Herbarius

Isn't the Intv Disc more like a paddle controller than like a d-pad? I don't really know as I've never seen one in real-life, let alone used it, but I always figured you operate it by rotating the disc?

So I guess you are making your own cables/plugs now? No. (I guess... )

Wait a minute... I thought on the first release, the sheet was not included, but then later it was? (Which would make sense as it basically is like an "errata" to the manual...)

If "BNC" there means the same as for the old BNC Ethernet cables, those are not the same plugs! They look kinda similar, but they won't fit at all. If it's not the same plug as from the network cards (but rather a funny coincidence or whatever they're called the same), then just ignore this post.

Have you checked in Mac's equivalent of the control panel if your gamepad is recognized by your system at all?

Well, as far as I know this depends on the game... With some games you have to repeatedly press the switch to go through multiple game variations. With others, you can just hold it down and it will skip through automatically. The rate with which it skips through als varies from game to game.

In one video I saw once how a company which produced 2600 games (not Atari, but I think Imagic) did it, and it seemed like they had somehow built/modified 2600s that way that you can turn on the power by pushing in the cartridge and turning it off by pulling it out, and there were workers at what looked like an assembly line which would, using that, test almost a game per second. Alternatively, to just prevent yourself from playing the games instead of just testing them, why don't you just disconnect the controllers? While there have been some reports of "selectively damaged" games around here, that's propably a rare occurence and usually you will be fine by assuming that the game works when it boots up.

Huh? "atari's rf"? "modern TV's RF"? DVB-T?? :? Or do you mean these things? Normally they're available from the store here on AtariAge, but it seems you've got to wait a week or so at the moment. Otherwise as you can see from the link those should be available almost anywhere, if you know what you're looking for. It's a "Phono plug" or "RCA" to "F jack" adapter.

That however is just a convention, get used to it. Of course some motivation behind it may be to make the drives sound bigger, but well, if you would try to change this convention today it would get even more confusing - They aren't "now" playing the game, they did that from the very beginning. It's only that the bigger the drive capacities get, the more you notice the difference Furthermore, if you go by SI units, one megabyte IS 1000 kilobytes, one kilobyte IS 1000 byte, regardless of what 30 years of computer literature might tell you. The reasoning is, by their book "kilo" cannot mean anything else than 1000, and "mega" can't mean anything else than 1 million. So what do they propose? The word "kibibyte" for 1024 byte, and a "mebibyte" for 1024 kibibytes. Needless to say, acceptance of that nomenclature is very poor

Are you certain that's not output?

Actually, my parents were more modern. Any video game system - including the gynormous Neo Geo - was a "Nintendo". I still have to Babblefish translate things in my head when they call 1.44 floppies a "hard disk". Funny! I still meet people who do the same. Just not things they deal with on a daily basis I guess. If you have younger siblings you'll encounter things like this too. I've had a hard time getting my younger brothers to realize that circuit boards are not "hard disks" (or rather "Festplatten" in German, which you could literally translate to "hard boards" if you really wanted to). Speaking of "babelfishing in your mind", I regularly get my head spinning when my mother talks about a "file" ("Datei") on the computer, as that could mean anything from a folder, a program window, an actual data file or even just parts of one of those (like one of multiple spreadsheet pages in an Excel document); but I think I've gotten quite good at judging just from the context what it is she is referring to.

Oh, about the PC, there is something for you: One day, a friend came around, and he brought Diablo II, which was newly released. I was still running Windows 9x. I installed it, and we started to play, then mid-game I accidently pushed the Eject-Button on the CD drive, it opened, the computer went Bluescreen... I then reset the machine, but Windows wouldn't boot up again. On further investigation I found out, that somehow the file system of my whole C: partition was screwed up completely. So I had to format it, lost everything I saved there (didn't know much about possibilites for file recovery, and even if I did I wouldn't have had the necessary software to pull it off), and subsequently I took an "oath" to myself never to install this game on my machine again... That oath propably did more damage in the long run than those few lost files and wasted effort in re-installing Windows I'm finally planning to break it, as I figure running Windows XP with Service Pack III should be sufficient to avert such a catastrophy from happening again...

Well it's not recommended, but as long as you use quality stuff (the power bars having all the standard safety certificates and so on) and don't over-do it (like say, only use a maximum of 2 level "depth") you should be fine. Oh yes, maybe it shouldn't be all CRT screens in there which you then plan to power on all at the same time

Well, actually I think that characterizes the 3DO quite well...

I can't even begin to imagine someone could have fun playing SC-not-3...

I always think about doing this myself, but keep putting it off... (and I also lack tools to make holes into the Atari case...) Select and Reset are an easy deal, but I don't think the difficulty and b/w switches would be as easy - at least as long as you want the switches on the console itself being functional themselves... Well, it's easy to understand: If you want the switch to be registered as "off" (being in the "up position" on a 6-switcher), both on the console itself as well as on the control board it has to be so. However, if only one of those two is "on" (or "down"), it will be counted as such. So basically, you can do it, you just have to make sure all those switches are in the upper position on the console when you whish to use the control board. Then, you really don't need those on a seperate controller that much, as you usually don't switch it in the middle of the game... Then again, the same could be said about the Select switch, so you could as well spare that one as well... But the big advantage of having all the switches on it, would be for games like Space Shuttle which use the console switches for something closely tied to the gameplay (and different from what it's conventional function would be). You maybe could even do the power-switch the same way, but I wouldn't recommend that. By the way, the Power Switch seems to be the only switch which has the upper position as "on" and the lower as "off", or am I mistaken? An alternative solution I've thought about: Do you think it would be possible, to have a remote controller (using infrared like your average TV remote), this time obviously only for Reset and Select? (okay, the others could be possible in that way as well, but this is getting into real complicated territory I'd think...) This would eliminate the cables, and - provided you have a Vader - the infrared sensor can be installed inconspicuously. Problem with that is many controllers just spare the wires to the unused pins... So you'd have to replace the controller cables completely, and then you can as well make it a seperate device, without adding warts to your controllers...

Accidently putting a piece of electronics into the microwave would require an amount of detachment from reality which could only be reached by either serious mental disorders or strong narcotics... Intentionally putting it in there (but later regretting it) is much more propable, only requiring bad mood swings, less extreme drugs (including alcohol), or something similar.

What always confuses me is how it comes the model that is less like a toaster (frontloader) comes to be called toaster, while the one, which is more like a toaster (toploader) is not.

The other day I played "Slicks" on my C64. It's fun, but it's quite tough (at least to me it is).

Maybe that's one of the causes for some old 5.25" disks spinning "with noise" (I tend to distrust those and eventually throw them out).

Seems many people disagree, or it wouldn't have been so succesful a genre (and - at least on portable consoles - it still is, if I'm not mistaken) - even long after the "invention" of cockpit or "chase cam" view

While it's off-topic, it nevertheless struck me, and I want to ask about that. As a matter of fact, I've got only one record. Okay, actually, it's two, but one album (Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds)... Why don't I have more? Well, I don't have a record player (at least not at the moment). Why do I have this one? Well, for once, it was a present, and furthermore, I've got personal reasons to think special about this album, and don't forget it's just plain awesome. Not being able to listen to the record itself (although I often listen to it in MP3 form), I hoewever thought I'd put it "on display" in my room, as the cover art is of course awesome as well. So it's now sitting on top of a small shelf, leaning at an angle against the wall. You say this could be bad for the discs?

Why E.T.? The game is above average for an 2600 game at the very least, maybe you could put it into an even higher "upper 20%" or something. I thought by now most people (who are familiar with the 2600 themselves, and not just from hearsay) realized that. If anything, the problem was with target demographics... it was bought a lot for very young kids who couldn't understand the game, while the game is more suited for older kids and adults. If you were into computer games in the 80s and early 90s, having to read a manual before attempting to play anything was pretty much something you had to take for granted. Only on game consoles there was this "plug in and start playing" mentality (which came over and infested the PC game market in the later 90s as well - which is why we don't have many complex games, like Simulation games or complex Strategy, anymore today...)

Link without "print" See the difference? I've known the website for quite some time. Basically it's about Game Development, with articles written from developers for developers. But even if you're not a game developer yourself, but are nevertheless interested in game development it can be quite interesting. A similar website by the way is GameDev.net.