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slacker

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Everything posted by slacker

  1. The original membrane keyboard on my Atari 400 has dead keys on it. Looking to buy a working keyboard to replace it. Thanks!
  2. Just gave the demo a go and played until the end. Really fun game! It started to get really pick up on the 3rd wave. I'm really terrible at hitting the top ship. Does it sometimes change directions on you when it sees a missile coming or is that just at random? The smushing the squid enemy with the block game mechanic is also nice. It keeps you on your toes watching the air and the ground. Really nice job
  3. Congrats @Albert! My question is regarding how how there are now two 'Atari owned' stores for 2600 cartridges. The official site has it's own store which sells carts (https://atari.com/collections/shop?filter.p.product_type=Cartridges&sort_by=manual) as well as the AtariAge Store. I know it was said in this thread that nothing will change here with the AtariAge store, but I can't help but feel like Atari will eventually want to consolidate store traffic to one store to buy Atari cartridges/products. My worry is if/when that happens down the road what that would mean to things sold here. I've been part of a corporate buyout before (I know every one is different...) and after a year or so, everything was either fully integrated into the new parent company or migrated off of and closed down. I don't see Atari doing that to AtariAge completely, but I could see them wanting to eventually consolidate their items for sale under one location. (Hopefully not) I'm also curious, does Atari now get a cut of the AtariAge profits? Do they get all the money that AtariAge makes? If they do, I suppose my worry above is lessened as there's a financial gain for them if they keep things running business as usual.
  4. While I don't see myself buying one of these (I have a bunch of working 2600s floating around) it is cool to see Atari actually trying to appease their fans. I hope this system delivers on its promise and isn't a flop. The one thing that makes me sort of wish I had some extra $$ floating around to spend on it is the 7800 aspect. I don't actually own a 7800 so it's cool to have both under one system. That said, I do really enjoy homebrew stuff so maybe this still wouldn't actually be the right choice for me in that regard either. I'm actually really interested in hearing about the quality of the new joysticks and paddles they're also releasing. They say they're compatible with the original system. If they're a nice quality it could be worth it for me to pick them up.
  5. Awesome! Glad to hear that you enjoyed it!! I started working on Area 2 back in 2021 shortly after the latest release. It's a small outside area with a mansion. Same play style as Area 1 with some key puzzles and a special item from a boss to exit. Unfortunately, I never got around to finishing it. Maybe some day though!
  6. Thanks. Looks like Best might be the only option right now if I go that route. I set up an email alert on eBay but seems pretty empty there for just a KB. Even completed listings only show one sold back in June. Thanks, I tried this out. I put my ohm meter on pins 8 & 9. Without anything pressed it showed open (expected). Then, pressing the shift key I noticed it was actually reading a value! I moved the keyboard around and it still showed a value when shift was pressed. I want to say the value was ~60k ohm when pressed but not sure. I plugged the keyboard back in and started the computer. The shift key was working again without any issues. I'm tempted to put it back together with it working now but I'd hate to have to take it apart again for the 1000th time if it randomly stops working again. I guess best course of action for now is to keep it apart, use it for a bit and if the keyboard stops working again: check the resistance on keyboard PIN 8 & 9 again. If it's not showing a value, keyboard ribbon most likely has a bad trace If it's showing a resistance value when shift is pressed, try jumping the keyboard port on the main board. If that works, keyboard port might be too worn for KB pins to make a good connection, if still not working, possibly bad trace somewhere on the main board that's making an iffy connection that's breaking if there's any flexing (ex: cartridge insertion or something). I'll keep this thread posted on how it goes after some more testing.
  7. Thanks!!! Yes, that seemed to work! Setting those pins and then jumping the character pins displayed their shift counterparts. I guess that means my keyboard is messed up possibly on PIN 9 as that seems to be the common pin between all three keys. Is there anyway to repair these keyboards or is it one of those things of "buy a new one"? They seem like they're getting hard to find these days.
  8. Thanks! Solder reflowed on R124 and R159. When I had a jumper installed from R124 to POKEY pin 16 from the bottom, the keyboard actually stopped responding. I'm not sure if I used too thick of a wire or it was a bad solder job (probably). I used a thinner jumper and the keyboard worked but CTRL, SHIFT, etc still didn't work. Removing the jumper did as expected, all keys worked but those few. Sorry I wasn't more clear earlier. My shift keys etc worked originally but stopped working randomly. I also had issues where other keys on the keyboard would drop in and out working. Pushing down on the POKEY fixed those keys but not the shift, etc keys. Is there a spot on that KB pin 9 route that I can jump to simulate the shift key being always on?
  9. New POKEY socket installed. Seems like key presses are consistent now. Still no shift, ctrl, break though.
  10. The keyboard connector on mine has a socket on the main board side but on the keyboard side, there's a bunch of pins at the end of the flex cable. Unfortunately no luck with pulling ICs or swapping the multiplexers. I even hit the pins with some very fine sandpaper and used basically 2 cans of Deoxit spraying out the sockets and the pins. Attached is an image of the start state of the socket the POKEY was in (I don't seem to have an after picture handy). I cleaned it up as best as I could. It no longer looks like it's bad but the fact I can press on the chip in the socket and the the keys (minus SHIFT, etc) start working leads me to believe that socket is done for. I was going to just pull one of the sockets from my 5200 and solder it in but with how cheap a pack of them are, I decided to just get some new ones. That should be here sometime tomorrow so I'll see if putting in a new POKEY socket solves anything.
  11. Thanks! Downloaded! It looks like if only some keys don't work the Atari guide basically specifies "replace keyboard". I haven't had a chance to dig more into the manual to see if there's other options, I'll do that later tonight. I did make a little headway. I noticed that when some of my keys don't work on the keyboard, if I press a bit down on the POKEY chip, they work again until I lift my finger. I'm guessing it's not making a good connection in the socket. The socket when I got the computer was in bad shape with a lot of corrosion. I'll try an soldering in a new socket and see if that at least fixes that issue. Pressing down on the POKEY doesn't seem to change anything with the SHIFT, CTRL, BREAK buttons though. I tried jumping pin 8 & 9 to each other and to various other pins while I had a jumper stuck in the other pins printing a constant stream of "2"s and wasn't able to get shift to work that way. I'm thinking maybe that's a keyboard issue? It's hard to tell because I'm not sure I'm jumping the pins for shift correctly.
  12. Thanks for the replies. I guess I'm confused on how to tell what pin number is what. In the attached picture, you can see my keyboard plugged in on the bottom right. If counting from the top down, if I jump pin #2 and I think maybe pin #15 or so (I don't have the computer in front of me right now) I was able to get a 2 to print on the screen. If i moved up to pin #14, it would print 1 and so on. The 2 seem to line up with the map above, but doesn't mention what other pin needs to be connected to get it to display a 2. Moving the one side to pin #1 or #3 would generate a different set of characters. Would pin #9 be the 9th from the top? and if so, what pin would the other side go to? Thanks again.
  13. Hi All, I've been working on fixing up an Atari 400 my friend gave me. It started with just getting a BSOD at boot. After attempting to clean and re-seat all the chips on the main board, CPU board, and RAM board with no luck, I picked up a 48k RAM upgrade board. After installing that, the computer booted! All keys on the keyboard worked and was able to use my BASIC cart for a while without any issues. I then I ran into another problem then where the joystick ports didn't work. (Just to note, these didn't work from the start, they didn't stop working after the computer booted for the first time) I was able to get those working by installing a new PIA chip (G65SC21P-2). Things seemed to be fine at this point. I played some games but then had issues with keyboard suddenly missing keys. Surprisingly, pulling and re-seating the PIA chip fixed this even though I was under the impression the keyboard was controlled by the POKEY and the two multiplexer chips. Anyway, long story short, I'm at the point where everything works great except the SHIFT, CTRL, and BREAK keys. These used to work as I was able to program a bit in BASIC earlier but now they're suddenly not working. I should also note, I have a 5200 that I swapped the CPU, GTIA, ANTIC, and POKEY chip back and forth into the 400 and it didn't make any difference to anything. I also swapped around the two keyboard multiplexer chips without any change. I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas or if you guys know what pins I can jump on the keyboard connector to simulate pressing "SHIFT+2" to get a double quote or something. I've been able to jump some pins to get it to display a bunch of characters but I'm not sure what combo is needed to simulate pressing SHIFT. The pinout images I've found online don't seem to match up what I'm seeing on my computer. Basically, I'm trying to rule out if somehow I borked the keyboard taking things apart 1 million times or if some other trace, chip pin, or something is broke or making a bad connection on the main board. Thanks in advance!
  14. I read in the non-spoiler thread for the game that some people have received their high score patches.
  15. Firefox on mobile didn't work for me either. Chrome worked though. Also using Android.
  16. I was also having issues with just the score page scanning. I changed the brightness and contrast to the default center location on my TV settings and the QR code scans on the first try now on the score page. The screen looks a little darker than I'd like but at least I'm not fighting the QR code registering on the camera.
  17. If you're a weirdo like me and Google street view the return "Shipping Department" address on the box it comes in, it's just a regular house in a suburb. (I was curious if it was coming from an actual commercial property or not). I'm guessing for each cart/digital download, they have to update the source with the serial number of the game and the recompile it and flash it to a fresh cart instead of just flashing the same "bin" on every cart. I'd guess they would have the whole box and manual stuff ready to go but they also shrink wrap each box so that's another assembly step in the process. There's probably only a few people (or may just them) doing it so it's taking time. I've had mine for a few days now but it would be nice if they would send out a blanket "Thank you for your patience, your order is on it's way" to all the people still waiting for over two weeks.
  18. slacker

    Movie Cart

    Yeah, Sega CD and early Saturn/PSX had a ton of these FMV games. Most of them not great but a few okay ones. That said, I'd definitely give one a play through on the 2600 just for the shear "nifty-ness" and technical feat of it. Being an actual fun game would be a bonus.
  19. I'm not going to make any comments on the morality of using someone elses IP without approval in my reply, but to answer the question, it all depends on who owns the IP and how much they're willing to fight for it. For example, someone like Nintendo is very concerned of any usage of their IP outside their own and will shut it down the second they get wind of it whereas some other company may either not know of an Atari homebrew using their IP or decide that it's not worth the money to stop it. </end of off topic for me> That said, these videos look fantastic! Keep up the good work @Andrew Davie!
  20. The green looking thing that doesn't hurt you but sort of looks like the heaters or radios or whatever they are from Keystone Kapers? Or am I thinking of the wrong skull & crossbones car?
  21. The QR code is killing me. I played for a bit after work today while it was still light out and it took me forever to get it to scan. I was just about to give up when it finally "clicked". Just played a bit more now that it's late at night with all the lights off and it scanned the second I pointed it at the screen. It must be really touchy to outside lighting. When I point at the screen with my camera app, it asks me if I want to open the QR code text in a text editor right away so I'm guessing it's something to do with the Javascript or something on their page that they're using to detect the QR code. No Patchgate from me. I ordered mine late in the night of the day it was released so I'm well past the first 250. I just found it interesting that my invoice number was lower than someone who was one of the first 250 people. Maybe they had a set of higher invoice ids set aside for those getting patches already.
  22. Even with Chrome, it seemed to be picky when trying to get a picture. The room I have everything set up in has windows on 3 of the walls and the small glare from the sun was throwing it off until I closed the blinds completely. Yeah, there's definitely something different in how it's done in this game. I remember David Crane saying something along the lines of saying it was "easier" than Pitfall because the player sort of got "stickied" to the alligator's head or something during the ZPH stream. I found that sometimes it allows you to walk farther on the gator's head than I would expect, but it doesn't seem consistent whereas Pitfall is always the same safe space over the eyes. There's definitely some mismatching going on at least with the invoice number. My invoice number is lower than widowsson (regular release #2320 with invoice #1945) which if they were sequential, mine would be before theirs and therefore I'd be eligible for a patch based solely on invoice # but it wasn't.
  23. Got my regular copy yesterday. Only had about 10 minutes or to try it and make sure everything worked though. Hopefully I'll get some more time to play tonight. It's a good game so far and I'm really happy with it. I obviously haven't gotten far and the gator part is harder than I thought it would be. I never really had too much of a problem with them in regular Pitfall. I guess I'm probably just really rusty. A bummer, but not surprising with the website issues, is that the high score stuff doesn't work on mobile with Firefox. The in-browser camera portion of the 2nd QR code never automatically takes the picture. Worked fine on Chrome though. Packaging and cart are all good quality. It's cool to see a brand new cart. The label on the cart was glossier than I was expecting (not a bad thing, just unexpected)
  24. That looks pretty bad and the colors seem off. Do your other games also have the same issue?
  25. Another ? for Frantic. It's an awesome game so far! Never saw that game before. It reminds me a bit of Zombies Ate My Neighbors for Genesis and SNES.
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