Kapikui

I am interested in one of these as well. For Lynx 1 if it matters. Thank you

The problem with ET isn't that it was the worst game ever, it wasn't, not by a long shot. It was indeed not very fun, and suffered from several gameplay issues that make it an exercise in frustration. I found it mildly fun, but less than many of my other games. That wasn't the problem, and wasn't why ET is blamed. The reason ET was so bad and became the posterchild for the video game crash wasn't because it was a terrible game, but because it was so overhyped, that even the best game ever couldn't have lived up to expectations, then Atari gave us a mediocre to poor game. Had another company released ET (with slightly different sprites and a different story and no movie license but identical gameplay) it wouldn't be talked about much, and certainly wouldn't be blamed for causing any crash. ET along with Pac Man (which would be considered a mediocre Pac Man ripoff were it released by a different company under a different name) told us that even Atari had started peddling shovelware. That, I think, more than anything is what killed Atari back in the day.

There were a couple three times with customers hooking up VCR's and the like. As I recall it was a low end Television, and there were only HDMI ports, we tried the coax, but there was no option to go to any type of analog input, it would only take digital broadcast channels.

I used to do phone tech support for DirecTV. Before I quit, I'd started running into televisions with ONLY HDMI and Digital coax. No analog inputs at all. A way to make an atari work with hdmi is going to be necessary soon.

Mine was a 4 switch woodgrain. I got it Christmas (it was a family gift) 1981 ±1. I don't remember the exact year, but It was right about then. I know I'd had it quite a while by 84. We got it at ZCMI at the (fairly new at the time) Pine Ridge Mall. The mall had recently replaced a drive in theater. It came with Combat, and we got Space Invaders for it. That collection grew. I still have it, I still play it, I'm keeping it as original as possible (though I need to recap it, and make some other minor repairs). I recently acquired a second 2600, woodgrain again. I'm going to mod it out as much as I can think of, just for fun.

You do realize that we're talking about the general situation of destroying someone's property because you're mad? Yes, this is fiction. We were talking about the situation within the fiction (which a large subset of our culture seems to support) of destroying something that isn't yours simply because you're angry.

Not sure it matters. It's destruction of property. If the offence warrants, you go to court and get a settlement. You don't get to destroy someone's property because you're mad.

Is this something for the RF output only, or does it work for the composite mods as well?

I hadn't thought of those, I might have to go with red after all. Whatever though blue is out.

I guess i'll need to get a replacement for the static strips. They didn't survive removal, and barely survived disassembly. I had been planning to remove the entire RF modulator. Would that be a problem?

Green traditionally meant things were working OK. while red LED's generally came on if there was a problem. That goes way back to some of the first indicator lights, predating LED's by a lot. Then someone invented the insanely bright blue LED's, and everything turned blue.

I recently aquired a 2600/a woodgrain. The circuit board is a rev 13. I’m thinking about doing some modding. I kind of want to make a 2600 modern retro. I have some questions and ideas. The field service manual refers to anti-static tape mounted across the switches and to the RF shielding to alleviate potential static charges through the switches to the circuits. Is this necessary? With the shielding removed to add the video composite mod, what would I ground the switches to? The first mod is a video composite mod I’m thinking of using this one http://www.vintagegamingandmore.com/product/atari-video-mod-kit/ does anyone have any experience with it? Is it acceptable, or is there another that would be better. I’m trying to make it look professional inside and out when done. So I'm going to want to mount the board nicely. It seems that some have used mounting tape, is there a better way? Next would be the pause mod. I don’t like the switches that seem to be generally provided. Would it be possible to repurpose the 2-3 switch since it will be of no use with the composite mod? That way I don’t have to mount a new switch to the case. I especially don’t want to make it difficult to take the case off. If everything were mounted to the circuit board and simply protruded from the top (as with the original design), it would be far more aesthetically pleasing, and it looks as if I could just cut the trace on the circuit board and solder the wires to the switch. Third would be a power light LED mod A simple green led could be mounted next to the power switch. Green as it would have been the period correct color had atari actually installed one. Again, it would be preferable if the LED were attached to the circuit board, and then simply protruded from the bezel next to the power switch, rather than attaching the power LED to the bezel and having to carefully open the case every time I want to mod it. Alternately, I just had an idea to put LED’s or EL wire around the switches making them glow from inside. Fourth, would it be possible to find a power supply similar in size to a laptop charger and use it as an internal power supply. It is physically possible to put an appropriate power supply inside the case. It could be placed in front of the board and the wire run to the back, and soldered in place of the current power jack. A standard removable cord jack could be attached to the back of the case making the Atari easier to deal with. Lastly, I had a thought about splitting off the composite out and running it to a simple HDMI adapter mounted inside the case, and then run to an HDMI jack on the back of the Atari. Has anyone ever tried anything like this? Thank you for your time.

Can't speak to why, but I had a Zaxxon cartridge that had severe interference. I traded it away for something else at least 30 years ago, so I can't exactly test it now, but it was the only one that had the issue.

Video Chess?

26/30 and 32/33

You could easily put Debian Linux or similar (some of the more mainstream distros are gui heavy and can't run on light hardware), on one and run as a file server or some other server. Don't put on a GUI, and run it headless. You can access it through ssh. I had one running on a Pentium III until it died completely, and I haven't gotten around to rebuilding it yet.

I saw lots of those, several a day. As of a few months ago, it became not too uncommon to see them without ANY composite capability on new TV's.

Most intelligent enterprise level backup systems have a combination of onsite and offsite storage, with as much as possible stored in fireproof and waterproof safes of some sort. The idea being that if one location is damaged, another is still there, and a minor fire needn't destroy all of your data. Tapes have several advantages over Hard drives, most particularly, they are far more robust for handling. While a Hard Drive will often give you more storage for the money, I've dropped backup tapes from more than 7 feet without ill effect. Most hard drives would be done. Hard drives are far better when the storage is not to be physically moved. However they don't like handling. I've also been given to understand that the bearings tend to dry out in one spot and seize if not used regularly. Tapes can last much longer, and are more resistant to rough handling, which makes them far better for archiving data for things like offsite or long term archival backups. The days of using tapes for active data are long gone, and never likely to return, but the need for massive space for archival storage with a minimum of moving parts that needs a minimum of maintenance will never leave.

While HDMI DOES seem like overkill for an ATARI 2600, until a couple of months ago I worked phone support for DirecTV. By the time I quit, it was not all that uncommon to see televisions without composite inputs, and only component and HDMI. I also started seeing a television now and again (didn't get the brand) with ONLY hdmi inputs, and standard coax for antenna. So while it is overkill from a picture quality standpoint, it's also quickly moving to the viabale connection method in general, and the only real alternative to RF on many upcomming televisions.

Nice fix. I never really hated ET as a game. It was a pain and had a few problems that really should have been addressed. Many of the worst ones now have been with this hack. I'm trying to see what I can do to break it since I discovered it a couple of days ago. So far I've found a couple of things. You said that you changed the Ninja ET to happen with 3 candy pieces in ET's posession and 3 in Elliot's. I was able to get ET to go ninja by collecting a large number of candy pieces (over 45). In that case it didn't give me the 10 pieces as noted with the "official" way to do the ninja easter egg listed in the writeup. A second bug seems to be an issue with the humans, particularly Elliot actually connecting with ET, possibly something with collision detection. It isn't that big of a deal since all you have to do to get Elliot to connect is move down one notch. Finally there's one other minor thing that always annoyed me about ET. The game select screen is slow. It takes far too long to go to the next game variation when holding select. Any other Atari game would be on about 15 when ET is just getting around to go to 2 I have had some minor exposure to assembly, but never done anything much with it. I was impressed with how little code was needed to make signifcant changes.

I had never looked into what some of the hacks took. Overall I'm quite impressed with how simple some of the changes seem to be. One possible bug, I was able to get the Ninja ET by collecting a large number of candy pieces (around 45). ET changed duing the end cutsceen during the Eating phase I think it's called. I don't know if that's what you were going for, but I got the impression that you weren't from the writeup. I did also note some issues when Elliot is comming to get or give. He seems to have slightly more trouble touching ET. All in all though, a vast improvement over the original. I'm still seeing what I can do to break it though.