eightbit

I guess I have been out of the loop on the development of an affordable GBC DIY build based on FPGA. Here is a review from Lon on Youtube: This looks great and it is finally an affordable FPGA device. I ended up ordering the parts from https://funnyplaying.com/ which ended up at around $83 total shippped. I can't speak for this personally until I get it so don't take this post as a recommendation. But, I will post again when I have it all together and let everyone know how I feel about it. However, looks pretty good!

A couple of things for sale: BennVenn El Cheapo SD v2.2 for Gameboy - I purchased this some time ago with the intent of using it with a Super Gameboy. It comes up to the BennVenn intro screen and goes to initialize the microSD save file but freezes there. It might be the microSD I was using, cluster size, or maybe it is not compatible with the Super Gameboy...I have no idea. I didn't have time to investigate and still don't. Take it for $20 shipped and see if it works for you ***SOLD*** Sega Saturn Console with 100 Campaign Box and Controller - The system is in excellent condition, works perfectly and has a brand new Duracell CR-2032 installed. Comes with the original controller, power cable, composite and s-video a/v cable and original 100 Campaign box. The box has seen better days but it is perfectly displayable. $200 shipped takes this. PM!

I've been digging around for you and came across a post here: https://www.forumvancouver.com/threads/the-good-old-bbs-days.7194/ I personally have never heard of this BBS software and it makes sense as the developer was from Canada and it appears the software was in heavy use for BBS's in Vancouver. That said, have you tried asking in the FB group for that area? https://www.facebook.com/groups/2316899757/

Say, Say, Say....Never trade white for black, or vice versa!

I recently came across a nice heavy sixer and two CX-10 joysticks that from the outside look new. However the boards have control issues and I have no idea how to fix them. Directionals have issues (down on one controller, up and right on another IIRC). Its a long shot I know, but does anyone have NOS replacement boards? CX-40 boards will not work btw. PM if you do!

I can say from owning many of Lotharek's devices that they are always top quality. I don't have experience with his Fujinet device but I can imagine it is very well put together. I'll have to give it a try when my wallet permits

It must have only affected very early (launch) models. Mine was certainly painted.

I was about to just buy one since they are pretty cheap (and I probably still will if I don't get any bites) but I figured I might as well ask and see if perhaps someone has a Harmony Cart they are not using and might want to trade it for something. I have random good stuff PM if you have one you would like to trade!

Purchased a really nice white Japanese Sega Saturn from Sir Guntz with a pretty hard to obtain VCD card and it arrived in beautiful condition. I can absolutely recommend this AA member. Thank you again!

Ebay auctions are weird in this way. Sometimes for no obvious reason at all one auction just explodes. I take them with a grain of salt for sure. But, I do know from trying to obtain one of these over the years that I was always most certainly looking at over $100. This seller was actually asking $100 initially for untested. I offered $50, he countered with $75. I accepted at that and figured I would just cross my fingers and hope for the best. I was confused on the joysticks when I got them. Buttons that click? Joysticks that were clicky? Are these bootlegs? "TOP" is not printed on them? But the connector ends are printed Atari...hmm. Well, it took some reading online to realize these were CX-10 joysticks. I never owned these and had no idea. Learned something new in the process! And, definitely not flipping. I got this because I wanted it!

It does work, perfectly. And, I am not so sure if this would have been too much, even not working. I saw this auction end at over $400 and I have to wonder why: https://www.ebay.com/itm/156122483746 Because of the CX-10 controllers? The boxed games? Low SN? People just bidding like crazy? Not that I am flipping this...this is for my personal collection. I never actually owned an Atari heavy sixer. I did own a Sears Tele-Games heavy sixer which I gave to my brother as a gift some years ago, but that's it. Seeing the prices these things command now I said to myself either I will find one locally or not own one. I figured I would just never own one but as luck would have it today was the day

I gave it a wipe down with some Windex...and very carefully as to not wipe off any of the orange pain that remained And, I used some q-tips and got into the grooves a bit. Then blew it off with compressed air. I really only put like 10 minutes into cleaning. This is what it looked like before any cleaning (the FB marketplace listing picture):

I was pretty surprised to find this today locally: It came with two CX-10 joysticks, a set of paddles and Combat. The kid who sold it didn't know if it worked...and didn't know how to hook it up. $75 total which I thought was a good deal. And just when I thought I would never find anything in the wild again

I will certainly follow the AVG cart project as it seems like it has a lot going for it. I don't think honesty you can make any truly "bad" choices with any of these devices. Be it the AVG cart, SDrive Max or Fujinet. Just have to compare and weigh out the options depending on what works for you. We should be so lucky that we even have options at all

I don't doubt it and again I am impressed by the feature set of the AVG carts. I have just never heard of them to be quite honest until now. When it was brought up in this thread I immediately checked the specs to see if it could connect to wifi like the Fujinet. And I asked here. But it couldn't do that so it's just not for me. I think you are getting me completely wrong if you think for a second that I have a stake in one over the other for some sort of "get them to buy this" sort of agenda. I don't make these and am not involved in any way other than being an end user with an Atari 8-Bit (and somewhat "new" to this line of computers as I did not grow up with them) that either likes what he sees in the feature set and ease of use or does not. I grew up with the C64 and I use the heck out of the Ultimate II+ in the present day. I know this machine like the back of my hand and I have tried every modern solution of this type for it and there is nothing that compares to the UII+ for this computer. I can positively conclude that at this present time the Ultimate II+ provides the best experience. See, I can't do that with the Atari 8-bit just yet. I discovered this machine only probably around the time I became a member of AA, and didn't actually buy one until around 10 years ago. They were never sold in my area at all...except for the XEGS. But at the time of that release we didn't have any peripherals for sale. Only carts. I had purchased the XEGS back then, or I should say my parents did. At "Woolworth" no less. I was 12 at the time I didn't understand it's purpose, other than keyboard vs. Rob The Robot. I had no idea at all that this was coming from a lineage of computers. As a kid I thought that Atari just made this one computer/console thing out of nowhere and was baffled why the graphics and sound were so privative (for that time in 1987). Just image being a 12 year old kid, never seen or knew Atari had computers before, and your first experience with that is the XEGS and stuff like "Fight Night". And had no idea that it was "old" technology under the hood at this time. I had no idea why this "crappy computer" was being sold to be honest. As a kid in 1987 we had some really great stuff and great graphics...and the XEGS was not that. I don't even know what had happened to that XEGS, but its use was very short lived. I really wish I had it now! But as years past I learned and understood where the XEGS came from. Appreciated the fact that this hardware was so far ahead of its time when released (the original hardware I am referring to). I have in the past decade or so gained so much appreciation in fact for this computer that I dare to I say it surpasses by beloved C64 in a bunch of ways. I now really love this machine, truly. My goal is to use it and play with software in the most convenient and modern way possible. I personally have found that the Fujinet device provides that to me, a person mind you who is not in the slightest a Atari 8-bit guru. And, if it can provide that to me with zero hassle you best believe it is a good thing and something I have no problem recommending to others. Again I am sure the AVG carts are great and I am not knocking them at all (and I would love to try one too!) but the lack of wifi is a bummer. This cart looks like it could almost be the "Ultimate II+" of the Atari 8-bit world, but just add the Fujinet wifi capability.

Haha...you obviously have zero clue how open I am to all solutions. I had already mentioned that I was impressed with the cart's feature set. I am just not impressed with the fact that it does not include an option that I think is a good one...wifi access. To each their own. But, it is starting to feel like (and sound like) you have some stake in this AVG cartridge project. Again it has a nice feature set from what I have read, but it is missing some features that I personally find convenient and at this point necessary. Let the users decide. I haven't heard too much "hoopla" in regard to the thing personally, and I am just being honest dude.

Sad to see you have gone down this sort of path. If you want to make a case for your 95 euro AVG cart and extremely expensive FlashAir SD cards (which isn't even the same as what this offers) go ahead. When it's popular enough to have it's own sub forum here on AA I'll think about it.

Glad you chimed in! Really great work, I am truly loving mine. I purchased it under my old handle from the heyday "zektor" some weeks ago. I know you have gotten some flack for using/cutting original SIO cables, but this really added that additional level of quality and I couldn't resist the purchase Keep up the good work!

I am sure the AVG carts are good, just looking at the specs and what they do...so don't get me wrong. I guess the best thing to do is to ask the OP more questions on what he is looking for and especially his budget. He already said he was looking for SIO based and not cart based so I think that is kind of ruling out the AVG carts however.

Yup, I read. But, he did say he narrowed it down to the SDrive Max and Fujinet for an SD based solution and wanted to know the pros and cons of each. And, the wifi capability is a big pro. I didn't buy it for the wifi capability at all to be perfectly honest. I didn't even plan on connecting it to the outside world or on my own network. I bought it because of the following reasons: It was pretty cheap ($73.78 shipped to me, tax included) It took SD (microSD) cards The Sdrive Max started flaking out on me some time back so I stopped using it I have been using the old serial SIO2PC and was tired of having a long serial cable going across my office But when it arrived I said what the heck let me connect this thing to wifi and see what it is capable of. And that's where I had realized a huge benefit that I didn't buy it for. So, I felt it was my obligation to give the OP my explanation of why I think that ability is a pro and certainly not a con. I always loved the SIO2PC adapter because it (along with the APE software from Steven Tucker) had a really cool option to mirror a directory on your PC. Choose mirror mode and a directory, turn on the Atari computer and well, you saw a listing of what you saw in that folder. Add stuff to the folder on your PC and refresh on the Atari and you saw your new stuff. It was and still is super convenient. I didn't have that at all with the Sdrive Max. You had to fiddle with the microSD card and copy stuff. Which would have been fine and great if it were a one and done situation, but people are making new stuff constantly and I want to try that new stuff and now realize how much of a benefit that was on the SIO2PC...and how much it is now with Fujinet. Also, the Sdrive Max's screen was slow responding and fiddly (not to mention felt gimmicky) and I stopped using that feature. It was just something to get dusty and potentially damaged...never cared for it. This Fujinet on the other hand is what I had with the SIO2PC, but wireless. I didn't expect it to be as easy to set that up as it was. It is excellent, and it works as it should. You can still use it as an SD only solution, but man, once you delve into what else it can do it's pretty darn cool. As for the issues you have had, I have no idea why you are going through all of these Fujinet devices...maybe just bad build quality from those seller(s)?

Fujinet is the best value for the money to interface with the thing over wifi in a convenient way....at least best way I have seen so far. I am not sure if there are good and bad Fujinets as they all should to my knowledge conform to the project standards. But I could be wrong and have known to be on occasion For memory in my case I use one of these in my 600XL: https://www.ebay.com/itm/276392081087 All I know is the combo of the Devkit Fujinet, 600XL and this memory upgrade really makes using the machine a dream. I've had a great deal of fun with it so far.

It looks like a fantastic cart otherwise with support for various image types and the RAM upgrade is great. I could care less about the stereo sound (same on the C64) however. No wifi is a complete dealbreaker at least for me. Connecting to servers and launching apps that take advantage of it is just pure awesomeness. Now that I have a taste of that I just can't go back to offline mode. There are just so many possibilities now with that technology in place. And, as Goochman said, no more swapping around SD cards. I can download new stuff right to my TNFS server folder and away I go. What a convenience!

I am not very familiar with these carts. Do they support wifi and TNFS servers?

I forgot to add that I had purchased the Devkit version: https://www.ebay.com/itm/134990839520 Which I believe is being made in small batches by a user in these forums @Jfcatari? Nice device, really nice build quality with a real SIO cable. It was a bit cheaper than the standard version and from what I am to understand has half the flash (8MB vs 16MB) which I don't think matters for normal operation. It does not have the SIO pass through so it would have to be connected last in the SIO chain if you have other devices, but it works for me as all I have is my 600XL and this. More on the Devkit version here: https://github.com/djtersteegc/fujinet-devkit-shield