JB

Sort of. When the inserted cartridge is pushed into the downward position, it pushes the cartridge contacts against the system's pins and fully engages. Over time, the pins can bend and wear out. The cartridge will engage the pins only when it's in the downward position, and thus will not work if the tray is in the upward position. However, some of the new aftermarket 72-pin connectors that are sold nowadays are very tight...so much so that the cartridge will work even if the 'toaster' is in the upward position. It's not just tightness. The original Nintendo part is a "Zero Insertion Force" connector. As you noted, it doesn't engage until the cart is levered down. Most of the replacement parts are NOT ZIF connectors. They're designed to engage as soon as the cart is inserted, and to not move. Honsetly, I'd expect levering the cart down to do long-term harm to a non-ZIF replacement.

I used to love the 99/4a version. But I was a dumb kid.

I'm pretty sure the DB-9 connector was selected for the Atari controllers because it was a cheap connector that had enough pins for all the needed signals. Everyone else took it because it wasn't a patentable design and it was cheap. Matching pinouts just made sense, because it boosted the peripheral selection greatly for minimal effort. Famiclones use the connector because it's cheap. Even though they use a serial interface that's fundamentally incompatible with the Atari&co design. Same reason Mattel used it on the INTV2 despite incompatibility. Sega used it on the Genesis for back-compatiblity with the SMS/SG1000 family. The original SG1000 probably matched pinouts for Atari-style compatibility. And somewhere in the middle is TI, who borrowed the Atari design, then shuffled pins to make it incompatible(but they got 2 controllers on one port in exchange, so...).

http://www.replacementdocs.com/

If you don't think it could get better, then get an s-video lead and prepare to be totally blown away. Seriously, the difference is as big as the RF-composite difference. Lag is actually a common issue with most LCD/DLP/plasma TVs. Different sets have different amounts. Allegedly there's some lag-free sets out there(or at least low enough that it's not an issue).

Oh... my mistake. Remind me to start checking date stamps.

That's not how Nintendo rolled. The SNES shipped with a composite AV cable that plugged into the proprietary multi-out connector and an auto-switchbox that plugged into a standard RCA jack. Unfortunately, if you use RF and DON'T use an auto-switchbox, it does bad things to the picture. But you shouldn't be using RF anyways. PAL cables SHOULD work, though SCART cables won't(US SNES has different levels on the RGB lines, which is the only reason you'd be using SCART on an SNES anyways).

The only DW game currently available on the 360 is DW5 Empires. There's also Dynasty Warriors: Gundam! What? It technically fits.

Yeah... mine's a presentation monitor I was gifted. Agreed, my Genesis3 looks fantastic with s-video. It would have been worth several times the effort needed. I hate to use composite if I play with the 32X now. Aye, I second to that. Wanna trade your Genesis 3? Just kidding. On a more serious note, is there a way to actually get the 32X to display in S-Video? Hmmm.... http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=2429.0 Apparently, the encoder int he 32x doesn't have chroma/luma support. Dunno if swapping it out is possible. Powering an encoder off the AV port as proposed in that thread IS possible, though. There's a 5-volt DC line intended for the RF modulator that oughta work nicely.

It SHOULD. I can't think of a single reason why it wouldn't work, unless Sega used a really wonky ROM type.

Congrats! Also: The reversed row lets you play with fire under your trigger finger or thumb instead of your pinky. I always thought the standard Vectrex control layout was wonky.

I heard that it does, which kept me from upgrading my Gen2's RF connection to my LCD TV. I figured if it didnt matter, why bother? Little tip: if you open up your Genesis and it contains any of the Sony CXA video encoders, upgrade to S-Video ASAP. It's SO MUCH BETTER than composite or RF, let me tell ya. All blurring is gone. If you have that Samsung crap, and have some experience soldering and de-soldering surface-mount ICs, you can swap out the Samsung chip for a Sony CXA1145(the Samsung is a direct clone of the CXA1145 without Chroma or Luminance lines on the encoder). I've been meaning to build an RGB cable for my Genny. I've got 2 sets of RGB connectors waiting for food. I just keep putting it off.

Potentially yes, but you would have to re-write the game so that it knew which parts to load into memory at what times... you might also run into the problem where you simply don't have enough RAM in the Dreamcast to hold this ROM buffer while also executing game code (In fact, now that I look at it, the Atomiswave has a good deal more video and sound RAM than the Dreamcast... I previously thought the two had the same amount of RAM). Also, this would have to be done on a game-by-game basis, and with some games it might not even be possible... it wouldn't be a simple thing like converting MVS ROMs into NeoGeo CD's. --Zero The Atomiswave has more RAM? I know the NAOMI did, but I thought the 'Wave was identical. ... Well, I'll be damned. Twice the VRAM, 4x the sound RAM. Or to look at it another way, same VRAM and sound RAM as the NAOMI. ... I STILL don't understand why Atomiswave exists. The NAOMI already existed, and 16 MB of RAM couldn't have been THAT expensive.

Then we're in complete agreement. Sorry for jumping on you. Was in a bit of a rush, and that last part crossed the line. I even agree wholeheartedly with Jess' statements. I generally like the things from a gameplay standpoint, but the reliability of a stock 5200 controller is somewhere between abysmal and appalling. It's kept me from recommending the 5200 to people before.

And easily refuted. The reason the 5200 sticks reign supreme could be because they are great, or it could be because the others are not. Or it could be that the people playing really hard on the contests are the people playing on real systems. Or even that the guys on emulators never invested in a controller and are flying by keyboard. Or perhaps just that the small sampling we have present here is using poor controllers. It IS a pretty small sampling. Your simple refutation ignores a very large number of variables, and is a false dichotomy. You've already argued that you have to compare the controller to a known quantity to verify it doesn't suck. I'd argue you have to do the same to verify it DOES suck. Just because one of the most popular gamepads for years was one of the worst(Gravis Gamepad, and later Gravis Gamepad Pro) doesn't mean ALL of them suck. But, if ALL PC controllers suck... http://www.atariage.com/store/index.php?ma...products_id=267 I must humbly concede the point. And thank you for it. Your irrefutably ironclad logic has cemented the CX-40 in the pits of gaming hell. Or is your real argument "anything that isn't a CX-40 sucks"?

That's game-level, not system-level. There's a "master code" you have to enter for games with "copier detection" to make them work on a Genie. That's because the website was only half-right. The US and Japan use the same lockout chip and clock timings. So a trimmed Genie will let you play Japanese games. No problems at all. BUT... Europe uses a different lockout chip. So those games won't work without a more elaborate hack. And once you get them booting, TV standard differences will make them run too fast, and with graphics hanging off the top and bottom of the screen(moreso than usual). And timing differences in the system raise the possibility of causing bugs in the game.

The big obstacle I see is that the Atomiswave used (very very large) ROM carts.While spec-wise it's a Dreamcast, there winds up being a bit of a RAM shortage on the DC since you now have to load game all your data off the disk and into RAM before you can use it. Admittedly not as much of a shortage as on the NAOMI-DC conversions, but... those were commercial reworkings with source code access.

IMO, DKCountry is getting FAR too much credit. Just because the sprites were drawn by a render farm instead of a guy with a sheet of graph paper doesn't mean it's doing anything particularly noteworthy. 3D-rendered sprites LOOK fancier, but they're no different than the more conventional hand-animated ones from the system's perspective. It's still just slapping 64*64 bitmaps on the screen. Now that I've gotten that off my chest... Most of the SNES games I'd consider impressive aren't, because they use coprocessors to cheat. I'd probably give the SNES nod to the Super Star Wars trilogy. It didn't really pull anything excessively fancy, but it's one of the few non-racing games to make extensive use of mode 7 without getting gimmicky. As far as making me stop and think... I spent a lot of time working out how they did King Koopa on Mario World, given that the clown car stomps down into the castle, and since the clown car is a mode 7 object, it CAN'T enter another background layer(hint: the propeller retracts before it flies into the screen or turns upside down, and is the only part of the clown car to actually enter the castle area). It's not the most impressive SNES moment, but it was one of the more puzzling for a little while. Solaris on the 2600. Just the fact that it can keep track of all the crap going on is impressive. Metal Storm on the NES. With 2independently-scrolling background layers, and 3 in some stages. No clever illusion animations, no cute tricks with stripes to keep things from overlapping. Real, honest to goodness independent layers. And highly fluid animations on just about everything else in the game. Honestly, it looked better than a lot of SNES and Genesis games. Robotron. On anything. Seriously, throwing that much stuff around on the era's hardware is damn impressive. Hell, throwing that much stuff around on an SNES or a Genesis was impressive.

PC controllers and Wico controllers also suck. Blanket-torpedoing every PC controller with one shot is a bit biased. Yes, there's a lot of dogs out there. There's also some very fine devices. I'll take my 360/PC Hori stick over a CX-40 any day. Of course, given the *ahem* "high regard" I hold the CX-40 in, that doesn't really say much. I'll take it over an NES Advantage and a NES->USB adapter, which DOES say something.

Why is this a concern? It's standard design behavior. Interference is exactly why almost every RF system ever made offers a switch to choose between 2 and 3 or 3 and 4. I don't know, TV stations aren't the only things that cause interference. I remember playing the 2600 on the TV in the living room back in the old days, while my mother was fixing dinner-- and if she turned on the blender to make mashed potatoes, the screen would go crazy with interference. Ban all blenders! The microwave also caused interference, but it would go in and out as the microwave's power cut on and off (i.e., at 50% power, it zaps the food for a bit, then stops zapping the food for a bit, then zaps the food some more, then stops, etc.). Death to all kitchen appliances! ...er, except refrigerators. Michael And vacuum cleaners too!

(saws the head off a claw hammer) Here, pound some nails into this oak table. If you can't do it, it's your fault! So I guess that makes me some kind of gaming god, since I find them quite playable on most titles. Nice to know.

Gee, there's an awful lot of colds going around aboard the HMS Warez... As someone that actually BUYS games... I don't have any rattly cards that I've noticed, and I keep them in the box when not in use(with a select few bouncing around in a backpack pocket for breaks at school). I also don't use the carrying cases. Though I've considered buying a few of the GameBoy-style ones, it'd be for aesthetics more than anything else. And as the Software Pirates of the Caribbean have noted... Leave a game card in. The NES was unique in the shittiness of it's cart-loading mech. The DS manual recommends leaving a game in to keep things clean. Don't leave it on the charger. For maximum life, the optimum for a lithium-ion is actually about 2/3s charged. So play a little after recharging it. I usually don't stick mine on the charger until the orange light comes on.

Exactly. Atari wanted you to burn those quarters.

Actually, you only need ONE working controller for Space Dungeon and Robotron. Since it's the buttons that fail almost invariably, and stick 2 only uses the directional control... And don't blame the tools because you can't handle them. Most of the 5200 library is quite playable with the stock controllers. Maybe not optimal, but playable. I recommend the 5200. Even if only to look at. But I love the stock controllers(when they work). The controller reliability is certainly an issue, though. And to add to the list of reasons to get it: Best version of Qix in existence(ignoring emulation).

My Model 2 is one of the bad ones. The main issue is everything has artifacting. Like I was playing an MPEG video. I think there's a pic on the board somewhere of the different versions... Ah, here we go... similar thread. http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=70376 It's not the most illustrative, but it does show the difference. And since I'm too lazy to do it myself...