BigO

I used to feel guilty for cannibalizing these "rare and valuable treasures" (haven't you looked on ebay?). Came here, got over it. Plan to try to make a deal on a recently spotted pile o' Combat carts so I can do my own repros of the rarest of the rare for myself. Will it minimize your guilt if someone else commits cartricide for you? I can go pick up one cart at any time for 50 cents just a short hop from my house. [EDIT]: Though if you're located in deepest, darkest Africa, transportation might be a bit pricey... C'mon, you know you want one. You don't get to lament people's unwillingess to share information if you can have said information right at your fingertips. Add me to the list of people who'd be interested in technical specs required to build my own version of your multicart toy. Have thought about it myself, but haven't mustered the interest or energy to that level. Don't speak FPGA yet, but could always use an excuse to learn. Thanks for sharing. (If you offer a kit or completed unit at a low enough price, I'll be asking to be moved to one of those lists instead. ) No, I'm not expecting you to do the measurements for me. I just thought you might have already made a Atari 2600 PCB yourself and thus already know the exact dimensions of the board outline such that it fits into a shell. I'd also like to know the position and diameter of the drill hole for the shell screw, but I guess I'll have to figure that out myself, since noone seems to be willing to share this kind of information :-( So...somebody could just gut a $0.00 - $0.50 Combat cart and send you the empty shell so you can measure for your specs? Thank for your help! I hoped someone was in posess of a "official" mechanical specification for the cartridge shell and the pcb, but it looks like those documents haven't survived or even did never exist. Since I don't want to cannibalize old cartridges, I'm planning to buy new cartridge shells for my MultiCart. I wonder if the ones from vgwiz and PixelPast are compatible to each other. I somehow doubt that - even old cartridge shells were slightly different to each other, so I'll have to design my pcb to fit one of these in advance. On a different thread, a user called bah posted his measurements of a Atari 2600 and 7800 pcb - I'm going to use that as a reference.

No, I'm not expecting you to do the measurements for me. I just thought you might have already made a Atari 2600 PCB yourself and thus already know the exact dimensions of the board outline such that it fits into a shell. I'd also like to know the position and diameter of the drill hole for the shell screw, but I guess I'll have to figure that out myself, since noone seems to be willing to share this kind of information :-( So...somebody could just gut a $0.00 - $0.50 Combat cart and send you the empty shell so you can measure for your specs?

I was going to ask about the end label being destroyed. It's a bit of a tough spot, opening the cartridge to prove its value when in the process some of its value would be destroyed if its legit. I wonder if the seller knows any surgeons who could use a 'scope to take pictures inside? [Edit]: I now see that the end label question has been addressed to some degree by the seller. But, it's still on there so would make opening the cart difficult, wouldn't it?

I'd be interested in: Flag Capture Real Sports Football Space Attack Towering Inferno I'm sure my puny collection of duplicates wouldn't be of much interest to you in trade: Asteroids, Battlezone (non-dust cover carts with slots in the shell if that means anything), combat, Carnival, Donkey Kong, Dodger Cars (Sears), Night Driver (Sears), Galaxian, Eggomania, Pole Position. What methods of payment are accepted and what would shipping charges be? (ZIP 85051) Forgive my ignorance/blindness, but do I just go that link and somehow make the purchase there?

While I surely hate that anyone would rip off anyone else, I don't see a problem with making reproductions. Maybe a (relatively recent) date printed on the label would be a strong enough indicator without totally ruining the effect. I don't see it as being any different from furniture or cars or anything else that is reproduced. There are thieves everywhere you look. I don't intend to let their moral shortcomings change what I enjoy about life. I was happy to find the Atari 2600 community so active in repros and homebrews. In fact, I think I have at least minimal computer/electronics skills and access to a high end digital press for making labels so have thought about making repros of some cartridges for my personal collection. They'll play just like an original, so they're good enough for me. I may even create a game of my own. Been doing a bit of studying existing source trying to get a feel for it, picked up some vintage 6502 books, downloaded Stella programming reference materials, got my SuperCharger handy and waiting for me to do Colbert's mod... Say, I probably should stop spending so much time reading and writing these posts and get after that programming stuff. I'm also working on a controller that will let me do a bit of a "core" workout while playing my Atari. Ripped up some surplus electronics today to get at some pieces for the prototype. Can't let the Wii people burn all the calories can we? Back to the topic at hand: if I were contemplating spending even hundreds, let alone thousands, on an Atari cartridge from eBay, I'd surely do my homework. Obviously, I have internet access if I'm buying on eBay. It couldn't take more than 20 or 30 minutes to find an image of the genuine article online and enough history to realize that it at least *might* be a scam. (Actually, I'd ask someone to just shoot me for contemplating such a thing, but I'd expect normal people to do their homework.)

I'm also in the market for an EPROM/PIC programmer. The Willem devices certainly looked good enough on "paper". Though I haven't done any deep research in to the details of this aspect but they seem to be "open" which has some appeal in terms of longevity and allowing me to create support for future chips if necessary. On the other hand, in the back of my mind waves a tiny red flag emblazoned with "Cheap Junk - Danger!" And, I'm having an awfully difficult time discerning which device is which model and how many different models actually exist. What problems have any of y'all had with the Willem units?

"[...] the site looks hmm idk if i can trust it." Based on a very recent experience (less than a month ago), I say you can most assuredly trust the Hozer Video site. I got my CD with no hassles whatsoever. It's a rare thing to get more than you pay for these days. I was quite pleasantly suprised by the quality of what I got for the mere pittance of $5.00. I mean the thing comes in a jewel case with professionally printed liner a 32 page soft cover manual, also very nicely printed. Subtracting out the cost of the mailing envelope, labels, tape and $1.59 postage (and whatever chunk PayPal takes) from the total $5.00 that I paid and accounting for the time it took him to package these things up for mailing, it felt like I took advantage of Randy rather than the reverse. I'm still tempted to send him more money . . . if only I weren't so cheap. Just cough up the 5 bucks. You'll be happy that you cashed in your empties or dug change out of the couch or your car's ashtray to make the purchase.

Does there happen to exist a repository of commented (heavily/tutorially/talk to me like I'm 4) source code for some of the classics, e.g. Space Invaders?

BigO is an old nickname. Bestowed upon me by others. Really, it was. ...okay, so it's not really a sordid story. O is the initial of my last name and I got the nickname long before I ever heard of that other meaning of the term.

Not a lot of luck with thrift finds here. Best I ever did was a Tomy Tutor with original cassette interface cable and controllers and 3 game carts. Only once have I found any Atari stuff and that was last night where I picked up 9 relatively common cartridges that I didn't yet have. Up to ~60 in a few months of collecting. Anybody have recommendations for a good readily available cartridge storage/organizer/display thingie?

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