Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store  

lord_mike

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    194

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by lord_mike

  2. Posted · Edited by lord_mike

    My question is for the people that did buy them and are playing them. How is your experience. Was it worth it to you. Still on the fence and want some honest opinions. Is the game play worth it to you

     

    I like it a lot, and play it a lot more than I expected. I have real arcade games, but I play them rarely, since I am worried I'll blow out something. I have no such worries with these, as they are new, without tubes of any sort, and cheap to replace. I did have to modify the spinner as I have the asteroids one. With that modified, it's a lot better!

  3. Posted · Edited by lord_mike

    So, i got one of the asteroids cabs a few weeks ago, and i too noticed the spinner problems. I was going to do some sort of 3D printer mod, but then i saw this mod on youtube and things are a million times better (especially after I sprayed in some silicone lube). This is the cheapest, easiest mod for the spinner, as it only needs pennies and electrical tape. I am very happy with the results:

    [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CFcOWWVLYg[/media]

    • Like 1

  4. Posted

    I grabbed mine at WalMart at 12:01 AM last night--that saved me from having to wake up extra early this morning. I got there around 10:15, and I expected to see hundreds of people, but I was #12 and had no problems. they had 24 of them and everyone in line got one, so that was nice. Some people even brought their kids, including an infant!! I haven't even gotten a chance to open it, yet, but I'm thrilled I got one. I hear that it is as hackable as the original (which I never managed to get a hold of), so I'm looking forward to that!

    • Like 1

  5. Posted

    Forgive me for getting in late. I just saw this post now. I was just thinking the other day, "Why BASIC?" Why did BASiC become the default language of microcomputers instead of something better? After all, the early computing pioneers were all familiar with other languages such as Fortran, why did BASIC become the default language. I think the simple answer is Tiny BASiC:

     

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_BASIC

     

    It was extremely small, which was necessary for the early micros, and it was free. Compilers take up a lot of resources such as memory and in the absence of those, required some sort of sequential storage that was not available for micros at the time. It only made sense that a really tiny interpreter would be used, even it made slow machines even slower. By the time microcomputers got more powerful, BASIC was already entrenched as the default microcomputer language.

    • Like 2

  10. Posted

    Also. My check of your OS ROM. There are a lot of differences with my stock 600xl and 800xl ROM. I suspect your ROM

    is either custom or corrupt. about 1000 differences C000CFFF and 9 differences D800FFFF.

     

    Russ, thank you for responding! :) Check your private messages! I sent you a PM with some more detailed information. I doubt this unit had any customization. It was a donation to a rummage sale, and looks like it was nicely put away in the closet 30 years ago only to be discovered by the estate or something similar. It's possible that it was modded, but I don't think anyone messed with it. The phillips screw heads still look pristine as if no one had ever touched it.

     

    How can I find out which OS revision this unit has?

  12. Posted · Edited by lord_mike

    You are likely to be in trouble w/ the TV. France uses a completely unique television system called SECAM which was used by France, French speaking countries in Africa, and the old Soviet Union :? . That has been superseded by modern digital formats, but I would guess that if you plug in a signal into a composite input, it would be expecting SECAM signals. A modern digital TV might be "smart" and be able to decode a variety of signals, though. You'd have to check the manual.

     

    The power converter should work OK (I think), but make sure you have enough watts. The computer itself probably uses up 15-20, but a disk drive can use up the whole 45 watts of that converter on its own. Just as a warning, when I worked at Radio Shack many, many years ago, we were told to advise people who would use these foreign converters that they shouldn't be used for "sensitive electronics." I'm sure that was to protect the company more than anything, but just letting you know that there might be some risk. Make sure the converter you get is OK with electronics.

     

    EDIT: Ah, you may be in luck with the TV thing. According to Wikipedia: "Most TVs currently sold in SECAM countries support both SECAM and PAL, and more recently composite video NTSC as well (though not usually broadcast NTSC, that is, they cannot accept a broadcast signal from an antenna)." You'll need a newer TV for this, and you'll need one of those monitor cables that has a composite plug in the end like they sell on ebay.

  13. Posted

    Hi again... Sorry to keep posting so much, but I'm in the market for an SIO2PC cable, and I noticed there are several manufacturers. I've kind of narrowed it down to the Atarimax http://www.atarimax.com/sio2pc/documentation/ or Atari8warez http://www.atari8warez.com/support.html versions.

     

    The Atarimax seems to be the original and "gold standard", but it's quite expensive. I'd probably get the serial port one if I went that direction, since it's much cheaper. Would that work with a standard serial to usb adapter if necessary? I'm also reading that there's no Linux support and you have to pay for the APE software? Is that true?

     

    The Atari8warez one is much cheaper, especially for USB, but I'm not sure if the software is as good as Atarimax's APE. I presume that the interface software for these things are propretary, and I can't use Atarimax's APE with Atari8warez's product... or is the interface universal and it doesn't matter what software I use on what hardware?

     

    Any comments, opinions, or recommendations would be greatly appreciated! :) Thanks!

  14. Posted

    seeing as how the BASIC cart works, the problem might be the OS. Does the 'self test' check the 'FP ROM'? I had BASIC that was crashing due to a bad FP ROM in my 400. This is not a separate chip in the 800XL, but it could be that the issue lies in this portion of the ROM. If you can dump the ROM, and post it here, we can check it, run it in an emulator and see if the symptoms persist, etc.

     

    Otherwise, it could be pretty much any of the other chips, but OS ROM is possible to check.

     

    You can save your ROM by booting, say, DOS 2.5 and doing a 'binary save' on the range C000 to CFFF and another on range D800 to FFFF.

     

    That certainly would make sense. I doubt many games would have used the built-in FP functions which would spare them from accessing the error. I remember reading that the Star Raiders author implemented his own functions for performance reasons. The self test has two "blocks" for ROM. I assume one is for BASIC and the other is the OS chip. Best Products told me that the Atari self tests aren't that great, so who knows what the tests really check. :?

     

    I will do a binary save like you recommended and post it here when I can. Thank you so much for offering to analyze it for me! :D It's greatly appreciated! It might take awhile for me to post, though, since I still need to order a SIO2PC cable (which will be the topic of my next post) to get the files onto the internet. Hopefully, I'll have the files for you by next week!

     

    Thanks again!! :) I'll post the files as soon as I can!

  15. Posted

    I talked to the folks at Best Electronics... prognosis is not good. It could be ANY of the chips, and who knows which one. They advised me to start swapping chips with a good working 800XL to see what's the matter, but I don't really have that option, unfortunately. :( I'll open it up and see if I can find any hot or cold chips, but other than that, not sure what else I can do... I'm open to any and all ideas out there... :woozy:

  16. Posted

     

    I would possibly understand this if it would only happen with the build-in BASIC, but otherwise the basic cartridge is in no way different from any other cart. Thus, if the problem does not appear with other carts, then just by pure chance. It would guess it is either a problem with the RAM or the MMU.

     

    What does the self test say?

     

    Thank you thor and Paul for your responses. They are greatly appreciated! :) I used peek(43234) to verify the cartridge was in and running. The system self test says everything is just fine and dandy--all green, and I seem to have no problem playing games from cartridge or disk, so it's really bizarre. I will play a full game of Star Raiders and another long running game from disk tonight to see if anything weird happens after playing for a long time. It's really baffling! I was hoping that the cartridge basic would fix my problems, but apparently not, unless I somehow blew the basic cartridge, too... :? maybe one of the socketed chips is loose or something. I'll see if I can go under the hood later tonight and see in any of the chips are loose or running hot/cold.

  17. Posted · Edited by lord_mike

    Hello again! In a recent post, I mentioned that I just acquired a used 800XL from a rummage sale. Everything seemed to be working fine at first--games loaded and ran from cartridge and from disk without issue. Then I started loading in some old BASIC programs, but they would start crashing violently for no reason (with spectacular video displays at times) while running or even LIST-ing them.I thought that the disk files might be corrupt at first, but then I started typing in short programs directly, and the same crashes would occur after listing them repeatedly or running them for a short time--even after a power off reset. The problem seems worse after the computer's heated up a bit, but it doesn't take long to get in this sick state. It seems like a memory leak of some sort eventually hitting a bad memory location, but the memory test shows up fine and games seem to work just fine!

     

    The weird thing is that this only seems to happen in BASIC. As I mentioned before, games and other cartridges seem to work fine. It's not exclusive to the built-in Rev B BASIC, either. I inserted the Rev A cartridge, checked the version with PEEK, and was having the same problem even in cartridge BASIC. I ran the built-in memory checker, everything came up green. I restored the original power supply (I replaced the original ingot power adapter with one described here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/241176-800xl-replacement-power-adapter/ ) thinking that may be the issue, but that didn't make a difference, either. I tested both power supplies directly and under a 6 ohm load--both supplies kept voltage around 5.15 volts.

     

    I am at a loss as to what to do or where to begin. :? My BASIC is sick, but every test shows the computer to be in perfect health. What could be the problem? Where do I start to look? Any advice or input would be greatly appreciated!! I'd like to be able to run my old programs again!

     

    Thank you, Atari doctors, for looking at my patient! :) If you'd like, I can show you pictures of my crashes. They are quite spectacular, if they weren't so disturbing... :(

     

    Edit: New interesting symptom... I would enter PRINT FRE(0) to see how much memory was left, and I would either get the expected number around 38,000, a number like 0.374626 :? , or a syntax error--a completely different result each time I ran the command. Very, very weird... My poor Atari is so sick... Can anyone help?

  18. Posted

    Hello, everyone! :) While I've been a long time AtariAge member, this is my first time in the Atari computer forum. I hope you folks can offer some advice on a rummage sale purchase. I recently acquired a working 800XL unit. Thrilled, I brought it home and everything worked great! While searching this forum on another topic, I discovered that some of the power supplies for this model tended to die violently with a huge spike in voltage destroying the computer. Unfortunately, it looks like the power adapter I have is of the infamous Ignot design:

     

    20029866988_b1826128d0.jpgpost-9203-0-86545200-1438492744_thumb.jpg

     

    Fortunately, I tested the output with a multimeter, and it was outputting a nice 5.14 volts unloaded. Still, I was nervous about the whole thing, so I went looking around for another power supply. Low and behold at the same rummage sale the next day, they had this puppy:

     

    20029864548_fc79c128c6.jpgpost-9203-0-61109200-1438492804_thumb.jpg

     

    2.8 amps at 5 volts, a switching power supply which I think should be more reliable. The unloaded output is the same 5.14 volts as the original power supply. It is much smaller than the original Ignot, but that shouldn't make a difference, should it?

     

    What do you think? Can I use this to safely replace my 800XL ignot power supply after cutting the cords and splicing them to the DIN adapter?

     

    Your advice and opinions are greatly appreciated! :) Thanks in advance!

     

  19. Posted

    I don't see an online presence for a flashback at meiers? local or nothing? would be interested in buyin the other for a bargain, but not otherwise:) ....me

    It's probably only in stores. There was a huge clearance section at this store by the toys and electronics. Everything was 50% off the lowest price (which was $30 for flashbacks). At the time, they had at least half a dozen of each type available. I guess it all depends on the location. Some of this stuff sells like crazy in certain places... others, not so much.

    • Like 1

  22. Posted

    This is certainly the "peak market" for these sorts of things right now... People who grew up in the late 70's and 80's now hitting their peak earning years and (even more importantly) peak midlife crisis years trying to relive their childhood a little bit. ;) We can see that effect with the massive increase in interest (and market value) of the Nintendo NES market as that generation gets to midlife, and now we are starting to see an uptick in interest with SNES and especially Sega. I suspect that in a few years, specialty consoles like the Dreamcast will suddenly become popular, too, with the next generation of grownups. The interest in the Atari/Intellivision generation has decreased in comparison, and will continue to do so as the younger generations take over, but I don't forsee much of a "crash" or cratering of support. Why? Two reasons. First, there will always be people interested in stuff that happened before their time. There are folks still building mechanical TV's that haven't been used for almost a century, some of them right here in this forum! Second, the decrease in availability offsets the decrease in demand. The fact is, older hardware gets thrown out or fails and there is much less of it to go around. That is why the standup arcade market is seeing exponential price inflation even though their target customer is starting to move out of their peak midlife spending years. Every day old equipment ends up in the garbage heap making it much more difficult, and expensive to find. That scarcity (and novelty) will prevent any "crash" IMO, even though prices will still wax and wane with demand.

    • Like 2

  23. Posted · Edited by lord_mike

     

    One word: money.

    It's not money. If it were about money, rights holders would want their products released everywhere they could to reap every penny they could. sow. If it was about money, Disney wouldn't sell DVD's of their movies only in certain "windows" of time to create artificial demand and hype for their products. They'd sell them all the time to get every dollar they could. Disney is deliberately forgoing guaranteed income to exert some more power and control over the market.

     

    It's about power and control. They want the power to determine who and how "their" products get used, and they want to control what the user experiences and how they get to experience "their" product. The can establish and control "their" territory and exert dominance over their territory in "their" way. That way they can protect "their" property and brand from being somehow "damaged" by being used in an "unauthorized" way that might diminish its value over time. Now, how much value, really does a 35 year old port of Space Invaders really have? Not much, if any, but that's being rational and logical. Taito is probably thinking of the Space Invaders brand as a whole, which makes them little money, but does give them some prestige value, I guess. Still, it's ridiculous. The Atari port of Space Invaders is in many ways better than the arcade version. Maybe they don't want to be upstaged. I don't know.

     

    It's a bunch of BS, really... but, that's the dominant paradigm in the intellectual property world--power and control. Otherwise, how can they extort license fees if they don't act like jerks about it? I've dealt with that world a lot over the years. It's extremely annoying. Lots or rights holders will deliberately forgo income in order to maintain or exert power and control over their "property" or brand.

  24. Posted · Edited by lord_mike

    In regards to the other questions, I've been pushing for SD card slots in all of their products for a number of years now. It's unlikely to happen though for a variety of reasons. It's not so much from the AtGames side - they seem onboard with the idea - but moreso from the willingness of whom they're licensing the products from, i.e., them not being comfortable with the idea. As we know, doing most things in this regard (at least officially) requires many layers of approval. One "no" and it gets scrapped.

     

    Naturally, with the Sega stuff being a Genesis-on-a-chip versus software emulation, compatibility is higher, and the options more flexible, but it comes down to Sega themselves also having the will/giving the authority to allow cartridge ports and SD card slots. Sega truly needs to be commended for having the good sense to get a lot of their classic product on as many platforms as possible and not being overly strict with usage.

     

    That's because Sega knows they aren't going to lose any money from someone running games of theirs that are over 20 years old and long out of production. However, lots of other intellectual property owners aren't as enlightened. They freak out at the possibility of a user doing what they want for themselves without requesting a "content owner's" explicit permission. It's never about the money with IP folks... They aren't losing a dime off of the ability of a user installing and running a 20 year old game. It's about power, control and exerting authority. It's really a shame. The Colecovision flashback is most hurt by this closed-minded philosophy since so many of its games were licensed. Having a cartridge port or SD card would remedy that situation greatly by allowing users to run whatever game they want, which is exactly why some of these game companies object.

     

    Thanks for all your work! Maybe AtGames could be persuaded to do a Commodore 64 or Vic-20 flashback. That would sell very well, but licensing issues would probably be tricky to navigate as well.

     

    On a different subject, after reading posts here stating that Walgreens still had some Flashback models in stock at a discount, I went around hunting today and found nothing anywhere nearby. :( The only place that had anything was Dollar Tree, but that was at full price, unfortunately. Oh well... it was worth a try!! :)

  25. Posted

     

    Bill, I don't know if you've answered this before, I don't even know if you know the answer or could share even if you did, but...

     

    Why is a cart port and SD slot on the Genesis unit a slam-dunk, but entirely out of the question for the others? Is it technical (emulator compatibility issues), licensing, both, neither? It's not just the cartridge connectors is it?

     

    I don't want to answer for Bill, since he's got the good info, but I wonder if it's because the Sega flashbacks seem to be a "Sega on a chip" instead of an emulator. If it uses the same pinouts on the same bus, it's not hard to also make the same cartridge slot that works without any modification. After all, a cartridge on these systems simply connects to the system bus like any other component.

AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2021 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...