eegad

Back about a dozen years ago when I first got back into playing with my old Atari, I won an auction on ebay for a console ("works") and about 30 cartridges. Photos didnt really show the console, nor the controllers well - they were behind the pile of cartridges. I didn't much care about the console - I bid on the lot because I didn't have about 20 of the 30 cartridges. I ended up winning for something like $40 or $50. Okay, cool, I got a bunch of games, and as a bonus I get an extra 6 switcher as a backup. When the box arrived, I was kind of shocked to find that the console was a low-numbered heavy sixer in really clean condition, along with two original style joysticks, an original style set of paddles, and the early style power pack. Nice.

A few years ago I was looking for cheats of some games I played a lot back in the day but never beat. In the end I ended up hacking some cheats myself. They can be found in this thread :

This is what happened with my 400 when it stopped working.... Sometimes a black screen, sometimes a green screen, once or twice even a dark red screen. Turned out to be a bad ram card. I think i paid around $15 for a replacement on ebay. Swapped the ram card and the 400 booted up fine.

Same thing happened to me. Several years ago I hooked up my 400 for the first time in 30 years. Blank screen. Took apart and reseated chips and wiggled connections. Nothing. Put it aside. Decided to fiddle with it again during covid lockdown last winter. Replaced RAM card with one ordered off ebay for about $15, swapped it out, and it booted up fine. ...not that I have any real USE for a 400, but it's kind of nice to have my first computer from 40 years ago functional again.

Only way I finished it was by using a cheat file.

32" samsung crt circa 2003. Don't know the model offhand but it's an odd duck in that it is a non-interlaced ntsc crt, so image is more like a computer monitor than traditional ntsc tv (no visible scanlines). Love it for playing old videogames; hope it doesn't die anytime soon.

Does anyone happen to a program that will generate a random maze in Atari Basic, in either graphics mode 7 or 8? I have one that works nicely in graphics mode 0, but doesn't lend itself to non-text modes. Thanks.

Meant to post in 8bit, cant figure how to delete. Sorry...

Cool. Anyone have any other short (10 lines or less) Basic programs that do something interesting graphically? Way way back in the early 80s I had some very short Basic programs typed in and saved on cassette that did things like this, or that plotted out various mathematical functions. Used to like to watch these type of things when I was bored.

Awesome! Will have to try this over the weekend. Would love to see The City turned into a cart as well. I know somebody here started working on it years ago, but never quite got it working.... It would load up and let you start playing, but after a few minutes it would crash, I believe when it went to load certain types of creature encounters. Anyway, great to see the Dungeon finally converted to cart.

Awesome! Thanks so much for this.

It's the age of covid-19 lockdown so there's not much to do. And so I've been playing much more Atari lately. I decided yesterday to mess around with Flight Simulator II a while. I actually owned a store-bought copy back in the day and spent enough time with it to learn a bit about flying, and the program controls. Well, that was then and this is now. The default is that you always start off in Chicago. After browsing through Atarimania's instructions, I see that ESC enters edit mode, and that ctrl-E loads a scenery disk. But the instructions also say that the included scenery includes NYC and 3 others....Fine....But it also mentions that coordinates, etc can be found on the included "charts". Well, I haven't been able to find any additional charts. And unfortunately, while I kept all my Atari hardware (and disks), I tossed all the packaging in the trash when I moved 20 years ago. Oops. Basically, all I want to do is be able to start a flight near New York City. Can anybody tell me how to start a new flight on a runway at either Newark or JFK? Much thanks for any help.

I'll second a request for air sea battle. Also would like to throw out a request for missile command.

One thing I was just wondering about this week - what hardware differences are there between the taiwan and hong kong versions, other than the version of basic, type of keyboard, socketed chips and such? A week ago I had all 3 of my 800xl's in use the same day and could really see the difference in video quality... The hong kong unit had much muddier video, while both of the taiwan units were sharper and brighter. These are ntsc units, using a composite monitor cable. What exactly did they change on the motherboard to improve the video when they switched to taiwan production?

I had similar problems with my 400. I had replaced the 16k ram card with 32k intec card way back when. A couple years ago, when I tried to use it for the first time in like 30 years, all I got was a black screen.... Or brown.... Or green. A few weeks ago I decided to mess with it again finally. I took a 16k board out of my 800 and put into the 400. Bingo, it booted up fine. I then ordered a 16k board from ebay for $20 and my 400 is in business again after all these years. So if you haven't tried it yet - swap the ram card with a known working one.

When I saw this I thought - no, how could that work on a 16k machine? But I just tried it and it did (though it did crash once). Now I'm even more impressed with AtariBlast! Haven't found many games that work on my 16k 400 with an sdrive-max. For cassette there's Apple Panic, Buried Treasure, Frogger, Genetic Drift, Sea Dragon and Stellar Shuttle. For disk images, there's Canyon Climber, Caverns of Mars, Chicken, Galactic Chase, Ghost Encounters, Jawbreaker2, Pinhead and Survivor. Problem is there's a decent amount of games that were 16k on tape long ago, but either there isn't an image of the tape version available (like Pogoman), or the tape is a multi-stage load which the sdrive doesn't do well with because it doesn't pause the loading between stages (like Zaxxon & Crypts of Terror). Oh well, at least it was fun to give my old 400 some use the past couple of weeks.

This 400 was my first computer, bought in July 1982. A year later I upgraded it to 32k. In late 1984 it got packed away in a closet when I got an 800xl. Got back into Atari about 10 years ago and rotate my 3 800xl's and 1 800 every 6 months or so. But when I hooked up my 400 for the first time in over 30 years, sadly it didn't work (just a black screen). I tried re-seating chips to no avail, and put it aside. Last week I decided to fiddle with it some more. I swapped out the 32k ram for a 16k card from my 800, and Bingo! It was up and running. Stupid, crappy 32k Intec card. Ordered another 16k card on ebay and installed it just now. My 400 is back in business. 🙂 ATARI 202 stamped in case (hard to see)

Looking for a list of commercial games that will run on a 16k 400. I normally use one of my 800xl’s or my 48k 800 for my Atari gaming, but my first computer was a lowly 16k 400. It hasn’t been set up or played with since circa-1984. I was thinking of taking it out and letting it get a little use. I know not too much will work on it, but certainly there were games out back in the 1980-1982 time period that would run, mostly cassette, but possibly a small amount of disks as well. I know I bought games for it back in the day that weren’t on cartridge. Pogoman comes to mind. Baja Buggies. Maybe Stellar Shuttle? Looking for more that I can throw at it. Unfortunately my usual go-to for game searches, Atarimania, doesn’t list memory requirements for games…..and neither does anything else that I’ve been able to find. (If only I had a couple of those old mail-order catalogs, because they always put memory requirements in their listings)

Definitely like the idea of having yellow key have slightly different shape to distinguish from green key. To answer your questions, no I have never played through dark mode. I have won games 1, 2, 4, 6 and 7. Have gotten all 3 bat eggs, entered secret room and won games 1, 2, 6 and 7 so far. Only tried playing a vast maze game once so far and got hopelessy lost in one of the mazes and quit after 20 minutes or so. Overall, really love the game.... Pretty much what I was hoping Atari would release back in the mid 80s.

>cassette audio. I had one or two back in the day that did that. But not what I'm looking for here. The reason I was asking about cassette-only games is that I wanted to D/L a few to try with an sdrive-max....just to see if it works as claimed for .cas images. But why download games that I know about and already have as atr/xex? So I figured I'd ask and see if there was any cassette-only releases that I somehow missed...a chance to maybe play something from 1981 that I'd never seen before.

I was just wondering if there are any good games (for NTSC machines) that were only ever released on cassette. Most stuff was released on both tape and cart/disk in the early 80s, but some were cassette only. Any recollections of such games that are still worthy of playing today? I'm wondering if there are any gems that I may have missed simply because they were only on cassette. If I go to Atarimania for example, yeah I can find many that only show a tape dump available....but rather than download and try a ton at random I figured I'd ask for any recommendations.

And having been playing original Adventure for 40 years I feel really REALLY stupid right now. I just got so used to chopping wood and building bridges at the start of each game that I totally forgot about the magnet. Oh well.

Don't know my time for game 1, but I think it was pretty long because I was messing around. But game 2 time was just under 16 minutes. Damn, so close! Also just remembered something I wanted to mention. More than once I had a game where the sword started on an inaccessable area. The screen near the start where you go up into a water area... Fountain to the left, island off in the water to the upper right. 2 or 3 times the sword started on that upper right island. But..... Without the sword you cant chop wood to build the paths to get to it, right? Well unless you are using the crab icon or something. But I was playing with the standard solid square icon. Each time I just restarted when I saw that.

Won both games 1 and 2 today with no deaths/resurrections, all dragons killed, and with finding all 3 bat eggs in each game and entering the secret room. Unfortunately I'm still a chamber pot dumper. Question.... What does the last line of text say in the secret room? Can only see top 2 scanlines on my tv.... Rest is off the screen. Also comment. Last week I hooked up my old 800 (I usually use one of my 3 800xl's). The key colors are somewhat easier to figure out on the 800 than the xl's (all with same composite cable connection).

Phoenix is the game I've most been hoping for on 8bits for...decades at this point.