Jumpman1981

Wow. Congrats, Al. If anyone deserves to be Atari's historian, it's you. Hopefully this acquisition turns out to be the best thing for everyone.

By the way, for anyone trying it out in MAME: MameHaze says that saving hasn't been implemented yet, so the game settings and high scores reset to default when you exit.

Mamehaze just uploaded this earlier today...

I'm sure I've seen a pic somewhere of a Midway Pac-Land with a joystick. Like an actual factory-installed one. Could it be possible that either a few joystick ones were made, or that there was some kind of obscure retrofit that Midway did, like how Nintendo used to AV mod NES top-loaders for anyone who complained to them?

I think the reason it got a listing is because it was going to open, but then they suddenly went quiet. Apart from them setting up a few of their games at a convention once, nothing seems to have happened. Finding out more is difficult, not only because of how long it's been, but also because there's a well-known place in Florida with the same name.

I hate to be that guy, but Replay doesn't seem to exist (yet). They've been trying to get it off the ground since 2010, but, apart from Aurcade listings, there hasn't been anything about it in the past couple years. It's a shame, because the place sounds damn cool, and they've claimed to have the original film-based version of Wild Gunman.

https://github.com/historicalsource?tab=repositories Some big names in here: Asteroids, Missile Command, Star Wars, Lunar Lander, Centipede, Millipede, Battlezone, Gravitar, Black Widow, Tempest, Quantum, the list goes on... There's also some non-Atari code as well, like NBA Jam, Sinistar, and Frenzy. From what I can tell, .DOC files are project outlines and developer notes, while the rest are all code.

I imagine if it's loose enough, it might do to indicate if the belt's a problem. Not something you'd fit permanently, but enough to see if there's any other potential issues.

It's a band, but it's only a placeholder. When I initially started working on it, the original belt had stretched and was beginning to perish, so I found a band that was roughly the same diameter to see if the original being loose was the problem. I only left it in as a reference for how the real thing goes through the mechanism.

Ah right... I thought it was the other way around. I still don't get how it's able to load fine if I use an adaptor and play the tapes through my Walkman.

I did adjust the head azimuth, but I don't have any blanks to hand so I can't do the save-and-load test. I didn't know that the data speed depended on the computer, I thought it was like normal tape decks where the tapes themselves are universal and the mechanisms have slight differences in them to run at the same speed on both frequencies. Edit: here's a pic of the insides for reference:

Hey all. A while ago, I posted about a box of Commodore parts that I was randomly given. Most of it is scraps that I'll probably sell off, but one of the things I decided to hold onto is a Datasette. The thing is, it's having issues loading the tape. I've managed to figure out that it's a mechanical issue, as it loads perfectly fine through one of those aux-to-cassette adapters. Basically, whenever I go to load a program, I'll start the tape and the Commodore just won't find anything, or it will start loading properly, only for the Commodore to report that it's found a string of garbage and/or give an Out Of Memory error. I know it's not the Commodore or the Datasette's electronics, because, as mentioned above, using a cassette adaptor loads things perfectly. I've done some repairs on cassette decks before, so I've already checked belts, head alignment, etc, but no luck. I have a feeling that it may have something to do with the speed, but I can't think of anything that could affect it outside of the motor. I will note that one of the Commodores in the same box was PAL, so could it be that the mechanism's been set up for 50hz? Any ideas?

Huh, guess I'm wrong. I don't know why I thought DK's roar would be TTL, perhaps it's because most of the other sounds (ex: all of Jumpman's movements) are done that way.

IIRC, Donkey Kong's roar is generated by discrete logic circuits (TTL), so the only way to hear it uncompressed would be if someone made a high-quality recording of the original board. You have to remember that Donkey Kong's MAME samples were recorded in the late 90s/early 00s (MAME itself dates to 1997), probably by someone holding a microphone to the cabinet's speaker, so they're not exactly the cleanest. Pauline's voice probably belongs to an intern at Nintendo or Ikegami, rather than an actress. Nintendo wasn't in the best financial condition at the time of DK's development, so they probably couldn't afford to call a professional in.

Is it possible that the Kid Vid data is simply being interpreted as button presses by the Atari? As in, you could theoretically tap the joystick in a sequence and fool the game into thinking you're playing a tape?

Hey all. A while ago I was given a box of various broken Commodore stuff, and I've finally decided to try and fix them. It's 2 VICs and a C64, with a couple of accessories and a lot of custom hardware (previous owner was a bit of an experimenter). I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on what could be up with them. VIC-20 #1 - Black Screen of Death - Voltage appears to be fine. Second board revision VIC-20 #2 - So close to working, freezes on "CBM BASIC V2" screen and emits a loud buzz - I've heard something about there being too much power from the PSU, but I checked and it's getting 9V, as it should. Second board revision C64 - Black screen - PLA's getting nearly 11V, two rams have a jumper wire running between them. 250425 board revision, if that helps. Datasette - Works, but the mechanism's too slow for my fully-working C64 to recognise the signal - replacing the belts hasn't helped. If anyone could give me some advice on how to fix them, I'd really appreciate it.

I think it may be a combination of the second and third. It looks to me like a generic Jamma cab that someone's put a Ms. Pac-Man board into, said board may or may not be official. An official Midway re-release in the 1990s would most likely be impossible, as they lost the rights to anything Pac-Man related in late 1984, and a full bootleg cab is unlikely too, as Ms. Pac-Man wasn't exactly the newest game around when this cab appears to have been made, so there'd be no real incentive to bootleg it. Plus, if someone were to make a bootleg, they, as you mentioned, would remove Midway's name from anything they could find, rather than adding to them. That's what I think it most likely is, but, in the end, who knows?

Gotta say, the "cue-and-response" gameplay style they mentioned really reminded me of Dragon's Lair. I wonder if the game can be reconstructed to some degree from the source code fragment above.

Revision 3, and possibly the last: Edit: Never realised how awkward my initial post was... Edit 2: For comparison: