Retro Rogue
-
Content Count
3,426 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
7
Posts posted by Retro Rogue
-
-
Just in case you do any future searches - Atari always spelled it Trak Ball, there's no ck.
-
Famiclone chips are NOT emulations, simulations, or any other kind of -ations. They are simple reverse-engineered, NES-compatible chips.
JB, come on now - nobody said the famiclone chips were emulations (emulators). There's a defined difference between an emulator and emulation (see above). The Famicom chips can be classified as simulations - they are reverse engineered to provide the same functionality of the NES hardware. In the case of the Flashback the original 2600 and 7800 games were re-coded to run on the pirate NES hardware present in the device
Just like the lockout chip in an NES Tengen cart is not an emulation of Nintendo's official chip.
Not a good comparison - by definition they'd have to be running original NES code to be an emulation process. The lockout chips were reverse engineered to duplicate a verification process (not to run original code), and therefore qualify more as a simulation process anyways.
It's just a reverse-engineered clone.
And how an Athlon is not an emulation of a Pentium 3.
Athlon would qualify more as a chip that provides simulation of the Pentium 3 capabilities to provide compatibility. It also provides it's own Athlon specific capabilities as well.
-
You sir, are the one who's confused... but apparently so confident in your confusion that you're convinced that anyone who disagrees with you is purely motivated by the need to argue.No sir, that describes you more aptly. Your need to argue is clear across many threads and the people who have noticed.
The NES-on-a-chip hardware is not emulation. Emulation and simulation are software/hardware pretending to be something they're not. Those things run natively as themselves. They're not emulating an NES any more than an Athlon is emulating a Pentium.
As another well known hardware homebrewer described it:
"an emulation means that *real game code* is being run
a simulation means *no real code* is being run."
Very simply put, emulation means you're running game code that runs on the native hardware on something other than native hardware. In the process of the emulation you simlute the hardware. That simulation can be in software (such as in emulation on your PC) or hardware (such as the NES on a chip). Hardare based is faster (and more accurate) than software based since in software based you're mapping it to your pc's architecture. Hardware based there is no mapping, the chip itself is designed to function like the original hardware. Again, emulation refers to a process (vs. an "emulator" which you took it as in your initial response). Again, yours (and others) confusion seems to be in not being able to seperate "emuation" the process vs. "emulator". In the case of the Flashback, the original game was re-coded to run on the pirate NES hardware present in the device.
-
So the hardware in these things is powerful enough to emulate an NES, but not powerful enough to emulate a 2600? Riiiiiight.
Has it occurred to you that the term "NES on a chip" means what it says? That it's an actual recreation of the NES audio/video hardware? Thus, not an emulation.
Well duh, that's what hardware based emulation (or simulation) is. Nobody stated it was a chip running an NES emulator. In your usual haste to argue at all costs, you forgot to read. My original statement was:
"The original code was ported over to run on NES architecture, which then runs on a hardware based emulation of the NES hardware (the "nintendo on a chip") on the Flashback." Clearly the words HARDWARE BASED are there. So in one of your usual selfserving posting attempts your "Has it occured" nonsense is simply restating what I already said. See below.
Just because a chip is supposed to be more powerful, doesn't always mean emulating/simulating games on what was supposed to be lesser powerful hardware is an easy task.Ummm, I know. I was arguing against wgungfu's silly position that these things are running emulated NES's, which in turn run ported games. Obviously if that were the case, they would have ported the games directly to whatever the native hardware was.
Huge difference between emulation and simulation. As I'm sure you're aware the latter is FAR less resource-intensive.
The only one being silly here has been you in these responses which are clearly being written in a prolonged attempt to argue. Nobody stated they're running "emulated NES's". See above and below. And you're wrong - the huge difference is between hardware vs. software based, not "emulation vs. simulation". Technically, all emulators are based around simulators - they are "simulating" the original hardware to emulate the functionality and run original game code. Emulation describes the act of what you are doing (using an aproximation/reproduction of the original hardware to run original game code). Simulation describes how it's done. In the case of hardware based emulation (a single chip dedicated to simulating or "recreating" as you put it, the original hardware) it is faster (and often more authentic) than a software based emulation (a software based recreation/simulation of the original hardware) scheme. As previously stated, these games (like the INTV one) are ported over to the NES architecture and are being run on an "NES on a chip". The chip itself is a recreation or "simulation" of the NES allowing it to emulate it's functionality and run actual NES roms. It's a hardware emulation vs. a software one.
-
They're both emulations of ports.This statement is gibberish.
The statement is self explanitory, not gibberish. And certainly not the selfserving one liners you seem to be posting in this thread instead of actually contributing.
The original code was ported over to run on NES architecture, which then runs on a hardware based emulation of the NES hardware (the "nintendo on a chip") on the Flashback. The same thing was done with the INTV multigame system.
-
Well technically the Pong, etc. forum should be ammended to Pong, Dedicated, etc. and it can just be discussed there. That's all these things are anyways - dedicated systems.
-
My review is up at ClassicGaming.Com as part of our 2004 Holiday Gift Review. Took some screenshots off the widescreen projection TV I have, as well as comparison shots, etc.
-
And no, the games on the Atari 10-in-one stick and the Flashback aren't the same. The stick has emulated games, whereas the Flashback has sloppily reprogrammed versions. Some titles are available on both machines, but they don't play the same.They're both emulations of ports. Both systems use the same "NES on a chip", and both contain atari game/rom code ported over to the NES.
-
its not a very fair comparison, 1979 vs 1983i would say a better comparison would be the 5200 vs Colecovision
Well considering the 5200 is 1979 technology as well, I don't see that as a viable point of discrepancy. Remember, the 5200 is just an Atari 400 in different clothing.
-
Keita being in Japan has nothing to do with anything, it's a website not a local store. Websites are international last I checked.
Keita was originally going to shut the site down two years ago since the original co-designer left and he didn't have the time to do anything to maintain or update it. I volunteered to help and undertook a complete redesign which is still in progress.
The current problem is with the server host. For some reason every month since August they've been declaring us as over our bandwidth. There's no way we suddenly became that popular. They've done nothing but screw up all the time. When they upgraded their servers they screwed up and mapped our DNS to another site which for some reason they took forever to correct. Then they corrected it and had us well past a gig over the storage limits when the site uses nowhere near that ammount. Turns out they had archived our directory twice. Then a month or two later our bandwidth problem started happening.
Consequently we're looking for a new host that supports php and mysql, has the room we need and is cheap. I froze all further development (which includes a large searchable database being put together) until this is taken care of.
-
Actually at least as far as the designers were concerned (as quoted from David Crane) the guys making the 400/800 *were* designing the next atari game machine, it was the higher ups that were insisting on all the other applications for the technolofy ^^gavv
Perhaps in the beginning, but Ray Kassar demanded that Atari get into the computer business once he heard about Apple's first computer. I don't think people at Atari thought the system was going to be a game console for long.
-Bry
Based on my interviews with Joe Decuir, initially the 400 was meant to be the next gen game console, with a keyboard built in to allow direct programming of games on the console by developers. (this was of course the same concept intended when they moved to do Amiga). The 800 was inteded to be the actual high end "computer". The graphics and sound chips were also initially to be designed to be used in coin-op as well, but the graphics chip use was soon scrapped because of the differences in display technology in coin-op monitor vs. television. Only the Pokey made it over. The coin-op releases of the time period support that crossdivision idea with the use of the 6502 as well as Pokey - Missile Command, Centipede, Warlords and the vector games Lunar Lander, Asteroids, and BattleZone.
The decision to get in to computers (and this game console and high end computer in general) actually started under Nolan's watch, not Ray's. (While it's been popularly reported that Nolan passed on the original Apple 1 in 1976, this later fact has been woefully under reported). The idea was (as someone else mentioned) the 2600 was to be only temporary, a bridge between the dedicated and programmable systems with a "higher end" game console to be released a few years later.
What changed it was when Ray took over and had no desire to abandon the 2600 nor create competition for it. Keeping the two in development and then seeing Apple's success, he held a meeting with management and engineering where he pushed development towards "computers as appliances". Some of the views in the speech actually wound up offending some of the women at Atari (without going in to much detail).
But in general, his view was much like Steve Jobs' view with the iMac some 20 years later. So the 400 was pushed as more of a low end introductory computer mainly for novice computer users (hopefully eventually leading people to upgrade to a full blown 800). The 800 was seen as the serious computer and business machine and considered high end. This is also what lead to the initial "closed system" view he had (much to the protests of engineering), where he viewed third party software development across the board (consoles and computers) in a negative manner. With the "computers as appliances" view, he felt all parts (including software) should come from the manufacturer (what else would you expect from a former towel man). Of course Ray was forced to change not long in to the computer market, as ultimately he had no control over it when talented hackers like John Harris started to explore and doccument the hardware. Likewise the success of Apple's support of third party development kinda kept hitting him over the head.
-
Which leads us back to the point that Atari didn't have the faith in their "new" product to dump the 2600, and there was a market already staturated with shit games.It really didn't have anything to do with faith. It had to do with Ray Kassar's decision to downplay everything else in order to not overtly "compete" with the 2600. Ray wanted to keep the 2600 as the flagship to squeeze as much life out as possible. After all it was his "feather in the cap", where his practices and management "rescued" it from the abyss. Of course depending on who you talk to, there were other reasons for the 2600 eventually taking off to the success that it enjoyed. However, having the management views that he's now infamously legendary for, the "non-competition" view ruled all. Hence the decision not to originally make the 5200 2600 compatible. It's also what lead to the 400 not being pushed in it's original game console idea (see next post).
-
Just saw this topic today when it got bumped.
Curt, I'm gonna respectfully disagree with your assertion that the games are what made the 5200 not as successful as it should have been.If that was the case, and it was true that the Colecovision had a better game library, then why did the Colecovision not come out on top and survive thru the game crash?
As a stock owner in Coleco at the time (I still have some of the quarterly reports), it was because the goal was pushed to the ADAM. The home computer market was seen as the future by many before the market crashed. Since the ADAM was to be able to play Colecovision cartridges, the Colecovision system was deemed unnecessary. The ADAM was of course released in two version to allow those with the Colecovision units to upgrade.
Truth is, that both of these systems had great game libraries, but they just could not survive the beating the market took thanks to Atari's lack of any kind of control over third parties in the market.
The reason for the 2nd crash is a bit more involved than that. There are a number of factors that lead to the market shift, including oversaturation of competitors (Over 11 consoles on the market at once, plus the low end game computers).
-
This isn't really gaming related, but does anyone know what the heck you're supposed to do with an Altair computer (like the 8800)? I can see that it's programmed via switches on the front of the machine, but with no visual display (except for LEDs) or printing device, how can you tell you did anything? And if you did, what function would it have accomplished?
I don't have one of these, I'm just curious about them.
Altair is an S-100 bus computer system designed by MIT's and made the cover of Popular Electronics, its the very cornerstone of personal computers.
Pop a Dazzler graphics card into it, some serial cards, jack up the memory and install a plethoria of other cards into it and you've got a computer, disk drive, hard drives, even ethernet cards too...
You've got the great great grand daddy of the personal computer, its a piece of history, or a really big payout on ebay. However you view.
Curt
That would be one Ed Roberts. If you guys are interested in a good book on the overall history of personal computing, check out Fire In The Valley. If you don't have the attention span to actually read a book any more, check out Pirates Of Silicon Valley a glossy dramatization of the founding of Apple and Microsoft that was originally broadcast on TBS back in '99. Some of the story includes Gates and Paul Allen's days programming BASIC for the Altair and their deals with MITS.
I have an IMSAI 8080 I rescued from UW-Milwaukee when it was being tossed, that goes on display at the MGC every year. As far as what can be done, just like Curt and others said - it's a fully expandable 8 bit computer. It was designed look like a mini, hence the large boxy look and front panel display. Back in the days before most of you were spoiled by scripting languages, Java, C++, etc. people actually still programmed in binary, taking the time to learn the opcodes of the computer and write out your program code by hand. And they had to know what the different registers were, and it was actually usefull to know what was in them while the computer was running. Hence the front display. So yes, you could program with it, generate output, etc. if you were versed in that material (which most hobyists and system operators at the time were).
You could add a plethora of output, input, and storage devices as they were developed over the next few years of that system's life, including other processor cards etc. S100 was an open architecture, so there was a decent third party market.
The IMSAI I rescued had terminal connections (didn't take the VT100 terminal though), a keyboard, and the internal cards were several ram cards and an EPROM burner card.
-
Is there any ATI Radeon for S-100 bus?
Maybe something for an April Fool's Joke feature; there already is one for Radeon ASCII enhanced.That would be a hoot! Throw an HDTV tuner on the Radeon and you might be onto something. Of course, the processor would probably choke just trying to display the mouse...oh, wait, no mouse. Imagine storing your favorite episode of Icons on paper tape...
Actually, IMSAI is still around (was bought out by one of the original employees). You can still get parts, etc. And the big news.......he developed a new updated version whose parts can also be used to upgrade the original model (still uses the S100 bus). Called the IMSAI Series 2. Some of the features: 50 MHz. Zilog eZ80® Acclaim! microprocessor (can address 16mb of memory), USB front panel, 32k flash memory (bios), 1 meg static, Back-panel interface connectors for PS/2 keyboard and mouse; IDE interface for hard drives, Memory Cards (when using our optional four-slot IDE Memory Card Reader), CD ROM, etc.; four RS-232 Serial Ports, two configurable for TTL interface; one parallel printer interface, System and software support available for CP/M, DOS interface, and ZS-DOS. Windows and Linux support on PC side.
-
Haven't seen one of those in years, I remember playing them (or trying to, since my age was still in the single digits) in the mid 70's at the airport.
That cabinet style and typeface/bezel reminds me of the old hot wax mold machines as well.
-
-
The price point actually isnt correct, while it may state $44.99 as the suggested retail price, the units should be on shelves for $34.99-$37.99 tops...
Curt
At the risk of you having to kill your self, what's under the hood? Actual updated 2600/7800 on a chip, or more NES on a chip garbage with ported games?
If the updates that "might" come out after this one do wind up having a cartridge adaptor, I would think at least the updates would have to be using actual updated 2600/7800 intenals.
-
Ahh, that was you and your girlfriend on the Fairchild. I was the guy who set it up for you, you should have said who you were.
By the way, that was an original '76 VES as opposed to the renamed Channel F. The nameplate and controller tips are a little different. Sorry one of the controllers didn't work in one of the directions. Trying to figure out a way to repair it without splicing up the cable covering to bad.
-
Just read that. Where did the author get that nonsensical rumor about Apple creating the mouse by turning an Atari TrakIt's the Village Voice, what did you expect?
Didn't Xerox create the mouse and try to sell it to Atari? There actually was a mouse for the Atari called RATS but I don't think it ever saw wide distribution.
Tempest
No. As stated, Doug Engelbart invented the mouse back in the mid 60's. Some of the workers from his lab left when Xerox created their lab in the early 70's and brought the mouse concept with them. There's actually a nice picture of it in the book Fire in the Valley. Check out the link I posted, there's footage of his exciting demonstration. Networking, tiled windows, overlayed video feed, and more - all in 1968.
-
Here is an article I found online that describes such and incident and is a pretty good read.http://www.digiserve.com/eescape/atari/art.../King-Pong.html
Jerry
Just read that. Where did the author get that nonsensical rumor about Apple creating the mouse by turning an Atari Trak-ball over? I hate when non-technical people write articles like this. Doub Engelbart invented the mouse back in the mid 60's at SRI. Here's his 1968 demo for anyone that's interested.
-
Besides Lynx networks, don't forget we'll be having the original GenCon Midi-Maze display of networked ST's as well!I want to see a networked 8-bit Midi Maze display. That would be neat.
Tempest
Well, if Mark (or anyone) has a couple of Atari 8bits with the needed equipment, we'd be happy to have a small 8 bit midi-maze display right next to the 16 bit one in the computer/lan room.
-
Besides Lynx networks, don't forget we'll be having the original GenCon Midi-Maze display of networked ST's as well!
About the only thing we'll be missing out of networked Atari systems is a battlesphere network of Jaguars like we had as Jagfest in 2001.
-
There is a book on Atari computer programming, once you learn that, using it for 5200 shouldnt be difficult, Ive learned a few things from it...wait that is ASM, but im sure there is something for Basic on Atari computersExcept that nobody is using basic on Atari computers here.
5200Bas is a PC based program that allows you to program for the 5200 using it's (5200Bas) own version of Basic. It then saves it as assembly code (which can then be assembled in TASM). A homebrew author decided to create it to allow people not as familiar (or comfortable) with assembly to still be able to write games.
Completely different than programming on an Atari system in Atari Basic.
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Is this a 'Heavy Sixer'?
in Atari 2600
Posted
Actually, it turns out that's not quite the case. I have one I recovered recently that has a March '78 manufacturing date. It also has some interesting oddities - it has a slot on the bottom for the channel 3/4 select that is unused and the center post of one of the right internal speaker mount has been molded extra high so it would be impossible to lay a speaker in it.