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Kurisu

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Posts posted by Kurisu

  1. Posted

    Looking to buy the crazy middle-man box for the Atari 5200. Mine has gone missing (so this whole thread might become a moot point if I do find it) so, I kind of am in need of a new one now that I have gotten the machine moved over to my new house.

    We all know the box in question, I think, so, if anyone has a spare they would be willing to part with, do quote me a price.

    Thanks!

    ~Chris

  2. Posted

    I will have to take another look in the drive and try this out.

    I did go ahead and order a SD reader for the machine, but of course, I want to be able to run original software disks, and make backups of the data the original owner had, so keeping the drive alive is still a priority.

    Need to buy some good needle nose pliers for that spring tension trick.

  3. Posted

    Hi guys!

    Carlsson, yes, I have checked out his guide in my research, which indeed is where I got the idea to at least play around with the drive head, to see the results!

    R.Cade, This drive certainly had been in storage for a while, and while it did have the transport card in the drive, the drive was NOT locked down, meaning, during the move from the estate sale to my friends shop, it certainly could have been damaged.

    I carefully studied the drive, and I'm not noticing any bent metal... then again, I can only do so much with this being my only specimine of 1571. It looks nearly identical to the photos on Ray's site.

    I do believe the spring is the culprit, since adding weight to the drive head causes good reading results. It would make sense then that the force of the spring is no longer enough.

    I still have a piece of metal taped to the drive head, and it's still working. I just need to snag another one, or alternately, I need to just get a SD reader for this machine. That would be the best route, and just use the physical drive sparingly. :3

  4. Posted

    Thank you for your reply! I had tried formatting, etc, and the drive would always try to work, then result in the same issue.

    I certainly should clean the heads when I get a chance, as that can always help things.

    I do however, have an update: I read more in depth on the workings of the drive this morning, since this is the first full day since getting the machine that I have had time to do such, and I DID get it to read a directory.. by pushing the head down a bit with my finger...

    The result? While I know it cannot be safe for the hardware in the long run, I have a metal plate, actually left over from the IC insertion kit I bought last night, taped to the head assembly very carefully, and balanced, weighing it down to where it reads both C64 and C128 software. I was able to run various Chess games (the old owner loved chess), some word processing software (turns out the owner was a doctor, who took trips to places like Saudi Arabia, etc) and CP/M... so, things seem to be working fine, but the end problem is simply that this is NOT a safe way to run the drive.

    I still intend to take video of the drive, operating correctly and with the "fix" and improperly, without the weight attached, but I think I at least found what the final issue was: heads not contacting. Now to figure out WHY this problem existed in the first place.

  5. Posted

    Hello everyone! been forever since I have been on here. Hope you all have been well.

    ANYHOO, I recently came into posession of a Commodore 128, a Commodore 1902 monitor, and a Commodore 1571 floppy drive. The monitor and the actual computer are fine, and seem to run perfectly as far as I can test, but the floppy drive has something severely wrong with it.

    I am aware of how fragile the drives are, and have read quite a bit on the issue, but nothing is quite matching the experience I am having with my drive: It seems to initialize fine, and behaves fine until you actually send a command to it. Then, it will grind senselessly, followed by the flashing green light of error land. It can be turned off and re-initialized just fine, and any commands to force the hardware to do most head-moving tasks seem to go fine, but any actual read or write commands just fail with this same error.

    Here's the funny thing: thinking the controller might be bad, and noticing that the machine came with un-installed JiffyDOS, I decided to do my first IC replacement and remove the original controller, and install the new JiffyDOS chip. Installation went perfectly fine, because after install the 1571 does the EXACT SAME THING AS BEFORE! I actually laughed about it, since i clearly had done the install right, but it in no way was related to the drive problems.

    To give an example of the issue at hand, if you hit F3 for a DIRECTORY command, the drive will begin to seek, then, will begin it's flashing green light and the commodore will return to it's "Ready" prompt without displaying any data.

    I will record video of this later, as I just woke up and decided to post here (go figure, right?). I hope there is an easy fix for this, but if the drive is fried, oh well. I just have a ton of old floppies from the original ower, including much actually user-generated data that would be interesting to look over.

    Thanks. Again, I'll record and share video of the issue later today.

  6. Posted

    Well, I am going to be blunt: I fubar'd my lovely "day old" 5200 Trackball. I was going to fix the fire buttons, and a little bad positioning on my part sent them flying. That wasnt the bad part, I amazingly found all the springs, AND found 3 of the 4 buttons. Great, right? Especially since the fire button went missing in an area that it should be easy to find in...

     

    Well, I go to get things put up in some form, and, well, you know the little bearing the rotator wheel sits on? Yeah, one of those went missing. Thus, the controller went from just needing the button found to totaly useless in an instan. This little tiny metal piece would be quite hard to find in my rather messy room, so I am kinda just screwed.

     

    So, Anyone got one they want to sell? I would even take nonworking since the only parts I would need are mechanical, or just those parts themselves, a fire button and one of those bearing deals (I would take a picture, but my camera died :\ ).

     

    Thanks...

    ~Chris

  8. Posted

    My copy came in today. I still wish I had an Odyssey to play it on, but the simple fact I own it is awesome.

     

    It is quite a beautiful package, and I think it was well worth the money, and the wait for it all to be produced and shipped.

     

    I also love how the cirtificate has my real name and not my nickname. It makes it much more personal, and I feel very proud to own it. Not like I did anything more than say "I want one" and pay for it, but for a game that only, what 17 copies of which exist, and that mine has an identifiable number, well, that is pretty awesome.

     

    If my camera hadn't fallen in water, I would take some pics and put them on my website. I will still make a post on my blog about it, but yeah... I guess it is just the whole idea is awesome to me. :D

     

    Oh, and as always, thanks! ^_^

     

    BTW, is there any way for us to figure out which one of us may have gotten the prototype? It would kinda be fun to know, but at the same rate, once it is discovered, the magic is gone.. since it is always nice to think maybe the copy you have IS that special one. heh.

  9. Posted

    Course, with only two "voices" it probably wouldn't be that much fun..

     

    Well, 2 "voices" is all the real game has.

     

    Now, try something more developed and correct, like Beatmania or GF/DM on it, and now you would run into an actual challenge.

  10. Posted

    Well, I would use the term "sudden" for the fact that I have heard people mention that they would stop playing for a the day, come back, and the buttons would already be pretty much gone: not instantaneous, but one of those "it was fine yesterday" situations.

     

    I had heard the rubber boot was the only thing in the design to "center it" so calling that a self centering part was the best term I could use, I guess. hah. Nice to hear that the analog sticks themselves are alright. What is funny is, the way people complain, you think they were the most messed up parts, but it seems they last longer than the rest. I don't mind cleaning if it lasts a month or more, and repairs can eventually be bought, so it sounds like I would be able to deal with the 5200.

     

    As for that POKEY adjustment. that sounds like a major headache for me, but one I am willing to try to go at when I can. hehe.

     

    Thanks! I hope to hear more little "here and there" facts about these things as I wait to get my unit.

  11. Posted

    Alright, I will soon be receiving an Atari 5200, and would like to know exactly what the problems with the controllers are.

     

    I am aware of the following:

     

    Loss of / practical lack of self centering capabilities due to use of a very soft, poor strength rubber boot for the joystick support, thus creating problems for non-analog games.

     

    Sudden loss of conductivity in "flex circut" contacts, thus creating the inability to actually activate gameplay; fixable with constant cleaning, or a circuit replacement.

     

    ...

     

    And thats really it. I was wondering waht else was out there. Did the actual analog stick component hold up decently? how much maintenance does it take if it does act up? I understand it is made up of 2 potentiometers, and that things CAN come undone, so is it that hard to reset them in the tracks? How long would a good flex cleaning last? Is there a cheap way to "rig" something up? What about the fire buttons, how well do they hold up?

     

    I would like to be ready to go when the machine arrives. I hope to have a friend over that same day to play it with, and I would hope to know exactly what to do to get started, and know what to look forward to in the very likely rate that they start to give out again in the MIDDLE of playing (I have heard that within an hour controllers will die out.)

     

    Thanks a ton.

  14. Posted

    Well guys, I have 2 stories, both Atari related.

     

    1) I ordered a sealed copy of joust for the 2600. Pics were of the actual item, and it was in great shape. The woman shipped it in a bubble mailer, and a corner got the classic "atari box crush" on the UPC corner. I messaged her about it, not complaining, just letting her know for her own sake, and she apoplgized. I left good feedback, and generally was not disapointed. It was a "stuff happens" moment for me.

     

    2) Spent $50 for 2 7800 "euro" controllers. One was a little stiff, but the other was great. Well, about a week after getting them, I noticed that one didnt work right all the time. Turns out a wire in the cable was frayed, so depending on how I held it, it would sometimes work, sometimes not.

     

    Well, I finally got tired of it the other night. I gutted the thing, which had a stripped screw (had to break that screw post, sadly, to fix it) went in and took, my box cutter to it, taking out about 2 inches of cord length, but managed to fix the wire, and force it all back inside the unit. took almost 2 hours, and this was right when I got that micro-flu the other day, but man, I was NOT going to let myself be pretty much shafted out of 50 bucks.

     

    Eh, that's about it. Nothing epic, and no other major stories to tell. Hopefully it will stay that way.

     

    ---

     

    Oh, well, one more: I ordered a record back in summer. It was coming from Little Rock, Arkansas, while I am here in Memphis, Tennessee. About 200 miles away. The record got "destroyed" by the postal service, and the seller refunded me no problem, but it is one of those things you have to think about: I have ordered records from Italy and Korea and they have arrived fine, but one from 200 miles away gets annihilated.

     

    I think the mail truck was in a major wreck or something, in that case. haha.

  19. Posted

    I wish it was a bit more compatible with TVs & TV cards. I did some recording of gameplay on my Hauppage card, and on some games, one part of the graphics are visible & the other is not. Reset the console, and the visible/invisible parts switch. Night Driver, for instance has the invisible player car.

     

    The problem here is not the console: it is doing what it is supposed to, which is an alternating-frame flicker effect.

     

    See, many games would, ever frame of image, alternate between one set of sprites, and another, to overcome limitations in the hardware. Well, it would seem your capture devices only record at 30 htz, instead of the normal 60, so the end result is it is only capturing every other frame.

     

    Try to track down something like the gamebridge... with enough bypasses, I can record direct feeds off the original hardware without issue, at the full 60 htz.

  20. Posted

    I snagged a copy of Circus Atari about 2 months ago. When I do play paddle games, it makes the rotation before I move back to joysticks.

     

    Hmn, I should plug it into my VAII and play it with the 2800 controllers.. :D

  22. Posted

    Gyruss should have used the Driving Controller. Now THAT would be awesome. Not quite like the original AC game, but it would have been incredible to have that as an option.

     

    Then again, in ALL of these cases, the problem comes in that the paddles and driving units take more processor time to check, relying on that capacitance discharge, IIRC, so some of these games might not have been possible to do given the VCS hardware design.

     

    Now, let's say a new version is made for the 7800... I am pretty sure there HAS to be a way to get the paddles to work on when MARIA is active.. but I am not a top tech expert on the machine by any detail, and it may require the TIA to be accessed in a way that MARIA does not allow, and thus ruin the entire idea.

     

    As for modding a game, I would say it COULD be possible, but I would think a major re-write would be in order, presuming the game can even run on the VCS with that much system usage. :/

  23. Posted

    I have always thought the name was intentional, and never believed any of those stories about it originally being "Monkey Kong" for, well, the very reasons listed on the page: It would be just too convenient for it to have been one thing, then changed to that via whatever method.

     

    In any case, it is still fun to occasionally scream out "Monkey Kong" in an odd voice at appropriate times. :D

  24. Posted

    That's gone now. I asked a while back if you could still order them and the employees there didn't even know what I was talking about. I had to *educate* them. ;)

    Nothing new!You have to educate those Radio Shack Clerks about everything.I don't mean to sound like I'm prejudiced,but its the god honest truth.Whenever i go in there to ask about something,9 out of 10 times they don't have a clue what I'm talking about and i ask about the simplest things that that ANYONE should know about ESPECIALLY if you work in an electronics store.It just blows me away,it really does. :x :ponder: :?

     

    Cell Phone Shack ticks me off to no end with this crap. All you will get is someone who knows nothing spouting out what they are TOLD to say about something.. if what you ask is not quiet in the scope of their brainwashing, they fry out and have to be replaced.

     

    Target is the same way... but that is another story..

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