Chilly Willy

might wanna make that a CD-RW, or you're going to have alotta coasters. CDRW doesn't work on the DC, and yes, it's a LOT of coasters, but at $10-$15 a hundred in bulk, you can afford a lot of coasters for dev work on the DC.

Good catch! Free is always a good price.

You can get an SIO2SD here: http://afs.atari.org/sio2sd.htm

Yep! People tend to forget about that left column margin in the OS. Since you cannot change it before the memo pad runs, there would be no way to actually do 40x24 unless you wrote a program to change the margin, then jumped into the memo pad in rom.

I find it easier to burn CDRs for testing software on my DC than using ipload... it NEVER works right for me, and it interferes with networking in the program you're testing.

The best SNES C compiler is snes-sdk, found here: http://code.google.com/p/snes-sdk/

Those are both really good ideas. I've got one of those fake cassette with line in, but never thought to use it for the Atari. I actually got it for my PSP to use in the RV on long trips.

You could try WAHCE, the Atari emulator my brother did for Windows back when 200 MHz PCs were the norm. It was more compatible and faster than other Atari emulators of the same period aimed at the same machines. http://atari.kensclassics.org/downloads/wahce10b.zip

I was wondering about that, the schematic I posted has a connection to "J1-11" I imagine that should read "P1-11"? Probably, plus it shows only a mono plug for the sound in which should be stereo with one side going to the chip and the other going to P1-11. It's not too surprising the CD interface doesn't connect them - it uses a higher frequency for the FSK for faster throughput, so it's geared towards just data, not data + sound. Connecting the audio in to the Atari is mainly for direct replacements of the cassette. I do find the idea of using a CD as a cassette replacement rather intriguing. What is needed is for someone to publish a mod for connecting the motor line from the SIO to a portable CD player pause control so that the CD acts exactly like the cassette. Or maybe a mini MP3 player.

Nice, but don't forget to run the other audio input to pin 11 of the SIO... that's how you get the cassette audio on the Atari sound for educational cassettes. One side has the data, and the other side has the audio.

Thanks. Might have to go back some time and try REing this again.

So how does a rom like that work?

Here's a commented disassembly of the Happy 1050 rom my brother did many years back. Not the same as having docs, but it should help more than an old magazine article. happy.zip

QFT. The dpad on the unit itself can be rather "stiff" and harder to hit those diagonals, but the wireless pads are better than most third-party SNES pads I've used. And yes, it does have AV out for hooking to a TV. You can leave the unit closed when using the AV out, and because you're using the wireless pad, it's no different than using a regular SNES except no wires on the pads! One other nice thing about the FC-16 GO - it doesn't check the region nor require those silly CIC chips. I can use a SNES Neo Myth flash cart without a SNES cart on the pass-through, and can play games from anywhere. EDIT: Let me clarify one thing on that last statement - it DOES matter as far as PAL/NTSC goes... I cannot play PAL only games on my NTSC FC-16 GO; however, if the game is NTSC, then it doesn't matter where it's from. I play Japanese games on it all the time.

If you can get a handheld without having to sell the N64, consider a Yobo FC-16 GO. I haven't used my SNES since getting one. They run between $50 and $70 new.

I got Necromancer on cassette... it was a LONG load, but worth it! After getting a Percom floppy, I wrote a program to transfer the cassette to floppy, and that's what I've used ever since, so I don't know what the "official" floppy is like. Sorry.

He He!!! Hmm - I'm almost positive there's something wrong, but I can't put my finger on it... I wanted to keep the waveforms simple, but use frequency modulation + detuning + reverberation to make instruments more lush sounding. I probably will allow channels to modulate the echo delay parameters so you can create phasing/flanging sounds too. Well, it'll will be interesting to hear how it sounds. Certainly nicer than any existing 8 bit sound chip.

6309 is a slightly upgraded version of 6809. Thanks, I should probably look up some datasheets on it. And did you notice the quoting is having trouble getting the author right? Odd... Well, actually it's based on Neo Geo's sprite system where every sprite is a tall stack of 16x16 tiles with separate attributes per 16x16 tiles, with a joining bit that places next sprite 16 pixels to the right of the last one. To create a background, join 22 16x256 sprites together and the background coordinates are controlled by the coordinates of the left most sprite, since the rest just follow the coordinates of the last. There can be up to 112 sprites per line, so there can be up to 5 layers. That sounds really good. It's just enough memory for each channel to have it's own 8-bit 256 sample instrument. But 256 samples really isn't very good. You either need really short instruments (no base drums), or really low sample rates. Having 2:1 or 4:1 ADPCM for the channels means you can have higher sample rates and/or better sounding base instruments. The hardware support for music isn't really needed, but would be nice.

There's nothing going on now that's any worse than in the past, it's just with the internet and global reporting at an all-time high, you hear about every last little thing in great detail where in the past whole COUNTRIES could disappear and you might not hear a thing for years, if ever.

Um, it was only $159 at launch, and included six $10 coupons for six different launch games (I used all but the Cosmic Carnage coupon). I never regretted buying my first at launch time, but getting my second a few years later for $20 was much nicer. Most carts are dirt cheap now, so that helps even more. I doubled my 32X collection in the last few years for less than $50. I've got a flash cart for the rare or unreleased beta carts.

I've got a 400, and a 65XE. I also have my brother's 400 and 800XL. I've got a Mosaic 64KB expansion board in my 400; it has two modes: you can use the Mosaic bank selection, or set it for XL bank selection. I've got mine of Mosaic mode; I thought about changing it to XL mode, but got the 65XE instead. I have a number of things I hacked to use Mosaic mode that I didn't want to give up on the 400, namely BASIC XL and Action!. Hacking them to use Mosaic banks actually gives you more memory with those than using the carts.

Where the artifacting comes from is the phase difference between the waveform made by the luminance, and the color burst on the hsync back porch. Any delay of the scan line as it's output compared to the reference transmitted for the burst results in a different color. Look at the basic pattern you draw: 01010101... 10101010... You'll see they are out of phase with each other, so they'll always have the same relation on the color wheel to each other. Where the precise color they have comes from can vary with the design of the GTIA depending on when the data is output compared to the burst generated during the hsync.

One person reported finding one of those AtGames thingys at a WalGreens. I've got both the RetroGen and GenMobile (ordered online). They're okay for the price... the main issue is the sound is still screwed up (plays music at the wrong pitch). Otherwise they're the same old ARM chip with an emulator. The only flash cart to work with these AtGames systems is the MD-Pro. You can also get a Firecore Passport (from Germany) to use SD cards with them. At that point, it's like the Gopher. I've got an MD-Pro 64 in the GenMobile, and the Passport in the RetroGen.

Sounds like it's dirty. A good cleaning might be all it needs.