toddtmw

I just played asteroids on my FB portable and it still holds up. I didnt appreciate how hard it would be to have so many moving items on the screen at the same time back then. There is ZERO flicker. Meanwhile, the Pac Man ghosts flicker so much they are almost invisible. I dont know how they did it. Asteroids plays better on the game pad of the portable than it did with a joystick. I really enjoyed it.

I was so disappointed with PacMan. I also saved my money to buy it and felt completely ripped off. Space Invaders and Asteroids greatly changed the LOOK of the game, but the gameplay and sound effects were similar enough that I think they got away with it. With PacMan EVERYTHING about it just completely sucked. At the time, I didn't care about the ghost AI or the longevity of the gameplay because I couldn't get past the suckiness of the initial experience to bring myself to play it long enough. I mean, PacMan didn't even turn his head to look where he was going! I didn't care how hard that was to do on the 2600, it needed to be done. Then, later when I saw Ms. PacMan, I was even more ticked off at the original. Didn't Miss PacMan use a larger ROM chip so the programmer had more room to work with? Yeah, let's spend x million dollars buying the rights to the game and then cheap out on the rom chips to save a few cents per title. It was just stupid. PacMan will always be a stupid, worthless game in the history of Atari. It has no redeeming qualities, it was a money grab that showed Atari had completely lost its way, and didn't care about its customers at all. I mean, at least with ET, there was an excuse (VERY limited development window) for the game to not play well. There is no excuse at all for PacMan. That's my opinon, and if you don't agree with me, I'll change it!

That's crazy. I just bought a flashback portable off of another site, it will be here tomorrow too. I don't know which one it is, but here is a picture. I paid $31 with shipping.

same.

I would like one please.

So, is this something that Atari made to maybe test prototype games or something?

Ive seen wire wrapped ones. This looks more ... professional.

I just bought this from an auction site. There really was no information. Does anyone have any information about this? Thank you.

I have that exact cable. It is really nice. I highly recommend it.

Check ebay for 800xls. They arent that expensive. Buy and resell them until you get a socketed one!

I bought one of these: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CQR5L1C/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 And 2 of these: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01ERJIA42/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Cut the midi cable in half and wire the individual leads into the wires of the adapter and now you have 2 modern power supplies for 800xl and newer computers. (Make sure you triple-check each pin to make sure it is connected correctly. Use a volt meter!) Todd

Hang on, let's not lump all of these vendors togehter. In my (limited) experience, Best and Lotharak both ship immediately. (I haven't ordered from B&C ... yet). Let's be clear about this. Yes, Best and Lotharak (and I suspect, B&C) are also pretty much one man shops, but let's not imply that they have a reputation of being slow to deliver. It's easy to say, you shouldn't expect speed from Steve because he doesn't promise speed. That's fair, but he doesn't set any expectation at all and in the absence of information, people make assumptions based on their experience with other vendors. If his order form said "Allow 2-4 weeks for delivery", anyone complaining here could be safely ignored. Since that is not the case, I think it is fair to at least warn people (probably not as often as it seems to come up) that if you order from him, it will likely take more than 2 or 3 days.

The Rana drives were a lot smaller than the 1050's weren't they? I wouldn't think the 1050 mech would fit.

Cartridge.

Atari 800's are so modular, it seems like the best way to narrow it down would be to swap parts with a known good 800. (ROM card, CPU card, etc) then once you have it narrowed down to the module, start trouble-shooting the components on that module. Of course, that means you need a working 800...

What happens if you press reset when the green screen is there? Does it act like it is resetting? Or does it just stay green? (I don't know what either means, just trying to see if the machine is responsive to anything at all after initial boot.)

I got a ton I could 2-day USPS you a box if you PM me your address. (Although with Labor Day, it won't go out until Tuesday, but I could get it to the post office tonight or tomorrow, so it should go out first thing...)

I bought from Best back when I had my original Atari. I think I still hava a catalog around here from back then somewhere. I ordered a 1200xl mylar from him a couple of weeks ago and it was perfect. Great response, quick shipping and a quality product. The story on what he went through to get the Mylars to work is worth the read, and I'm thankful he did it!

I wonder what it would take to make a kiosk like this today? Canabalize cartridge ports from a bunch of 2600's? And then what?

Or another way to test it is to only plug one of your other drives into the 1200xl without anything else connected (in that case, make sure it is set to be Drive 1)

Glad you made it! Especially since you keep finding old Atari stuff laying around your house you forgot about, like the 320k 130XE I bought from you. I wouldn't want anything to happen to your Atari collection! (Or you and your family... 😯)

Funny that we both posted "Weird drive stuff" threads about the same time...

Are the wires perhaps replacing bad or missing traces in the board?

I got an 810 on eBay. When I tested it, it sounded faster than stock, but the Hapy software said it wasn't happy. So, I opened it up and there is a wire going from one of the pins of a very small chip to a blue rectangular thing (that is the technical term, I think) and then into the shielding. Here is a picture: Anyone know what this is? Thanks.

Steve has a very loyal following in the community and he has done great things for it. The thing that concerns me is that I don't know what happens if he ever becomes unwilling or unable to provide support. I've had this happen with "modern" software I've purchased and begun using what was written by a single person. If that person gets a real job, or a girlfriend or wife or just grows tired of it, there is no way anyone else can pick it up and run with it. I end up having to find a way to convert to another application that performs a similar task. If I had realized before I placed my order that Steve's SIO2PC only works with his software (and that the software is not included in the purchase price of the device), I would have probably gone with a different solution. As it was, as soon as I ran into an issue and Steve didn't respond (I assume he didn't respond because I did not pay for the software, so I was not entitled to support) my options were to pay $50 to register the closed-source software that has questionable long-term utility or spend ~$50 for a competing product that does the same thing, but works with open-source software that can be maintained by the community. I opted for the latter. At my day job, when we buy specialized software from a company, we add in a source code escrow agreement that says we get the source code if the company exits the business. I've often thought that a company that did that on a smaller scale for independent developers would allow these smaller devlopers to offer peace of mind to their customers in the event that the software stops being supported. At any rate, the Atarimax catalog of products does look nice and I am happy (no pun intended) with the 1050 Happy Enhancement I bought from him.