jbanes

I was afraid you guys were going to say that. Ah well. As NovaXPress mentioned, it's a pretty neat item. I'll have to look it over and decide whether I should find it a better home for it, or wait until the kids are old enough to play it with me. Thanks for your help, everyone!

So I recently purchased an Odyssey^2 off of eBay to find out what all the fuss was about. It came with a boatload of games, but most of them are considered the poorer titles for the Odyssey^2. However, there was one title that really stuck out. Conquest of the World The box is in good condition, with only a bit of warping. More or less what you'd expect for a hinged box after 20 years of storage. The ribbon is intact. The cartridge is completely undamaged. There are no signs that it's ever been used for anything more than a quick test. I tried it myself and it appears to run fine. There are 9 sheets of point markers, all unpunched. 3 are blue (1000), 3 are white (100), and three are red (500). There are six sets of magnetic game pieces, all unpunched as well. They are blue, yellow, black, white, red, and green. One of the pieces on the black set has the sticker partially coming off. Otherwise the set is undamaged. The instruction manual is complete with a gold cover, wax paper inner covers, and no tears that I can find. It appears to be in excellent condition. Likewise, the board is still glossy, and doesn't appear to have been used. It folds and unfolds without issue, but is stiff like a new board. According to the Odyssey^2 homepage, this is a level 6 rarity item. Based on the information they provide (1981 release, box and cart say "Odyssey^2" rather than "Videopac" or "GS7000", etc.) this appears to be the US release. Pictures of the bundle I got can be seen on the eBay page. ---- So my question is, is this a very rare item? If so, does it have any value, or should I just punch it out and play? I'm not looking for any solid estimates at the moment, just a ballpark figure of what it might be worth. If there's enough interest I might be able to post some pictures next week. Thanks in advance for your help!

Same here. A console is just too costly of an investment to get for only one game. I think the closest I ever got to getting a system for a single game was when I got a Virtual Boy. At the time it was marked on sale (a significant discount!) so I got it. Mario Tennis and that third-person, shoot'em-up were the only games I ever played on it. But that had more to do with Nintendo dropping support on the Virtual Boy before they managed to build up a library.

You mean the "major hole" like the Euro 7800?

newfs_msdos -F 16 /dev/<diskid> The graphical tools will probably work fine as well, but I know the command line off the top of my head.

* jbanes buries his face in his hands and sighs If you'll excuse me, I need to go get another cup of coffee. This is going to be a loooonnng thread.

You call that odd? I dunno, it made a lot of sense to me. Memory was extremely limited in those old consoles, and the Intellivision just happened to be an incredibly expensive one. Reusing busses and memory was a very useful idea. A similar concept was used in the IBM PCs to get around the 640K limit. If a programmer needed some extra memory, he could easily overwrite the video locations in the HMA. Of course, this was made easier by the fact that the IBM PC had two video memory locations rather than one. (A000 was graphics and B000 was text.)

Yep, definitely can't tone down the abrasiveness. So much for humorous banter.

The game industry doesn't get a say in these things. Hardware is hardware is hardware. I could start calling all consoles cheese muffins because "the professional computing industry never accepted the definition of consoles", but that doesn't mean that anyone will take me seriously. (MMmmmmm.... cheese muffin.....) Actually, this gets back to what I was saying about modern processors. Things have gotten pretty darn fuzzy thanks to the march of modern technology. As a result, 64-bit is used to refer to memory addressing more than math or register sizes. I thought that was Atari's line? 32 bit + 32 bit = 64 bit "Do the Math" The memory bus is usually between 256 and 512 bits for the high-end cards, but the processors themselves (AFAIK) don't go beyond 128-bit floating point precision. Alright. If we accept that the embedded processor was a clone of the DSP, then you've still got a 32-bit processor. ("Jerry" was a 32-bit RISC.) (raises eyebrow) Can you find a reference for that? I very much doubt that Atari would have wasted silicon on 64 bit memory addressing. Even the largest ROM wouldn't have needed more than 24-bit addressing, much less 32-bit addressing. 64-bit addressing would have been like lighting off a 300 megaton nuclear hydrogen bomb just to kill that fly you couldn't catch with your chopsticks. Simple answers like that are for advertising. They have very little place in any technical argument. For those purposes, the "was it 64-bit?" question is neither here nor there. It was what it was, and its games did what they did. Mmm... well we agree on one point. Not really. The Intellivision was unconventional, to be sure, but I don't see anything odd about its design. The Jaguar, on the other hand, seems like an exercise in "how many microprocessors can we get away with putting in a single system?" I imagine that Flare thought that programmers would appreciate all the general purpose processing power they were given, but they seem to have failed to realize how incredible of a burden they placed on those same developers. You'll notice that when 3D co-processors became popular, they all came with a standardized API for programming them instead of allowing the programmer to go willy-nilly with the GPUs functions. This actually improves performance on modern 3D hardware since the driver is responsible for turning graphics commands into highly optimized GPU code. Interestingly, pixel shaders may have brought us into a full circle. Whereas GPUs have traditionally been glorified Digital Signal Processors, they're now becoming more complex processors that allow arbitrary code to run onboard. It's difficult to say if this is a good thing. The complexity of the modern GPU has resulted in exponential cost increases in creating a new video game. Each game can easily require a budget the size of a blockbuster movie. And the situation is only getting worse, not better. IMHO, we're just about ready for a technology change-over. Using Ray Tracing technology would greatly simplify rendering engines, and allow graphics designers to create future scenes much more naturally than most game engines today. The types of polygon limitations we see today wouldn't exist in a raytracing system (at least not in the same way), and the Lightwave 3D/3D MAX/Bryce/Poser models could go directly into the game rather than using something more complex like a Milkshape model and custom level editor.

Um, yeah. That would be for the benefit of anyone who doesn't know and wants to get the gag. This is a public forum, remember?

What is the bit-width of the Jag system bus? It's a 64-bit* non-argument. The bus width only matters for transmitting data. Most PCs today have at least 128 bits of bus width. That doesn't make their 32 bit processors 128 bit. Neither does the 128 bit math and 256 bit bus of the GPU. What *does* make a processor 64 bit is the size of its registers and the size of its ALU. A machine as a whole isn't really 32 bit or 64 bit, but rather refers to the Central Processing Unit of the machine. The central processor of the Jaguar is a 32 bit Motorola 68000 processor which is complemented by a DSP and several graphical processing units. Ergo, the Jaguar is a 32 bit machine. But for marketing purposes, Atari chose to play up the 64-bit-ness of the system. Which (while rather dubious) was somewhat acceptable for its time. There really weren't any major competitiors with the same sort of technology. Then again, I remember some gaming system from the time (it was either the Jaguar or the TGFX-16) advertising "4-D Gaming". So Atari was not the only one selling a bag of balony. In modern machines the "bit-ness" of a CPU is becoming less and less clear as time goes one. With machines moving to SIMD architectures with 128-bit registers for DSP-like streaming of computations, the number of bits has been redefined to refer to the memory addressable by the processor. Thus a 32 bit processor can only address 4GBs of memory, while a 64Bit processor can address 2^64 bytes (several exabytes) of RAM. The Jaguar REALLY fails under that definition. Honestly, I don't see any reason why people feel a need to call the Jaguar the "first 64 bit processor". It was what it was. Atari advertised it as 64-bit, but the reality was more complex. I don't see why that's hard to accept. * The Jaguar's bus varied from component to component. As a result, it was as little as 16 bits in some places, and as large as 64 bits in others.

There's two notes displayed at a time... they could be playing simultaneously or in sequence. There's no time signature so we don't know the duration, but considering the time they're visible on screen, polyphony seems likely. So what you're saying is, given the probability distribution of the notes, we can compute a 75% probability of the smiley face listening to polyphonic music versus a 25% probability of monophonic music, subject to errors introduced by the Uncertainty Principle. Therefore it is most likely that the smiley is listening to polyphonic music, but there is no way to be certain unless we can observe the music itself. Once observed, our universe will diverge into two separate branches; one where the smiley was listening to polyphonic music and one where he beat the odds to listen to monophonic music? Well, I'm glad we cleared that up. EDIT: So what you're telling me is, you don't read my links either? Damn. And here I was hoping this was the alternate universe where at least someone paid attention.

Has anyone considered setting up a Wiki to document this stuff? At least that way the information becomes centralized rather than distributed. Any mistakes can easily be updated and fixed without fear that the reader will accidently end up with old info.

More likely he doesn't know you very well, is reacting strongly to your abrasiveness, and then is wondering why no one else sees his issue. Have you ever considered being a little more gentle with new posters? Meh. I suppose not. Hey! That's my link! Well, at least I know that someone clicks through to them. Since the 2600 has a two-voice sound chip: all of them. Unless, of course, the game only uses one voice. Then it's monophonic. Hey, look! Another link! (<-- I wonder. Is this guy listening to monophonic music or polyphonic music? The world may never know...)

Perhaps I'm not the only one who thinks of Doctor Who whenever "Time Lords" are mentioned? And I'm in the US!

I've got an idea! Let's give a game system to Mr. Wise Old Owl and ask him to tell us! Great! Now that it's settled, does anyone know where I can get a new Jaguar?

Здравствулте! Don't forget about the Dendy, one of the most popular Famiclones ever! What's odd is that I've never met any Russians who've had a Dendy. Supposedly it was quite popular, though. The thing about Russian manufacturing is that most of their electronics were swiped from designs of other countries. The Dendy was a Famiclone, the BK-0010 was a Spectrum, the MS 1502 was an IBM XT, the "Wolf and Rabbit" handheld was a Nintendo Game and Watch (I have one of these!), the Tupolev Tu-144 was the Concorde, the Buran was the Shuttle... errr... I'm getting a little carried away, aren't I? In any case, all the major resources were so tied up in everything military that the consumer firms didn't do any real development. What's even more interesting is that quality varied heavily depending on the factory that made the item. Since everything was "owned" by the government, any factory could put out copies of items without fear of legal action. There was a big fallout on intellectual property after the Soviet Union was dissolved, but the reprocussions of the USSR's policies can still be felt today. For example, if you pick up candy in Moscow, it will tend to taste very different from the exact same candy purchased in one of the smaller towns. All in all, Russia is just starting to get their feet under themselves when it comes to consumer products. Give them another decade or two and they might start to produce original products that are competitive with the international market.

As JB and I were just discussing, both sticks come from the work on the 2700 and Sylvia controllers. I think Atari had it about right with those two, but for some reason they felt the need to screw it up. In the 5200's case, the reasoning was fairly simple: The analog stick messed with the design. But in the case of the Proline, they were obviously trying to do a more stylish 2600-style stick. So they extended the shaft WAY too long. If they'd stuck with the stubby-knob type of stick on the 2700/Sylvia sticks, I think they would have done much better. Being smaller, you could have moved them with your fingers rather than forcing you to use a solid, torque-inducing grasp. I've never seen one in real-life, but isn't that what the Sears Telegames 7800 Super Deluxe Joystick did? At least from the pictures, it looks like they made the stick a lot heavier while simultaneously shortening the shaft. It's hard to be sure from just a screenshot, but it does look like it would be a far more comfortable controller than the regular Prolines.

Now there's an idea! I actually used pieces of scotch tape to firmly hold the joystick over the domes. It works surprisingly well, but it still doesn't give a proper "click" when you push on the stick. (Though at least it gives some sort of "click"!) I'm afraid that the only way to get that back is to get a new stick or PCB. Agreed. The problem with the stick is that you put a lot of torque on it, but its slim design does very little to resist movement. Even if you get a good grip (which will eventually tire your hands), pressing the button will usually throw your grip off. As a result, I've developed a few different holds for different types of games. Probably my favorite is to hold the stick sideways so that your thumb can press directly down on one of the buttons and your trigger finger can press the other button. You can then control the stick with your other hand by using forward/back and up/down motions instead of the usual forward/back, left/right motions. That being said, the best solution is a CX78. Not the best controller ever, but a lot better than the Proline.

Ack! That is not good. Not good at all. I'm really starting to dislike the 7800...

It's too bad I have an LCD screen. I want to take one for the team too! (j/k)

There was a similar thread on the Cuttle Cart here. I think the concensus was that the method used to record data for the CC was resistant enough to errors that it was "safe" to store it in MP3 format. However, you need to be aware that errors may still creep up due to the information that MP3s throw away. As long as you realize that (and don't throw away your originals!), you should be fine.

Without Nintendo, Tramiel never would have felt pressure to reenter the console market. Being as cheap as he was, he wouldn't have reentered the console market without that pressure. Good or not, I sincerely doubt that it would have existed in its current form without the influence of the Nintendo. Given its computer roots, it's possible (likely?) that it would have been in a home computer configuration instead of a console configuration. Which means that the CDROM attachment might have been integrated in the US market from the beginning. Which means that more software would have been ported, and it might have had a chance. OTOH, the IBM PC was pretty popular in the US Market by 1989. It's a question as to whether the PC Engine would have been noticed in a market that was already slowly pushing out Atari and Amiga computers. Nice one.

I'm not sure how this logically ties back to anything, but the answer is fairly simple: Presidential order. The Saturns were part of the Apollo program, and Nixon told NASA to shut it down. In fact, he told them to shut down everything including most secondary rocket launches. The military continued to fly the Titans, and non-NASA agencies (Boeing, Lockheed, etc.) were allowed to fly commercial rockets. Since NASA owned all the IP on the Saturns, they were not available for remanufacture. Even if they were, what commercial entity had the money to spend on a 100+ tonne to orbit rocket? And why bother manufacturing a IB when both the Titan and Space Shuttle could carry similar loads? You think the Space Shuttle is made from the same materials and technologies as the Saturn V? Oh, and the Saturn V is a "mid-1950's design". Both contained technologies WAY ahead of their respective times. Have you considered that you might get a better answer to this over on Space.com or some other rocket-focused forum? But if you really want a guess, it's probably for visual tracking purposes. The black/white paint is high contrast, ensuring that the craft can be seen no matter which background it's against, and the alternating pattern would allow visual tracking to verify if the craft were improperly spinning.

Gah! Won't this urban legend just die? The blueprints are safe and sound. The reason why the Saturn V can't be rebuilt is that American industry has moved away from heavy metals, analog computer, and slow electronic switches toward plastics, composites, alloys, and hyperfast microprocessors. You know how many compatibility problems were in the FB2 just because of newer manufacturing techniques? Imagine if these types of problems were across an entire rocket. It would be faster to design a new rocket than blow up a few dozen remanufactures just to work the bugs back out. Don't worry though. We're still flying a machine more powerful than the Saturn V. The Space Shuttle lifts about 129 metric tonnes (give or take depending on how you figure). The problem is that 104 metric tonnes of that is the Space Shuttle itself. In the Saturn V design, the craft was whatever you wanted to pop on top of the stack. It could be a human-carrying craft, or it could be pure cargo. It didn't matter. The Space Shuttle took all that away when the most powerful engines known to man were forever tied to a massive dump truck for space. The CLV (part of the CEV program), however, will finally give us the engines without any extra baggage to go along with it. It will be significantly more powerful than the Saturn V, but it will use the engine technology from the shuttle program.