Paul Slocum

If there are enough people who are willing to submit songs, I might consider making an Atari song CD. I'm working on a track right now myself. My current layout includes the beat from Felemel #3 but not the bass-line. I'm going to try to finalize the beats tonight. I'll post the list when I finish. I already did the label. I wanted it in a vector graphics format since I was taking it to a print shop. And most of the label had to be a chart of the sound settings anyway. You can see it here: Synthcart Label -Paul

There were a lot of great entries which made this very difficult, but I've finally picked my three favorites: Hally Submission #2 Felemel Submission #2 Jeff Gregory Submission #1 Although only the three top entries win a free Synthcart, I will include some of the other entries on the cartridge. I'm still finalizing my decision on this, and I will announce these in a few days. If you have a favorite that you think needs to be included, let me know. Thanks to everyone for your participation, and thanks to Albert for sponsoring the contest! -Paul [ 02-21-2002: Message edited by: Smart Patrol ]

At Disneyland they use polarizers (at 90 degree angles) in the glasses and the projector(s). -Paul

Sounds cool. I've toyed with the idea of making a 2600 cartridge that let's you edit beats on-screen. The problem is that there would be no way to save them. If you made your software able to produce Atari binaries, that would be really cool. Because then you can load them onto a real Atari using a Supercharger or Cuttle Cart. -Paul

Chuck, I'm glad you got the Clash album title reference. I wasn't sure how many people would remember a bad Clash album from the 80's. Combat Rock is sortof a hack/homebrew combo. The Combat code is unchanged except that the sound is disabled and two subroutine calls are redirected. You'll notice it's a 4k game instead of the original 2k. My music player code is in the upper 2k. It's basically the beat player from the Synthcart but with the ability to play patterns in a programmed order. BTW: The music pauses when you press Game Select because Combat clears a bunch of memory each time you press it, and it takes too many cycles for my music code to run without the screen rolling. Here's the ROM image again if you missed it: Combrock.bin -Paul [ 02-19-2002: Message edited by: Smart Patrol ]

One time I found a bunch of 2600 games behind my friend's warehouse. They had been in the yard for a couple of months, and several of them were actually submerged in muddy water. The labels were shot, but I cleaned them up and they worked fine! -Paul

Thanks for everyone's great entries. I'm really glad that we had this contest. I'll announce the winners later this week. -Paul

Tom, I think you were clear about what it was, and you started bidding at $7, which is reasonable based on what it was. I did not intend to imply that you were being deceptive at all. After all, you listed it pretty much the same way I did when I originally sold it to you. I was just blown away by how much it went for. -Paul

Maze is Slot Racers, and Maze Mania is Maze Craze. Kinda confusing. -Paul

I think the only sears exclusives are Steeplechase, Stellar Track and Submarine Commander. -Paul

I also really like having manuals. I love the pictures and personally I think it makes the games more fun to read the scenario and have the game variation information. I've now got manuals for 275 of my 300 games. I started out buying them off the internet from Chuck Gill and 4jays. I also would buy big lots of manuals or games with manuals off ebay and sell back what I don't need. I would sometimes almost break even doing this. To fill the last few hard to find ones, I've ended up having to buy the cartridge with the manual on ebay, and then sell the cartridge. If anyone else has any manual tips I'd love to hear them too. -Paul

Then my next question is: Will a game with 262 scanlines work on a PAL system? I thought that I had read that NTSC games work fine on PAL except that the colors are mixed up and there's black space at the bottom of the screen. I kept the Synthcart at 262 on the PAL version because I wanted to keep the tempos roughly the same. But I need to add more scanlines and adjust the tempos if it's going to cause problems. -Paul

Isn't it true though, that if they don't add the extra scanlines (keep it at 262) then the game will run at pretty close to the same speed? Are there PAL versions where they only fixed the colors and didn't add the scanlines? -Paul

Well, it is a cool thing to have, but you sure paid too much. But I'm sure we've all paid way too much for Atari stuff at some point. -Paul

4Jays has a special where you get two driving controllers and Indy 500 for $12.95 + s/h. It's probably about what you'll pay on Ebay and you avoid the hassle of bidding. 4Jays -Paul

UMMM!! Wow. Did you guys happen to read my previous post? I'll tell you exactly how that came into being: I had a copy of Pac-Man sitting in my closet. I opened it up and cut the EPROM off the board. Then I took a 2532 EPROM and burned a copy of Alligator people that I downloaded off the net. Soldered the EPROM onto a board with the inverter, and found that it wouldn't fit back into the case because I didn't cut the EPROM pins short enough. I stuck a sparkly sticker (from Toy Joy in Austin) on it, and sold the board with an Atari and some games on Ebay (clearly listed as not a prototype). Tom won that auction. Anybody else who wants one, I'll make you a great deal and sell you one for $50!! Half price!! -Paul [ 02-16-2002: Message edited by: Smart Patrol ]

I bought some DC's off ebay and they arrived today. I had some a while back, but they were borrowed and eventually I had to return them. Thomas, those hacks are GREAT! They're so much fun to play. -Paul

I used the "quarter inchers" from BG Micro. These end up making the buttons stick out a bit more than normal even if you cut and sand the switches so they're not as tall and hollow out the rubber buttons. But I did end up getting them to work and I finally enjoy playing the 5200. BG Micro Catalog (pdf) -Paul [ 02-16-2002: Message edited by: Smart Patrol ]

I did it on the 5200. My switches are a little too big and were hard to fit, but they work great. I'm sure there are smaller switches out there. I installed them on the fire buttons, start, pause, reset, # and *. -Paul

I just dealt with this issue when working on the Synthcart. The clock speeds of the NTSC and PAL machines are slightly different. But the more significant issue is that PAL TVs have more scanlines. Since PAL games draw more scanlines and it takes time to draw them, PAL games run at a slower framerate. Usually the game logic (like the music code) runs through once per TV frame, so a PAL version of a game may run slower. -Paul

Thrust! -Paul

I vote for the track and field controller. Then you can also use a joystick if you don't have a t&f controller since the buttons are just the equivalent of left and right. -Paul

Right click on the link and choose "save target as" and then you should be able to save the beat kit on your hard drive. Open the .h and .asm files with a text editor like notepad. -Paul

The one that really pains me is the opening song for Sneak N Peek. I made a house remix of it if you need a refresher: Sneak N Peek -Paul

I'm not anti-Mac at all. There are many times when I wish I had Final Cut Pro. I would set it up for a Mac if I knew of a way. I just don't know of any 2600 assembler for the Mac. -Paul