hardhat

Hard to say, but in the US, the DMCA specifically allows for that. So it is quite possible that it is legal to use and distribute in the US.

I've been thinking more about this project, and the more I think about it, the more I like it. Over the winter I may try to make some test hardware to see if my proposed interface will do the trick. As for the pack in game, I have two ideas: 1. a racing game, where the map is determined by the barcode that you read. It would include bar codes for a couple of easy maps, and a challenging map. Every order would ship with a custom barcode that would give that user a unique map (to share and trade). 2. a fight/exploration game, where the barcode would determine the attributes of a playable character, and their native domain. Inspired by the skylanders craze on more recent platforms.

Okay, so I've finally shipped all of the existing orders. I got most of them out last week, but a few trickier ones took me until today to finish packaging. That darned Christmas got it the way again. At any rate I've begun production on some new ones for my website and they will be available to order once they are ready (probably Monday some time). In the mean time the rest of you should be receiving your orders over the next week or two, depending on where you live.

So I phoned Tony Morehen a few years ago (maybe 8 years ago) to see what was going on and to ask for permission to have the interested parties continue to maintain the software. I had managed to get a copy of the source code for TDOS from Guy Cousineau before that, and Guy suggested that I contact Tony to make sure he gave permission. We chatted for a while about what kinds of programming he was doing lately (at the time he was really into Visual Basic programming) and how he felt that TDOS and the related software should be treated. Any questions I asked him suggested that he was pretty happy to have people continue to spread and use TDOS, and he didn't have a problem with having myself or others update TDOS to reflect new hardware. So with his support, that is what we've done since then. When I called and interviewed Mark Gordon back maybe 12 years ago about the legendary (and very expensive) trashing of the AdamNET harddisks, an issue that came up between Tony and Mark, was that Tony didn't feel that the performance over AdamNET was sufficient. So they had experimented with a high-speed AdamNET upgrade, but I guess it gets messy with normal speed and high-speed devices on the same wire. I guess it didn't work to Mark's satisfaction and so Mark eventually gave it up and decided that it was hopeless.

I'm almost done shipping out all of the first 32 copies, so I will finish that up and post when the next round of copies are available. I've been shipping steadily all week, but it all takes time it seems. So I'm glad I was able to take this week off and work on shipping and also coding Reckless Wizard.

That is all of the information in the Adam Technical Reference Manual. But the good news is that I had the exact same issue, and I stopped and figured it out: http://adamcon.org/pipermail/coladam/2011q3/001719.html is the information that I found.

The Opcode version may not be released yet, but NIAD brought a version of it to AdamCon two years ago with a prerelease SGM, and it looked pretty amazing.

So for A, an F18A most likely does not use any old TI chips (although I would have to double check that). So you'd just have to be careful with what you plan to ship to Europe and be aware of what the restrictions are. So for B again, there are lots of suitable certified power supplies out there. And of course there are many that are not. You just have to be careful and select one that is certified, and perhaps verify the certification. Hopefully the certification is independently verifiable with out a cost of 15000 euros or that would be pretty stupid. Governments around here would tend to put that kind of thing on the web for easy reference, if you have the certificate number from the supplier. Or you could just buy a suitable 12V 2A power supply locally. There are lots of them around. And it would of course have the local plug. As for WEEE being required for any non-personal use, I couldn't say. If that is the case, and the board is compliant, and the 20 people who want it can't reasonably split the fee, I guess the only option is to have everyone make their own or they are out of luck. 100 euros per person split between 20 people seems pretty excessive, since you can just buy a used ColecoVision on ebay for about that much maybe. Do you have a good link to WEEE information? I'd definitely like to learn more. In my experience there is almost (although not always) a reasonable way to make a device compliant enough to sell, while still respecting the environment.

A) Well, pretty much everything I buy lately is already ROHS compliant these days. So the issue would only be if he is using the old chips like old VDPs and so on I guess. Then, when it is assembled, you have to do lead free solder. That is a pain, I suppose, but 5-11 under already offers that service, so that isn't impossible. B) He is talking about a swap in board, so no power supply is needed to be included. But even then, buying an already certified power supply isn't that hard. There are lots available on sites like Alibaba. C) Since it is designed as a swap in board, the purchaser in Europe can either do the swap in themselves or there perhaps there is someone who would do it in Europe as a service, that shouldn't be a real barrier. The other part is A. The recycling dump fees start applying at $2 million in sales in Ontario since 2002, so that wouldn't apply to a hobby business.

I'm not sure I can give you a useful answer to your question, but in my modified Adam with the 9958 video chip instead of the 9918, we added a delay circuit that held down the wait state on the clock at boot up until the board reset itself. On the other hand the reset switch should probably do the trick, right?

Just a quick update, that batch one, the first 32 copies of flora are sold out. I will be shipping them out, and begin production on batch two. I expect to have batch 2 ready for ordering by Friday. I will let you know.

Hmm...so I tried upgrading to 3.3 (daily build) and even 3.2.0a, and it wasn't working with lib4k. I patched the crtcv.s file that Daniel supplies a bit, to add in the new .areas and put them in the correct order, but it still doesn't seem quite right. So I'm back using 3.1.0 until I can figure out what is wrong. The areas list now looks like: ;; Ordering of segments for the linker - copied from sdcc crt0.s .area _HOME .area _CODE .area _INITIALIZER .area _GSINIT .area _GSFINAL .area _DATA .area _INITIALIZED .area _BSEG .area _BSS .area _HEAP but there is still something wrong with some variables. Maybe they aren't initialized as expected? I'm not sure yet. PKK, is there something else I need to add to the start up code to initialize and zero all variables properly on startup? Anyway I'll poke around a bit as time permits.

A back up list? Well you can just go to my web site and order. Once the first batch ships I will make a second batch, but there are several available in the first batch. I will be sending out emails once your order is prepared with the latest shipping estimate from Canada Post. So hopefully that will be helpful.

The buzzing usually means that there is a capacitor that needs to be replaced (on occasion old capacitors begin to leak). I'm not sure who could do that for you, but if you could find someone it should be an easy enough repair. With power supplies, they can retain dangerous voltages for as long as several days, so if you attempt the repairs yourself do so with caution.

I certainly thought about Tunnels & Trolls but the RPG system that the work is based off of seemed more involved than I was into at the time. My current game Reckless Wizard is a kind of action game with RPG elements I guess.

Looks like some good progress. Still a lot of work to populate those boards though. Any cartridges that are compatible with the Coleco Adam should be fine with the 24k of RAM. There are a couple -- like Telegames US released a soccer game that worked on the CV and not on the Adam as I recall. I usually use Eagle from cadsoft for work. It works pretty well, but you have to pay big bucks if you want to make a PCB that large I guess. It is cheap/free for smaller projects though. I haven't tried FreePCB in a while, maybe I'll have to check it out again.

1. Complete and ship (with the generous help of Kiwi's art) Reckless Wizard and Super Action Bowling 2. Progress on some ColecoVision/Coleco Adam hardware 3. Buy an AtariMax SD cart (so I can debug bigger games) 4. Get my ColecoVision working (instead of just my 6 Coleco Adams)

Well, I try never to collect money for anything until I know when I can ship it. Somehow I was designated to ship some copies of the Flora beta, and each time I talked to any of the three beta recipients they suggested that I wait until the full version of Flora was ready -- expecting as always that it was just around the corner. I never should have agreed to that. So I had the physical copies that they paid Daniel for and that wasn't really a good plan on my part. I'm not really sure why Daniel gave them to me. But I accepted them, so clearly I am at fault, and should have done better. When I couldn't communicate myself, I did my best to keep Daniel as informed as I could. I will continue to try to improve my communication skills, or I will do as Toby suggested and allow him to do what I can not do properly. I've toyed with the idea of running a ColecoVision game as a kickstarter campaign to see if I could try and expand the size of the community. But it plays on my biggest fear, which is that I collect money before I'm ready to ship my project, and then the project becomes delayed an unreasonable amount of time. Maybe kickstarter just isn't for me.

Okay, so I put up the ordering page in the usual place: http://www.adamcon.org/cartridge.html So check it out if you're interested. Initially there are 32 available, but once those ship I'll make more available. I will be PMing everyone on the pre-order list.

Okay, so I missed my window in August with work commitments, and then in Sept, Oct my seasonal allergies and personal commitments meant I made no progress. So finally over the month of November, I finished what I'd hoped to finish in August before other things took over. Here it is: and a peek inside: so the last step is the ordering button. I'll work on that, and get that going today. I'll be shipping out the first batch of carts on Monday. Again, I'm sorry I'm so slow at all of this. I'm trying to learn from my mistakes and get everything flowing more smoothly with each new project I publish. I've seen some improvement as I progress, but never as much as I desire. And for the three Canadian Flora beta owners, I can only say that it was my biggest mistake ever to not ship those carts back in August. I will try hard never to fall into that trap again.

Yeah, unfortunately I'm too busy (or sick from seasonal allergies) in September to maybe mid-November to do anything new. The same happens April to June. I try my best to make everything important happen in the months where I am well. If I did the box, I'm sure you'd have it by summer. If I don't have to design the box, but just print and glue it, I think I could have it by the end of January. But if coleco_master can do it all, I'm more than happy.

I think I'm out of boxes (three people requested copies which I haven't made available yet). But there were a couple of different box designs out there for this title. Maybe someone else has some spare boxes? I have a few carts ready to go for some long standing requests, but I need to reorder some manuals to be able to ship them. I am also getting ready to do the boxes for my upcoming titles "Super Action Bowling" and "Reckless Wizard", so when I do that, if I can find someone to make a design that is compatible with my die (for die cutting), I can do a few more boxes at the same time.

Well when I saw the screenshots, I thought it was truly bizarre to see Guy's game republished with a pseudonym. But the list of improvements to the game that were mentioned by 5-11Under address most of my complaints about the game when I published it in the Canadian Mini Games collection. I can tell you that it was an original game developed by Guy. I saw his source code as he developed it (and when Daniel integrated it into the collection). The art is all by Sandra and I was kind of surprised to see the same art in a different game, with no mention of her. I guess anything is possible though, right? Anyway, I summoned Time-Bandit here. So it's always good to get to see him here. He was also at AdamCon this year and like he says he wants to develop more CV stuff but life always gets in the way.

I've known Daniel for 10 years now, and I have to say it's been really great to have him as a friend and to get to use all of his great tools like ICVGM and the getput library. These and other tools have really raised the bar on what can be done on the ColecoVision in a way that was so challenging before. He has inspired me to work on my minigame projects and of course my many prototype extended games. Before having access to Daniel's tools, I had my own command line tools and did most of my graphics work on paper. But with tools like CVToolkit, you can actually try the animated sprites to get the right shapes. It truly makes for better art than was easy to achieve before. Without his influence I would never have considered making and releasing games on cartridge. I programmed SuperGames and ColecoVision games only for myself, with no idea that there was actually anyone who would still be interested in my work. Even now when I meet people in the Toronto Indy Game community they are amazed that there is this whole active community, and I attribute to the expanding community in large part to Daniel's tireless work to promote and support new CV developers.

There are 64 patterns for 16x16 sprites, but only 32 are visible at a time.