mactari

Now you’re talking controllers. Had the one with swappable grips… you’ve almost convinced me to go open up some storage bins and see if I can’t find it.

Just those that have “if we don’t get enough preorders that we end up canceling this thing, you don’t get charged.” Unrelated: I still don’t get how ARM carts work. Edit: Now I get it. Just had to read Alex’ post following yours. It’s not so much the ARM but coding up an emulator to know what to do with an ARMless ROM, so to speak. It’s “yet another bankswitching (or whatever) convention”. A real 2600 would be fine, but that’s why ROM dumper inherently === less compatibility.

That's why I was asking about how the ARM carts work -- they obviously work with the real woodgrain, but not here. How does conventional bankswitching work with a ROM dumper but the ARM version of [what I assume is still bankswitching] doesn't?

Sorry, hit submit and nothing happened so hit submit again. That was a mistake.

Okay, I've been away too long. This looked enough like a 2600 in the marketing email that I was curious (though a 4-switcher? COME ON!!! ). What's a ROM dumper do -- exactly what it sounds like? Just reads the cart and saves the ROM? I googled up a little on the Retron 77 and it didn't sound great. Is it a respected device? What's an ARM cart? Literally a cart with an ARM processor? I found, eg, this from https://champ.games/turbo-arcade And Stella's relatively recent release notes make it sound like I'm on the right track... But I'm not sure what that all means. (I'll keep googling if that's now too noob a question to bother answering.) I guess I'm wondering how these work on real hardware, but, again, I haven't paid enough attention recently. Guess it's time to search the forums like mad... Sounds interesting. I guess when you hit the right address the ARM catches it and fakes a bankswitch? But then I wonder how the ROM dumper works. I wish this 2600+ was a Kickstarter or something where you had an iota of protection. The "Pre-orders are considered final 30 days after the order date" phrase scared me a little. Let's pretend it's delayed -- when can I order and know my money's not going to disappear? I have ordered a t-shirt from them, and it eventually came, though it took two and half months just to ship. Some of their other offerings ("invest in us! But you don't really get anything approaching actual equity") seemed a little squirrelly. Anybody order some of their more expensive items and were pleased?

Just curious, since your original post was over two years ago, how many Pac-Man carts are you up to now? ..Al You know, I got exactly zippo Pacs from begging on this forum. Even usenet's results (admittedly done back in usenet's height) proved more productive. Musta been all those NES carts in that pic putting my poor project to shame. I'm still stuck at a few hundred, collected at random by myself. If I ever make it to a classic gaming expo, I'll have to bother you for the extra PacROMs!

Okay, realizing I'm nearly two years late to this party, the Mactari Tools Page (may it nearly rest in peace), is only for Classic Mac users using OS 9 or below. So yeah, unless you've got Classic installed, downloading MPW and friends is going to do an OS X user diddly squat. Now that said, at least the Classic Mac tools have a GUI for DAsm! (Though I can't take credit for it...) http://rufwork.com/mactari/dasmtut.html (down near the bottom there's a screenshot; very basic, but fairly useful) At some point I really should fix those pages up. Many of them are unchanged since 1998, just a few months after I was using RAsm and ResEditing the Activision Action Pack for my emulator. (Walking uphill to school in the snow without shoes, too, I'll wager.)

Though writing Crazy Insane Tank Battle from scratch wouldn't be all that difficult. At times, it seems that the hardware in the 2600 was specifically chosen so that you could play Combat & Video Olympics. Two players, two missles, a ball, and some playfield (not to mention the score flag to make the playfield color match the player) spell those two games perfectly.

EDIT: Argh, Super*chip*. For those of you who read this when I had misread the above as "SuperCharger", my apologies. We need different acronyms in this case, I think -- SC!= SC!!

Ha, sorry to return to the thread years later like this, but yep, noticed you were joking. My apologies if my reply was too dry It sure is a shame the homebrew scene grew to the point the Pac-Mans are actually worth something now. I keep meaning to find time to meet Albert at some convention to take some broken down Pacs off of him, but have yet to make the time. But don't let that stop you, the AA Forum frequentor, from sending your unwanted Pacs my way! AIM away!

I'm giving a talk at the "Playing the Past" conference (http://academic-gamers.org/gsg/) at U of Florida next month, and wanted to include the game hidden in BS2k for Lynx. Anybody have one they wouldn't mind parting with, for research purposes, of course? Condition beyond 'playable' not horribly important. Though I'm looking to buy, if someone's trusting enough to try it, I'm open to 'renting' it as well. I'd also trade, but don't have too much that's quite as rare. Have a medium sized 2600, 7800, Genny collection. Thanks!

Realizing this is months after the last post, here's a picture anyhow: http://www.atarihq.com/museum/2678/2800.html

I actually got the Kaboom! and Dragster patch (didn't save either -- didn't earn em) by doing something wacky with the instructions. Just to save time, here's a quote from my quick write up at Curmudgeon Gamer (http://curmudgeon.linuxgames.com/article.p...021228121934768) Not sure if that counts as a real cheat, but it's gotten me a couple of patches. Haven't experienced the other "cheats".

Man. It's obvious you have a problem. Get help. Your best first move would probably be to send me your hundred Pac-Man carts. TIA. Ruffin Bailey

You can grab the non-OS X'd tools at this overly-long URL: http://www.angelfire.com/mac/mactari/mactari/mact.html Let me know if you find broken links there. It's in need of some clean-up, but this is the latest version of the site. I wish AOL would take the old one down; it's awful misleading. If you just want a hex-editor, they're a dime a dozen. If you're just changing a few lines of graphics, you might try a search at versiontracker.com. Seems like I stumbled over a decent freeware hex-editor for OS X there last time I tried (on PC now, I'm afraid). Good luck and let me know if you have any trouble! Ruffin Bailey