Imperious

Only minor little thing I'm aware of is the Version of Buck Rogers on Gamecart 1 I think it is, has the dull Text only startup screen, I have a EA5 version that has the Proper Sega start screen somewhere. Obviously not worth recombining a whole Rom for that, but I will dig it up just in case there is ever a need to redo it. Thanks for the hard work Gazoo, just waiting for the 27c040's I ordered so I can modify my Jon Guidry boards to take the 512k Gamecarts.

Sorry to appear to be pedantic, but the Chroma and Luma/sync signals are combined for Composite output, not S-video. S-video has separate Chroma and Luma, hence why it's superior to Composite output. Problem nowdays though is that modern tv's no longer have s-video input, but generally do have composite. Best solution is to get a cheap s-video to vga adaptor and plug that into the tv or monitor.

All decent brand tv's will let You select PAL I or G and even NTSC if You need it, so You shouldn't have a problem. The issue with RF years ago was that people that brought TV's over from the UK ended up with only UHF channels and no sound as Our TV sets used 5.5mhz for the audio subcarrier and UK is 6mhz.

It won't let me edit the previous post. UK is Pal I, Aus and NZ is Pal G. Just make sure You are not using RF output for any of Your devices and You will be ok.

UK, Australia, NZ are all PAL countries. You shouldn't have any problems at all there.

Thanks for that idea, that will save me a lot of time and no wrecked chips in the process.

I've spent a few hours over the weekend armed with my multimeter, a bunch of PDF files on the computer screen, and both the UberGrom cart and the 64 Guidry boards. I am very confident that modifying the 64k boards into a 512k board with a 378 won't be as messy as I was originally thinking. There will still be fair bit of wrapping wire involved, but once tested and working will be inside a cart case and out of sight. I've ordered a bunch (10) AM25LS07's and 10 27c040's from Aliexpress, so in about a month should be able to post pics of a working example (I hope). The 27c040 is wired the same as the 27c512 from the bottom up. Only Pins 1, 2, 32, 31, 30 of the 040 will need special treatment, and I can Leave pins 1,8,9,16 of the 378 soldered to the 379 socket, the rest will involve wrapping wire and bent out pins.

The Power switch just passes the 9v through to the 7805 regulator, so if You don''t even have 9v at the regulator, then either the switch is faulty, or You have a continuity issue somewhere. Start measuring at the dc socket on the mainboard and work forwards from there. Test for shorts to ground as well.

Actually there are 2 different meanings for metre and meter, metre the unit of length, and a meter as in Multi-meter. Of course in the USA all are Meter. Centre and center is more confusing. What really got me when I was in New York was seeing the word "Tires" on the side of a building, I thought why is anyone putting something about being tired on a wall. Of course it mean't car tyres, or car Tires to You. At the end of the day arguing (and I'm not saying anyone here is) over British vs US spelling is just splitting hairs about nothing. It really just boils down to evolution of a language in different localities over 100's of years. My personal opinion of where the English language is headed in the 21st century however is another story, devolution is more like it largely thanks to social media, cell (mobile) phones, etc.

It's really a matter of opinion whether to remove unneeded components and/or the RF modulator as well. As an electronics tech it's no big deal to put the circuit back together as original if necessary, we are only talking about a few resistors and capacitors mostly. I agree completely though that had Longhorn taken a closer look at the schematic He should have realised that it was unnecessary to remove any IC's and go bending pins out risking destroying now rare Tia's.

I actually made that up to program a nanoSWINSID that has a Atmega88, and it was my only easy option left after I realised the Willem didn't have an ISP connection. I double and triple checked all connections with my multimeter before attempting to program, also downloaded the Atmega1284p datasheet as wasn't 100% sure of the +5v and MISO connections on the board. It did cross my mind to use the TI as power but the old trade college power supply I made uses a bit less desk space. I was also having occasional issues with the other board I purchased. I programmed Gamecart1 onto a rom chip, no Atmega, and occasionally the TI doesn't pick it up, just shows TI Basic only. So I suspect the EA5 games disk could have been causing some conflict there too. Thanks all for the help.

That was it. I had to have the one disk loaded in the nanoPEB that caused a problem of course. It was one of the EA5GAMES disks with a LOAD command in there, tried other disks and they behave as normal. Here's pics to prove You don't need a expensive programmer to program the Atmega. I had to use my 15 year old PC that has a parallel port and Win98se. A combination of Avrdudess (GUI) and Avrdude in a MSDOS prompt did the trick. I couldn't program the Flash and EEprom at the same time as the MSDOS prompt wouldn't let me fit it all in the one command line. Another thing I found out was that even a FTDI USB com port was slow as hell and failed the verification, so had to use the genuine COM port of my old pc which programmed it in about 3 minutes instead of 40. I hope no one here gets a heart attack from these pics of my "Programmer"

Thanks for that, hadn't even crossed my mind, I'll move a non XB autoloading program into DSK1 when I get home in about 2 hours. Hopefully that's all it is. I used a el-cheapo Chinese Willem to program the roms, had no problems at all, and a homemade serial programmer on my old win98 machine for the Atmega, will post pics later too.

I'm having a few problems with getting the XB 2.7 cart to work properly. I've programmed the Atmega correctly and the AT49F040 and all verified ok, but when I hit "A" for XB 2.7 I get "I/O error 70 in line 100" I reflashed a more voltage tolerant version of AT49F040 to a AT49BV040 but that has made no difference, so at least that rules out a flaky Rom chip. The games and all the other software I have tested seems to work ok. My system has a NanoPEB and a F18a installed too.

Hey Mef, I've done before what You just did, which is get a bit annoyed about something then go on the Forum with a big unnecessary rant about it. What I did after that was to delete the offending comments and offer an apology. Would be nice if that happens here. Sure the build instructions for the longhorn mod are unnecessarily messy and potentially destructive if You are careless, but the guy deserves tremendous credit for His service to the community. This is likely why He doesn't do physical mod builds anymore.

Who said that an SVideo mod isn't possible on a PAL machine? I just did one myself. I did the Longhorn mod, info here.. http://longhornengineer.com/category/diy/atari-av-mods-diy/ BTW it is better to disconnect some components from the board than removing the TIA chip and bending out the pins. I've got another 2600 junior PAL on the way and may try the Batari mod this time just to see what the differences are.

Interestingly I wonder if Taito originally had to get permission from Atari to do a Breakout clone? as that is what Arkanoid is. I would say just turn it into another variation of Breakout, but one that is more like Arkanoid.

Thanks to Matthew and His F18a my TI has the best image quality of all my retro computers. I now have Atari 2600, Vic-20, C64, Plus/4, Atari 65XE, Amiga 500, and of course the TI99/4A and all except the TI with the F18a have been modded to Svideo which is good, but not as good as the F18A. Also there are numerous owners of the MSX, Colecovision, and a few others enjoying the benefits. Massively looking forward to loading the 1.6 update when available. As far as expense is concerned, at the moment, unless You are in the USA the F18A is getting dearer as the US $ is on the rise against most other currencies, not that that really makes sense with in excess of $18 Trillion debt, obviously at some point something has to change there, but that's not the point I guess. I am glad I ordered this last year with respect to the exchange rate, but buying anything from the USA is now getting really expensive. As far as games being written solely for the F18a, obviously it is better to try not to alienate those without one, and where possible an enhanced F18A version is best. This works on my capture card, haven't tested on a TV though. Cost $16 from China

Just to confuse the issue even more, in Australia we call all of them chips, although the sealed bag variety is usually referred to as potato chips, and then there is Corn chips as well. I'll add another to the list of differently named edibles. USA - Candy UK - Sweets Australia - Lollies That's really gotten off topic now. BTW what the heck is that thing to the far right, looks like a battered Turd!

Anyone who lives in Australia can fit these pots from Jaycar, but You will need to cut and file the shaft as the D shape is too long and too fat. http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=RP3524

I'm aware of that "port" but it's too horrible to play in my opinion, would rather play the real thing in Mame. That version looks like it was designed for the PET. If I had a PET I would be happy with that, but not on the c64.

I hadn't given it too much thought I must admit, and had mostly concentrated on what the TI actually has, but You are correct, aside from Space Invaders the TI is noticeably lacking in late 70's, early 80's style vertical space shooters. I nearly forgot Demon attack, but most others are of a different style. Galaxian, Galaga, Moon Cresta, Phoenix are missing. The c64 surprisingly doesn't have a port of the original Galaga at all, does have Gaplus though. Anyway, maybe nowdays it is better that our super talented programmers concentrate on doing things that will be seen as unique for the TI, rather than copying what has been done on all the other 8 bit systems of the era. No doubt at all, the version of Flappy Bird is the best of all by a long shot.

I reckon this is actually a good thing, as after Christmas/New Year especially, people offload a lot of stuff onto ebay to recoup some of their Holiday spendings. If there is less TI99/4a stuff there then that means that their TI gear is too precious to them

You will find Jungle Hunt in the attached file, just took me 1/2 hour to dig that up, I must catalog my disk files at some point. You need a Editor Assembler cart or equivalent and got to option 5 and type DSK1.UTIL1 EA5GAMES.dsk

I think You will find that the reputation for china producing fake chips has been blown out of proportion. I have bought many genuine "None left in the world" parts from china, and apart from 2 fake SID's, which I got a refund from, all others have been the genuine article. These are likely good too.. http://www.aliexpress.com/item/10PCS-free-shipping-100-new-original-TMS9900NL-TMS9900-original-spot/1777587556.html Chips I have purchased are TMS9929ANL, TMS9928ANL, 8362r2 Ted chips for a Commodore Plus/4, 6510 and 6526A c64 chips, 6561-101 Vic-20 Video/sound Ic's (these were supposed to be all gone), 16mhz 68000 chips for my Amiga, and lastly 8501r1 CPU's for a Commodore Plus/4 (still being shipped). I have bought other more generic parts like 6522's, 6502's, and various memory chips. Where I had any dead parts, like the 8362's I had good replacements sent. Considering that the Plus/4 chips are notorious for being the worst chips MOS Technologies ever made, it wasn't surprising that I got some DOA, but the sellers were reputable so no lost money.