R.Cade

There is a lot of fake and junk media out there... and it's difficult to identify the fakes.

Could be bad connector, but could also as easily be bad RAM or PPU.

My memories of this game are skewed, because the local laundromat had a "Cosmic Guerilla" marquee on a machine with a "Cosmic Alien" board in it for years, and I played it many many times. I never suspected it was the wrong game, as there was no title screen that I remember that had the game name... Regardless, it was a pretty fun Galaxian-style clone. I liked the abrupt ship movements... .i.e, they were not smooth and would suddenly swoop toward you really quickly. Plus it had a "boss" which was unique at the time.

Experiences vary... I've had people send me 1000's of disks over the last 2 decades and some batches all work fine, and some all have problems. I would chalk it up to storage conditions and climate. Once you find a batch not working properly, though, just stop unless you want a lot of work cleaning out your disk drive. I've never had one ruined, but I did have to open the drive and scrub the head well to get it off. You get good at spotting them, though. Just take a look under a good light (or magnified light if you have failing eyesight like me). If you see what look like water spots, don't even try it unless you are prepared to go into extreme measures and clean it and your drive well to try to rescue the data.

Just out of curiosity, was the 2600 actually referred to as the Atari 2600 in the 80's? I always that was a modern way of referring to it. We're talking 1983 here specifically...

None out there besides new ones from Best?

When I saw one of those last year, I figured you could buy the panels and make one at home and adapt MAME. However, at the time the panels were expensive and it would have cost thousands. I haven't looked, but it may be better now. If my math is correct, you'd need 992 of the 8x8 panels at $8-10/each. Ouch.

Sounds like a great service/deal. Do you pictures of the modded output on a TV?

My NanoPEB does this. The documentation says: CALL UNMOUNT(<drive number>) – un-mounts (removes) the disk drive and set the volume to the matching drive number. In other words, DSK3 will have VOL3 re-mounted. I take this to mean when you UNMOUNT a disk, it actually mounts the default VOL3. FWIW, I find everything about disk and file management on the TI99/4a confusing, and this doesn't help.

I would go grab it. You'll never see another one again...

Yes, I knew it was the 5200 version, but didn't realize it was also the same as the 400/800 cart version until I tested that, so I did correct my post.

The one with the simpler color-cycling logo...

The "rainbow color" version is the cartridge version, looks the same on the 800 or 5200. I assume any XEX or disk version of that one is a "Glenn the 5200 man" production or a cart rip, since I've booted all archived original disk versions and they are all the overlapped artifact-color title screen version.

Hey guys, I had a chance to play the test version (hopefully it was the newest build or close) and I had a couple of comments on the pinball part. 1) It's awesome- great work. 2) Some things happened that aren't normally possible. Example - hitting a ball with the right flipper as it goes over it should not be able to direct the ball back to the right. At best, it should go up the middle or to the left side. 3) I was never able to hit the ball on the top and knock it across to the other side, which is how you get back to the maze. I tried for 10-15 minutes, never hit it once. It needs to be easier or at least possible.

Did she work for Tronics?

This seems like nonsense, since it was basically just a portable Master System. What did they copy?

Hello, Unfortunately, I have an Atari 800XL and and 600XL both with dead mylar keyboards. I'd like to fix at least one of them and wondered if someone had one (or more) of these computers I could use for parts that might have a good or repairable keyboard? I'd rather have the mechanical (keyswitch) keyboards, even though I know I could buy the mylars from Best- I'd rather not if there are better keyboards out there. -Pete

Mandela effect...

I measured the power to the RAM chips and it goes to 0v immediately after power off. It is actually the RAM chips somehow holding it internally.

Agree, that is what they look like. They are tan, not grey. That picture above is very "cold" as they call it on my TV, which is toward the blue side.

Mine takes an extremely long time to forget what's in RAM and do a cold reset. A minute or more... no exaggeration. That is one reason I put in a replacement ROM, so I could actually cold boot the thing.

FYI, this reverse-BASIC patch does not seem to work on the XEGS (Changing F0 to D0 and recalulating checksum). It ignores it and BASIC is still enabled... I guess the code is slightly different due to the option to enable Missile Command, etc?

I thought they were always a little on the "orangey-yellowy" side and not straight grey. The C64 is the same way. Some say brown/tan, some say grey. I wouldn't try to retro-brite a 400 or 800- they were from the 70's, and earth tones were the thing.

Yes, "M" for make an Adventure disk.

I've done it- it looks OK. I did some further mods to reduce the noise in the picture. Removed a cap, and added one from GND to 5v to filter the power to that part of the board. If anything, it is *too* clear. You can see every pixel, like there is a horizontal and vertical grid. I've tried to filter it out to no avail so far... There is a little further you can go for S-Video, and I haven't done that part. (The moire effect is just my camera taking a photo of curved CRT) Really, now that I compare it to my 800XL standard- it looks the same, so it may just be my CRT. It is a "Super Fine Pitch" Trintron.