jaybird3rd

Wow, thanks for doing that! Most of my stuff is in storage, but I'll add it as soon as I can get it unboxed.

I suspect having the full 32K will be useful for new homebrews, too. Was the 32K cartridge ever a released product, or was it a prototype? I've seen conflicting accounts of this. The cartridge is so big because they were limited to 2K RAM chips at the time, so they had to use two large circuit boards covered with surface-mounted 6116 RAMs, sandwiched together. Nowadays, you can build an equivalent design using one 32K SRAM and one logic chip for less than $5. After I get the multi-cart finished, I'm going to document my procedure for upgrading the original 4K module to 32K using this design. Speaking of which ... I haven't tested this yet, but I added a "hidden bonus" to my new cartridge board design: I took the opportunity to pull a few extra signals from the cartridge port which will make it possible to piggyback a 32K RAM on top of the cartridge ROM. This would allow you to have all the multi-cart software and a full 32K of extra RAM in a single cartridge, without requiring a Mini-Expander. I don't know if I'll offer that modification myself, but I'll document it for anyone who would like to try it with their own cartridges.

Based on his posts here and getting a thread of his locked, I'd say there's a LOT of things he doesn't like. I think somebody associated with the Mattel Aquarius must have run off with OldAtarian's girlfriend years ago. Either that or they ran over his dog. That's the only explanation I can think of.

I have: six Aquarius computers and five Mini-Expanders (which include one of each from a Computer & Game System "family pack"), two 4K RAM modules that have been upgraded to 32K, a Program Recorder and a thermal printer, about half a case of new Night Stalker cartridges, and boxed copies of the more common released titles ... and a couple of multi-carts, at varying stages of maturity. Actually, I think only a small percentage of Aquarius owners are AtariAge members, so we shouldn't judge the size of the Aquarius community from this thread alone. There are a lot more Aquarius owners on the Aquarius newsgroup, which has (I think) about a hundred active members. I've also spoken with several owners who aren't members of either community.

It's only present in the Intellivision II. Removing it or changing it would be a nontrivial task, as I discuss here. The only other major add-on I can think of is the Intellivision Computer Adaptor, which "upgrades" the Intellivision to the Entertainment Computer System. It adds 2K of RAM, an extra sound chip for three additional voices, a very simple version of BASIC, and the ability to add a computer keyboard (included with the module), extra hand controllers, or a Music Synthesizer keyboard. It also has cassette and printer ports, but no peripherals were released for these except for those designed for the Aquarius home computer system. There is also the System Changer, which was an Atari 2600 clone packaged into a module for the Intellivision cartridge port. I believe it was compatible only with the Intellivision II; the original Intellivision required a factory upgrade.

Attached is a picture of my ECS Computer Adaptor power supply, in case anyone needs the specifications on the label. From what I've read, the same power supply should work for both the gray and brown Adaptors, but I only own the gray ones so I can't confirm this myself.

I really don't know why that reaction is so difficult to understand, but let me explain it this way. If you were bald, and if you encountered constant bald jokes everywhere you went all day long, and if you then go to a friend's house expecting to get away from the jokes for a while only to hear more of the exact same jokes, how do you think you'd respond to that? And how would you feel if the person then started poking you in the ribs with their elbow and saying, "hey, I'm just messin' with ya, grow a thicker skin, will ya? Hehhehheh!" I think you need to follow Mark's advice and start contributing something positive, because what you're doing now is not helpful. There's a limit to how much "ribbing" anyone can be good-natured about.

Picking on the poor old Aquarius again, are you? You now owe me exactly 5 minutes and 34 seconds of my life back.

The only CX-40 part they've redesigned (at least as far as I know) is the joystick PCB. The improved CX-40 handles that they sell are an updated design that came from Atari; they're NOS, not newly-manufactured parts. They have had certain new parts manufactured (like the 5200 buttons with gold contact dots), but they've been very selective about it because of the expense involved. I'm sure they would have redesigned/remanufactured more parts if it was economically feasible.

Two words: tooling costs. Making anything out of injection-molded plastic, whether it's cartridge shells or new controllers or plastic parts, is damned expensive because of the costs involved in making the molds. Unless some suitable alternative comes along that makes economic sense for very small quantities (which anything for classic consoles is likely to be), then we're pretty much stuck using the existing supply of old parts.

Well, the NES gamepad did reflect a certain transition in the evolution of game designs and game controllers. I talked about this once when I tried to explain why using gamepads with the 2600 and 7800 never worked for me: And yes, I have had my fair share of bad/nonfunctional NES controllers of all kinds, so they aren't immune to failure. But, keeping this on topic ... I recently got my first 5200, a nice 4-port "asterisk" unit without any controllers, and I fully intend to get at least two Best Electronics gold contact refurbished joysticks as soon as I can save up enough money. Reading through Brad Koda's 5200 joystick pages on the Best Electronics website, I'm amazed at the amount of work and research that has gone into fixing what was wrong with the 5200 controller design and finally making it as reliable as it should have been from the beginning.

No problem. Let me try to walk you through it: Start by opening the Command Prompt window, which should look something like this: Next, drag and drop your DASM/TASM executable into the Command Prompt window. The executable name and path should appear in quotes at the command prompt. Here is what it looks like with TASM (your path and executable name will probably be different): Then, select the Command Prompt window again and press ENTER. The executable will run, display its help information, and then terminate at the Command Prompt again (as opposed to closing the window completely, which it did when you double-clicked it). Here is what the TASM help information looks like: Give it a try, and if it doesn't work for you, post a screenshot of your Command Prompt window so we can see what it says.

Now that you mention it, so do I! "Aquaricart: The Aquarius Album Cartridge." Definitely a name I'll be considering.

Ah, I get it now. I don't watch TV, so most pop culture references just go right over my head. I really need to pick a final name and put an end to all this crazy speculation ...

Uhh ... that one's a definite "no!"

The 5200 illustrates, to me, the lack of imagination (and maybe a lack of confidence) that Atari was suffering from after losing Jay Miner and all of the key individuals who were responsible for the 2600 and the 400/800 computer series. The 5200 was a slapdash repackaging of their old 400/800 computer technology, the new elements that were added (such as the controllers) weren't very good, and the overall design of the console was at least in part an attempt to copy everyone else's ideas instead of pioneering their own. The keypad and overlay scheme of the controllers, for example, seems to have been borrowed directly from the Intellivision and ColecoVision. Neither of those systems had the best controllers, and yet Atari the "industry leader" was chasing their taillights. The 5200 software wasn't much better: there weren't enough exclusives to keep it afloat, and even though people were already getting tired of them, Atari kept churning out ports of the same old arcade games. It's an interesting system to own today, and one of the things I like about it is the potential for four-player games (at least with the four-port models). But I can also see why it failed, and why the 7800 would have been a much better successor to the 2600 if it had been available in 1982. The 5200's problems were more fundamental than any one game; even with a better pack-in than Super Breakout or Pac-Man, it still would not have worked.

Thanks for your interest! The final product will be $65 plus shipping for a loose cartridge board, fully populated and tested, which can be inserted into any of the existing Aquarius program cartridge shells (or 4K RAM module shells). It will include a printed manual and a simple cartridge label. I also have a limited supply of new Night Stalker cartridges, so while they last, I'll also be able to offer a fully-assembled multi-cart in a Night Stalker box for $75 plus shipping. These will include manuals, labels, and the original Night Stalker manuals and overlays.

If you're going to port Sonic to an Atari system, I'd say the 7800 would be the best choice, especially with the upcoming Expansion Module. And, you'll be able to keep at least some of the sprite design work you've done, at least if you plan to implement it using one of the 7800's 160 modes. Either that, or design a simpler game around the Sonic characters, something that would work within the limitations of the 2600 and doesn't need to replicate the more advanced features on the newer consoles.

Be careful ... if they're masochistic enough to have worked on the game.com, they might like it!

No Konami codes ... but there just might be a few BASIC commands that you'll be able to use to "unlock special content."

I'm trying to keep it as flexible as possible, depending on the demand. I designed the boards to be configurable as multi-carts or as ordinary bankswitched cartridges, so nothing will be wasted: any components that aren't used to build multi-carts will be used for future homebrew projects. The fact that I'm also doing all the assembly myself allows me to economize on that design even more. This was important to me mainly because, in certain ways, this project has no precedent. I still don't have a firm idea of how many cartridges I'll need to make because nobody has made Aquarius homebrew cartridges of any kind before. One of the things I hope to learn from this is just how large the audience really is for new Aquarius hardware and software. This project should give me a pretty good idea, since it stands to reason that anyone interested in the multi-cart will also be interested in other Aquarius products and upgrades. I'm ordering 200 boards in the first batch, so there should be plenty available for everyone who wants a multi-cart (cartridge shells will be another matter, unfortunately, since there aren't very many donors around). I don't think there will be as many units made as there are for the average 2600 homebrew, but based on the level of interest I've seen so far, I think it will be successful enough to pave the way for future projects. This is a good thing, because I've got many more ambitious plans for the Aquarius!

Wow, lots of creative suggestions for the name! Thanks to everyone for their contributions. It looks like I've got some thinking to do, so I'll turn the various ideas over in my head while I'm getting my programming and testing finished. The list you see on the screen scrolls down to reveal the other options. The full game/application list (at least for now) is as follows: AD&D: Treasure of Tarmin Astrosmash Biorhythms BurgerTime Chess Demonstration Cartridge Extended BASIC FileForm FinForm Logo Melody Chase Mini-Expander Diagnostic Night Stalker Shark! Shark! (Unfinished Prototype) Snafu Space Speller TRON Deadly Discs Utopia X10 Command Console Zero-In There will also be the 1541 OS, which is a modified Extended BASIC with some new features and a monitor added to it. I'm including it mainly because it adds a few new commands to do things that you previously needed to use inline machine language to do from BASIC, such as reading the hand controllers and filling the screen with color. The DOS commands won't be usable because the 1541 disk drive interface won't be included, so I consider it to be an alternate version of Extended BASIC, and it probably won't have its own menu option. Biorhythms and BurgerTime will also have alternate versions: our "patched" versions will be the defaults, but you'll also have the ability to use the originals if you want to. In all three cases, you can access the alternate versions by pressing SHIFT-RTN instead of RTN at the menu.

I don't have an extra Intellivision system to offer, but I do have a few extra Intellivision cartridges and overlays (mostly commons) which might be useful to help start your collection. Here is an updated list.

I think the only real differences are cosmetic. The Intellivision systems that INTV Corp. released, the INTV System III and the Super Pro System, went back to the original Intellivision design. They're pretty much the same internally; in fact, the last System III console that I repaired had an old Intellivision I board inside it which looked like it came from Mattel's spare parts department! The INTV systems switched to a black plastic and aluminum case design, instead of the original brown plastic and faux woodgrain. They also added a power LED, but this is trivially easy to add to the original Intellivision. The only major changes that INTV made (at least that I'm aware of) were made when they repackaged the Intellivision as the World Book TutorVision in the late 80s. They apparently consolidated some of the chips and simplified the design somewhat, and there were also some changes made to the EXEC. An AtariAge member found one and posted some nice pictures, and here is the Blue Sky Rangers' article on the TutorVision (from their July 2003 newsletter). Now that's an Intellivison variant I'd love to own someday!

What does it say? I've only run TASM in DOS and Windows XP, but I've used DASM successfully in Windows 7, so I'm fairly certain it should work under Vista as well.