RodLightning

Atari 7800, if I could have torn myself away from playing games on my Atari 48k 400 or 64k 600XL. In 1987, plenty of games were available cheap or free for Atari 8bit. By 1993, I already had a used 7800 and a few cartridges, so I can imagine picking up one a few years earlier if I was in the right place and time to buy one new. It took me a while warming up to the NES. Those gamepads were a foreign concept to me at the time.

Agreed. Great work you have done over the years. Thanks for fixing so many games! The Atari ST now has a fine library, compatible with a far wider range of hardware than would have otherwise been possible. Your efforts are much appreciated. Many are silent, but recognize the hard work and time going into this project.

On topic.. What is the maximum ram that a TOS 1.0 ST will support? I remember from back in the day that TOS 1.4 or greater was a good idea when upgrading to over 1 megabyte. Are there limitations with TOS 1.0 or 1.2 with regard to memory?

I enjoyed the manual and short story in Silicon Dreams more than playing the games! Actually, the only one I ever ended up putting time into was Snowball. The difficulty level put me off so bad that I never got around to chapters II and III. Those have been on my 'to-do' list for years. I finally looked at a walk-through cheat sheet for Snowball, many years later, and I don't think teenage me would have ever stood a chance with that last part. The games themselves have amazing background however and I wish I'd found them more playable. Thanks for mentioning this one, I feel like trying it again via emulation or maybe dig out the original...

I remember running 8bit Atari emulation on the ST, but can't remember the program name. I thought it was XL-it! but I think I'm confusing that with the first one I tried on the PC, a 486DX. Colors were off and compatibility was limited, but it worked somewhat. Definitely more of a novelty back then. As stated by others, a Falcon would probably be capable of doing a better job, and probably a more convincing job with a skilled developer. I don't think it was ever tried completely in software. Off topic a little, but I used this one on a 486 and my first Pentium 133. Also more of a novelty to run, but entertaining just the same: http://cd.textfiles.com/230/EMULATOR/ATARI/XLIT/

Didn't know Activision had an official "You Suck!" patch. That one has me laughing. Imagine wearing that proudly on your jacket.

Infocom Stationfall. After playing through the Zorks, I played through Planetfall and enjoyed its comedy scifi theme. The Stellar Patrol was a fun transition from adventuring in The Great Underground Empire. I was in the middle of another Infocom title (wish I could remember which one) when I learned that Stationfall, the sequel to Planetfall would soon be released. I started telephoning local stores, as we did in those days, to ask if Stationfall for Atari was in stock. I could have ordered it from a mail order catalog like Tevex, but wanted to do cash and carry so I waited. I really miss in-person browsing for physical boxed game media. Going from want, to setting aside cash, to finally seeing and buying a software title was part of the fun.

I pieced my first 5200 system (a 4 port) from thrift store parts back in the early 1990's. Amazing times, as Atari cartridges could be found in Rubbermaid tubs for pennies each. Actually from around $1.49usd each to as low as .39 cents. I wired a diode into the RF cable since I had to solder in a power jack on the board at first to use it. I had collected a few 5200 controllers over time. The first thing I noticed was that the buttons either didn't work, or barely did. I had a few loose carts by that time and played a lot of PacMan. It looked much better than the 400/800 version and didn't need a fire button to play. The analog stick made it so aweful to steer PacMan that I was finally forced to do something about the fire buttons for other games. After bodging a couple of controllers various ways, I played mostly Centipede and Pole Position after that. Those two games are very well suited to the 5200 analog sticks. I have two four ports today, one in storage and the other on a shelf with all parts including that weird switchbox/power thing. I play with it infrequently and use emulation most often as that is the most convenient. My main 5200 console is more of a display piece these days.

Looks very cool. The blue LED was a nice touch. It seems to set off the color shifting. At least the exposed cards are capped and labeled versions. May I suggest a piece of clear plexi for the top?

I found Zarlor Mercenary more fun on the rare occasions I played over comlynx with a second player. As for Electrocop, the built-in mini games where nice to have at computer terminals.

Here's a picture of mine, with a SLB-10A camera battery installed. The block of packing foam is wrapped in green tape and wedged behind the battery. There are three contacts on the other end that are springy enough to keep the battery in place. When the back is on it and screwed down, it all holds together well.

I used a battery made for Samsung digital cameras. Search ebay or Amazon for SLB-10A. The battery is a little small for the atgames genesis battery compartment, but can be padded on the end and sides to help hold it in place. I used a bit of cut packing foam. The important part is that the contacts line up correctly. They sell for around $7 to $10 USD. I read somewhere online (forget where) years ago someone claiming that the game unit will drain the battery too low to the point of destruction. Being a cheap design, it lacks any protection to keep this from happening. No idea if this is true, but I have since stored mine with the battery removed.

In that case, a method mentioned elsewhere of cutting out the chips with a pair of fine snips, leg by leg might be safest. It sounds tedious as hell to me, but does make the pins "easier" to remove. The chips are out of the way and each leg can be individually heated with fresh solder and a little flux, then gently pulled out with pliers. All 256 of them! or, 240 if we leave the NEC dram in place.

I ordered some from Jameco a while back. I notice that they are listed as refurbished. https://www.jameco.com/z/4164-150-Major-Brands-IC-4164-150-DRAM-65-536-Bit-65-536x1-150ns-with-Page-Mode-DIP-16_41662.html

The piggyback trick doesn't always work, although always worth a try in finding bad RAM. No success here either. A second cheap trick is to leave the XE on for a few minutes and do a touch test on each chip. Dead ones might be very hot (shorted) or cooler (broken circuit) when compared to most of the others. With the bad reputation of those MT4264s found in 130XEs, RAM is still highly suspect as the problem. Best to replace all the MT branded chips. The NEC chip has the best chance, I suppose of being good. There has been speculation about why that first chip in bank 0 is often a different brand. Could the flakey RAM have been a known issue from the factory? Many including mine also have one NEC chip in that spot. The one I have here is in pristine condition otherwise. It only boots to self test and shows red blocks in RAM test. I've been putting off desoldering all the RAM for a while now. Reading various forum posts about poor quality circuit boards and lifting traces if the temperature isn't just right has given me pause. You will find many threads around here with good advice on the 130XE and bad RAM.

There must have been some involvement between companies. Borregas Avenue was where Atari HQ in Sunnyvale was located, after all. The 400 label is indeed odd. Perhaps that 800 was used in-house by Atari. It would be interesting to get a look inside it for sure. Control Data appears to have been Atari's neighbor, or at least had an office on the Atari campus.

Robotron 2084 was very annoying to play on the Lynx. The game looks and sounds great. I love the music. However, the controls don't do the game justice. Due to Lynx design, there really isn't a good control option. I was excited when I first bought the game, but quickly disappointed by it's high difficulty. Maybe there is hope for getting better controls through a Lynx emulator...

I wonder if it was part of their educational program? I attended a Control Data learning center while in high school as part of a tutoring service. All we ever used were ascii terminals attached to a mini-computer, but anything is possible. Atari may have been involved in the program elsewhere. I googled "Control Data Corporation" and that logo brought back memories. It was on every terminal and also on the letterhead for documents issued to students. I was clueless about any of that at the time, but looks like the main company was a heavy hitter in early super computer development. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_Data_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_Data_Institute

If you must, color shifting paint would be an interesting look. Otherwise, what about a camo color scheme? I don't think anybody has done that yet with Atari 800. Modern digital camouflage, desert theme, or even the traditional green/olive drab. It might be difficult to paint though. Silver might look good too, come to think of it.

Several rides would be rotated in and out every few months. Thunder horses were always good earners. The only licensed products I remember were a Sonic race car, Bob the Builder dozer, Sesame St. Big Bird car and a Paddington Bear taxi. There was a semi truck ride with the Walmart logo in one store that did pretty well. Most of the others were generic themed, like helicopter and rocket rides. Stores with more room would have a carousel.

I maintained and collected coin-op equipment in several Walmart locations for a couple of years. It is a sorry state of affairs that they had become the last vestige of arcade style amusements in many cities and towns. Some stores had small arcades up front, others only had one or more Deer Hunting or similar prop based games. The best locations had upright cabinets, a pinball or two, kiddie rides, air hockey and basketball, gumball and claw machines. All that is largely over since Covid19 pretty much killed it. I don't know if it will ever come back like it was. I doubt it will. I am out of it now, but miss the kind of world that still allowed such things to exist.

I would love to see Texas Instruments build a new chip production factory somewhere in the USA. Here's a thought, the state of Texas. I know the costs of production would not be at all competitive when compared to Chinese facilities. More wishful thinking, but it would be great for national image.

Yeah, we should be careful that this thread doesn't degenerate (as usual) and call attention to the slow decline of basically everything worthwhile. Isn't 2022 a great time to be alive? God I miss the 80s... Some of us reaching the half century mark may very well be past retirement age before manufacturing returns to what we remember, and this is wishful thinking. I wish I had grabbed up a few things before the plague made everything scarce. More ammo, bags of caps and transistors, Raspberry Pi stuff. On the bright side, Batari's Hokey replacement will be available. That's one ray of sunshine. I think e-waste recycling should be suspended or at least restructured. There might be a full time career in harvesting components off of old circuit boards. Don't the Chinese already do that to some degree? I have seen legacy chips for sale online that have been pulled from old hardware. Better that than having everything ground up to get the gold and base metals. This would be great for those of us who still care about such things.

I built just about this same pc that year. I think we weren't alone. I recall having a Yamaha OPL and S3 Virge in my version of the system. Did you try to overclock? When I went that route, trying to speed up Quake, it just added to my disappointment. @Keatah, yeah Quake did definitely kill that cpu! Thanks to Cyrix, I learned the difference between linear and pipeline burst cache. At least one of the reviews tried to blame idsoftware for not taking advantage of the 6x86mx and instead writing the game as optimized for intel's pipeline burst mode. I still tried to like my Cyrix and stuck with it for a couple of years. It was small comfort that the cpu was reported to excel at spreadsheet calculation and other business related tasks. I wish I had that board (m-tech r534g) and cpu framed and hanging on the wall of shame...