Keatah

Real men went straight to The Source.

Do you think this is good coverage for running the vast majority of PC software and games? Modern i7, 64GB, GTX1080 Pentium III 1.4, 1GB, GeForce4600 128MB, AWEGold64 486 DX2-50, 16MB, CL5422 1MB, SB16 And of course VirtualBox, DosBox, PCem for convenience and picking up other combos of speeds and hardware. And for playing this on i7s or i9s. Just trying to get a good solid perspective before I clear out extraneous PC hardware that doesn't support those configurations. I'm not too concerned with disk storage as I have enough to adjust up or down. Thoughts and commentary are welcome.

updates on this project?

I'll second the comment on the parts being worth the same or more compared to the entire cabinet. I think the only situation where the cab would be worth more all-together would be if it was in really good condition. By now I would imagine that most game cabs have either deteriorated, rotted, got burned or trashed. And the surviving examples are in private collections or money-making commercial arcades. Both of those locations would demand spare parts in preference over complete working units. I also don't see multi-cade units appreciating in value. They are like commonplace PCs or any other appliance. You have many manufacturers of ready-made units, Arcade 1up, Arcade Legends, and complete 16TB HyperSpin plug-in-play kits! And more.

I was pretty much that way with the Apple II. I learned so many basic concepts and how-to's on that machine it's enough for many chapters. Of course the specifics are long outdated by some 40 odd years, but the direction and svelte mobility of thought continue to be refined and applied today. Across many technical disciplines. I got going in the very late 1970's with it all. And the Apple II was pretty much the only game in my town. Aside from TRS-80. It was my grandparents that highly recommended I get something with color graphics and that seemed to be an important factor. But not the only one. They said I'd be bored with monochrome. I got to looking at a picture of the II series motherboard and it had hundreds, no, thousands!! of chips. Some were bigger. And the biggest one of all was the main controller of the whole shebang. I knew it was a smart computer then. And they were all lined up is perfect order. Aesthetically pleasing and futuristic. Unlike my toy room at the time. I even imagined programming (or somehow getting) a Dr. Theopolis type program. After all he had 6 chips going, and the Apple II had a thousand!! So yeh.. In an alternate timeline I could have just as easily got going with a C64 or Atari 400/800. They were good machines. I was already invested and entrenched in the Apple II ecology. And I *did* get a 400/800 and a 64 later, though. I used them for gaming and entertainment mostly. The Apple continued to be my general-purpose computer right up to the time of the later Amiga models and 386/486 PC era.

What did you do? You got a portable computer.

Of course.

Not sure anything “MegaMan” has much to do with Atari VCS style.

A key to keeping capacitors healthy is to use them a bit every coupla years.

BITD I had nearly all the 8-bit systems beginning with the Atari VCS and ending just before I got a 486 PC in the early 1990's. I don't recall ever hating any system except for the Amiga. Systems like the O^2 and Intellivision simply had different personalities and matched (at one time or another) my various seasonal moods. I disliked the Amiga because of lack of available software (to me) and promises by advertisements for products that were equally unavailable. They said there would be arcade games available. One was. Marble Madness. That was it. And on the hardware side I so wanted to get the Tecmar stuff, the stuff that had red leds and stood beside the machine. It all looked too cool, and turned out to be vaporware. Really pissed me off. But today I've become rather fond of the platform more or less and WinUAE takes its place alongside my other emulators.

That's ok. Those of us that don't have killer skills and such can, and do, participate in product improvement by testing and reporting bugs and edge cases. And making suggestions too. All the bug reports and "complaints" that go into making emulators for example, do you think they are just to bitch and moan and complain? Perhaps 5% are, the other 95% are done with the intent of improving the product. It's like in the Altirra threads. Not a page goes by that someone isn't making a suggestion or reporting something. As a result it's become the best Atari 8-bit emu in town!

Since common wisdom says FPGAs are exact recreations of the hardware, wouldn't it be best to add-in the extra chips used in enhanced cartridges directly onto the FPGA? So that when the game code asks for it, it's ready to roll.

Ugh.. The regularity and rapidity with which things like this show up on ebay is tiring. The scalping is tiring. Myself and my "gang" turn a blind eye to all this nonsense and just move along. Splotches of ink (signatures of any kind) shouldn't raise the value of any electronics unless designed by like space aliens or god himself! There you go..

I think that once you throw high levels of complexity into a game, more than what was/is possible on the VCS with or without CPU assist, you're no longer adhering to the "design language". It is now some other style of game. Sure it's a style. A sign of the times too, a marker in computer history, and many other things. Once you start bending rules and deviating from originality, well, you've just made something different and new. The only thing that can be claimed with the new thing is that it may have a heritage reaching back to the VCS. Hardware was simple and almost mechanical in nature. As a child I could almost have imagined the VCS (and other simple electronic games of the era) having pushrods, motors, pulleys and gears, valves and switches inside them. Not unlike the Tomy Blip style games. The VCS is from a time when chips had only a few thousand transistors. And there was little to get in the way between you and the running GameProgram. And it felt that way too. The VCS was like starting out on a journey, full tank of antimatter, 100% shields, no damage or anything. Especially when pulp magazines kept reiterating that the growth of capability of "computer stuff" was happening by leaps and bounds. Couldn't wait to see what came next.. What enhancement came next.. All the new styles and flavours of each new company, CBS, Imagic, Activision, TigerVision, and so many more. But all in the same big-picture style due to the hardware. The Atari VCS console was also a warm and welcoming sight after a long hellish day at school. No more headachy visions about invisible men in the sky fading in and out (religion class) or utterly meaningless stories about people in covered wagons trying to cross the country (history class). For fuck'sake, just wait till they made airplanes! Then do your trip. So.. I'd come home, sit my fat-ass on the beanbag and play Space Invaders or Slot Racers or StarShip to decompress and eat McDonald's. I could just about handle a quarter pounder and was now imagining getting BigMacs! When done "doing Atari" I would read real books, important books, like astronomy books or programming books. Books that actually taught me something useful and relevant.

I think there is a growing annoyance with "fees" everywhere. Not necessarily singling out the Legends cab itself.

BYOG is interesting, if only from a marketing point of view. It isn't something I would ever use. And that's alright. Like the previous poster said - I wouldn't pay again for something I already bought. There'd have to be significant upgrades and changes to the whole experience. And playing "sit-down" games on a stand-up upright arcade console isn't considered a change by me, let alone a significant one.

If all devices are built to HDMI spec then there shouldn't be an issue. I wonder which device, here, isn't to specification?

I wonder if this would handle Atari's Assault? I know something would have to be done about the controls, but I know Assault works on the MAME 0.68 and on a Pentium III.

Most of the time the problem is making the right connections to buy/sell/giveaway. At least that's been my experience.

..send money to 'zem all!