Viso
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Posts posted by Viso
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Crossbow, your image is labeled incorrectly. What you have listed as "Adj", the center pin, is really the connection to common ground. The other pins are right; in takes a source of +7 to +15 or +18 volts, and the out pin has +5 volts.
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Maybe you could make a modified River Raid that starts at level 1024?
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FYI: The story of Snow White is in the public domain. It is not a creation of Disney. So Disney is powerless to do anything to prevent the release of the game. While they do drive copyright extentions to protect their rodent, they cannot grant protections to something that was already public property when they used it.
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If only new games are to be supported, the additional sound device wouldn't even need to be a POKEY or POKEY clone. As long as it can be used effectively in the system, proper bus interface for example, it could be put to use by new games. The only real problem would be support for playing games that use a POKEY without the cartridge (CD-ROM, copmputer download, etc). I've been told that only Ball Blazer uses a POKEY, so I don't think that'll be a big issue.The onboard POKEY clone was what I was after for, so developers wouldn't have to find them, and still have good sound.
I'm envious. If only my soldering skills were good enough to solder to the 7800's PCB . . .I have a 7800 that has been modified to output S-Video and this is the single most important mod you can make, in my opinion.I agree though -- RF, no matter how you do it, sucks.
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S-video eh? What about good ol A/V?If the schematics for it were put up, a built in POKEY would be cool, though I don't know what the point of it would be, other then to be a good help to new 7800 homebrews.
There are readilly available adapters that convert S-Video to composite video, so it shouldn't be a problem. POKEY is a custom chip, so its availablity may be too limited unless a clone can be made. The clone would only need to handle sound, so that should help.
About the CD-ROM thing, it is possible to get a microcontroller to interface with IDE (see http://www.barrymichels.com/ide/). Most, if not all, such projects focus on using hard drives. This means they don't support ATAPI, which is used to send SCSI commands over IDE and is used by all IDE CD-ROM drives, and they don't support ISO-9660. That leaves a lot of work to be done. The project at the link I gave uses 16-bit RAM. That means 16-bits of data at each address. I think the 7800 will need 8-bit RAM.
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Enjoy the system!
The different date codes may be common. I just checked my power supply and its date code is 2284 compared to 2484 on the system.
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S-video? Ah what the heck, go for RGB Scart, even better!Hmmm do Americans know what that is though?
I bet most don't. The Stella and Maria chips output signals roughly equivalent to chroma and luma signals. This makes S-Video easy, if you can do the soldering, and makes RGB considerably more difficult.
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Ok, here are some wild ones:An extendable reset-switch (on my 7800, I hooked the reset button up to a 9-pin male adaptor such that I could plug a controller into it, hit the button, and it would reset the game).
Junie's Ultimate 15 VCS takes this idea much further -- all the console switches are available to controllers. Of course, you need a new controller to go with it. I'm working on hooking up unmodified Playstation controllers to Atari 2600's and 7800's and I plan to support the U15VCS in addition to unmodified consoles.
I've mentioned these two issues before: S-Video and RCA audio out, and some way other than a cartridge to load a game, with support for 7800 games. It would be difficult to make a system read data from a floppy or CD (not audio), but it is easy to get a microcontroller to talk to a computer over a serial connection. I've done that. It is also easy to connect the microcontroller to an RS-485 style link, as opposed to RS-232, so that Cat 3 cable can connect a microcontroller and a computer more than 15 feet apart (RS-232 limitation). Much more, in fact. And it should be easy to make a little RS-232 <-> RS-485 converter box. On the computer end, it is easy to write a POSIX compliant C program to work with the serial port. That allows a lot of computers and OS's to be supported. I did that recently, too.
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I looked at the schematics for the system some, and unless I'm mistaken, the port doesn't even offer a connection to any of the data and address lines in the system. Instead, it seems to be a way by which an external device can provide RF audio and Maria style video to the RF modulator in the 7800. I don't understand the usefullness of doing that from a techcnical standpoint.
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Curt, atari70s is trying to track down the earlist production 7800 units, and atari70s hopes to figure out a way to identify the ordering of the units as they were produced by the serial number. Like identifying one as the fith unit made, for example. But then, they may well have been produced in parallel.
Why figure this out? Well, it sure isn't much of a challenge to figure out the age and ordering of the prototypes anymore.
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To add to the list, I have a copy of Asteroids and a copy of Joust that also have the spring-loaded protector.
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I have 2 - 1984 - 7800's and 2 others from the later periodMy first one was brand new off the shelves sadly i dont have the box anymore
i payed $89 for the new one and $10 for the other 3 i own total and out of 4 systems i only have 2 power suppliesIf you're adventurous enough, I doubt it would be difficult to modify a couple of the 7800's to take a more conventional cylindrical shaped plug for power. The only real problem would be finding a 9V AC-DC adapter. The 7805 voltage regulator in the 7800 will take 15v, but I wouldn't be surprised if that makes it overheat in this case.
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Curt, do you have a production 7800 with a date code of 2484 or earlier?
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I hope the project succeeds, Curt. It would also be really nice if it had S-Video out, RCA audio out, and the ability to play games that are not on cartridges. I've occasionally thought about trying to fix that last issue using ethernet, TCP/IP, and either FTP or HTTP. It is possible, but wouldn't be easy, and I'm busy with another project at the moment.
Still, any new Atari console that doesn't need to have games on cartridges is assured to get a few sales, almost no matter how it's done. I just hope it doesn't require a Windows PC somewhere.
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I'm surprised that images of the boxes aren't somewhere on the AtariAge site. I've got a box for an 84 unit, complete with stickers over the parts advertising turning the 7800 into a computer. I don't have a digital camera handy, but I could borrow one in the next few days.
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I've been having trouble controlling direction with the Joypads, too. I have no such problem with the Proline joystick, but I'd like to play more than about 10 minutes before quitting for the day.
Because of these problems, I've been working on a way to connect a Playstation controller to an Atari system. I've got a setup reading data out of the Playstation controller, and soon I'll be working on the first attempt at emulating an Atari 7800 joystick.
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On the underside of the PCB, you'll find some text printed in a corner, including the date manufacture. The format is WWYY, where WW is the week number, and YY the year. Mine is 2484. You'll need to remove the RF shielding to see this, but it is no problem to put it back into place.
I just happened to notice what appears to be the initials "DJS" used as part of a solder trace on the bottom. How's that for an easter egg?
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I personally really enjoy Wipeout 3, a very addictive racing game. What must have been a prototype of the first Wipeout made an apperance in the movie Hackers, but what is in the movie is very different from Wipeout 3.
Also, Hydrothunder, an incredibly fun game in the arcades, is not very fun at all on the Playstation.
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scrummy, with the Linux kit for the Playstation 2, running things like Stella and MAME on the PS2 is not far away. I wouldn't be surprised if a recompile alone wasn't enough, but someone who knows what they're doing shouldn't have much trouble.
As for the X-Box, as soon as someone can get Linux running on it, the already existing x86 binaries of Stella and MAME my run fine on it. I'm sure someone is trying to get Linux running on it. I may well buy an X-Box then because MS losses money on it
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The website looks nice, although a few parts aren't quite lined up. Given the state of HTML, that is perfectly acceptable.
But 20+ Flash object on a single page ?!?! That is ridiculous. Are you sure you can't find a way to present the information without using so many Flash things or other plugins?
I almost didn't notice while using Mozilla, but I decided I would try Internet Explorer since the claim was made that the pages were designed with IE in mind. It asked me once for each Flash object if I wanted to download Flash. Clearly Microsoft's fault for thinking that everyone would want to install every plugin ever used (can you say security risk?), but still really obnoxious.
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I really have no dislike of the 7800 -- I'm working on some hardware gizmo now that I decided early on had to support it -- but I don't see making a new 7800 clone as anything but an odd academic exercise until there are more really great games for the system.
Besides, if someone wanted to make a console for classic games, they might do better to see it as an exercise in making a new cheap console rather than make a clone. The option to chose modern parts alone would make it much easier. A much faster processor could be used without bringing up the price much, if at all, and could allow for games written in C, which means more games sooner. And ethernet could be used to download software -- you don't really want to use cartridges again. Even a clone of a 7800 should try to address that problem.
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If they're going to charge $200 for a system, they should at least give it S-Video and RCA audio outputs. If only I had the skill to solder to my 7800's PCB, it would have these features already.
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quote:
Originally posted by Glenn Saunders:For instance, Freespace II is an excellent game. It's just that it's yet another scripted mission-based space game. I haven't tried the online multiplayer component, though. There don't seem to be anymore players online for that game, or X vs.Tie.It just seems that the genre has faded out of popularity.When I was a kid it was a dream come true to be able to play a game that made me feel like Luke Skywalker. Today it's sort of anticlimactic, at least when I'm thrust into the middle of a linear scripted scenario vs. a randomized freeforall ala Star Raiders and Battlesphere.
Have you taken a look at Terminus? It sounds like its scripting is much more open, and you have some to a lot of choice over what missions you do, depending on what kind of character you choose. What you do, and what other players do, affects the outcome of a number of events in its universe. I would have bought this game long ago, but I only recently got a computer that *might* be able to run it.
In any case, Terminus sounds like a game that would give you a better sense of being someone like Skywalker, or in my case, Han Solo, because it isn't so linearly scripted.
Also: Newtonian physics! That would sure make Wing Commander a *lot* different.
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Here's another fun one to categorize: the Japanese simulation game where you pilot a 747 and take passengers from one airport to another and have to do it on time. It is a Playstation 2 game. Silly Japanese
Plus, how about those games that revolve around music, like Frequency? Are they Space Invaders shooting notes?
I suppose networked capture the flag type games, like BZFlag, are Pac-Man + Video Chess games? The strategy is totally unrepresented in the five categories as is the requirement for teamwork.
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Dan Boris has a site with lots of goodies. Go take a look:
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I've killed my CX2600
in Atari 2600
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Those values look good. Seems like the voltage regulator isn't the problem. Unfortunately, I don't have another suggestion, other than see if there is something in the system that gets *very* hot after being on for a short while. That may not help, though.