rbairos

Hi Everyone. Getting close to the finish line. I've made a list of everyone who's requested one (in this forum, or messages), but the list is longer than I was expecting. To manage getting them out there, I've made a tindie shop: https://www.tindie.com/products/lodefmode/moviecart-atari-2600/ I haven't yet posted any inventory for 2 reasons: A) Planning to get the device covered by a couple people here, who I've communicating with. This should help shake out any remaining issues before shipping them out. B) I want people here to get first crack, as you were first in line, and very helpful throughout the process. That being said, think easiest is if people here sign up on tindie and order from there when I add inventory. I'll give everyone here a heads up a few days before, with a specific date+time when I'll put up inventor on that shop, so you can be first. First run is about 60 units, but should be easier to order/package more. Sorry about the shipping costs, best I can do for now shipping from Canada. Cheers, Rob. PS. I redid some of the tutorials, so I would recommend viewing them if you wish to encode your own content:

I'm hoping so. Works on two different Mac's I've tried so far, one several years old. I've left the setting to use the cpu at any rate.

Hi Everyone. Just a quick update. I haven't forgotten about this project, instead I've been busily adapting the encoder to work on the GPU instead of the CPU. You can now encode a full 2 hour movie (at top quality settings) in anywhere from 30mins to 3hours (depending on your graphics card) That plus a few other slow downs previously took about 28 hours on my higher-end PC.

@Albert can i edit the original post to add more entries?

Would you want the paper to encode active hardware? or just 2k /4k games?

Thanks, I'll add you to the list. In terms of soldering one yourself, unfortunately it's not as feasible anymore as version 2 is all SMD components, and you'd need a programmer for the microcontroller. The upside is I've posted all the info on the github, so theoretically one should be able to either build from scratch, or like me, order from a PCB assembly house. I'm hoping eventually I can make public the jlcpcb.com order or something to make it even easier, but for now I'll order them myself, burn the chip, sell them at cost, and ship out from Canada. In terms of release progress: I'm still assembling the first 3 or 4 complete movies for public review. I want to prepare a little movie collection again. One thing Ive discovered, the best quality for encoding the movies, is just sitting there during the encoding and nudging the zoom, center and brightness controls as it encodes in slow motion. Slow (2 hour movie at 1/3 speed is 6 hours) but the end result is much better, with almost no unusable scenes when things go night time etc. I hope to make these more automatic moving forward.

That's perfect thanks.

I'm reading the original 6532 datasheet, and am curious what happens when you read a bit set as output. From the documentation below is this correct? Reading a PA bit set as output: returns the direct external pin Reading a PB bit set as output: returns the stored output register value Thanks, Doc: "Internal Peripheral Registers The Peripheral A I/O port consists of eight lines which can be Individually programmed to act as either an Input or an output. A logic zero In a bit of the Data Direction Register (DORA) causes the corresponding line of the PA port to act as an Input. A logic one causes the corresponding PA line to act as an output. The voltage on any line programmed to be an output Is determined by the corresponding bit in the Output Register (ORA). Data Is read directly from the PA pins during any read operation. For any output pin, the data transferred Into the processor will be the same as that contained In the Output Register if the voltage on the pin Is allowed to go to 2.4v for a logic one. Note that for Input lines, the processor can write Into the corresponding bit of the Output Register. This will not affect the polarity on the pin until the corr'9sponding bit of DORA is set to a logiC one to allow the peripheral pin to act as an output. In addition to acting as a peripheral I/O line, the PA7line can be used as an edge-detecting input. In this mode, an active transition will set the internal interrupt flag (bit 6 of the Interrupt Flag register). Setting the interrupt flag will cause fRO output to go low If the PA71nterrupt has been enabled. The PA7line should be set up as an input for this mode. Control of the PA7 edge detecting mode is accomplished by writing to one of four addresses. In this operation, AO controls the polarity of the active transition and A1 acts to enable or disable interrupting of the processor. The data which is placed on the Data Bus during this operation is discarded and has no effect on the control of PA7. Setting of the PA7 interrupt flag will occur on an active transition even if the pin is being used as a normal input or as a peripheral control output. The flag will also be set by an active transition If interrupting from PA7 is disabled. The reset signal (RES) will disable the PA7 interrupt and will set the active transition to negative (high to low). During the system initialization routine, it is possible to set the interrupt flag by a negative transition. It may also be set by changing the polarity of the active Interrupt. It is therefore recommended that the interrupt flag be cleared before enabling Interrupting from PA7. Clearing of the PA7 Interrupt Flag occurs when the microprocessor reads the Interrupt Flag Register. The operation of the Peripheral B Input/Output port is exactly the same as the normal I/O operation of the Peripheral A port. The eight lines can each be programmed to act as either an input or as an output by placing a 0 or a 1 into the Data Direction register (DDRB). In the output mode, the voltage on a peripheral pin is controlled by the Output Register (ORB). The primary difference between the PA and the PB ports is in the operation of the output buffers which drive these pins. The buffers are push-pull devices which are capable or sourcing 3 ma at 1.5v. This allows these pins to directly drive transistor switches. To assure that the microprocessor will read proper data on a "Read PB" operation, sufficient logiC Is provided in the chip to allow the microprocessor to read the Output Register Instead of reading the peripheral pin as on the PA port."

Yah I discovered your composite option yesterday, which got me wondering about the whole scene. Very nice work! Thanks for the links.

I could have sworn this was a thing, but can't find links anywhere. Wasn't there an A/V mod that listened to the data bus and reproduced the audio/video signal from that directly?

Played asteroids (real cart) on modded Flashback2 last week or so.

Awesome. Here's another clue for the first:

Preparing some movies for review. Anyone want to guess which?

Just informally here so far. I'm going to go through my inbox + this forum and contact people in the order they requested one.

Not yet. Six switch, modified flashback 2, and coleco Atari adapter, but I'll wait for a couple reviews before sending them all out.

Okay.... I've just finished a series of instructional how-to videos. From installing the encoder software, to ripping the DVD, to putting it all into a real cartridge... For anyone interested in buying one, I'd strongly recommend watching these to make sure it meets your expectations: Cheers, Rob Caveats: -Emulator playback works on current Gopher 2600, but not yet Stella (it's in there, just new release needs to be compiled) -Only the PC plugin is on my github, but I'll get the OSX version compiled soon.

Update: Working with @JetSetIlly, added an 'Orientation' parameter to the encoder to specify left/right/top/bottom orientation. Careful tipping those old large TV's Also I went down the rabbit hole of making the firmware upgradeable via the micro SD card. In a nutshell: If the only file on the card is 'update.frm' it will append that code onto the end of the chip and call it on startup. If this goes awry, you can factory reset the card by grounding a couple of pre-defined holes on it, which will erase it again. (hopefully means if I send you a card, you can get bug updates) Cheers.

From what I recall, modded Flashback 2 starts polling data around 2 msec, and a heavy sixer 25 msec.

Is this a problem with the M6502 emulation?

Thought about this one a few times, but quality doesn't seem that great. However @Andrew Davie showed me some colorized versions of public domain movies that may be interesting.

To be clear, make the sd card an option or the usb reader?

Oh okay. That's good to know. I've planned to ship with an SD Card though with some basic content, to make sure it works. Fear there's lots of SD card variations out there, and if it doesn't recognize / reads too slow, the whole thing fails to work as described. I'm currently in the process of creating a bunch of how-to-vids, since there's a custom codec involved.

Next problem: I realize people won't be able to update the content, unless they have their own USB SD card reader. (just misplaced mine) (To plug the micro SD card into their pc/laptop/macbook etc). They retail for about $10 on Amazon, but <$1 in bulk on AliExpress. Is that something people expect to be included, or is it more bring your own? --- And then is it still USB or do people expect USB-C now?

Can you explain why having any of the upper 3 address bits set caused issues? Who was relying on them specifically? Where were they being manifest?

Ah. I've seen some github projects that implemented bare-metal PI graphics displays over serial communications that looked interesting back then but I could be misinterpreting. Anyways, suspect I may be pushing a different project direction here so I won't confuse it further. Loving the progress btw and looking forward to updates.