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joesmooth

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Posts posted by joesmooth

  1. Posted

    I'll be heading out to PC5 on Thursday.. Can't wait! :)

     

    I don't have too much to trade, but here are some of the goodies..

     

    * Bachelor Party (the only spare 2600 game I have!)

     

    * "The Adventures of Q*Bert" kids book made by Parker Brothers, 1983

     

    * Verious posters/stickers from Jah Fishs's infamous "Attack of the Killer Memorabilia" German Atari exhibit

     

    * Computer Warriors: The Adventure Begins - The action-packed adventure where the heroic Computer Warriors battle against the evil Virus renegades (AWESOME cartoon on VHS)

     

    * Swordfish (VHS)

     

    * The Stash Book: How to Hide Your Valuables - Could be good to hide your rare Atari games from kids, theives, etc.

     

    * Computers: An Illustrated History (ISBN 3-8228-1293-5) - Some nice pictures of various computers and gaming consoles, including 8-bit stuff.

     

     

    If you're interested in any of the above, let me know and I'll hold it for you. Otherwise, you'll see me making my way around trying to unload the stuff (Cassidy, I *know* you want the kids book). ;)

     

    See ya soon!

     

    Joe

  2. Posted

    Very funny, SS, very funny. :D   Guiness made me part with my beloved Subterranea cart for a box of Joe Grand's Pac Man stickers (and of course gum).

     

    I honestly have giggled about it for a year.  I think I honestly like the gum better :)

     

    Haha! I remember that fondly.. Took some haggling :)

     

    Joe

  5. Posted

    No, the Stelladaptor does not ship with the cable. We wanted to leave that up to the end user, since people have different setups and different length cables that they might want. You'll need a standard Type A-to-Type B cable.

     

    From what I know, the AtariAge store will have 6 foot USB cables shortly, probably after PC5.

     

    Joe

  6. Posted

    Have you thought about a more expensive, more complicated/flexible variation as a future variation?

     

    It's possibility, but we won't make any promises. As I mentioned before, this is a hobby, so I need to be careful of what projects I choose, and how much time and effort they require. Even this "simple, less complicated" device was difficult to design and took a great amount of energy.

     

    We just wanted to provide a cool device for people to play standard-type games on their emulators. That was the goal, and we think we did it :)

     

    Joe

  7. Posted

    The main goal of the design was to be clean, simple, easy to use, and easy to interface. It is a standard HID-class gaming controller and was not designed to be a specialized unit for a particular emulator (or even system). Your idea might work in theory for digital controls (e.g., logic HIGH or logic LOW), but it would not work for paddle data, which is purely analog (based on the voltage of a resistor divider). The beauty of the device is that is can easily be used with other emulators with minimal software changes to them.

     

    Joe

  8. Posted

    1. - Will the Stelladaptor support the second fire button of Atari 7800 Pro Line Controllers? If not, could this be implemented later, possibly by myself?

     

    The second button in the 7800 is not supported. We needed to use that pin for autodetection of the paddles.

     

    2. - I think this was asked before and wasn't answered - Will the Stelladaptor be available for a while, or do I need to order one now as they will be in limited supply?  

     

    The Stelladaptor is NOT a limited run. As many will be made as people want and they will always be available. :)

     

    Joe

  9. Posted

    The encoder for Tempest is a higher resolution than the Indy 500 controller.  I don't think it would work that well.

     

    Though, since you can hack a Jaguar controller with a driving controller to play Tempest 2000 on the Jag, you could use the DC on a Stelladaptor in a Jag emulator (once the emu supports Stelladaptor, obviously) :)

     

    But, with MAME, I don't think a statement can be made about the DC not working well until someone implements it.

     

    Joe

  10. Posted

    Will this adapter allow you to try unorthodox combinations of controllers like the footpedal/driving controller combo that I'm using to develop Death Derby?

     

    The Stelladaptor was specifically designed to support the three original Atari controllers - joystick, paddle, and driving controller.

     

    I don't know what your configuration is for a customized controller, so I can't guarantee that the auto-detection will work. I'm assuming you're using the driving controller to steer and the footpedal to accelerate (taking place of the driving controller button). If you're just hacking combinations of controllers to act as a single contoller (or better said: if Death Derby can be played with a REGULAR driving controller or it HAS to be played with a hacked controller), it might work, but it's completely unsupported.

     

    What about Booster Grip buttons?

     

    Booster Grip buttons are unsupported. We didn't want to risk introducing bugs to our autodetection system, as I've mentioned earlier in the forum in order to add support to non-essential controllers. From what I know, the BG is used in one CBS 2600 game (Omega Race) and just Thrust+ homebrew, so the "need" is fairly small.

     

    Joe

  11. Posted

    Can you use the Driving Controller to play Tempest on MAME??? That would be awesome!!! If not, I know that it's a software issue and that MAME would have to be updated to support it.  

     

    Currently MAME doesn't support the Driving Contoller data from Stelladaptor, but it should be trivial for developers to update MAME. It works great with the upcoming version of z26 with Indy 500 :)

     

    Great job to Joe, Albert, the staff at Pixels Past and everyone else involved in finally bringing a product like this to the mainstream!! It's much appreciated!  

     

    Thanks! We hope you like it :)

     

    Joe

  12. Posted

    @pmpddytim: We made 250 units for our first run.

     

    @Jess: If the later 9-pin controllers are 2600-compatible, then yes, they will work. The pinouts need to be compatible with what the Stelladaptor is looking for. Future support could be added depending on if we can come up with a clever way to do auto-detection of that particular controller.

     

    @Thomas: From what I understand, it is a software/emulation problem. Reading the data from the trackball and sending it over the USB interface is not an issue. Also, we spent a lot of time designing the product for joystick, paddle, and driving controller and didn't want "feature creep". We wanted to make sure we had a solid, bug-free device - trackballs can also be supported fairly well by mice (especially the larger Trakball mouse), so it wasn't a completely necessary feature for the product. The joystick, paddle, and DC were.

     

    Here are some quotes with an earlier private e-mail with Eckhard Stolberg regarding Trakballs. This might help to clarify. But, wouldn't it be better to focus on the things the Stelladaptor CAN do? The product is already done right now :)

     

    The Trak-Ball in joystick mode only send the normal "joystick pushed right" message, as long as the ball is spinning right. In Trak-Ball mode it works like a normal PC mouse. There are two types of Trak-Balls. One is compatible with the ST mouse. This is basically like a 2-axis version of the driving controller, but with a much higher resolution. The other type has a

    different protocol, which I don't quite remember.

     

    and

     

    I think Thomas' hacks of Missile Command read a new value every 8 scanlines, and you can still spin the ball fast enough to confuse the handling routine. But even if your adapter was fast enough to produce that

    many values, there would still be problems with the PC being fast

    enough to handle that many updates for a "joystick" and with

    synchronising all the reads with the emulator. For the driving

    controller this isn't a problem, because you only need a new value

    once per frame and the emulator already syncs with the display.

     

    The Stelladaptor sends a USB data packet every 10mS if it detects a change in movement of the controller.

     

    Joe

  14. Posted

    @Rob: Yes, there is +5V at pin 7. It's current-limited, though, since the Stelladaptor is powered by the USB port.

     

    @Thomas: We are using USB 1.1. We're not THAT high tech yet for USB 2.0 (my machine doesn't support it :)

     

    @MayhemUK & @Raindog: Yes, as Raindog mentioned, the device is HID-class USB game controller compatible, so if the emulator software supports that (using DirectInput or whatever), the joystick will work without change. The paddle should also work without change. The driving controller is actually NOT treated like a "mouse" like someone said - it is four joystick positions that represent a 2-bit Grey code, so emulators will need to be modified to support this (like z26 will be when the new version is released at PC5). More information on the USB specs of the device and what data is transmits are in the Stelladaptor manual.

     

    @Everyone: Thomas gave the explanation to why Trakballs produce a lot of data. If Eckhard Stolberg is on the forum, he can explain, too, as we were discussing adding Trakball support when I was working on the hardware. Aside from the resolution issue, which would be to slow for the emulator to properly process it (@raindog, the PIC is fast enough for it, I assume, it's running at 24MHz), we couldn't figure out a reliable way to have the Stelladaptor auto-detect the controller along with all the others. And, adding a switch or button was not part of the design - I wanted this to be as simple and easy to use as possible (e.g., Plug and Play). Now, if we come up with new design features in the future, the Stelladaptors can always be upgraded by sending them back to AA, but we haven't come that far and haven't decided on that, but it IS possible.

     

    Hope that helps.

     

    Joe

  15. Posted

    We tried to keep the costs down while designing the device. A lot of time, effort, and money went into the prototyping and production. I personally feel that $30 is an exceptional price given the small quantities and the time it takes for myself and AtariAge to support the product.

     

    There are lots of hacks out there that you can do yourself to build a USB joystick adapter, and we're not forcing anyone to buy this. But, I haven't seen anything that will support paddles or driving controllers, and that's where the key design features of the Stelladaptor came in.

     

    We designed it in such a way that emulator developers can easily support the device and I think it will make big waves for classic gamers. Stelladaptor has automatic controller detection which will change the data sent in the USB packets on-the-fly. Our manual has technical information about the USB data for easier developer support.

     

    As with everything I design, I only design it if I myself personally would want to use it. I take great pride in my work and I know AtariAge takes great pride in manufacturing and distributing my products.

     

    Being a hobby, it's not an easy task to balance money and time, but we're trying. Now, if someone wants to come along and pay us wads of cash so we don't have to worry about paying rent and buying food, then maybe we could just give the units away.

     

    Joe

  16. Posted

    Yes, Warlords works with 4 players. With paddles, both paddles are supported per Stelladaptor, so if you use two, you can have four people. Good for parties :)

     

    Trakballs are not supported, basically because the resolution required is very fine compared to the relative "slowness" of USB.

     

    Keypads are not supported because they can be easily emulated using a keyboard. We wanted to concentrate on actual controllers that can't be properly emulated on a keyboard or mouse.

     

    The Track & Field controller (along with a few other not-so-common ones) is supported in hardware and should be worked into z26 at some point, but probably not the first version with Stelladaptor support.

     

    Hope that helps,

     

    Joe

  17. Posted

    No, that should be OK. I just picked up an SVA II last weekend at a flea market for $15 without a power supply. I'm using a 9VAC, 400mA supply just fine. Looking at the circuit board, the AC signal is rectified and then passed into a 7805 DC linear regular, and I don't think they are using AC for anything on the board (maybe the 60Hz for timing for something, but I have no clue). So, putting a 12VAC supply will probably not hard it.

     

    I'd open up the machine (there's only a few screws) and reseat all the chips in their sockets (on my board, all the chips were socketed). Take a dust blower to it and look for any loose connections. The system is pretty integrated.

     

    Good luck,

     

    Joe

  22. Posted

    Just so I understand this correctly, the games WORK with the PCB, you are just seeing the weird noise/paddle response? But, they function normally?

     

    If that is the case, it is most definetely a noise issue and the boards obviously work (if they didn't, you wouldn't be seeing the game). You could try removing the metal shielding from a real cart and attaching it to your PCB, but you'd have to solder it to a ground connection in order for the shielding to work. But, it's worth a try if you have a soldering iron handy :)

     

    Joe

  23. Posted

    I would also suggest trying another power supply, especially if you are using the same one to test your system and your friend's system. It might be introducing some awful noise.

     

    You can deal directly with Albert offline to handle the return and the rest of the support.

     

    Joe

  24. Posted

    What board are you using with the 27256? If it is the 8KB bankswitch board, that is designed to run 8K ROM images with Atari F8 bankswitching.

     

    2K and 4K ROMs should be used with the 2K/4K board. At least, that is how we designed them.

     

    For the 2K/4K board, the capacitor on the PCB is a bypass capacitor to help smooth the voltage going to the EPROM and 7404.

     

    I can't really be of much help on the forum, especially since we've never seen a problem like this before. I'd recommend to send the boards back to AtariAge so they can be analyzed and they can send you new ones. Even though they were tested, it will probabaly save a lot of heartache.

     

    Joe

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