5-11under

Link to the thread at cgcc.ca: http://www.cgcc.ca/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22421 Thanks for the information about Diabetes. I think my father-in-law should know this.

I'm having issues with the "View New Content" option, with missing (and sometimes duplicated) posts. So... I was relying on "Today's active content", but that now seems to be misbehaving in similar fashion. Right now, for instance, "Today's active content" has a post by Krytol at 3:32, then KnechtRuprecht at 3:30, with the third item by charliecron at 2:46. There's items missing between #2 and #3.

Important update here... Sue, hopefully you don't mind... Sue just sent me a picture of her brother, and it's actually "Technosis" (AtariAge, cgcc.ca) who passed away. I'm not sure who lance_miller is, but it sounds like he is someone else. I can't explain what the deal is with the accounts, but maybe that doesn't really matter. Technosis was a fairly regular poster here, so I'm guessing that at least a few of you knew him at least to some degree. I actually bought some games from him about 15 years ago, and over the past half-dozen years or so, looked forward to seeing him at the local cgcc swap meets.

Sue, I've sent you an e-mail. I suggested to sell any items that were thought to be worth > $100 each via eBay (auction), and any worth less than that via AtariAge and CGCC (ideally with prices listed). Any leftovers once that was exhausted would be sold at a CGCC swap meet. I think the owner of 1UP games is active on CGCC, and is as much a gaming guy as a businessman. You won't get the maximum value of course, because he needs to make money too, but this is probably one of your best choices for a one-shot deal. This may be a lot of outlay for a small business to handle, so I wonder if that will have an effect on what they're able to offer.

Sorry for your loss. I'm actually just down the road in "downtown" Vineland, although I never knew Lance, that I'm aware of. I'd suggest finding out which items are rare, or worth over a certain amount (either yourself or someone from AtariAge). Sell the items that are worth less in bulk lots, and the more rare/expensive items as singles, either via eBay or AtariAge (AA would be a bit simpler, probably, although you might get a bit less for the items). I'd consider taking anything worthwhile with you, to sell at your own pace, maybe after additional investigation. If you need, I might be able to act as a middle-man for the more common items, if it's not too overwhelming of a collection. I could help with packing, shipping once the items are sold (with a minimal handling charge probably, depending on the scope). It's definitely worth your while to at least find out if there are any items that are rare. Some items could be worth significantly more than a lot of the others, and it'd be a shame if you sold it to a local dealer at a cut-rate prices.

Me again. Another suggestion: keep the spy tab. It's pretty cool if you "need" to keep on top of things.

I sold mine a few years ago for about $300, including some games. The Gladiator/Football/? game supported 4 players, I think. I only had 2 joysticks, though.

I'd like to see more updates to the front page of AtariAge. There used to be news every few days or even more often, where now, it's been over 4 months. Sure, there will be lean times, but I'm guessing that some noteworthy items could have been added, even if it was new products or relevant threads. I know this has been suggested a number of times... maybe we need a new way to enter suggestions/topics/write-ups for the front page. In the least, we need to be encouraged to send in news. Out of topic perhaps, but the front page is a good gateway to getting people to look at the forums (checking out the latest news, and seeing something of interest in the recent forum posts sidebar)... actually, looking at the home page just a minute ago, the "recent posts" listing has been removed.

Or go back in time to 2001, find the machine, and take a picture.

Super Game Module

Or at least some of the good music from the '80s. /apologies

If you find the other thread, some of your questions will be answered.

Are you the one who e-mailed me a bunch of times to assemble some PCBs? I'd suggest to buy a flash cart, load it up, and see what you like. If you have time to play, you can find some time to figure out what's good. No?

Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but one way would be to have two controllers basically in parallel, except: Player A has pins 1 and 2 of the DB-9 connector cut, and Player B has pins 3 and 4 of the DB-9 cut (or re-routed to pins 1 and 2) (I think I got that right), so left and right work for both (although the CV will register Player B as up and down). The hard part comes with the fire buttons, because you can't just cut pin 8 out of one of the DB-9s. You could cut pin 5 of one controller, losing the keypad functionality. Sorry, thinking out loud mostly... you'd probably need to re-wire or create a new joystick with custom wiring to get player B to have a distinct fire button. Here's the schematic, although I think the keypad diodes are shown backwards (it all gets too confusing ): http://www.atarihq.com/danb/files/ColecoController.pdf

What you need to try is to go into Classic's controller test, for instance, and see what different keypad and fire2/3/4 buttons are distinct from each other. What you don't want is to have player one press the 1 on the keypad (for whatever purpose) and player two press the 9 on the keypad (for whatever purpose), because I think you'd end up thinking the * was pressed. That's workable to some degree... but you wouldn't want to have the * key by itself (because it really means 1 and 9 are pressed). Also, for the extra functionality of keypad buttons, you might need to have custom-wired controllers. Not sure about access to fire2.

I think I described this in a "what homebrew would you like to see next" thread, where I said I'd like a 4 player game. Sure, this can be done, and fairly easily, I think. Getting the keypad to mesh between two players wouldn't work too well, I think, but you could fairly easily split the directions and the two fire buttons, I think. One player could have left and right and fire1, while another player could have up and down and fire2 (re-wired to play like the first player, of course). You could verify with Classic's controller test, to make sure you have full control of each of both fire buttons at the same time... I think you do. Same with the keypad and fire 3/4... there might be a few cases where you could split them between two players (haven't tried all the combinations, to see if any work separately from eachother - without screwing up the output - like when you press to keypad buttons at once and get a different result).

I don't have mine in front of me, but it looks like a TOP2004. I haven't tried programming PALs/GALs on it, although I see it on the list of devices in the programming software.

I've got a cheap TOP??? USB EPROM programmer from eBay. It looks a bit different from most of the ones I see right now, but it's probably similar to at least some of them. Mine does PLDs also, which I thought might be useful. Mine works fine. I've only used it for relatively modern EPROMs such as 27C*, with ~12V programming voltage.

The original/alternate color palette sounds interesting... being able to switch between natural and a somewhat more saturated set of colors could be useful.

What do most of the flickery ColecoVision games do at boot time? Call the BIOS routine that uploads the system logo and copyright screen to the 9918A. That could be the software switch that enables 32-sprite mode Interesting. Switching between 2 BIOSes in this way could work for at least some of the games... maybe there's a similar way to do this, regardless of whether the system logo is shown or not. I'm not too familiar with the BIOS, but it's probably possible... reset points to the BIOS, from what I understand.

You will have the options, just not via a physical switch. I think to total number of people who would want such a thing is 1. You. We'll see what happens in future versions. Make that 2! For me, this is an option I'd love to have available. For fancier graphics options, software/registers is the way to go, but for legacy software, such as any ColecoVision game that flickers, it'd be great to be able to switch between 4 and 32 sprites per scanline. I can't/won't be reprogramming any of the old (or newer) games that use flicker. Don't worry, though. I'll still buy one from you.

I like looking at the "background" of pictures that people post. Good fun. As far as the project goes, I'll only buy one if it has a DB9 connector on the end. Make a corresponding wall socket, to plug the joystick in. What could possibly go wrong?

Do tell? DigiKey has them in-stock. 1500 exactly, so maybe they recently got a reel of 2500 and sold 1000 of them to a customer.

It does absolutely nothing as far as playing games goes. On the flip-side, it's been used exclusively in relation to video games and video game systems.