DanBoris
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Posts posted by DanBoris
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My parents got me my first system, an Atari 800, back in the early 80's. I actually kept the packing list from the order, here's what we got with the prices:
800 16K Computer $679.00
810 Disc Drive $449.00
850 Interface $169.00
410 Recorder $76.00
Joystick $20.00
Video Easel $35.00
Star Raiders $60.00
Epson MX80FT Printer $559.00
Printer Cable $30.00
32K Expansion Board $159.00
Touch Typing $20.00
Atari Word Processor $159.00
Breakout with Paddles $43.00
Graphit $17.00
Statistics $20.00
Visicalc $169.00
Atari 800 dust cover $7.99
1 box floppy disks $36.00
My computer today has 1Gig of RAM (around $24.00), back then, that much memory would have cost $5,013,504.00
Today a DVDr can hold round 4.7G for around $0.30. Back then the same capacity in floppies would have cost $197,551.71
Today, Microsoft Excel $229.00, then Visicalc, $169.00.
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Well, this being part of a large kiosk atari 2600, isn't impossible. I actually did work in the computer and electronics departments of Sears in the early 80's. However, with all this discussion, I took a much closer look at the connector, and although the lettering I'm about to show you looks quite clear in the photo, trust me, its very small and you have to angle the lighting just right to be able to see the black on black lettering. Anyway, the word Amp is embossed in one of the corners of the connector, and a "w" on the opposite, so now I'm back to thinking it's a car wiring harness "maybe"Bob
Amp is the manufacturer of the connector, they were/are one of the biggest connector makers in the electronics business. It being part of the 2600 kiosk makes a lot of sense.
Dan
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It appears to me that the "LEFT" and "RIGHT" labels are handprinted, perhaps with a paintmarker, suggesting that this may be homemade.Hard to tell if they are hand printed. The piece the labels are on is probably shrink tubing. It's possible the text was printed on the tubing first, then it was shrunk on. This would lead to the text being a little uneven.
Dan
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The connector is quite unusual, it looks very industrial from what I can see in the picture, reminds me of the type of connectors used in automobile wiring harnesses. It also looks like there are a bunch of jumper connections that loop back on that connector. If this cable was designed specifically for the device it was connecting to, these wouldn't be necessary since they would just do this on the PCB. This would lead me to believe that this cable connects to something that wasn't originally intended to be hooked to a computer, or at least to an Atari computer.
Dan
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- Has anyone successfully used R: to connect two instances of the emulator on the same desktop?- If so, some code examples would be handy.
I played around with the R: handler in Atari800WIn and was able to get it to work somewhat. I loaded up AMIS BBS in the emulator and once it was up and running I could telnet to my local machine and connect to the BBS. I don't know how to setup AMIS so I didn't get anything to productive back, but it was a start. I also tried this with the Carina BBS but it wouldn't accept a connection.
Dan
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Just for the folks who may not be familiar with the lengthy 7800 vs. NES comparisons of the past, here's a quick rundown of the differences.Processing Power:
- I always find the statement of X being more powerful than Y to be funny. Both the NES and 7800 have 8-bit 6502 processors. Some have made the claim of the NES having an additional "processor' in the PPU, but it's not really correct. The one difference is that the NES PPU has its own access to the bus when building graphics whereas the MARIA halts the CPU when building graphics.
Arguably you could say that the 7800's CPU is more powerful since the version of the 6502 the NES uses does not have the BCD math mode, where there 7800's does, but in most cases this wouldn't have a significant effect on performance.
Dan
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I took a stab at trying to massage the sources so that they would assemble using ATASM. The biggest issue I have is with local labels. It is difficult at times to tell when a local label region (in ATASM terms) should begin. If I could learn the rules for local labels for this assembler I don't think it would be too difficult to write a perl script to make the necessary source changes. I nearly got it to assemble but I'm sure it would likely crash as I know there are places where I got the local label regions wrong.If we could simply get the docs for this assember I think that would be enough to be able to convert the sources to your favorite assembler.
tjb
I think the local label regions are delimited by the non-local lables. Here is a chuck of code from one of the Galaxian source files as an example. DODX: stats a block and it has two locals 1$: and 2$:. DECRX: starts the next block, it has one local 1$.
Dan
DODX: ;X SHOULD STILL HAVE INDEX TO DYDX TABLE LDA DYDX(X) STA BTEMP ;SAVE FOR BIT TEST AND #7 LDX ANMAT0(Y) CPX #4 ;ARE WE STILL PEELING OFF BCC 1$ ;IF NOT, MAKE SHORT DX SWEEP LDX STRTY0(Y) CPX #0B0 BCS 1$ LDX FLTBND BEQ 1$ ;DONT MOVE SO FAST IF AT END GAME ASL ;MAKE BROADER SWEEP 1$: BIT BTEMP BMI DECRX ;MSB INDICATES VECTOR IN MINUS X DIRECTION CLC ADC HPOS0(Y) CMP #RBOUND ;SEE IF AT THE RIGHT BOUND OF SCREEN BCC 2$ JMP FLANDN 2$: STA HPOS0(Y) BCC DOGRFX ;UNCONDITIONALLY DO GRAPHICS ; DECRX: STA BTEMP ;SAVE SUBTRAHEND SEC LDA HPOS0(Y) SBC BTEMP CMP #LBOUND ;IS LEFT BOUND ABOUT TO BE EXCEEDED? BCS 1$ JMP FLANDN 1$: STA HPOS0(Y);ELSE RECORD IT ; DOGRFX: JSR STUFEX
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Well now we at least know who wrote Crossbow. Scott Marshall... Why does that name sound familiar?Tempest
Here is his web site, you can see a list of the other games he worked on there.
http://mysite.verizon.net/scottathome/index.html
If you lookup the phone number that's in the readme.doc file, it's still his number!
Dan
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The artifacts only show up when you plot single pixels horizontally. If you put two or more pixels next to each other a line you won't get artifacting.
Dan
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There are some great documents on that site. I found the Centipede notes that where just put up pretty interesting. It contains a bunch of documents discussing the results of prototype play testing. It's interesting that a lot of people didn't like the trackball control and Atari even tried a full size trackball to see if people would like that better.
Dan
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Hi folks,We've identified the other three machines (from the farthest forward: a cabaret Pac-Man, Popeye, and Ms. Pac-Man), but the space themed game closest to the viewer has us stumped. What is that machine? I've searched every big name 'space' game I can think of, but no luck. It's probably something obvious, too.
How did you identify the cabaret Pac-man!? I would have had no clue on that one.
Dam
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Is there any place where people leave sources for assorted routines. Anything from PM graphics to the two things I am especially interested in. I want the fastest, best routine to move a software sprite on a screen with four colors or maybe even graphics 9, 10 or 11. Guess the routines are a little different, but maybe not too much.Also, a 3-D starfield, like the one in Star Raiders. Anybody have a good routine for that?
Thanks and take Atarian care
Sounds like you are programming for the 5200/8-bits not the 7800. You might want to ask over in the 5200 programming forum.
Dan
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Hi thereJust got hold of an early PAL version of a heavy sixer made in sunny california, only problem is after getting it home it doesn't work! Would love to bring it back to it's former glory and use it instead of using my black 2600.
I've tried a different power pack and still nothing, is there any common problems or point me in the right direction?
Thanks Steve
What exactly does it do when you power it up? Do you get anything on the TV or just snow?
Dan
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I'm just asking as I obviously don't know, but.... was it? :The schematics on this page: http://www.jsobola.republika.pl/schematy.htm refer to this as a test connector. These schematics are not official so we can't be sure why it was labeled that way, but where it connects to in the circuit seems to bear this out. For example there is a pin that connects to the power adapter jack, but no pin that connects to the regulated power. If the connector was intended for an add on it would probably have a connection to the regulated power.
Dan
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Yeah, the numbers on the chips aren't readable in that pic, but I dug out one of my 7800's:
The major chips are
Left side
CO25349-30 (MARIA) - Handles graphics in 7800 mode, and clock generation and address decoding in both modes.
CO14806C-29 (CPU) - Atari's version of the 6502 CPU
Middle column
6116L-5 (RAM) - 2K x 8bit static RAM, only used in 7800 mode
6116L-5 (RAM) - 2K x 8bit static RAM, only used in 7800 mode
BIOS ROM - Used for boot up
CO10444D-01 (TIA) - Graphics in 2600 mode, Sound and fire buttons in both modes
6532 (RIOT) - RAM and Timer in 2600 mode, Joystick direction, difficulty switches, pause, select, and reset switched in both modes.
Dan
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Thanks for the response. I will re-seat everything to see if this fixes it. How would one know whether the problem is caused by a bad MARIA or one of the two 6116's?There's really no way to be sure other then to swap the components with a good system.
Dan
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I guess were all not to mechanically inclined. I had a similar conendrum awhile back. Couldn't get help either.
I could do this, but I don't have easy access to a 7800 right now. If someone could provide a high resolution image of the PCB I could identify the chips.
Dan
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So removing a cart during power up, why would that cause 'damage' either? I'm asking because while I don't actually remove the game during play, if it's an old game, any mere touch will cause the unit to go nuts. That 'technically' would be equal to removing the cart out during power up. Any ideas?Pulling out (or putting in) the cartridge with the system on would be more likely damage the cartridge then the system. There are pins in the cart slot that deliver power, ground and signals to the cartridge. If when inserting or removing the cartridge, the power and signals get connected before the ground it will allow current to flow in a path that is was not intended to flow which can damage the eletronics. You will notice that most electronic devices that can be plugged and unplugged "hot", usually have a mechanical way of ensuring that ground gets connected first.
As someone else pointed out there is also the concern of pins on the cartridge getting shorted out, which could damage the system.
Dan
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The 5200 trackball has circuitry to simulate the action of a joystick. The faster you roll the ball, the further the stick appears to be pressed. In games like Centipede the values are taken to mean velocity, not position.There is a pin in the 5200 controller port used to detect the trackball, but I'd have to go look up how it works (maybe when I'm not at work).
This thread discusses the trackball:
It's not really a special pin that detects it just a technique using the normal pins. Here is a post I made about it a while back:
"The key is bit 2 or the CONSOL ($C01F) register which enables/disables the pots in the controllers (I believe a 0 disables the POTs). When you disable the pots in a normal controller they always return $E4 which is the max pot value that can be returned. But when you disabled the trackball it returns a $7A which is also the value that the trackball returns when it is at rest. So you can use this to determine whether a trackball or stick is connected.
"
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I wonder if it's some sort of internal employee magazine.
Dan
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AJF, cheers for trying.Aye, I've gathered that much about it so far. In a sense it's just as well; a modern processor means a well-supported modern IDE. I'm thinking a flash-based PIC will make a nice cheap single-chip solution, but I've no idea how much or what kind of I/O I'll need nor how much physical space I'll have to fit everything in. I'll have to butcher an existing cartridge for the casing, but ... y'know ... omlettes and eggs ...
I have some technical information on my web page about it http://www.atarihq.com/danb/Microvision.shtml including schematics of the base unit and cartridges. On the cartridge page there is a link to the patent for the TMS1100 CPU, and one for the system on the main page.
Dan
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The funny thing about the Asteroids Easter Egg, is that in an earlier version of the ROM, the message actually says "Dave S. says Hi!"
I wonder if the Joust message is triggered in a similar fashion... >:-)
Be sure to submit this to Digital Press, they pay money to people for finding easter eggs. Even though the message was documented on thier site, the method of getting it isnt' so you may qualify for the prize money.
Dan
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Can anyone recommend a podcast that discusses the Atari 2600 (or pre-1990 video games in general) on a regular basis? Thanks in advance.Check out:
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First computer?
in Atari 8-Bit Computers
Posted
My mother tells me that when they were planning on buying it for me, she said to my father, "he'll probably play with it for 2 weeks then loose interest". She was wrong about that one! I spend endless hours with that system, and it started me on the road to my current career as a computer programmer.
Dan