Rob Mitchell

Yeah .. the original 1977 joysticks have/had little hexagonal aluminum plates on top of the stick that had the name: Atari or Sears. The little plates inevitably fell off with time/ stress of gameplay .. I remember one falling through the speaker slots in the top deck of the VCS and rattling around inside the console until I got the nerve to open it up and remove. I remember saving all the Sears plates .. only to lose them over time. Someone sent me an Atari plate in recent years ... which I have successfully saved. Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA

I also have the Cuttle Cart .. but have no plans to build inside my console. It is already full of circuits: Lumina/ Chroma/ out. Stereo 2 channel audio out/ Battlezone tread control circuit in/ autofire built-in. One thing I am thinking of adding is a normally closed/ momentary open pushbutton to the left of the power switch. This will make it easy to turn off/on my console now that I am using the Cuttle almost exclusively. You may wish to do the same. Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA

Indy 500 (Sears Race) is one of the best of the first 7 carts for the Atari VCS (Sears Video Arcade) in 1977. It brought home the Atari arcade hit home .. Plus let us play steering games that reminded me of Exidy's Death Race. Dad and I gleefully paid $40 for Sears Race in 1977 .. double what was paid for the other introductory carts then .. because of the pack-in pair of driving controllers. I remember experimenting with them .. trying to see how they worked with the Combat (Tank Plus) cart. Of course the driving controllers were probably a result of the arcade design. And Atari had the lead there .. Other home console designers used the joystick to steer in their driving games (UGH!). So it is unfortunate that Atari would never design another 2600 game to use the controllers. Sprintmaster was designed after the Atari Indy arcade .. but everyone knows that a joystick is not the way to steer a driving game. Even though Thomas hacked the control of Sprintmaster to use the DCs, it doesn't have the 16 angles of steering that Indy 500 has .. so it doesn't feel right (like Indy 500 does). Continuing my curiosity about the DC .. I took one apart .. more complicated than I could figure out .. the circuit board consists of spirals of contacts .. where one stops, another begins at a different radius. I looked at Atari sites .. and none described what was going on here .. Kevin Horton and others mentioned Quadratrue signals .. and I learned that the DC is a low resolution Quadrature encoder .. and the Indy 500 program does Quadrature decoding. Other sites described what Quadrature encoding is .. and I looked for circuits that could decode and put out a left or right signal in response. I learned that A leads B in transition means turning one direction and B leads A in transition when turning the other direction. I finally got to see what was happening when I plugged the DC into the Vectrex running the Test Cart program!! As a result of this discovery, Chris Tumber is releasing new Vectrex games that use the DC. Independently Thomas is hacking old games to use the DC. And Glenn Saunders and I are planning home ports of Death Race for the 2600 and Vectrex respectively. Q: Just who figured out that the DC works with the Jaguar Tempest? Some time in the mid 1980s I went with a family to ChuckeCheeze .. and checked out the games .. and fun! One of the kid videogames was a kid console of Indy 500! Built-in seat, big steering wheel, foot pedal, and game one set for one player. I wish I had played it then and there! whew! that's all I can write about a 25 year obsession with Indy 500 and the driving controllers. Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA

Hi .. I rewired a broken Atari Video Pinball to function as a controller! So the side buttons now work with Atari 2600 pinball games.. and the Vectrex Spinball game .. I had to wire some switches to make the buttons compatible with the various games .. and it brings those games alive! I still need to rewire to be compatible with Bally Astrocade Pinball. In place of the paddle controller on top of the deck, I have placed an Indy 500 driving controller for use as a spinner for games coming out that use that function (2600 Thrust, Vectrex Tsunami). Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA

Chad: I love my Cuttle Cart .. I had a blast showing it off in Cincinnati last fall .. running Thrust and Combat2. It is the only way I can keep up with all the new BINs coming out .. And I used it extensively when helping Thomas test a bug in Thrust last year .. The only other comparable product that I enjoy so much is the new Vectrex RAM cart .. by which I programmed the Pythagorian Theorem (Vectrex). Rob

Pick-up has a girl and a guy and a hotel and scoring ? Woeah! I wonder what the sound effects are like? Racy! The other games look cool .. Rob

Wow! I'm impressed with all the high scores .. I got 104,040 the other day .. but I didn't take a pic of it .. BTW: I'm playing Thrust with the Starplex 5 button controller .. Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA, USA

Hi Rasty: I just loaded your Space Treat into the Cuttle Cart in a real 2600 console .. Nice work .. and nicely addicting gameplay too! The colors and scrolling objects are all nice and smooth .. I like it! BTW: Your game made me get registered at atariage just so I could post this reply .. Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA, USA