willbilly

I would figure any new-build hardware may as well be an improvement, since both avenues are backwards-compatible (the 99/8 and the Geneve) - which is why I lean towards the Geneve when doing hypotheticals, it being the biggest improvement. I figure priced well enough it might engender more homebrew for the original Geneves as well. If you really wanted to jumpstart homebrew development, you could also release a devkit/emulator disguised as a "fantasy" console, like the Pico-8.

I've put some thought into it. I know that there's quite a few custom chips in the 99/8 to contend with. There is also the option to produce new build Myarc boards, possibly even putting the myarc architecture into new cases.

Bmack had a good amount of input too. We bounced a couple of ideas back and forth - especially the power and reset buttons. The controller-knob-as-buttons was his idea.

Okay...I want one. I don't even have a pro system yet...or the money. But when I do I want this in my collection

Aha...DMA time. There's the bottleneck I was expecting. So, if I understand this correctly, MARIA halts the 6502 to read the DLL, determines which display list to generate, goes out and finds all the appropriate elements, then determines what pixels will be in the raster, and finally outputs the raster. Just trying to clear this up so I can theorycraft some more.

Minix Lint?

That's pretty much what I was looking for. The Sally-Maria interface is so quirky though that I don't know if there'd be any bottlenecks or anything like that that would make this idea a non-starter.

Hi all, First post in the A7800 forum for me. I'm mostly a TI-99 guy, but the 7800 has interested me since I heard about it from this forum. I think it's a shame it never really had a chance to shine (kinda like my brother's Jaguar and my own Lynx). I've been reading a lot of this forum since then and although I don't have a 7800, I'm pretty interested in getting one and seeing what it can do, and what it could have done. I'm a machinist so I have tons of time to think when I'm doing a production job in front of the lathe. And yesterday I got to thinking about 320B mode and Nintendo's MMCs. From the software guide I gather Maria stops the processor while doing two jobs, assembling the Line RAM and then displaying. Unfortunately, while I understand some of what's happening, I don't understand most and I certainly don't grok it. So I came up with some questions: Would it be possible to build an IC to mount in the cartridge that you could offload assembling the Line RAM to, and if you could, would that actually reduce the amount of time Maria has to use Sally's resources? Would that make 320B viable for a full background including sprites? Would it have been possible to do this in 1988-90? I'm trying to find a period correct solution. No ARM shoved into the cart.

Not really sure. I think I'm going to do my final setup and then finally get back to designing my cartridge scheme. I'd like to finish the designs for all of them and then start costing out injection molds. They're simple shapes, I think my machines can handle it.

It's necessity more than anything else. There are so many gaps, so many holes in the Atari 7800 library that it's begging for more games, including genres which simply didn't exist on the system.

Olivetti M24. Very simple, clean design...but great proportions.

Ti 99/8 for starters.

Hmm...maybe I'll get one of those mucked up TI-99s off of shopgoodwill and make an industrial case for it.

TMS 34020 graphics card for the PEB has been bouncing around my noggin for some time.

I've considered doing a software interface for my Fanuc 0m-B equipped VMC. They're roughly contemporary.... Then again, I don't want any of my TI-99s getting mucked up by being in the shop

Yeah, if you're wondering why I haven't continued my work on the TI cartridge cases....this is why.

Brian actually posted an update about this on the KS. I went ahead and copied here for your convenience.

As a Matra-Bonnet Djet fan, I approve of this computer.

In my experience when that happens people tend to take whatever isn't nailed down.

Saw this on Shopgoodwill.com. Thought you guys might like to know about it.

In my defense, the design language of the original Colecovision is pretty rectangular. I had wilder ideas, but I thought they departed too far from the original for the majority of Coleco fans. The newest iteration has been refined and tweaked. Hopefully you'll find it a little more exciting.

Congratulations on getting the rights to the name!

Nice Intellivision ii...all wires and cables, picture soon

That's what I figured after doing some ebay research. I'm willing to drop some cash on top as well to sweeten the deal.

Hey all. Just picked up an intellivision II. It's neat, but my collection is Texas-themed, so I'd prefer the Tandyvision if I can get it. I'll post a pic asap. EDIT: I don't know the relative values of the two consoles. I'm hoping they're somewhat commensurate.