Jumpman1981

September 7, 2023

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.

May 25, 2022

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.

May 24, 2022

May 24, 2022

Mamehaze just uploaded this earlier today...

March 10, 2022

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?

December 31, 2021

28 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Ah, too bad. Aurcade shouldn't be listing sites that aren't open yet, but I guess the policing in that regard is lax at best.

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.

December 31, 2021

On 12/29/2021 at 3:39 PM, Shaggy the Atarian said:

My guess is that the Replay Classic Arcade Museum would best fit what you're looking for

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.

October 25, 2021

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.

September 23, 2021

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.

September 23, 2021

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.

September 23, 2021

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.

September 23, 2021

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:

September 23, 2021

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?

May 20, 2020

On 5/19/2020 at 1:12 PM, John Stamos Mullet said:

As of MAME 0.116, the Donkey Kong sample set is no longer required and thus I've moved it to the 'Older Samples' page ~Twisty~ June 03, 2007

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.

May 16, 2020

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.

May 15, 2020

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?

May 15, 2020

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.

April 27, 2020

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?

April 9, 2020

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.

April 9, 2020

Revision 3, and possibly the last:

Edit: Never realised how awkward my initial post was...

Edit 2: For comparison:

March 19, 2020

On 3/14/2020 at 1:35 AM, BassGuitari said:

No, it's the same chipset as all the other Super Pong systems. Functionally it's just Super Pong but with handheld controllers and Pro/Am speed settings. Or the same as the Super Pong Pro-Am Ten but with 1-2 players instead of 1-4.

I See. Seems odd that Atari would go to all that effort with manuals and such, just to can it for something that's arguably inferior.

March 13, 2020

On 3/11/2020 at 8:42 PM, Nathan Strum said:

Evil Hater Taco Trolls™ sounds like one of those Milton Bradley board games from the 70's. Just needs the Pop-O-Matic™ dice.

(Kids shouting) "Evil Hater Taco Trolls! Evil Hater Taco Trolls!"

(Narrator) "Those Evil Hater Taco Trolls are back! Can you stop 'em? Move your player around the board using the Pop-O-Matic dice! Land on the right square, and you can send those Evil Hater Taco Trolls back under the rock they crawled out from!"

(Kid) "Take that Evil Hater Taco Troll!!" (Kid slams plastic "AtariAge" rock over the Evil Hater Taco Troll in the center of the board)

(Narrator) "But don't land on William Shatner!"

(Kid lands on picture of William Shatner wearing a Mariachi outfit, "Jarabe Tapatio" starts playing from a tiny little speaker)

(Kid) "Oh no! Now I have to eat a taco!"

(Other kids, laughing) "Oh no! Es muy mal!"

(Kid, grimacing, picks up a fake plastic taco, and shoves it into the face of his player piece - a tiny, plastic Michael Arzt)

(Kid) "Nom, nom, nom!"

(Narrator) "Choose from all of your favorite AtariLand characters! Arzty-Farzty! Cheesy-Chezzy! Frugal-Feargal! And Hands-Down-The-Back-Of-His-Pants-Wyatt!"
(Kid, moving piece, landing on a square, cringes) "Oh no! Mike Kennedy!! Now I have to start all over again!"

(Kids shouting) "Evil Hater Taco Trolls! Evil Hater Taco Trolls!"

(Narrator) "That's Evil Hater Taco Trolls!! Coming soon from Atari!"

(Narrator, in fast, lower voice) "Evil Hater Taco Trolls requires some assembly. Evil Hater Taco Trolls will not work with the AtariVCS, but you can stream it for $5 and play it on a Raspberry Pi. Netflix not included."