x=usr(1536)

To use the MAME testers vernacular for a moment: this what I'd consider to be a BTANB (Bugs That Are Not Bugs). It's more of a human perception issue, though it is one that is both subtle but noticeable in gameplay. It has to do with how lives are displayed (and thank you for the space between the score and life counter ). Start a two-player game with 3 lives on 'hard' difficulty; this will be the fastest way to reproduce it. Let both Player 1 and Player 2 lose their first two lives. Note how the life counter decrements. When both players start on their third (and final) life, there are no lives showing on the life counter. Not a huge deal, but it does make it appear as though the player has zero lives left when the player's final life is still in reserve. What this leads to is thinking that the game is over (despite no 'game over' message having been shown), which in turn causes a scramble to get back into playing when the player's last ship does appear. Like I said: it's down to human perception, not the actual gameplay. I did check this behaviour against both galaxian and galaxianm in MAME, and neither one does this - they wait until the player's ship is first drawn to decrement the number of lives remaining, which avoids the issue. Other than that, it's playing great. I'll try to not lump too much to have to bang on into the crunch towards a final RC

Had you been doing a better job of making your point in the first place, the response that I gave would have been considerably different. See my above point. What you were getting at was not terribly clear. If you'd prefer to not be misinterpreted, write more accurately. Hate to tell you this, but opinions aren't sacrosanct. Anyone can hold an opinion regarding another's opinion. Doesn't change anything either way.

I understand the point that you're making, but can it really be considered retrogaming if you're doing it while the systems are still current? One man's crap game is another man's delight. I have a thing for arcade oddities and bootlegs. The Crazy Kong set added to MAME where Kong is turquoise and everything else about it is janky as crap because it's running on Scramble hardware is still one of my favourite things that I've found. Ditto just about anything released by Taito do Brasil, Falcon, EPOS/Magic/Glak (etc.), or that was really obviously bootlegged. I do draw the line at Kyle Hodgetts' games, however. Anyway, there's no point in caring about whether or not someone has / wants full sets or just partial ones. It's solely down to their interests, which really can't impinge on whatever anyone else is doing in this case.

Had a few minutes this evening, so did a bit of tuning on the 1200XL's colour pot. Definitely much better on the CRT, which also received some mild colour tweaking. On the LCD it still looks bad (though better than pre-UAV by miles) but that's down to the LCD's crappy A/D handling. I used ACP for broad tuning, and the Atari versions of Pac-Man and Moon Patrol for fine-tuning since I'm very familiar with how they should both look. Everything is much improved and closer to where the 800XL sits; thanks @Sugarland for getting me to go back and recheck.

I agree that that's the hope. However, that's also why I tend to look at overall suitability (including durability and build quality) first and price second. Granted, that may put things out of my financial reach either temporarily or permanently, but that's the point where looking for alternatives may come in. Which would be a fantastic balance to strike, and I would hope that he's able to do it. Having options is almost always a good thing.

Just ran across this thread for the first time, and fired up Sector Wars. If it had seen just a bit more polish and a release at the time it was being worked on, this could easily have been a commercial title. As it stands, though, it's still a fun game. Scored 21,220, finally reaching game over at the first docking screen. Wasn't expecting diagonal fire coming in my direction @SectorWars: out of curiosity, who are ADA, SAM, and RAB on the high score table? I think we can guess who VIC is

All of which is fine. Being perfectly honest here, I really have no interest in either his or Arcade 1UP's cabinets, but I am always interested in seeing different (or reproduction) designs for arcade controls. I've installed and used the Ultimarc ServoStik a couple of times in the past, and was pretty impressed with its quality. It'd be interesting from my perspective to see how this one compares.

Once more with feeling

That's the same as the one linked in the original post.

Twin Eagle?

Just played all three difficulty settings with 5 ships on each. Gameplay is excellent! Two small things stood out to me, however: 'Hard' mode should have its name changed to 'HAHAHA YOU'RE GONNA DIE' Would it be possible to put a space between the score and the spare lives counter? It looks a little bunched up right now. Really like the level indicator at the top; it works well. Ditto the gradual change in tempo of the swarm sound. Overall, this specific build was one that I really liked. Can't really explain why; it just felt right.

You may want to look for that over on KLOV. It's an arcade-centric community. Not saying you're not welcome to stay here, just that your chances of finding what you're looking for are going to be much better over there. One survival tip for posting on KLOV: if people reply to your posts with, "is the Popeye still available," start checking the dates of posts that you may be replying to

I'm wondering how well this would hold up in the long term. It doesn't look as beefy as Ultimarc's ServoStik, but if it was designed specifically for use in the Arcade 1UP cabinets that may not need to be as much of a consideration.

Excellent news, and very much looking forward to its arrival. That would make my day, week, month, and possibly even year. Perhaps the delay is due to him being on yet another extended tour of Japan with his band. This should be good. When a recidivist liar, thief, and coward says that it wasn't him, hilarity generally ensues.

Didn't back this for the sole reason that I just learned about it now. I do have a couple of questions, though. The author is in Germany. That's fine, but does the book concentrate on the German cracking scene or the wider one in Europe? What about the US and elsewhere? Interested in finding a copy of this, but I'd like to know how far they went with research before putting in the effort to find one.

Waiting for the hardback copy to arrive. Once it gets here, I plan on going through it PDQ.

True, but there were more than a couple of print buffer devices that sat between the printer and the A8. The A8 would dump everything to the print buffer, and when that was complete the A8 would be freed up for other uses while the print buffer handled getting data down to the printer. Wish I could remember the one that I used with my Epson FX-80; I was so incredibly pissed-off when it was replaced with a 1029 and the print buffer wasn't SIO-compatible. Having to sit there doing nothing through an entire printout sucked.

This one strikes me as the 1090 that actually made it to market, though it may have been in equally-tiny numbers as the 1090's prototypes. Yep. And both of these are what make me think that this was basically a third-party 1090 equivalent. I'm wondering if this wasn't being developed in parallel with the 1090 and designed to match its capabilities. Yeah, but I can see where the burglar alarm could've been workable: X10 supported dry contacts from not terribly long after its inception, and burglar alarms have handled them since the 1960s or thereabouts. With X10 being a target for the 1090, it wouldn't be surprising if these folks were looking to replicate that functionality and 'burglar alarm' was just a way of saying 'dry contacts, X10 if you want.' Then again, it's not like there was never pie in the sky in peripheral advertising of the 1980s, so, y'know...

Fixed a rubbing ABS sensor wire on the Jeep that was tripping the ABS light when it made contact with the steering knuckle. Now to find somewhere that can replace the dead TPMS sensor battery for less than an arm and a leg. If that happens, I'll have zero warning lights while running!

No idea how I missed this thread until now, but those are bloody beautiful. Damn. Now I want both of those devices just to stick them in those cases.

I keep going back & forth on the Syscheck. Not because of any concerns I have about its features or capabilities, but because for my situation it's really only useful for 600XLs and 800XLs. What I'm doing with the machines that I own is building out two parallel sets of hardware: stock and modified. The stock machines are there as reference items, with the modified ones being guinea pigs for upgrades and experimentation. Ditto peripherals (disk drives, mainly). However, with very few exceptions, I'm really only interested in doing this with the A8s that I grew up with as a major part of my early computing experience. That rules out the 400 and all XE machines. Because of this, Syscheck is a difficult sell for me. Don't get me wrong: I think it's a fantastic piece of hardware, and can absolutely see where it may be useful to me. But only being able to use it with two machines - while it would be useful - is a limiting factor.

As far as that goes, I agree. With that in mind: Well... This is why it's almost never a good idea to make impulse purchases. A few minutes' nosing around would've saved you $70.

The one machine where I can see installing a permanent U1MB is the 1200XL. Being able to switch out the OS as necessary would give it great flexibility as a daily driver, and the memory bump would be a nice bonus. WRT tf_hh's boards, I completely agree with all of your reasons for using them, and certainly have no opposition to the idea. I'm just in something of an experimental mood right now, so am slightly fixated on the U1MB Realistically, though, I'm in no rush to upgrade the 800XL. If adding in another 64KB was something that could have been done with a bit of soldering, great, but since it doesn't I'm OK with holding where I am for now.

Having seen exactly the damage you're referring to (right down to the Varta batteries), I'm inclined to agree - but only if things are as badly damaged as batteries can make them. On an otherwise-solid device, contact cleaner and isopropyl alcohol.