Marius

Totally agreed. It looks nice... gameplay is horrible. And although some people hate background music, for me it is one of the thing I usually like in games. This games does not have any music at all. Pity.

Oh that is a good one. I was most certainly under the impression that my cart was Championship Lode Runner as well, but you are entirely right here. Very good point!

It is how the game looks (at least on PAL) ... I have it on cart, and looks just like that as well. There do exist loderunner variants in color though, but I always believed those were hacks.

This is absolutely true, but I have 5 blackboxes from 3 different batches. One of my black boxes is the oldest one, and comes from Bernard Kok (Becotel). It's my most favorite BlackBox. It has absolutely "everything" socketed and works the most stable from all Black Boxes. Two of my black boxes had the 1.41 Firmware and are from another batch. I purchsed them from Bo and Ernest Schreurs Then much later I purchased another one from Bo and Ernest Schreurs. I suppose this on is from the same batch as the 1.41 one. And much later I purchased one directly from Puff. That was the newest batch. All with green and red LED Perhaps the yellow LED is a custom fix from the owner?

The most important feature (for me) missing on those modern solutions is that you can during the operation of a program jump into the config-screen and mount another partition. I know the modern solutions do have the 'rotation button' which is handy too, but not as handy as the way the black box handles this. @mr-atari Did an amazing job in MyBIOS to add this feature as well for the MyIDE and MyIDE2 interfaces. Excellent! Just like operation on 'stock' equipment (where you can physically change disks or tapes) during the operation of a game, this should be easily possible with these harddisk interfaces as well. Sio2PC, Sio2SD, Sio2USB (Abbuc), Sdrive Max can do this as well. You don't have to leave your atari-program to mount another disk. I used the feature a lot back in those days with the BlackBox. And I also used it all the time on MyIDE. I wished IDE+ had this... I know Konrad is thinking about it, but the idea of rewriting the entire bios for IDE+ is not something that makes him very happy (and I can understand that). For IDE+ it would be amazing though. It would be amazing if I could mount another APT partition on the fly, or mount another ATR (stored on a SDFS formatted partition). Well there still have to be things to wish for. A few big downsides of the BlackBox: 1. It does not support APT (partition format). So if you use CF cards like me, you can not simply remove the CF card and move to MyIDE or SIDE or IDE+ ... you can exchange CF cards between IDE+, SIDE and MyIDE (2) though. (It would be amazing if MyBIOS would also support APT so one wouldn't have to stick to SDX to use those APT partitions) 2. It is indeed very large on the desk (and so is the powersupply) 3. It appears to be slightly more problematic when it comes to stability on upgraded atari's. Probably due to the amount of logic IC's. 4. It is kinda slow. Not a real problem for me, but it is true. Especially with the also not so fast Acard IDE -> SCSI adapters. Besides these points... it is a fabulous add-on.

I have no idea, but I was seriously under the impression that when I would sell one of my Black Boxes it should bring in at least 300 euros. I am afraid that is not going to happen. If I had no blackbox at this moment, I would definitely pay £150 ... including a floppy board. Obviously the times in a8 land have changed. Something I can understand very well of course (at this moment my black box is not in use as well, since the modern upgrades do some of the Black Box tasks faster and better) ... but still.... the Black Box has some unique features and sometimes I really miss them. And besides that... the Black Box 'breaths' the nostalgia feeling more than those modern add-ons... (for me) but that is probably a matter of taste; or something personal.

By the way... There are a few odd things about this BlackBox on the photo. 1. On all of my blackboxes there is a green and a red LED. This one appears to have a yellow led. 2. There is a strange rectangle cut out on the right side just above the XE cart connector. 3. The power supply connector is different than original? 4. The color of the PCB is much lighter green than all of my BB's It's a pity we don't see a pic of the blackbox without the floppy board. On older blackboxes the yellow resistor-chip (I believe it is a resistor pack) is in a socket as well. On later BB's it was soldered on the PCB. I have one older BB where it is in a socket. Anyway, still no bids. Very odd.

Haha you and @MrFish are so right! 1. Ma as starting characters in both our names 2. Both from The Netherlands 3. Both owners of BlackBox 4. Both love Atari 8bit computers Are you a secret twin brother? Lol Greetz Marius

Actually it was @Mathy who owns a Floppyboard. Except for the first 2 characters in our names, we do not have anything in common... so I don't understand the mix-up haha.

No it is not me on ebay. I would NEVER part with a blackbox. In fact, I am trying to see whether I could move back to it, since I have many fond memories of using it. I do not have a floppy board. I am SHOCKED though to see that it has zero bids. I was always under the impression that when I would need money BADLY I simply could sell one of my BlackBox to convert it into a big bag of gold. Hmmm wrong thought... perhaps it will get bids in the last hours?

The reason for this absence of help is probably because many people moved to another device and websites from developers meanwhile disappeared. When I look to my own situation: I will have to dive really deep into my (not so well organized) archives to make an attempt in finding what you need. That is something that needs time which I most of the time do not have. It is nothing personal. Which version of sio2ide do you have? Please post a picture of the entire device.

I did not see it either. I love Qix!

Did you manage to do this or is the previously shared table updated?

503049 also started from 0 points this time. My wrist and left hand hurt like crazy haha. But totally worth it. What a game... WHAT A GAME!!

AVG, cart with amazing features, really could use some esthetically updates. Side loader is milestones ahead when it comes to User Interface and looks. I never scroll through windows, but simply type a keyword or part of that, so I don't care for screens with more titles listed. Search facility on Side loader is really fast. On a cf or sd card with thousands of titles 24 lines is still not much... Why did you post that comparison?

If we need to start at 0, no problem for me. I am still trying to improve my last score. Although I did not succeed yet, I still love this game SO MUCH. Millipede is so much cooler than Centipede.

For a very long time I had the same opinion. But at a certain point I really "needed" SDX. I believe that was when I wanted to use The Last Word on a harddisk partition (and no, I won't start using mydos!). First is was slightly more complicated than the average atari 8bit DOS, but once things are setup right, it works.... VERY WELL. To be honest, I find it one of the most compatible DOS'es for little Atari, and it is extremely versatile. There are actually 3 Dos'es I use most: 1. SDX 2. SpartaDos 3.3a 3. XDOS 2.4 by Stefan Dorndorf. The "fun" is that my main SDX partition (let's call that D1:) is a 16MB partition that boots SpartaDos 3.3a when SDX is not active. So SDX and SpartaDos 3.3a share the same partition. On a SIO only system, I prefer using XDOS. Really nice DOS with quite some cool adjustable settings.

Nice to have you here!

Best is to type here what is printed on the biggest chip, or better a detailed pic of that chip so people can read the label. It is quite common part so probably easy to flash. Ps. Please make also pic of sio2ide you have.

When it comes to flashing, I do not know anymore. I remember I flahsed my Atmega's using an external flasher. But there was (IIRC) on my sio2IDE a header.... I made back then a cable using a printer cable (still if I remember correctly). wasn't it an AVR header?

Yeah, but that is the (for Pal systems fixed) version of 1984. There is also a 1983 version, which has equal gameplay but does not show the scores of the spiders and the DDT looks slightly different. There are also two cart versions; there also does exist a 1984 cart version, which is equal to the file version. I applied the Fandal fix on that ROM.

Haha what a fun idea!

What I find very interesting in this game, is the fact that every crawling creature has it's own sound. This makes the game so funny for nut just visual but also audio senses. A few tips in this game: 1. The beetles with the prrrrrrrr sound do never come at the max left or max right position. So if you want to be in a relative safe spot when these approach you, pick that position. 2. Keeping the fire button pushed down is in most of the cases the best choice. But... beware the 'intervals' of the shooting can be risky when you approach the spiders, so better release the fire button then. 3. If you are in a swarm and you expect yourself to die there, look at your score. If you have lives enough left (so you can afford to lose one) and you are very close to getting a new life, choose for a kamikaze action. If you die with your score so close to a new life, you'll recover with the bonus life. If you die just after you received your bonus life then it might take too long before you get another life. 4. Try to learn (if you did not yet) the different sounds of every creature. I find it extremely helpful. 5. If a swarm is almost there (the game runs in cycles) make sure you have killed enough mushrooms around the DDT. As soon as the swarm start, shoot the DDT. It results in lots of points, AND it gives you for a few seconds a safe lane under where the DDT was. Stay there and the swarm will recover from DDT and then you have excellent position for shooting more of the insects. (Beware for the spiders though who are always in the swarms) 6. If no swarm is expected soon, shoot all the DDT's as well. Give quite some points! And did you notice that DDT increases the points you get for what you kill with DDT? I am still not sure, but it seems that killing a spider on a short position from DDT with the DDT results in 1800 points for that spider. It is always during a very short time visible that score, but I believe it says 1800.... wow! Well If I have more tips, I'll let you know. This is by far my most favorite and played atari 8bit game ever.

I always start with 30.000. I think these starting scores do not make much sense anyway. You can maintain max. 6 lives (no more bonus lives above these 6) so when you manage to keep 6 lives around 100.000, 200.000 or 300.000 points (max start score) it wouldn't even matter that much to me personally if one uses 300.000 as start point every time. But not every participant in the HSC reaches 300.000 points, so perhaps it is best to start with 30000 points every time.

Getting on fire.... 469301