MaximRecoil

Karate Champ was the first arcade game that I played regularly, in 1984 at the local laundromat. When people would pull down on the joysticks hard, the control panel would pull away from the front glass just enough for any quarters leaning against the glass to fall down into the cabinet. When the route operator would come around to collect the money, he would always find a bunch of extra quarters that weren't in the coin bucket because of that. I remember telling him how it happened because he couldn't figure it out; he was thinking there might be something wrong with the coin mechanism making some of the coins miss the bucket.

Your crystal ball is in need of repair. That doesn't have anything to do with my question. Irrelevance seems to be your thing... and attempts at crystal ball readings.

What of it? How did you find yourself even replying to my post, since you said nothing that was relevant to anything I said?

You wouldn't win at all against someone who's good at, say, Street Fighter II or Mortal Kombat, by just bashing buttons, let alone win faster. You'd be lucky to even land a single hit, even if you played against him a thousand times in a row. I've seen other people say the same thing on other forums; it seems they've never played against anyone who wasn't a novice. In 1991 when I was 16 I was working next to a drug store that had a small arcade in the back of the store, and they had a Street Fighter II: The World Warrior machine. I started playing it a lot, but only against the computer, because there was hardly ever anyone else there. After a couple of weeks I thought I was getting pretty good at it, because I could get to Vega, who was one of the four unplayable boss characters, though not without continuing quite a few times. Then one night some guy walked in there and started playing against me, and I couldn't do anything against him. He easily countered everything I tried. I played him probably 20 times in a row without even winning a single round. I learned quite a bit from that session though, and I started going to Space Port in Bangor after that where there were lots of good players, to learn even more. Current me, or even 17-year-old me, could do the exact same thing against 16-year-old me that he did.

Thanks. In my case, after booting to the Harmony cartridge, when I turned the knob it would just move the selection indicator from the "[.]" to the last folder, skipping all other folders, and turning the knob in the other direction from there would just move it back to the "[.]", no matter how slightly I turned it. Even if I found the exact position where it would jump back and forth rapidly and automatically between two selection, it still skipped everything between the last folder and "[.]", plus the paddle's button wouldn't do anything. After reading your post I fiddled with it some more and I discovered that if I turned the knob CCW a little ways there was a point at which it would start moving the selection indicator correctly, and once you're at that point / in that range you can turn the knob in either direction and the selection indicator moves correctly (down for CW and up for CCW), and it doesn't skip any folders and the paddle button works to make a selection. So the paddle's knob needs to be about in the middle of its rotational travel to be in the right range to work correctly. When it's rotated almost all the way CW it will start moving the selection indicator again, but incorrectly, like I described in my first paragraph. Previously I was always turning the knob CW until the selection indicator moved, so I always ended up in the end-of-the-travel range where it doesn't work right.

What do you mean? Stella the emulator? I'm talking about navigating the Harmony cartridge menu. The Harmony cartridge manual says you can do it: It doesn't work for me though, not on any of the three consoles I tried it on.

I just tried it with an Atari 7800 and a 4-switch woodgrain 2600, as well as with a different pair of paddles, and they did the exact same thing as with my heavy 6-switch 2600. Menu navigation doesn't work with the paddles and it doesn't work in exactly the same way on all 3 consoles that I tested it on. The firmware version is 1.06.

I just got a new Harmony Encore in the mail yesterday. So far it works perfectly with a joystick but I can't navigate the menu with a paddle. The paddle moves the selection indicator, but not correctly. It only moves it back and forth between the "[.]" and the last folder, skipping all other folders, and the paddle's button doesn't do anything. Also, I can't even use the console's select and reset switches to navigate the menu like I can when a joystick is connected, because they are completely non-responsive. So the only way I can play a paddle game is to navigate to and start it with the joystick and then unplug the joystick and plug in the paddles (which work fine in the games, just not in the menu).

At some point in the 1990s. It still should have had at least composite output like the TRS-80 and Apple II did, which were both released the same year as the 2600 (1977). The original NES frontloader had composite video output in 1985, which was still before the vast majority of people in North America had a display with composite video input. They were thinking ahead, and I'm glad they did, because even though I had no use for the NES's composite video jack in the 1980s, I do now.

There should have been a minimum of 2 buttons on the controller. They should have ditched the Color/B&W switch, which is nearly useless, and put a pause switch there instead, which is very useful. There should have been at least a composite video output in addition to RF. The joysticks should have been designed like arcade joysticks, i.e., a single, fairly strong spring around the shaft for snappy self-centering, a restrictor for a positive stop at the end of the travel, and good quality leaf switches or microswitches. Compare a CX-40 to say, an IL/Happ Competition joystick; the difference is night and day.

That's different than the TIA I tested. His tank is green like it's supposed to be rather than blue. His player 1 score is blue on the tops and bottoms of the numbers but is green on the sides, which is weird, but starting at 0:32 the parts that were blue have turned green, though a slightly different shade of green than the sides of the numbers. This is from the start of the video: And this is from the 0:32 mark: My player 1 score numbers are uniformly blue, and the tank is blue too. The rest of the colors are the same as with the original TIA chip installed. Yeah, I've read that before, but if the colors change on any of my six 2600s or my 7800 then it's too slight for me to notice it.

It being emulation is a deal killer for me. It not having analog video outputs would be a deal killer too, had the deal not already been killed by emulation. One of the best things about the 2600 hardware is its responsiveness (no frame buffer, so no input lag). I can tell the difference in responsiveness when playing 2600 games in Stella, especially with games that I've played a lot on real hardware since childhood, like Space Attack. To make matters worse it only has a digital video output, which means you get display lag to go on top of your input lag. Even if you use a digital-to-analog video signal converter and connect it to a CRT, you'll still get display lag because the digital signal has to be processed; it can't directly drive the CRT's electron guns like an analog video signal does.

They changed the picture when they went to the 4-switch design. With those there's a picture of a "heavy fourer." It looks like they just retouched the original picture of the heavy sixer. The 4-switch "Vader" design had a completely new picture on the box.

No. If it did change I would consider that a problem in and of itself, since the colors don't noticeably change on any of my 2600s regardless of how long they are left on. Doesn't the color pot have a global effect on colors? In the case of this particular TIA, only the tank and player 1 score are the wrong color. The ground, aliens, and shields are all the right color. But I don't want to change the color pot adjustment to try to compensate for a weird TIA when the colors are already correct with the original TIA. Well, it's definitely the TIA causing the wrong colors in this case. I only installed it to test the TIA itself; I didn't install it to try to fix anything because there's nothing to fix; the 2600's colors are perfectly fine with its original TIA installed. That looks like a useful program, but I don't have any way to use it at the moment. I ordered a Harmony cartridge a few days ago but I don't have it yet. It shipped yesterday.

I tested a TIA chip I just got in my 6-switch 2600, and in Space Invaders the tank and player 1's score are blue: Those are normally green on all my 2600s, in the Stella emulator, and in the screenshot in the manual. Is this TIA defective or do some variations of it naturally produce different colors? This is: AMI 8317MCC C010444D-01 C04075 Philippines In a 2-player game the second player's tank is light green, same color as the second player's score.

If you're referring to this picture on the Grand Idea Studio site, then that's a 2K/4K PCB, which does have a different layout than the 8K/16K/32K PCB that I have. The ATF20V8B_8K.jed file that I downloaded from the PCBWay site shows a Rev. B 8K/16K/32K PCB, and my PCB also says Rev. B on it. I wonder if my GAL chip is defective. I don't know if it can be defective yet also program and read in my programmer without any issues.

I just tried a different CRT TV and got the exact same results. My main TV is a 32" RCA CRT that I bought new in 2005. I wanted to try it with the Sears 19" TV (manufactured by Goldstar) that was our family TV from 1988-on. I haven't turned it on since about 2005, and it came on for about a second and shut off. I thought I saw a wisp of smoke, but I'm not positive; I didn't smell anything, and when I took it apart, I couldn't see any signs of anything burnt on the chassis. One of the two glass fuses was blown though (125v, 1A). The only fuse of that type I could find in my house was a 125v, 300mA one from a Nintendo/Sanyo arcade monitor chassis, so I tried that, but it blew instantly, and I don't know if that's because the fuse was too light to begin with (less than 1/3 the amperage rating of the stock fuse) or because there's a failure somewhere that would cause another 1A fuse to immediately blow too, so now I have an unexpected and unwelcome project on my hands. Then I tried a 13" Symphonic CRT TV and like I said, I got the exact same results as with my 32" TV. It must have something to do with the chroma signal because of the way the diagonal lines only accompany certain colors, and go away completely in B&W mode.

In all four of them (or five counting the 7800, which is mostly, but not entirely, devoid of the diagonal lines)? And all slightly wonky in the exact same way?

Also, I forgot to mention: with the 6-switch ones, if I switch to B&W mode, the diagonal lines go away completely and the picture is very clean, so those lines don't get produced on any shade of gray. I'm wondering if those diagonal lines are even caused by RF interference to begin with. If they were, I wouldn't think the colors being displayed would affect them at all, i.e., I would expect them to be there no matter what colors are being displayed. I don't know what else could cause them though.

It's almost certainly happening before the signal even reaches the RF cable, otherwise using RG6 cable would fix it, or at least result in some sort of change. I've already replaced capacitors and the 7805 in my heavy sixer. I'd like to know why it only happens with certain colors. It's especially weird that it doesn't even happen with all shades of green; there are both darker and lighter shades of green that it doesn't happen with. White is another color it doesn't happen with, so, e.g., Activision Skiing looks very clean. And of course, it doesn't happen with black, and there are lots of black-background 2600 games. In order to refresh my memory I just tried all of my 2600s one after the other. The two 4-switch woodgrain ones both have faint shadowy vertical lines that aren't in motion; evenly spaced about a quarter-inch apart across the whole screen ("jail bars"), and they are always there, i.e., unaffected by the colors on the screen. They didn't have the 6-switch type diagonal lines. The four 6-switch ones (3 light, 1 heavy) all have the diagonal lines that are in motion, fluctuating, and changing depending on the colors on the screen, disappearing altogether with some colors (no "jail bars" though). With one of the light sixers it was less prominent than the other three 6-switch ones. I used the stock RF cable plugged into an RCA-to-F connector for all six of them, and I haven't done anything to them except for the heavy sixer because it's the main one that I use, so as a matter of preventative maintenance I've already replaced capacitors, voltage regulator, and switches on that one. I also did the 820-ohm resistor modification from the Atari Field Service Manual to the two 4-switch ones, which drastically improved their colors. And for good measure I tried one of the light sixers with an RG6 cable (terminated with Belden PPC EX6 F connectors, along with an F-to-RCA adapter on one end to plug into the Atari's RF modulator) after trying it with its stock cable; no change whatsoever. In summary: - Replacing capacitors and the voltage regulator in the heavy sixer didn't make it any better than the light sixers that are still all stock, and one of the light sixers actually has the least amount of those diagonal lines out of all four of the 6-switch ones. - The type of RF cable makes no difference whatsoever in my house, nor does its proximity to the AC adapter and its cord. - My 4-switch versions have a completely different type of RF interference than my 6-switch versions, a type that's very similar to the type that an NES top-loader has. - I tried my 7800 again this morning too, and it has no 4-switch type "jail bars" at all and almost no 6-switch type diagonal lines. There are a couple shades of green where you can faintly and briefly see 6-switch type diagonal lines though. - Not a single speck of "snow" on any of them, ever, but the 7800 does have some minor staticky sounds in the audio that I've never noticed before. I don't know what that's all about. I used the attract mode of Space Invaders for all tests.

Did you make it from scratch? What's there so far is the most arcade-like SI I've ever seen for the 2600. You have all 55 aliens (5 rows of 11) exactly like the arcade rather than 36 (6 rows of 6) like the official 2600 port), the staggered movement that looks very arcade-like, and the small, thin-lined numbers for the score look like the arcade version too. I didn't think that such an arcade-like port was even possible on the 2600. I guess that replicating the arcade sounds can't be done though, unless it's possible to include a sound chip on a cartridge? The arcade sounds are great, especially the sound effect the UFO makes, and the sound when you shoot it, and the thumping 4-note bassline. I'd love to have an arcade-perfect port of Space Invaders on the 2600 (even if the sounds weren't perfect), especially if it had the option for 2 things from the official 2600 port that make it more fun (IMO) than the arcade version: double-shot capability, and being able to turn off shot-to-shot collisions (i.e., in the arcade version if your shot hits an enemy's shot, your shot gets cancelled out, which aggravates me to no end). Those things could be turned on and off with the difficulty switches or a menu.

I've been using an 8K EPROM every time except the one time that I tried it with a 32K EPROM with concatenated ROM files, and I do know that the JED file needs to match the size of the ROM file regardless of the size of the EPROM. I've attached the 2 JED files I've tried. The one named GAL20V8B.JED is the one that came on it, which I dumped before trying the other one (ATF20V8B_8K.jed) from that PCBWay share link. The code in them is very different; the one that came with the PCB has hardly any code at all. I just tried Asteroids (the version with fixed VSYNC that Thomas Jentzsch posted some years ago) and it displays a stable copyright screen, but when it tries to go to the attract mode, it only shows it for a split second and resets to the copyright screen, ad infinitum. One time it stayed on the attract mode screen for a little longer, maybe 2 seconds, and you could see the screen roll. That was with the ATF20V8B_8K.jed file programmed to the GAL chip. Then I tried the GAL20V8B.JED that it came programmed with, and I just got a blank screen, nothing else. Do you know if either of those JED files I attached are correct? The JED file I downloaded from the PCBWay share site is for an Atmel ATF20V8B chip, and my chip is a Lattice GAL20V8B. I'm guessing that they are interchangeable, but I don't know for sure. jed.zip

What about Activision's H.E.R.O.? I tried that one too, with the same results. Do you know of any that should definitely work? If the problem with Defender II is that it doesn't have the extra RAM on the cartridge, why does it have the same rolling screen / sync problem as SI Deluxe? Shouldn't it have a completely different problem?

I find your post to be bizarre, because it's completely at odds with how things work at my house (I'm not saying there's anything wrong with your post; I have no doubt it's accurate relative to what happens at your house). At my house the RF cable doesn't matter. I never see even a single speck of "snow," not even in a picture taken of the screen, not even with the stock RF cable (which I connect directly to the TV's tuner with an RCA-to-F adapter). That applies to all six of my Atari 2600s (four 6-switch models and two 4-switch woodgrain models) and to my Atari 7800. Also, the RF cable's proximity to the AC adapter's cord makes no difference whatsoever; they can be all tangled together or separated as far as possible and I get the exact same picture either way. Using the stock RF cable or using far superior RG6 given to me by a cable TV installer (which he had leftover after installing cable at my house many years ago) results in the exact same picture too. I do get some RF interference but it's never in the form of white specks ("snow"), but rather, it's in the form of faint/shadowy diagonal lines on the screen, which are in constant motion, and they continually vary in degree of visibility. They also vary depending on the colors being displayed. They are most prominent with certain shades of green, and they pretty much disappear with certain other colors. If you watch the attract mode in Space Invaders for example, you can see them instantly come and go at the color change points. Here's a picture of the diagonal interference lines on my "heavy sixer" (it should be opened at its original resolution [800x600] to eliminate the moire effect caused by the forum software resizing it to embed into this post): My 6-switch models are the worst in that respect (but they have the best colors by far); the 4-switch models have less of that type of interference, and my 7800 has none at all. Here's what that same screen looks like on my 7800: The cleanest RF output I've ever seen is from my frontloader NES; it's nearly as clean as its direct composite video output, and that's using it's stock automatic RF switchbox, which has a very skinny coaxial cable, even skinnier than the stock Atari ones. I would love to know how to eliminate those diagonal lines on my 6-switch models, especially my heavy one (because I use that one the most), but I have no idea how. Like I said, the type of coaxial cable and its proximity to the power supply's cord have no effect on it whatsoever. It must be possible though, because my 7800 has a very clean picture by RF standards, almost as clean as my NES's RF picture.

The problem is that the screen is rolling. There are brief moments of stability for up to about 5 seconds, but it's rolling most of the time, like it's not syncing properly with my CRT TV. The first game I tried was a hack (Space Invaders Deluxe 8K), and I thought maybe there was some issue with the hack, so I erased the EPROM and tried an official 8K game: Defender II, and it did the same thing. So then I tried some different EPROMs. The first one I tried was a Fujitsu 27256 (I concatenated 4 copies of the ROM to make it 32K) and the next ones I tried were a National Semiconductor 27C64 and a Fujitsu 2764 (no need to concatenate the ROM file with those), and I got the exact same results. Also, I tried two different Atari 2600s: a "heavy sixer" and a 4-switch woodgrain version, both of which work perfectly with all of my cartridges, and got the same results with both. The PCB is a common design that's been shared on PCBWay's website for example (link), and is sold by 8-Bit Classics (link) and maybe others. Mine came from 8-Bit Classics, and they said they would send me another one, but it might end up doing the same thing. Here's a video of what it's doing (note that the title screen is stable; the picture doesn't start rolling until the attract mode starts or a game is started): rolling_picture.mp4 I also looked at the code on the GAL chip and it didn't seem to have much on it, so I reprogrammed it with the JED file from that PCBWay link, which had a lot more code in it, but I still got the exact same results.