cschell

Paypal has informed me that my products violate their acceptable use policy as a device that allows one to play backups of video games. It's their company, their call. As for options, I'm still trying to find good ones. I've asked in the international forum what people have used. Personally I use international postal money orders for these things. I can buy them at the US Post Office for most countries. I assume there is something similar in other countries where people could buy money orders in US dollars. It's been a while so I'm hazy, but in the pre-paypal days I recall people used bank transfers, cash in the mail (risky IMHO, but apparently not too bad with registered mail), money orders drawn in US dollars, and money wire services such as MoneyGram or Western Union. So, anyone got any good ideas for me? Chad

Hello international classic gamers, I'm looking for suggestions / experiences with ways you've paid for things in the US other than paypal / credit cards? I will avoid the plug here, but I am selling items and will likely have customers from outside the US and would like to know what methods of payments have worked well for you so I can suggest them to my customers. Unfortunately paypal is not an option as they have decided that my products violate their acceptable use policy. Any suggestions for methods to use or methods to avoid would be appreciated. Chad

Since I'm back to pay by mail and it will take a while for payments to arrive, I'm going to go ahead and open things up for orders. I still don't have the labels, but expect them soon. You can order now, and I'll ship when I have them, or you can wait until I have them, whichever feels better to you. Enjoy, Chad

Hi, Just thought I would let people know that I've posted the *hopefully* final release version of the CC3 Editor GUI software on my site along with the CC3 manual. The CC3 manual has a screen shot filled step by step example of how to use the GUI to build menus. Hopefully all versions of the software (Win32, Linux, Mac-OS X PPC, Mac-OS X Intel) work as desired and the tutorial in the manual makes things easy enough for everyone to figure out. As for the CC3 itself, the boards are here and ready to go, I'm just waiting on labels before I start taking orders. http://www.schells.com/cc3.shtml I'd appreciate if people gave the GUI and manual a spin / looking over and let me know if all is well. (Yes, it's a little klunky when dragging menu rows, but the Qt GUI package that let me build for all three OSes is rather buggy in it's "convenience" classes for tables, so I had to make do. I figured offerring linux and Mac support was worth a little quirkiness in the drag menu rows behavior.) Hopefully the GUI makes the CC3 a little more accessible than the CC2. Chad

It seems most of the discussion points have been correctly answered by others, but I'll add a few things below. The reason for Micro-SD is for the size. Intellivision cartridges are very small, and there is very little room inside the cases with the two screw posts. So I chose the smallest form factor that was readily available to make things fit. There is a new GUI which is, hopefully, easier to use. Basically stick in your Inty Lives/Rocks CDs, let it scan them for the games - it copies them to the SD card and formats them for the CC3. Then select them and add them to your menu. If you want to get fancier than that you can do the whole submenu thing, arrange games in your desired order etc. The dragging aspects of moving games in the menu is on the weak side, but it was the best I could get out of Qt, which was the most full featured GUI system I could find that worked in Win32/OS X/Linux. Feel free to download it from my site and kick the tires. There are homebrews for the Inty, but not many. Fortunately the Intellicart .ROM format is the standard for releasing Inty games, and that is the format that the CC3 reads as well. (Inty games have non-contiguous memory maps, so a means of describing those maps is required.) I have no plans for making a 5200 or Colecovision cart. Both of those consoles have very simple requirements, basically just a straight eprom/flash, flip the upper address bits to select the games. Almost no special stuff to worry about. (Bounty Bob for 5200. Is there anything special else for either console?) Nothing there to make designing a product interesting to me. As for the status of the CC3, 3 people have been testing it on various hardware. Generally results are good, but it's obvious the Inty hardware is getting old. Flakey controllers and power supplies are causing some problems. Sometimes when you turn on the Inty the screen shows garbage for a second or so before the CC3 menu screen kicks in, most likely due to the CC3 being held in reset waiting for stable power. You're supposed to be able to return to the menu by holding clear on a controller and hitting reset (good for Inty 2's which don't like to turn off), but a lot of Inty 2 controllers haven't help up so well, so the clear button is intermittent, so you have to press reset more than once to get the menu. And very rarely the backup boot system will come on even though the main system is fine, requiring a power cycle to fix the problem. I can't do anything about the faulty controller buttons, and have some ideas on the power on problems but know that I will never be able to entirely eliminate them. So far my testers tell me that the problems are no big deal and wouldn't deter them from purchasing. However, as Lee mentioned in the opening i have a low tolerance for problems in my products. So at this point I'm not feeling all that motivated to bring this to market. I haven't even bothered to price parts or assembly costs. What I may end up doing is posting a feedback form on my website that basically lists the above problems as a disclaimer, and asks how many people would be willing to buy anyway. Then if there is still sufficient interest I could go forward. The other thing is I'm thinking about just selling these as bare boards with no cartridge case, basically a user supplies their own case deal. This saves me from the worst parts of selling these things - acquiring old shells, removing labels and getting them cleaned up. (At least no holes to cut on these ones.) I'm not sure how people would feel about that either. Keeps costs lower at least. And price wise I hope to hit $150.00. But as I said I haven't actually looked into costs much at this point. Chad

I haven't made a list from any feedback emails. When I actually get to the point that I'm ready I'll put up an official preorder list at that time. Chad

Not late at all. There was a fairly long pause while I did some other things so I could put off working on a GUI to build menus and convert .bins to Intellicart .roms. Finally got the GUI more or less working. (At least it works on my machines, who know what linking problems I'll run into when other people try to run it.) I decided to use Qt as the GUI toolbox because it could make Win32, Linux, and Mac OSX ports. After the fact I'm not sure it was the best choice as I ran into a lot of bugs trying to add the ability to drag games from one spot in the menu to another. Finally settled for something less than perfect but functional. Anyone interested can download the Win32/Linux versions of the GUI from www.schells.com/cc3.shtml and give them a try. Hopefully they're friendlier than the even more spartan tools provided with the CC2. It would be nice to know that other people can at least run it. Chad

Have you considered using a solder pot to pull the chips? It's like the poor man's wave solder device. It's a little electric hot pot in which you place a brick of solder. Basically you dip the board in and it heats all the pins and you can just pull the parts out. Never tried it myself, but have heard it works quite well. I think jameco.com sells them. Chad

Hi Ken, You can use the CC2 to test how it works without a POKEY even if the CC2 has a POKEY. Just use HSC_32K as the banking instead of 78HSCPOK. Or 7800_32K to test no POKEY and no HSC. Chad

Something is screwy with the formatting of your MMC, or its not FAT16. Possibly the first FAT is corrupted (the CC2 does not compare against the second FAT.) Most likely your GAMES directory is pointing to something goofy if the loads fail right away. Easiest thing to try is to rename your GAMES directory to GAMES2, and then recopy the GAMES directory from the computer to the MMC. But you'll probably have to end up reformatting the MMC to FAT16. There are instructions about reformatting the CC2 in the manual if you're using Windows. Chad

Intellicart ROM format is a way of representing the .bin and the matching .cfg file from Intellivision Lives/Intellivision Rocks in one file. There would be a program that would generate the ROM files from the bin/cfg pair. (Or just the bin if it's as standard memory map cartridge.) It will work with the Inty 2. The games that may not work are Chess, Land Battle, and WSMLB (no voice support). Some claim Chess and Land Battle work fine, but I think they are glitchy. Has to do with the defective RAM used in the original cartridges. WSMLB has it's own bankswitching format, which I could support, but the rights owners do not want the rest of the ROM released so it's not very helpful to support it. (Part of the ROM is missing on whichever CD it was released on. The missing part is just the Intelliivoice play by play stuff.) Chad

Hi everyone, I've been tinkering with a menu based multicart for the Intellivision similar to my Atari 7800 Cuttle Cart 2. I've finally got to the point where I know the hardware can be made to work, and I'm looking for some feedback. If you're interested, please check it out at http://www.schells.com/cc3.shtml and let me know what you think. Thanks, Chad

Less than 10 CC2 left. Closer to 5 I think. So if you want one, don't wait too long. Chad

Cuttle Cart 2 - Yes, it's custom hardware, but there is plenty of original software too. Chad

I've had people report problems with "white label" MMCs, but none with the major brands. The white label MMCs didn't follow the reset description as described by SanDisk. I did have one customer who had problems with a SanDisk RSMMC. He sent it to me and I couldn't read it with anything though (CC2, external card reader, laptop card reader) so I chalked it up to being a faulty card. (And still believe that to be the case.) I've had others report no problems with RSMMCs, although I've never known the brands. It's possible that the RSMMC you have, being newer, only works at low voltages, lower than the CC2 can supply. In that case the MMC will simply turn itself off and refuse to play. I've never actually seen any type of MMC that won't work at 3.3V, but it is allowed in the spec. I guess I'd ask people what brands of RSMMCs are working for them and stick with them. As for SD cards, sure if I did it again it would use SD cards. But at the time I designed the CC2, SD Cards weren't in wide use and the information on how to initialize them was only available by joining the SD Card association for like $5000.00 (which is a lot considering the number of CC2s being made). These days the info is available on the net, although you still have to dig for it. Chad

A while back I posted a 78scser.bnk or something along those lines which is a supercart bankswitching file with the serial port active. It's in the CC2 discussion thread. It was made by request, but I don't think anyone has actually used it though. Chad

Another option is to use Mot's Java version of the menu generator along with his more detailed cc2romdb.txt. You can read about it a few pages earlier in this thread. Mot's has the advantage of letting you create menus by company and controller type, as well as game name. I've seen some people use this and the new submenu features in OS ver 2.01 to build some pretty nifty menus. Of course what do I know. I always just end up editing the MENU.CC2 file directly. Someday I may get around to setting up my own CC2 with a controller type menu though. Chad

I gave my spare POKEYs away in a free POKEY promotion quite some time ago. Chad

NIB? You mean that lovely brown shipping box they come in? Seeing this I just had to comment on the ebay auctions I see for Cuttle Carts and Intellicarts that emphasize they come in their original packaging. Seeing as the original packaging was a ziploc bag, it doesn't seem to really enhance the value that much in my eyes. (And how do we know that's the *original* ziploc bag and not a reproduction???) Chad or Curt or, uh Craig...oh one of those one syllable C names. In a strangely silly mood.

Hi everyone, Ok, since I posted this thread, I should offer some sort of discount right? So I've created a coupon code for all you loyal Atariagers. The coupon code is "ATARIAGE" (no quotes, ALL CAPS). It's good for 25% off. Limit one per household. (And since I'm lazy the order form will allow any quantity, but I'll just cancel orders with quantity greater than one.) Typical disclaimers: Not valid with any other offer. Quantities limited, offer good while supplies last. Sale ends whenever I feel like it. (You'll get a confirmation page with the price before you commit your order, if there's no discount, and you spelled ATARIAGE correctly, the sale is over. ) And to be clear, people who have previously ordered can order a second with the discount. It's 1 discount per household. Obviously not the discount most were hoping for, but it's better than nothing, right? Enjoy, Chad

I wouldn't be surprised if the CC2 wants a cluster size of 2K, which is the normal value for drives up to 128MB. FAT16 drives can go up to 2GB using 32K clusters, but that would require the CC2 to support different cluster sizes and I don't know if it does. 958938[/snapback] The CC2 does support larger cluster sizes. It just has to be formatted in FAT16. Chad

Hi. No decision has been made yet for two reasons. 1) I had some (relatively) minor surgery shortly after this thread died down, and have been busy catching up on things due to the time lost during recovery. 2) I've had an unexpected burst in sales lately, which has honestly lowered my interest in cutting prices. I also recent received a batch of boards back from rework (yes, it took a long time, they kinda got lost in the system.) I need to program them and get a final inventory count as well. Chad

Hi, Since the flash BIOS upgadeability of the MMC64 was listed as a feature that made it better than the CC2, I thought I would clarify the the flash OS inside the CC2 is also flash upgradeable. In fact both flash banks are independently upgradeable. The smaller one provides an emergency boot backup in case something goes wrong while upgrading the primary one, such as a power failure. It was using this upgradeability that allowed me to release version 2 of the OS that provided support for submenus. (Something I still need to add to my site. ) Chad (And for the record I know nothing about the MMC64, so please do NOT take this as a comparison of the two products.)

Hi everyone, Since there has been some speculation, here's what I can remember off the top of my head as CC2 components: FPGA 512k SRAM 40 Pin Socket Voltage Regulator MMC Socket Stereo Audio Jack (for serial port) 2 Triple Schmitt Triggers Battery Holder Lithium Battery RS-232 to TTL level shifter Ferrite cores for RF decoupling on serial lines 2 CPLDs* 256K Flash RAM* 32K Flash RAM* 4K NVRAM* (* All contained in a single IC) Programming Header Boot/Main Jumper Several capacitors and resistors Stereo Audio to Serial Cable Modified Cartridge Case Cartridge Label Software CD ROM Sadly with all those parts, the custom cables, and case modifications the labor assembly charges were surprisingly high. If you'd like some technical information I have a write up at http://www.schells.com/techdocs.txt Chad

I'm not sure actually. I have a few things to consider, and some kinds souls have actually placed orders today. (Thanks you VERY MUCH.) I will post in this thread when I make a decision. Chad