jsoper

Make sure you add some protection circuitry so the consoles that are turned off don't see any voltages at their controller ports. I was working on something similiar two years ago, but stopped midway and never got back to it. For awhile on the workbench, I was playing an NES and SNES with a wavebird, quite fun.

Mainly I did the limited edition for the many people who pre-ordered the game--it was never part of the original plan. I know that people are going to turn around and resell the game, no real surprises there. If I ever do this again I will probably only allow one copy per individual and perhaps exclude known dealers and vendors from purchasing copies to at least give everyone a fair shake at getting the game at a reasonable price. ..Al Ahh, but then people would bitch, "But I want one to play and one to keep mint", and the dealer would price it at $150 because it was harder to obtain. I think high blood pressure is inevitable when dealing with collectors Not really. One "boxed" version to keep mint, and one without a box (cart only) to play. Sounds simple enough to me. Yes really. "I want color instructions with the bare cart" "The bare one should be almost free, because the programmer is already getting a single-user royalty from me for the boxed one" "I'm the programmer and I'm pissed because people are selling their bare carts on ebay and I don't get a royalty from seller or buyer" "I bought a boxed one on ebay but it was a bare cart with a color copy of the box and instructions, what's AA doing to prevent this?"

One time, I was talking to Jay of 4jays, and he mentioned buying Bounty Bob from Best Electronics in the old days for $40 or so, and how ripped-off he felt at the time. "I would have a bought a couple dozen if I'd have known the future"

Mainly I did the limited edition for the many people who pre-ordered the game--it was never part of the original plan. I know that people are going to turn around and resell the game, no real surprises there. If I ever do this again I will probably only allow one copy per individual and perhaps exclude known dealers and vendors from purchasing copies to at least give everyone a fair shake at getting the game at a reasonable price. ..Al Ahh, but then people would bitch, "But I want one to play and one to keep mint", and the dealer would price it at $150 because it was harder to obtain. I think high blood pressure is inevitable when dealing with collectors

Easy fix, no limited edtions. Keep producing identical units forever and only adjust the price for inflation.

We're loving ours, bought last Dec and playing through a projector and 92 inch screen, a Sony projector even. Watched episode 3 of "Planet Earth" last night and in one part the camera zooms along a river in South America, then suddenly goes over a huge waterfall. You could actually feel the movement.

No one will miss a few more Super Breakouts. You're supposed to use Super Breakouts? I heard Albert was working his way through a pallet of sealed BBSBs that he found in a warehouse one day.

Actually, there's a large button to the left of the power slider labeled reset on both my INTV1s. Oooops!

The I (and III I believe) has wimpy built-in power supplies that tend to go bad, especially if you like long gaming sessions. It's big, has no reset, and controllers are hard to swap out. The II is incompatible with 3-4 games, takes a four second button press to turn off, and has fire buttons that are nasty to push. There are hardware hacks to overcome a lot of these issues (and also use decent controllers), but you need to love the library or the various hassles aren't worth it.

My old boss showed me a trick once, start adding tons of solder until all the pins are shorted. Then they all become loose at once. Also works great for stubborn thru-hole stuff. Of course you need to clean things up later with wick, and there's always the chance of heat damage, but that's what makes soldering interesting

I was at his CGE talk four years ago or so. He had a nice dry humor when telling war stories. "When Atari first began, I went to the California Department of Labor for employees. We didn't know at the time that the CDL labor pool consisted mostly of alcoholics and drug addicts. We were making pong arcade machines by taking the picture tubes out of black and white televisions. It turned out that B&W TVs are very easy items to fence...........................We were having a slight inventory control problem for awhile." "One trick we used to discourage pirate copies was to include an uncommon logic chip like a quad exclusive OR, because with rare chips, you can actually corner the whole worldwide production for yourself. One quarter, we checked the numbers and found we had purchased 120% of the total number of ICs produced. After investigating, it turned out an Atari stockroom worker was stealing ICs out the back door and selling them back into the front.

There's only two CD4016 analog switch chips in a masterplay. Just cut the chip pins, remove each pin and clean the holes with solder wick, then solder in two new 4016 (or 4066) chips.

If anyone needs only a PIC programmer, I bought the PICstart2 kit from Microchip for $50 which came with assembler software and a USB programmer board. After adding a $20 ZIF socket was able to program 16F785s (the standard part is 16F690). There was only four signals needed, VDD, VPP, and two SPI. That's the reason I haven't bought an eprom burner yet, the prices seem outrageous for the actual hw/sw needs.

I read one article that said he didn't even put in that many hours at Activision. Slept in then got up, played tennis and other fun stuff, then came into the office and blasted out assembly at a furious pace for four hours or so.

Yea, it's funny how the fanboys on both sides of the format war work themselves into a lather because it looks like both formats are succeeding equally and are here to stay.

Go for it

I've thought about taking the 0-3.0v analog voltage from a PSX dualshock, amplifying it, running it into an ADC and using the output to control two 4016s that switch in a 8 resistor ladder network from 10k-500k. Kinda like a masterplay with more resolution. Never got around to it, too much work for the few games that would benefit from it.

I'll just second that I love my HD-DVD add on. There may be players with slightly better quality, but it looks damn good to me. Most the time you're limited by the source material anyway, that is how good they do the transfer. AVSforum got me fired up to buy one, especially that thread about printing out the $40 Circuit City coupon. The player, remote, and King Kong all for $160 was the bargain of the year IMHO. Yes, component cables are kinda a drag, but now my empty HDMI jack is calling out for a PS3. Another adventure to get into next Xmas.

adapter

We got one for Xmas, haven't had time to watch much yet. Looks great but it seems hard to find movies that have both great picture quality and a great story. Superman Returns bored me.

Go track down that Digital Press thread about Joe opening his own store, tons of advice in it. My advice: don't. 80% of new businesses don't make it.

I got a $160 Circuit City one using the coupon printout they talk about at avsforum.com. It's an Xmas gift to myself. Heck, King Kong is worth $25 by itself, it's a great deal. Asked for EBgames gift cards for gifts because I already had one, hoping to get close to the price of a 360.

If ever a device deserved it, though, it was the 32x. Funny, I always thought that word was a better fit for the Channel F

I've wash boards at work, we use organic core solder which has messy acidic flux. Take it into the bathroom, run hot water over it, scrub with soap and a toothbrush, rinse, shake water off, dry with paper towel, then compressed air, then 120 degree oven (or car dash during summer). The alkaline nature of the soap really attacks the acidic flux. I don't think I'd try any boards with adjustable components like pots though.

I had three 32x's that didn't work, but opening them up and unplugging then replugging the white ribbon cables brought all three back to life. I second trying that approach.