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Mclaneinc - thanks for those cheats. I was actually looking for hacked files to play on a real Atari via Maxflash cart. But you've been a big help in finding the relevant addresses. I just loaded your Shamus cheat in Altirra, found the address $0202, then used a hex editor to search the Shamus file for 8D 02 02, which would be a "store accumulator" at that address (thankfully I still remember a little bit of assembly). Found it, along with a "load accumulator" command with value of $04 before it. I changed the $04 to $FF, saved the file, and here is the result - a hacked Shamus .xex with 256 lives. When I get time I'll try to incorporate the rest of your cheats into these games. Shamus (cheat).xex

I've found a few cheat files / trainers for Atari 8-bit games. (http://atari.panprase.cz/?action=trainery&pismeno=vse has a bunch for instance). There are a few games I'd love to find cheats/trainers for (because I can't finish them!!!), but have so far not been successful. Was wondering if anyone out there happens to have any of these : - Shamus - Necromancer - Sea Dragon - Pharoah's Curse (yes, I know the level select code...I would like unlimited lives) - Astrochase - Laser Gates - Spelunker Much thanks in advance for any help.

I'd definitely be interested in this device if it would work with Alternate Reality. A general question though - I've never used an SDrive or SIO2SD before, but I take it from the above comment that SIO2SD supports more than 4 drives and works with AR, but SDrive thus far does not? My question is how does that work? Even if a device "supported" say 8 drives, how would an atari program (ie - Alternate Reality) be able to access them? With a real Atari, there's only a maximum of 4 drives, right? (at least 1050's only have switches supporting drives 1-4) If you're playing AR, you load up the first disk, swap in a character disk to load, then you can load the remaining disk sides into your drives. Even if a device supports 8 drives now, how would AR know to "look" for a drive 5 or drive 6, when such a thing never could have existed back in the day? (I know I may be drifting a bit off topic, but I'm trying to understand the difference between this device and SIO2SD, and also how this all works in relation to a multi disk game like AR. Being able to play AR on my real 800xl without any real drives connected is something I'd love to have.)

Also Pleiades....it's runs, but keeps playing the same level over and over.

How about Tac-Scan? Just realized yesterday that that one is on the not working list.

Thanks for the disk version - that works fine! (still no idea why the cassette version won't accept the password for me, but I guess it doesn't much matter now).

First game I ever bought for my 400 in 1982 was Crypts of Terror on cassette. Stumbled upon it on atarimania last summer. Loaded it up on Altirra and got it to work, but didn't play it for more than a few minutes....put it aside for some future time. Just decided to play it more. But it won't load. I get it to load the intro and then the second part of the tape loads....but then it asks for the level to start at and I can't get past that, not even with the "magic" password posted on atarimania...it just jumps back to the level select screen. Can't imagine HOW it worked last summer and not now.....what setting or whatever might be different. Any ideas? Anybody have a save state for altirra for this game? Or maybe a xex conversion???

I was just wondering about Superman. I haven't noticed any comments about this one, and it's listed as 'works perfectly' on the compatibility list. But...at least on my system, it 'jitters'. It seems to bounce up and down one scan line while playing. Yes, it's completely playable, but a bit annoying. Does nobody else get this on theirs, or does everyone else just not care? (I know that through the years Superman hasn't gotten all that much love, but it was one of my first Atari games, and still remains one of my favorites).

Just had my old 800 set up the past 2 weeks for the first time in 25+ years. I've had my 800xl's in rotation for occasional gameplay the past several years, but the 800 had been sitting in my parents laundry room since the early 90s. Still works great! NTSC : 83S AW71280 #203 (with handwritten strip under main label : AW501899 5-18 )

thank you for this....really liked this game back in the day. although....haven't played it in years, so i now need to dig up the instructions (or walkthru) to figure out how to do it anymore!

I've been occasionally using my three old 800xl's and 1050 drives for the past several years. Over the holidays I brought home a box of "atari stuff" that's been buried in my parents laundry room untouched for a good 20+ years. Amongst other odds and ends were my first computer, a 400, and also an 800 and 410 recorder. Good news - the 800 works fine. Bad news - the 400 doesn't. (the I-guess-I-don't-care-news - the 410 runs the tapes when booting with start and hitting a key, or 'cload' in basic but doesn't load anything...always get an error message after 30 seconds or so). the 400 power light comes on, but the screen remains black (or sometimes it's a yellowish-colored blank screen). i took it apart and tried prying up all socketed chips and reseating them. also plugging and unplugging the cpu and ram cards multiple times. still no joy. i kinda recall that long long ago i upgraded the 400's memory (to 32k i guess), and the ram card does say intec rather than atari on it. questions : - is there any other potentially easy thing to try/check for on the 400? i'm not a hardware guy, don't have any fancy test equipment. - are the cpu and ram cards interchangeable between a 400 and 800? (and will the 32k card in the 400 work in the 800? the 800 currently has 3 16k cards in it) also - the other chips on the motherboard? if not, i can't see any reason to keep the 400, but if everything is interchangeable then maybe i should hang onto it just in case the 800 ever dies at some point and then i can at least try swapping chips/cards with it. (alternately, i could also put the 800's cpu card and a ram card into the 400 and see if that gets it going, just to try to figure out what's wrong with it....although i guess i probably shouldn't risk it if something is shorted out in the 400...i wouldn't want to kill the 800 in trying to find out what's wrong with the 400). anyway, as always, any input from you guys is most appreciated.

Question about the compatibility list - it currently says that Pleaides works perfectly. With my Pleaides file (which works fine on a Harmony cart or with Stella), it does not work perfectly on the portable. Instead it just keeps playing the final level (where you are dodging between the flags) over and over and over. No way to get to play the first 2 levels. Does the game in fact work correctly for others here??

I guess I spoke a little too soon about how "all" of my old 8bit stuff still works fine today. Turns out I forgot about one other system...my 400 with 410, from 1981. Hadnt seen those in a LONG time, but dug them out the week before Christmas while over my parents house. Just tried them out today. The 400 just shows a solid yellow screen. I opened it up, took it apart. The only thing I noticed was that one of the chips was standing high in it's socket. I pushed it back in all the way, also pushed on other chips, wiggled connections, etc. but when it went back together, still just the yellow screen and no sound when pressing on any keys. Oh well, looks like my 400 is gone. Also tried the 410 on my 800. It'll start turning a tape after booting with 'start' and hitting a key, or when you do a cload in basic. But it just runs for short while and then the 800 gives an error message without ever getting to hear that old burned-in-my-brain sound of an Atari tape loading. Don't have a guess as to the problem, but then again, am I REALLY ever going to wait for anything to load from tape again?

Still haven't tried a whole bunch of games on the AFP yet, but my current top 3 that don't work would be galaxian, Pleiades and stay frosty.

Juno first fix - awesome. I'm aware of the compatibility list spreadsheet online, but is there a list anywhere for fixed/patched game .bins? Or is Juno the first? Would love to get stay frosty, galaxian and pleiades patched to work with the portable.

Yes, I played on a real console back in the day, and just as with the Atari unit, the sound is pretty weak. Can't argue that point. But for $40, I think the sound is "good enough". Given the decent screen, video out port, sd card slot, and controls that are laid out similar to the original controllers, I do think the genesis model is pretty darn nice. The Atari unit is a step down in terms of screen quality and controls that are so different from the original console. One other plus for the genesis unit - a user replaceable battery.

Got one of these for Christmas. I've been wishing for someone to make a portable Atari for the last 10 years! Overall it's a nice enough little unit. I loaded 60 or so games onto an SD Card (SanDisk 4GB Ultra SDHC) and had no trouble. I'm mostly satisfied with the compatibility....I can see why some new homebrews, especially of larger file sizes, won't work....though I would be curious to hear the technical reason as to why some older, actual Atari carts don't (like Galaxian). The sound quality is rather weak, but at this price point it's good enough. I do have 2 minor gripes though. First and biggest would be the screen quality. Two Christmases ago, I got the AtGames Genesis portable. Same size, same layout as the Atari portable. But put them side by side and the Genesis screen is noticeably nicer - it's brighter, and doesn't "fade out" as much when tilted side to side. On the Atari, you can look at the screen with one eye....and then the other...and notice the picture is brighter and less faded from the vantage point of one eye over the other. That's really poor. Sure hope they release a slightly updated version next year with a better screen - I'd definitely "upgrade" if they ever do. My second gripe is I suppose more of a personal preference type of thing, but I find it really hard to play a lot of the games with a D-pad under my left thumb. On the Genesis sytem, the controls felt natural because the actual Genesis console controllers used a left-thumb D-pad and buttons by the right thumb. For years now (decades!) I've been playing these Atari games with a joystick, moving the player with my right thumb, and pressing fire with my left thumb. It just feels VERY unatural swapping controls at this point. So another wish for a future update - make an option to swap the screen (and D-pad orientation of course) upside down so you can play using your right-thumb on the D-pad. The Genesis portable I'd pretty much give an "A" grade to - it's really a nice little unit. The Atari portable is decent, but I wouldn't grade it higher than a "B".

Confused....that link points to a binary game file called dr toms castle

Looking for an atari basic program listing to move a player with a joystick, utilizing a VBI/DLI.....something that I can drop into the beginning of a larger basic program, put the player shape data in a data statement, and which will move an object around the screen in a smooth way in the background while the rest of the basic program does its thing. (30 years ago I could have figured this out myself, but after all these years i've totally forgotten such things). Much thanks in advance for any help.

I'll give ABC another look. I'm pretty sure the program in question does some non-integer math, but I'll give it a shot and see what happens. As to the reason why I want it as a single compiled file is that I'd like to put it on one of my MaxFlash carts and be able to use it on a real 800xl without the need for using (and waiting for) a disk drive. The program runs too slow in standard Atari Basic....it runs just fine in Turbo Basic.....but Turbo Basic won't load with MaxFlash Carts (I assume they both use the same portion of ram under the os...if anyone knows of a way to get TurboBasic running on a MaxFlash cart, PLEASE let me know - that would solve my problem quite nicely).

Always liked turbo basic xl. My only wishlist feature would be a way to compile a program to a standalone binary. Unfortunately it can only compile to a .ctb file which then gets run with runtime.com. What I was wondering is if there might be a way to sort of "append" a ctb file to the runtime.com, thus creating a standalone in a roundabout way. I mean if runtime is loaded into memory, and the ctb gets loaded into memory and then executed, why can't you possibly just load it as one chunk (depending of course on where it gets loaded....I assume you couldn't do this if the runtime resides in the ram under the os). Any thoughts? Also, are there any other compilers other than abc and mmg? (would like convert an old basic program into an executable, but it does use floating point, and it does have variable goto's, so abc/mmg are out)

Definitely in the power supply plug. Using another power supply works fine (can wiggle the cord/connector all around with no color shifting or other anomalies).

Yep, turns out the latest version of Altirra does indeed read those old atr files. I was using a version from a year ago.

I have encountered a dilemma that I hope someone knows of a solution for. Roughly 10-12 years ago I created a few disks full of files on my 800xl/1050. I then diskcomm'd them and uploaded them via modem to my pc. At the time I was using Atari800Win/Plus on the PC. I used that to convert the dcm files to atr files. Several years ago I switched to Altirra after finding some glitches with Atari800WinPlus in Windows7, and seeing that Atari800WinPlus was not being updated/maintained anymore. Just now I went to use one of those atr disk images in Altirra for the first time. Obviously there must be some differences in "atr format", because Altirra will not accept any of the atr's I created in Atari800WinPlus. I am however able to open and use them in Atari800WinPlus, so it's not the case that the files have become corrupted, but that Altirra just doesn't recognize Atari800WinPlus's version of atr. I have also tried using the PC utility MakeATR, but that utility also will not open the atr's, saying they are corrupt. Any ideas? Any way I can either convert the atr's to a version that Altirra likes, or extract the files from these atr's and then import them into a new blank atr disk using MakeATR?

While messing around on my 800xl yesterday, the colors on screen were sometimes strange. Turn off and on, wiggle cables, the colors would return to the correct colors...but change after a while. Then while in Basic, I watched as the background color drifted from blue to green over a 30 second span of time. At first I thought it was the monitor cable connector, but ended up discovering that I could make the colors change by slowly wiggling the cable of the power connection where it attaches to the connector plug. If it were an "ingot" I'd probably just toss it. But it is a black brick, so I'd prefer to keep it if it's easy to fix. A couple questions... - I've seen the pin outs for the plug. 3 +5 and 3 grounds. Are there actually 6 wires inside that power cable, or is it just 2 wires, each attached to 3 pins? - out of curiosity, I've wondered a few times through the years why Atari used a power connector with so many pins. Are those 3 "pairs" of pins connected to different parts of the circuit board, or are the 3 +5v pins tied together and just connected at one point on the board. If tied together, what was the point of having 3 separate pins? - back in the day I was into programming...the software side of things, not the hardware, so I never bothered to learn much about circuits, etc. But again, out of curiousity, how would a loose connection in that cable cause the odd color shifting I was seeing? I would expect a bad connection to cause the power to just cut out completely, not shift screen colors but otherwise keep functioning. Unless the 3 pins do have separate connections and just the pin going to the video circuit has a loose connection? - and lastly, the most obvious question.... What's my best source for getting a replacement connector? And possibly with wiring already soldered to the pins so that I can skip that somewhat difficult (for me) step and just splice the wires. Much thanks for any replies.