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is the 7800 necessary?


Drsoren24

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On 1/16/2021 at 4:17 PM, Giles N said:

@Drsoren24

Have taken on an interest in the 7800 after reading the posts on this thread, or are you still satisfied with ‘only’ the 5200?

Yes. I have a 7800 that I bought years ago on ebay and put in a box long long ago and many moves ago. It worked then but now it doesn't. I've done some research and have pulled it apart and experimenting on it. Hopefully I can get it to work, but if not I'll probably ebay another one. The reason I posted about the 7800 is because I was thinking about just eliminating it because I love the 5200 for many reasons. The original weakness was the controllers but now with all the adapters out there that is not a problem. The atarimax rom cartridge allows me to put away most of the old clunky cartridges, and the vcs adapter lets me play all the 2600 cartridges. I also can play 2600 on my colecovision. So the backwards compatibility means nothing to me on the 7800. Basically I was just looking for some space savings, there are just to many systems and switching between them can be a pain in the ass. I have decided to eliminate the intellivision, what a POS that was...coming soon to ebay.

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Switching back and forth is likely the most annoying aspect of having too many systems. Sure they can be set-up with A/B selector switches and converters and all that - then you end up with a rat's nest of wiring. And it all looks too cluttered. I've only seen 3-4 setups in the "Show us your collection" thread that gets it right.

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6 hours ago, Keatah said:

Switching back and forth is likely the most annoying aspect of having too many systems. Sure they can be set-up with A/B selector switches and converters and all that - then you end up with a rat's nest of wiring. And it all looks too cluttered. I've only seen 3-4 setups in the "Show us your collection" thread that gets it right.

Well, sure. But, on the other hand, the 7800 can also double as a 2600 console, helping to reduce the clutter. 

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Quite a few people here have raised similar if not the same answers, but I have found the 7800 to have great arcade ports for the era. I do see validity in arguing that you get pretty similar experiences with the ColecoVision or NES, at least for the common titles between them.

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14 hours ago, Keatah said:

I think that the 7800 and an 8-bit like the 130xe or 800xl provide the most coverage for the least hardware.

 

7800 covers the 2600 like you say. And an XL/XE covers the computers and the 5200. 
 

Giving up a few 5200-specific titles is well worth what’s gained.

I have to agree. I have them all, and the 7800 takes care of 85% of what I want with the 2600 compatibility, and my XEGS which is basically a 65XE, will run everything else I need. I keep the 400 in the family room and use it as the console it was intended to be. Atari really should have made a lower cost "vader" like 400 and dropped the price to the price of the 5200 at it's release. Maybe introduce a 2-button joystick, perhaps, bit not that horrible painline. Or come up with the XEGS as the 5200 earlier. What if. What if...

The only reason for me to keep the 5200 was Adventure II, but now it is available on the 8-bit, I have no need or desire to keep the 5200 other than eye candy on the console bookshelf...

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/24/2021 at 12:50 PM, Zonie said:

I have to agree. I have them all, and the 7800 takes care of 85% of what I want with the 2600 compatibility, and my XEGS which is basically a 65XE, will run everything else I need. I keep the 400 in the family room and use it as the console it was intended to be. Atari really should have made a lower cost "vader" like 400 and dropped the price to the price of the 5200 at it's release. Maybe introduce a 2-button joystick, perhaps, bit not that horrible painline. Or come up with the XEGS as the 5200 earlier. What if. What if...

The only reason for me to keep the 5200 was Adventure II, but now it is available on the 8-bit, I have no need or desire to keep the 5200 other than eye candy on the console bookshelf...

I now agree with most of that. There are some games that are really expensive in the 400/800 that I really like on the 5200 though. I guess that's why I'll probably keep my 5200 for now. I really like some of the cbs games and gyruss, gremlins, popeye, and I have a port of tapper that is great. I also really like that it has two action buttons for games like moon patrol and defender. I haven't played the 400/800 versions of those games so I don't know if they came up with a good solution for having only one button or not.

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On 1/23/2021 at 8:46 PM, Keatah said:

Switching back and forth is likely the most annoying aspect of having too many systems. Sure they can be set-up with A/B selector switches and converters and all that - then you end up with a rat's nest of wiring. And it all looks too cluttered. I've only seen 3-4 setups in the "Show us your collection" thread that gets it right.

Oddly, making this lot work was fun: http://80.229.1.38/geekery/videowafflage11.html

 

Yep, it's a rats nest, that's kinda inevitable without making all the cables custom and to length. but it is all plugged through a single switch into two monitors and one sound system. It's of course been through a bit of a revision since in that the Xbox is now going through a custom made cable into a GBScontrol outputting VGA to the LaCie monitor rather than going RGB to the PVM, but again this setup allows that flexibility. At some point the 7800 will be going into a semi-pro S-Vid to RGB box I've got kicking around, I just need to put a sync stripper on the output of that to make it play nice with the Extron (which is not straight forward to make work this way).

 

For me though, the hardware side is as interesting as the software side. Even I will admit that it makes no real sense now the MiSTer and emulation is where it's at. Indeed on my panel in the other room has a MiSTer and I've got a mini Retropi desktop arcade machine also.

Edited by juansolo
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1 hour ago, juansolo said:

Oddly, making this lot work was fun: http://80.229.1.38/geekery/videowafflage11.html

Beautiful description and setup.

 

I did stuff comparable to that years ago - unfortunately without the custom cables, adapters, and converters we have today. So it was a more frustrating experience. The tedium stopped me from making it a long-term modus operandi. Had I started the hobby much later, like after the hectic dotcom era, I may have stayed the hardware route.

 

Quote

For me though, the hardware side is as interesting as the software side. Even I will admit that it makes no real sense now the MiSTer and emulation is where it's at. Indeed on my panel in the other room has a MiSTer and I've got a mini Retropi desktop arcade machine also.

I'm equally at home tweaking <xxxxx.ini> files as I am with soldering iron and TTL databook. I appreciate being able to work on configurations in small time slots. Half an hour here, hour there. And the ability to start/stop work on it instantly.

 

So give me a multi-billion transistor CPU & GPU combo in SFF PC case that can become any console, any computer, at anytime, and I'm totally happy. Throw in R-Pi and MiSTer to round it out. I'm banking on these three platforms being the way forward for a long time. And they're only going to get better. I figure that we'll continue to see continuity in the evolution of these platforms. Easy migration to the next generation of hardware.

 

Though space isn't much a concern I do prefer gaming in a small cozy reading room. Especially the moody downtempo evenings of wintertime.

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