Propane13

Wait a sec-- but what would that be for? Boulderdash 2? -John

Paypal sent! -John

I disagree. There is not enough space in a regular 7800 cart because not all the devices used in the XM are available in modern surface mount packages. You also have to factor in the hole needed in the middle of the PCB for the plastics. The hole means you have to route PCB tracks around it and it also limits your component placement options. If you consolidated POKEY, YM2151 and the board logic all into a single FPGA (assuming its possible) then it'd still be a struggle to get everything in there. Well, that's making 2 assumptions: - that a homebrewer will be using every single feature in one game - that the cartridge size and layout has to very closely match previous 7800 design, i.e. have a hole in the center Let's say that a lot of homrebrewers start taking advantage of XM's extra RAM and pokey features. If there are enough games like this, then I could see somebody making a new cart design without the hole in the middle, and a board with just those 2 features. Then, people could pay more to have a standalone cart, or just buy the XM version and save some money. Doesn't seem impossible; anything could happen. -John

Neat! -John

Question-- do you have any programming background?

What I would probably do for starters is: - take some high-def pictures of the cart - play the game; get a LOT more video - build trust in 3 ways: - show that we're not a bunch of jerks that want to give the ROM around and make him have nothing. Instead, show that the perspective we're coming from is as "archaeologists" out to verify via our own "carbon dating" method if it is indeed authentic. If it is, big win for him on price point. - Get him to understand that only like 3 select people would access the ROM for validation, and show off maybe some of their other validations (Turbo, Extra Terrestrials) - A demonstration of "ROM dumping" could be done on a few common carts to ease his mind that it's not harmful. That's what I would do.

I think music and sprite tweaking are definitely doable for someone who wants to learn. They don't need to know about MARIA cycles or any of that jazz. For music, they could have a basic kernel (many available) that calls "JSR PlayMusic" in a 1K code area every frame. Someone could easily learn music that way; and, if they use TIA, they can do this in 2600-land too. In the 2600 forums, some homebrews have come out where music isn't completed, and someone takes a few days and does this, which eventually gets adopted. For sprite tweaking, as long as requirements are put forth up front, people can make sprites, and improve over time. GroovyBee did mention that "it can be hard on pixel artists to stretch the limited pixels and colours available into making good sprite animations and graphics". This is true, but whatever they come up with, if they have an artistic mind, could be much better than "programmer placeholder graphics" in the long run. I, for one, tweak any sprites I make multiple times, and then realize that there are some people out there that could do that a LOT easier than me if they understood how the 7800 works a little bit. They may have a hard time with it initially, but that's the challenge of retro-programming-- and what's great is you get better with time. In fact, PAC-MAN-RED in a thread has demonstrated his learning of 2600 and 7800 sprites through his "Free sprites for the taking" thread; he persevered to learn the limitations, and workarounds. I think that's really cool. And now, he contributes to real projects. Anybody with the desire to dive in, definitely can make a difference. So, yeah, if people want to learn this stuff, you can. When it comes time for games to get polished (always recommended), they can be instrumental in taking a game from "B-" to "A+". Just my 2 cents. -John

Wow; that thread was 5 years ago. So, a follow-up; did Albert ever ping Steve, as was recommended in that post? Secondly, again-- does anyone live near that portion of Ohio, and want to try to go verify nagn's cart? It can't be impossible that someone's not in the area. Heck, this thread is making me want to drive all the way from the east coast out there to see the thing, but I'm no expert in hardware nor printing procedures, so I am probably not the right guy. Suspicion or not, I'm surprised that nobody here wants to pick up the gauntlet and go on a trip-- they could end up finding a unique piece of history. Incidentally, since this is becoming a weird thread, I want to clear some air here. It was I who offered the $80 for Music Machine. I put in a low-ball offer to try to be the first one to go for it. I have a friend that has the high score in the game, and wanted to get it as a present. Additionally, everybody else was going bonkers over Red Sea Crossing, and nobody cared about Music Machine, so I thought I would have a chance. At the time, $80 was all I was willing to afford on a present, so I thought "meh, the guy's new, at least I'll have an offer in first, and if he gets a better one, no big deal. That, or we can negotiate". I had no idea what his knowledge of Atari rarity was, if he was willing to take the time to get informed, or if he just wanted to get rid of inventory. If it was the latter case, an early bid can do wonders. I believe I received a "no thank you", which was fine, but then later in the forums it was posted that he had a random offer for $80 that was insulting. That was not my intention at all-- I just wanted to try to see if I could get a good deal for my friend that likes this game. In my head, I thought that $150-ish was the asking price "amongst friends" at the time, even if ebay had higher numbers. Perhaps I just didn't know what I was doing and was greedy. If anyone thinks I messed up, then I'll just apologize out of the gate. I was at the time looking to get a gift for a friend, not to potentially send someone into a frenzy where they would be less amicable to negotiations on another cartridge. Anyhoo, I feel better now that that's said, and I want to ask-- who's going to Ohio? -John

Interesting. So, from a TwinGalaxies high-score and record-keeping perspective, someone could have a better/worse time if they used a PAL or NTSC Atari / Imagic cart? Sounds like a possibility for fradulent low scoring. -John

Tried this question in the 7800 forums; didn't get any real response, so posting here. In games with timers (i.e. Activision games like Decathlon, Stampede, Sky Jinks, Winter Games, Airlock, etc, there is a timer on screen. Since PAL is 50 frames per second, and NTSC is 60 frames per second, I am wondering: - is the PAL game 5/6 slower to play than the NTSC version (seems logical to me), and: - is the clock accurate to a real timer, or is the clock for PAL also a little slower? In essence, I'm wondering if playing one vs. the other would probably net you the same winning time, or if there's an advantange to playing one over the other because the clock is "more real time"? Just curious. As a programmer, if I wrote a game where there could be a leaderboard for "best time", I want to make sure the game is fair, but I also want to make sure that people aren't distracted if a timer is not 100% second-accurate. Thanks! -John

Can it be done, and if so, what tool is best? Thanks! -John

Are you accepting payments yet? -John

Woohoo!

Agreed, a youtube vid would get more looks at the topic-- I personally would take a look myself, if there was one. -John

Do any collectors live out near Ohio? If I still lived in Chicago, I would have paid this guy a visit the first summer that he reported owning this cartridge. I think that's the right way to attack this problem. -John

Aww.. yeah, I didn't know these were being made as well; this is something I was hoping to get someday. Now, it kind of sucks that a rotten apple seems to be spoiling the bunch. As I have no plans to buy the XM at the moment, I'm thinking this may just have to be the one that got away. Do you think this is a reproduction, or one of yours? Any way to tell uniqueness? On a lighter note, perhaps we can identity the culprit through their choice of sofa cushions... -John

The reason I'm asking is if in some games, one can "cheat time" in a PAL version to get a lower time, and therefore a better high score. -John

Any other 7800 games in the library with a timer? Surely there is one. Impossible Mission I think qualifies. What others? -John

Just an interested question. In Winter Games 7800, there are a few "timed events". Since PAL is 50 frames per second, and NTSC is 60 frames per second, I am wondering: - is the PAL game 5/6 slower to play than the NTSC version (seems logical to me), and: - is the clock accurate to a real timer, or is the clock for PAL also a little slower? In essence, I'm wondering if playing one vs. the other would probably net you the same winning time, or if there's an advantange to playing one over the other because the clock is "more real time"? -John

Did they say anything interesting in their email (such as "wow"), or was it just a simple go/no go email? -John

Random interjection. If we need more RSYNC examples, it at least was discussed years ago on the StellaList. It was believed that to have the 2600 enter Interlace mode, RSYNC would have to be used. I see a few threads about it, but no concrete successful ROMs on intitial search: http://atariage.org/pipermail/stella/2000-September/026609.html http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/200208/msg00076.html If more examples are needed, that might be a place to dig. I thought that someone had actually succeeded. -John

One thing I'm curious about-- way early in this thread, there was potential discussion about contacting the owner of the rights to Star Castle. With all of the publicity from the kickstarter page, a lot people know about this, even outside of Atari circles. I'm wondering-- did those discussions ever happen? That was what I asked about before on this thread, but never got answered. It seems it's not a big deal at the moment, but there is always inherent risk when releasing certain games-- that's why there are so many misspellings of Tetris out there. -John

If you've done ASM, and like ASM, I'd say start there. If you've never done ASM, bAtari is great.

Somewhere in these forums a few years back, I think somebody made a "2600 cart for the 7800" that was just an extender as a joke (maybe Shawn Sr?). That thread would be fun to dig up again, but it's hard to search for the terms "2600", "7800", and "cartridge" on these forums to get meaningful results. Maybe someone here remembers the thread. You can also use a high-score-cart, too. -John

Yes, it can. -John