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SearsRoebuck

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Posts posted by SearsRoebuck

  1. Posted

    Thanks guys, that would be great if that would be possible, in fact it was similar to what I had in mind (though I lack the tech know-how).  When it comes to classic gaming, I am a 'consumer grade CRT only' type, and S-video is the best I can do with my TV. 

  2. Posted

    Hey this all looks fantastic! 

     

    This may sound strange considering RGB's superiority to it, but is there a chance this could help with a (true) s-video out for the CV?  With my setup, S-video is the best I can do, and even with a (very nice) composite modded cv, there is still some blurriness on some games with small text.   

  3. Posted

    This will sound silly, but one reason I held off on buying the original was because there was a technical reason (?) why the marquee intro in Ms. Pac Man didn't have the moving lights - is it still not possible to add this?  It's just a favorite arcade intro of mine so I have the NES Tengen version as my Ms Pac Man 'representative' instead. 

    • Like 3

  5. Posted

    2 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

    Another AA member has found an alternative ball top that doesn't require any pre-threading and can be used to screw directly onto the stalk of the original controller once you remove the flat top original top. I've not tried it myself but it was available locally from a common source for them and I'm told works quite well!

    Do you have them? If so I may send you my controllers when 'we're ready'. 

  8. Posted

    Hey all, getting back into Colecovision after a few years away, and I was told that Yurkie retired from modding, so I would not be able to get his nice controller ball tops again.  

    So I am wondering if anyone either knows what he used for these, or has a comparable solution that is something like them. I really liked the ones that I had (and I regret selling them) and would like that set up again

  10. Posted

    I have two of these, and the quality has continually gotten better.  I held off for a long time because of no dip switch settings, and although I did break down and ended up buying a TMNT, which lacks them, I was pleasantly surprised with Star Wars having the full selection of dips for all 3 games. IMO it is their best release to date. 

     

    The Burgertime one looks interesting, but I think going forward, dip switches are going to be a non negotiable for me. I understand they were considering doing X-Men too, which I think I would also get.  Just wish we'd see upgraded versions of some of the older cabs.  I wanted to get Galaga, an early release, but not just with Galaga + Galaxian.  Wish they'd rerelease it with new firmware and maybe make it a 4 in 1 with Galaga, Galaxian, Gaplus and Galaga 88. 

  11. Posted

    Well, if you ever want some ideas, beyond the much requested Pac & Pal (which I'd also buy), one game I'd love to see done someday for the 7800 as it never had a port that I know of, is Gaplus/Galaga 3.  Not sure if the 7800 could do it, but it would be an impressive effort. If only I could program I probably would have already done it myself. The 7800 is absolutely underrated for these arcade conversions. When I saw the Jr Pac Man some years ago I was blown away by the attract mode being intact.

  12. Posted

    Ordered the minute I saw the front page. Been waiting for this for months, thanks to everyone who was able to put this together. And Bob, I look forward to your future releases - I already have several of your homebrews on cart.

    • Like 2

  13. Posted

    9 hours ago, DrVenkman said:

    One of my local nerd-pals is @shupac - he has created a couple different FPGA POKEY implementations specifically for arcade board replacement and repair. It just so happens that his most recent version, POKEYOne, is - in quantity - an affordable AND AVAILABLE solution for @Albert to use in 7800 homebrews on the store. I also have one in my 1088XLD beta machine serving as the second (stereo) POKEY. Audio quality is indistinguishable to my ear and the Audacity waveforms were impossible to tell apart from genuine POKEY tracks. There might be some specific musical tricks and types of sounds where differences would be more pronounced but in playing dozens of stereo A8 demoscene tacks I never found one. 

     

    For now, on a one-for-one basis the prices aren't quite cheap enough to buy POKEYOne or other FPGA versions when real POKEYs are still out there at the same cost or less. But vintage chips go up in price year by year while FPGA cores get cheaper. The crossover point is almost upon us, and when that happens, we'll be glad there are smart hardware guys like my friend and his colleagues who will be able to supply us with usable substitutes.

    Yeah I actually first heard about this because the repairman I mentioned in my post managed to get one (but only one) of these and used it to repair a Millipede PCB - so I got a little excited thinking we had a great solution - until I saw the price. Obviously in the long run, it will go down as you say. 

  14. Posted

    I still think in the long run, it would be good to have a more permanent solution than a finite number of donor carts.  I know of an arcade repair guy who has hundreds of pokeys taken from Ballblazers that he uses for various Atari PCBs; someone making a few custom carts won't be a big blip in the long run, but I don't think this is sustainable forever. I just had no clue how many had actually been destroyed, maybe my experience with the repair man has made me paranoid. 

     

    I have no intention of keeping these forever, and it is the only game I have more than one copy of.  I only collect games that I will actually play, so my collection is rather small (about 300 games across all systems from 2600 to the Switch)

  15. Posted

    1 hour ago, Shawn said:

    It's so funny to read how self important people think this tiny blip of people on this forum are in regards to the remaining quantity of a mass produced product that was made with the intent to be sold to as many consumers as possible when originally released.  99.999+ percent of the world doesn't give a shit about the Atari 7800 or any games for it. The perception of effected rarity on it's shitty little common games is so funny. We mean nothing to the numbers in total. The only time the numbers moved around was when Oshea's melted tens of thousands of them for their tiny amount of gold a decade ago.  And then you have guys who are hording them thinking they are doing God's work "saving them" when in reality they are furthering the problem they think they are addressing. :lol:  Humans I tell ya 🤣

    The issue isn't just this tiny blip of AtariAge people; my understanding is that there were others using Ballblazer as a donor on arcade boards or Atari 5200s. Again, you're probably right, but if I knew the numbers of these things that are out there vs. a pretty good guesstimate of how many have been destroyed, I'd probably stop worrying and learn to love to sell these things for people who might want them. I only need one copy for my collection after all. 

  16. Posted

    12 hours ago, Shawn said:

     

    Oshea's smelting down tens of thousands of NIB copies by the pallet didn't cause that, nope, it was all the AtariAge Hater Brigade!  

     

    P.S. There are folks out there still who still have full cases of Ballblazer (and other titles) from back when Oshea sold them for 40 to 90 cents each.

    I guess I'd have to see production numbers of Ballblazer + if anyone has any idea of how many have been sacrificed for Pokeys.  If it turns out I am being too paranoid about them (it is true after all that the game is worth 30-40 bucks now loose), I can always just unload the ones I have. 

     

    Still, I think as collectors we'd all agree that in the long run, it is better to stop having to 'borrow' the Pokeys from them entirely. 

  17. Posted · Edited by dmaxwell

    On 11/5/2019 at 11:30 PM, Shawn said:

     

    It was not just you, don't worry. There was a lot of double standard Tomfuckery on that site from time to time on top of that unwelcoming attitude you are speaking about. The first couple years it was really good. I was actually asked to be a moderator when it first opened up but I declined and just stayed on as a member. After a couple years went by it got too big and too clicky with some folks. They would endorse selling there own fake NES stadium events carts but ban other members for doing the same that where not on the inner circle. The user based changed over a few times and each new wave of users seemed to bring their own set of "issues".  Overall it was a good site. Now it is not. Now it the the husk of a decade worth of user generated data that has been mined by a company down to a pile of left over 1's and 0's that didn't fit into their profit plans.

    This. I just found out about the site take down, and while there was obviously some good traders there, there was alot of outright BSing that caused the site to slip several years ago. Alot of people who would demand a little knock off on the price compared to ebay, you know, from one collector to another. OK. And more than once, I would later see the games I just sold to these 'collectors' end up on ebay within a couple months with the guy reaping the profit.  I'd also get guys wanting free shipping on 10-15 dollar games, shipping cutting so much into whatever I was going to make I may as well give you the game for nothing.  Greed/how to make a quick buck became the overriding principle there.  Half of them didn't even seem to really play the games. So I stopped going there quite some time ago.  But it is still sad to see the whole site (and SegaAges) overturned and ruined. 

     

    I hear alot of the younger guys say that Atari/classic games are 'too old', and maybe that acts as an insulation to a certain degree from the worst of the game 'collecting' scam artists/con men. 

    • Like 1

  18. Posted

    22 minutes ago, sixersfan105 said:

    Uhh it's pretty common. So you'd rather Ballblazers sit with no one playing them then see them repurposed into a fabulous new homebrew game that someone can enjoy on a regular basis? Keep in mind that most everyone that "kills" a Ballblazer cart already has a personal Ballblazer cart. As in, everyone who wants to enjoy Ballblazer in all its glory is already able to do just that. 

     

    Meanwhile, you're hoarding Ballblazer carts so no one can either enjoy the game OR turn it into a homebrew game? Your logic seems quite flawed.

    As a matter of fact, yes I do. Considering that we've managed to turn a formerly 5 dollar game into a 25-40 dollar game, I plan on holding on to them. 

     

    • Haha 1

  19. Posted · Edited by dmaxwell

    We gotta stop killing Ballblazer carts. As a collector it makes me cringe to see that many of them get their guts ripped out. It's one thing if we were recycling a super common 2600 gameshell, but Ballblazer was never *that* common and it seems like at least several hundred (perhaps even 4 figures?) of them have been destroyed for homebrewing.  I've already hoarded about 25 of them over the last 2 years (Protective custody?), mostly ones I have run into locally, just so I can release them into the wild once a (cheap) pokey solution has been found.  

    • Like 1
    • Haha 2

  20. Posted · Edited by dmaxwell

    I think you're probably 100% right about what would be needed, but the sad thing is I don't think there are enough of us interested in such a device to justify one, unless it were made in very limited numbers and priced very high.  Those POKEY clones that have been discussed here I guess have issues with 5200 instructions from the controllers, and personally I don't want to see any more Ballblazer cannibalized (about to buy some just to hoard from people trying to do just that).

     

    That doesn't even begin to address how the 7800 would handle the 5200 controllers, unless the 'adaptor' also had controller ports like the Colecovision 2600 adapter did. 

    • Like 1

  22. Posted

    Playing them on the 4k is temporary until I can get a decent, smaller TV (under 20 inches) that can do component and s-video (there are a few later TV models that can). In the future, I will probably put the 4k through one of the extra video outs (this thing does have 8 outs after all), but have the component and s-video output going to the CRT (yes, stupidly as it sounds, 2 outputs going to the same TV, depending on what the S777 actually does). I check craigslist every few weeks and have told a friend who does flea markets to keep an eye out.  If this goes on awhile, I may get that device though of course I always worry about introducing lag. 

  23. Posted · Edited by dmaxwell

    Thanks, and sadly from what you guys have said, I think I had the correct impression.  Crossbow is correct about what I am trying to do (make everything go to component out).

     

    It's fine though, for me the s777 is still an upgrade and it future proofs me a bit better (though I intend to hold on to the s700 still). I will probably at some point get a CRT that has a S-video and a component input. The problem for my current set up is that 1) my 4k TV combines the component and composite (and has no s-video), so I was hoping to do it all in one and 2) my one CRT is composite only. 

     

    The only 'true' all-in-one solution to my quandary is buying a 700-1200 dollar shinybow switcher, and that's beyond my level/budget. When it gets here, I will do a test just to see what happens regardless, but I am not getting my hopes up.

     

  24. Posted

    I just bought one, and now I am starting to wonder if I made a mistake considering I already had the JVC-S700.  I bought the S777 because it had 2 component inputs and 1 component output, and although I knew it wasn't going to do any upconversion of the composite/S-video signals, from what little information I am able to find on this switch, it sounds like it won't output S-video/composite to the component at all, sort of defeating the purpose of why I bought it in the first place.  So I'd have to have a strange setup with 2 different outputs going to the same TV, but 1 to S-video/compsite and another to component. 

     

    Could someone who has/had this confirm this? Thanks. 

  25. Posted

    I have a US Championship V'ball board that I blew out the sound on all the way back in 2001 by turning it on with the JAMMA plug on backwards. It's been sitting in a bin for most of that time, but I pulled it out last year and the thing still works and plays fine otherwise. Was told by another member who has done some console repair work for me on AA to just ask here - who to talk to, etc as I would like to fix this board.

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