Frotz

For those who want to examine the idea of digitally inserting someone else's face into a movie, say Stallone in the title role of "Ben Hur", look at the book "Remake" by Connie Willis (isbn 0553574418). In the Hollywood of the future there's no need for actors since any star can be digitally recreated and inserted into any movie. Yet young Alis wants to dance on the silver screen. Tom tries to dissuade her, but he fears she will pursue her dream--and likely fall victim to Hollywood's seamy underside, which is all to eager to swallow up naive actresses. Then Tom begins to find Alis in the old musicals he remakes, and he has to ask himself just where the line stands between reality and the movies. It's out of print, but easily available from the usual places.

Another problem I recently became aware of are cranks who conceal their feedback ratings. Ebay suggests you don't do this and forbids doing it if you want to sell. So a couple weeks ago I sold a ceramic figurine on consignment. It was just fine except for dust. The customer complained that it had severe crazing. Unfortunately I cannot put an automatic block on bidders who conceal their reputations. Then again, because buyers are exempt from getting bad feedback, does it matter anymore?

In my talks with Longhorn about circuit design, I identified three resistors that IMHO would be better replaced with pots. Two of them are to deal with differences between the 2600, 5200, and 7800. The remaining one needs to be very precise. Longhorn says that this would put people off having to do such adjustments. I say that if someone's keen enough to install one of these things, that someone should be just fine with adjusting some pots, particularly if the instructions are "set it to the middle and wiggle it around until the picture looks right". Opinions?

Here's Longhorn's circuit with the resistors mounted vertically. The resulting board is 2 inches by 1.5 inches. That should be small enough to tuck into a Jr.

Just for fun, here's a layout I did from Longhorn's schematics. The board is a bit smaller than his and could be a bit smaller still if the resistors are mounted vertically. Is there enough vertical clearance in a Jr to do that?

It's not clear to me what's going on at R6 and R11. Are those ranges of values? Perhaps trimmers should go there? Are you sure that C9 should be unpolarized?

As SMTs go, a SOIC is by far one of the easiest to solder. Wipe off most of the solder from the iron and tack down a corner pin. Move the opposite corner pin into position and tack that down too. The rest of the pins should now be aligned. I can deal with a single SMT.

What's wrong with atariservice.com? Every time I've viewed it (for the past couple months) it's "Down for Maintenance".

So there are only two possible hedge maze layouts? That simplifies things. Has anyone recently done anything with 2600 carts that carry their own RAM?

If recursion is available to the 2600 programmer (I don't know if it is), then solvable mazes can easily be generated on the fly with minimal memory usage. There's a very old X11 graphics demo that does this.

I'd handle that by having several different configurations of hedge mazes. Upon passing some tripwire point just before entering, a random configuration is loaded. That's how I handle a lot of randomized things in Inform games. Given the huge amounts of memory one can command nowadays on the 2600, that should be easily doable.

Funny that Foghat would pop up here... I did Shakespeare some years ago with one of the ex-members. "Cow Tipping" looks like it could be doable.

You could probably do the kingdom map layouts okay, but I'm not sure how you would do the minotaur and the shape shifting hedges, although I bet Nukey could do it all right. It would take a fair amount of work. Can you describe the minotaur and shifting hedges and why those would be troublesome? I wonder how it would work in a 7800...

If you can't do it yourself, I suggest you lay down all your ideas here and hope someone WITH the skills gets interested. Managing a project like this isn't a simple endevour. If you get in over your head, you run the risk of being branded like 8bitdomain.

There's yer problem! Yeah, yeah... I'll get a 5200 one of these days. It's backseated to some other projects like getting an AV mod into my 2600 and finishing some Midibox gear.

The prospect of being able to have 64k of rom is quite salivating. I have something that would be great for that.

Try these: http://www.aade.com/ check - the links page, check the soldering how-to link http://www.electronics-tutorials.com/ - tutorials starting with basic electronics http://www.morsex.com/building/atoz.htm - electronics construction how-to http://www.eio.com/ - besides the surplus stuff, check the technical forums http://www.play-hookey.com/ - Great primers on AC, DC, analogue, and digital. http://electronics.wisc-online.com/ - Primers and more advanced stuff.

Do you have any pics exported from the PCB software?

I'm thinking about making myself a dipswitch-style multicart. I found a 512-in-one design here: http://www.xs4all.nl/~rdemming/Atari/MultiCart2600/index.htm which does only 2K or 4K roms. Does anyone here know how to make a simple dipswitch multicart that handles bankswitching?

So I know Adventure II is for the 5200, but I've never had a 5200 and I'm not that interested in the 5200. Is it possible to port Adventure II to the 2600?

I voted "yes", but I'd like to also see what Longhorn eventually comes up with. In particular, I'd like to see some sort of cross-pollination going on between the two designs.

I remember drooling over this machine when I saw an article on the PC Engine in "Video Games and Computer Entertainment". When I got an SNES, I lost interest and never quite regained it.

I got some contact cleaner from Radio Shack and that seemed to mostly fix the problem. The select and reset switches were still grinding, so I popped one open to more thoroughly clean it. I couldn't get it back together, so I desoldered those two switches. Then something occured to me -- the footprint of these switches seems fairly generic. Why not replace the switches with a standard tilt-bat toggle? Of course, one can get easily get exact replacements, but what do you guys think?

I wonder if some sort of sheath can be concocted to prevent dust from creeping in the sides.

I'm thinking about what would be the Right Way to restore the switches on my light-sixer. Currently they're very mushy and stiff. Blowing with compressed air doesn't do anything. A local hobby shop sells tubes of grease for lubricating the throttle switches of RC cars. Would I be safe popping off the tops of the switches and using that grease?