x=usr(1536)

If her husband, the Fed, and his wife, the bounty hunter, can't track down the sister, the thief, between them, and bring her to justice, then all that can really be said is that the entire story is a load of crap.

Just call him Supreme Leader and you'll be OK. Anything else and you'll be dragged out of your house and shot in the street.

Rudy, We've never met. I don't know you, and you don't know me. That said, I have seen a great many statements from you over the years, both here and elsewhere, regarding scores that you have achieved. Most of them seem to centre around grievances that you have with Twin Galaxies. As far as I know, those grievances are completely valid, and I certainly have no interest in diminishing their importance to you. But I do have to say the following: The way that you are presenting yourself is not helping your case. If anything, it's hurting it. Your statements do not do anything to engender sympathy on the behalf of those who may be reading them. Cheers.

fixed that for you Ssssh... I'm playing a long game of 'a fool and his money'

I'll freely admit to being up to nine RasPis at present. Seven of them are dedicated low-powered servers for resources I either don't want to or can't run in the VM environment, and two are there for prototyping without taking down any of the other seven. Dropping $300 on a Linux box in an Atari 2600-alike case simply because it's in that case makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. If someone just wants to get their feet wet with Linux, $34 gets you everything you need.

Or a CPU, or a GPU, or functional input devices, or networking, or pretty much everything else that's expected of a modern computing device. It can certainly light up an LED like nobody's business, though. That's gotta be worth at least a couple hundred bucks right there.

Now that you mention it, I think it may have been both. Ringback on busy is jogging a memory of having run across that a couple of times.

There were a couple of different ways: At signup, you'd provide the number you were typically going to be calling from. Once your account had been activated, you'd connect to the BBS by calling it and entering your credentials, at which point it would hang up, typically giving a message to set your modem and /or terminal software in answer mode. The BBS would then call you back a few minutes later, and your session would be allowed. Later, once Caller ID was widely-avaialble, the same thing could be accomplished using it. There was also voice verification, in which the sysop would call you back after signup to establish that the number you gave was real. Not true ringback in the strict sense, but similar in method and with about the same end goal.

You certainly raise a good point: the Ataribox will definitely have broad appeal to the demographic that was -29 years old at the time of the original's launch. It's easy to understand how someone born a decade after the demise of Atari would have such a strong connection with the 2600, and would be in the market for a nostalgia-based console ahead of one that might have existed in their lifetime. And with the nearly unlimited disposable income that the average 12-year-old hipster has, only the sky can be the limit! Buy your Atariboxcorp, Inc. stocks now. NOW!

Re: recording INP files and generating save states: that's mostly correct. Let me see if I can clarify this. One thing that needs to be understood up front: INP files and save states are independent of each other; one can exist and be used without the other being required for it to be used. They can also be used in combination, but that brings up some considerations I'll come to shortly. Starting MAME with the -record option will record all inputs sent to the game; starting it with the -playback option will feed inputs stored in an INP file to it. Fuller explanations of these options can be found here. Save states are different in that they can be generated or loaded at any point while the game is running. Press F7 to load a save state; press Shift-F7 to generate a save state (more info here). There's some trickier stuff that can be done with save states, such as rewinding them frame-by-frame and restarting game playback (and save state capture) from an earlier point in time, but for the sake of clarity I'll keep to the basics for now. What this means is that you could record an INP file of gameplay, reach a difficult part of the game, generate a save state, and stop recording the INP at the same point as the save state is generated. You now have two things: a save state that can get you immediately to the point that you need to practice on, as well as an INP file that can feed inputs to the emulator up to that point, making it appear as though a human is playing the game. With both of those in hand, you can then fire up MAME, loading the save state at launch and also recording an INP file of that particular session. The idea at this point is to play until you can get through the difficult part, generating a separate INP file from the start of that part of the performance. Any failed attempt can simply have its INP file discarded, the save state reloaded, a new INP file generated, and the process repeated until gameplay is satisfactorily recorded. So let's say that you now have an INP file of just your gameplay through the difficult part. This is where it's possible to make it appear as though multiple games have been played as a single performance. You'll need to be meticulous in how this is done in order for it to work properly, but it is possible. You've probably seen reference to 'stitching' INP files together. It's pretty much what it sounds like: joining two INP files generated in two different sessions together in such a way that, when played back as a single file from the point of emulator startup, they show what appears to be a single session's worth of human gameplay. If you've been careful about managing your save states (e.g., always starting MAME with a save state loaded that was generated from one 'master' save state), all of the gameplay should match up as random number generators, etc. will remain consistent across emulator launches. At that point, all that remains to do is to play back your 'perfect' INP file with the appropriate save state loaded and record the video output directly to tape. If done correctly, at this point you should now have a recording that is - for all intents and purposes - virtually indistinguishable from a single gameplay session. This really only works for games that are relatively deterministic; ones with higher degrees of randomness in their gameplay typically don't work as well if at all. But for many games it can be done and surprisingly effectively. Also, I'm referring to the present behaviour of MAME in the above regards. While the techniques I'm describing aren't new and certainly existed around the time that the disputed scores were submitted, MAME was a significantly different piece of software at that time and as such the approaches outlined above may not accurately reflect how MAME would have behaved at that time. Note that I am not saying that this is absolutely what happened in Billy Mitchell's case - I just don't know what specifically happened there, so tend to align myself with TG's view that while he may not have been playing on a stock, unmodified Donkey Kong PCB, that doesn't automatically mean that the video of his disputed runs was unequivocally generated in MAME. However, there do appear to be a number of gameplay behaviours shown in his gameplay tapes that match behaviours found in MAME, so completely discarding the possibility of MAME gameplay would not be prudent. As far as that goes, I have no idea. Unless someone came forward and said, "yep, that's exactly what I / we did," I don't know that there's any good way to prove culpability one way or the other. However, mechanisms certainly exist(ed) by which it could have been accomplished.

Yes, but it will be Internet jail time.

For my money, it doesn't get any better than when Feargal Mac Conulaidh sings, "When A Plan Turns To Dogshit."

"We wanted to redefine what it meant for gaming enthusiasts of all types to see an LED light up," said Michael Arzt, Chief Operations Officer, Atari Connected Devices. "Only Atari can bring that experience - cherished by millions around the world - into a stylish, modern package that even a mom capable of using Netflix can appreciate." He continued: "Through the use of 'battery' technology - pioneered by Atari in the Super Pong console of 1976, and a clear acknowledgement of our brand's storied history - we want to provide a next-generation LED experience to a new, connected audience. Imagine the possibilities: online, fully-interactive games of, 'LED on', 'LED off', and 'LED blink', with scores shared in real time on social media! All we need is your, er, some cash up front to make it happen. Also, speakerhats."

This is probably the category that my comment most likely falls under. I really like how we're seeing games that have gameplay elements reminiscent of the 8- and 16-bit eras, but that are done in a modern context on modern hardware. There are quite a few titles out there that do this without being unimaginative reworks of earlier titles or games that simply ape what's come before without understanding what made those earlier games great. Limbo comes to mind: There are others, but I feel this is one of the best examples. The influence of older games is readily-apparent, but it stands on its own merits.

Had these passed on to me a while back: And yep, those are 8" disks. Don't have a drive to read them with, but they're one of my more favourite things to have picked up recently.

Hopefully it's not just half-a-taco. At that point you've got a tostada, and it's dogs and cats living together all over again.

Related to this: YouTube uploads of the podcasts would be *majorly* appreciated. It's the one unified playback method I can use across multiple devices that lets me listen pretty much anywhere - particularly in the car, via Bluetooth from my phone.

Unplug the keyboard, let it sit for the amount of time that it takes for the '+' key to stick, plug the keyboard back in, and see what happens. From memory, you should be able to hotplug the keyboard without any adverse effects, but someone should double-check me on this since it's been a couple of decades since I last had a 400 open. If the problem recurs, it's possibly (note the conditional) not the keyboard. If it doesn't, plug the keyboard back in, make sure that everything is securely connected, and see what happens. This should at least give you some ideas of where the problem might be. Good luck!

He's just symptomatic (and stereotypical) of what's crap about YouTube: the subject of his videos is simply a flimsy excuse for him to be on camera. Every time I see a teaser still on YouTube of someone making a ridiculously-exaggerated (and -staged) facial expression, I pass on general principles. It's generally a sure sign that they're a tool.

Fun, fun, fun!

Seconded. And all of the repair advice above is sound. One thing to consider: if you toss the CRT, you're tossing a good chunk of what makes the game the game. Unless the burn-in is really awful, I'd say keep it.

They'll probably go with something along the lines of, "AtariVCS 2017 2018 eventually We Really Wanted It To Happen".

(Largely because nobody ever picks the Monitor ///.)

Originally, this post proposed a Flash-to-HTML5 converter of some sort. Teh Googlez has shown me that this already exists. In my defence, my knowledge of current web development is not what might be called 'comprehensive'.