Bobkop Posted September 11, 2007 Share Posted September 11, 2007 Hello, a few days ago I saw a MP3-Player cartridge for the C64... It worked with an SD-Card and a MP3 decoder chip. It also has own audio outputs... (the audio quality of the C64 chip is poor... the TIA´s of the 7800 is more poor ) The Name of the cartridge for the C64 is MP3@64 Is ist possible to build something like this for the Atari? Greats bobkop Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregory DG Posted September 11, 2007 Share Posted September 11, 2007 Hmm... Maybe a Cuttle Cart 2/software combo would do it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flipper Posted September 11, 2007 Share Posted September 11, 2007 (edited) Hello,a few days ago I saw a MP3-Player cartridge for the C64... It worked with an SD-Card and a MP3 decoder chip. It also has own audio outputs... (the audio quality of the C64 chip is poor... the TIA´s of the 7800 is more poor ) The Name of the cartridge for the C64 is MP3@64 Is ist possible to build something like this for the Atari? Greats bobkop In theory? Sure. Both the C64 and the 7800 are 6502 based machines. The 7800 has the advantage of having an audio input line on it's cartridge port, so you wouldn't need separate jacks for mono sound (obviously, you would if you want stereo). I've had the idea for some time of making a game and rather than incorporating a POKEY or SID or something hard to get, putting a standalone MP3 playback circuit and using an emulator to pre-render the sound on a PC. This would require having an idea for a game worthy of making into a cartridge, and teaming up with someone who could write music. The problem with the H/W MP3 codecs is that they can be tricky to get ahold of in small quantities. Finding them in 1,000 unit quantities for making iPod knockoffs, easy to do. Finding 20 to make a run of video game carts..not so easy. One source that seems obtainable is VLSI's VS1001. They do have ways to get small quantities! There are some projects out there that show the techniques for using this chip in an embedded environment. Edited September 11, 2007 by Flipper Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobkop Posted September 11, 2007 Author Share Posted September 11, 2007 (edited) @Gregory DG Hmmm... I don´t think the processor speed of the 7800 last to decode a mp3 song... Edited September 11, 2007 by Bobkop Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobkop Posted September 11, 2007 Author Share Posted September 11, 2007 @Flipper the first part sounds good... that with the 1000 hardware decoders sounds not so good ... I think two audio jacks would be better because of stereo and the sound quality (Not all 7800 system owners have the cinch audio outputs, RF is BAD). I actualy thought to use the 7800 as a stand alone MP3 player and the TV only as a monitoring tool (show track name, playtime etc.) Here are the links to the Commodore player: The card reader, needed to acces SD-cards And this is the player which you connect to the cardreader or direct to the c64 Perhaps we find somebody who sells decoder chips in smaller quantities and somebody who has got a idea of electronics... AND some people who will buy such a cartridge Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flipper Posted September 11, 2007 Share Posted September 11, 2007 @Flipper the first part sounds good... that with the 1000 hardware decoders sounds not so good ... I think two audio jacks would be better because of stereo and the sound quality (Not all 7800 system owners have the cinch audio outputs, RF is BAD). I actualy thought to use the 7800 as a stand alone MP3 player and the TV only as a monitoring tool (show track name, playtime etc.) Here are the links to the Commodore player: The card reader, needed to acces SD-cards And this is the player which you connect to the cardreader or direct to the c64 Perhaps we find somebody who sells decoder chips in smaller quantities and somebody who has got a idea of electronics... AND some people who will buy such a cartridge Looking at some of the VS1001 designs, I could probably bang out a schematic, but the mechanics of getting a card edge connector entered into PCB layout software is beyond my experience. Getting the parts wouldn't be an inordinate difficulty either. Time, time, time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobkop Posted September 12, 2007 Author Share Posted September 12, 2007 And is it possible to show music information on the TV and control playback over the 7800 controller with this solution? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flipper Posted September 12, 2007 Share Posted September 12, 2007 And is it possible to show music information on the TV and control playback over the 7800 controller with this solution? Yep...the microcontroller in the cartridge would make the directory listing and the ID3 tags available to the 7800, and accept the menu selections from the 7800. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jess Ragan Posted September 13, 2007 Share Posted September 13, 2007 I don't see the point, really. After all, the cartridge would be doing most of the work. Heck, the Atari 7800 couldn't even make good video game music unless you added a POKEY chip to the games you were designing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flipper Posted September 13, 2007 Share Posted September 13, 2007 I don't see the point, really. After all, the cartridge would be doing most of the work. Heck, the Atari 7800 couldn't even make good video game music unless you added a POKEY chip to the games you were designing! Ok, so what is the 'point' of making any sort of game for a console that's been out of production for 20+ years, never sold well in the first place, and isn't that good in some respects? If I were to do it, and I've already got way too much on my plate, it would be to: * Play with my microcontroller stuff * Get some practical use out of my flash-modded 7800 * Learn PCB layout * Play with some 6502 code. * Make a 7800 draw pretty pictures The one-off costs wouldn't be too hideous. PCB would be the largest cost, and that can be shopped around pretty cheap. Just..time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Posted September 13, 2007 Share Posted September 13, 2007 I don't see the point, really. After all, the cartridge would be doing most of the work. Heck, the Atari 7800 couldn't even make good video game music unless you added a POKEY chip to the games you were designing! totally not true TIA can do some really amazing things, even full songs of real speach you just gotta know what your doing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari060 Posted September 13, 2007 Share Posted September 13, 2007 (edited) I don't see the point, really. After all, the cartridge would be doing most of the work. Heck, the Atari 7800 couldn't even make good video game music unless you added a POKEY chip to the games you were designing! totally not true TIA can do some really amazing things, even full songs of real speach you just gotta know what your doing. Yes, but for such a cartridge you won´t even use TIA. As far as I understand, the c64 decoder is hardware based. The decoding isn´t done by the c64, just the title select, etc. This would in theory easyly be possible on the 7800... with the better aspect that you could use the original audio throughput (mono of course) and make it look like the 7800 is playing mp3s... From the horsepower point of view none of the 8-bit machines has the power to realtime playback mp3! My Milan060 (Atari ST clone with 68060 CPU 50 MHz) can not do this at all (only some light compressed ones in poor quality). But I´d like to see a hardware to make the 7800 look like it can play mp3s... maybe a cartridge with usb to coonect an ipod and show the menu via 7800 on TV? Best regards, Christian Edited September 13, 2007 by Atari060 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt Vendel Posted September 13, 2007 Share Posted September 13, 2007 Not really... companies like expresspcb.com have really come around to catering to the hobbyist sector where they will do inexpensive 1 pc and 3 pc runs of small boards, so you can run off a few samples and if it works correctly, you can generally get away with doing a small 100 or 200 pc run and get your board prices down to under $5 per board, which is hideously expensive for a major production run (should be about .25cents per board, but we are then talking into the 10's of thousands) but for small hobbyist and homebrew runs, a $5 cost to a board on the overall scheme is not too bad. Curt I don't see the point, really. After all, the cartridge would be doing most of the work. Heck, the Atari 7800 couldn't even make good video game music unless you added a POKEY chip to the games you were designing! Ok, so what is the 'point' of making any sort of game for a console that's been out of production for 20+ years, never sold well in the first place, and isn't that good in some respects? If I were to do it, and I've already got way too much on my plate, it would be to: * Play with my microcontroller stuff * Get some practical use out of my flash-modded 7800 * Learn PCB layout * Play with some 6502 code. * Make a 7800 draw pretty pictures The one-off costs wouldn't be too hideous. PCB would be the largest cost, and that can be shopped around pretty cheap. Just..time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jess Ragan Posted September 13, 2007 Share Posted September 13, 2007 I don't see the point, really. After all, the cartridge would be doing most of the work. Heck, the Atari 7800 couldn't even make good video game music unless you added a POKEY chip to the games you were designing! Ok, so what is the 'point' of making any sort of game for a console that's been out of production for 20+ years, never sold well in the first place, and isn't that good in some respects? OK, I'll bite. There's a satisfying challenge in pushing the limits of a classic console. That challenge is greatly reduced when you're making a cartridge that does nearly all the work for the system. The 7800 would be little more than a vestigial organ in this project... you could just as easily throw an LCD display, a few buttons, and a battery into the cartridge and it could work as a stand-alone unit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobkop Posted September 14, 2007 Author Share Posted September 14, 2007 But then you have no TV to show informations and that´s boring Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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