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When do you power on your Astrocade?


sixersfan105

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So you're ready to play a cartridge-based game on your Bally Astrocade. At what point do you power on your console? Prior to inserting the cartridge or after?

 

I know it seems like a trivial question but I noticed that the game manuals as well as the FAQ on Bally Alley state to turn on the console and THEN insert the cartridge. Like with all of my systems, I have traditionally inserted the cartridge and then powered on the console, and it seems to work fine. Occasionally I'll get a garbled screen, but reset takes care of that. 
 

Is there any benefit to following the game manual steps? Am I hurting my console by inserting the cart and then powering on the console? 

Thanks in advance for any and all insight!

 

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5 hours ago, sixersfan105 said:

At what point do you power on your [Bally Astrocade] console? Prior to inserting the cartridge or after? [...]

 

I noticed that the game manuals as well as the FAQ on Bally Alley state to turn on the console and THEN insert the cartridge.

 

Turning the Astrocade on with the cartridge inside of it is how I use my Astrocade, but, yes, the Astrocade can be turned on without a cartridge and then the cartridge can be inserted afterward and the Reset button can be pressed.  Swapping cartridges with the power on will not hurt the console; it was designed for this type of use.

 

Either way you choose to turn on your system, the Reset button should be pressed when a new cartridge is being used.  This may make no difference, but for some games it's required.  For instance, ICBM Attack comes up with a black screen.  It looks like it's not working; it will not start until the Reset button is pressed (this is true under emulation too).

 

In another Astrocade-oddity, sometimes cartridges are swapped and the Reset button isn't pressed.  Tricks like this allow the Bally BASIC and "AstroBASIC" cartridges to be swapped.  The Astrocade multicart has programs on it that would normally require the BASIC cartridge to be swapped-out, but instead only the DIP switches have to be changed.

 

Adam

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