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DanBoris

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Posts posted by DanBoris

  4. Posted

    We had SpacePort arcades in Southern New Jersey also, they must have been a chain. We also had one called Funway Freeway which was done with black carpeting on the floors and walls, and decorated with road signs. Very cool arcade!

     

    I remeber back when arcades where really big, my local shopping mall actually had 3 seperate arcades opertating at the same time! Those where the days!

     

    Dan

  5. Posted

    Yes, it all has to do with the graphics modes your use. Antic modes 2-7 are character modes where the background is made up of individual graphic "tiles". Modes 8 and up are graphics modes and can display fully bitmapped graphics. Modes D and E are nice for a high resolution 4-color graphics, and for real high resolution there is mode F, but that is only 2 colors.

     

    You will find that a lot of games use the character modes because they take less memory, and you can update the graphics a lot faster since you don't need to do as many write to the video memory as you would with bitmapped modes.

     

    Dan

  6. Posted

    The expansion port mainly has audio/video connections on it. For example there is a composite output, and video outputs directly from the Maria chip. What's interesting is the EXTMEM and RDY signals which are related to the processor. There signals are pretty useless on thier own so I have to assume that the idea was to in some cases use this expansion port along with the cart slot which provides the full data and address bus from the processor.

     

    Dan

  8. Posted

    Prior to the Pokey I believe all the Atari games generated thier sounds with a variety of custom digital/analog circuits. You would generally see a different circuit for each sound the system had to generate which allowed you to have multiple sounds simultaneously.

     

    Taking the game SuperBug as an example, it had a circuit for the engine sound, a curcuit for the tire screech sound, and a circuit for the crash sound.

     

    The engine sound circuit was built around a 555 timer (very common in sound circuits) the frequency of which could be controlled by the processor to give the impression of the engine running faster or slower. The output of the timer went into a counter circuit that generated a pseudo-random sound for the engine noise.

     

    You can get manuals and schematics for a lot of the old Atari games at www.spies.com/arcade.

     

    You may also want to check out the Video Game Logic Handbook Volume 1, which can be found in the Bronze Age section of that site. It has a couple pages on sound generation.

     

    Dan

     

    [ 06-03-2002: Message edited by: Dan Boris ]

  9. Posted

    One reason is that there are a few games that don't work on all 7800, but of course will work on a 2600.

     

    The other reason is for reasons of collectability. Some people just like to have the original systems as collectibles even if they don't actually need them to play games.

     

    Dan

  10. Posted

    quote:
    Originally posted by StanJr:

    I don't think they can touch you if you give it away. Am I right?

     

    By this same logic, if I were to burn copies of Microsoft Office and hand them out at a flea-market for free, Microsoft couldn't touch me? Whether you get money for them or not, it's still copyright/trademark infringement.

     

    (Insert obiligatory "I am not a lawyer" disclaimer here)

     

    Dan

  11. Posted

    I have read the book and highly recommend it, it's packed with great information on the history of video games. I do have to agree with the last poster that the writing style can be a little awkward at times (sorry Leonard), but the content more the makes up for it.

     

    I also recommend

     

    "The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon--The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World"

    by Steven Kent

     

    (this was originally published as "The First Quarter")

     

    It's another good book on videogame history and make's a nice compliment to Phoenix.

     

    Dan

  12. Posted

    I checked a set of paddles and the lowest reading on them was 82 Ohms on one and 284 Ohms on the other, but you don't have to turn them to far to get the reading up to 2.7K Ohms, so that might not be a problem.

     

    You might be interested in the schematics on my web site (www.atarihq.com/danb) for the Atari 5200 trackball. This converts digital signals into an analog 5200 input which the 5200 uses for it's joysticks.

     

    Dan

  13. Posted

    quote:
    Originally posted by Heavy-Sixer:

    I don't know why they are only going to include 10 games. They should be able to fill the thing to the brim with games. I like their choices for the ten though.

     

    I have a fealing that these are conversions of the originals and this not running the original ROMS. I this case it would take a lot of effort to add each game this keeping the game count down.

     

    Dan

  14. Posted

    I still wonder how these units actually work. I see three possible options:

     

    1. A clone of the 2600 hardware

    2. An embedded processor running an emulator

    3. An embedded processor running ports of the games.

     

    I'm tending to thinks it's number three. I think the game selection screen is beyond the graphic capbilities of the 2600 hardware so that would rule out a simple clone of the 2600 hardware. I also don't think a powerful enough embeded processor to do emulation would be economical enough. So that leaves option 3.

     

    Dan

  19. Posted

    That only applies in 2600 mode. In 7800 mode the cartridge has access to the full address range. So a 7800 cart can directly address memory locaitons $4000-$FFFF which is 48K. In some cases 16K of that is used for extra RAM on the cart instead of ROM. The bankswitching varies a bit. You can get some info on it in the Maria technical docs which are here:

    http://www.atari-history.com/7800.html

     

    Dan

  20. Posted

    quote:
    Originally posted by Curt Vendel:

    I wanted to fly too.... don't think the stuff would've fit in the overhead storage on the plane though
    ;-)

     

    Curt

     

     

    I don't think it would have fit if you had an entire 747 to yourself!

     

    Kidding aside Curt had a great display. It was really cool to see some of the prototype stuff in person, instead of just as pictures on his site.

     

    Dan

  21. Posted

    quote:
    Originally posted by Scott Stilphen:

    [QB]I'm pretty certain I got the last entry badge (#995).

    [QB]

     

    Cool! When I left Saturday afternoon they were working through the 900's and hoping to hit 1000. Maybe the did it!

     

    Dan

  22. Posted

    quote:
    Originally posted by rick weis:

    ataripitbull,

     

    how many people were there?? and how many tables of sellers?? find anything good?

     

    Take care,

     

    Rick

     

    I worked the registration table, and we had over 900 people attend throughout the weeked, that's almost 3 times more then last year. There where approximatly 2 dozen vendors/exhibitors. The press coverage of the show was really amazing, the local ABC, CBS, and FOX affilities where there, so was a crew from VH1, and I am told CNN Headline news, although I didn't see that one.

     

    I have posted some pics of the show on the Classic Gaming General board.

     

    Dan

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