molecularr

Alright, well it's nice to know I'm not alone at least! For what it's worth, I did leave mine running (figuring that if it's running one of my cpu cores to 100%, it might be actually doing *something*), but when I got back to it this morning it was still hung. I had to kill -9 it. I can certainly manage the inconvience for now, and since stephena's working on it, I think I'll just wait for 3.1 !

Hello, I'm having a bit of trouble with Stella on Ubuntu (9.10), and I wonder if anyone has encountered (and hopefully corrected!) the same thing. Mainly, when I go to exit a ROM by hitting "escape", the software hangs and I have to force kill it. (Force with the -9 flag.) This is rather inconvenient, especially since it also jacks up my CPU usage. Now, the version in the package repository is still 2.6.2, but I went ahead downloaded the .deb for 3.0. Still got the same bug. I haven't tried this yet, but would anyone happen to know if compiling it myself would make a difference? Thanks in advance.

No argument there. So are you saying the alternate font was a recent hack as well?

So, any idea if these originated with specific ColecoVision iterations? I mean, for example, did the different font one come with the Telegames Personal Arcade? The wikipedia article on DINA says its startup screen included japanese text. If so, it's worth noting that I couldn't find any Japanese characters (certainly not a full character set) in any of these three ROMs.

Hello, I'm trying to learn more about the ColecoVision console, and I'm perplexed by something. Seems like someone here may know the answer. Basically, if when you emulate the ColecoVision (in MESS, for example), you can install one of two BIOSes, both of which are pretty easy to find. The main difference between the two, it seems, is the system font they each include. The original is a sparse, pretty generic character set, and the alternate (usually labeled "ColecoVision BIOS (Different Font)" is a much more distinctive, wide-lettered typeface. It's almost script-like in some letters. I haven't tried to disassemble either yet, but I can tell there are some other differences besides the font. So, does anyone know why there are two? For example, Is the different BIOS from the Telegames or CBS Electronics version? Thanks.

Excellent! That's exactly what I needed. Should have looked there first. Thanks.

Hi all, I'm looking for some information about programmers of specific Atari coin-op games, but it's turning out to be not so easy. Does anyone know of a database which might list credits for early coin-ops? Specifically, I'm interested in Super Breakout [1978] (note: NOT the original Breakout -- we all know the story on that one). Does anyone know where I can find this information? Google isn't helping much since there are so many super breakouts out there. Thanks.

Oh, right. I get it now. For some reason I was thinking that the whole character would be "leaved" and interwoven with other stuff, but that's obviously wrong since I would have already seen that. Duh. Thanks!!

Thanks. That makes sense to me. So here's another, even more basic question: How do I find $f0a? I can't read/convert binary in my head, so I've just been printing each byte with an ascending decimal. Decimal f0a would be 3850, but upon looking there, I didn't see a character. There's something there, but I can't tell what it is. Am I looking in the right place?

Hello, I'm researching different lettering and numeral designs used in Atari 2600 games, and I've run into a problem. Basically, the problem is that, whereas for most games I can "print" the text sprites by rendering the binary in some textual form (e.g., X's and .'s), I've come across a few games where that doesn't work. As I understand it, the 2600 lacks any implementation of ASCII, so when a particular character is needed, it's shape has to be stored directly in the game ROM, right? But for Wizard of Wor at least (and several others I've forgotten off the top of my head), this does not appear to be the case. When I print out its binary, I see the other sprites, but no text or numbers. Does anyone know what's going on here? I've seen conflicting information about whether Wizard of Wor uses the RAM+ chip, but if it does, is it possible that there's a small character set stored there? I really have only the most basic understanding of programming for this console, so it's likely that I'm missing something obvious. Any suggestions?