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Yep these Apollo protos are definetly soldered to the boards. I'm going to need to send them out to someone with a cartridge dumper. I wonder why they would bother soldering the eprom to the board considering these were some VERY early WIP protos?

 

Tempest

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Now that you have seen the protos, what are your ‘expanded” thoughts on them? Are any of them rare (other than the Apollo ones), previously unseen/unknown versions or valuable? Is any of this stuff going to be posted to the Atariprotos site?

 

Tempest, thanks again for taking a look at the games, and I’ll be getting to the 400/800/XE stuff this weekend. I’ll let you know what I dig up.

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BTW: There were two games I was unable to get working - Beamrider and Robot Tank I think. Did you have any luck with them.

 

Also what does WIP mean?

 

WIP means Work In Progress. This means a beta or unfinished version of the game (aka. what I'm looking for). :D

 

No luck on Robot Tank or Beamrider, but when I dump the EPROM I might be able to get it to work. Sometimes the protos stop working because the board (not the eprom) goes bad.

 

I played with all th games briefly this weekend. These are my initial impressions, we won't know more until I dump the eproms and do a file compare on the .bin file with the released versions. My computer is back up and running, so I can dump them this week. :)

 

Unknown Apollo Proto (Kyphus?) - Looks to be a mid level WIP. You can wander about the rooms, avoiding the blob and robot, but there's no gameplay implemented yet so there's nothing much to do. Interestingly there's alot of debugging info (hex values) being fed to the score and displays at the top of the screen. They look like position coordinates.

 

Guardian - This is definetly a WIP. The game is permently in two player mode, and the scores say 123456 and 456789. I think there may be some gameplay implemented because the ships appear to be shooting the enemies. I need to dig out my paddles and play around with this one.

 

Squoosh - This version is further along than the previously released version. Unfortunately the game still isn't even close to being playable. You can watch the grape roll around the floor and jump and get hit by the press (you get knocked down into the pit), but that's about it. Someone will have to look at the game code and see if there's more functionality in this one, but I doubt it.

 

Private Eye - Appears to be the final version.

Skateboardin - Appears to be the final version.

Montezuma's Revenge - Final version

Beamrider - More than likely the final version. 99% of Activision protos that look like this are the final versions.

Robot Tank - More than likely the final version. 99% of Activision protos that look like this are the final versions.

Pigs in Space - Final

Krull - Final

 

Galaxian - This is a WIP version, but I'll have to play around with it a little more to know what's different. It's close to the final though. I think the colors or sounds are a bit different.

 

Ms. Pac-Man (PAL) - Final. This is an NTSC proto even though it says PAL on the label. Odd...

Solar Fox - Looks like the final, but I need to play around with it more.

Pitfall II - Appears to be the final version.

Name This Game - Appears to be the final version.

Crazy Climber - Appears to be the final version.

Frankensteins Monster - Appears to be the final version.

Encounter at L-5 - Appears to be the final version. I need to dig out my paddles to play this one.

 

Tempest

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Yep these Apollo protos are definetly soldered to the boards. I'm going to need to send them out to someone with a cartridge dumper. I wonder why they would bother soldering the eprom to the board considering these were some VERY early WIP protos?

 

Do later versions of these games exist? If not, even though they're early WIP games I would think they may be "souvenirs" from people who left when Apollo was dissolved. For someone leaving a game company in the early 1980's, a playable cartridge would be far more useful than a floppy for a development system that was no longer posessed.

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Ok some more updates:

 

Skateboardin - Final

Name This Game - Final

Solar Fox - Differs by 2 bytes. No idea what these do, but it's either a very small bug fix or just 'eprom garbage'.

Private Eye - This one actually has a production chip in it. This is actually not all that uncommon with Activision 'prototypes'.

 

More updates soon.

 

Tempest

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Ok more analysis:

 

Ms. Pac-Man: Final, but not PAL as stated on the label.

Crazy Climber: Final

Galaxian: This is a WIP, but it is not from 035-02 (2/4/83). I have another Galaxian proto dated 035-02, but this one is different than that one. One of them has a wrong date. :)

 

The rest of the protos will have to be sent out for dumping as they are soldered to the boards.

 

Tempest

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Here's the Solar Fox proto. Only two bytes are different, so don't expect to see anything different.

:idea: Actually not even those two bytes are different. They are bankswitching hotspot bytes, which result into random values when getting dumped.

 

So the ROM is 100% indentical.

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Here's the Solar Fox proto. Only two bytes are different, so don't expect to see anything different.

:idea: Actually not even those two bytes are different. They are bankswitching hotspot bytes, which result into random values when getting dumped.

 

So the ROM is 100% indentical.

 

I thought it might be something like that. Good to know.

 

Tempest

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Tempest any idea when you might be covering the new snow white and Apollo protos on your site?

 

The Apollo games are being shipped out today to someone I trust who can dump them. The EPROMs are soldered to the boards, which means I can't dump them myself.

 

Snow White will be dumped soon. We found someone out in California who can dump it for us. I'm not sure how long this will take, but I'll let everyone know when it has been dumped.

 

Tempest

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Tempest any idea when you might be covering the new snow white and Apollo protos on your site?

 

The Apollo games are being shipped out today to someone I trust who can dump them. The EPROMs are soldered to the boards, which means I can't dump them myself.

 

Snow White will be dumped soon. We found someone out in California who can dump it for us. I'm not sure how long this will take, but I'll let everyone know when it has been dumped.

 

Tempest

 

Thanks for the heads up Tempest. Look forward to reading whta you have to say on them ;)

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  • 4 weeks later...
Tempest?

 

It is getting near a month since I've heard anything about the status of those unknown protos or for that matter any details on the other protos I sent you.

 

Update please...

 

I was able to dump all but 5 of them since those were soldered to the boards. I sent those to Albert (who owns the site) to dump, but he had trouble locating his 7800 that is capable of dumping whole cartridges. This weekend he did find it and is going to dump them. Hopefully he'll have them dumped today. Sorry for the delay.

 

Tempest

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