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solidcorp

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Posts posted by solidcorp

  1. Posted

    Yes Air Raid - that's right.

     

    Also, I like the $10 and $50 options. You get the most bang for your buck. But for me being an emulator junkie, the $10 option looks nice! Very very nice. I'd love to see other homebrew games with similar pricing structures.

     

    Scott, do I get the rom and manual right away? Or do we have to wait till the project it fully funded?

     

    Thanks Keatah, the project has to be fully funded.

    Nothing will happen until 5/24, but the CD and DL options will happen really quick after that, that is if the Kickstarter is successful.

  2. Posted

    Well, at least the price is now reasonable. 10.00 for the ROM. Or 50.00 for a cartridge.

     

    Is that what it is now - $50?

     

    As for becoming the most valuable cartridge in VCS history? Air Raiders holds the title, making a sale at 41k, right?

     

    I think you meant Air Raid

     

    Air Raid Wikipedia entry: "On April 10, 2010 the only complete game (cartridge and box) known to still exist sold for $31,600"

     

    I thought the $41k was either for the Nintendo game or was the auction price for Air Raid that was ultimately not paid.

  3. Posted · Edited by solidcorp

    So pledging $ 10 you get the ROM and manual and Stella emulator (oh links to DL) or 100 for a Harmony ( I mean a Flash Programmable cart )and

    Star Castle rom w/ CD hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

     

    Think I'll put the money towards cd-w's Cart when its ready, and I aleady have a Harmony and Stella emulator

     

    You left out the $50 clear flashing cartridge, or $100 clear flashing cartridge sealed in a box with a manual, both prices include include shipping.

     

    Sounds like a good plan, I assume most people here at Atari Age will already have everything they need to play any game and if you'd prefer to play Chris's modern version that's fine with me.

     

    I'll probably be saying this a lot... cd-w and I did different games for different reasons and have differing resulting products, mine runs in straight 8K cartridge and could have been released in 1981 - Chris's is a fully featured modern homebrew. I think they compliment each other more than compete, and at the technical implementation level they are both very interesting.

  4. Posted · Edited by solidcorp

    Won't distributing it with Stella mean it has to be GPL?

     

    Stella is GPL v2. The game is not derived from and does not incorporate the Stella source so it is not under the same license... but all the source to Star Castle is on the CD so it will be out there if the Kickstarter is successful.

  7. Posted

    Looks good - and I like the idea about attaching the fingers to the screws, but not sure if I'll change my design (I think all it needs is holes beneath the fingers on the back of the shell for it to work as an injection mold, which I don't think is a big deal, as it's not under the label like later Atari shells.)

     

    Mine went through many revisions and finally this one works well enough. It may look a little rough because it was printed on the coarsest setting the printer will do (for speed) and I haven't cleaned up all of the support material completely. Also, I haven't yet printed any on the finer settings. As of now, I only have boring white ABS right now, but better colors are on the way and I will post something when I have time to play with them.

     

    That looks awesome - simple and effective.

     

    In white it looks like an Apple product, and they are masters of aesthetic design. ;)

  11. Posted

    I'd prefer not to have any label over the screws. Whether that's a function of the label shape or the cartridge design makes no difference to me.

     

    FWIW, The Star Castle cartridge I designed could not have snaps because I couldn't machine them with my 3 axis CNC machine, so I used 2 machine screws and two nuts, both countersunk. The screws also secured the acrylic fingers that open the Atari 2600 cartridge door. I made sure the nuts were behind the label in snug hex shaped recesses so that I could open and close the cart if I wanted. If you use plastic screws, you could simply screw from the back.

     

    IMG_3382.jpg

    • Like 1

  12. Posted

    Wow, that's pretty cool.

     

    You could put a four bit rotary encoder on the board so you could select from 16 games with a knob.

     

    http://search.digikey.com/us/en/products/288XAA5K162A2/288XAA5K162A2-ND/361283

    http://www.ctscorp.com/components/datasheets/288.pdf

    http://search.digikey.com/us/en/cat/sensors-transducers/encoders/1966131?k=4%20bit%20rotary%20encoder

     

    You want hexadecimal type, not grey code - they will both work, but hexadecimal will give you the order you expect.

  14. Posted

    The top board shows the back of the board, and the bottom board show's its front. I flooded the bottom with a ground plane. It's good for RF, it's good for power delivery, it's good for the environment because it uses less etchant and wastes less copper but takes more solder to tin I guess. I *probably* should have a can over the chips for RF. Since the boards come through hole plated and pre tinned, solder bridges weren't a problem, as a matter of fact, they were a hell of a lot easier to solder than surface mount parts. I wanted to make sure the ground plane could get between the pads around the chip pins though I could have left a little more space.

     

    I really like ExpressPCB for quick prototypes. You can get three 2.5" x 3.8", double sided, through hole plated boards in about 3 days for around $60US. Their free board layout software is decent too. That's pretty handy for prototypes. I used to make my own boards but that's a lot of work and mess - more than $60 worth :-)

    • Like 1

  15. Posted

    You've probably already seen all these,but they are all I have... I wish I took more video of the machining but I was in such a rush the before the 2011 VGS that I just didn't do it.

     

    https://picasaweb.google.com/102303773171415008577/Atari2600StarCastle

     

    The PCB - I made in ExpressPCB and cut out with a Dremmel - I should have used the CNC.

     

    The electronics design - EEPROMs that I had on hand from SNES/Genesis development, PLDs I had on hand from previous electronics projects.

     

    The cartridge case: It took a lot of engineering to make the case, a lot of measurement and CAD work but in the end I ran out of time and had to make it from scrap on hand in the shop. I bonded two sheets of 1/4" polycarbonate (Lexan) together to make a 1/2" slab, then machined the cartridge halves out of it. I only have three orthogonal axes on my CNC router and couldn't machine the posts to open the cartridge door into the case so I had to cut those separately from 1/8" polycarbonate. If I remember correctly it takes just under an hour to machine a half, front and back; I have to flip the piece over to machine both sides of each half to make the curved edges, label recess, and nut/bolt recesses.

     

    Was there anything more specific that you were curious about?

  16. Posted

    I haven't had a chance to play Chris's version yet but judging from the screenshots and the blog updates it looks FANTASTIC, he did some awesome stuff in that game and it's great that he shared it and blogged the process with everyone here. I've been really busy and haven't had a chance to get the new Stella to check it out since the early first ring demos (which were 11k ;) ).

     

    There's no rivalry on my end. I said someone should make one in the other threads and these guys knocked it out of the park! We made different projects for what I can only assume assume are different reasons. I know I made mine alone in response to the HSW interviews to prove it could be done in 1981 in 8K then had some fun making the physical cartridge and box. I assume that Chris was looking for a new project, saw the demand and challenge in Star Castle after the hubbub surrounding my not sharing mine and decided to make a first class homebrew version. If there's any rivalry or animosity on his end I can't tell by his posts. He and his team made a sweet modern version (no games over 16k were released before 32 in 1 in 1988 and Fatal Run in 1989) with more features for the good people here on Atari Age (and Andrew Davie ;) ) Maybe Thomas could have squeezed a little more into my game, but there is no way I could fit that cool title screen, music, or the high score list. We used the system in different ways and also made different design decisions and sacrifices that will differentiate the games game play.

     

    Once again, hats off to you guys.

     

    Scott

    • Like 4

  17. Posted

    Great idea! and I totally agree with the paddle controls.

     

    It certainly could be done on a larger cartridge with more RAM. Simple rigid body dynamics are not that complicated but given 128 bytes, you can't store many positions, orientations, velocities, constraints... Even with a simplified system of circles instead of rectangles, the RAM gets full too fast. I'm not exactly sure how you would draw so many discrete elements but I am sure that there are several people here who could do it well.

  23. Posted

    How much do you think a machined cartridge case would cost?

     

    A standard Atari cartridge (Star Raders) is 3.23" x 3.83" in two halves, one with features 0.7" thick and the other 0.4" thick. When I designed and CNC'd my case, I was able to confine the halves to 1/2" thick and each part needed machining from the top and bottom side. The cartridge must be in at least three pieces (mine used four) if it is to be three axis machined because of the slot pins to open the door on the console, four or five axis machining can avoid this. Original injection molded Atari cartridges also have overhanging PCB clips molded into the case that can be avioded in a redesign of the cartridge.

     

    Each cartridge uses over 12 cubic inches of material 3.23" x 3.83" x 0.5" x 2 halves. I'm pricing 1/2" thich sheet nylon at $63-$91 a square foot - this is low quantity, online retail pricing so I'm sure you can get it for much less (and if anyone has a good plastics source, I would really appreciate hearing about it), but ignoring machining losses like material lost to fitting parts into the bulk material shape, fixturing, and bit width you could get around 12 halves out of a 12" x 12" x 0.5" sheet if I am not mistaken; enough to make six cartridges. That price seems pretty high. There are cheaper durable materials like HDPE (used in white plastic cutting board, $20/sf) or Polycarbonate (Lexan, $21.25/sf) but even if you could get as low as $12/sf cartridges would cost $2 apiece in raw material alone.

     

    I am a hobbiest machinist, not a professional by a long shot, so if I have my facts wrong or if there are cheaper ways you can share to do things like this I would be very grateful to hear about them.

     

    Here are the dimensions I measured with .001" calipers, I hope they might help anyone who may want to reproduce or design their own cart (I suggest you double check them before sending anything off to production).

     

    The Star Raiders PCB dimensions are in the lower right corner.

     

    IMG_3013.jpg

     

    D. Scott Williamson

  24. Posted

    What I'm wondering is whether the 2600's modulator circuitry adds any of that filtering? As I was alluding to in my original reply, I've been thinking that the waveforms I'm seeing in WavePad are mainly the result of that modulation circuitry. I hadn't considered that the VCR and DVD recorder might be altering the signal, too.

     

    The modulator circuit is probably not imparting too much colorto the sound, the circuit is a very straight forward FM modulator (link to Atari 2600 schematic). Its simplicity may introduce nonlinearity, but that really shouldn't matter for a high pass filtered binary wave form. If you are interested in how the cable carries the color TV picture and audio see wikipedias NTSC and PAL links, for more detail you can look here video signal details

     

    I'm not an EE, just a hobbiest, there are probably others who could really shed some light on this.

  25. Posted

    One way to make a new cart is to CNC machine one. A lot quicker than 3d printing them.

     

    This is your best bet for small production runs.

     

    CNC is not used, as far as I know, to produce plastic parts for production, it is however used extensively for metal parts. For plastics, CNC and 3D printing are generally slow processes used to make high precision prototypes or molds. I suggest designing and fabricating a prototype, then make a silicon or polyester mold and cast shells it in using resin. Original Atari cartridge halves could be used to make flexible (silicone) molds as well.

     

    http://www.freemansupply.com/ Serious manufacturer and supplier for casting from hobbiest to industrial applications - great videos on their site and interesting newsletter.

    http://www.smooth-on.com/ More retail sort of distributor for casting supplies, mostly for artists.

    http://www.alumilite.com/ Casting supplies, more geared towards hobbiests and small projects, they have kits and good videos too but are unnecessarily expensive.

     

    D. Scott Williamson

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