DanBoris

The one exception is EPROM chips which can fail due to "bit-rot" even if the system/game is never powered up. I don't think there in any consensus on how long EPROMS will last but it seems the problem can start showing up in as little as 10 years. Fortunetly very few systems/games used EPROMS. Outside of prototypes, the only place I have seen EPROMS in classic systems was in certain Colecovision cartridges. Dan

Do you have any tech info on the network module? I have been studying the pictures on the site and a dis-assembly of the ROM images. I am really interested in finding out how these things worked. Dan

You could get tricky and pull the R/W and clock signals off the expansion port. You would just have to have a second cable coming out of the cartridge to connect to the port. Dan

Because it's hardwired to do that inside the 6502. When the the 6502 wants to access the stack it puts the address $0100 + SP onto the address bus, thus it always goes to page 1. Dan

I did a search of the MAME source code and only turned up Pokey in Atari games. Dan

The only arcade developer that used POKEY (as far as I know) was Atari, since it was thier chip. Dan

Well, if your power supply dies, just pick up a new one from Radio Shack (or other electronics supplier) and transplant the connector. The power supply itself is not unusual, it's jut the connector that's hard to find. Dan

This is correct, the BIOS overlaps the cartridge space. The BIOS is really just a boot routine and serves no useful function once the game is running so it can be switched out. The switching is controlled by a special control register. I'll have to dig through my notes and find the details of this register. Dan

There is not a lot of documention floating around on the 7800 but you can find links to most of it on my web site: http://atarihq.com/danb/a7800.shtml There are also schematics on this site. You may also want to get in touch with the guy doing the 2600 on a chip project since the 7800 has a complete 2600 inside it. http://www.mindspring.com/~2600onachip/index.html The trickiest part of this project will be the Maria graphics chip, which is an Atari custom IC. None of the 7800 ROMS are in the public domain. Dan

7800 carts (like most systems) used mask programmed ROMS, as opposed to EPROMS, so it would be almost impossible to "erase" the cartridges. I can't think of anything that could have happened to them to damage them. The only thing I can think of is that they are PAL carts and you are running them on an NTSC system. Not sure what would happen in this situation, but it's very possible they won't run. What happens on the screen when you run these games? Dan

It was probably put there so there was the option of using a hard wired cable or a cable with a connector. Dan

Also note that electronically, they are totally different and are not interchangable. Dan

It's probably a 600XL. The 600XL is almost identical to the 800XL except that it has 16K or RAM instead of 64K and it's physically a little smaller. Dan

This is suprising since in 1982 he wrote one of the greatest books on Atari 8-bit programming, De-Re-Atari. Not to mention that in 1981 he wrote Eastern Front, arguably one of the best Atari 8-bit games. Dan

I am wondering if roadblock to doing this is the intelectual propery rights to the 6502 processor. Western Design Center owns the IP rights to the 6502 technology, and it's possible that they don't license the rights at a low enough price to make this economically feasible. Dan

I didn't play a whole lot of games on my ST by my three favorites where probably: 1. Sundog 2. Time Bandit 3. Rouge Dan

I've been thinking about the ups and downs of the videogame industry recently so I put together this graph. It show how many arcade titles where released each year between 1972 and 2001, based on the KLOV. The first part of the graph is not surprising, a slow but steady increase from 1972 until 1980, then around 1980 the rate increases rapidly until the crash in 1984. Things then level off and stay that way until the early 90's at which point we see the slide which has continued until today.

Has anyone seen a list of 2600 carts along with the year they where first released? Dan

I remember 2, The Atari Word Processor, and AtariWriter. Of course there were also a few from third parties. Dan

According to the calculator on this site: http://www.halfhill.com/inflation.html $189 in 1983 is about the same as $341 today. Dan

Wow! Where did you find that? Dan

A few years ago when I first started collecting I passed up a Vectrex at a flea market for $25.00. I kick myself for that now! Dan

My suggestion, since they are all free, get them all. If a game doesn't work well with one, try another. Dan

Well, first you would probably need a schematic of the internals of the Pokey chip so you could recreate it. As far as I'm aware they just aren't available. However, you can still buy the original chips at Best Electronics, I'm not sure how many they have left though. Mitchhttp://atari7800.atari.org The POKEY tech specs and schematics are available here: http://www.atarimuseum.com/archives/tech_d...docs_8bits.html Considering that someone managed to put an entire Atari 2600 on a single chip, it's no to far fetched that someone would be able to develop a Pokey clone. Dan

You can get the standalone emulator here: http://mywebpages.comcast.net/lordfrito/ir...obot/index.html The standalone is faster, but the MAME driver is more accurate. Dan