Atari and COVID-19 - how are YOU keeping yourself occupied???

[BIGHMW]

Now we all know how much the coronavirus (COVID-19) is affecting us but how are YOU dealing with it???

 

As Atarians, we can rely on our arcade systems to keep us occupied during this massive health crisis, I am proud to own a 5200 and also a Flashback 9 to keep me occupied as a (now-vital) part of my home entertainment system, as my system consists of several audio and video components, with more than 6 decades of technology in which are being represented, hooked up to both a Sony STR-DH190 home stereo receiver and also a Sony STR-DH590 home theater receiver with an Insignia 39" HDTV hooked up to all of it.

 

For more details on how to deal with it, you can read my suggestions on my official BIGHMW Facebook site (https://www.facebook.com/BIGHMW) and also whatever health-related sites where you can find ideas and suggestions to deal with this that much more, but like I have been saying for the past 4 days, WE WILL GET THROUGH THIS!!! As long as we remain calm, cool, composed and collected we'll be OK. This virus lives off of, feeds off of, and thrives off of paranoia, fear, and panic, if we don't panic, we won't get it, if we remain calm, we won't get it, if we don't fear it, we won't get it.

 

(note to @Albert: you have my permission to pin this and also spread it (no pun intended) to the other system subforums like those for the 5200, 7800 and Flashback and other subforums as well)

 

WE'LL GET THROUGH THIS!!!

 

GAME ON!!!

 

Ray Jackson

AtariAge user ID: BIGHMW

Edited March 17, 2020 by BIGHMW

[Shawn]

There is already a 27 page thread on this in the general chat forum.

[BIGHMW]

27 minutes ago, Shawn said:

There is already a 27 page thread on this in the general chat forum.

Thanks @Shawn, but there isn't one specific post that is related to Atari and how our gaming systems are helping us cope with this pandemic, but yes, thank you for posting up that link.  GAME ON!!!

 

But believe me it will soon be "GAME OVER" when it comes to COVID-19, as I believe that this is just like a mere storm cloud that will pass by us and we'll never hear from it again and we'll all be talking about it a few years from now for mere nostalgic reasons, just like West Nile Virus and also SARS before it, in which also went away, never to be heard from again, it's only temporary. It'll be gone before you know it.

Edited March 17, 2020 by BIGHMW

[Keatah]

Absolutely. It will be over before you know it. As far as keeping busy, any extra time I have will be taken up by storytelling, playing and updating emulators, maybe wrapping up my 486 restore, starting on rebuilding my PIII, and a host of other projects. I personally welcome the downtime coming from all this.

 

[BIGHMW]

8 minutes ago, Keatah said:

Absolutely. It will be over before you know it. As far as keeping busy, any extra time I have will be taken up by storytelling, playing and updating emulators, maybe wrapping up my 486 restore, starting on rebuilding my PIII, and a host of other projects. I personally welcome the downtime coming from all this.

 

That'll work.  

[+cvga]

When I'm not working from home I've been cleaning the game room, inventorying my carts (amazing how many I didn't have in my database - I recently purchased a game I already owned), and plan on getting some good playing time in. Atari-wise, my goal is to try some of the many homebrews I've purchased and haven't had time to play. I'm also hoping to play games on my C64.

[BIGHMW]

That makes me want to fire up my Flashback 9 and play Chaotic Grill!, as that seems to (along with Pac-Man 4K and Space Rocks) be my current favorite homebrew at this time, so I'll make @splendidnut proud and do that after I take a quick shower (5 minutes just to keep myself up), and then it's GAME ON! after that. 

[KevKelley]

I plan on working on my games. I hope to practice some batari Basic and learn some things.

[BIGHMW]

I reached 12,400 points on Chaotic Grill! this afternoon and left one pepper on the table (should've used it!), but went out for a drive (solo) and now I'm now watching KING 5 News keeping myself informed about COVID-19 before I hit my work at Safeway (I work 7-10 pm weeknights cleaning the cutting room in the meat department so they're ready for first thing the next morning), we're usually open 24/7 but we are closing our doors from 1-5 am nightly for cleaning and/or sanitizing and might even be utilizing a new set of hours exclusively for seniors, pregnant women and those with compromised immune systems, that could go into effect as early as this week.

 

But here at home at BIGHMW.com Headquarters in Port Townsend I have plenty of Chunky Soup still left from the sale where they were only $1.25 each provided you buy at least 4 so I'm doing fine for now.

[BIGHMW]

You know THIS forum could be perfect to introduce us to some new WIPs and finished homebrews for those of us who want to try them out while we're sheltered during this pandemic, so I hope @Albert won't mind if we use this forum for games for all systems even though this thread originated in the Atari 2600 subforum, so I hope it'd be OK with him. ?

Edited March 18, 2020 by BIGHMW

[Keatah]

10 hours ago, cvga said:

When I'm not working from home I've been cleaning the game room, inventorying my carts (amazing how many I didn't have in my database - I recently purchased a game I already owned), and plan on getting some good playing time in. Atari-wise, my goal is to try some of the many homebrews I've purchased and haven't had time to play. I'm also hoping to play games on my C64.

 

That's always something I wanted to do when I was a kid, starting in like 1980, with PFS (Personal Filing System) for the Apple II. I only had like 48K or 64K of memory at the time and 1 or 2 drives of 143K each. And it was working really well till I hit around 400 records OR tried to search for anything by any other field different from the title or first record. It was one of the few times I was disappointed with the Apple II+.

 

And I lost interest in the whole thing, not even considering the superior AppleWorks package that came some years later. Or even the 486 in the PC era. But today I have a "pseudo-database". I rely using a file search program or Windows File Explorer and its search function to scan a library of images with descriptive filenames. I started doing that vaguely in the second decade of this century. Not wholly unlike TOSEC, but more.

 

In a roundabout way it is a database, but a database of disk images and their contents. I also have a secondary disk image scanner that makes a text file of each disk's files. And I scan that, too, if I'm looking for something like a BASIC program I entered when I was a kid.

 

The whole thing works incredibly well. It doesn't give an accurate count of what I have as there are sometimes dupes and multiple versions/cracks. But I can find literally anything in like a minute or two - out of like 40,000 files. More if you count individual files on a disk. Might as well throw in docs, scans, text files, notes and magazines.

 

It works incredibly well and would've been THE database to die for as a kid trading WaReZ in grade school and high school.

 

If there's a lockdown I'll spend some time evaluating the whole shebang and see if there's any room for improvement in technique or whatever.

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

• Coding my own games
• Coding for Stella
• Helping with the PlusCart
• Watching ZeroPage Homebrew
• s.to
• Riding my bicycle as long as I am still allowed

[+Karl G]

When I'm not feeding hungry teenagers, I have been doing a lot of coding on my work in progress.

[keilbaca]

I am out of the high score club. I have been setting up a capture setup when I have time between taking care of my daughter, and the fun of the kitchen being remodeled.

 

I finally found the combination that works with my RetroTINK 2x and my s-video modified Atari. 

 

S-video VHS player cleans up the signal that the RetroTINK 2x likes it. 

 

Whenever all that is said and done, I plan on doing Twin Galaxies style recordings, just to get some scores recorded. Not entirely sure of the direction I am going to go, if it's live streaming or if it is a website that I can broadcast my scores on, but I don't think I'll be submitting anything to Twin Galaxies. 

 

TL;DR: Tinkering with my Atari and setting up to start recording score sessions for YouTube, and future projects/endeavors. 

[insertclevernamehere]

13 hours ago, BIGHMW said:

But here at home at BIGHMW.com Headquarters in Port Townsend I have plenty of Chunky Soup still left from the sale where they were only $1.25 each provided you buy at least 4 so I'm doing fine for now.

Watch the blood pressure.  Way too much salt in tinned soup.

[hizzy]

I am exploring some home brews and playing classics!

[Atarian7]

Thank you for your optimism, BIGHMW. 

[+SpiceWare]

I've done some work on Stella, a preliminary fix for the DPC+ jitter issue that occurs in some games due to various versions of the DPC+ drivers. I plan to do some more work on that, but have put it on the back burner as my mind's too distracted.

 

I don't play my games that often as I get burned out on them during development, but it's been long enough that I've been playing a few rounds of Draconian (port of Bosconian) each day - it's easy to zone out while blasting the enemy.  Specifically I've been playing the Δ Quadrant Sectors, which are the winners of the level design contest.  

 

While playing I twice managed to take out a formation by blowing up a station as the formation flew over it.  Also saw a rare bug - one of the enemy ships became stationary.

[+cvga]

1 hour ago, SpiceWare said:

While playing I twice managed to take out a formation by blowing up a station as the formation flew over it.  Also saw a rare bug - one of the enemy ships became stationary.

If Intellivision has taught us anything, there are no bugs. That's a special feature!

[+Nathan Strum]

I'm still going into work. But I'm about the only one here, so I'm probably more isolated than most of the population.

 

Atari-wise, I'll be watching ZeroPage Homebrew tonight. Besides video conferences, that's about all of the socializing I'm getting right now.

 

I also have three homebrew labels to work on, plus graphics for at least three homebrews. Hoping to find the motivation to get back to them.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

And you could start catching up with your reviews.

[+KaeruYojimbo]

10 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

• Riding my bicycle as long as I am still allowed

I saw a lot of other people out on their bikes while I was riding in to work yesterday. The weather's been nice, the cherry blossoms are in bloom and pretty much everything is closed so people are heading outdoors while they can.

 

I'm one of a handful of people still going in to the office. I figure I'm just as safe if not safer in a nearly empty office than at my house, and there are fewer distractions at the office.

 

Atari-wise I've been working on a new homebrew. Non-Atari-wise I'm playing my custom 1988 'Murican League season in Super Mega Baseball 2.

[RevEng]

I've been helping with a few Atari 7800 based homebrew projects, which sidetracked me for a bit, but I'll soon be back at work on v0.2 of my XMYM tracker, which plays FM synth based music on the 7800 XM module. (another demo here).

[BIGHMW]

15 hours ago, KaeruYojimbo said:

Non-Atari-wise I'm playing my custom 1988 'Murican League season in Super Mega Baseball 2.

Does it have that famous Game 1 of the 1988 World Series between my Dodgers and the A's where Kirk Gibson (of the Dodgers) sends Dennis Ekersley's (A's) 3-2 backdoor slider into the right field seats???

 

.....and on TWO bad legs at that!!! (bad left hammy AND a swollen right knee)

 

 

GO BLUE!!!

[+Random Terrain]

If so many people at home at the same time don't cause rolling blackouts and roving gangs of hungry thugs don't murder me for my food, I'll be playing video games, working on my web site, and possibly working on a batari Basic game. Same as it ever was.