johnnywc
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Posts posted by johnnywc
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*** EDIT: the NTSC and PAL60 ROMs for the first Gorf Arcade demo are available here! ***
Hello all,
As we finish up Zoo Keeper, Champ Games has started on a new project: Gorf Arcade for the Atari 2600! Although a version of Gorf was released for the 2600 by CBS, the Champ version will follow the same treatment given to Wizard of Wor by adding the following:
- All 5 arcade levels
- Updated graphics (by Nathan Strum)
- All 30 speech phrases using the AtariVox (by Mike Haas)
- Updated sounds (*)
- Improved game play
- High score support using the AtariVox/Savekey
- Cut scenes, ranking badges, etc.
We estimate that the game is about 40% done. Here are some teaser screen shots showing the current progress:
We are currently looking for a volunteer to help with the sounds (TIA). If you are interested in helping bring an updated Gorf to the 2600, please send me a PM!
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On 11/3/2019 at 7:59 AM, MissCommand said:Yep, glad to hear someone else having the same results! Since I removed the PIC several months ago, not a single issue with WOW (or Man Goes Down), which is two I really wanted it to work with.
We are currently testing a new board design by Richard H. and so far there are no issues! I'm pretty sure Al is planning on having new AtariVox's in the store sometime soon with this fix.
On 11/3/2019 at 7:59 AM, MissCommand said:And now I hear they are working on a new GORF (I think it is Champ Games)... really excited about the speech possibilities with that!😀
That is correct! @Nathan Strum has done most of the graphics and I'm finally getting around to working on the game. The title screen and Astro Battles screen is looking good so far. We do plan on adding all the phrases (or most of them depending on space) with AtariVox support too!
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On 11/3/2019 at 6:04 AM, Oldschool80skid said:Mumbai who is a member sells colecovision games and accessories. He has a controller for sale. I have purchased from him several times over the years and have always received my items well packed and in great condition and working order.
I would PM him right away, because the demand for controllers has just spiked with other members such as yourself wanting to purchase them for their Phoenix.
1 hour ago, sixersfan105 said:I can second that @mumbai is great to deal with and I highly recommend him. If you are looking for alternative controllers, @RetroGameBoyz's ColecoVision offering is quite good and results in less hand cramps than the originals. Purchase one through AA or Facebook instead of his eBay or Etsy store and you will save a few bucks.
Thanks everyone! I am in contact with @mumbai and picking up a couple of the classic controllers.
I'm also going to check out the gamepad from @RetroGameBoyz in case the Colecovision classic controller causes hand cramps like the good ol' days. 
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Hello all,
I just got my Collectorvision Phoenix and I'm looking to see what the best options are for controllers. I think an original CV controller would be fine; I think I saw some with a ball replacement for the disc sometime ago. Any suggestions are welcome, or if you have some controllers you would like to sell that would be great too!
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks,
John
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This looks pretty promising - thanks! I was away at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo this weekend and we demoed the finished Wizard of Wor Arcade with a prototype QuadTari using 74HC245 transceivers and 74HC04 inverters using the DUMP_PORTS as the select line. Functionally it worked great and since we were using a modded Atari there were no interference issues (the interference on an RF system is really bad as we know).
I would like to try to build this circuit over here so I can see how the interference looks and try a few different capacitors to see how the response is. Would you happen to have any links to Mouser to the parts I should pick up?
How does the interference look on your end?
Thanks!
John
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31 minutes ago, grips03 said:When playing in 2 player co-op mode, is there two player ships at the bottom of the screen at the same time?
Hi there!
The 2 player co-op mode plays like a 1 player game with the following changes:
- when there is one ship on the screen, control changes every 8 seconds from one player to the other (red ship and blue ship)
- when a ship is captured, control of the rescue ship will not change until the captured ship is rescued (or the rescue ship is destroyed)
- when a ship is rescued, the double ships are independently controlled by each player
We have done a lot of testing with co-op and made some tweaks along the way, but the overall consensus is that it's really fun and challenging!
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On 10/9/2019 at 7:09 PM, ChildOfCv said:So, don't get out the confetti just yet, but I may be on to something.
I've been researching what might cause power draw on these chips, and the common answer is state changes. Obviously true on the final output, as standard logic chips have to pull the signal in both directions, and the faster they have to flip the state, the more power they draw. We did reduce that a lot by using open collector, since now it only has to pull down.
But there is still remaining interference, and it's probably caused by the 6532 and the TIA. After all, they're also logic chips and they can also see rapid state changes.
As noted in the above scope pictures, you see a huge amount of ringing whenever a direction is pressed, and less so when a direction is released. This is caused by the switch contacts, which will have a period of bouncing just as a connection is made. The logic chips react to this with an attempt to turn that bouncing into a square wave. This takes power internally in the amplification stages. Also, when a particular chip is turned on for output, it takes power to affect the output state.
The solution, probably, will be to eliminate the bounce. For that, we use a debouncing circuit and a Schmitt trigger. This is a model for the circuit, though there are a few choices for implementation.
This sounds very promising! Anything I can do to help? Should I look into buying some of these chips?
Thanks!
John
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Thanks for the update!
It's weird that this only happens with non-modded Ataris using RF and there is absolutely zero interference with a modded Atari, even with the circuits that use 7404 and bus transceivers where the interference is much more prominent vs. the circuit with the NAND gates. Could that be a clue?
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41 minutes ago, root42 said:@johnnywc thanks for the info. I guess I will have to wire pin 5 to GND then. I think virtvic used pin 6 & 9. Maybe I’ll even put in a throw switch to toggle pin 5.
Thanks for looking up the autodetect code!
You're welcome!
I may be wrong, but I think you need to wire pin 5 to VCC (not GND) if you want the arcade stick to be recognized as a 2-button gamepad by Scramble since it's expecting INPT1 (paddle B) to be '1' on startup.
Good luck!
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25 minutes ago, root42 said:I have a question regarding the detection of gamepads: virtvic built me a two button arcade stick. It works fine in all games as a one button stick. However in Scramble I can’t get the second button to work. He wired it up as button C according to the Sega pinout. But I guess something is still missing... any ideas? A regular Sega gamepad works fine.
Hmmm, does it say "GAMEPAD FOUND" on startup? If not, then the auto-dectection scheme probably isn't working for the arcade stick based on a different reading of pin 5 on startup.
Looking at the Scramble init code, it thinks you have a 2-button Sega Genesis controller connected if INPT1 (pin 5 on the Atari) is logical "high" on startup. Can you reach out to virtvic to see how he has wired up pin 5? If he grounded it (maybe he didn't need it), then unfortunately Scramble will think you have a 1-button joystick connected as this pin (and pin 9) are both 'low' when regular joysticks are connected.
Hope this helps!
John
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2 hours ago, discotronic said:All I can say is amazing. Everything that is happening in the world of gaming around these older systems is really cool. This is one game that I never thought could be playable on the 2600. I just downloaded the demo for my Harmony and it is very nicely done. Can't wait to get the cart.
Thank you so much for the kind words! Galagon is set to be released at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo in about a month, and will be available in the Atari Age store sometime after that.
1 hour ago, Stephen said:Let me just say, that for 2 solid days at VCFMW, there was a never ending line of people sat playing the Galaga demo. 9AM to 11PM Friday, and 9AM until I tore down at 3:30PM the next day. I even helped some dude upgrade the firmware in his Harmony in order to be able to test the demo. Well done guys!
Wow that's great news - thanks for sharing! I'm glad Galaga aka Galagon was a hit!
1 hour ago, sramirez2008 said:Champ Games continues to outdo themselves. 😀
Thanks Steve! We're busy working on getting a playable Zoo Keeper ready for PRGE - it's looking good so far!
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On 8/25/2019 at 3:03 AM, SoundGammon said:Are we ever going to see a COMPLETE "GORF" with all 5 screens?
Can't call it "GORF" unless it has all the screens.
We have started on "Gorf Arcade", by request from our graphic artist @Nathan Strum, expected to be released sometime in 2020. And yes, it will have all 5 screens, plus voice using Atarivox.
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12 minutes ago, ChildOfCv said:Well, it's possible. But you should notice a definite change in voltage when plugging the capacitor in in that case. You can hook up the capacitor through an amp meter, that is, "- stripe" to ground, + side to meter black wire, meter red wire to VCC, and meter in amps mode (if the meter requires a different plug for current measurements, make sure you use it), and see how much current is flowing through the capacitor/meter.
Okay, I do have a multimeter so I'll see if I can get a measurement.
12 minutes ago, ChildOfCv said:It probably won't have enough impact on the circuit to matter. So that would be one of those desperation moves
Let's hope it doesn't come to that.
12 minutes ago, ChildOfCv said:Not even a momentary dot? :S
It's hard to tell since this is an RF connection and the picture isn't clear to begin with, but I was eagle-eyed on the area where it usually appears and didn't see anything.
12 minutes ago, ChildOfCv said:Yeah, but the open-collector outputs defeat that problem. Since nobody is supplying a strong positive voltage for someone else to fight against, there should not be any especially strong power draw for this case even when two or more devices think they own the output.
Okay, that makes sense.
Thanks!
John
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16 hours ago, ChildOfCv said:Well at least the world isn't too insane then. If the smaller capacitor was the cause, I'd be giving up on life. But still, this is a DC filtering circuit, so it shouldn't be increasing the interference. At best, it should be the same.
I hope I'm hooking the DC circuit up correctly.
I have pin 7 going to a pin on the board, then the inductor between this pin and another on the board. I then connect the output of the inductor to my common vcc pin strip on the side. I connect pin 8 to the common ground strip on the board. I then add the capacitors with one pin on the common vcc and one pin on the common ground strip. I then pull off of vcc after the capacitors to feed the chips and resistor networks. Hope that makes sense; I can take a pic to clarify. Is it possible I fried the large capacitor when I connected it the wrong way (a couple times )? For sure the interference increases slightly but noticeably when I add the large capacitor and reduces when I remove it.
16 hours ago, ChildOfCv said:This at least seems to confirm that it's the power draw that causes the problems. Oh, and are you using 1M resistors for the pull-ups now?
Yes, I have 1M resistor networks on the 5 inputs from joystick 1, 5 inputs from joystick 2, and the combined output from the NAND gates prior to the 74HC05 which then goes directly into the Atari. I am using a 10K resistor pull up on the select line input and a 100K pull up on it's output from the 74HC05. Should I try a 1M on this too?
16 hours ago, ChildOfCv said:Well, you can try building a minimal circuit and increasing it until the interference kicks in.
For starters, just do the filtered DC circuit (including the large capacitor) between pin 7 and 8 to make sure there's no interference when you try to input-select.
Next, add in the 75HC05 and its pull-up resistors on the inputs. Also wire the input selector since it's part of this circuit, but you can leave its output disconnected for this test. This will mean no real inputs, but at least some electronics.
Now try wiring it up so that one joystick can use the set of inputs of the 74HC05. This still leaves the input select out of it, but now you have joystick input.
Okay, I will give this a try.
16 hours ago, ChildOfCv said:Is there a way that you can set the input select to toggle at a more noticeable rate? If so, you could even use your multimeter to see whether it's the up transition or the down transition that causes the static (or both).
I changed my test program so it toggle the input select every 2 seconds (instead of twice a second). In this case there is no static, you just can only use 1 joystick every 2 seconds.
I measured pin 9 with my multimeter and alternates between 4.98 volts and 0.16 volts every 2 seconds as expected. I think it was suggested above that there may be a situation where all the chips are active for a split second during the transition that may be drawing more power which is causing the interference? Maybe it's more noticeable when it's happening 120 times a second vs. once every 2 seconds.
I'll keep you posted on my progress.
Thanks!
John
16 hours ago, ChildOfCv said:Hmmm, are you sure that's not a UFO sighting? 😜
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1 hour ago, ChildOfCv said:Try the capacitors one at a time to see which one hurts more. On the large capacitor, are you connecting the stripe side to ground, or to power? It should be ground. But the fact that it's worse with the capacitor would seem to indicate that it's drawing power.
The large capacitor causes more interference when connected. The small one doesn't seem to have any effect. I connected the large capacitor with the short pin (negative) to ground; the small capacitor doesn't seem to have polarity.
1 hour ago, ChildOfCv said:Does the interference still only happen when a direction is pushed, or is it constant?
The interference gets slightly worse when you press the joystick in one direction, but seems to almost go away when you press the joystick down and to the left or up and to the right.
1 hour ago, ChildOfCv said:Does it happen even without joysticks plugged in?
The interference seems to go away when you unplug both joysticks.
1 hour ago, ChildOfCv said:Finally, to make sure we're correct on the power situation, it should be Atari pin 7 -> inductor -> ( all capacitors and VCCs and resistor pull-ups ), and ( all capacitors and GNDs ) -> pin 8
Yes, I think that's how I have it hooked up. I originally had the resistor pull-ups connected to straight 5v as it wasn't clear in the original diagram, but I made the change and it didn't seem to have any effect either way.
1 hour ago, ChildOfCv said:I may be able to test some things on my 7800, but it looks like even by the 2600Jr days they already noticed the folly of their power distribution scheme and modified it. So the 7800 may be immune to these issues. I do have a SECAM 2600 board that uses this stupid power scheme, but it seems to have a bad RIOT chip, at the least. I'll have to socket the chips in my 7800, then maybe I can swap the RIOT from it and see if it works then.
I can always ship you a unmodded 2600 if that helps and if you have the time to work on something like this.
I want to also mention that the interference does go away completely if I disable switching or use the QuadTari with a standard Atari game (I use Basketball to test). The controls work great (it always uses joystick 1 since Basketball isn't setting DUMP_PORTS) but there is no interference.
One last thing I want to mention; if I disconnect VCC (pin 7 from the Atari) completely, the circuit still works and there is no interference. I measured vcc at the chips and it's getting 4 volts somewhere, probably from the other Atari pins; I measured the select pin and the directional/button pins and they measure 4.6 volts). I'm sure it's not good for the overall circuit or health of the Atari/chips but thought it might be useful.
I should stress that the interference is almost down to nothing compared to what it was before. Here is a pic and a short video so you get a visual. The interference are the white dashes:
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I had a couple hours free and wired up the design above with the 74HC03 and 74HC05 chips with the inductor and capacitors. Functionally it works great!
The interference is much much less than the previous test with the x245 and 74HC04 inverters but still small traces at the top of the screen. Interestingly, the interference is worse with the capacitors; if I pull them out it's barely visible but with them a bright short line of interference shows at the top. The inductor doesn't seem to have much effect either as the interference seems the same whether or not the 5V vcc is connected to the chips directly or thru the inductor. As with the previous design, if I disable switching (DUMP_PORTS is always on or off), there is zero interference (but of course just 1 joystick works and controls both players
). I hope I'm connecting the capacitors up correctly!
FYI The 74HC05 has 6 inputs/outputs so I was able to use 5 of them for the output prior to the Atari for the 4 directions/button and the other to invert the select line (the design above has the up direction hooked up to a NAND gate to save a chip but I was able to use the 05 instead since it really doesn't save a chip - you still have 3 74HC03's and 1 74HC05).
For the select logic, I have the select pin 9 connected to a 10K pull up resistor before connecting it to the 74HC03's for joystick 1 inputs, and the output from the inverter (the inverted select line) I have hooked up to a 100K pull up resistor prior to connecting it to the 74HC03's for joystick 2. Does that sound correct?
So it looks like we're getting really close!
Any other suggestions? I can try a version with the LS641 open collector bus transceivers, plus I have the 240 octal buffers too.
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Update: The parts came in today so I hope to wire this up in the next few nights. Silly question before I blow up something; is there a specific direction I should be hooking up the capacitors? I read online that the inductor doesn't have polarity so that should be okay in any direction (I think) but read about capacitors blowing up if you don't hook them up in the right direction. 😮
Any safety tips are appreciated!
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19 minutes ago, ChildOfCv said:Yeah, a 74HC04 drives both highs and lows, while open collector (74HC05) only drives lows. Since you have spare gates on either the 74HC05 or one of the 74HC03's, though, why not use one of them for the select line? That will save you a chip.
Sounds like a good plan! I just got the open collector bus transceivers in the mail (74ALS641) so I'm going to swap those in in place of the x245 and diodes to see if that makes a difference, but from what you've found in your research it seems that the interference is most likely being caused by VCC on pin 7 which I won't be able to test until I get the inductor and capacitors in the mail. It's times like this I really miss having a Radio Shack around!
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2 minutes ago, ChildOfCv said:Yeah that looks good.
Great thanks! I ordered the 7 items on the shopping list; they should be here by the weekend.
2 minutes ago, ChildOfCv said:I was using up all the chips before adding new ones, as you guessed. But actually, you could just use all inverters since that only uses 5 of them. There is also one NAND gate I forgot to use anyway.
Okay, I'm ordering 10 of each to save on costs (plus I'll probably fry a couple while I'm testing lol) so I should be able to mix and match to reduce chip count if needed.
2 minutes ago, ChildOfCv said:And for the simple select logic, you need a pull-up resistor on both sides of the gate. The input should be a lower resistance like 10K, but the output could be another 1M.
Okay, I have a 10K on the input side in my current design, so I can keep that. I'll add a 1M on the other end. Quick question; regarding the design above where we're using the 74HC04 to invert the select line; why isn't a 1M pull up resistor needed for that output? Does the 74HC04 pull up the value but the 74HC05 does not?
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6 hours ago, ChildOfCv said:And here's another crazy idea. It uses discrete logic to simulate a bus transceiver. I omitted the select logic itself since that's still negotiable.
Okay, so this looks very interesting and reminds me of my discrete logic class @ UCONN (CS207/208).
It all makes sense to me except for the NAND gate connecting the Joystick pin 1's (UP); why is that being used instead of the inverter? EDIT: I think it's to reduce chip count? The NAND and inverter have the same logic but using only 4 inverters means just 1 74HC05 is needed and the 11 NAND gates can be accommodated on 3 of the 74HC03's, right?
As for the select logic, if we go with the 2 joystick option, could we use the 12th NAND gate on the 3rd 74HC03 to simulate the 74HC04 inverter? Meaning we could just pass the select line (after a 1M pull up resister) for selecting Joystick 1 and the inverted value from the NAND gate to select Joystick 2?
I would like to add some NAND gates to my order before I checkout; is this one okay?
Thanks again!
John
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8 hours ago, ChildOfCv said:You'd want a fixed inductor.
The polarized capacitor is labeled 10/16 which means 10uF at 16V. It's not critical that it be exactly 16V, only that it has a good margin of error for handling over 5V.
Thanks, I figured that symbol was another capacitor but the 10/16 threw me off a bit.
8 hours ago, ChildOfCv said:And yeah I guess I should have been less specific about part numbers. The main thing is that you use HC or HCT technology. The actual part numbers are based on how the circuit is constructed. I'm thinking HC because HCT doesn't seem to have the 05 variant. For the earlier idea of using an inverting buffer and open collector inverters, that would be 74hc240 into 74hc05.
So the shopping list would include:
Excellent! I have these in my shopping cart @ Mouser; I'll wait a bit in case we end up adding a few more items based on your 'crazy' design above
8 hours ago, ChildOfCv said:By the way, do you still want to try for a 4-player controller? If so, then maybe instead of using pin 9 as a simple player 1/player 2 select, you could use it to clock a selector IC such as a shift register. So when you want to read the next player, you'd activate the dump transistor for a short while and then deactivate it. But then you'd need a way to ensure you're reading player 1, such as resetting the selector if you hold the dump transistor on for longer than a certain amount of time (or maybe if you don't activate it within a certain amount of time).
Although that sounds tempting and very interesting, I think we should keep it simple with just 2 joysticks as the logic involved for selecting/etc. gets a bit complicated. Our plan is to allow 4 joysticks on 2 ports by basically using a 2-joystick selector adapter on each port. Of course that means we can't use a Savekey/etc. in the right joystick port, but that should be fine since the pros (simpler circuit, easier to read and confirm values for each player, less ROM needed, less time needed in vblank/overscan etc.) outweigh the cons. So, with an adapter connected into each port, for 4 player games we can detect if there is an adapter in each port (INPT1=1, INPT0=0 if an adapter is in the left port and INPT3=1, INPT2=0 if an adapter is in the right port). Also, we use just one write to VBLANK to read two joysticks, one on each port:
- DUMP_PORTS=0 you can read Joystick 1/Joystick 3 movement in SWCHA, Joystick 1 button/Joystick 3 button in INPT4 and INPT5 respectively
- DUMP_PORTS=1 you can read Joystick 2/Joystick 4 movement in SWCHA, Joystick 2 button/Joystick 4 button in INPT4 and INPT5 respectively
Perhaps down the road we can design a 4 joystick adapter on 1 port; that would be a cool project!
Thanks again for all the help!
John
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1 hour ago, ChildOfCv said:Well, actually... looking at the 2600 schematic (the official one in the field service manual, not the reverse-engineered one-page one), the power from the regulator is filtered to a couple of sub-circuits. The one that powers the modulator just happens to be the same one that provides controller power as well as the pull-ups for the TIA inputs (don't ask me why). This actually offers a clue: The multiplexer is on the same circuit as the modulator is, so any little ripples it causes will affect it.
The 10K resistors that are on the input lines only pull 0.5mA. A 74LS or 74HC chip can pull up to 50mA, or 100 times that much.
So then I remembered that there's an Atari trackball, which also uses electronics. So what's its secret? Well, look at its schematic: https://www.atariage.com/2600/archives/schematics/Schematic_2600_CX22_Low.html
Pin 7 is connected to a 15uH inductor to block transient current to/from the Atari, then served by two capacitors in parallel, a 10uF and a .1uF to provide both short term and longer term demands for the electronics.
Ignore the 100K and 8200 voltage divider--that's just biasing voltage for the op-amps.
So the inductor and capacitor circuit may be what you're looking for.
This all sounds very promising!
Could you recommend a 15uh inductor I should pick up? I just did a general search on Mouser and there's a bunch and the price range is wide (50 cents to 5 bucks) and I'm not sure what the difference is.
Looks like there are fixed, coupled, each with different power draw, resistance, etc. Also any specifics on the capacitors would be helpful too. I'm looking at the diagram and I think I see the capacitors, the .1 and .22? I'm not sure whre the 10uF one is. Also, what is the symbol right below the inductor that has 10/16 next to it? Is that a capacitor too? Maybe that's the 10uF capacitor? Sorry for all the basic questions!
59 minutes ago, ChildOfCv said:In addition, if you use the 74HC241 or 74HCT241, you can reduce power consumption even more by using larger pull-up resistors in your resistor network. 74HC series requires only .001mA for an input. So you could easily get away with 1M per resistor there. Much better than the 1mA pulled by each of the 4.7K pull-ups when its direction or button is pressed.
Hmm, it looks like the 74HCx241 is an octal buffer/line driver. So this would replace the bus transceiver? May I ask, what is the difference between the 74HCT241 and 74HC241? Also, how do these differ from the 74HC244 octal buffer that I was using before? Regarding the resistor network, do you mean I could use a 1M RN in place of the 4.7K RN that I'm currently using to reduce the power consumption if we switch to the 74HC241 vs the 244?
Since a lot of these components are cheap (and the big cost is the shipping and the time to have them shipped), maybe I can just get a bunch of different types that you think may work so I have them on hand.
Again, apologies for all the basic questions... I appreciate the education and help!
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21 minutes ago, ChildOfCv said:Ah, so it sounds like I could duplicate it on the 7800 and maybe track down the cause and a potential solution.
That would be great, any help is greatly appreciated!
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6 minutes ago, gauauu said:Yes, I'm sorry, I mean the previous iterations. (my point was that I doubt it's related to the TV connector specifically)
Gotcha, thx for the clarification! I was panicked that we didn't have a solution that had at least the interference cleared up.
I agree, I don't think the interference is related to the connector (or at least one specific connector).
Thanks for looking up the autodetect code!
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Champ Games - Gorf Arcade (2600)
in Homebrew Discussion
Posted
Wow, when you list them all one after the other, it does sound like a lot! 😮
A few that you missed:
LOL we do keep ourselves busy, that's for sure!
Of course none of these games would be completed without the help of a lot other people like Nathan Strum, Mike Haas, Dave Dries, Ross Keenum, Thomas J, Darrell Spice, Bob D., all the game testers like Steve Ramirez, James @ ZPH, Glenn AKA GRay Defender, and everyone else here on Atari Age! 
And of course we can't forget Al for all his work coordinating with everyone to get these games put together and in the Atari Age store! 