Atari XE/7800 Light Gun Alternatives?

[Shawn]

1 hour ago, CPUWIZ said:

 

He must be running low, I paid $24.95 for mine.

 

Ya, that price must be newer cause I've bought a couple over the years and never paid more than that.

[Swami]

Wikipedia's XG-1 article says the problem is with the games, not the gun, but, oddly enough, the article has no references...so, kind of pointless.

[+sixersfan105]

14 hours ago, CPUWIZ said:

 

He must be running low, I paid $24.95 for mine.

I think @R.Cade is referring to $50 as the going rate on eBay. "Untested" XG-1s have recently gone for $13 and $5, respectively. @7800Knight, I'd recommend setting an alert on eBay and then you can pounce when a decently-priced one pops up. Or go the Best Electronics route, as suggested.

[Swami]

4 hours ago, sixersfan105 said:

I think @R.Cade is referring to $50 as the going rate on eBay. "Untested" XG-1s have recently gone for $13 and $5, respectively. @7800Knight, I'd recommend setting an alert on eBay and then you can pounce when a decently-priced one pops up. Or go the Best Electronics route, as suggested.

Best Electronics "Best Light Gun" is manufactured differently from the XG-1's and tend to be increasingly pricier ever few years. I think it was $35 four years ago for the Best Electronics model, when I bought one. Below: XG-1 vs Best

 

[Shawn]

On 11/12/2020 at 4:58 PM, Swami said:

Best Electronics "Best Light Gun" is manufactured differently from the XG-1's and tend to be increasingly pricier ever few years. I think it was $35 four years ago for the Best Electronics model, when I bought one. Below: XG-1 vs Best

 

 

And I still think he just bought a ton of the commodore guns and sold them as the best gun. If you look around that exact mold and pinout was used for a 3rd party commodore gun back in the day.

 

 

Just sayin'

[Swami]

2 hours ago, Shawn said:

 

And I still think he just bought a ton of the commodore guns and sold them as the best gun. If you look around that exact mold and pinout was used for a 3rd party commodore gun back in the day.

 

 

Just sayin'

Looks right. He did something similar with the Best Trackball, using a PC trackball.

[+sramirez2008]

3 hours ago, Shawn said:

 

And I still think he just bought a ton of the commodore guns and sold them as the best gun. If you look around that exact mold and pinout was used for a 3rd party commodore gun back in the day.

 

 

Just sayin'

*Sheesh* If this is true, I would have rather had the original box, instead of that government issued Video Light Gun box.

[gilsaluki]

I am telling you.  I own EVERY Variety of Atari-compatible lightgun.  None are more/less accurate than the others.  So, convert a Sega or whatever.   They all are inaccurate. 

[electronicsibley]

Has anyone ever tried to modify the Atari XG-1 to improve its accuracy? Assuming the gun is the issue, I wonder a relatively easy fix could be implemented. 

[Shawn]

11 hours ago, electronicsibley said:

Has anyone ever tried to modify the Atari XG-1 to improve its accuracy? Assuming the gun is the issue, I wonder a relatively easy fix could be implemented. 

 

The game code itself is sloppy from what I've been told so the most fantastic lightgun going will still be wishy-washy.

[+SmittyB]

The lightgun code for Crossbow is only able to poll the gun 15 times a line with the leftmost value being 6 and then incrementing at 11 pixels a time. Ideally a game would count the hit as being anything in those 11 pixels, but I doubt that's what they do.

[Trebor]

On 11/14/2020 at 3:27 PM, Shawn said:

And I still think he just bought a ton of the commodore guns and sold them as the best gun. If you look around that exact mold and pinout was used for a 3rd party commodore gun back in the day.

 

 

Just sayin'

Agreed.  The item is just showing the other side under brighter lighting in the picture below.

 

Best Electronics is actually selling that Commodore light gun for $59.95 and that's without shipping. 

 

It has gone up considerably...

[+sixersfan105]

7 hours ago, Trebor said:

Best Electronics is actually selling that Commodore light gun for $59.95 and that's without shipping. 

 

It has gone up considerably...

Yikes! That's a bit much. I'd prefer to roll the dice on an untested official XG-1 for considerably less - if I was in the market for one, of course. My XG-1 seems to work fine (at reasonably close range). 

[gilsaluki]

17 minutes ago, sixersfan105 said:

Yikes! That's a bit much. I'd prefer to roll the dice on an untested official XG-1 for considerably less - if I was in the market for one, of course. My XG-1 seems to work fine (at reasonably close range). 

Yeah, they all work well within 12 inches of the screen.  For the price listed now for Best's version of the gun, I would go with the Sega and build the converter adapter.   It looks nice, and it's black.

[Shawn]

9 hours ago, Trebor said:

 

It has gone up considerably...

 

$60 bucks? Hell no.

[electronicsibley]

14 hours ago, Shawn said:

The game code itself is sloppy from what I've been told so the most fantastic lightgun going will still be wishy-washy.

Somehow that’s more reassuring than Atari releasing botched hardware, but not by much. 

 

12 hours ago, SmittyB said:

 

The lightgun code for Crossbow is only able to poll the gun 15 times a line with the leftmost value being 6 and then incrementing at 11 pixels a time. Ideally a game would count the hit as being anything in those 11 pixels, but I doubt that's what they do.

 

Sounds like at least a few games in the 7800 light-gun collection are ripe for hacking to (at least) correct for accuracy. 

[Swami]

4 hours ago, electronicsibley said:

Somehow that’s more reassuring than Atari releasing botched hardware, but not by much. 

 

Sounds like at least a few games in the 7800 light-gun collection are ripe for hacking to (at least) correct for accuracy. 

The Wikipedia article provides the following, although only gives the "Atari 400/800 Hardware Technical Reference" as a source for the first sentence. The nature of this hard-coded value is not explained or referenced and neither is why it wouldn't vary due to calibration drift.

 

"The Atari 400/800 Hardware Technical Reference recommends a "calibration procedure" each time the light pen is used, so that the software can compensate for this offset. A calibration procedure would improve the accuracy of the light gun. But both Bug Hunt and Barnyard Blaster for the XEGS both have "hard-coded" values, different ones in fact. While Bug Hunt appears to shoot slightly to the left, Barnyard Blaster seems to shoot slightly to the right. The Y readings for the gun are more predictable, equal to half the number of the currently displayed scan line."