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Just saw this mentioned in an arcade FB group I follow and thought...

 

HOLY CRAP!!!

 

The price is still too high considering each one costs more than a single Pokey still goes for or at least compared to the last few Pokey's I've bought. But eventually this will be the only way moving forward and I'd be curious to know if this works on 7800 games that use the pokey etc...or the 8bit and 5200 systems.

 

https://hotrodarcade.com/products/pokeyone-atari-pokey-chip-replacement-for-atari-arcade-games?fbclid=IwAR3u92zWhFkpFnCVQTZVpDpH8v0uUKpkN8Pj1X2-tbyCKZ-L-6AwdFx-raY

 

 

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With Ballblazer carts enevitely going to be rare after harvesting of pokeys, hopefully demand and sales pushes the costs down as Pokeyones get cheaper to make.

 

I'd be interested in these if they were half the price, but yeah they are too expensive.

 

They do look good though :0)

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I totally agree. The price would probably be fine for Arcade Boards which seems to be primarily who they are making these for. But $40 for a cart you can still harvest a current Ballblazer for maybe $10 less if you are patient and lucky. But like what has already been stated Ballblazers and regular Pokeys are eventually gonna run out. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out for carts if they even are gonna work in a cart or the XM. Either way I have a couple of Pokeys that I have been saving for an XM or the next Pokey homebrew depending on how the XM deal shakes out.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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...I'd be curious to know if this works on 7800 games that use the pokey etc...or the 8bit and 5200 systems.

 

Unfortunately, that's a negative on the 8bit, and 5200/7800 is a "maybe".

 

"Will PokeyONE work in my Atari 400/800/1200 home computer? Regrettably, no. The Atari home computers require certain POKEY functions that are not supported in version 1.0 of the PokeyONE."

 

"Will PokeyONE work in my Atari 5200 or my Atari 7800 homebrew cartridge? Maybe...? We haven't tested PokeyONE in these applications, so we can't guarantee compatibility."
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I'm guessing this widget is a sound generator only and it WON'T work on the 5200 either. POKEY there is used the read the positions of the analog sticks and Trak-Balls as well as reading the keypad buttons. So unless they've implemented the keyboard and POT lines, it won't work there. And if they have implemented those two functions, it would also work in A8 computers.

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Just for the simple fact that audio and pot paddle function is all that is needed for all arcade games use, and all the remaining functions are not needed in the arcade games, I strongly doubt this project will ever reproduce 100% the entire POKEY chip used in home computers.

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The relative price difference will shrink - Ill note that Brad is still selling POKEYs for $20 but back to a limit of 1 each. So if you have a more than one computer, console, cab or 7800 homebrew in mind that all need one, youre down to making Sophies choice there, buying up A8 machines to scavenge or hoping to get lucky and find a box of Ballblazer carts in the back corner of an antique mall ...

 

This is not the price point and feature set we want yet, but by giving arcade cab owners the option to avoid buying up A8 machines, 5200s and Ballblazers to scavenge, it will certainly help.

Edited by DrVenkman
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Hey guys, this thing is my invention, so I will take full responsibility for developing it with a feature set that I know may be useful only to the arcade community.

The PokeyONE does scan the pots. That was a feature I finished just before release, and I confirmed it was working by testing it in a Warlords arcade game. (Of all the Atari arcade games, Warlords is the only one that uses the paddle-scanning functionality of the POKEY.)

I apologize that PokeyONE does not include keyboard-scan, nor does it implement the logic needed to enable the IRQ, SID/SOD, ACLK, or BCLK pins. There are a couple reasons for that, but the simplest and most fundamental is that I committed early on to using a certain FPGA that matched my size and price constraints, and this particular FPGA simply doesn't have enough I/O pins to support all the POKEY functions.

I'm very much interested in extending the feature set in future versions to include all POKEY functions, but apart from the challenge of coding the logic and the difficulty of conducting thorough testing, I'm concerned about keeping costs under control. I was really impressed by foft's PokeyMax device, which reportedly works 100% as a POKEY replacement, but from studying his photos I concluded that his bill of materials for the PokeyMax is more expensive, probably by quite a bit, than mine for the PokeyONE.

It's regrettable that POKEYs have become as expensive as they have, but you can be sure no one was going to develop a replacement until it became economically realistic. There's a reason no one was working on a POKEY clone when Ballblazer cartridges could be bought by the case for a buck each. :)

Edited by shupac
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Hey guys, this thing is my invention, so I will take full responsibility for developing it with a feature set that I know may be useful only to the arcade community.

 

I think from the comments you made during the video that I'm local to you, or relatively so (I live in Murfreesboro, southeast of Nashville along I-24). I have a bunch of 400/800/1200XL machines, plus a 5200, as well as a 1088XEL and a 1088XLD (both with stereo POKEY). I also have a couple 7800's.

 

So if you ever want to experiment with extending the feature set or testing with 7800 carts or a 5200, let me know. :)

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Would one of these PK1's alongside a normal pokey work in a Stereo pokey card I wonder?

 

Full features kept in the original chip but using just the sound from the PK1

(Edit I know it's an A8 question but the threads on this forum).

Edited by Magic Knight
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I'm actually tempted to one of these to see how it would perform in a Mateos cart even though I already have a POKEY for it.

Something else to consider is the moral aspect of this. Personally I'll never feel comfortable idea with the idea of dismantling Ballblazer and Commando cartridges (though I know it can be reversed if done properly) so a renewable alternative is very appealing to me regardless of the price.

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I'm actually tempted to one of these to see how it would perform in a Mateos cart even though I already have a POKEY for it.

Something else to consider is the moral aspect of this. Personally I'll never feel comfortable idea with the idea of dismantling Ballblazer and Commando cartridges (though I know it can be reversed if done properly) so a renewal alternative is very appealing to me regardless of the price.

I thought getting one to put in my Mateos as well, but the way I have my Mateos cart redone, it wouldn't be that easy to do since I rebuilt my Mateos to make the daughterboard sit more flush and hard soldered everything inplace. But like Mitch I have a spare BallBlazer PCB that is missing its Pokey (It is the one in my Mateos cart) that I could pop one of these into. BallBlazer is a good choice since all the sound comes from the pokey on that game.

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Does this chip have the random generator in it? The 5200 needs it for games.

 

Once I had a bad pokey chip in my 5200 and just for fun, I thought I would leave it out and see what would happen.

 

I powered up with Galaxian in it and the screen came on but there was no star field movement and other odd things!

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Does this chip have the random generator in it? The 5200 needs it for games.

The PokeyONE does have the (pseudo) random number generator in it, and it behaves identically to the one in an original POKEY.

 

Unfortunately, it does not have the keyboard-scanning functionality, which, I'm informed, the 5200 uses to read the controller keypads. But for 5200 games that don't use the keypads, my guess is the PokeyONE would work fine.

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I use the RNG as well, but I have tons of POKEY's, so no issue for me. We can't justify using these for games in the store, unless everyone is cool with paying $40 more for a cart. :P

 

Paying the extra $40 for a POKEY cart in the store would be nice as an option. If you don't have one available to send in, one has to purchase a Ballblazer from eBay then send it in. When you add the cost of the cart plus the wait time (maybe not all people are as impatient as I am), I think the additional $40 would be well worth it.

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Well, my view on this is a bit more nuanced, I guess. Presumably, Curt will finally get the XM shipping soon-ish (maybe even this year :P ) and I'll be able to buy one. For those who get one, great. That takes care of a lot of 7800 concerns.

 

However, I think there's still a bit of a niche market for folks who might just want a simple, "dumbed-down" POKEY-only pass-through board that costs less than $150. If someone can design one and release the project board files and bill of materials, hobbyists could build it and that would help open up another avenue for homebrew sales through the Store (POKEY-enabled games that depend on external POKEY). I suppose there there's still hope that someday a working modern flashcart will become a reality, especially if it supports a POKEY. If so, there's another use for a music-only POKEY or clone.

 

But all this is 7800-specific. There are millions of A8 and 5200 machines that can all potentially benefit from a POKEY clone, even if it's not super-cheap. $40 is not a big price to pay to resurrect a treasured machine or if you have several to repair but are stuck with Best's "limit 1" policy for POKEYs. Remember, most of us DO NOT have tubes full of them handy. :)

 

That said, I think this is a reality we are going to face in the retrocommunity going forward: our original IC's are slowly dying. I've run into multiple dead TIA's, GTIA's, ANTIC's, and 6532 RIOT's. I've also had one dead POKEY, one dead SALLY, and a pair of dead 6507's. The better/more seamless" we as a community can get FPGA replacements, and the more inexpensive the technology becomes over time, the better off we'll all be if we want to keep using our real hardware as long as the PCBs, plastics and discrete components hold up.

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However, I think there's still a bit of a niche market for folks who might just want a simple, "dumbed-down" POKEY-only pass-through board that costs less than $150. If someone can design one and release the project board files and bill of materials, hobbyists could build it and that would help open up another avenue for homebrew sales through the Store (POKEY-enabled games that depend on external POKEY). I suppose there there's still hope that someday a working modern flashcart will become a reality, especially if it supports a POKEY. If so, there's another use for a music-only POKEY or clone.

 

I do remember Curt thinking of selling hi-score circuit boards inside surplus XM cases, maybe something similar with just a PokeyONE on a circuit board in case. I mean selling PokeyONE pass thru cart of some kind with game that needs an external pokey seems like a better deal than paying game + $40 for each and every game with a pokeyONE build in.

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