Tooth Protector

I'd like to put in a plug for DCStella, the Atari 2600 VCS emulator for Dreamcast. I've played Atari 2600 games in emulation on a variety of platforms, including PC, PS2, Xbox, and Dreamcast. And for whatever reason, I've had the most fun playing 'em on the DC. Perhaps it's partially the Dreamcast controller: the analog stick and the buttons feel extremely natural when they are used to play VCS games. My two cents, Tim

Hey, Just for those readers who aren't familiar with BitTorrent, here are some relevant Web links: The official BitTorrent home page: http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/ If you'd prefer to use a so-called "experimental" BitTorrent client instead of the original one, visit this site: http://home.quicknet.nl/qn/prive/romeria/clients.htm Here are my personal favorite places to download .TORRENT files: http://www.suprnova.org http://www.torrentbits.org You can always find loads of torrents by using eMule; simply do a search for filenames using an extension filter for .TORRENT. Hope that helps, Tim

Reptone, I'm seriously beginning to doubt your seriousness, pal. After you've downloaded, installed, and started eMule, the next thing to do is to update the server list. Visit the following Web page and click one of the add to eMule hyperlinks. http://ed2k.2x4u.de/index.html The trick is to quick-sort the serverlist in eMule to ensure that you are connecting to the server with the highest number of users. As regards your search string, I would recommend you filter your search to show you files > 100 MB and just use simple keywords: SNES, Genesis, NES, etc. You'll find what you need. And as long as you possess hard copies of all the ROMs you download, your legal bases are covered. Later, Tim

Although you can purchase so-called "solderless" mod chips, I haven't heard much good about them. Essentially, unless you are pretty handy with the soldering iron, then I would recommend that you ask a friend who is a pro to install the chip for you. Disassembling the Xbox is a snap. On the other hand, the mod chip itself requires something like 10 wires to be soldered to the main circuit board; at least one of these wires is TINY. But someone who can solder really well should be able to finish the job in less than 15 minutes. Check out the tutorials section on the Xbox-scene.com link I gave you. I learned just about everything I know about modding Xboxes from there. -Tim

Reptone, Have you used eMule? It took some patience (like eight day's worth), but I amassed my MAME ROM set by using this P2P program. http://www.emule-project.net/ If you are new to eMule, then I'd recommend you visit the following Web page; it includes some links to some tutorials. http://www.emule-help.com/links.htm Hope that helps, Tim

Chris, In a nutshell, you are going to have to install a modchip in your Xbox. I would recommend the X-ecuter lite; I purchased mine here: http://www.mods4less.com/catalog/default.php You might also want to replace the Xbox stock hard drive with another one. You can learn all about modding your Xbox from this Web site: http://www.xbox-scene.com/ There are tons of Web sites that are related to playing old console video games on the Xbox. Here is just one of many: http://www.emuxbox.com/ Hope that helps, Tim

Yuk--that was an unfortunate choice of words on my part. Let me be the first to include myself in the realm of "non-heavyweights." At any rate, I'm currently working on a tutorial for Atari800Win. You are definitely correct in describing it as a challenging emulator to use. Regarding save states in MESS: as long as you are running a game in a window (and not full-screen), you can use the File => Save State and File => Load State commands to save and load your progress, respectively. Thanks, Tim

Disco, This is a simple preliminary question, but are you using the latest version of z26? I've tested it under both Windows 2000 Pro and variants of Windows XP with no problems. If you aren't sure which version you are running, then visit the z26 home page: http://www.whimsey.com/z26/z26.html If you want to use z26 in as Windows-friendly a way as possible, then I would recommend that you use z26 along with the x26 GUI front-end application. I just sent Albert a tutorial covering how to set up and use z26 and x26; I'm sure he'll be posting it soon. Watch for it! Good luck, Tim

Hey everybody, I know that a lot of members here at AA are "heavyweights": software developers, network engineers, and so forth. In all likelihood you folks don't need the tutorials. I am writing these tutorials for people who might not (yet) be all that computer-savvy and who yearn to reexperience the glory of old console video games. If any of you have any questions, comments, criticisms, or suggestions for improvement, then by all means post 'em. I see those tutorials as dynamic documents, and it would be great to see them shaped by the AtariAge community. Thanks, Tim

Kaine, I've had pretty good luck with the z26 Atari 2600 emulator: http://www.whimsey.com/z26/z26.html If you don't like working from the command prompt, then you'll also want the x26 Windows front-end application: http://www.wintersolace.com/programs/x26/i.../x26/index.html Enjoy! Tim

Hi there, Has anyone had any luck booting .CAS cassette image files in Atari800win Plus? I've tried both methods for doing this in the online help, and neither works. I've also used several different .CAS images, so I feel I can rule out a corrupted image as the problem. Thanks, Tim

Follow-up: I've examined every single dialog box in the MESS GUI and am unable to find any options that relate to remapping key bindings. I know that you can adjust the control bindings by using the in-game menu bar; perhaps this is intended to supplant the TAB functionality. I dunno. -Tim

Yes, I'm using the MESSGUI.EXE program. I'll examine all of the menu options. Thanks, Mitch. -Tim

Hi everybody, I can't seem to access the in-game configuration menu when playing Vectrex games in MESS 0.81. The TAB key just doesn't seem to work. Unfortunately I don't own any other gaming platform ROMs to test this functionality with other systems. Any help or insight, please? Thanks, Tim

Dan, Do you (or does someone on this forum) know how to run VSS in a window? I can't get the thing out of full-screen mode. I've tried editing the 5200.EXE PIF, tweaking 5200.CFG settings, even messing with some of the arcane (and mostly non-functional) graphic-related options in Regal Beagle 2000. No matter what, though, I just can't launch an Atari 5200 game ROM in a window. Thanks for the help, Tim PS: Props on the emulator. I love it.