AussieAtari

My opinion is the Wii, as it's the closest thing to a modern-day 2600 in bringing the family together etc, which will see it placed in a number of homes that would not normally have bought consoles. We have two friends who have done just that after playing Wii and they are non-gamers. Reality in Oz though is the PS3 will probably win overall as this is a BIG Sony market, the price point is the only thing that may see it lose.

Well, It's not the 80 column/64K card as that is in it's usual place in slot 0, and I'm still none the wiser. The card is in slot 1, which is where I want to put a Super Serial Card. Here is the chip set list from the card and a picture, I'm trying to find information on the actual chips now to see if I can get an idea that way. Chipset: Hitachi HN462732G 2A3 R, HD74LS373P 7B1T (2 of these), HD74LS74AP 7L18, HD74LS30P 7L38, HD74LS279P 7G18 Motorola SN74LS08N J8713 Mitsubishi M74LS00N 428DC Texas Instruments SN74LS00N 428DC Unknown DM74LSN SI8718 (2 of these)

That's a good question, does anybody know? It would be interesting to get an insight into Nintendo's distrubution ideas based on country and PAL/NTSC.

I disagree and think that it simply comes down to population size, the PS1 and PS2 were/are very big in Oz with a big take up per head compared with other countries, the same for the Wii.

In what has to be a first for Australia, there are plenty of Wii's in stock reasonably widely in my area and even on special at $10 off. I was talking to my local game shop owner and he reckons consoles have a three week wait at worst from Nintendo Australia, and yet the Wii is the fastest selling console ever in Oz (I know, our population is so much lower then everywhere else, apart from NZ), but it appears that Nintendo Aus received a greater percentage per population share than pretty much anywhere else. Is this the same in other PAL countries?

She Who Must Be Obeyed has decreed that they would be too hard for her to make, and went deeper into the site and found pictures of knitted ear warmers for push-bike helmets, which she thought were pretty cool. And she has the audacity to call me an Uber Geek!!!!! I'd cry into my super-cool Atari pillow - if I had one.

I'll double check tonight, I reckon it is the closest slot to the PSU but will look as it will be labeled on the PCB. If it is a RAM card it should show up under ProDos utilities as a RAM disk drive in bay 0, drive 1, should it not? I don't think it is a printer card as it is totally the wrong sort of connector. There appears to be a reasonable sized ROM chip in the centre of the card which has a blank label that most probably had printing on it years ago, the joys of thermal printers! I'll try it as a RAM card and take a photo if it is not.

I have an Apple IIe with an unidentified card in Slot 1, the card has no identifying marks on it, is half length, has a 12 pin male connector at the top and full of Hitachi socketed chips. Is there any way within the OS that I can query the card to find out what the hell it is? The only test I know is for a RAMDisk and it is not one of them as the test failed. This has got me stumped and I would like to know what it's purpose is before I swap it out for a Super Serial Card. I might try to take a photo of the card over the weekend and add it to this post. I have another IIe that has a functioning power supply (all pins providing the correct current and the power light on the keyboard (it's a first model IIe) comes on but there appears to be no power to anywhere alse as the PCB LED does not come on, nor the floppy drive nor the video out. Is the PCB fused, I cannot see anything obvious, or are there some chips that are prone to failure that would cause this? I have 5 other IIe's I can rat for parts so swapping chips etc is no problem. Any suggestions/guidance would be appreciated.

Only the Wii for me, it isn't an expense thing, I'm just crap at modern games requiring all sorts of button combinations etc (hell, I'm still scared of using my Dreamcast and have never found my GameCube as challenging as a PS1) and don't need super detailed graphics to enjoy a game. The Wii is a great family & friends console, plays the classics as well as offering great ways that new technology can make game playing more immersive and actually easier than ever before. As long as Guitar Hero comes out on Wii I will never have a desire to own a PS or XBox.

Love the multiple polls, great idea for such a large franchise. I went with: Platform - Super Mario 64, one of the first games that actually made me want to play to the end, the original arcade Donkey Kong would be a close 2nd. Sports - Mario Tennis Power Tour on the GBA, I've really enjoyed it. Puzzle - I have not played any of them (maybe I should?) Kart - Have to go with Mario Kart DS as it combines most of the best features of all before it. Before that came out it was Mario Kart 64 all the way. RPG - Paper Mario - The Thousand Year Door on the Cube, great fun and a great game. Where's the Mario Party category?

There's a whole lot of complicated answers to that question. Depends on your Macs and their capabilities. The easiest thing to transfer is always archived or binhex files (to avoid the whole resource/data fork mess). If you have Macs that can read 1.44MB floppies (and you're transferring small stuff) take a look at HFVExplorer. It's very easy Serial modem transfers are also a good easy path if possible. Other than that there's a host of ways depending on your Macs. Using a Mac with a NIC and Appletalk, and a product like PCMaclan is one of my personal favorites. I have a Mac Classic, a SE and a Color, all really early Macs, I don't think they will read a 1.44MB floppy but I might give it a try. Only one of the units has a HDD. I guess what would be ideal for me is to download from the web onto a PC, save to disk and then read the disk in the Mac, or using a null modem transfer. I'll have to do some more research once I've finished cleaning up 5 Apple II's I have for sale.

I used to play it a lot on my Colecovision and still have the cart around somewhere. I used to struggle a bit with the 3D perspective when missiles came up right under my ship and that frustrated me a hell of a lot. Now that I have learnt the art of (some) patience, maybe it is time to try it again?

The list looks great, I've been wanting to get some games for my Classic and SE Macs for a while now and this might kick start that little project. Is there any way of getting programs off a PC and onto a Mac, or do I need to somehow get a browser on the Macs and download straight onto them?

Will Nintendo ever realease the Game & Watch collection at retail? You'd think that it would have to be a decent seller and from what I've seen it is a really good collection that has been well done.

This is going to She Who Must Be Obeyed right now, stuff an iPod for my birthday, I want an Atari pillow I can cry into when I can't qualify for Pole Position! I can now see a valid reason for "craft".

You're kidding; they were "sorry" that they opened your mail, tore it up and then sent it on to you as some sort of joke? The fact that they have printed "We're Sorry" stickers is enough cause for concern. I gather that USPS are not all that interested in constant improvement or any sort of quality improvement program then?

Thanks for the reply. They all run basic BASIC programs and load and run cartridges and tapes so I'll take that as okay.

Does anyone know how to test the RAM in a CoCo2? I am preparing 4 units for sale and one of them has a pretty dodgy looking 64K upgrade board and I would like to test that it is actually working as I don't want to make any false claims when selling it.

I liked the original best of the few I've played, but I'm really a Serious Sam sort of guy when it comes to this type of game.

Looks great, especially with an article on the Vectrex, now I have to be patient for 3 months until the issue finds it's way to Oz...... Keep it up Darran, it's a great mag.

Fantastic, another entry in my quest to upgrade the video out on all of my old consoles and micros, thanks mate. This looks very nice and now another project has found it's way into the queue for me.

I voted for the DC for all of the reasons previously mentioned, I would have also added the TI99/4A but you can only vote for one......

Double bonus points to me then

Didn't Sports come in a standard case in the NTSC versions? It did in the AUS PAL boxes at least. To gloat further, for some reason we have very good Wii console availability here (the longest you have to wait is 3 weeks). However, still no extra Nunchcks, Classic Controllers, not many Wiimotes and no ethernet adaptors, nor is the PAL range of games anything to write home about so far.

The cat better not wee on your Wii!!!!