simpler task. I haven't had much time to tinker with this yet, but am looking into device programmers at the moment: looking for an affordable "universal" programmer that will let me program microcontrollers, EPROMS, EEPROMS, etc...

Yeah , I remember seeing that. I was looking at a few , but also kept my distance for a bit. If memory serves me right , he was a newcomer to the AA boards, so I was waiting for others to leave a good word. Consider this a good word left. I bought a few cartridges from him and would do so again if he had more that I wanted.

Hey, thanks krypton85. I was just going to order a couple on speculation that they'd be what I needed. Now I know. I was prompted to check back on this posting when I saw that Curt Vendel had posted a review for the item on the site on 4/4/07, specifying (as others did here) what it actually was: "The item is not a Breakout Box. It is the Atarilab base module. Used in conjunction with various Atarilab add-on kits, you could perform experiements on measuring light, heat/cold, etc..." It'll work for what I want it for in my 2600 tinkerings.

I'm sure it's just the one cable as I've seen other images of the same thing. I found that they have some other stuff I needed so I'm planning pick up one or two of these and report back when I've had time to dissect them.

Might be a good way to construct custom controllers and such. Uh-oh, he's on to me!

I saw another image on eBay of what appeared to be the same thing. If so, the DB-9 has a raised Atari logo molded in to it. I do need a few other electronic tidbits, so I'm looking around on there to see if I can find them there.

Hey, thanks guys. I was hoping to be surprised by something really cool that I couldn't even imagine. Yeah, if there's nothing more exciting about it than that, I've already got my protoboard breakout "box" that I use for messing with my 2600. But, if I were buying at least $24.00 worth of other merchandise at that site, I'd still buy one cuz ya just never know. Heck, for a buck it'd be a fairly inexpensive way to get a cable with a nice molded db9 on it. I'd better hurry, they've only got a little over 700 of them left.

Can anyone tell me what the intended purpose is for this device? I stumbled across it for the first time today. It looks like 8 RCA jacks-in-the-box. Do I need one? http://www.excesssolutions.com/cgi-bin/item/ES455

The business name was actually "Bookman's", local to Phoenix and Tucson. When I was in Tucson last, one of the three stores had a ton of 2600 cartridges. That was at the very beginning of my collecting so didn't get much as I didn't know what I wanted. I hope to get down there again sometime soon. If you're in Tucson, check 'em out. The stores in Phoenix just have a few commons.

I've found quite a few 2600 cartridges at a local "media exchange" shop, part of a small chain. Their practice was to stick some very sticky price tags on the labels of their game cartridges. Then of course they stacked the cartridges in such a way as to hide the price tag anyway. I sent an email to the headquarters explaining how their practice was at least a nuisance to the buyer (me) and offered them no real benefit in merchandising and could reduce the value of the product to the potential customer. I suggested that they might consider instituting a policy of putting stickers only on the plastic parts of game cartridges whenever possible. They sent me back a letter with thanks for the suggestion and $20.00 store credit. I guess sometimes whining pays off.

On the flip side, does anyone have recommendations for an adhesive to reattach my Frogger label?

That's pretty cool, Shawn. Any idea what the actual scale of that is? I saw some 1.5" LCD TV watches somewhere recently, that'd be the way to go. I was thinking about getting rid of this Arcade Mania board game I have. Maybe I should retrofit the little cabinet as a (semi)portable 2600. Was only joking about the keypad controller, Eric. Hooking up the controllers "directly to the chips" isn't much different from plugging them into the ports. Maybe you mean you wouldn't use ports interally. Looking at the schematics of the Joystick and Paddle controllers, I can't see any obvious electrical conflicts that would occur if they're both "plugged in" at the same time. I hadn't looked at it for using just those two controllers. The pins used to implement the potentiometer reading scheme are 5,7,9. The joystick doesn't use those pins. Turning the paddle control shouldn't have any effect as far as I can see. With a "Y" cable installed, I guess that means that a game could use the paddle and joystick from one port at the same time, if the coding could support it. (No idea why you'd do that. Maybe a volume control for the background music? ) The left paddle controller's button maps to the RIGHT movement of the joystick, so you would have that potential conflict. On the other hand, you might take advantage of that fact and wire up for both paddle buttons as those are the same as left and right joystick movement. Use those buttons with the joystick fire button and you've implemented a Track and Field controller.

I don't understand. You're bumping this for what reason? I PM'ed you with a request for a price on the entire pile of stuff (my 2nd PM) and didn't see a response (hence the reason I'm now posting instead). Not sure why you don't want to do business with me, but it is your stuff and your choice. Oh well, there's lots of other fun stuff out there I can spend my hobby budget on.

Fun project, BTW. Good luck with it.

Caveat: I am not one of the requested experts. These are just rambling thoughts that may or may not be meaningful or useful. I'll throw them out here just in case they spark any actual productive comments: Spinner - I don't see how you'll make use of the TurboTwist thing if you're using "real" hardware. It says it works with ps/2 or USB ports. Paddle controllers are a very simple device. Is it that true "arcade feel" you're after with the spinner? Is that the reason for not just putting a $2.00 potentiometer in the panel? Are you trying to implement the driving and paddle controllers with one knob? Without additional electronics, driving controller and paddle controller games can't be controlled with the same device. It is true that the fire buttons are not mapped the same between paddle controllers/driving controllers and the joystick. A set of paddle controllers buttons map to the LEFT and RIGHT of a joystick, if I remember correctly. Switching between Atari controllers (or functional equivalent) without physically plugging and unplugging...I know this doesn't sound elegant, but you could probably switch between controllers using a good old fashioned printer selector switch (A-B switch). I recall seeing them that would permit selection of 1 of 4 devices. One with all 25 pins hooked up could handle the switching of both 9 pin ports at one time and still have leftover pins to pass power to "using this control" lights on the panel. You might even be able to use the same fire button for a joystick as a paddle controller in this way. I've built an electronic version of a device selector that utilized "bilateral switch" IC's so that it didn't really care what the signal was that it was passing through (i.e. I didn't have to worry which "direction" a digital signal was going). I think that same device might work to switch Atari controllers and have been considering testing it for one of my projects. That was my one and only paid electronics consulting gig, in case anyone's keeping score. Using such a scheme, one could put sensors around the cartridge socket to automagically detect which type of controller was needed. Something as simple as a white sticker in a specific location on the cartridge might be detectable by its reflectivity vs that of the standard black cartridge surface (okay, so you might have to put a black sticker on a Coleco cart). Something like that would keep the cartridge fully compatible with the original system and not ruin any "collectible" carts. I remember recently seeing where a standard LED can be used as a light detector so it shouldn't be too expensive to implement. Have you considered two player games? Space Invaders, for one, doesn't require passing a single joystick back and forth between two players. It looks for input from two different joysticks. Maybe that auxiliary port should be on the side or front instead of the back. What? No keypad controller?! Okay, done for now with my knee-jerk thoughts.

Well, you might want to check the shipping on that before you stake that claim. $6.00 for one can! It's a lot more reasonable per can when you buy a case of 6, but if he buys single cans, you'll owe him.

Nice. Did you not listen to what the person typed who so generously offered to GIVE you what you were after?

On the page http://www.atariage.com/2600/programming/index.html, there are two broken links. 1) At the bottom of the "Source Code" section, the "The Dig Source Code Archive" link to http://www.neonghost.com/the-dig/ goes to a site that is no longer anything to do with Dig. 2) In the page footer, the "Drop us a line" link to http://www.atariage.com/2600/programming/contact.html results in 404 error. Thanks for the great site. Keep up the good work. I sent this in an e-mail a while back to [email protected] I didn't get any acknowledgement and the (minor) issues are still there so I'm posting this just in case the information was never received.

Though I see that you can order it from the internet and know that the point was basically moot, I was next door to TJ's at a sporting goods store a few minutes ago, so I went ahead and checked. I'm sure everyone was just dying to know. They've got at least 2 dozen of those 12 oz. cans at $5.49 with no sign of the item being discontinued.

PS3 was launched?

I don't know that it's technically a "board game", but I spied "Tetris 3d Tower" in a thrift store yesterday for a couple of bucks: http://www.firebox.com/index.html?dir=fire...uct&pid=916 It's a Tetris game where you physically drop the pieces into the stack. As the ad copy in the link says, "It’s like being able to stroke a Space Invader or fondle Pac-Man."

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...l=threaded+view I happened to stumble across that thread the other day where the same question was asked. Looks like the orange options button is what you're after.

I've printed out the picture to help me remember. If you've got a clean, near-actual-size shot of the UPC, that might help speed things along.

Wow, that must be some gooood coffee. If my faulty memory permits, I'll drop by the one a couple of miles from my house if I'm out and about in the next few days.