selgus

Thanks Karri, I'll take that advice around the slope on the edge. For PLCCs and other SMD devices, I normally use my rework station and hot air with solder paste and haven't run into issues in the past. I'm doing my game and engine in pure 6502 assembly so I am not using the C compiler, but thanks for the head's up. I haven't looked much into the cartridge/ file side of the Lynx yet, as I am working with the rendering and my fractal code.

Yep, I based the outline on the atarilynx.lbr but needed to rework the connector pad sizes and how they are drawn. Thanks for the feedback around the depth guides, I didn't know that before. I'll move it up so it is closer towards the top: lynx-cartridge-v2 by brett.bourbin

While I am programming my first game on the Lynx, I was looking into how I could distribute it and looked at the different options documented here on AtariAge. Then I decided what the heck, I'll just design my own cart and release it when it is complete. I'm basing mine on a OTP (One Time Programmable) EPROM, since I have a EPROM burner with a PLCC adaptor, and went with a 4Mb (512KB) capacity AT27C040. It's pretty bare bones, with no EEPROM (as my game won't need one) and no jumpers/configurations for different EPROM chips. I'm going to make a few prototypes using 2.5mm thick PCBs in blue and once I get enough of my engine up and running, will test out this design. This is what the board currently looks like: lynx-cartridge by brett.bourbin

Hey Karri, are you still making/have programmers for your flash carts? I didn't seem them on your store-front. I was looking into making my own pcbs using either an eprom or a similar Microchip flash-rom, but if you already these working, maybe that is a better route. I am working on my game now, so I have time but did want to start planning on a delivery plan. Thanks.

1K is what I use sometimes in my circuits for many of the LEDs I use, so that doesn't seem to be your issue. What was the voltage at the LED? You can use that voltage to match up with specs for different LED's F.V. (forward voltage) and get a better match. Or you could change the resister, to something slightly lower to better match that existing LED.. but be careful not to drive the LED too high. LEDs are meant to be operated at certain voltages, hence why there is a resistor in the circuit.

Normally when using an LED in a circuit, you have a limiting resistor to knock down the voltage to whatever the forward voltage of the LED in question. Different LEDs have different forward voltages, so it really depends on what you have. What I would do is put a multimeter on the leads of the LED and see how much voltage you are getting there currently. Also look to see if there is a resistor in series with it. Once you have this info, you can either replace the resistor with a new value (though if you are not experienced, might not be your best approach), or replace the LED with one that matches the voltage you get from your meter. Good luck!

Well it wasn't always rosy between Sony and EA. I still work there so I won't go too much in depth, but the relationship between the two companies started off with EA reverse engineering the Sony boot disc and threatening to bypass their security..

Heh, just saw this post from years ago and looked at that link to the XBAND page.. and in the archive include source files from me. Did anyone actually build a new XBAND system based on the work we did originally at Catapult?

I've been using a Weller WESD51 digital soldering station for years now, and highly recommend one. Whenever I get the question about what kind of solder iron or tips one should get, I recommend staying away from these cheap irons from Radio Shack, etc. Get something that has high wattage (50 and above is a good range), heats up quickly and can be regulated. There are people that say the wet sponges will damage tips with micro-cracks, other that say this is nonsense. I use Hakko solder tip cleaning wire and it works great, with no stress on the tips. Also, use a good flux on your joints, and you will save yourself lots of grief trying to debug your circuits. As for tips, it really depends on what you are using the soldering iron for.. if you are soldering high-pitch parts, drag soldering SMD parts, removing large through-hole components from a PCB, etc.. each one of these I would use a different size/shaped tip.

I'm assuming you did these tests on real hardware and not emulation.. do you have the actual timings you could post? Would be interesting to see the deltas. I'm in the process of writing my Lynx engine and one of the questions I had was around accessing the display buffer while SUZY was doing it's sprite rendering.

I was in charge of Saturn development at the games company I was working at back in the mid '90s and can say it wasn't the easiest console to develop for. We were doing Playstation and Saturn games at the time, and there were many factors that made this console harder to develop quality titles. I was an assembly language guy before the Saturn, so working with the SH2s at that level wasn't really an issue, but we could create stuff quicker on the Playstation and use more standard techniques. The Saturn was made from a bunch of off-the-shelf parts and was a bit awkward trying to do polygonal model rendering with the VDP. To get the power of the multiple CPUs, I needed to develop a very different type of rendering engine, which distracted from putting more time into the games. We were doing a game for EA and it took awhile to get an engine to a state were we could iterate on the game design. That said, I did like the system, but that's because I liked getting down to the medal and low-level programming. As a commercial platform, it wasn't the best for delivering games on tight schedules.

Hey Scott, I was just re-reading some these threads as I was going to try my hand at doing a game on the Lynx now when I read the stuff about the programming of Bubsy. I had thought my buddy Michael Schwartz (Mykes) had contributed to the Genesis version too? He was the guy that got me into the game industry. Now to start figuring out the Lynx hardware and tapping into my 6502 brain cells..

sure, add me to the pre-order list, though by the size of it I assume it will be quite a wait..

Wow, amazing how far you have gotten with this, and after all these years, the passion is still there. Congrats!

This is a little project I've been working on, a VT100 serial terminal made from an Atari XEGS keyboard, a 1.8" 160x128 262K color TFT OLED display, an Atari XE game cartridge shell, a LiPo battery with a USB charging circuit and a custom circuit board I designed around an ATMEGA328 micro controller to drive the display and do the VT100 emulation. The keyboard will have DB-9 and RJ11 connections on the back to attach it to any device that talks serial and allows the unit to be a self-contained serial monitor terminal. I needed a serial terminal to test out some I2C code/hardware I've built for my R2-D2 project, and this gave me an excuse to use an Atari again. The second cartridge shell on the left was my first attempt.. I was going to use a 2600 cartridge shell, but it made the display look too small and everything fit into the XE cartridge shell, so I switched. The XE cartridge plugs in permanently to the keyboard and will be tilted on an angle.

Wow, I haven't been around here in a long time but its great to see you are still working on this!

I've done a few games on the N64 back in the day, and while Nintendo had some unique features in their platform, it also had a bunch of limitations. Texturing was obviously one of the limitations as the active texture had to fit within the 4K texture cache. Which meant you need to load the texture cache and then draw all the polygons that used that texture, switch the texture in the cache, draw those polygons, etc. etc. Also, since it was cartridge based, you needed to load the textures from the cart into RAM first, and then load it to the texture cache. The cartridge was not like previous consoles, with you being able to use things directly from cartridge. It also had a programmable processor for doing graphics (RSP), though Nintendo didn't open up access to programming it to 3rd parties until very late in the life of the console. I always felt this was a mistake on their part, as developers could have optimized their renderers for their specific situations and make better use of the RSP memory and cycles.

Good to see you still working on this project, and I would say used whatever tools/hardware that is available that can plug into the cartridge port to make the best version you can.

Your garage looks a lot like mine Scott... old game development hardware in boxes.

Been gone for awhile on other projects, but very glad to see you are still working on this and the amazing progress you've made!

How complex is the code? Is there PC specific UI code in there? If I can get some cycles away from building my R2 droid, I will convert it to C and X-Code for OS X. Oh, and as you know, I already have a cart, so don't worry about that. --Selgus

Yes, you just need a lead connecting the 2nd controller ports of both machines. There's a wiring diagram and some demo code around somewhere. Do you know where this demo code is located? I was a interested in doing this at one point and heard someone had accomplished this before. If you had a link, that would be helpful. Thanks. --Selgus

I'll archive up some stuff that I can release for you. Please PM me your e-mail address. --Selgus

Hmm, interesting... --Selgus

Just have one left, but was holding on to it for myself.. though still in the box. --Selgus