Kr0tki

It's called "colour pot", as in "potentiometer". And it is already implemented, see View->Adjust Colors->Hue step. On a related note, I've noticed a peculiar issue in the "Adjust Colors" dialog. Among the various reference colours listed in the bottom-right, there are these two entries: $AA: Pole Position sky $D8: Pole Position grass The problem is, "Pole Position" is among the handful of games that use different colours for NTSC and for PAL. So using these two colours as reference points may be somewhat confusing for PAL users 🙂

"XLFriend" from Quick Assembler uses Shift+Control+1, 2, 3 and 4. "E", a simple text editor published in Tajemnice Atari 4/91, uses Shift+Control+Esc, < and >. The OS allows to change key definitions via KEYDEF and FKDEF. I guess you could extend this to support Shift+Control combinations too, to allow the user to adjust them to their liking. Also remember that you can use console keys and Break in combination with other keys.

Maybe that representative was Technicallly Telling the Truth: it is a known fact that indeed, Atari was not shipping the chip in question (i.e. NTSC GTIA) to overseas markets.

I've found a reference in the "Archives Catalog of the Strong" in a collection of Atari Coin-Op Division materials. (This is only a catalog, the documents are in a library in Manhattan, if anyone wishes to research. 🙂) The collection contains documents referring to a "Moose Brain", "Mouse Brain" and "Mouth Brain" which may or may not be the same thing. I guess it was some widget developed by Atari for use in coin-ops.

😆

It was free only for the customers with a still-valid warranty. Others had to pay.

Oops, I misread the Field Service Manual. The procedure for testing the 2-port model, as described in there, differs from the 4-port one in that it specifically not uses the loopback board and omits the Port Test. Sorry for the confusion.

What was this 800 Black Box system? I understand it was an Atari 800 with some modifications, but finding anything on the web is difficult because of the unrelated "Black Box" hard disk interface. Dit it contain a special OS ROM? Did it support standard 5200 controllers, with their 2nd button and keyboards? The latter would require some rewiring of the GTIA outputs to make them work like on a 5200. I guess I could look into it, but it would be much less time wasted If I had access to the source code. Interesting. Are there any other occurrences of ZZZROM in the sources? Wait a moment, so Atari planned to connect a Votrax to the 5200's expansion port?

Interesting! I would assume that the 2.3 diag cart, being a later version, would correctly support all 5200 models released up to that point, not only the latest one. Especially considering that, according to the Field Service Manual, the 1.1 cartridge supports both the 4-port and 2-port models.

It's 4B58 0000 for the C019156 OS (the original one) and 54E4 0000 for C019156A (the "2-port" BIOS). Where does the 1.1 number come from? What other 4-port OS? There were only two OS versions.

Sorry, it's just not my cup of tea.

Well I don't know why they don't work, because I haven't seen them, but still, I don't see the point in investigating the issue, if the 16 KB ROMs work for you.

Why can't you just use the 16 KB ROM image?

Your numbers don't seem to be correct. In the Atari Engineering Information System Item Master List, the parts are listed as: C010177 CRYSTAL: 3.579575 MHZ C016010 CRYSTAL: 3.579545 C061090 CRYSTAL,3.579545 MHX,QUARTZ and the frequencies are the same in Field Service Manuals for the various computer and console models. So there is apparently no difference in frequencies between the two.

"Star Raiders" is a 12 KB game. This matches with the chip sizes that you've found - the cartridge contains one 64 Kbit = 8 KB and one 32 Kbit = 4 KB chip, which sums up to 12 KB. What bugs me, these two cartridges contain chips with differing internal part numbers. That most certainly means that the contents of the ROMs also differ. I've cross-referenced the numbers with Atari's "Engineering Information System - Item Master List". Here are all the pages with part numbers for 5200 ROMs: The ROMs from the "25 3 R" cartridge are described there as "CX5205 CARTRIDGE" while the "29 3 PR" ones are described as "CX5205P CARTRIDGE". Considering that, in the context of this list, the "P" in description of 2600 cartridges means PAL variants, this would mean that the "29 3 PR" cartridge indeed contains an updated version of "Star Raiders", modified to support the planned PAL 5200 console. There exists a PAL prototype of Star Raiders, so maybe they simply replaced the original release with the PAL-compatible version at some point in time? Look, there are several other ROMs listed as "CX52xxP CARTRIDGE". There may be more game revisions in the wild that we don't yet know of. I guess we need a coordinated effort to search for and dump the 5200 cartridges like we started in the 8-bit section a few years ago.

My main issue with the 8-bit version was that player movement was restricted to a grid. Maybe it would not be such an issue if the game was fast enough, but it was so anemic, especially compared to the C64 version, that it made the control feel laggy to the level of actually hampering playability. Dark Chambers was much better.

The worst for me was not the lack of any particular tile, but that Gauntlet was so disappointing. The title screen promised a lot, but the gameplay was not very good. At least we had Dandy and Dark Chambers. Championship Sprint would be great, certainly could be done better than Grand Prix Simulator. Also, I loved Xybots and Rampart on the Amiga and I believe both could be decently converted.

Not that rare at all. "Road Runner" is an Atari Games game, and it was the norm that their games would be converted to everything but the kitchen sink, unfortunately that kitchen sink was the A8 line. In fact, the only game of theirs that was converted to the A8 was "Gauntlet".

No.

Doublepost

That whole Youtube channel is all fake videos - it is one of several "Thomas the Tank Engine" Alternate Reality Games, because ARGS are apparently a thing in the Thomas fandom.

AtariAge has always been a safe space to me, but what has it now devolved to? Feline cornography?

I've noticed that artwork was used on the Lynx "Super Asteroids/Missile Command" cartridge.

It works for its intended purpose, that is, it does force the Self-Test when the jumper is removed.