Paul Slocum

I fiddled with it a bit. I guess I'd say: NTSC: $86 Blue $8E LtBlue PAL: $D6 Blue $DE LtBlue Commodore Colors -Paul

536 Boo-yah! -Paul

Hehe. I did today. -Paul

I love dodge em, but I was able to flip the score pretty easily. But with the difficulty switches, it's a real challege. I'm glad you posted that. I managed to get 351 on expert. -Paul

I was looking for that the other day. You can find it here: Bankswitching Info -Paul

From the Stella mailing list: "It is simply 16 cropped and connected screenshots of colors.bin running on Mac Stella, with the odd numbered colors (which Mac Stella erronously displays) removed. As such, its accuracy is limited to however acurate Mac Stella is." You can probably find colors.bin and run it on an emulator that supports PAL color (like PCAEWin) to get the PAL colors. NTSC Color Palette -Paul

The Atari basically has a 40x192? resolution background (very low res), two 8 bit wide bitmapped sprites, a three box/line/box things you can move. The game "Frogs and Flies" illustrates this perfectly. The "sprites" are high resolution compared the background. There are only two bitmapped ones, but you can copy them multiple times on one screen. Programmers later started using multiple copies of the sprites not just for the "players" but also for backgrounds and other stuff, making games appear to have better resolution. For example, the text in Basic Programming is made by copying and changing the shape of the sprites many times during one draw of the screen. -Paul

I've always liked the Tigervision cartridges. I like the shape and the white and colored plastic. -Paul

Some of my favorite rare ones are: Quadrun Rescue Terra I X-Man (not really fun, but funny) Wall Ball Mangia A couple of my least favorite are: Music Machine Chase the Chuckwagon -Paul

It's probably a prototype, but personally, I wouldn't spend a lot of money on anything like that unless I saw the board inside the cartridge. Xevious is a standard 8k ROM which can easily be put on a modern Chris Wilkson bankswitching board. So you could build the same thing that's in that auction for about $10. Most prototype auctions appear to be legitimate, but I've seen a few that look really fishy. -Paul

Here's what I don't have: working 7800 (never can find them) 4 switch 2600 (don't like them as much) kids controllers, light gun, steering paddles(hope to get these soon) A few cool things I do have: 2 Wico Trackballs 128 game menu-driven multicart (homemade) Cuttle Cart (awesome) Commodore Paddles 2600 6-slot pushbutton cartridge switcher Atari 1040ST w/80286 board (runs DOS under TOS!) -Paul

Also, the following games had their own comics: Yars Revenge Centipede SQ Earthworld SQ Fireworld SQ Waterworld Anyone know if there are any others? -Paul

Q: Which Atari 2600 games did the Atari Force mini-comics come in? A: This actually the only FAQ in this document. #1 - Defender #2 - Berzerk #3 - Star Raiders #4 - Phoenix #5 - Galaxian Atari Force FAQ

There's definitely something VERY special about this auction: Auction -Paul

Speaking of toons, check this out: Homestar Runner They have Atari references in several of the toons (In Search of the Yellow Dellow) and throughout the site. -Paul

Well I'll be... This is from the Chisolm Trail manual: "1. Turn the computer ON and wait for the master title screen to appear. Then slide the module into the slot on the console. 2. Press any key to make the master selection list appear. To select the module, press the key corresponding to the number beside CHISHOLM TRAIL. NOTE: To remove the module, first return the computer to the master titles screen by pressing QUIT. Then remove the module from the slot..." Appearently you don't have to do this, because I've been turning it off to take the cartridge out for years. -Paul

The biggest problem is that many Atari games use flicker to appearently display several things at once. So a screen shot will be missing half (or more) of the action. Here's my patented process for getting good screen shots with PCAEWin: In PCAEWin run the ROM, then stop it when you want to capture. Open up the debugger, and click the "->Line" button and enter 200 (you may have to do this twice to get a good screen.) Save a screen capture. Then click "->Line" button again and type 200. Save a second screen capture. Then open both up in Photoshop and paste one of the shots on top of the other. In the layer window, set the top layer type to "lighten". -Paul

Atari70s: I think you may be jumping in a little too fast. Even the playfield demo requires that you have a pretty good understanding 65xx assembly. And assembly is VERY different from the high level languages you have experience with. I went into the playfield demo with quite a bit of experience programming Commodore 64 (6510) assembly, and it was still tough. My suggestion would be to get an intro book on 65xx assembly language. I learned most of what I know from the Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide, which you can find on Ebay often. And there are many other books on this topic which you can probably find on Ebay or at thift stores. -Paul

I just downloaded the program and I'm impressed. I think I may switch over. My suggestion is to add a few custom text fields that we can name whatever we want. This would add a lot of flexibility and free you from taking requests for new fields. -Paul

Emulator save-states are the easiest way to save the program. I'm not sure about the other emulators, but in PCAEWin, just stop the emulation and choose "Save Game". It'll save the state of the entire machine in a 24k file. -Paul

I'd say Warlords. -Paul

Honestly, right now I'm planning on going with Hozer Video. Randy takes care of the orders and shipping which saves me more time and really makes $11 a bargain. I would consider the board w/ EPROM deal, except that I don't want to mess with shipping anymore. I am thinking about upgrading the label quality, though. I'm considering using an online bumper sticker printer to get my labels done. Looks like they'll cost $3 a piece 300dpi full color, and they should be about as durable as you can get. I've been just printing my manuals on nice-looking card stock from Kinko's using a good ink jet. Probably costs about $1 when you consider the ink cartridges. I don't really expect to sell anything close to 200 cartridges. Counting current orders, I've only sold about 20 Testcarts in four months. I expect to sell more of my Synthcart and Marble Craze game, but probably not more than 50. -Paul

You can get kits to rebuild them at Best... Best Electronics -Paul

Somehow I pulled 5.91 on Dragster today! -Paul

Atari minds must think alike. The background colors you see in the screen shot cycle continuously. I'm also planning on adding a mode that removes the text from the screen and cycles colors based on what note you're playing. -Paul