tep392

U1MB just arrived and couldn't wait a day to install it in the 800XL!

My suggestion to everyone is to just keep an eye on this thread for updates from Curt. When he's ready to start that process, he will let everyone know. And based on the messages I have seen from Curt on the subject, I don't think any pleading will be necessary.

I mostly computer gamed in college on Atari, Apple IIe and PC. Near the end I played some NES when one of my roommates got a job at Blockbuster and could bring home the rental consoles for free.

Most, if not all, of the first 6 are going to developers/testers. There was some delay reported for the first 6 due to not having all the parts but they are now in process. There is testing that happens as the boards get built, so there could be additional delay's if debugging is needed during the build. Don't forget that these are the very first builds of this major design revision. Hopefully everything that was learned with the previous revisions will pay off and this will go smoothly.

Mine has some jumpers and cut traces.

I was at my local used game shop and found this iCade. I thought it would be a good use for the Nook HD+ I've had sitting in a drawer for the last couple years. It will make a nice little MAME setup.

I probably shouldn't continue this line of discussion, since its been done many times before, but I'll state my opinion about digital distribution. First, I think it has little impact on piracy for these 8-bit computers. That is because copying of 8-bit computer homebrews is so trivial, that limiting distribution to physical copies will do nothing to prevent it. If someone wants to make a copy and give it away or even sell it, it can't be stopped. Most importantly, the people that would rather get a pirated copy than buy a legit one are unlikely to buy it in the first place. These are homebrews that sell in the hundreds at best and those sales are primarily to collectors who want to own physical copies. I've offered digital copies of my 7800 Donkey Kong XM/PK and I would estimate less than 2% of my sales have been digital. My second point is that digital copies can be priced to provide the same or nearly the same profit as a physical copy. This saves the budget minded buyer money and the author loses nothing. It's really a win/win situation for both. Additionally, if bugs are found in a game, it is much less painless to fix the issue with the people who bought the digital copy. Of course this is just my opinion, and Pete can do whatever he wants with his games. He should not get flack for it.

Using rotating bytes is the same method I use for Pac-man Arcade, which I just carried over from Atari's Ms. Pac-man release. But I wasn't happy with the vertical and horizontal speeds being slightly different due to the non-square pixels, so in the latest release, I used different speed values for horizontal and vertical movement so they would appear the same on screen. You could use three values for vertical, horizontal and diagonal, if you wanted to goto the trouble. I did the update on Pac-man Arcade just because I found it personally annoying.

The process of checking for carts in the left or right slot by looking for 0 in 9FFC and BFFC is well documented in books like Mapping the Atari. De Re Atari has a good flowchart of the boot process. I like to reserve 9FFC with a non-zero value so I don't run into any surprises as things move around while I edit/debug code.

Maybe it's a regional thing. In the midwest, I always hear it pronounced sahder.

Yep. I stole the POKEY'S from my spare parts 5200 and 800xl boards a long time ago.

It has to have a working POKEY chip which limits you to Ballblazer or Commando carts and Commando's are less common so more expensive.

Ok. I was just curious because you had been talking about including the OS in an emulator and this guy seems to be doing this. The timing had me wondering if it was you.

Is this the emulator that Mr Robot was talking about in his thread? http://atariage.com/forums/topic/274020-i-think-the-atari-os-roms-are-pd-heres-why/?view=findpost&p=3934298&hl=%2Bmr+%2Brobot

I just bought the last 800 cover. Will buy an 800xl if she makes more.

I can't imagine soldering all those by hand. Just doing a batch of versaboard carts drives me nuts. Each of my carts has 4 IC's, 5 resistors and 3 caps to be installed and soldered, which is nothing compared to the XM.

That's it. It's the only reference I've been able to find. I spent some time on google looking for the schematic or install instructions, but never found it.

I posted some photo's of my rev D Happy Enhancement a little while back. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/257578-happy-810-resources/?view=findpost&p=3621351 I don't recall if I bought it from Best Electronics or B&C, but it was new old stock and should be the last version that was released. The center two chips get pulled from the 810 sideboard and placed in the Happy board during install. I don't know why the disk controller chip, FD1771B, has the window, but it would likely have been in the 810 prior to the Happy install.

The happy warpspeed documentation references an "autospeed mod". That is probably what you have with that extra pot. I've never been able to find any documentation on the mod. Can you please document the ohm rating of the pot and which specific pins it connects too. Thanks!

The rom I posted here is the full version of the atarimax cart image.http://atariage.com/forums/topic/196992-8bit-pac-man-arcade-final-version-accepting-orders/?do=findComment&comment=2507336 I dont recall if I made any changes after this one.

Did I miss the post about when a cart will be available from the Atariage Store?

The guy develops a very useful program and provides long term support for it. Seems pretty reasonable to me that he should be able to make some money on it. If you don't like the price, you don't have to buy it. The price doesn't seem unreasonable at all to me and if he wasn't selling enough at this price, he would have reduced it.

Curt said a while back that he still has the pre-order list, so don't get too worried if you can't find your order number. I can't find mine either.

The Dig Dug project will use the yamaha sound chip and to be honest, I didn't want to put much time into it until I knew the XM would get released. Now I'm hot and heavy into D2K so it will have to wait a bit.

My wait list is starting to grow, so I've ordered more parts and will be able to start building more carts in about a week. Details: Price includes shipping in the US. $56 with POKEY chip doner $52 with Ballblazer doner Send me a PM if you want one. If your outside the US, I'll let you know how much the extra postage will be.