RamrodHare

IF you are freely sharing the rom, then you could do the "tip" system as people have mentioned. If you make a rom and I play it and enjoy it, I'd be willing to send some money your way, to show my appreciation for your work. I really believe that the developers should get something, as an incentive to keep making games, now if you wanted to make a nice downloadable package with artwork and instructions, backstory, etc., YES, I'd be willing to pay for the package. The developers who are already sharing their work deserve just as much as those aren't. My main message is to the people who are making a game, selling a very limited number of carts and then just forgetting about all the other Atari fans who are desperately want to play their game. If they would just sell the roms to those of us who have Harmony carts or who only play on emulators, everyone would win. Most of us are far more likely to support a developer who shares his work with the community. I'm not going to spend a bunch of money on the secondary market to get a cart that I missed out on due to limited funds or not being quick enough when it came out, but you can bet your ass, if someone dumps the rom, I'll be playing that game. The way I see it is- if the developer releases the rom for a small fee, he (or she) will get my money and everyone will be happy. If they don't release the rom, eventually someone will dump it and I'll be playing it anyway. It's that simple. What's the point in making a game, if only a few people ever get to play it? I just can't see the logic in it. If a Developer sells 20 carts and makes $5 off each cart and then locks the rom away and throws away the key, they made $100. If they share the rom for $5 and 30 people download it, that's $150 (most likely on top of the cart sales). There are plenty of us who can't afford to buy carts, but can dig up $5 somewhere. If they want to have limited edition carts, that's fine, they can use special artwork or even use a slightly different version of the game for that. I really don't see how selling (or giving away) the roms will affect the sale of the carts, since the people who want a cart will still get a cart. I just think everyone should be given the opportunity to play the games, not just the people who have the most money or who got there first. This community is what keeps Atari alive, the fans and the developers, it's a team effort.

After some more searching I found an old thread where a fix was found for Skeleton Plus. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/174878-skeleton-not-working/?do=findComment&comment=2815053 I tried the fixed version that Thomas Jentzsch did and it now works. I'm guessing that the original Skeleton also needs to be patched, but I have no idea how to do that. OK, so Skeleton and Skeleton Plus are the same game, so I don't guess that both need to be patched. It's really odd that both play on the 7800 but neither plays on the 2600, until I found the patched one Thomas did. Very odd..

I do have a donor system that I can remove chips from, but I'm not sure if they are good or not, but it's worth a try.

Here's a quick update.. I went through all my roms on both systems, 2600 and 7800. Heres what I found. Boulder dash , no video signal on 2600 or 7800( this applies to any binaries other than "demo 2", which works). Galaxian Arcade, garbled junk at the beginning, gameplay works on both systems, but the player's ship is garbled on both. Skeleton, works on 7800, but on 2600, there's no picture, only sound. Skeleton Plus, same as Skeleton Star Castle Arcade, won't work on either system. Ultra Pac Man, won't work on either system. Based on what I know now, I'm sure that my 2600 is the problem with Skeleton and Skeleton Plus, but the other games have an issue with the roms. So, my original question still stands. Could the issue be caused by a revision 12 board or do you think it's something else? Has anyone had any trouble playing Skeleton or Skeleton Plus on their 2600? If so, what revision is your board?

I don't know if this has been covered on the forums already or not.I did a few searches and didn't find anything like this. I have a revision 12 board in my 2600. I've ran into a few 2600 games that refuse to play, but work fine on my 7800. Just off the top of my head, Skeleton, and Skeleton PLUS. There's at least one or two more that I know won't play and possibly more that I haven't tried yet.. I have over 700 games loaded on my Harmony, so it's hard to keep track of all of them. Has anyone else had an issue with one console not working with a game when another console does? I've been considering buying another 2600 anyway, but if some revisions are better than others, I need to keep that in mind when looking for one. I know it "might" be the roms I have, so I'm going to check that out right now and then see where I stand. The fact that these games play on the 7800 but not on the 2600 makes me think it's probably not bad roms. Oh, almost forgot, I'm using a Harmony Encore, in case that's relevant.

No, I'm running it on the Harmony Cart. I can download Stella, though.

You just got me thinking. I'm going to do a little research and see if there are some commons that have cases that aren't black (and are the correct shape). If I can find one cheap enough, I might just reshell my Harmony cart and do a custom label for it. After a bit of digging, King Kong can be had at a reasonable price, but I'm not sure the Harmony would fit in it due to the tapered nature of the top of the cart. However, I do have a few Coleco games in my collection that have white/off white cases. I'm wondering if they would take dye. if they would, I could make my Harmony cart into almost any color I wanted, except translucent. OK, one more update. The Coleco carts have a tapered area on the back too. I'm not sure if the Harmony internals would fit and I'm not ready to take it apart to see, so for now I'll live with it being black.

Hi guys, Let me start off by saying, I have no idea how to even begin doing a hack. (if that didn't scare you away from this thread, them maybe you can help me.) What I'm looking to do is change the color of the ship in Save Our Ship (NTSC version). The NTSC versions have a very bright and colorful ship. I would rather it be more of a brown color like the PAL versions, so that it's easier on my eyes and looks more like a wooden ship. What I'd like to do, is get information on how to go about this with the least amount of knowledge (right now, being zero). Of course, if someone thinks it would be easier to do this for me, than to explain to an idiot how to do it, then that's fine too... So,is there a simple way to show an idiot how to change the color? Then by all means, share your knowledge. If on the other hand, it's too complicated and you are feeling generous, I'd be very happy with someone else doing the work for me. It's up to you.

I'd love to have a shell for my Harmony Cart. Any color other than Black would be awesome. It's too bad you can't find these 2600 shells anymore.

I've seen at least one homebrew cart that had a blue translucent shell. I don't know if it could have been a one-off cart or not, but it really seems to me that new cart shells would be availible. I'm all for manufacturing things in places other than China, but if anyone here has connections with toy or plastics companies in China, there's a good chance these might be easier and cheaper to get than what we think. I'd really love to have color options. I know I've ran into games at flea markets and thrift stores that had beat up shells. had there been readily availible replacements, I would have been buying up more games to bring back to life instead of leaving them to be thrown away eventually. Also, I've seen more than a few auctions on "the Bay" where someone had gutted a bunch of carts and was selling off the PCBs in large lots. I had considered buying some 7800 ones, but without replacement shells, it wouldn't have made much sense. When the shells do become availible, I might just stock up on a bunch of them just to make some of my favorite games stand out from the rest in my collection.

This is awesome news! I'm really excited about getting mine! I don't have many games that take advantage of it, but from what I've heard, it's going to be great on the ones that do! I got to thinking about something, but I'm no programmer, so forgive me if this is a dumb idea, but I'm wondering if it would be possible to create a "patch" program that could be used to add basic high score saving to some of the older games? I know there are multiple patches and patching programs for NES and such, so I thought it MIGHT be something that could work for Atari games. Maybe?

UPDATE!!! After doing a lot of yelling and throwing things because I couldn't get a nice picture on my CRT, I switched to the HDTV in my bedroom. Guess what??? Everything looks perfect. No bleeding, the yellow looks yellow, it's all good. Of course there's still the stuff going on outside of the actual game screen, but I don't care about that. I'm just happy the picture quality is good now. I also tested my 7800 on my CRT and of course, it looks horrible too! So, I'm guessing my little CRT has just outlived it's usefulness. I still have my huge floor model Magnavox CRT and I haven't even tried it yet, so I have no clue what the results will be on it. I'm not dying for a light gun right this minute, so I'm fine with using the HDTV in the bedroom to play Atari on. I did notice after warm up, both the 2600 and the 7800 show a shift in color, but I only notice it on the test screens, not on actual games. So, for now, it seems all my problems are solved.

I need to look into the UAV board. I posted in that topic a while back and never got a reply back, so I gave up on it. If it fixes the color bleeding, then I really need to look into it again. I have a 7800 with a standard AV mod and there's no color bleeding on it.. (or if there is, it's so minor that I don't notice it even on the 47 inch HDTV.) I did recheck all my solder points and reflowed anything that even looked a LITTLE bit off, but that didn't really improve anything. I hadn't even thought about the socket being the culprit of any issues. I'll try removing the TIA and cleaning the contacts and reinstall it a few times and see if that makes any difference. I'll probably go ahead and buy a TIA chip to have on hand or I'll pull the good one I have on the donor board. I don't think my colors change much as the 2600 warms up. No matter what my yellow test bar is always orange. On River Raid, The streets and stuff at the bottom of the starting screen are always too dark of a gray, nothing I do improves that. Also on River Raid, the F-U-E-L is always off. I can't get the white in it to look white. Could swapping the TIA fix this? I did my color adjustments using a CRT late last night and haven't reconnected the system to an HDTV yet, but if I can get the colors right on one of my good CRTs, then I'll be fine. I don't really care if it's not great on all my TVs, if it's good on the one I'll be playing on most of the time. BTW, Crossbow, Thank You for helping me out here. I really appreciate your input.

I think developers should allow the roms out in the wild after the game has been released and sold on cart. Yes, someone might bootleg it, but they can do that if someone rips the image from a cart, so it comes down to trust. You know that somewhere, someone had already ripped images for a bunch of homebrew games that the developers didn't release the roms for, yet I don't see them popping up on download sites. I own a Harmony cart and I want to play ALL my games from that one cart now. I'll still buy vintage games I like, just to have the cart. I'll still buy Homebrew, just to have a cool cart. What I would really LOVE, is to be able to pay the developer for a rom. That way, he gets the money, I promise not to share the rom and everyone is happy. Real Atari fans are going to support the developer, be it by paying for the cart or paying for the rom. Developers need to all get on board with this and get a little more money for their work and get their games out there for more people to enjoy. Yeah, we all know, there are going to be Bad Apples in the bunch that buy the rom and then try either sell it themselves or put it out there for people to download for free. that's going to happen no matter what. I've never done a bit of programming for the Atari, but I know the developers work hard for a long time to make good games, I'm not at all against paying $5 for a final version of a rom. Every bit of that goes to the developer, where it belongs. I don't see why a developer wouldn't like this idea, but I know there are probably a stubborn few who for some reason, don't want their roms out there for everyone to enjoy. For these developers, I have one question? Why? Now if it's a licensed game, like Boulder Dash for example, I understand not putting the rom out there, but for all the original homebrew games, DEVELOPERS, PLEASE SELL or freely distribute the ROMs! Get your games in the hands of all fans, not just the ones who can afford (or find) a cart. I have every intention of doing some hacks and eventual some original games and when I do, Hacked roms will be free and Original homebrew roms will be $0-3. I feel like this would be a very fair and beneficial system. It would get the games in the hands of everyone who wanted to play them, at a very fair price. I'd be happy and so would people who wanted to play the game. YES, it would work on the honor system, but I feel like almost all AtariAge members are trustworthy (even if some are rather annoying and grumpy.) Final note, let's say developers did agree to release any rom, for a fee of say $0-5 here on AtariAge, this is where most if not all of your sales will come from. Now lets say one evil member here (probably wearing a top hat and twirling his moustache) buys the rom and then makes bootlegs and sells them on eBay. Yeah, it would be annoying, but if you had already release your limited number of carts (with say a certificate of authenticity), there's no harm really being done. You've sold the number of carts you intended and members will still buy the rom before they buy what should now be clearly a bootleg cart. Seems to me this would be a great system. The gamers get the games, the developers get some money, it's a WIN-WIN situation!

OK, here's an update of what I've done. I removed the zener/cap combo and replaced it with the original caps that I had removed. I may add the combo packs back in, when I get more info or photos on how to do it, if it turns out to be necessary for the 4 switchers. I went ahead and changed out the two caps for the audio, but I haven't done much testing to see if it helped anything as far as the wildly different volume from game to game. I did test it out on a CRT last night. Yes, the lines are in the overscan area, so on a CRT you never see them. I didn't change the AV mod wires, since I wasn't sure it would help. Before closing it up again, I decided to tune the colors. I used the Test Cart rom on my Harmony. I was able to get it to look OK, but no matter what the yellow bar always looked bright orange. Any attempt to fix that, threw all the other colors way out and never got me to yellow. My biggest issue now is that the colors don't line up, if that makes sense. I'll try to explain what I mean. On say, seaquest (just as an example), it looks almost like it would be in 3D, you know, if you had 3D glasses on. There are the subs and sharks, but slightly to the right of them, is another image of them that overlaps the first (actually I guess it underlaps, if that's even a word.) It's like this on all my games, real carts or Harmony. If this has something to do with the TIA or one of the other chips, I can easily fix it, since mine are all socketed. I actually have a donor 2600 that I could desolder chips from to test that out. I may do that later today, if I don't find anything better to do.

OK. I have a 4 switch board, revision 12 with a standard AV mod. Everything was working fine, but the color wasn't great, so I decided to "refresh" the board. I got the complete 2600 kit from Console5.com and I have installed everything except the two polystyrene capacitors (for the audio) , but I ran into an issue when installing the zener diodes and their caps. Here's what Console5 said on their site- "Pre-Revision 14: A pair of zener diodes and capacitors used for static protection on the trigger lines (J202 & J203). Equivalent to service parts CA018263. Each small yellow .1uf cap is soldered across each zener diode. Each diode/cap combo is then soldered with the diode's stripe end connected to joystick port Pin 6 and the opposite side to the nearest ground plane." I wasn't 100% sure how to do what they were saying, since it seemed odd, considering how hard it is to get to pin 6 from the top of the board and they didn't mention if these went on the bottom of the board like the 820 ohm resistor for better colors.. I then referred to these instructions in the field service manual- "Install the static modification on all 2600 units. Install CR202 and CR203 ( that's what they call the zener/cap combo), by removing C236 and C237 and inserting the C236/CR202 and C237/CR203 assemblies in their place (See Figure 3-2). CAUTION: Observe the polarity on CR202 and CR203 (the dark band must be toward the J202/J203 connectors)." I did exactly that, but when I powered the system up, I didn't get a picture. When I checked the voltages on the regulator, it was EXTREMELY low only around 3 volts going in and only 1 volt coming out. I knew something was wrong, so I removed both of little zener-cap packs (whatever you want to call it) and powered it up again, everything checked out and picture was back. So, I tried to follow the trace from pin 6 and see which side needed the Black stripe of the zener on it. From what I could tell, it was right the first time, but I knew that didn't work, so I gambled, reversed it and tried again. The regulator is showing the correct voltages and the joysticks and fire buttons work, everything seems right, but those zeners are reversed from what both instructions say. I decided to search for a photo online showing how someone else soldered theirs in and I came up with nothing. So, I started wondering if only the 6 switchers needed this, since my 4 switch doesn't have a CD4050 IC (which the site suggested I order also, for 50 cents) and based on everything I've read, that's what the static effects. If that's the case, you would think they would have made it clear somewhere that all of this was only for 6 switchers. My question is this, should I remove the zener diode packs and replace them with the original components or leave them as is, even if they are installed reversed? Now, that was my BIG issue, so for some smaller issues. With the new parts, I now have much better color and picture quality , mostly. I'm testing on an HDTV, since it's all I have availible right this minute (I'll have access to my CRT later tonight) My issue is this, I now have a bright purple line that runs down the far left side of the screen and a dark green line that runs down the very far right hand side. On some games these are dotted lines others they are solid. The most annoying instance is on Asteroids. the top and bottom quarters of the screen are fine, but the center portion is shifted to the right making the purple line sit closer to the actual game play area. Now this may all be unimportant once I connect it to a CRT, since it won't be a widescreen format and will hopefully cut off these lines anyway. The main thing is though, they weren't there before I replaced the caps. At one point, I thought the 820 ohm resistor on the TIA between pin 6 and 9 might have something to do with it, so I removed the resistor. The lines were still there, so I reinstalled the resistor and put the shields back on the board. Maybe I'll have to live with the purple and green lines as long as I'm using an HDTV... I used the supplied tiny wires when I installed my AV mod and it's been working fine, until today. While I had everything apart I noticed that there was some type of interference in my video. The best way I can describe it is a wave of "tint" coming from the right side of the screen. I noticed it did this if I got the Joystick or even just my hand close to the board. and if you touch the positive video wire from the mod board to the video rca jack, you could make the wave "dance". My question is, should I replace that wire with something thicker, possibly shielded? It's not an issue when it's all closed up in the case, but if you shake it enough to jiggle that wire inside, it will do the wave thing. My last question (hopefully).. The two polystyrene capacitors (for the audio), I hadn't intended to replace them, but I want advice, just in case I should. The audio works on every game, but the volume varies wildly from game to game. Some games you barely hear, others you almost have to turn all the way down to keep from going deaf. Is this something that those caps can correct or is that just the nature of some games? I would post photos, but getting to my camera and then USING it is a lot of work, so I was hoping that someone here could maybe shed some light on this without needing photos. If it turns out the photos are going to help, me and possibly other people, then I'll bite the bullet and dig out my camera. I'm really tempted to buy another 2600 with a newer board and seeing if it works any better than this one, but I've already got the 7800, which seems to be working perfectly, so I'm not doing anything to it until something in it dies, forcing me to reopen and repair it. ​Sorry this post is so long, Thank You to anyone who reads it all the way through and can offer some advice.

I'll check it out right now.

The two games I've been dying to play on my Harmony cart are Army of Darkness and Alien Ooze. I managed to find Bifrost and Ooze, so I can at least enjoy the gameplay, even if I don't have the same graphics. I'm happy with Bifrost, but the ship on Alien Ooze is just so awesome! There's a copy of Alien Ooze on ebay and if I had the extra money, I would bid on it, but I can't afford it after just buying a Harmony Encore and having quite a few other items already lined up for purchase. I'm really hoping that the rom of Alien Ooze eventually gets put out there for us all to enjoy. I'm not sure who the developer is, or how to contact him about the rom or else I would have already been begging for a copy! I did however contact the developer of Ooze to see if he could point me in the right direction, since the gameplay seems to be pretty much the same, but I haven't heard back from him yet.

Since you mentioned it, I just wanted to tell you that Warlords had been a favorite of mine for many, many years, but it's been replaced with Medieval Mayhem. Thank you for the amazing work you you did on that game!

My only issue is that I have too many games to choose from now!

That's a good point. You would think that would have been developed by now. I KNOW plastics have made big advancements over the last 30 years. I guess as long as there is a decent supply of originals, maybe it's not that high on Bradley's list of things to have reproduced. I wonder if anyone has mentioned it to him? I know I've never opened up a CX40 that didn't at least have some stress marks on the bottom of the white handle piece. (For all I know, Someone has already made new version that are awesome and I'm just so out of touch that I don't know about it yet.)

I did PM him this morning, but I wanted to cover all the bases, in case he didn't have any of them. Turns out he did! Thanks! I was really hoping you might have some left!

I'm looking for a Memcard/Savekey for the Atari 2600. I'd really like one either made by Richard H. or CPUWIZ, but if someone here is willing to build me one for a reasonable price, That would probably work too as long as it looks at least semi professional (not a Hot glue mess or something. I've been looking for decent instructions so I could build one myself, but so far, I haven't been able to find anything detailed enough for me to make sense of it. I think CPUWIZ may have had an LED on his (can't remember for sure), but if it did, that's the one I'd really like to have.

I knew the savekey plugged into the joystick port, but I had read in old threads that Fred had worked on saves with the Harmony. I'm guessing it just never panned out. As far as the AtariVox+, it's out of my price range considering I only want to be able to use saves on the games I have that support them, not the voice stuff. I'm on a limited income, so a $10-15 savekey or some DIY plans for one are what I needed. thanks for the quick reply though! I'd gladly pay someone to build one, but I'm sure I have the skill, I just need the DIY info. I saw a diagram in that thread, but I'd like to have a little better info before I start building something that I'll be plugging into my Atari.

My early morning search isn't turning up much info on Savekeys for the 2600, but I did find what I though might have been a reference to the Harmony having something like this built in. I know at one time CPUWIZ was selling Savekeys, but I missed out on it by quite a few years. I'd like to be able to save my high scores (or game progress), so if anyone can fill me in on the Harmony Encore having this feature or where I can either buy a savekey, I'd really appreciate it. From what I've managed to find out, it seems it isn't a big deal to throw one together out of off the shelf parts, so info on that could be useful as well.