jaybird3rd

Too true. That's why the 7800 is a much less intimidating platform for homebrew games. The standard that has been set by many of the commercial releases is pretty low, and would be a lot easier for a homebrewer to surpass than the standard for, say, the Sega Genesis games (which often had teams of artists contributing to them).

Oh God ... I've always instinctively distrusted Wikipedia, and now I know why.

Apparently, it's the same grammar that forbids him from using the apostrophe.

I was never a "collector," per se, but I haven't missed my ColecoVision stuff since I sold it off some years ago. The ColecoVision seems to have a very low percentage of original titles (most of its games are either arcade ports or are available on other platforms also), and the hardware was problematic.

I agree, and that's one reason why, when I sat down to decide what my homebrew platform of choice would be, anything from the 16-bit era onward was pretty much off the table right from the beginning. Those are the systems that are powerful enough to really show off the value of professionally-created art, and any efforts of mine would fail to hold up alongside commercial releases (one requirement of a successful homebrew title) without a professional artist, which I am not. In my opinion, the most interesting homebrew platform at the moment is the Atari 7800. It has the smallest library of any of the major consoles of its era, and since many of its titles are mediocre at best and cover only a few genres, it has the most untapped potential. Its MARIA graphics chip is powerful enough to create appealing visuals, but isn't so powerful that a professional artist is needed to create graphics that match the best commercial 7800 titles and push the hardware to its limits. As for homebrew development in general, I think it's likely to continue as an exciting but very small subset of independent game development. It's more of a labor of love than development for profit-generating platforms, and is a haven for those who want to have fun creating games but do not have the resources to produce the kind of audiovisuals that games on modern platforms need to get any attention in today's world. Great independent games are released for modern systems every day that barely get any notice, but those same games would be a much bigger deal on something like the 7800. Even if one-tenth as many people see them, those people are a larger percentage of the user base and in general are more enthusiastic and supportive (although the foaming-at-the-mouth lunatics in the Jaguar community are a notable exception).

Atari 7800. It can play virtually all of the 2600 library, plus 7800 titles. It also makes a nice cartridge dumper and development console thanks to Eckhard Stolberg's DevOS software.

If I remember correctly, the OmniView OS is a software upgrade that allows you to display 80-column text on a standard TV using the graphics hardware already in the computer. It was meant to be a low-cost alternative to more expensive hardware upgrades, and it sounds like it's working about as well as it was intended to; you're seeing fuzzy/indistinguishable letters because televisions really aren't well-suited for high-resolution characters. If you really want 80-column text on the Atari 8-bit computers, my recommendation would be to get an XEP-80 interface and a good monochrome composite monitor. As for the letter codes next to the OS names in the 32-in-1 menu, I think Steve has documentation somewhere on his site that explains his naming convention. I don't own a 32-in-1 yet but I remember being puzzled by them myself, but after looking them up they're not too hard to understand.

I seem to remember hearing that Sardu got a job with some major publisher (I think it was EA), and that one of their requirements was that he discontinue emulator development. Genecyst development also stopped around the same time. I do wish Nesticle was still being developed, though. It was the only NES emulator I've ever seen that could run NES games at a full 60 FPS on a 486. Genecyst was pretty amazing, too: a low-end Pentium was all you needed for full-speed Genesis emulation.

I'm sure I can help you ... I'm warm to BASIC, and I'm no dummy, and I've got some great Kinko's connections. I'll get back to you as soon as I finish learning 6502 assembly and the entire 7800 architecture and build a development system; I figure I can get that out of the way this weekend if I really push. In the meantime, you might want to take a look at this.

At least there's something to be said for the built-in Pause feature, and for the simplicity of going directly into the game without dealing with a game selection menu (although the startup splash screens are very annoying). I bought one of these for my three-year-old niece, who loves Frogger and always wants to play it in MAME with me whenever she comes to visit. The TV-game version isn't perfect, and she obviously isn't very good at it yet anyway, but she loved getting a handheld version of her own to play with. I guess they're not too discriminating at that age. I also thought the inclusion of the tiny little green button was odd considering that there are already two larger buttons that are mapped to the directionals (or something equally worthless). They should have used these instead and left the green button off altogether, but this was probably a generic stick design that was meant to accomodate many different games.

I was almost certain I saw them at Tex*In Treasures at some point, but I don't see them there now; I've had mine since the late 80s. It looks like it should be simple enough to build (the only thing inside is a little PCB with a few diodes on it), but I haven't seen any tutorials for this.

An MFM hard drive to connect to a SCSI controller? I wasn't aware they were compatible. If they are, I could kick myself for scrapping so many of those old Seagates years ago. I just took a look for Adaptec 4000 controllers on eBay but didn't see anything but a bunch of USB2 cards; I guess I'll have to keep looking (and putting away my pennies for a Black Box).

Yeah, it's missing its boot, but at least the white plastic isn't all full of bitemarks (why in the world did that happen so often anyway?!).

I've used much worse controllers than the stock TI sticks, but they're far from the best, too. If I had to get by with them, they would certainly do the job, but thank goodness I've got the TI joystick adapter so I can use CX-40 sticks (or compatibles) with my 99/4A.

At least you're not alone ... everybody who bought a 32X feels ripped off sooner or later! Seriously, though, $19.99 is a good price for a new 32X on closeout even without a pack-in. I remember going into a local department store some years ago and seeing a whole stack of new Genesis 3 systems (the super-small Genesis consoles that Majesco Sales brought out) on closeout for $9.99! I picked up three of them and actually got them even cheaper than the sticker price, and I've kicked myself for not going back for more later; those things seem to be much harder to find at reasonable prices now.

You're right, the Intellivision 25 and Intellivision 10 handhelds contain NOAC "ports" (and pretty nasty ones at that) of Intellivision games. I cracked open my Intellivision 10 once, and as I recall, the NOAC and ROM chips are mounted on a tiny wafer of a PCB, which is connected by a ribbon cable to the larger PCB that holds the buttons and A/V circuitry. I suspect that the design is too highly integrated to allow you to wire in a full cartridge slot; there don't seem to be enough traces going between the ROM and the NOAC.

I don't think I've ever actually seen an "official" set of Jaguar extension cables (with the Atari logo molded into them); most of the cables I've seen on eBay are generic 15-pin M-F cables that look like they were meant for monitors or KVM switches. I've never been tempted to buy one myself because the Jaguar pads' cables have always been long enough for me without an extension.

I guess their availability on eBay comes and goes; I've got a couple new ones that I picked up fairly cheaply two years ago or so. There are a number of Atari suppliers (B&C ComputerVisions, Best Electronics, etc.) that carry them also.

The 7800 ProLine controllers are not the most comfortable joysticks in the world, to be sure, but I kind of like them anyway because they're very well made and durable and have a certain elegant simplicity about them, especially compared to the overdesigned and failure-prone 5200 controllers. Many 7800 players prefer the European gamepads (which are the controllers in your picture), but these aren't too comfortable, either. The action buttons are outside the comfortable reach of the thumb, and the gamepads themselves have a lightweight, "cheap" feel compared to the rugged ProLines. I think there was at least one third-party controller that supported the two-button 7800 configuration, and recently, a few people on these boards have begun building custom controllers of their own (including modified NES pads and the Space Invaders arcade controller).

I'm in the same sort of situation. I am a graduate student and am not making enough money as a GA to pay my bills, but my job gives me the supplemental income I need and is flexible enough to work around my school schedule. Even though the work can be a little frustrating sometimes (I'm a part-time network admin and computer tech, with some development sprinkled in), it isn't too demanding and doesn't leave me without any energy for my studies. I have to be thankful for that, and that it's at least in my field of choice; some of my classmates are having to resort to fast-food or retail or assembly-line jobs to make ends meet.

Is it possible to even find a hard drive and controller to use with the Black Box anymore? I considered buying one some years ago, but was scared away by the seemingly arcane technology; it almost looked to me like I would have had to somehow find a working twenty-year-old SCSI controller and hard drive. That's got to be a hard sell nowadays compared to the IDE solutions that are available for a lot less elsewhere. I know the Black Box gives you a lot more options, plus the ability to sector-copy floppies into bootable hard drive partitions (which I don't believe is possible with MyIDE), but still ...

Their website might be up, but are they still in business? It looks like it hasn't been updated in about five years.

Yup, I found them. I need to revise them (the wire colors mentioned are from a third-party cable and don't match the Atari colors) and clean them up a little bit, and then I'll type them up here. I'll probably do that sometime tonight.

Very nice! None of my printers are of a high-enough quality to do a joystick label justice, but I was just thinking the other day about whether I could have labels printed and cut to fit the joysticks I work on. The original Space Invaders label isn't bad, and it's certainly better than plain plastic, but I can understand wanting something more Atari-style.

The 850 uses the same power supply as the 1050 disk drive and 1010 program recorder (and the Atari 800 computer, for that matter). Speaking of printers ... I've been thinking about connecting a parallel printer to my Atari computer, and I'm wondering whether I should use the 850's parallel port with an adapter cable or a MicroPrint interface (I have both). Does anyone have an opinion on which option is better, or are they both the same? Also, can both be used at the same time?