bcombee

http://www.best-electronics-ca.com/2600_Tech_Tips.htm-- Best Electronics sells TIA and CPU chips, all old-stock from Atari.

I just bought my airplane and show tickets yesterday, so I'll be up a PGRE for the first time! Very excited to see the show (and wear my AtariAge shirt!)

The color signal for NTSC video has a much lower horizontal resolution than the luminescence (black & white) signal, so seeing color bleed is pretty normal. It isn't too noticeable in normal camera-generated images, but more visibly affects sharp transitions, like the digital art from video game systems. This is why analog video aficionados liked S-Video -- it had a higher bandwidth path for color information, which let it be more accurately reproduced.

I wonder if the Astroblast problem is due to hitting both left and right at the same time. That's not something that can normally happen with a joystick, but seems quite possible with this controller.

I already heard back on Facebook. It looks like they're planning separate spaces for both bands and speakers next year. Yay!

Yeah, sorry I missed you too -- I didn't get there until 3ish and I didn't see you around while I was on the floor. I just posted on their FB page with my speaker complaint.

I was there for an hour on Saturday afternoon. I was a little disappointed in it; the size is huge, but most of the vendors were NES-era and up. There were so many attendees that I didn't get to spend any time on the classic arcade machines or computers. I'd originally planned on coming back on Sunday with my 3-year old, but I didn't want to bring him into that chaos. If I wanted bulk GBA and DS carts, I could have my fill -- one booth had them for 3 loose carts for $5. I've already got a bin full of those, so I passed. I liked looking through Ianoid's offerings and found a couple of Atari 8-bit carts I needed. In one of the many $1 bins at Game Over, I got two Suncom Slik Stiks - one works, the other has a broken plastic bit inside that I probably can fix with superglue. There was one booth doing silkscreened shirts; I got a couple from them last year and really liked the designs, but it looked like they hadn't expanded the screen selection. Lots of people were selling hand-made art, but if you wanted something outside the world of Pokemon, Mario, and Zelda, it was slim pickings. My other concern with the event is that they really need a separate room for talks. Having a speaker compete with all the traffic and noise is terrible. The other events that I've gone to have had their own keynote rooms.

Yeah, it sounded like the Character Generator was using the 6502's 16-bit derivative, the 65C816 (which was also used in the Apple IIgs and Super Nintendo). I'd love to see some pictures of that hardware too.

In that case, I'm not sure... is there some sort of fine tuning adjust that you can use on the TV? Does it work with other video sources on channel 3, like a VCR?

Is this a recent RCA TV with a LCD panel or an older analog TV with a CRT? There's some LCD hardware out there that can't handle the 2600's weird 240p video signal. The 2600 doesn't sent interlaced video, but instead starts each field at the same offset, and this isn't recognized by some low-end LCD TV processors.

The Digger Dan DX issue got resolved -- it looks like the the game developers and First Star worked out the issue, and they're being relisted in the Nintendo Store. See http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2016/07/digger_dan_dx_dispute_settled_will_be_back_on_sale_as_soon_as_possible for details.

"59 Steeplechase" is a paddle game, so unless it was reworked or there was some sort of game pad -> paddle mode, it wouldn't work on the portable.

That file URL isn't going to work for anyone but you.

Finally took this as an opportunity to order this issue as well as all of the back issues! I'm excited to get my haul in a few weeks.

Lode Runner's Rescue - http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-lode-runner-s-rescue_3022.html King's Quest IV - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King's_Quest_IV See also Games with Female Protagonists (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Video_games_featuring_female_protagonists) and Games with Female Antagnoists ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Video_games_featuring_female_antagonists)

I'll probably get these, as I'm a sucker for these collections. I wish there was a way to get the digital version at the preorder price retailers like Amazon have, as I much prefer not putting in a disc now. I'm hoping that if these do well and we see future versions, there might be an opportunity to visit some of the unique games from the 8-bits and 5200. I'd love to be able to play the original Star Raiders on my XBox One, as well as Coutermeasure, Final Legacy, 8-bit Dark Chambers, 8-bit Caverns of Mars and Food Fight. Unfortunately, it looks like many of the best 8-bit and 5200 games were based on non-Atari licenses, although given AtGames licensing success with Taito for the Flashbacks, that would open up Jungle Hunt and Space Dungeon.

Alas, archive.org doesn't show anything because Craig has a robots.txt that disallows it.

I might have a printed copy of this; I found Edit 6502 and a lot of documentation last year.

Looking for the Atari 800 Technical Reference Notes? http://www.atarimania.com/documents/atari-800-technical-reference-notes.pdf Hardware Reference with details on ANTIC? http://www.atarimania.com/documents/atari-400-800-hardware-manual.pdf I don't think I've seen an ANTIC-specific document before.

Curt Vendel was trying to get a project like this approved by Atari after the Flashback 2. See the FB3 thread at http://atariage.com/forums/topic/74783-fb3/

That would work, as it would tune the RF signal on channel 3 or 4 and output to VGA which your monitor can likely handle. If your monitor only has HDMI or DVI inputs, then this wouldn't work.

The VT-100 terminal was a common serial-connected display/keyboard that you'd use to connect to a minicomputer or mainframe, either directly or through modem. Because they were so common, lots of software was written for their control sequences, so emulators would let your computer act like that terminal. On Unix-based systems, we still refer to the text-mode displays as terminals. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT100for more info.

Did you try a different TV? That looks like a color phase detection issue on the monitor end, not an Atari problem.

Have you posted this to GitHub yet? I'm curious at looking at the design files and seeing if I want to try to fabricate my own.

This also seems very similar to the old school game Zenji (http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-zenji_5922.html), a game that I've spent countless hours playing.