DanBoris

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

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

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

I seem to recal that there where a few games that did not work perfectly on this module, but I can't seem to find this documented anywhere. Dan

This is a great idea! You can get the cleaning cards like this from MCM Elecntronics (www.mcmelectronics.com). It's part number 20-2385. The kit MCM sells comes with dry cards and a bottle of the cleaner. Dan

I never noticed the initials at the end of the BIOS! The initials must be for Rob Zydbell who wrote the bios according to this document: http://www.atari-history.com/archives/pdf/...0romrelease.pdf Dan

You can get them here: http://gamearchive.com/video/manufacturer/...chematics/jedi/ Dan

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

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 The Atari History Museum 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

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

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

And one more pic. If you like handhelds this was the booth to be at. They had pretty much everyone one you could imagine on display.

Here is a picture of a portion of the arcade area. Lost of great games all on free play!

quote: Originally posted by skatepunk60: Wow man, great pic , when does PhillyClassic end? Sorry, it has already ended, but with the success of this year, I think there is no doubt that there will be another. Dan

I have just returned from two excellent days at Phillyclassic. Here is a picture for everyone who couldn't make it: That Albert (from Atariage) on the right in the white shirt, next to him is John Hardie from CGExpo in the Black shirt, and I believe that's Tempest with his back to the camera. I'll try to put up more pics later. Dan

Here's a challenge for everyone. I have the disassmbly of the 5200 bios on my page (http://atarihq.com/danb) that I have commented most of it, but for the life of me I can't figure out the part of the code that draws the startup screen with the Atari logo. There are two parts to the code, $FD93 - $FE01 draw the Fuji logo, and $FE03-$FE61 draw the "ATARI". It isn't doing a straight copy of graphics data to RAM, it's using some tricky algorithm to do it. Any one have any ideas on how this works? Dan

quote: Originally posted by Heaven/TQA: does VSS 5200 emulator have a single step debugger and brake points etc??? that would be cool because this is missing in atari800win 3.0 hve Sure does! Dan

The only official game to use them is Indy 500. They can also be used with the Stell-a-Sketch homebrew. The keypads where used with a couple different games and aren't to hard to find. Dan

If you really get stuck you can do it via public transportation: http://www.septa.org/ There is a train the runs from the Airport into the city and a bus line (Rt 125) that runs from the city up to the Valley Forge Convention Center. Just a matter of making the connection between the two. Dan [ 04-24-2002: Message edited by: Dan Boris ]

I will be there Friday and Saturday, helping out with the setup and running of the show. If anyone want to say hello, I will be wearing my MAME logo pin that should be a good identifier, or you can ask at the CGExpo booth, those guys know me. Dan

It might just be me being dense, but what system are we talking about? Dan quote: Originally posted by Heaven/TQA: to speed up development...i need your help... i started to code timepilot... the vram is organized 120x256 bytes as well as the sprite tables... (16x256) the sprites are stored in stripes. the timepilot sprites most have 16x16 pixels so they take on atari 4x16 = 64 bytes... here is my actual sprite copy routine... i used a strange trick as the 6502 has no lda/sta (zero) adress mode... ;--------------------------------------------------- ;copies testwise player sprite in the middle of the screen ;si contains start adress of the sprite ;--------------------------------------------------- test_copy mwa si si0 ;set 4 pointers mva si+1 si1+1 mva si+1 si2+1 mva si+1 si3+1 lda si add #1 sta si1 lda si add #2 sta si2 lda si add #3 sta si3 mwa #screen+14+52*256 di0 mwa #screen+15+52*256 di1 mwa #screen+16+52*256 di2 mwa #screen+17+52*256 di3 ;4 stripes a 16 bytes per sprite (16x16 pixel) ldy #15 ldx #0 test_copy0 lda (si0,x) ;get sprite data sta (di0,x) ;on screen lda (si1,x) sta (di1,x) ;on screen lda (si2,x) sta (di2,x) ;on screen lda (si3,x) sta (di3,x) ;on screen inc si0+1 inc si1+1 inc si2+1 inc si3+1 inc di0+1 inc di1+1 inc di2+1 inc di3+1 dey bpl test_copy0 rts this can not be the fastes copy routine??? what would be the cleverst data structure to be very fast in coping sprites on screen??? the routine should be excepting a source adress (which sprite) and the destination screen adress... so it becomes most flexible (f.e. when animating the sprite...and even moving...) any good ideas??? i thought it would help when the structure is in 256 byte lengths... even the vram... but really??? is this the fastes way? atari 7800 does it in this way... thoughts & ideas welcome... heaven ps this is really crucial before developing further... timepilot on atari 8bit depends on the sprite engine...and the sprite engine depends on the data structure...and this structure must be optimized for 6502...

You aren't the first person to mention this, and I have to say this is strange. Which version of VSS do you see this problem in? I have check the push and pull instructions and they work fine. There must be more to this problem. Dan [ 04-21-2002: Message edited by: Dan Boris ]

This is possible, but a little tricky to build. I don't know of any place on the net to find documentation on how to do this either. Another good option is to get ahold of a Starpath Supercharger. This was a device that originally allowed you to load games on the 2600 from an audio tape. You can actually hook it to the audio output of a PC sound card and transfer any 2K or 4K ROM image to it so you can play on the real hardware. You can get more details here: http://members.cox.net/rcolbert/schookup.htm Things get much trickier for games that are over 4K. These would require extra hardware to simulate the bank switching the games used. Dan

How many 5200 programmers (or potential programs) here are going to be at Phillyclassic? I am putting together what I am calling the 5200 Programmers Scrapbook which I want to have available at Phillyclassic. The main thing it will contain are copies of the excellent series of articles from Byte magazine in 81/82 all about programming the Atari 8-bit computers. It gets right down to the hardware level so it's very applicable to the 5200. There will also be a few other 5200 related items thrown in. I will probably be charging a small amount for them, just enough to cover the copying costs. Dan

Well at the moment I am not actually dealing with it. I shortened the number of cpu cycles per line to 80. Since there is a fairly small pool of games for the 5200 this seems to work ok for the most part. I may improve this in the future by simply calcualting the number of cycles the ANTIC is going to steal on each line and adjusting the number of CPU cycles appropriatlly. To fully emulate the Atari 8-bit computers would require much tighter timing so I have no plans to get into this at this point. Dan