jaybird3rd

Atari 800 series. The C64 had its advantages (as one would expect for a design that's about four years newer), and it was much more prolific than the 800 because of its low price (Jack Tramiel's famous "carpet-bombing with cheap computers" strategy). Overall, though, the 800 was a better design and implementation of a 6502-based computer; both the C64 and Apple II were clunky and hackneyed machines compared to the elegant and versatile 800. The C64 didn't have anything like Atari's SIO bus (which was something like a 1970s version of USB), and you never needed to type anything arcane like 'LOAD "*",8,1' on the 800.

And a native Bostonian, too, judging from your pronunciation of "pharmacy."

Aha ... apparently another one of those has just joined the forums ... BreakInvaders The Knight Rider 2600 project To All Non-Programmer Idea Peddlers Read carefully and learn.

I posted a quick list of steps on building an RSI stick in remowilliams' RSI stick thread earlier this year, but I'm thinking of revising it and drawing up some diagrams to make the process easier. If there was a "howto" thread started, I wouldn't mind posting it there at all.

Geez ... I saw this thread resurrected and thought for a horrible moment that 2600khz had returned ...

One of my FB2 units (a Rev. A, I think) occasionally scrambles the picture in the middle of a game and then goes completely blank. Cycling the power fixes it, but none of my other units have this problem, so I figure it's just a defective unit. I'd return it, except I already opened it up to do a cartridge slot mod on it (which I never got around to starting). I also notice some vertical jitter every now and then on my other FB2s, mostly on the homebrewed/hacked games but sometimes on the commercial games too.

I agree ... there are Atari platforms other than the 2600 that would benefit greatly from the MemCard, and the name should be platform-agnostic to reflect that.

I'm sure a lot like yours would be worth more than $10, depending on what's included. You might want to make a list of everything you have, take some pictures, and list it for sale in the Marketplace section.

Despite their uncomfortable size and weight, the wireless CX-40 joysticks actually worked pretty well as long as you didn't venture too far away from the receiver. Their biggest problem is the bulky and obsolete radio circuitry inside the joysticks and the receiver base. With today's Bluetooth technology, one could fit a transmitter and battery inside a standard CX-40 joystick; the receiver would be nothing but a little module that plugs right into the joystick port and runs off of the 5V provided by the 2600 console. I'd love to see these things bundled into a CX-40 "wireless retrofit kit," but unfortunately building such a thing is beyond me. One thing I did succeed in building was a pair of wireless controllers based on the Radica Space Invaders joysicks; here is a link to a forum post with a picture and some information about them. I built and sold them some months ago, and unlike Atari's originals, they were very comfortable and a real pleasure to use.

Identifying the chipset on your motherboard would tell you what kind of onboard IDE controllers it already has. A 440BX chipset, for example, would only give you an Ultra33 controller, while an 810 chipset would probably give you an Ultra66 controller. Of course, you should also know if your hard drive would benefit from a newer controller before you go out and buy one, but you'll have to check its specs to find that out (or upgrade it as well). The Celeron 800, incidentally, is a great chip for giving an inexpensive boost to older systems. I've used several of them on 440BX motherboards that weren't designed for anything faster than a Katmai Pentium III (up to 600MHz). Most of them are limited to a 100MHz FSB, but a lot of them will support up to an 8X clock multiplier even if their specifications don't say they will. Since 800MHz Celerons (which are all 100MHz FSB processors) are a lot easier to find than 800MHz Pentium IIIs with a 100MHz FSB, those are usually the chips I use to extend the life of these older systems.

Yes, it reminds me a little of how TI chose the obscure TMS9900 for their 99/4 series of computers instead of something more popular like the Z80 or 6502. I'm sure that hurt support for their platform during and after its lifetime, too, in addition to all the other factors.

I noticed the sequential part numbers, too, but I guess a mislabeled chip was almost too simple an explanation; I was thinking it had to be something more complicated or unusual. I'd love to be able to even own a Triple Challenge cartridge, much less look inside one, but they seem to be even harder to find than Diner these days.

It does a good job. I'm running XP on a Celeron 800 machine right now (with 512MB of RAM), and it performs perfectly well for the vast majority of applications. One thing you might want to consider adding to the machine (if it doesn't have one already) is an Ultra100 or Ultra133 hard drive controller. I find that, once you have enough RAM and the CPU is fast enough, hard drive access is the biggest (and most overlooked) bottleneck in system performance. Adding a controller only costs about $35 or so, and it really makes a difference. Also, 256MB is more than enough for ME but is the minimum I'd suggest for XP; you might want to add another 256MB. Fortunately, used PC100 SDRAM modules are cheap and easy to come by these days.

I like it !!! I especially like the fact that you're taking the time to socket every last chip on the board. I recently socketed all the chips in my 130XE, and it made me wish that every manufacturer would make the extra effort to socket their chips. That does look like a very nice board, too; it's a whole lot nicer than the 130XE boards Atari made.

Here are some of the best sites I've found for Intellivision game reviews/information: http://www.videogamecritic.net/intel.htm http://intvfunhouse.com/games/ http://www.intellivisionlives.com/bluesky/...tructions.shtml I'd say you should definitely pick up the Intellivision system; it's a platform that's overlooked too often but still has a lot to offer. Since this thread has already been dusted off, let me repost something I originally posted in the hardware forum; perhaps it will get more exposure/commentary here: This is a picture of the board from my Diner cartridge. What could a Triple Challenge chip (the top one) be doing inside this cartridge?

Horray! There's another piece of classic Atari hardware that I'll finally have the opportunity to own! Between the mux boards and the new MIO boards, not to mention the new DOS, the Atari 8-bit computer world is really getting exciting! I too am glad I'm getting back into it in a serious way, after being a "casual" user for many years.

The Intellivision cartridges aren't as simple as Atari cartridges. A typical 2600 cartridge board contains an EPROM and a hex inverter; the more sophisticated ones might include some bankswitching hardware and extra RAM. On an Intellivision cartridge (at least as I understand it), some of the pins act at different times as either address lines OR as data lines, which requires a lot more logic to implement and makes Intellivision cartridges more difficult to design and build. Other factors (as has been pointed out) include the smaller fan base that the Intellivision enjoys compared to the 2600, lack of documentation, and the Intellivision's somewhat unusual (but very cool) hardware.

My first thought was to give it a female name, in the classic Atari tradition. Barring that, here are some platform-agnostic names I've thought of: ScoreBoard Thumbtap J-Drive JoyTrack RAMPad G-PROM GameScribe RAMBOard

Well, the video game industry has been trying for years to get women more interested and involved in video games, but I'm sure this isn't what they had in mind. Ick.

Nice price on the two-player paddle! I am very impressed with the Atari paddle units, and wrote a favorable review of both versions some time ago. I still get a lot of play time out of mine. Again, great find!

I noticed something interesting about my Intellivision Diner cartridge. I opened it up to clean it and to get rid of some loose plastic, and here is the circuit board: Take a look at the chip at the top of the board: Triple Challenge was a cartridge that combined three earlier releases (Chess, Checkers, and Backgammon) into one cart, along with the extra RAM that Chess required. What would a Triple Challenge chip be doing inside a Diner cartridge? I thought it might be a leftover RAM chip, but I've never heard anything about Diner requiring extra RAM.

I always thought it was a good effort considering the limitations (technological and otherwise) that the developer, Ron Surratt, had to deal with. He did the game under protest because he knew the 2600 couldn't properly handle it, but Mattel wanted to take advantage of the popularity of BurgerTime and to quickly get it on as many systems as possible. They also insisted that it be done without flicker, which left Surratt no choice but to use the 1-bit objects for the enemies. So, the enemies became blocks and sticks. The result runs a little slow and isn't particularly nice-looking, but all the gameplay elements are there.

I've been thinking about that a lot lately, probably because of the approaching 10th anniversary of the "death" of Atari and its "reverse merger" with JTS (which officially took place on July 30, 1996). All of these later games were developed at a time when the Jaguar console had been on the market for several years already, and I think they prove that developers were finally learning to get the most out of the Jaguar technology. They certainly seemed to push the Jaguar beyond what any of the 32-bit competition was capable of doing at the time, and on top of that, all of those systems were produced by companies that had more resources and were a lot larger than Atari was by that point. I'm grateful that companies like Songbird and Telegames have found ways to finally bring these games to market, and I agree that they're all excellent titles, but playing them today is almost a bittersweet experience for me. It always makes me wonder what more could have been accomplished if the Jaguar (and Atari as an independent company) could have lived a while longer. It's a pity that Sam Tramiel had his heart attack when he did, because from what I hear, Atari had some very interesting things in the works for the Jaguar that were all shoved to the side when Jack Tramiel took the reigns during Sam's recovery.

I don't know what it is about 7800 games that were ruined by bad control schemes. Karateka is another example ... its controls make some kind of weird sense once you figure them out, but they're so counterintuitive that you have to think more about the moves than actually playing the game. That's another control scheme that warrants a good shooting.