gdement
-
Content Count
1,763 -
Joined
Posts posted by gdement
-
-
Can't wait.
I must remember it might take weeks or months to get this done.
So I must be patient.
Nobody is working on this (unless you are)
-
makes me think that rewriting 7800 Donkey Kong from scratch would be easier than disassembling and reverse-engineering it.
That would be my attitude about any game really. I hate modifying other people's code. I much more enjoy starting from scratch and doing things my own way.
Finding old 7800 source code is fine from a historical standpoint, but it really doesn't interest me as anything to build projects from.
-
I think you could get up to 80KB (64KB+16KB chips) on old bankswitched carts without needing heavy modding. So a board like that with xboard support would be pretty economical. Not many people have xboards though.
You can get up to 144K (128K + 16K) onto a C300565. And yes, the XBoard would be ideal for this, since it would eliminate the need to put POKEY in the cartridge.
The problem with 128KB EPROMs is the 32 pins. Not a big deal to hack that into a devcart but I'd be uncomfortable with it for distribution.
In terms of the work involved though, it might not be any more of a pain than installing 2 separate 28 pin chips.
-
I know it was an awesome game, but my point was that it is absolutely copyrite infringement. There is probably something in the rules of Wiki or whatever that won't allow them to post that kind of thing....
As for tetris for Teengen, the deal isn't that the game was unlicensed, it's that the lockout chip was. And when the liscense ran out on Tetris for Teengen, they just dropped it (look at all the other teengen releases that continued on even though they weren't "liscensed"
Tengen didn't have a legal license for home console Tetris. They thought they did, but it turned out later that their license wasn't legitimate and thus the games they had produced were copyright infringing.
-
If this ever became real, I'd buy it in a second. Particularly with POKEY sound.
Unfortunately I think POKEY would be a problem, since the Ballblazer boards only support 32KB. The Commando boards are too uncommon/expensive. A custom board would work, but I don't think an appropriate board has yet been designed. Somebody could do it but it would inflate the cost for sure.
I think you could get up to 80KB (64KB+16KB chips) on old bankswitched carts without needing heavy modding. So a board like that with xboard support would be pretty economical. Not many people have xboards though.
-
That's ridiculous, though. I use Paypal shipping for most things, but I have found that when I mail a larger item (a 2600 setup and games, etc.) it's easier to just mail it from the Post Office. It costs a little more for the delivery confirmation but it always gets there faster and I know it gets scanned.
You can add the tracking information manually. Just go into the Paypal payment details, click "add tracking info" and enter the delivery confirmation number. This also makes it possible for the buyer to look it up on their end.
-
Feedback is very broken. I don't really blame ebay though. I think the real problem is that buyers aren't discriminating enough. It's not just ebay that has this problem, I see it on everything.
Youtube videos? All 4.5-5 stars.
Morrowind mods? All 9.0-10.0.
Game ratings? Usually 7-10 - not as bad but still inflated.
Newegg product reviews? All 4-5 eggs.
It's like people are afraid to critique anything.
ebay feedback is so inflated that sellers actually have to obsess about the difference between 99.5% and 100%. Below 98% is considered a disaster. This is unfair to low volume sellers, who get slaughtered by a single neg. Meanwhile the high volume sellers are guaranteed sky-high feedback unless they're scammers.
Star ratings are just as bad. Supposedly it's a 5 star system, but everybody is between 4.5-5.0. eBay has caught on to this and uses a 4.3 average (I think) as the threshold for flagging a bad seller.
Because of this, sellers try to make buyers feel guilty for leaving even a 4. Don't buy into that - if ebay sees the typical star ratings going down, they'll recalibrate the threshold. In the meantime, remember it's an *average* - your individual rating isn't going to get them banned.
Don't feel guilty about leaving 1s and 2s either, if the seller deserves it. Scores this low are added up separately and can get the seller into trouble, but if they earned it, then they earned it. It's not the buyer's problem to worry about the seller->ebay relationship. eBay will always recalibrate their rules/thresholds over time.
If you don't want to leave a neg, then fine, but leave a fake positive and give honest star ratings. Don't just leave nothing.
The star ratings are anonymous, unless the seller happens to notice the change in their rating immediately after you left feedback. Unlikely to happen, and even if they notice, who cares?
That said, be fair, but I wish people didn't toss out perfect ratings constantly. Then we might actually be able to tell the difference between an average seller and an unusually good one.
-
Comparing different ports on how some are value added or not over the original is also an angle I am thinking about.This is something I like. There's a review site somewhere (don't remember) that has articles of this type. The article I remember was a comparison of many 80's ports of Choplifter. It's interesting to see all the differences between versions of a game, and which are the best to look for.
Articles like that, with the possible addition of newer remakes, would be fun to read.
Doing these comparisons pretty much requires you to have a big collection of systems though.
-
The third zone DL down (after the two 320 mode score lines), put a DLI to change the Character mode to use white, light blue, and black. At the sixth DL down (just under the lower cloud), put a DLI to change the Character mode to use tan, brown, and black. Of course this means that no bricks/question mark boxes can be in the same zone as the clouds (or they would share the same color) but this would work. I used this in Super Pac-Man as suggested by kenfused (I change the color to green for the Super Pills, and back to lt blue for the Keys).
Oh, it's a palette change for character mode graphics, I see. Thanks for the explanation.
-
The white clouds are a DLI color change.I'm confused about this part - the maria never releases the bus in the middle of drawing a scanline, does it?
Maybe you mean the cloud color is being changed between white and light blue.. but I don't get that either because there's lines where both white and blue appear next to each other.
I'm sure you know what you're doing, so I must be misunderstanding something.
-
Are the tracking numbers recorded with the "add tracking info" link on each payment? This might allow the tracking to be recognized automatically, rather than requiring human intelligence to be involved.
-
It now seems that you are only needing to connect more modern systems like PS2 and Xbox 360 to your new TV set. Worst case for any of these would probably be component hookup, but I do not know that there would be a very noticeable difference over S-video.
I think he's just trying to maintain S-video quality, since that's what he has coming out of the console. I'm assuming these are modded, older consoles since he has svideo output but not component.
He doesn't have an svideo input, so he's forced to mix svideo->composite.
By instead converting svideo -> component, the luma and chroma would stay separated. But somehow the chroma needs to be filtered properly into Cb and Cr, otherwise it'll probably look terrible.
The chroma -> Cb+Cr filtering probably wouldn't be any better than what the TV can do internally, but the point is to keep chroma and luma separated so it maintains S-video quality.
So unless I've misunderstood, the key question is if there's a reasonable way to achieve chroma -> Cb+Cr. (I don't know the answer myself).
Oh I also have a VGA input on this too, so an S-Video to VGA adapter would work fine too. Those seem to be available at a cheaper price ($60-70).Several years ago I had a Viewsonic box made for watching TV on a monitor, but it also had Svideo input on it. I used it on my PS2 for a while. It worked fine, but it died after about 12-18months. I don't recall any noticeable lag.
FWIW, only 60Hz output mode is useful. Mine advertised a 72Hz mode but that just makes everything jerky because it doesn't match with the NTSC input.
There might be some ugliness with converting resolutions. The box already has to convert once, then your TV might have to convert it again to the native screen size.
-
Unfortunately there are way too many negatives posted on the web about pretty much everything, but if you look there are also a lot of people happy with the device.
Not trying to carry this on forever, but I referred to the balance of the commentary. I'm well aware that every device has mixed opinions.
-
Well I could have gotten the wrong impression, but there were some complaints that worried me:
- The screen cover reportedly is directly against the screen, so it's very vulnerable to pressure damage.
- From doing a web search on drops, it seems virtually every time Dingoos are dropped, they break. But a major share of the PSP drops reported surviving.
- I've seen a lot of DOA and dead in a few weeks complaints. Also inconsistent build issues with buttons and such.
- Somebody on youtube said his screen got screwed up when he left the charger plugged in overnight. I would hope it has a decent charger circuit that shuts down when it's done charging. I don't want to have to keep track of that.
But I don't own one, so it might be better than I think. I proceed from a skeptical position with no name Chinese stuff, and I haven't gotten a good impression from the balance of all the commentary.
Maybe I'll end up with one anyway though. If I do, I'll probably hide it from my young nieces/nephews.
-
Mountain Maniac for the Atari 7800:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8L1-Xwg4cc
It's ridiculous enough to make perfect sense on an Atari.
-
I've got one of those: Thrustmaster Firestorm Digital 3
It's not expensive, but made very sturdy and comfortable to hold (at least for me... For once, it's much bigger than the PSX controllers - and I always wonder how to hold those comfortably...). It has the d-pad and 4 front buttons you see plus 4 shoulder buttons (2 on each side). As you see it does not have analog sticks, which I don't really need...
However there's a Dual Analog version, too:
Thrustmaster Firestorm Dual Analog 3 (on the German site, amazon.de, you can still order it, while amazon.com says "We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock." But I guess there are other vendors that have them...)
Wow, that D-Pad looks much better than mine. I have an older model called a "Firestorm Dual Power 3" which is similar, same ergonomics, but the D-pad on mine is a terrible design. It actually prefers diagonals and is difficult to move in straight directions.
Looks like they completely changed it on yours, I guess lots of people complained about the old version.
-
It's cool to see they now have it running native, instead of needing linux. I wasn't happy with the linux idea, this is much better.
I'm a bit annoyed though that they used a modified version of Prosystem, but the documentation only credits the original author. There's at least 3 people listed in changelog.txt who coded improvements that are in the version he ported. More if you include "valuable advisers".
I also disagree with calling it "Pr00sytem 2.0" - the original author is working on ProSystem v2.0, and this will only cause confusion. If he's made improvements it should either be called 1.x or it should have it's own name entirely (like Wii7800 does).
I don't mean to sound so negative though, I'm glad it's running natively on the Dingoo, and it makes me more wish I had one.
-
I've been scared off of buying a Dingoo because from everything I've read, it sounds like they're terribly fragile. Hacking a PSP sounds like a pain, but at least I won't have to worry about it breaking when I breathe on it. I wish I could use a new PSP though, instead of having to find an old one that can be hacked.
If they'd make a better Dingoo I'd be all over it.
-
serial printers?
I thought (at least for "IBM compatibles") printers are always for the parallel port. (disregarding USB printers)
Not always. My laserjet 5 has serial, parallel, and ethernet on it. Ethernet sometimes misses print jobs which is annoying, so I prefer the parallel.
However, newer boards usually don't have that. It's easier to find serial than parallel nowadays. So if I ever get a new motherboard, I might actually end up trying the serial.
-
I just checked and found WinXP has a built in driver for the Epson T-1000.
My dad bought that printer for our Apple IIc. It's from either late 80's or early 90's. It wasn't anything special, just a cheap and basic dot matrix. It still works though, unlike every inkjet bought since.
I remember that driver was in older versions of Windows, but it's funny to see it's still there. On principle, I'm glad. They should leave old drivers intact as long as they still work. I wonder if Vista still has it.
Rumor has it that many offices still use the old HP Laserjet 4 (1990)My laserjet 5 has a mfg date of 1997, so this surprised me. I looked it up on wikipedia, it says the 4 was introduced in late 1992.
I'm pretty sure the LJ4/5 is the oldest printer HP still makes toner for. I'll be disappointed when they kill it off.
There's also some difference in the fuser technology, where these use an older style that takes longer to heat up but it's more reliable. All the newer laserjets have quicker heating times but break easier.
I was annoyed at the WinXP driver for these. HP had a good configuration menu on Win2k, but that driver won't work on XP. You can only use the Microsoft driver, which lacks the options HP had.
-
This might also fit:
I don't know anything about the 5200, so don't take my word for it. The datasheet shows dimensions and how it mounts to the board.
-
OK, I got hold of some MS6264L SRAM. They will hold data down to 2V.
Now, something weird is happening. I'm using the SRAM and 3V CR1225 coin cell with a ICL7673 (automatic battery back-up switch). But as soon as I connected the battery the voltage dropped a whole volt.
It's still within data retention range at 2.1V, but only just.
I just measured a very old GameBoy cart battery (which uses a custom Nintendo chip for switching) and it's still at 3.1V
Can someone confirm that the ICL7673 is appropriate for this, or is there a better way of doing it ?
Thanks
Is this a retrofit on something that didn't have battery backup previously?
The battery must be overloaded - are you sure it's not trying to also power the ROM?
-
I have recently started putting my collection of games into a database to keep better track of what I have, (and what I don't have as well) and I am finding it to be quite handy. I can run SQL querrys to figure out if, for example, there are any games in my 2600 collection that require a special controller, and if I have that controller, etc... I'm about half way done getting everything entered, but I was thinking it would be super nice if there was some kind of application that would make it easier to enter new info into the database, and an simple way to look stuff up as well.
I guess my question is this, does such an application exist? if not, is this something any of you would like to use?
It's been a long time since I've done it, but you should be able to link most databases up with MS Access as a frontend. That's not cheap though unless you already have it.
-
That pause thing turned out to be a good idea.
How? Did you hit pause first then get ready to hit Ctrl-C right and then un-pause it?
I'm playing this on MESS not on the Prosystem emulator. I didn't have any problems pausing the game on MESS.
There's some games i do better at on Prosystem with the smaller screen.
And some games i tend to do better at on MESS with the bigger screen.
Sounds like you're using an emulator pause, not the 7800 pause function. That's why it's not covering up the score - the game doesn't know it's paused.
This can also be done in prosystem by using the pause on the options menu (not F7 or whatever the console pause is mapped to).
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
eBay Sucks Donkey Balls
in Auction Central
Posted
On the occasions when I've bought something heavy or otherwise fragile, I try to look for a seller who specializes in those type of items. I don't trust somebody who normally sells random stuff, and doesn't have a track record shipping the item I'm concerned about.
The heaviest items I've ever bought on ebay were a very heavy workstation PC, and a used laserjet. Both came from sellers who dealt with those items routinely, so not surprisingly they each showed up in great packaging.