ATARI 2600-in-a-chip project finished soon ?

[Lord-Chaos]

Is this project finished now ?

 

Because it would be quite interesting to replace the emulator of the Jakks Pacific joystick with a real 2600 and re-release it as a real 2600 which runs real ROMs.

 

Or maybe make a Paddle instead of a Stick with all th Paddle games.

 

Or is anyone working on a similar 7800-project ? This would be even more intersting , since the 7800 also runs 2600 games , although it will be "a bit" more complicated to redesign this one.

 

Thimo

[Carlos_Lopez]

This project is not finished yet

 

Honestly I haven't spent a lot of time on this lately. I have another projects/activities that I am working on and I need to organize my time.

 

Anyway, I also think that it would be interesting to develop a portable 2600 with this chip (at least as a hobby), so I have never considered to abandon this project.

 

BTW, even though I occasionally read this forum, this is my first post in it

[MegaManFan]

Good to see you posting here Carlos. Welcome! I'm sure your other priorities (working, paying bills, family) come first and that's to be expected. I hope though that you will indeed "stick with it" for the 2600-on-a-Chip. Ever since I first read about your project, I've been drooling over the possibilities if it comes to fruition. A few of us have even speculated it could be the breakthrough in developing a cost-effective, portable, handheld VCS. I hope I'll live to see that day!

[Rob Mitchell]

Welcome Carlos .. Your fame precedes you to this forum! We all know that your 2600 chip project is an effort of love! Thanks for your efforts!

 

Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA

[Lord-Chaos]

This project is not finished yet    

 

Honestly I haven't spent a lot of time on this lately. I have another projects/activities that I am working on and I need to organize my time.

 

Anyway, I also think that it would be interesting to develop a portable 2600 with this chip (at least as a hobby), so I have never considered to abandon this project.

 

BTW, even though I occasionally read this forum, this is my first post in it  

 

This is great , we all wait for this.The Jakks Pacific thing based on an emulator wasn´t the real thing , so the "real thing" would be much better.

 

I think this could be very successful.

 

Thimo

[jeff_a]

I have a question that has been on my mind for some time now. Would it be possible to put this chip in a gba, and hook it up to the screen inside and play roms? If anyone thinks it is, I would love to have my gba be the guinnea pig

[Carlos_Lopez]

Thanks for the warm welcome!

 

I have a question that has been on my mind for some time now.  Would it be possible to put this chip in a gba, and hook it up to the screen inside and play roms?  If anyone thinks it is, I would love to have my gba be the guinnea pig

 

What I think is possible is to design a GBA cart with this chip and some kind of rom memory to interface the GBA controls/screen with the 2600-on-a-chip.

There are free tools available to develop GBA roms, and also enough technical info about the internals of this portable, so yes I think this is doable.

[jeff_a]

well, i know when you hold start+select as you boot up your gba it goes into a different mode, one of the third party flash cart things uses this feature, perhaps the start+select thing could trigger the chip, and draw the roms from a flashcart.

[Rob Mitchell]

Only problem (of course) with GBA/retro Stick is other control: Paddle, keyboard, driving .. so a custom setup should still be the end goal.

 

Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA

[jeff_a]

my dream is to play 2600 on my gba, so games that use other controllers wouldn't bother me too much.

[Carlos_Lopez]

Only problem (of course) with GBA/retro Stick is other control:  Paddle, keyboard, driving .. so a custom setup should still be the end goal.

 

Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA

 

I agree, it would be cooler to end up with a custom 2600 portable that could accept normal sized carts and standard connectors, but the 2600 special cart for the GBA would be a considerable cheaper product.

 

Maybe we can have the two flavors, but first things first. I have to finish the 2600-on-a-chip and then we will see

[mos6507]

What people keep forgetting about the GBA is that it's LCD screen is smaller than the 2600's native resolution. It's only 240x180 as I recall.

 

Everyone does know what graphics look like when it has to scale at anything less than an even multiple?

 

Crap.

 

I have a Sharp LCD monitor at home and when I set my computer to run at anything other than the default 1024x760 of the screen I get bad artefacts. It's going to look even worse on a lower res screen.

 

You'd need to use a 320x200 screen, like what's used on most PDAs.

 

This thing really cries out for a custom solution. Any attempt to make it an add-on to portables that feature smaller res LCD screens is going to suck.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

What people keep forgetting about the GBA is that it's LCD screen is smaller than the 2600's native resolution.  It's only 240x180 as I recall.

 

240x160

 

Everyone does know what graphics look like when it has to scale at anything less than an even multiple?

 

Crap.

It mainly depends on number of color gradients and the scaling algorithm. With lots of colors and a good scaling algortihm you can get quite good results. And since many 2600 are not using the full Y-resolution a windwo with 160x100 might work for those.

[Andrew Davie]

my dream is to play 2600 on my gba, so games that use other controllers wouldn't bother me too much.

 

Try www.2headed.com/2600.bin

 

Cheers

A

[jeff_a]

you sent me that about 8 months ago or so, i really like it, but full, or close to full speed would be nice.

[jeff_a]

i dont know how much it would cost, but if someone with the knowhow to make the chip work with the gba needs funding for a project, tell me, and we can maybe work something out.

[mos6507]

It mainly depends on number of color gradients and the scaling algorithm. With lots of colors and a good scaling algortihm you can get quite good results. And since many 2600 are not using the full Y-resolution a windwo with 160x100 might work for those.

 

160x100 would be a portrait mode, correct? In that way you wouldn't even be using the full width of the screen, and you'd be dropping out or merging every other scanline in the process.

 

That might look fine for Combat but any game that features single scanline graphics like Atlantis or Thrust is going to be in trouble.

 

And I don't know how you'd go about mapping the video output of the 2600 on a chip to the GBA. You'd almost be writing an emulator just to take the video signal, do some kind of A to D sampling and drive the GBA display from it.

 

It's a lot easier to use an LCD that's natively 320x200 and supports direct analog video input right from the start. That is, assuming the LCD's pixels line up with the 2600's active display area (it may not).

[Carlos_Lopez]

And I don't know how you'd go about mapping the video output of the 2600 on a chip to the GBA.  You'd almost be writing an emulator just to take the video signal, do some kind of A to D sampling and drive the GBA display from it.

 

The 2600-on-a-chip (as the TIA) provides digital video and sync output. This stream can be used to fill a video buffer on the cart, convert the luma/chroma values to RGB using a table, and then use the capabilities of the GBA to resample/scale this image to the 240 x 160 screen.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

That might look fine for Combat but any game that features single scanline graphics like Atlantis or Thrust is going to be in trouble.

Yup, that's what I meant.

 

It's a lot easier to use an LCD that's natively 320x200

The easiest (and probably cheapest) way would be a 160x200 (..240) pixel display that has an aspect ratio similar to the 2600. But I doubt that something like that exists.

[Lord-Chaos]

That might look fine for Combat but any game that features single scanline graphics like Atlantis or Thrust is going to be in trouble.

Yup, that's what I meant.

 

It's a lot easier to use an LCD that's natively 320x200

The easiest (and probably cheapest) way would be a 160x200 (..240) pixel display that has an aspect ratio similar to the 2600. But I doubt that something like that exists.

 

Anyone knows what resolution the Lynx II display has ?

 

I´ve got lots (that means hundreds) of not-working Lynx-II units , maybe it´s possible to use them for something.

 

BTW. Some Lynx games turned the screen by 90 deg - Klax or Gauntlet for example.Maybe this could be an idea to use existing LCDs...

 

Thimo

[mos6507]

Anyone knows what resolution the Lynx II display has ?

Thimo

 

I think it's just 160x100. Great for an Intellivision or Astrocade on a chip, but not a 2600.

[Andrew Davie]

Anyone knows what resolution the Lynx II display has ?

Thimo

 

I think it's just 160x100. Great for an Intellivision or Astrocade on a chip, but not a 2600.

 

I disagree! If it's 160 x 100, then it's just about perfect for a '2600. Exactly the right horizontal resolution, and you'd only need to merge pairs of scanlines (assuming most games have 192 actual lines of display data) and it would look rather neat, I would guess. One could even interleave odd/even lines over consecutive frames, instead of programatically averaging pixels.

[Carlos_Lopez]

I rescaled some screenshots to GBA and Lynx resolutions. The images were resampled with IrfanView using a Lanczos filter, and then sharpened a little bit. This assumes that the GBA or Lynx are capable of doing this at full frame rate speed.

 

I'm posting the images at the real resolution, so they look different in size.

 

Atlantis: (2600 - GBA - Lynx)

 

Thrust:

 

Combat:

[jeff_a]

i would seriously pay for this to be done on gba.

[Lord-Chaos]

Maybe Activision or Infogrames (owner of the ATARI copyrights) are interested ?

 

Are any Activision or Infogrames people here in this forum ?

 

They may be interested in selling such a cartridge ...

 

Thimo