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Auto Race from Mattel. Then Football I and II, Baseball, Hockey, Armor Battle. And Merlin. I actually just took mine all out the past few weeks for the first time in several years. I was quite bummed that Auto Race wouldn't work though. But I eventually managed to get it open and fix it. Such a simple little game but I still find it fun to play today.

It's got a 1976 copyright on the unit. I don't think it actually hit shelves until 1977 though.

As a kid I got most of Mattel Electronics handhelds. Always treated them fairly well and kept the boxes, instructions, etc. For the last 30+ years, every few years or so, I'll take them out and play a few games. This week, when I took out Mattel Electronics Auto Race, it seemed to have died. After some fiddling, I managed to fix it. Here's a summary, in the hopes that someone else out there with a similar problem might be able to fix theirs also... Last time I played the game a few years ago, for the first time in maybe 7-8 years, I noticed that the LED's were kind of flickery (which I didn't remember them being years ago), and the game seemed to play slower than I remembered. Also, sometimes you'd have to turn the on/off switch a couple times to get the game to start....sometimes you'd turn it on and there'd just be faint blips scattered on the screen, or the screen would stay black. Oh well, it mostly worked, so I didn't mess with it. The other day I went to play the game and couldn't get it to play at all. Turning the switch to 'start' usually did nothing. Occasionally if you flicked back and forth, or wiggled it around a bit, you could get some random blips to show up, but it wouldn't actually play. So I decided to take it apart and take a look. The big problem with these Mattel handhelds? Those stupid triangle screws. 2 solutions that I know of. One (the good way), is to find a 3-sided, triangular shaped metal file that tapers to a small traingular point. I've got one from my grandfather, must be 75 years old, that just fits the screws pretty good. Not sure if they still make/sell files like this, but there ya go. Second (the bad way), is to just carefully drill out the screws using a drillbit just slightly smaller than the screw head. You'll get it apart, but will later have to superglue the case back together (or use rubber bands to hold it). Pull the steering button off - it was difficult on mine, but if you just keep pulling straight up and *carefully* wiggling it back and forth, it eventually pops off. Now you can remove the entire circuit board and take a good look. I assumed the problem was with the on/off switch. First I tried using wires with small alligator clips to jump the posts attaching the switch to the board, thus bypassing it and making the game always be "on". Doing that, the game would sometimes come on and play the way it had a few years ago....flickery LED's and seemingly slower gameplay. Sometimes the screen would just get random garbage blips on it. Sometimes it would start to play, and then crap out. Hmmm. Maybe not the switch, maybe one of the components is just fried. Then I was noticing a small "pot"...a little circular thing with a slot in it that you can turn with a screwdriver. You often see these in old computers (like the Atari 8-bits), and videogame systems, where it works as a color adjustment knob. Why is it in this Auto Race game??? I turned it a bit. After doing so, the game played flawlessly again....solid bright LED's, it played faster (the way I remember it being originally), and oddly enough the On/Off switch works fine all the time - it's no longer flakey. Turns out that little adjustment knob controls the speed of the game. If you play around with it you can make the game play slower or faster. So what happened? I guess after not being moved for 40 years the contacts got worn/corroded/whatever. Just moving it a bit moved the contacts to a 'fresh spot' and solved the problem. If you have a Mattel Electronics Auto Race game that seems dead, broken, acts strangely, or the start switch seems to be messed up, give this a shot. Hopefully someone else benefits from the info (because I myself was searching for "Mattel Auto Race repair" and came up with nothing!).

Truly excellent game! If only games like this were being released for the 2600 back in the mid-80's, I wouldn't have "retired" my 2600 so soon.

Wondering if there's a larger/updated list of 800xl serials anywhere. This topic was the best I found when searching, but one never knows... I was just trying to figure out when I got each of my 800xl's back in the 80's and started digging through stuff... My first 800xl had serial 114106, D-374, made in taiwan, has Rev B Basic. Based on date code, sept '84, I assume I got it late '84 or very early '85. My 2nd 800xl has serial 338710, D-524, taiwan, Rev C Basic. This one has the receipt in the box....I mail-ordered it direct from Atari, Sunnyvale, in June of 1988 (totally forgot about that....I guess they had an 8-bit warehouse clearance?? Other than to test it, it's never been used.) a 3rd 800xl has serial 4105134 and was made in hong kong, has rev B Basic. Was gotten at a computer swap meet in 1989 for $35...and it had been upgraded with a 256k Rambo. Now...moving off-topic, but does anyone have any info on 1050 drive serials? Haven't come across any useful info yet, but my 4 drives have the following #'s : 48445 473 04836 015 10483 344 80231 234 all have prefix code of 7VDFF and were made in singapore.

Thanks for that - after googling images of the 2000, I'm sure you are correct. I vaguely recall Radio Shack making some pc clones in the 80s, but I never thought they would have put a "trs-80" label on the case...I would have thought an "-80" designation would be reserved for z80 based machines. Thanks for clearing up the mystery...I guess Dan Brown was correct with his description after all.

Hello all. While I’ve always been a diehard Atari guy, I do have a soft spot for the trs-80 since it was the first computer I ever used - in my 1980-82 high school “intro to computers 1 & 2” classes. I was just reading Dan Brown’s latest book, Origin. In it a billionaire computer genius uses his very first computer from his childhood to trigger the streaming of an earth-shattering message about the future of humankind. His first computer? A TRS-80, which he got at age 8. It is described like this : “…an ungainly, mushroom-colored box with a floppy-disk slot, a 1,200-baud telephone modem, and a bulbous twelve-inch convex monitor sitting on top…” the keyboard unit is attached with a “…tightly coiled cable stretching out like an old rotary phone cord.” After entering an “incorrect password” on the machine and panicking, it is pointed out that : “Professor,” she whispered, pointing to his keyboard. “Your caps lock is on.” In school we used a mix of Model 1’s and a couple of Model 3’s. The teacher had a big Model 2. I would call them “silver and black”, NOT “mushroom colored”, though I agree with the “bulbous monitor sitting on top” of the expansion unit that the model 1’s all had. From what I recall, the main keyboard unit has a straight (NOT coiled) cable going to the monitor, and a RIBBON cable going to the expansion unit. But the main thing is, I don’t think it’s even possible to “have the caps lock on”, because I don’t think those models had a caps lock key on the keyboard, did they??? Any true TRS-80 fans care to comment? Is there another model TRS-80 besides these 3 that fit the description in the book? Just curious….I love it when I notice that a writer got a computer/videogame type of detail wrong.

Speaking of Bandits... does anyone have an .xex version of it? I wanted to put it on a MaxFlash cart, but the only version I have is an .atr and it's not working (crashes).

What, no Goldbergs fans here? I thought for sure somebody would have mentioned last nights show... It was Thanksgiving and the uncle was talking up all his investment success, and ended up talking the kids and their friends into giving him all their money to invest for them in a "great electronics company that makes computer thingies". Meanwhile Adam sees the Atari E.T. commercial on TV and is psyched for it....and ends up getting the cartridge later that day somehow. We see Adam insert the cart into a 4-switcher and start playing the game "wow, great graphics, classic Atari!". Then he falls into a pit. Repeatedly. And he's screaming "Balls" and "are you kidding me?" and finally "how can I get ET back home when I can't even get him out of a pit? This is nothing like the movie!". Later in the episode the kids lose all their money when the company their uncle invested in has a horrible earnings announcement and the stock nosedives....the company of course was Atari. I like the show a lot and thought it was nice to see Atari prominently featured in a primetime show. The one thing I always find odd about the show though is that it is set in the 80s, but the timing of things very often don't make sense or match up. This episode was no exception. The ET cart came out in December 1982 if I recall, yet Adam was playing it on Thanksgiving, so a bit early. But the uncle mentions how "Wall Street" is his favorite movie....but that didn't come out until 1987. These shows are based on Adam Goldberg's childhood and at the very end of each episode a few brief home video clips of his from the 80s are shown that coincide with that episode. Interestingly, the clip from last night showed young Adam playing the ET game...on a 7800 Atari system, with a date stamp in the corner from March of 1989.

While I can somewhat see the concern for them of only being able to play the sd card once, if they don't, I'm already at the point of not needing to ever buy another one. Why keep buying the same thing year after year, just for a handful of different games? But a version with HDMI and the sd card? Yes, I do need to get one. I do very much like your idea of a future version doing both 7800 and 2600 games. And with all the great homebrews in recent years... Draconian....Anguna..Space Rocks...Zippy... and many more... That would also be a great inclusion for a future unit to have a homebrews assortment built in.

Thanks for both this hack and the Gauntlet one. I just finally stumbled upon Gauntlet last week and was playing it earlier today. It got me thinking "Dark Chambers could have been much better if it moved more quickly; I wonder if anyone ever hacked it". And here it is!

>Thanks for the info Bill, as always. These are nice offerings from AtGames, and the move to HDMI finally is terrific. Just wish the HDMI "new" editions had the SD card slot. Ditto that. Last year I got the flashback portable and love it (some incompatibile games via SD card, but overall very nice). Some years back I got the Flashback 2 console, and thought it was pretty cool at the time (and loved getting 2 NEW Atari style joysticks to use with my old heavy sixer). Each year a new flashback console comes out, but not the one I’ve been waiting for. This years Flashback 8 has one feature I’ve wanted - HDMI connection. But the other big feature is still missing - SD Card slot. If the portable can have it, why not the console? Add an SD slot to the console version and I want one (or two)! Keeping fingers crossed for 2018.

I saw mention of the 2600 ChipHead demo recently, downloaded it, stumbled upon some other 2600 demos and got those as well. It seems that all of them are PAL however...the video rolls on my real 2600 with Harmony cart. Are there any interesting graphic/sound demos out there that work on NTSC Atari's? Advance thanks if anyone can point me to a few.

Was just playing RC6 for 2 hours via Harmony. Wow. Truly amazing game, easily one of the best on 2600. Didn't come across any bugs/glitches. (how the heck did you get digitized voice WHILE all the other gameplay is going on? I thought it was necessary to blank the screen while playing digitized sound....both on 2600, which I never did any programming with; and on the 8-bit computers, which I did dabble with programming back in the day)

Got my 2600 in 1980...finally...after harassing my parents for over a year to get me one. Had it hooked up to the 25" wooden-console type tv in the living room...and often had fights with my sister when she wanted to watch tv and I wanted to play Atari. Many times over the next 2 years I rode my bike 5 miles to the nearest Toys R Us to get a new game. Played that light-sixer a lot for a couple of years. Then in 1982 I got an Atari 400, and after that, the 2600 rarely got touched.

Superman has always been one of my favorites, but it seems like a lot of people don't like it. Adventure has always been my most favorite 2600 game; and superman & haunted house would be in my top 20....i guess i like wandering around from room to room looking for things.

Interesting to see the differences of opinions on this. On the one hand, my own vote BY FAR is that Firefly is the worst game ever. I bought it for 99 cents and still felt ripped off. I also was disappointed in the Swordquest games....I don't know that I really hated them, but they weren't really full "games" to me...more like a stupid incomprehensible puzzle tied to a comic book insert. But on the other hand, Superman is one of my all time favorite 2600 games. Adventure is by far my favorite, and I can't even come up with an estimate of how many hundreds (thousands?) of times I've played it through the years. But honestly, I'd have to venture a guess that Superman is probably my 2nd most played game on the 2600. Basically, same thing as Adventure....go from room to room, looking to collect objects and bring them somewhere. The only thing about Superman that I do not like is that the flickering annoys me more than Adventure does.

Sorry if perhaps it's been posted before, but... In cleaning out my inlaws house,I came across a 1982 issue of Games magazine. I browsed through it. There were 4 ads for Atari stuff. This one I looked at, turned the page, then flipped back and was like "what???". So... Q: What's wrong with this picture? A: Look at the picture on the PacMan box.

Fort Apocalypse with unlimited lives and fuel. Fort Apocalypse (cheat).xex

I took another crack at Necromancer from a different angle. Result is a version where you play through the first phase (planting trees) normally. In the second phase, the arms grabbing down from the ceiling cannot grab you or your trees. Hatched spiders can kill your trees, but will actually INCREASE your strength if they touch you (an odd side effect of what I was trying to do). In the third phase, you can mostly just walk through it....sometimes you lose a little strength, but not much. Also, another cheat version for Sea Dragon. Infinite lives, infinite air, and full invinceability. Necromancer (cheat).xex Sea Dragon (cheat2).xex

Laser Gates cheat. Shields will not be diminished by enemy ships, nor slamming through stationary walls. Contact with the shimmering "laser gates" will however drain the shields, so you do at least need to move around a little bit to not die. :-) And I'm pretty much giving up on Necromancer. I could do the seed cheat, but really, I never have a problem getting through the first of the 3 phases. What I really want is to have Strength to not drain during phases 2 and 3. And I can do that.....in Altirra. The problem is that you need to have strength drain in order to complete phase 1, so if I just hack the file to not ever drain strength you are stuck forever in phase 1. In Altirra, you can just play through phase 1 and then enable a cheat to put $05 into $5069 at the start of phase 2....that'll let you just walk through phases 2 & 3 to the ending. Oh well. At least I finally DID get to see the ending in Altirra, after 30+ years. Laser Gates (cheat).xex

Sea Dragon with infinite lives and unlimited air. Sea Dragon (cheat).xex

All addresses should be totally relevant to real hardware Yes. But some .xex have been compressed from disk/cassette images and have 'loaders', so you can't just search through the file normally. Having trouble with Sea Dragon. Working on it.

Astro Chase with 95 lives. Astro Chase (cheat).xex

Cracked one more, for anyone else interested. Pharaohs Curse, with unlimited lives. Pharoahs Curse (cheat).xex