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I'd like to make my own reproductions


toploaderleo

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I've been looking into making my own reproductions of games. I've looked into it for other consoles such as the NES and was interested in doing Atari also, but I cant seem to find any tutorials on how to make a reproduction of an Atari 2600 game. Could someone please help with a link? Ive searched the internet and the forums and didnt come up with what I was looking for so please help.

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I've been looking into making my own reproductions of games. I've looked into it for other consoles such as the NES and was interested in doing Atari also, but I cant seem to find any tutorials on how to make a reproduction of an Atari 2600 game. Could someone please help with a link? Ive searched the internet and the forums and didnt come up with what I was looking for so please help.

 

Why are you looking to make reproductions? You can just get a Harmony cartridge and play all the games you want, and most people now and days for the 2600 crowd at least just get the Harmony cartridge to play the games they want. Yeah there are some reproductions out there that people get but its not many . . .

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I know of the harmony cartridge and its great and all, but I like having the actual game. I want to make my own carts with labels that only play that game. Seems inefficient but I'm a collector and have an interest in reproducing games that are basically impossible to find without selling my car, like Pepsi Invaders for example. I know Atari Age could just make it for me, but I'm really interested in doing it myself.

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Let me say this, Albert's work is second to none, his carts are high caliber, his PCBs are great (I believe he gets them from CPUWIZ . . . could be wrong) and his labels look amazing. I got Tempest from him, and if I didn't know better, I thought it would have been the real thing . . . which is a danger. I like what policy Albert has in place, he'll make a reproduction of a rare game, but he puts "Reproduction" or something on the label as well, which I think is fair and helps to keep the collectors market intact. The last thing this community needs is a slew of reproductions made that can pass off for the real thing.

 

Also just the equipment alone to be able to do that will make the very first cartridge cost more than most rare games (Excluding the R10s).

 

One of the reasons why Harmony/Melody was such a welcome and exciting product to the 2600 community, especially for homebrew programmers, is it allowed us to make more complex games that use to take specialized chips which were all but impossible to find, and now we can just put them on Melody and sell them.

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I see your point. So i guess what your saying is that there really isn't any tutorial on making reproductions of Atari carts for this reason. I figured it out on an NES and doing so on other consoles around the same time period is very similar. My desire was never to flood the market or sell of my reproductions, but I understand how some people would. I appreciate the reply though, as disappointed as I am about not being able to do it myself thanks anyway.

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I think thats a great idea as you can slowly build up a collection of all games with whatever lables you desire ,however i do agree with disjaukifa on the sales side of things. Other then that i would not mind doing the same myself ,for all cart based consoles i have. Personally the collection of hundreds of games you have produced your self would be something i would be very proud of ,not to mention look very cool. I sure some of the veterans on AA can help you out when they see the topic you have posted

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I too, have always wanted to make my own carts. Simply for the idea of doing it myself. I'll never be able to afford all the homebrew and repro carts I would like to play. And nothing beats playing games on a real cart. Unfortunately, I've done some reading on the subject and it appears some hozer has ruined the entire game for everybody. I'm afraid to even ask questions about this subject for fear of being branded a hozer.

 

But it would be cool to make my own carts, with my own label designs. (And speaking of label designs, although this may be controversial, I think someone needs to release a complete set of Activision labels so people can replace their original, ruined cart labels.)

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I'm fine with people making unique labels for their carts and even labels that say reproduction on them but I'm very uncomfortable with people making exact copies of rare games. When you talk about reproducing games that are basically impossible to find without selling your car it makes it hard for me to believe that you would go through all the trouble to make these without making them exact copies. It is possible for me to believe that you won't sell them but it is impossible for me to be certain they will never become someone else's property. You could show them off, someone steals them, and then they sell them as the real thing, you could eventually decide to give them away, you could die,... I don't know how but somehow they could eventually be used to rip someone off. I'm not saying you definitely would make exact copies or that you would sell them. I'm not saying you are a bad person or that you intend to do something wrong. I'm just saying that I'm glad that it is hard enough to find a tutorial that people have to ask.

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I too, have always wanted to make my own carts. Simply for the idea of doing it myself. I'll never be able to afford all the homebrew and repro carts I would like to play. And nothing beats playing games on a real cart. Unfortunately, I've done some reading on the subject and it appears some hozer has ruined the entire game for everybody. I'm afraid to even ask questions about this subject for fear of being branded a hozer.

 

But it would be cool to make my own carts, with my own label designs. (And speaking of label designs, although this may be controversial, I think someone needs to release a complete set of Activision labels so people can replace their original, ruined cart labels.)

 

Hence where my original reservations and comments came from. I remember a while a back (I think it was early 2010 honestly) there was an auction on eBay for Halloween that ended up going for a $125+ but it had the Hozer logo on the cartridge somewhere . . . I'd have to look up the thread again, I know it was talked about in-depth at one point.

 

That being said, their have been homebrew programmers that have gotten Hozer to make their cartridges for him, and thats fine they have sold without any issues.

 

I'm fine with people making unique labels for their carts and even labels that say reproduction on them but I'm very uncomfortable with people making exact copies of rare games. When you talk about reproducing games that are basically impossible to find without selling your car it makes it hard for me to believe that you would go through all the trouble to make these without making them exact copies. It is possible for me to believe that you won't sell them but it is impossible for me to be certain they will never become someone else's property. You could show them off, someone steals them, and then they sell them as the real thing, you could eventually decide to give them away, you could die,... I don't know how but somehow they could eventually be used to rip someone off. I'm not saying you definitely would make exact copies or that you would sell them. I'm not saying you are a bad person or that you intend to do something wrong. I'm just saying that I'm glad that it is hard enough to find a tutorial that people have to ask.

 

I agree with the above statement as well which was why I was advocating Harmony/Melody and the AtariAge Store so much!

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Well I haven't actually done it on an NES cart before. My main concern was how to I put the rom onto the Atari cart's eprom. Obviously you cant just copy paste a rom itself you need to make it into a file the eprom supports and the 2600 itself can comprehend. The only games I wish to create are like pepsi invaders or even Atlantis 2, but I don't want Pepsi invaders to have a blank cart with the sticker written in my own handwriting "Pepsi invaders" Id make it more like the magnet they sell at the store here. Same with Atlantis 2, Id make my own unique label and not literally write atlantis 2 on the ariginal cart liek the real ones.

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Well I haven't actually done it on an NES cart before. My main concern was how to I put the rom onto the Atari cart's eprom. Obviously you cant just copy paste a rom itself you need to make it into a file the eprom supports and the 2600 itself can comprehend. The only games I wish to create are like pepsi invaders or even Atlantis 2, but I don't want Pepsi invaders to have a blank cart with the sticker written in my own handwriting "Pepsi invaders" Id make it more like the magnet they sell at the store here. Same with Atlantis 2, Id make my own unique label and not literally write atlantis 2 on the ariginal cart liek the real ones.

 

Well for Pepsi Invaders at least, you could get Albert to just make the label for you at the beginning to help keep cost down. Have you looked at eprom programmers at all?

 

From what I have read on the this forum, avoid the Willem programmers, RevEng has had good luck with the Top853 that you see on eBay for like 40 bucks. Serveral members have recommend the Batronix BX32 for the 2600, if you are interested in doing NES stuff down the line you might want to invest into the BX40, but cost a considerable more amount of money.

 

The nicest feature to me at least about the Batronix programmers is that they are Windows and Mac compatible.

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Let me say this, Albert's work is second to none, his carts are high caliber, his PCBs are great (I believe he gets them from CPUWIZ . . . could be wrong) and his labels look amazing. I got Tempest from him, and if I didn't know better, I thought it would have been the real thing . . . which is a danger. I like what policy Albert has in place, he'll make a reproduction of a rare game, but he puts "Reproduction" or something on the label as well, which I think is fair and helps to keep the collectors market intact. The last thing this community needs is a slew of reproductions made that can pass off for the real thing.

just 1 question did Atariage/Albert have to get permission to make the reproduction cart from atari or the companies that own the rights to the software

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Obviously you cant just copy paste a rom itself you need to make it into a file the eprom supports and the 2600 itself can comprehend.

 

I thought the bin dumps are already in the correct format for the eprom's and 2600 console ,isnt it practically the same as dumping it to a harmony cart?

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Obviously you cant just copy paste a rom itself you need to make it into a file the eprom supports and the 2600 itself can comprehend.

 

I thought the bin dumps are already in the correct format for the eprom's and 2600 console ,isnt it practically the same as dumping it to a harmony cart?

 

For 2K/4K games I believe it is, but anything over 8K its not because you have to put the code into different 4K banks, and honestly I'm not sure how to do that.

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someone mentioned getting replacement stickers? does atariage print new stickers for folks? Wouldnt it be cool to have a new sticker on your favorite cart. especially if you (or someone else) had to pull the screw out to properly clean the cart. (you can do a great job with a fiberglass pen IF you take the cart apart) I wouldnt care it if said "reprint" or atariage.com on it somewhere small.

Like a member said, i could die and someone thing it is a perfect label cart. but on a R1-R3 or something a clean label is gonna isnt gonna net you alot more money. it would just be so that my copy of reactor looked as good as the game is to play.

im gonna go email someone here now. I want some reprinted labels. You could put them on other things.

the harmony cart is great. If atariage will make me a melody cart with teleterm2600 on it a conversation will ensue between the two. Wouldnt it be great though if the harmony cart came with a few extra labels or stickers. Everyone here is soo proud of their Harmony. You would see my sticker stuck to the back of the cart, so it was two sided.

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Obviously you cant just copy paste a rom itself you need to make it into a file the eprom supports and the 2600 itself can comprehend.

 

I thought the bin dumps are already in the correct format for the eprom's and 2600 console ,isnt it practically the same as dumping it to a harmony cart?

 

For 2K/4K games I believe it is, but anything over 8K its not because you have to put the code into different 4K banks, and honestly I'm not sure how to do that.

 

From this post http://www.atariage....__fromsearch__1

 

quote from Quadrunner

 

"Dumping 4K carts that way is pretty straightforward. As for other ones...

 

You need to be able to read out memory non-sequentially. In particular, for a typical 8K cart, the sequence is: Read $1FF8. Read $1000-$1FFF **skipping $1FF8-$1FF9**. That's the first 4K (address $FF9 in the first 4K isn't readable so put whatever you like there). Then read $1FF9. Then read $1000-$1FFF **skipping $1FF8-$1FF9**. That's the second 4K (address $FF8 in the second 4K isn't readable either).

 

Batari's dumper is designed for 8K or 16K games using either F8 bankswitching (described above) or F6 bankswitching: read $1FF6, then $1000-$1FFF skipping $1FF6-$1FF9. That's the first 4K. Then read $1FF7, then the second 4K, then $1FF8 and the third 4K, then $1FF9 and the last 4K.

 

I can tell you in advance: Parker Brothers games use a different bank-switching method so you'll need a different sequence for them."

 

 

 

PS this was a neat dumping utility, which spawed an even better one here...

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/185932-my-2600-cart-dumper/page__hl__rom+dumper__fromsearch__1

Edited by Syntaxerror999
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