Mux

Hi There! I did a search and while cartridge repro's came up, those were from a galaxy, far far away.. Sooo, the question I have is whether or not anyone knows a link or two of people that still sell repro cartridge shells? TIA, -Mux

Would love to hear more! If it's stalled / abandoned, any chance you'll open source it?

As compared to getting throwing a scanlines + NTSC filter on the HDMI signal to make it look more 'real' ?

Damn! 88 bucks???? SOLD!

You'd be surprised how many TV's still have a composite-in! Sometimes they masquerade as regular headphone type plugs, but there's actually quite a few still out there.. But yeah, I generally agree.. It's definitely narrowing down your audience if it's composite only.

I'm not talking about HD games on SD. Basically stuff like the standalone paceman and what not. There's really no need (other than convenience) to have HDMI for games that are essentially 256x224. Ironically, people will then try to emulate a CRT by putting a filter / scanlines over it ?

How big a deal is it for a new game console to only have composite rather than HDMI? Would that be a dealbreaker for buying one? A lot of 'tabletop' games still have composite, presumably to keep the price down.. Personally, I don't really care as I have a bunch of CRT's at home but... -Mux

WRT bits -vs- bytes.. It's still mapped as a byte but, as pointed out earlier, some bits don't physically exist. Usually they're marked with an 'x' or '-' or something similar. Think of it as having 4 wires on a bus rather than 8. The non-connected wires contain 'junk' as well, they're not connected. The copy mode is supposed to help you speed up updating VDP registers although I don't really see the advantage as it's still a MOV instruction. I guess it helps you don't have to switch back and forth. -Mux

Although I (personally) haven't used it, according to the doc there are 128 bytes external to the CPU. Besides that RAM that is internal to the processor there are 128 bytes of RAMexternal to the processor. To enable the external ram set P14 low and P13 high. The memory can now be read and written to using the MOVX command. Looking at the PCB, it's an external IC..

You can find it here: http://www.atarihq.com/danb/o2.shtml It does state there are 64 bytes but some of them are taken up by the BIOS (collision bits for instance). Hope this helps! -Mux

It's got 32 bytes of internal ram and another 128 bytes of extra ram you can enable using one of the ports. Check out the O2 doc for more info..

Judging by the lack of demand I've told the manufacturer to put the project on hold. I've got a tentative order of around 200 units but that would leave me with 800 carts, which isn't great.. @ozyr - I contacted a manufacturer in China and sent them a cartridge shell to get a quote. Most of the cost goes to the initial mold (which you'd get send as well if there's ever more demand) and shipping, which comes in at around $500. The carts themselves are about 50 cents. *IF* there was a lot of demand the price would go down to about $2.50/cart or so but at this point, there is.. err, no point... -Mux

Actually, it'd be $5/cart and, if there's enough demand, the price goes down to about $3/cart. Most of the cost is in shipping and the upfront cost of the mould. If you wanted to go all-out, you'd probably (again, in volume although a lot lower) come to about $10 for COG's (cart, pub, eprom, inlay and printed box).

Anyone? Anyone interested? If not, recommendations for cross-posting on other forums (already posted on videopac.nl) would be appreciated. I really would like to get this off the ground but can't spot the entire amount up front...

The O2 is a niche system for sure. There are quite a few home-brews though but all devs tend to canibalize carts which is a bit unfortunate IMO. As for your idea, you'd need to make sure that it would accommodate different size PCB's as well.. The 7800 PCB *just* about manages to fit into a standard 2600 by utilizing the original plastic tab cutouts.. -Mux

Hi everyone! So I had a company draw up a quote about creating reproduction cartridges. While the cartridges themselves are dirt cheap (about 50 cents/piece), the mould and shipping is what makes it come to (roughly) $5k for 1000 pieces. Is there any interest in me going forward with this? Ideally, I'd increase the run to 2000 or more but I would really need to be sure I can sell them :-) Thoughts? -Mux

Manic MIner was NOT written in forth. It was completely written in assembler to squeeze every bit of memory out of it. -Mux

Read about the 'Coleco Chameleon' on Gamasutra today and almost instantly barfed. Don't know when this became public knowledge on here but they're effectively redoing the same S.H.I.T. under the Coleco brand. If Coleco is smart, the run away from this thing as fast as possible. This has NOTHING to do with the original Coleco and is just another pitch with a different angle. If this is their 'new console' I hope, and this might sound mean spirited, that it receives a similar treatment as the previous one. -Mux

Dude, that's awesome! Looks like a helluva lot of work.. Much appreciated! -Mux

At this point I'm just following the thread to see how much deeper they can dig the hole they're digging. WRT to the prototype video, as others have already stated, its off-the-shelf devboards stuck together with a jag-shell covering it to avoid what board is being used (looks like a digilent board actually). The whole thing looks staged as fuck. An old analog tek-scope (seriously?), an aoyue SMT soldering station and other shit that has absolutely nothing to do with it. I would have been fine with them showing a single DE1 or whatever if what was running on it was relevant. The demo looks like one that came with the board and isn't relevant at all IMO. Why go through all the trouble to create a window / blob system, add a USB stack etc. This is nothing but a last-ditch effort to attempt to save face and 'prove' they have something which seems to have exasperated the whole thing.. Btw, I first though he said 'the power supply is there to supply 5v power' to the proto but it sounds like he says 'to supply VOLT power'.. WTF? [Edit: if you blow up the clip, the screen shows a complete desktop environment. Kudos! (sarcasm)] -Mux

I'm actually kinda surprised that, at least from the outset, there's actually a bit of a backlash against cartridges... or am I completely wrong here? I pretty much had the same idea when I made my console, complete with web-ordering services for getting games done for devs. Over the course of this thread though, it's interesting to see that cartridges are still popular... BUT FOR OLD SYSTEMS as in flash cards, multi-cards and what not. Am I just reading this wrong or is there a genuine backlash against going with cartridges. Some of the reviews just blatantly blame them for not being with modern times. Also somewhat surprised that the 3DS hasn't been compared (although it's technically not a cartridge in the true sense, just serial storage). Last but not least, 16MB of nor-flash sets you back about a buck, so even if you add a tenner for the case and what not, cartridges shouldn't really cost more than $20... -Mux

I'm sorry but listening to Mike explaining what an FPGA is and how it works is cringeworthy..While he admits that he's neither a software or a hardware guy, at least have a friggin' idea what you're talking about or be able to explain it in layman's terms... Oh, and there are SNES and Genesis cores out there... -Mux

From the comments on that last link: RETRO VGS Here is another KS campaign that ended in January. Again, nothing showing and these are two of the more recent campaigns. Again, know that KS goes through a real approval process before lighting these up and to see these types of campaigns get through is a bit disturbing. No credible team and NOTHING to show. -https://www.kickstarter.com/.../supergfx-pc-gaming... Sure. It also never got funded and reached a whopping $51 out of the (more reasonable) $25k they wanted.. Not exactly a great example if you ask me... -Mux

$3.1M dollar as a stretch goal for adding an FPGA is severe overkill. There's not that much difference between FPGA's, cost wise. A 25k Cyclone 5 costs ~$35 in single quantities whereas a 50k LE and 100k LE roughly come in at around $50 and $80, again in single quantity. Aside from that, there are others (Xilinx, Lattice Semi) who have different models and sizes. So in all, as pointed out here several times, a functional prototype is going to cost around $1000, no IGG/KS required. FWIW, Mist runs numerous 16-bit consoles / computers just fine with (IIRC) ~23K LEs, so around $30-50. -Mux

There's something odd about John Carlsen's LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johncarlsen In that he's got all these things listed but apparently only worked for one company? With regards to 'old technology', considering his vast resume I don't think that would be a problem? Just curious here, especially after 'liking' comments that actually seem sensible yet go against what Mike's putting out.. Maybe there's some in-fighting going on or the blame game has started internally? -Mux