Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store  

eegad

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    493

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by eegad

  1. Posted

    So I was thinking today...."wouldn't it be great if an interface existed that let you connect a usb thumb-drive to the atari 8-bits?" Just as a straightforward "storage device", it would allow you to boot the atari with a real drive and then load tons of programs from one usb drive. Even better, if you could boot from the usb drive (with dos or a menu loader installed on it), you could boot the atari with no disk drives and play tons of games. Similar to the idea of the "max-flash carts", but I think much more flexible.

     

    Anyway.....does anyone know of such a device, or has anyone else explored the possibility of making something like this???

  2. Posted

    I unpacked all my old Atari stuff (2600 and 8-bit computers) 2 months ago and have been playing around with them since. One thing I totally forgot that I had was the "Trak-Ball" controller. I got it late in the game for use with a few 8-bit computer games that I loved. So I used it with those (Missile Command, Centipede, etc) and played it with them recently.

     

    But I figured, 'hey this probably works with 2600 games also", so I last week hooked it to the 2600 and used it to play centipede and a few others. Works fine when set to the "joystick" mode.

     

    Today I was thinking "okay, so if the Trak-Ball can work in a 'joystick' mode, then it should work with emulators, right?". A few years back I bought a cheapy PS/2 keyboard, ripped it apart and hacked (soldered) an Atari game controller port onto it. When plugged into a PC, an Atari joystick plugged into it causes keyboard inputs to be triggered (ie - 'h' for fire, 'm' for 'up', etc). Don't ask why those keys....it was just easiest to solder with that particular cheap keyboard circuit. Anyway.....I can plug an Atari joystick to it, and then map those keys to controls in MAME and Stella Emulators. Works great. So......I figured if I plug the Trak-Ball in and it emulates an Atari joystick, it should work great for use with emulations of the "real" arcade games of centipede, tempest, etc. But..... the fire button works.... unfortunately, I can't get MAME (or stella) to recognize input from the trak-ball when you roll it.

     

    As an aside, if I open a text editor and plug in a joystick and push different directions, I get a string of text "jjjjjjjjjjjhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmm", etc that corresponds to the keys being "pressed" when moving the joystick. With the trak-ball plugged in I get "hhhhhhhhhh" when pressing the fire button, but NOTHING when rolling the ball.

     

    So.....does anyone out there with a more "electrical engineering" background have any idea how the trak-ball works??? What kind of outputs does it give that it would work on a 2600/8-bit computer, but isn't recognized when plugged into an "emulator" port??

     

    Any ideas would be much appreciated. Would love to be able to play the *real* arcade versions of games with the old Atari Trak-Ball.

  3. Posted

    I unpacked all my old Atari stuff (2600 and 8-bit computers) 2 months ago and have been playing around with them since. One thing I totally forgot that I had was the "Trak-Ball" controller. I got it late in the game for use with a few 8-bit computer games that I loved. So I used it with those (Missile Command, Centipede, etc) and played it with them recently.

     

    But I figured, 'hey this probably works with 2600 games also", so I last week hooked it to the 2600 and used it to play centipede and a few others. Works fine when set to the "joystick" mode.

     

    Today I was thinking "okay, so if the Trak-Ball can work in a 'joystick' mode, then it should work with emulators, right?". A few years back I bought a cheapy PS/2 keyboard, ripped it apart and hacked (soldered) an Atari game controller port onto it. When plugged into a PC, an Atari joystick plugged into it causes keyboard inputs to be triggered (ie - 'h' for fire, 'm' for 'up', etc). Don't ask why those keys....it was just easiest to solder with that particular cheap keyboard circuit. Anyway.....I can plug an Atari joystick to it, and then map those keys to controls in MAME and Stella Emulators. Works great. So......I figured if I plug the Trak-Ball in and it emulates an Atari joystick, it should work great for use with emulations of the "real" arcade games of centipede, tempest, etc. But..... the fire button works.... unfortunately, I can't get MAME (or stella) to recognize input from the trak-ball when you roll it.

     

    As an aside, if I open a text editor and plug in a joystick and push different directions, I get a string of text "jjjjjjjjjjjhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmm", etc that corresponds to the keys being "pressed" when moving the joystick. With the trak-ball plugged in I get "hhhhhhhhhh" when pressing the fire button, but NOTHING when rolling the ball.

     

    So.....does anyone out there with a more "electrical engineering" background have any idea how the trak-ball works??? What kind of outputs does it give that it would work on a 2600/8-bit computer, but isn't recognized when plugged into an "emulator" port??

     

    Any ideas would be much appreciated. Would love to be able to play the *real* arcade versions of games with the old Atari Trak-Ball.

  5. Posted

    I've had Stella from long ago for when I want to occasionally play Adventure or something while on the PC. I just upgraded to the latest version (after about 5 years), and see that Stella now has the ability to store cheat codes in a 'stella.cht' file. That sounds great....except that so far I haven't been able to find a cheat file anywhere online for it. Anybody happen to know where I can get one? (I've found random, individual cheat codes to enter, but surely there must be a larger collection of codes already in a 'stella.cht' file)

  6. Posted

    In the hopes of helping someone else in the future who gets stuck....

     

    I finally beat haunted adventure........after downloading the .bin file; running it in the latest version of Stella; using Stella's visual debugger to change background colors in the mazes, and then copying and pasting those pieces together. Ugh!

     

    The maps I pieced together are attached for other stuck adventurers. :)

    maze1.pdf

    maze2.pdf

    gray_cavern_maze.pdf

    green_storage_maze.pdf

    grave.pdf

    • Like 1

  11. Posted

    I just recently dug out my 800xl (with 256k rambo), four 1050 disk drives (2 with us doublers), and my 200-300 old floppy disks. Was in a nostalgic mood and figured I'd see if any of this stuff still worked after being packed away in a closet since 1992, when I finally stopped using the Atari as my main home computer (and game playing machine) :)

     

    After all this time, I kind of figured that at least one of the drives wouldn't work, due maybe to something like a deteriorated belt that slipped/cracked/etc. And I figured that most disks would work, but since most of them are 20-25 years old, several would probably be dead (especially since I used to use whatever cheap no-name brand I could find).

     

    To my pleasant surprise all drives work, and every disk I've tried so far (about 50-75) works just fine. It got me curious as to what others out there have experienced through time. What kind of failure rates have people been experiencing on their 25 year old floppies??

  12. Posted

    I've been considering making a USB programming adapter for the maxflash carts to eliminate the need for the whole PC->SIO2PC->Atari->Cartridge programming dance.

    I wonder if there would be a market for that. For me, the cart programming exercise will happen very infrequently. SIO2PC will be a permanent attachment. I don't see someone buying a cart but not buying SIO2PC. Just extend the sale price of the 8M cart to one day after the usb version of SIO2PC is available ;)

     

     

    Well, I'd buy one. I'd love to be able to dump bunches of games to a few maxflash carts, but I really don't care to have the Atari hooked up to my PC. Atari's in the basement, PC's in the den...would be nice to have some way to hook a maxflash directly to pc, copy stuff to it, then just take the cartridge to the Atari.

  13. Posted

    Greetings. I was an Atari addict from '79 thru the 80s. Somewhere in the early 90's I packed away all the Atari consoles and computers and moved on.

     

    A couple of months ago I stumbled upon the Flashback II (a bit late, I know) and bought one (only because I saw that it had a sequel to both adventure and haunted house, 2 of my favorite 2600 games). Anyway, I got into it and ended up digging out my old Atari stuff and have been playing with it all in the basement lately. I've gone "retro" :)

     

    I was searching the database here, as well as poking around ebay and I see that a couple of things that I have classify as "rare". One thing that I was wondering about are the Swordquest games. Back in the day, I ordered them all thru the Atari Club. I have all 3 released games, with boxes, instructions, comic books.......and also t-shirts. I haven't yet seen mention of the t-shirts anywhere, but AtariClub orders included free Swordquest t-shirts with each order. So I was wondering....can anybody give me a ballpark of what the set is currently worth? I don't necessarily want to sell, but I'm curious what to expect if I were to put it up on ebay or something.

  14. Posted

    did anyone here ever program a game with? or a Excel-like database or something?

     

     

    well, i did program a "pong" game on it way back when. it was really really lame (abysmally slow, paddle and ball were both large squares), but kind of interesting that you could do it like that on the 2600. :)

  15. Posted

    Been playing Fatal Run on the Flashback 2 the past few days. Does anyone know if there is a code to jump to the last level? Yes, I have the code to jump to level 29 "TC1LE9H". Searching for Fatal Run 2600 online brings up several references to a code "TURTLE" that supposedly jumps to level 32 (and also other codes for invincibility, etc). None of those codes work for me however, so I assume the posters made a mistake and were referring to the 7800 version of the game, even though they were saying it was for 2600. In any case, are there any other codes actually available in the 2600 version?

  16. Posted

    Hello all. I was an Atari addict all through the 80s. I don't know how the Atari Flashback systems came along without me ever noticing them. In any case, I recently got a Flashback 2 and it has revived my Atari interests - I love it. Especially the prototypes and new games. Adventure and Haunted House were always among my favorites, so it's great to see "sequels" to them. I figured out Adventure II (with hidden room) on my own. But Return to Haunted House has me stumped. I beat game 1, but can't seem to ever get anywhere with game 2. I've found the skull but can't find the shovel, and I always get lost in 1 of the mazes.

     

    So I'll re-ask the question that somebody posted here a couple years ago.....does anybody have a walkthru or map for Return To Haunted House??? HELP!

AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2021 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...