Mr SQL

Kevin, BREAKANOID is all about fun, download and try the playable demo! The playable demo is fully functional with the first three levels of the game and it's free! If you have a Harmony Cart or Cuttle Cart you can play BREAKANOID on cart for free! For $20 you get two versions of BREAKANOID as well as BREAKANOID monochrome dreams! AND you also get the kit for building fantastic new BREAKANOID rom binaries at home! If you also want a stand alone BREAKANOID cart it's an additional $25 but this gives you the option to choose which version to put on cart; Atari-age will carefully print and affix a colourful label with the BREAKANOID gameplay instructions to your cart. Go and have fun playing BREAKANOID however you like! :)

BREAKANOID has an ending but some versions like monochrome dreams do not; the BREAKANOID level editor lets you design a classic breakout style ending for the last screen or allow the user to loop back to the first level

The modulator circuit is probably not imparting too much colorto the sound, the circuit is a very straight forward FM modulator (link to Atari 2600 schematic). Its simplicity may introduce nonlinearity, but that really shouldn't matter for a high pass filtered binary wave form. If you are interested in how the cable carries the color TV picture and audio see wikipedias NTSC and PAL links, for more detail you can look here video signal details I'm not an EE, just a hobbiest, there are probably others who could really shed some light on this. Lots of great replies on this thread! solidcorp, IMO the mixing oscillator impacts both sound and video to the extent that something is lost with a composite mod (I prefer ferrite). SeaGtGruff, very cool analysis!!! RevEng, good point about the caps - their involvement and discharge is part of the relaxation oscillator circuits comprising the sound channels; this is different than the harmonic oscillator circuit (the quartz crystal) which drives all of the other oscillating circuits. Also a good point about the digital stepping; these can be emulated like the 6502 but both are acting on analougue circuitry! To conceptualize this in EE consider the following ASCII representan of a relaxation oscillator circuit under digital control: .......I........I..........I... --/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\--CAP--- The I's are the taps in the coil under digital control; I've drawn three but there could just as well be 31 Which ever tap we digitally switch to doesn't matter, we're left with an analougue resonant circuit pushing out analougue frequencies and imparting analougue ideosyncrasies. Stella is a fantastic and tremendously fun Atari 2600 experience and the emulation for the digital parts is spot on; stephena has raised an excellent point that actual emulation of the analougue components would be a massive undertaking requiring a great many developers and tremendous computing power. Since this is not practical, the stella development team is doing the next best things with these parts; IMO this makes stella a hybrid emulator/simulator. I agree with Thomas that the wavepad graphs could be used to improve simulation aspects and bring Stella closer still to the 2600. I'm impressed by the related efforts of the stella dev team in this direction in implementing phosphor trails, psychedelic interference patterns, et al. Interesting discussion aside, Stella plays so well that I like it more for it's subtle differences than if the gameplay and sound were exactly the same - it means there are two excellent Atari 2600 game playing experiences to be had

This isn't a cop-out. I don't mean the raw speed of the computer; I was referring to the non-real-time aspect of it. If I want something done 2 milliseconds from now, and the system responds 3 milliseconds later, it doesn't matter that it can do 10 million things before the next timeslice. Real-time is concerned with guarantees, not raw processing speed. It's more a matter of timing than raw computation speed. If speed were the only issue it wouldn't be a problem, since Stella originally ran on a fast 486. The jitter you see when playing a game in Stella with software rendering is because the screen refresh isn't synchronized to the monitor refresh rate. In other words, a timing problem. And when something starts in the background and visually interrupts Stella, again a timing problem. Then there's reading from USB controllers; latency is introduced, which again is timing. If I ask for (and absolutely need) a dollar right now, and you respond that you can give me $1000 1 minute from now, then for all intents and purposes that's useless. What I can get in the future is irrelevant if I can't get what I need right now. If I could take control of an environment, lock out all other programs, tie the emulation to the underlying 60Hz refresh rate of the monitor, and directly read from controllers, I can almost guarantee that many (most?) people would never know it was emulation. The fact that Stella can perform better in one OS environment than another (Linux vs Windows) is proof that the environment is an important variable. I'm not sure exactly why, but I suspect that Linux can respond to requests faster than Windows; again, a timing issue. stephena, all excellent points again; Windows users very often have their system cluttered with apps that do as you described, suddenly taking the lions share of the CPU. Programs that follow proper design protocol are preempted but it is possible for the user (via task manager process list) to designate Stella as "master control" giving it priority over all the other apps. I don't doubt Linux has a more responsive USB polling driver; one way to get around this in Windows write your own faster low level USB driver in Assembly or load the existing kludge driver into your process space so it can join master control like Sark I think stella is fantastic and by far the best 2600 experience aside from an Atari.

TIA sound is based on the system clock being fed into frequency dividers and a combination of LFSRs. There are no analogue oscillators, digitally controlled or otherwise. RevEng, the system clock is also an oscillator, quartz analougue And as per the wiki entry: The TIA is capable of generating different flavors of pulse and noise out of its two oscillators (or channels) AUD0 and AUD1. Each oscillator has a 5-bit frequency divider and a 4-bit audio control register which manipulates the waveform. There is also a 4-bit volume control register per channel. http://en.wikipedia....terface_Adaptor

I think your premise here is flawed... TIA sound isn't based on analogue oscillators, it's based on digital counters. There are some complications to emulating the sound, but it's not impossible. RevEng, I disagree; TIA sound is generated from oscillators; these resonant circuits are analougue despite being digitally controlled (waveform, frequency and volume). The digital control aspects can be emulated but baring immense resourses the analougue circuitry will only be simulated like with the (entire) Odyssey.

stephena, excellent post and many great points except environment; a programmer can't throw this card today. Maybe 20 years ago when some users still had a 386 running at 33 mhz. But todays slowest windows systems processors all run over 1000 mhz and any end user with a web browser is all too keenly aware that just about any app can easily enter kernel mode and ursurp 99% of the CPU making the system look and feel like OS9 (the apple one that locks up and doesn't share the MPU, not the cool multi-tasking OS for the 6809) I agree with all of the rest of your points, these in particular: "Emulating a real-time console on a non-real-time OS will always be a series of compromises. And emulating a system at the logic level vs. the transistor level will always be inadequate unless you're willing to devote massive resources (both in developer time and a faster computers) to the task." Too true; if we look to the SID example, synth design later branched from subtractive analougue and only recently have synthesizers become powerful enough to match digitally what the SID could do with it's analougue parts. No serious artist wants a moon machine because you can't emulate a SID (at least not without an inordinate amount of processing power) so what you get in practice is simulation. Today's chart topping recording artists know how to steal borrow SID's to incorporate that phat sound into their music, but they all use the Electron SIDStation which is rare as it's no longer mfr'd due to chip scarcity. Electron tries to push their moon machine simulator but it's just not the same - your other points apply here though as well: throw enough processer power and developers into the mix and they could design a really expensive supercomputer to emulate the sid. This won't happen anytime soon and I still enjoy SID simulation, but a 6581 device is on my list to acquire. PlaySID and TinySID are really cool too and I listen to SID's with them on various devices including a walkman (RockBox has TinySID) but I still want a real SID chip because it has a phatter sound. Likewise I enjoy playing games in Stella - it's fantastic and tremendously cool because it brings the 2600 to so many platforms! Like with the SID though the real hardware has phatter sound and gameplay

I think one difficulty in emulating TIA sound is that the analougue oscillators can only be simulated; this seems similar but not as severe as c64 SID emulation where the filters too can only be simulated. I suspect the other noticeable differences between emulation and gameplay/feel compared to playing on a real Atari 2600 are due to other portions of the system architecture that can only be simulated and not emulated. If we were playing 1972 Odyssey games on current hardware it would be 100% simulation despite the best programming efforts. Conversely we can play N64 games in an emulator with a very close feel to the original with differences limited only by the skill of the programmer. I think Stella is fantastic and does a great job of reproducing the 2600 experience with a very authentic feel, but that there is no such thing as an Atari 2600 emulator

At least its real hardware. There are quite a few models of Pong machines out there. Maybe specifying a model number might help. I have well over 60 different pong units, so any of the more common models or common clones would be fine. I would be able to provide the unit for the AV modding. Even a link to any schematics would be helpful. swlovinist, check this link: http://www.pong-story.com/peritel.htm

Legend, Excellent question! Please travel back with me in time to 1969 to watch this short video from the dawn of pong straight from the man behind the curtain, Ralph Baer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNRx5hc4gYc If you watched carefully you were seeing some odd physics - yes it's the magnetic paddle! Baer created the magnetic paddle, not me! I thought I had added this innovation, everyone who tried it loved it and it was so cool, then one of the champions of pong sent me this video and showed me why. The champions of pong are correct and I've only brought it back, but the magnetic paddle is the ultimate tribute to pong that's been missing for 40 years. Putting english on the ball to bend the laws of physics, dropping it up and around corners... this doesn't just add new dimensions of fun to the game, it puts the pong back in pong

tremoloman, you got it! BREAKANOID pong tribute - monochrome dreams sent!

You're welcome Mark! You definitely won't regret getting a Harmony - the fun factor is tremendous being able to play all the classics and homebrews instantly and it's perfect for playing all of the BREAKANOID versions!

Thanks killersquirel! Yes BREAKANOID is available right now for $20 in many different flavours BREAKANOID comes with an alternate levels version and a construction kit to design new game versions - the monochrome dreams version was built using the construction kit. For full details and a playable demo please visit the BREAKANOID Order Thread!

Thanks TrekMD! BREAKANOID pong tribute - monochrome dreams sent!

BREAKANOID pong tribute monochrome dreams sent!

BREAKANOID pong tribute - monochrome dreams EXTREME PONG WARNING: this game is rated pong champions only! This exclusive version of BREAKANOID features black and white, sepia and monochrome colour themes against some of the toughest pong scenes you will ever play; don't think you'll need the magnetic paddle? Think again BREAKANOID pong tribute - monochrome dreams is available for free to anyone who's purchased BREAKANOID, just post your interest on this thread or pm me and I will send you the binaries ASAP! (There are two versions of this game which are identical except that one starts on level 5, so you have a better chance of seeing all the screens ) Play it everywhere: Play BREAKANOID pong tribute - monochrome dreams everywhere! Play it on your phone, your pc, your wii, your PSP, your XBOX or on any hardware you can run Stella on! Play it on a real Atari 2600: For ROM collectors it's possible to get BREAKANOID pong tribute - monochrome dreams on cart (see order thread for details), but the Harmony cart is the easiest way to enjoy all the versions of BREAKANOID for nonstop fun! SuperCharger all your retro parties: Invite the champions of pong to your next retro party and turn up the action with BREAKANOID pong tribute - monochrome dreams!!!

NML32, you're welcome! BREAKANOID pong tribute - monochrome dreams sent

BREAKANOID pong tribute - monochrome dreams EXTREME PONG WARNING: this game is rated pong champions only! This exclusive version of BREAKANOID features black and white, sepia and monochrome colour themes against some of the toughest pong scenes you will ever play; don't think you'll need the magnetic paddle? Think again BREAKANOID pong tribute - monochrome dreams is available for free to anyone who's purchased BREAKANOID, just post your interest on this thread or pm me and I will send you the binaries ASAP! (There are two versions of this game which are identical except that one starts on level 5, so you have a better chance of seeing all the screens ) Play it everywhere: Play BREAKANOID pong tribute - monochrome dreams everywhere! Play it on your phone, your pc, your wii, your PSP, your XBOX or on any hardware you can run Stella on! Play it on a real Atari 2600: For ROM collectors it's possible to get BREAKANOID pong tribute - monochrome dreams on cart (see order thread for details), but the Harmony cart is the easiest way to enjoy all the versions of BREAKANOID for nonstop fun! SuperCharger all your retro parties: Invite the champions of pong to your next retro party and turn up the action with BREAKANOID pong tribute - monochrome dreams!!!

I ran The Best BBS in the 80's. I also wrote the system; anyone who read Rainbow (great mag) may remember the ads for it. I think the web that we used in the 80's wasn't too different than what we use today - browsing bulletins, sending e-mail, chatting and downloading. Want to follow the link to another url? Just hang up and dial it Some sites feel a lot like a board today; AtariAge for sure

I listen to SID's; I have several favourite lists comprised of the ones that get just the right alpha waves going I like Galager, Hubbard, Jeron Tel and many of the other gread composers. Draxish... fantastic, who wrote that? I'd really like to pick up a SID player with a real 6581 if anyone knows of one; the chip has analouge filters that can't be emulated.

Interesting topic! In a sense Internet forums are interactive role playing games - in real life you might be Thomas Anderson getting a lecture from your boss but you can be Neo online; or Space Cowboy or Superman. Either way I like the game so I won't go calling you Clark except in private

X2 pce_collector! Breakout games are fun and Boost is cool! gtmtnbiker, the joystick and the d-pad work great with BREAKANOID on the 2600 Too true. Super Breakout for the 2600 is one of my all-time faves. Me too, have to pick up a set of paddles so I can play on the 2600! Think the mouse works really well as a paddle in Stella though.

X2 pce_collector! Breakout games are fun and Boost is cool! gtmtnbiker, the joystick and the d-pad work great with BREAKANOID on the 2600

JPjuice23, sounds like a great project! The pong genre has had a long and interesting evolution with Breakout and Arkanoid adding new dimensions of fun. New variants of this classic continue to emerge such as Breakout Boost running on contemporary hardware and BREAKANOID for the Atari 2600.

Rudy, your hand is absorbing some of the RF interference; place a snap on ferrite filter on the coax, close to the RCA adapter.