the.golden.ax Posted February 14, 2009 Share Posted February 14, 2009 I'm fairly certain that Dragons Lair on the Xbox (original) was 1080p. Plus if you mod it, you can play 7800 games on your Xbox. Viola... HD Dragons Lair and 7800 in one. AX Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jet-X Posted February 25, 2009 Share Posted February 25, 2009 Anyone remember the Atari ST add on? There was a Dragon's Lair set up sold (was $300 if I recall back in the day) that had an interface between the ST and an industrial laserdisc player (notably Pioneer, through RS232 port). Came with the Dragon's Lair laserdisc, and you could play it through the ST (ST functioned essentially as the joystick). I also seem to recall that it wasn't 'real time' like the arcade but would stop at each set up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supercat Posted February 25, 2009 Share Posted February 25, 2009 So, are you saying that's what the 7800's expansion port can do? Stream video/images from a LD/CD/DVD/Blueray (or whatever) and put sprites on top of that? The expansion port may have been engineered onto the 7800 board at a time when MARIA was expected to be capable of handling video overlay, but since MARIA does not have any genlock support it would have been impossible to engineer a practical video disk unit that could handle video overlay (today's DVD players all have frame buffers, so a DVD player could be engineered to sync to a 7800, but that would seem a bit silly). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philipj Posted March 1, 2009 Share Posted March 1, 2009 Not to get off topic here, but the Flashback 2 really didn't do the 7800 any justice... In my opinion if your going to make a CD ROM unit for the 7800 it's probably best to do what wasn't done for the Flashback 2 by including a cartridge conector and a CD ROM drive. And while you're at it include a USB port for homebrewing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted March 1, 2009 Share Posted March 1, 2009 It looks to me like the expansion port is for giving an external gen-locking device access to internal video signals, and is not for controlling anything. If you interface to this, you certainly won't get hi-def. Pin Name Description 1 GND Ground 2 +5V +5 VDC 3 CVIDEO Input to RF modulator (Video+Audio) 4 MLUM0 Maria Luminance Bit 0 5 MLUM3 Maria Luminance Bit 3 6 BLANK Blanking output 7 OSCDIS Disable 14.31818 MHz Master Clock 8 EXTMEN External Maria Enable Input 9 GND Ground 10 EXTOSC External clock to replace Master Clock 11 CLK2 Phase 2 Clock from the 6502 12 MSYNC Maria Composite Sync 13 MLUM1 Maria Luminance Bit 1 14 MLUM2 Maria Luminance Bit 2 15 MCOL Maria Color Phase Angle 16 RDY Input to the 6502 17 AUDIO Audio 18 GND Ground Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retro Rogue Posted March 1, 2009 Share Posted March 1, 2009 Not to get off topic here, but the Flashback 2 really didn't do the 7800 any justice... In my opinion if your going to make a CD ROM unit for the 7800 it's probably best to do what wasn't done for the Flashback 2 by including a cartridge conector and a CD ROM drive. And while you're at it include a USB port for homebrewing. The Flashback 2 had nothing to do with the 7800. What are you talking about? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philipj Posted March 2, 2009 Share Posted March 2, 2009 I personally never owned a Flashback or the Flashback 2, but on of them was suppose to have a couple of 7800 games on it. However the actual Flashback hardware wasn't really like the 7800 if I recall. Now I could be wrong about the Flashback; the point I'm trying to make is that I'd like to see a new 7800 with a CD unit. One with a cartridge slot and perhaps an extra Pokey or Speakjet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retro Rogue Posted March 2, 2009 Share Posted March 2, 2009 I personally never owned a Flashback or the Flashback 2, but on of them was suppose to have a couple of 7800 games on it. However the actual Flashback hardware wasn't really like the 7800 if I recall. Now I could be wrong about the Flashback; the point I'm trying to make is that I'd like to see a new 7800 with a CD unit. One with a cartridge slot and perhaps an extra Pokey or Speakjet. That was the first flashback, which was simply a NOAC with 7800 games ported over because of the time constraints laid out by Atari. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DracIsBack Posted March 2, 2009 Share Posted March 2, 2009 (edited) Not sure I see the point myself. A bit like a solution looking for a problem. Edited March 2, 2009 by DracIsBack Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philipj Posted March 2, 2009 Share Posted March 2, 2009 (edited) I wouldn't call it a problem, but when I saw this topic I certainly can relate to enthusiasm... The desire to want to see the 7800 continue beyond its retro status. It's a cool system with a Maria processor that probably didn't see its fullest potential realized in its short life span so I can certainly relate to wanting to see more from the 7800. That's just my personal opinion on the matter, but I do think it would be cool to see a CD ROM drive for the 7800. Edited March 2, 2009 by philipj Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoundGammon Posted March 16, 2009 Author Share Posted March 16, 2009 ...to get this thread back on track...Dragon's Lair would have been real easy for the 7800 to control, possibly through a joystick port. Anyway, all the 7800 would have to do is cue up the laser disc player at the right frame and read the digital output from the player as to what frame it's on to sync the players input to see if the right move was made. Mach-3 had different way of doing things. The laser disc would provide the background visuals while the computer/game system would generate the sprites to "overlay" the screen. It had a video interface board, a couple of which I have somewhere, that separated the sync pulse and fed it to the computer so the computer could sync the game output, back to the same board, to the rgb/video output! Just think what the 7800 could do then, it wouldn't have to generate any backgrounds and only take care of the sprites and game logic. Think Space Invaders with a scrolling moon backdrop or Xevious with a real looking ground scrolling by or Joust with real looking lava pits... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted March 16, 2009 Share Posted March 16, 2009 Just think what the 7800 could do then, it wouldn't have to generate any backgrounds and only take care of the sprites and game logic. Think Space Invaders with a scrolling moon backdrop or Xevious with a real looking ground scrolling by or Joust with real looking lava pits... Think how exactly those sort of games crashed and burned in the marketplace. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spector Posted March 16, 2009 Share Posted March 16, 2009 ZylonBane's opinions do not represent those of the management. No, but they do represent someone that's severely autistic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted March 16, 2009 Share Posted March 16, 2009 ZylonBane's opinions do not represent those of the management. No, but they do represent someone that's severely autistic. Sorry, I'm not catching what that has to do with the discussion at hand. Or are you just trolling? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spector Posted March 16, 2009 Share Posted March 16, 2009 ZylonBane's opinions do not represent those of the management. No, but they do represent someone that's severely autistic. Sorry, I'm not catching what that has to do with the discussion at hand. Or are you just trolling? No, I'm saying you are autistic. Are you denying it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spector Posted March 16, 2009 Share Posted March 16, 2009 Heh. Your lack of a quick response is more significant than all your other posts on this forum put together. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted March 16, 2009 Share Posted March 16, 2009 So that's a "yes" on the trolling then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Sauron Posted March 17, 2009 Share Posted March 17, 2009 Enough with the trolling comments and accusations or this thread will be locked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SRGilbert Posted March 17, 2009 Share Posted March 17, 2009 This game had a laser disk for background and reg sprite based video game elements on top. Time Warner owned Movie rights and so.... it was this thinking that put the expansion port on there. So, are you saying that's what the 7800's expansion port can do? Stream video/images from a LD/CD/DVD/Blueray (or whatever) and put sprites on top of that? Interesting. I'm not at all familiar with the 7800's technical specs, but that would be pretty cool if so. I wonder how hard it would be to connect a standard external CD-rom to the port? Might be interesting from a homebrew standpoint. Very interesting. It might be more practical to control a CD-ROM that a super duper mega hi def disk of some kind. Hasn't it been discussed if the port has audio input? If it does, one might be able to program a game to read audio tracks on the disc for its background music. Just a thought. Never mind the fact that Pokey is probably a better choice, use the port! Sounds like you are talking about an upgrade to the Kid Vid concept. That only needed a joystick port to work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philipj Posted March 17, 2009 Share Posted March 17, 2009 Just think what the 7800 could do then, it wouldn't have to generate any backgrounds and only take care of the sprites and game logic. Think Space Invaders with a scrolling moon backdrop or Xevious with a real looking ground scrolling by or Joust with real looking lava pits... Think how exactly those sort of games crashed and burned in the marketplace. I remember Don Bluth once describing Dragon's Lair as a "Paticapatory Interactive Game" being that Dirk the daring couldn't be controled the way Pac Man could be in a video game. I think that had a little something to do with the market, plus the fact that the video game industry at that time suffered financial losses with the over satuation of Arcade games. I think Atari should've redesigned the 7800 after the release of the NES before they actual released the 7800. It would've cool to see a lazer disc player for the system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phonedork Posted March 17, 2009 Share Posted March 17, 2009 There will never be a Bluray atari 7800! Why are you guys even discussing this? Get a Playstation 3 if thats what you want. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcjakeqcool Posted May 3, 2009 Share Posted May 3, 2009 Blu Ray add on for the Atari 7800? Aint gonna happen, the 7800 has been dead way to long for anything like that. Also, call Atari the prehistoric company, but they were quicker to put a cd add on the Jag then Nintendo were to put one on the 64, and also they were quicker to make a fifth gen system then Nintendo aswell, also I don't recall Nintendo had any plans for a laserdisk add on in the 80s or 90s for that matter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ApolloBoy Posted May 6, 2009 Share Posted May 6, 2009 Also, call Atari the prehistoric company, but they were quicker to put a cd add on the Jag then Nintendo were to put one on the 64 Except Nintendo never made a CD add-on for the N64. You must be thinking of the 64DD, which actually used magnetic disks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcjakeqcool Posted May 7, 2009 Share Posted May 7, 2009 Ok, magnetic disks then, but they are pretty much the same as cds, the same as video cds are pretty much the same as dvds, ok to the point... they are a heck more advanced then cartridges. Lol! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ApolloBoy Posted May 7, 2009 Share Posted May 7, 2009 Ok, magnetic disks then, but they are pretty much the same as cds Nope, not even close. Do you even know how CDs or floppy disks work? But anyway, back to the topic on hand, I think a Blu-Ray player for the 7800 might work, but I'd much rather see something like a CD add-on. A Blu-Ray disc holds about 50 GB of data and that kinda seems like overkill to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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