bcombee

I"m interested in a 7800 kit when it's available too... my soldering skills have improved a lot since last spring.

You can also use a VCR or other recording device with a RF input and a tuner for this. Just hook up the 2600 to the RF input and use that device's tuner, with it's output going to a composite input on your TV. It's simpler than modifying your 2600, although the video quality won't be as nice. Old VCR's are very cheap at thrift shops these days.

Just wondering how you're handling quality control/returns on these. They don't seem too complicated, but I've seen plenty of inexpensive electronic items from overseas come in with bad solder jobs or other problems. I had a malfunctioning Simpsons sound playback keychain a couple of years ago; when I opened it up to see why it was failing, I found solder all over contacts where it shouldn't be. BTW, I already ordered two. Can't wait to hook them up to my PC.

In NYC proper, there's Video Games New York (http://www.videogamesnewyork.com/?page_id=14) that's in Manhattan. Also, there's the Digital Press store, http://www.digitpress.com/store/, which is in Clifton, New Jersey; it's not in New York City proper, but not too far if you've rented a car. Finally, there's a Nintendo museum at the Nintendo World Store, http://www.nintendoworldstore.com/, at Rockefeller Center, although I don't think they sell any retro gear.

If you use the gamepad controls rather than the pen controls, you don't have to deal with the zoomed-in problem. I also found it easier to do the counting needed, especially on advanced puzzles, with presses on the game pad.

I'm known Bruce since back in the mid-1990s, and he's a great buyer and seller.

I've also had good luck buying 2600 carts on half.com. It's run by eBay, but all the prices are set by sellers and items stay listed until sold. You can find a lot of uncommon and rares there for not-too-much.

I would look at a Windows Mobile device running PPC 2003, WinMo 5.0 or later. In order to run the Atari 8-bit emulator, getting at least a 200MHz ARM is recommended, though most of the iPAQ machines have that. The Dell Axim devices also will work and tend to be pretty available in the used market. Palm OS devices with a 320x320 or 320x480 screen will work OK, but there hasn't been as much emulator work there, especially for the Atari systems. There are good Coleco, Atari ST, Apple II, and Spectrum emulators for Palm OS, but the Atari systems aren't well supported.

The Retrobits Podcast is is more classic computer focused, but with occasional Atari-related episodes: The homepage is http://retrobits.libsyn.com while the feed is http://retrobits.libsyn.com/rss. It's sometimes a little slow, but the shows aren't too long and it's easy to find ones on a topic you like. There's also Twitch Asylum Video Game Radio at http://www.twitchasylum.com/podcast.html with feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/TwitchAsylum. They don't publish very often, but the shows are usually really good. The last one was on the classic EA computer game Seven Cities of Gold. Their 2/26/06 podcast was about HSW's "Once Upon Atari" documentary.

That looks like the cable that connected the 2600 to the Coleco Kid Vid cassette player. See http://www.ralphbaer.com/inventions.htm for a picture of the ad for this.

One quick suggestion; a lot of mid-range carts can be found fairly cheaply on half.com. They have a 2600 section under their Video Games category. If you combine multiple items from one seller, you can keep the shipping costs reasonable too, and you don't have to deal with all the hassle of auctions.

Motorola never made the CPU for the 2600. The 6502 was designed by MOS, although the designer had worked at Motorola on their 6800 chip before leaving to setup this venture. The actual chip in the 2600 is a 6507, a lower-cost version of the 6502 with a smaller address bus and no interrupt inputs. Most of the ROM chips used by Atari were custom made by Synertek. There's an interesting post about them at http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...t&p=1425428.

Since 2600 games using those opcodes work on the 7800, I'm pretty confident they'll work in 7800 mode too.

I've seen that cable. It usually is paired with a small power brick and one of the USB-to-IDE adaptors. You use it to give power to a drive, then the data cable plugs into the IDE connector on a drive, with a USB connector on the other end.

That would be the Astrocade's Space Fortress, which was a version of the Bally arcade game Space Zap. A few years ago, Brian Prescott did a port of the arcade game to the 2600 called Vault Assault.

Be sure to check out Halcyon Days at http://www.dadgum.com/halcyon/ -- it's a collection of interviews with classic game and computer programmers that was done about ten years ago and now is free on the web. I still have my floppy disc copy of these

I'm in for $90. I'm really glad Rob went to all the effort, and I look at it like my special edition Qb with the custom box or my Cuttle Cart 2 -- an investment in something special and a keystone piece for my collection. I've picked up a number of deals like this over the years, and so far, I haven't regrettted any of them.

You could also pack the three initials into two bytes by storing the letters as 5 bits, which allows for upper-case letters, space, and dot, and maybe a few extra.

I finally took the plunge and have put up an eBay auction after exclusively using half.com for the last few years. If you collect for the TI home computer, this is a really nice deal -- one of the rare Milton Bradley MBX units, with joystick, power supply, and six games. If you want to find out more about this unit, see http://www.videogamehouse.net/mbx.html. It's a pretty fascinating read, especially the part about Atari licensing the technology, then never releasing anything but the Space Age Joystick. Here's the auction link: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=200208439647

Many Toys 'R Us stores have the 20GB hard drive for the 360 for $50 on clearance. Check behind the counter -- that's where I saw a HD last week at one of the Austin TRUs.

I seem to remember an article mentioning that the 1400XL/1450XLD had a V: handler installed for talking to the voice chip. Also, Bill Wilkinson did a series of articles on making a M: device for accessing memory in Compute! magazine in 1982.

Landon Dyer, the developer who did the Atari 8-bit version of "Donkey Kong" as well as the PD "Myriapede", just put up a blog entry about his experiences at Atari and on developing the game. It's fascination, especially how much more thorough he was than the typical Atari programmer. Read it at http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=987. Some great stuff, like and

I'm definitely in the market for both the joystick and HDMI switcher. I can't wait to see these products shipping. Good work, neo-Microprose!

I've been working on http://stella.wikidot.com/ for the last couple of days on-and-off -- I hadn't announced it yet. However, I'd be perfectly glad to port all of my work over to an official AtariAge wiki if that's still going to happen. I like WikiDot's system, but I'm also a little frustrated with its lack of ability to take raw HTML, and the linking syntax bugs me a little.

Basic XL works great on the Atari 800. OSS used a bankswitching scheme to fit a lot more language into the same 8K footprint. According to Antic at http://www.atarimagazines.com/v4n9/basicxe.html, Basic XE requires a 64K or larger XL/XE computer, as it uses RAM underneath the OS.