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-^CrossBow^-

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Posts posted by -^CrossBow^-

  1. 1 minute ago, Dopy25 said:

    Oh nice! I see the stone age gamer PSU. That will probably be my best bet. And I totally forgot about yahoo auctions. I've never sued it so I'm not even sure how to.

     

    I'm also debating on making an arcade stick. They don't have an encoder so it's super easy. I even thought about getting the USB-C neo geo controllers and modifying that to use 15 pin. 

     

    Thanks for the reminder of Yahoo Auctions, and the recommendation for SAG.

    Yeap.. I don't use it all the time but I've gotten quite a few good deals (I feel) doing it. I use Buyee.jp as my proxy service to browse and bid etc. The auction I won for my controller as an example was about $30 shipped. It does have some small scuffs on it that was shown accurately in the pics of the auction. Aside from that little bit of cosmetic flaw, the controller works great! So that is one suggestion for something like that and if you use a proxy service like Buyee, or Sendico, then you can save some money that way vs eBay.

     

     

     

    • Like 1
  2. On 3/27/2024 at 10:01 AM, Dopy25 said:

    Just got a Neo Geo CD and am hoping to find a reasonable priced controller or joystick. It can even be broken. I can repair it.

     

    Also looking for the kinda proprietary power supply plug end. $50+ for either seems excessive to me.

     

    Have lots of things to trade if you are looking for anything. Send DM and I will let you know if I have what you would want.

    I ended up buying a new repro PSU from Stone Age Gamer over the summer for mine. And I got my NGCD controller through my proxy on JPN Yahoo Auctions for about half the cost I usually see them go for on ebay and that was with the shipping and fees.

     

  3. On 2/23/2024 at 1:25 PM, RobDangerous said:

    I messed with this a bit but ran into some issues mainly with my CD games being played from the SDcard. They load up and work, but after about 20min in or so, the audio will suddenly start to play with a bad stutter and the entire game comes to a crawl while it does this. It will sometime recover from this and start to play normally again. But in all cases, once this happens, then the game will soft lock and the only option at that point is to end the game through the A-DUO menu. 

     

    So I really hope a jailbreak with the save states is able to get released as that would at least provide a work around for this since folks could save state as they play and not have to restart from the beginning after getting a lot of progress through a game.

     

  4. On 3/21/2024 at 10:01 PM, TrekMD said:

    I did and I like it.  Nice way to look and read the manuals for the games.  :)

    If the Doc says its good then that is good enough for me. I just placed my order for one before they possibly can't be gotten anymore. I like that is comes with some game maps already in it along with passcodes. That means I wouldn't have to print that stuff out myself or look it up and have it all in one spot. Nice...

     

    • Like 3
  5. 1 hour ago, DZ-Jay said:

     

    I was going to say the same thing -- it seems to have a smoothing filter.  Other than that, the colours look great.  Is there a way to remove the smoothing filter?

     

          -dZ.

    Yeah the Rad2x has a switch to turn that on/off. Usually it is off by default, but it looks like their Rad2x arrived with it turned on.

     

    • Like 1
  6. 6 hours ago, rbairos said:

    Okay, update:
    I've got my hands on a 7800, saw the issues with garbled graphics, and some audio, did a bunch of trial+error testing and now have a fix.
    The issue is the 7800 doesn't let me ignore the A12 line like I can with the FB2 + 2600 (where I was using A11 as a proxy).

    Running attached update.frm on the sd-card by itself should patch it to work:


    (Please ignore poor CRT TV quality, think my blue died)



    image.thumb.jpeg.3b28ee9b2ddeed10906178c91e41ac48.jpegimage.thumb.jpeg.14191891374b40809f711981cdd6e200.jpeg

    update.frm 92 B · 0 downloads

    Going to give a try here in a bit as I've got a few 7800s out from service requests I can use it with. Will update this post with some results a bit later.

     

    Yes! I just tested mine with this new FW load and it ran each and every power on on no less than 4 different 7800s (all NTSC) just now. So I'd say you got this working quite well! Now to study up on how to re-encode some other movies onto this.

     

     

    • Like 2
  7. 5 hours ago, Blackened said:

    Well, I was successful to some degree! I ditched the RF box and was able to get a picture but unfortunately no sound. I'm reading about some capacitors on the board that might solve the trouble... I also saw something about a repair kit that came with a bunch of new capacitors and other doodads that fix the most common 2600 issues. I'll have to see if I can find one of those again...

    I believe this is what you are looking for?

     

    https://console5.com/store/atari-2600-total-refresh-tune-up-cap-kit-new-capacitors-and-more.html

     

  8. Wanted to update this thread as the issue has been resolved. It was in fact the Maria IC causing the issue. Once I removed the original, installed two 24pin sockets (as I don't have any 48pins on hand), and then popped on another Maria I pulled from a parts 7800. Good to go and Ballblazer once again looks like I would expect. Also, the squished look is actually how I have my monitor currently setup that causes that and it wasn't the Maria. But the extra graphics on the side was the Maria for sure.

     

    So yeah, if you have a similar looking issue from your 7800 when doing an AV upgrade, then the Maria is the first place in this instance to place the blame. I'm guessing this Maria has always had these issues in the past and the owner never noticed since they mainly use a CRT to play.

     

    20240323_130529.thumb.jpg.c4686202798d378184cbbec32d32d1e7.jpg

     

  9. 5 hours ago, WicoKid said:

    Well....just do it...I removed the Select switch and disassembled; cleaned, reassembled.....it is working. Still confused with the multimeter demonstrating the switch was working and several times, with the switch not even in the loop, the Atari did the auto-sleect thing. I did reflow J101 while cleaning the switch as well.

     

    Thank you for responding.Will return here if recurs. 

    Excellent to hear! Now go play some games!

     

  10. 7 minutes ago, SoundGammon said:

    Forgot about that. And if memory serves, doesn't it short out the power supply on the 5200 if someone tries it in an unmodified system?

    Not that I'm aware of... one of the parts of the mod is to feed the input voltage off the PSU before it gets to the regulators to an unsued redundant ground pin that you have to separate from the traces on the board and that becomes the input voltage for the VCS adapter.

     

  11. 1 hour ago, Atari800Xl said:

    Hi guys I'm looking to buy a CX55 I saw a cheap one but the seller says it just makes a black screen when he uses it. Are these easily repairable?

    Assuming the seller was using a 2port 5200 when they tested it? Because if they used a 4port model and it hasn't been internally modified for the VCS adapter, then you get nothing from the adapter when trying to use it.

     

     

  12. 15 minutes ago, mthompson said:

    One drawback of the MTE test carts is that they all reverse the left and right controller displays. Not a deal breaker, but still annoying.

    Yeah I've never understood why that is? I mean, I'm used to it but it is very odd. The Free Wheeling diagnostics corrects this as well.

     

  13. 1 hour ago, Eiswuxe said:

    Hi there,

     

    first of all, I am not sure if this topic belongs into the "intellivision Programming" forum or not. I thought that my program could be useful also for non-programmers, so I decided to post it here. If this is wrong, please forgive me and feel free to move the topic as applicable.

     

    My name is Jörg aka Eiswuxe and I have recently entered the world of IntyBASIC programming (after being a long time game developer for many other platforms) :)

     

    I had trouble with playing some games on my controllers (like tanks not doing what I wanted them to do...), so I decided to write a simple test program that shows if the game controllers are working correctly.
    The program works with my BackBit Cartridge since I dont have an LTO Flash yet.

     

    Feel free to test it, feedback is highly appreciated! Especially if it runs with other cartridges like LTO Flash.

     

    The usage is self explanatory. The display shows which buttons / digits / discs are pressed.

     

    controller_test Screenshot 2024-03-21 090240.png

    controller_test.rom 3.06 kB · 1 download

    This is very cool! But you know since you have the BBpro and the Intellivision adapter, it comes with v4.1 of the MTE test on it already? Just hold down the button while powering on the Intellivision and you will be at the controller test screen first thing on that test and it shows all buttons and control directions as well. It is what I mainly use for testing quickly or my actual MTE-201 test cart if my BBPro isn't handy.

     

  14. I've done... a lot of 7800s over the years and most of them with UAVs installed. But I've never encountered a 7800 doing what this one is doing that I'm working on right now. 

     

    This is what BallBlazer via s-video from a UAV would normally look like from a 7800 like this one below I did back in November.

     

    78_Completed.thumb.jpg.0080e36352d40f5c351ea4e3ae86b89b.jpg

     

    However, the 7800 I have right now is showing extra graphic info on the far left and right side of the screens that I've never seen from a 7800 before with a UAV installed.. Here is what the same BB cartridge looks like running on the current 7800 I have on the bench right now.

    78_BB_extra_graphics.thumb.jpg.17c263d64f9c215e9e2ea30600fcb52b.jpg

     

    As you can see the black masking on the left and right doesn't seem to be working on this console? I know I see this same effect on the 5200 as the UAV doesn't feature any v-gate masking on it and that is normal on the 5200. But the 7800 doesn't normally show this and I'm wondering if there is some section of this 7800 that isn't working properly to cause this? It doesn't effect the game play area at all and only games using colored backgrounds show this. So games like Food Fight, Donkey Kong...look normal. Even the color squares display on the 7800 Utility cart looks correct on this 7800.

     

    But stuff like BB above show an odd checkerboard pattern of graphics that will change a little as the screen graphics change and it more distracting than usual since I'm not used to seeing this.

     

    I've ruled out the UAV as the cause since again, the UAVs don't feature anything to mask that info anyway, and I tried a different UAV with the same results. I also bypassed my mount board with the chroma timing just to rule that out and no dice, same exact thing. 

     

    Only think I can suspect is the Maria itself, or possible odd brand of RAM I've found in this console that I can't recall what it is off the top of my head right now. I will look through the schemes to see if I can find anything related to handle this, but yeah...this is an odd one. Anyone else encountered this on a 7800?

     

    • Like 1
  15. 48 minutes ago, Crash7 said:

     

    I just hooked it up I didn't touch so it must have been that way when I hooked it up. Thanks buddy. 🕹️

    No worries! I was just surprised to see that it looked like it was enabled since most people I know, aren't a fan of that rounded smoothed look on their the retro games. There are some cases where it might improve the image quality but it looks way too artificial to me on vintage/retro consoles. But again only my opinion.

     

  16. @paulwgraber The audio hum could be a ground issue as was mentioned, but it could also be due to two other things or a combo therein. It could be that the audio in addition to your RF modulator might require a little tuning on its own. And I've seen the humming also come from the poly caps for the audio starting to go bad. The power conversion kits from Console5 actually come with replacement poly caps for the audio but you stated our purchased yours from Ebay so I don't know what would come included in that case. 

     

    The audio tuning is done in the same manner as the RF. Using a plastic hex adjustment tool, to audio tuning coil is right there just off center right of the system board standing straight up.

     

  17. 9 minutes ago, paulwgraber said:

    Can you guys send me a link for the UAV mod.

    Several links on Utube where they are simply using a tiny board and it looks great. Is this the UAV?

    Cause the UAV I saw was like $70.

    The UAV is sold by The Brewing Academy. For the 5200 you want the 5200 prebuilt kit but with the output connector on the top not the bottom. Since you have a 4 port, the 4050 IC will be in a socket. As long as you don't care about the RF output anymore, you can remove that IC chip from the socket and then just stick the premade UAV right into it. From there you just need to install the AV jacks that you want to use. Although, it would be worth looking into doing a power conversion on it so you don't need the swtich box anymore and can have a standard DC jack to plug the 5200 PSU into on the console itself.

     

    https://thebrewingacademy.com/collections/atari-5200/products/tba-ultimate-atari-video-uav-board-for-atari-5200

  18. 2 minutes ago, Shawn said:

     

    The output is garbage at best from that amp on a 5200. I've tried it just to see for myself.

    I hadn't used it myself although I've removed quite a few from other 2600s and 7800s over the past few years where the owners wanted to replace them with UAVs. But as I send everything back that I remove, I never kept on on hand to mess around with.

     

  19. 18 minutes ago, paulwgraber said:

    Atari 2600/7800 Composite Video Mod Upgrade Kit - DIY | eBay

     

    Or can anyone suggest one that wont take a year to get here.

    It can be made to work...but I've heard mixed results regarding the output. I would advise going with a UAV for composite/s-video output that will look much better. Or... you can get the Sophia and have that routed for DVI, Component, or RGB output for the best from the system.

     

    • Like 2
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