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The devil's workshop
They say "idle hands are the devil's workshop." I got bored again.
I'm not sure if I explored the possibility of porting Uncle Hairy's Nosehair to the Intellivision. If I already did, I lost it because I looked through all my INTV projects. The Secret Government Waffle Project was mysteriously AWOL. Perhaps the government hacked into my computer and removed it lol. Which is too bad because I wanted to see if I used Moonlight Sonata for it.
I spent about 90 minutes coding an Intellivision version of "Moonlight Sonata." And another few minutes was spent trying to design a title screen for it. If you can do better, PM me.
One thing that bugs me about the INTV color palette is THERE'S NO BROWN! I wanted to make brown burger patties. I wanted to make a brown nosehair. And what should be brown ends up being puke green. And I wanted to make the scissors gray but I couldn't because the nosehair was in the second half of the colors and so was gray.
I finally figured out why I couldn't draw very well in Photoshop. It decides every now and then to reset itself. And when it does that, it snaps the pencil to the grid. So I had to undo that option. I shouldn't have to because it's a dumb option that shouldn't be there, but I didn't code Photoshop so I don't have a say what goes in it.
I had to give up on SGWF2 because I couldn't get the jumping correct. So I began work on this.
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Irish Washerwoman - Another Jig
I was deciding which song to arrange from Maggie Sansone's "Traditions - Hammered Dulcimer" when I picked "Irish Washerwoman". The ability to look at the sheet music and hear the music in my head eludes me. After I got the first section programed into MIDI MUSIC SYSTEM software, it was easily recognizable as music I had heard many times before. The remaining composition was variations on the theme.
The MIDI Music System file overview
IrishWasherwoman_Proteus 2000.atr
V1 - the melody - channel 1
There are 6 voices(tracks), V21 - V26, that hold the 6 sections of music. V1 makes a jump to each of these Voices in order of play. V21,V22, and V25 share the same cord progression. V23,V24 and V26 have a slightly different progression.
V2 - Cords - channel 2
Four cords are used; G - Am - D7 - C. The cords from a Ukulele cord chart were used. These can be found in V31 to V39. The odd numbers are a down strokes and the even numbers are the up strokes. The up stroke were not note used. The sustain control, CC 64(P64,127), is turned on before the strum and will stay on until a change of cord is needed.
There are 2 sequences for the cords. They have been programed into V27 and V28. The sustain control need only be turned off (P64,0) when the cord is changed. Refresh the cord with a strum as often as needed. When a cord change on a real ukulele occures, the sound is deadened as the fingers are moved to the next cord and of course if notes are not turned off they will simply over lay the next cord.
The strum voices are programed for a standard duration of 1/8th note. In this song most strums occurs every 3/8. There are lots of 1/8th rests used to keep everything in sync.
V3 - drums - channel 3
The drums are a synth base drum. A triplet leads into a series of beats every 1/8th beat. The drum sequence was programed on middle C. Later, the percussion instrument was then chosen by transposing the note. The Velocity is changed to give an accent on the first and forth beats. The meter is 6/8.
V4 - Utility
It seems that when exiting the play mode using the escape key, the voices are not turned off when they have been turned on with the control code (64). One way to deal with this is to send a command for All Notes off(control code 123,0) to the channel of choice.
/CHn
P123,n
Once the channels are entered into a voice you simply have to enter edit mode. Go to the voice with the channel list. Then play that voice.
Enter edit mode.
Vn
P
This should turn off the sounds. Since V1-V20 are played to assigned channels, be sure to deselect the voice, when the voice falls in this range.
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Woebegone: An “The Oregon Trail” Homage - DevLog: Day 18 (08/27/24) - Lost on the Trail ...
I wanted to drop a quick update on this, as it has been two months since my last post.
I'll start that by saying that this is not a dead project, nor something I've abandoned.
Being "lost on the trail" is less being "lost" and more some (pleasantly but unexpectedly) extended travel, starting with visiting home for the (British) Silverstone F1 GP (where I grew up) immediately after my last post, and various excursions and sojourns since, along with a barrage of "summer activities", that only left a couple of days to do any useful coding. Now that's done, I have a few weeks before our fall travel begins and will be seeing how much I can get done in the mean time.
What I Worked On
Most of the two days were spent playing around with various approaches to handling the actual game, and especially how to implement its model and calculations. That included one wine-soaked evening's contemplating "maybe I should just do all the math/game-logic in BASIC"; a thought that was quickly put to rest. Then I played around with the OS' floating point routines, followed by creating some of my own math functions in 6502 assembly. And finally experimenting with an internal integer-only model, coupled with some 6502/macros to handle clean division and multiplication (which is probably the route I'll take, by adding them to my related utility/includes project).
I also spent some time trying to improve the initial graphics, including animating the oxen/wagon. As I've said before, I have no artistic ability - thus this proved extremely frustrating. It was not helped by my simply either not getting along with the available tools, or them just not being native to the platforms I'm using - and issues arising as a result. For example, I could use "Mode 4" here - in terms of what it does and how it does it - but on an Apple Silicon Mac, on the latest (non-beta) OS, it doesn't respond to clicks until I move the mouse (I expect it is an issue with a dependency, rather than the "Mode 4" code itself, but I've not had time/inclination to get to the bottom of it). Other tools require Windows, and are x86 builds - which then exhibit various oddities when run under Windows 11 ARM and Microsoft's x86 emulation.
I decided to put together my own character/tile/map editor (despite the tools I've already built/posted for working with the output of other programs), for Mode 4/5 and regular 1-bit/pixel modes, using a modern, cross-platform, framework (likely Tauri, since I've done enough with Electron for a lifetime) and that will be able to run in a browser from the web, or as a native desktop application for macOS, Windows and Linux. I'm not going to spend more time on "graphics" until that's in a useable state, but will work on the "game" internals of Woebegone in parallel.
What's Next?
- Finish up the "title screen" aspect of this, including the cleaner, neater, clearer, bottom-panel
- Finish decision making on internal model/math, and code up any necessary support routines/macros
- Work on my character editor (subsequent "*" items are dependent on this being functional, if not "finished")
- Animate the oxen/wagon*
- Improve the parallax effect on the mountains/hills (will have two "distances" of hills/mountains, rather than one)*
- Add scrolling landmark entry and bit-shifted (soft-sprite) elements (technical validation)*
There probably won't be much "visible" progress in the code (unless you want to peruse the repository) beyond the title screen aspect for a couple of weeks or so. So, once I'm at that point, I'll do another build and then things should be less staccato through the end of the year.
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I went Googling for help in 2024 and couldn't find anything useful. They all tell you to click on the three dots near the top right corner, but they don't tell you to scroll down with your mouse scrollbar.
How do I get to my Google Chrome Settings?
Click on the three dots near the top right corner, then scroll down with your mouse scrollbar and you'll see Settings all the way down near the bottom of the list.
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Okay so ever since the 2600+ came out and my desire to want to be a part of the 2600/7800 community started, i came to the realization that obviously these days its extremely hard to get some of the more obscure or sought after 2600/7800 titles i wanted to play on my system without getting a custom cartridge, which honestly is really fun sounding! I can have my own copy of a game like "Red Sea Crossing" or prototypes like "Sinistar" and even hacks like "Wolfenstein 2600" with the exact kind of label i wanted and since as of now i live in the same town as AtariAge themselves, i could get this game by the next day after shipping for a fairly tempting price.
And the best site to get most of the work done for me was labelmaker2600.com, it had nearly all the 2600 Atari cartridge templates and it was easy to use, i was quite satisfied with it. But it missed my favorite label! And of course there were other third party publisher labels i wanted to replicate. Like Activision, so i'd like to show you the label and style i'm talking about.
The "2600 Red Label/Jr Style" from the mid-late 1980's to early 90's
It's a bit bland and for those who were atari fans in the 80's is kind of seen as the "Budget/Dollar Store Era", but i felt that especially the Logo/Header and the red coloring were truly fitting for the console, and i loved how well they would mesh on the shelf, i really loved how the end labels had the system listed + Catalog #NO with the name boldly in the top.
I thought since the 2600+ was bringing the 2600 and 7800 together again and bringing new life to both platforms, i thought this kind of 7800 esque 2600 logo + Distinct Red Labeling was something i wanted to standardize with a template so anybody with a basic photo editor such as myself could make a custom label, send it to AtariAge and get it back with the confidence that it would unify their game collection, that may be a very neurodivergent thing to want to do, but yeah it is... So what?
So i whipped up something in about 30 minutes as a concept for people to mess around with and emailed the owner of the 2600labelmaker website with my idea, posted the question on atariage and left it there for the month of June.
I eventually got a reply from the owner of the website, but due to the fact that i haven't gotten a response yet on if i should publicly state what he said i will say that it was on the table at one point but isn't possible for him to do, please dont message him about it though. If i get anything i will let you know. So unfortunately i was left with this very off, quick reconstruction from a JPG of a 2600 Red Label, in gimp, made in 30 minutes as a proof of concept that honestly needed far more work than i put in it even as a proof of concept and thus i left that there...
You may notice that the font from the original red labels and mine are different, even that 2600 logo above that i used as an example has a different font if you look at the 6 in 2600, so here comes a little interlude about how hard i tried to search for this mysterious font and how it proved fruitless.
Essentially it is a custom hybrid of sorts of Futura Bold and Futura Bold Condensed, slim 0s, the number 6 with an oval hole. Minor differences, this seems to trip up a lot of people not just myself as seen below with this custom Donkey Kong cart, this is just a very mysterious custom typeface that i have yet to find a perfect match of
But the weirder thing is the 2600 Jr box and oddly Midnight Magic on the 2600 use the standard Futura Bold font...
and oddly the current day atari uses the unknown typeface to this day for new 2600 releases, which iimplies they at least have a high quality image of the "2600/Atarian Futura" font or the 2600 logo in that typeface, but i never bothered to ask aboout this.
Okay all of that aside, despite not finding the exact font, me and (mostly) a user on the AtariAge discord (DragonGrafx-16) found one close enough, and when i found out about the Midnight Magic thing, i felt at peace finally, so here it is again.
How lovely, i apologize for kinda tommy tallaricoing your contribution, but if i knew your user here, i'd just @ you instead with sole credit, my mother is indeed very proud.
Okay ENOUGH, for real...
In between my rabbithole for finding this typeface and that original attempt in june, i decided to use what was available to me at the time with the 2600labelmaker's silver label generator and Frankenstein my own hybrid label! Effectively meeting the best of both worlds.
The Silver Label is a beloved template for 2600 carts, it co-existed with the red label for awhile but Silver came before Red! So it's extremely iconic and uniform, and seemingly much more prefered to the red label
and i do like this label, however i think the silver better fits the 7800 and i feel like it'd be too similar to that console's label, even if the red label format was the exact same as the 7800 label, the coloring made it stand out, taking the red from the logo/banner and making it THE label for 2600 in my opinion, not to mention the end labels, while i liked their boldness, i preferred the extra details on the end labels of the red carts, makes them fit nicely on a shelf to me.
But i did like the rainbow header and a few other features on the Silver Label so i decided to try to mix a bit of the late silver label with the coloring and end labels of the red labels after being inspired by the labels made by @ZippyOasys to make this middle ground label, and i was very happy with the results
i would like to make alterations to the design and font choices but this was very satisfying to make and to see the results of.
And eventually around this time i also decided to use my printers scanner at the time to scan two of my red label games, which at the time were my only ones, but honestly i'm glad i chose the two i did, Dark Chambers and Ikari Warriors, it seems like with the final 90's games they changed the logo again so it was really interesting to see the differences between the two, although i wish i had done a better job of keeping them fully aligned in the scanner as i still feel like they were crooked, as with a lot of the JPGs i used as reference material.
This image is almost 77 MBs.... Sadly my printer no longer works so i'm afraid i can't try again or add scans of other games, but i am glad to have scanned them at all at this quality.
Also around this time i toiled around with tackling my favorite style of activision labels (The Blue Ones) and trying to make them fit this kind of "New Hybrid Style", unfortunately as far as i know, Gimp doesnt seem to have shape tools or something so it took me a while to get this down to a point i was satisfied with, and eventually i just used it as the artwork for the 2600labelmaker and just made the background blue, although i am pretty pleased with the end labels.
i couldn't find the exact font that the blue labels use, which i will put down below but i think i did my best to show this idea of a less boring Blue Label Activision template concept.
Again, designed for Atari style 2600 carts in mind since, those are the ones i'd expect most to use for custom carts, as AtariAge does. I do hope to revisit this idea eventually, as i did want to experiment with alternate color choices instead of blue for certain games like Black for Ghostbusters or Green for Pitfall!
And as a one off i did a quick label for a hypothetical demake of the Sunsoft NES Batman game in the hybrid red label for 2600 since i felt like something like that would make total sense as some kind of late era 2600 batman game, then somebody told me that somebody already did their own demo of that, so i presented them what i made. But i'll post it here too because you can never have enough images.
I did not make an End Label for that was the most time consuming part, and when i made this label, i didnt know that game existed so i didnt think much of it and by the time i did i was likely already tired, much apologies to the atari wizard behind the game.
But in August i decided after making my best PNGs of the 2600 logos as i will post both PNGs one more time below (you havent seen the other one so) based on the cartridge scans i did before, i thought i should try to make a template to AtariAge's specifications including bleed and cut dimensions, now maybe i could've made the bleed a different color to make it less confusing but i'm never sure about much of anything really, so, while i still feel like theres much to improve on with the current template i am excited by the results and propositions that this endeavor may provide, i just dont think i can do this alone.
And with enough teasing and motivational speech, i bring you the label template as of now, Main Label 1.1 and End Label 1.0
AGAIN i need to say this includes "Bleed" so it may look like everything is too small, this is not how it would look on a cartridge, see the atariage store's custom cartridge listing for more info, i will say i wish i put in sample front label text (obviously in a lower opacity to make it easier to write over) and the end label has a few errors in terms of how i used too much bold fonts or non bold fonts intermixed with eachother, its a mess basically 😅, but i hope to get an updated 1.2/1.1 versions of the labels with tips from the community on my thread in the 2600 forum here, its gone stagnate with replies since june and i really need help with my skills to help advance progress on it, i am also hoping to do more "Hybrid Label" tests as well, i dont see that going way.
But thats my progress on trying to DIY this. Thank you for reading my blog entry, more will come soon, i recommend following the blog but mostly my thread on the 2600 forums dedicated to the template, thats where i will mostly be posting this stuff in or updates on that mostly. Send your tips there too!
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I have recovered the Instruction Manual for Connect the Dots off an old dead hard drive I had thought was lost forever. It's been lost for 21 years. The manual is making its online debut today.
Without further ado, here is the Instruction Manual (see attached image files)...
If you don't already have a ROM image of the game, it can be found at larger ROM collection internet web sites. Or you can just grab a copy of it right here.
-Ben
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Latest Entry
My Favorite Atari Games
Dragster
Haunted House
Moon Patrol
Yar's Revenge
Video Pinball
Ms. Pac Man
Surround
Pac-Man
Berzerk
Outlaw
Jungle Hunt
Missile Command
Maze Craze
Warlords
Circus Atari
Centipede
Combat
Asteroids
Joust
Galaxian
Crystal Castles
Dig Dug
Lost Luggage
Fast Food
Fast Eddie
Frogger
Q-Bert
Montezuma's Revenge
Congo Bongo
Donkey Kong
Pitfall!
Pitfall II
Space Jockey
Sky Jinks
Enduro
Oink!
River Raid
Frogs and Flies
Dragonfire
Atlantis
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Latest Entry
Part 1: The Setup
Windows NT 4.0 is very interesting, but equally confusing.
Researching what parts were required to get the most out of this operating system while remaining period-correct was a time consuming process. Again, when we're working with a topic this niche, it's very difficult to find any pertinent information. Who documented CAD workstations in the 90s? Very few, as it would seem. Depending on who you are, the project would stop here. For me? This makes it that much more interesting. It's like a mythical being or MacGuffin; it exists, but hardly anyone has thought to research it.
These are the specs we're going to be looking at - they're subject to change:
- Intel VS440FX (Socket 8 Motherboard)
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Single Pentium Pro Clocked at 150Mhz
- this is a modest estimate based on my preliminary test bench results. If my host computer can handle higher clock rates, this will be upgraded in a similar manner to a real workstation of that era.
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Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold 28 MB
- I know, it seems like an odd choice for an NT focused build, as it's a card known for its DOS and early 9x performance. I have my reasons, which I'll get into later.
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Matrox Millennium II 8 MB
- This card was revered because of its excellent 2D acceleration and support for very high resolutions up to 1600x1200, and even 1920x1200 in operating systems such as Windows 2000.
- It absolutely has 3D capabilities, but they aren't stellar by any means, even for its time. For 3D CAD/rendering, its doable but not ideal. However, gaming is entirely hit and miss, even when keeping the limitations of NT in mind with its lackluster DirectX support.
- The card supports up to 16 MB, but NT 4 apparently has problems with this.
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512 MB of RAM
- The maximum supported by this motherboard. I wanted to go with 1 GB, and had previously on my testbench running an Asus board of the same era. However, I ran into problems with emulation speed that I've attributed were most likely due to its far more complex design. Regardless, I imagine I'll have a hard time actually using all this RAM even if I went out of my way to. The operating system only idles at around 20-32 MB based on my previous testing.
- 24X CD-ROM
- Dual 3.5 inch 1.44 MB Floppy Drives
- 18 GB IDE 5400 RPM Hard Disk
That just about sums up the specs I've decided on for now. We'll look at any potential upgrades later on after running some benchmarks. I've also considered running Raid 0 on this emulated machine, but I think I'll instead save that for a later NT Server project. 18 GB should still go a long way.
Here are the various tasks that will be pitted against the machine:
- Video Production/Editing
- Audio Production/Editing
- Music Production
- 2D & 3D CAD
- OpenGL Gaming
- Game Making
- Microsoft Office 97 Pro
- Internet Browsing
It's a decently extensive list, but my research suggests this machine will be up to the task. What's honestly been the most difficult part of this project thus far is finding software. A lot of these products, especially those created for enterprise level 3D rendering & urban planning, have simply been lost to time. Many of them haven't been archived, unfortunately. This is really a huge part in why I've begun this project, as I want to draw attention to a forgotten era of computer-aided-design. One that was extremely important in regards to productions such as "Toy Story" - the first fully 3D animated feature-length film. Will that happen because of my efforts? Only time will tell..
Regardless, my next entry will focus on the installation process of the operating system, and some basic information you should know if you ever decide to work with NT 4. Thank you for reading.
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DRAM died?
Last weekend my son let me know that the main computer was spontaneously crashing and sometimes wouldn't boot up. I try to run an offline Windows Defender scan & chkdsk, but the system shuts down / reboots in the middle. It also fails to boot - not even getting to the BIOS splash screen. Worrying...
I download the motherboard manual to see if it has any suggestions. Well, there are "easy debug LEDs", but they are so bright I can't see the labels. There's also four LEDs next to each other so I need to figure out which is lit - again the brightness making this difficult to determine. Furthermore, the system stops failing to boot into Windows... sigh...
Eventually the failure reoccurs - and (with the aid of my phone's flashlight) I determine the DRAM LED is lit. I swap & reseat the DIMMs but the issue still occurs. Off to NewEgg & Amazon I go to order another pair of DDR-4 DIMMs, which were delivered yesterday. Popped them in and no more failures.
I could point to the old DRAM being from "budget brand" G.Skill as being the reason for it dying, or the lack of any kind of heatsink (the new DRAM from Corsair has a aluminum "headsink"). However, this is the first time I've ever experienced this kind of failure myself. I'm just glad it wasn't the CPU (although I wouldn't mind upgrading to one of the X3D models).
The other annoying thing is I now have two sticks of DDR4 that are basically e-waste. While I could sell them as "for parts only", there's a high chance that the seller would simply resell them to someone as 100% working...
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The Atari MovieCart is amazing!
The MovieCart is amazing! Ridiculous, but amazing! - 1086
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Hey Bubsy fans! Some excellent news that started with Rusty posting the picture on Facebook:
This caught my eye, however I see concept pictures for "wishlist" games we'd like to see, but thought, how perfect that would be. Atari has the rights to Bubsy, and they have the BigPEmu they used in the Atari 50th Anniversary to pull off FINALLY being able to add Bubsy: Fractured Furry Tales to the collection. Last time we had a sort of collection was Bubsy Two-Fur which bundled the first and second Bubsy games.The following from the Steam pre-release page as this game is set to launch in 2025:
"Is Bubsy a celebrated icon from the mascot wars of the early 90s or a platforming punchline? Bubsy in: The Purrfect Collection explores the franchise's troubled history and enduring popularity. A playable history that includes games, artifacts and interviews. What could possibly go wrong? "
Bubsy fans (of course there are Bubsy fans) have been screaming for Fractured Furry Tales and the ever meme-able, ever lovable and for other loathable, Bubsy 3D!! People would also love to see the Bubsy Pilot cartoon on this collection.
Also looks like Gex is finally getting some recognition!
Way to go ATARI! Hopefully we can get some confirmation soon that all games are represented. With a statement like "A playable history" That would seem to say all titles would be there.
And personally I hope like a lot of Atari titles, this will not only work on the PS5 but the PS4 as well!
Original link:
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Latest Entry
Early Artworks and first levels
Back in the days (2011-15), we used visualbb to start assembling the differents levels.
The first level was slightly modfied so that each different level have a different challenge for the gameplay.
The background used the extra possibilities offered by the SARA chipset and thanks to Michael « SeaGtGruff » Rideout.
severals levels later, the maximum capacity of the standard kernel of 32Kb is close to be reached.
We also tried to make our customed cartridge and for quite a long time, the programmation was stopped: we had to know if that we could make cartridge by ourselves. If it was doable, the limit of 32Kb would have been compulsory. Unfortunately, our friend Yann didn't succeed to transfer our program onto old legacy cartridges (bought nearly 50 carts on flea market for it).
After a long period of doubt, we decidated to give up doing our cartridge. The game was then extend to 64Kb and is still at that size for the moment.
Note: this content is repost from our dedicated website http://www.drakhansnight.com
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It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it
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Why planning console upgrades is important
When doing console service work and especially when adding in upgrades like audio video type stuff. It is important to plan how everything is to be done so that you can make sure that things can be undone in a manner that is at least service friendly in the future. As an example of how NOT to do this, I had a pair of 7800s come in last week for services. One of them was to remain in stock condition but get refurbished internally but otherwise working great. The second 7800 on the other hand was sent in with complaints that the paddle controllers don't work on it. This second 7800 was apparently purchased already upgraded with a UAV setup. While the UAV installation itself was fine and no complaints there, my issue was how they did the AV jacks as shown below...
Now the hot glue is NOT the problem here as that can be removed easily with some alcohol. The issue is how the jacks were done. What they did was to install the main board back into the console first with the UAV already in place. Then they installed the s-video jack and TRRS jack for the audio output afterwards. While again, this presents an easy way to make a no cut type case solution. It also means that the main board cannot be removed without removing the AV jacks from the console. Even with the glue removed, there was a washer on the audio jack on the outside of the case to prevent it from being pushed into the console. The s-video jack that was used also has a lip around the edge of it that prevents it from being pushed back into the console shell. So, in order to replace the TIA chip (Reason for the faulty paddles), I had to cut the wiring and remove these jacks from the console first before the main board could be removed.
After talking to the owner of this console for a bit. It was decided for me to go ahead and redo all of this using one of my newer installation methods. Along the way, a few other options were requested as well. Here is how the main board looks now after having all of this redone;
So yes, the UAV was reinstalled using one of my newer mount board solutions. Because the RF was already removed and not provided with the console. I removed the remaining resistors left behind that the mount board would normally solder against. With the resistors removed, the mount board will fit into the vias left behind properly so it is easy to install as a very secure mount. A 10pin mini din was then soldered onto the main board ground traces in the RF section. This is wired to use a Sega Saturn AV cable which, are easy to get and cheap cost. This allows for not only the s-video they had before, but also composite output and the audio too all be routed to one spot that is secured the board itself and not to the case shell. The original TRRS jack for audio output was reinstalled as an audio input jack so that it can allow easier mixing of external audio sources through the console. A primary example use case is with the AtariVox adapter for instance. The TRRS jack is now soldered to the main board but with foam core both under it and around it for support in addition to epoxy resin to hold it fast onto the main board securely. Again, this allows for it to not have to be mounted to the case shell.
This still allows for a near no case cut modification but with the added benefit that the new AV jacks are now mounted to the main board so the entire assembly can be removed easily for future servicing as needed. This installation does require having to widen the RF opening to allow for the cabling to fit through and seat into the connector properly. But in this case, the RF opening was already widened for the s-video jack. So I just had to round it out a little bit more. Still provides for a much cleaner look over all from the rear of the console.
And now that everything is self contained to the main board and it can be removed easily for future servicing. That means the next doesn't have to place curses on me when he needs to open up the console and work on it. BTW, this is one of the nicely looking 7800s I've had come in for service to the ITC.
So in summary, when doing work like this, make sure to plan everything out and think about how it will come together so that it can be worked on in the future should that be needed. It is obvious that what was done here was to take shortcuts to get the console done and ready enough for selling. But that doesn't mean it was done completely correct.
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Worm War I, Chapter 1: The Battle Begins
Dark space. Almost no one dares to enter here, at least not humans. Who knows what evil lurks in the galaxy? Aliens are all around you, ready to strike... double agents with a twisted sense of morality.
However, there is one regular runner of the cosmos that venture into these unknown areas. A group, actually.
They're the Robot Force.
The spaceship Wingman zoomed into the vast blackness, traveling approximately 90 miles per hour. Not many roller coasters could reach that speed, let alone a car itself. Traversing the empty void, planets scarce in this region, the crew didn't mind being bored.
Because this crew weren't your "Star Trek" type of stern. They were party animals.
A robot painted a deep jet black had one hand on the yokel, and another hand on his hip. His eyes were non-existent, as in that area of his "face" was instead a glassy visor, reminiscent of Ray-Bans. "Fantasy" by Aldo Nova blared through the Sony Walkman hooked up to the Wingman's speakers. The booming rock music pleased a robot colored a lighter shade of blue, with a head slanted downwards like a backwards baseball cap yet the same Ray-Ban replacement for eyes, who was glancing downwards at his handheld device, perhaps displaying the planetary traffic or some other form of navigation. A female robot, looking like the black one yet with a pink and red color scheme, was sitting at a terminal somewhere near the back of the ship, scrambled codes flashing all around the screen. Suddenly, she jumped to a start when she realized something, after carefully relating words to numbers and vice-versa, as the decoded message became clear.
"Captain TOM!" the girl shouted, over to the front of the ship.
Captain TOM turned around and gave a petulant sigh. "What is it, RUBY?" he moped.
"I've found a transmission from a planet named Teriyaki! An invasion is happening!"
"...yeah, okay. You know I'd rather chill and cruise the space-ways than save people. Pick up some alien babes. You know, fun stuff."
"TOM, this is serious! These people are in great danger, and you value laziness over heroics?"
"We're only here to document the galaxy. That's why Dr. Activision sent us into space. Heroics are just a byproduct."
The blue robot perked his head up from the handheld upon hearing Captain TOM display such dumbness.
"No it's not! You get more out of it than anything else!"
"Well, it's been a ****ing burden on my life," said Captain TOM. "I'd rather get more out of watching Mystique all night."
"Galaxy integrity is the most important thing of all," DAN said. "Anything else is the media lying to you. As I always say, the media is the enemy of the people."
"So, what, Starship 2000 isn't Hugh Hefner's House of Hoes like they advertise themselves?"
"JUST GET TO TERIYAKI, CAPTAIN TOM!!" RUBY and DAN shouted simultaneously. Captain TOM gave out a depressed yawn.
"All right, fine. But you better leave me alone after this." He turned over to the automatic navigation system, and in a most deadpan voice, "Clara, set the course for Teriyaki."
Meanwhile, on the planet of Teriyaki, trouble was brewing. Teriyaki was sort of "neon Asian," with a Shinto flair and Edo period loveliness. Citizens wore kimonos, there was a chain of gas stations called "Pagoda" that literally looked like a pagoda, and true to form, delicious, delicious teriyaki was served in every restaurant (the best being Matsuri Bar.) But danger lurked in a high mountain overseeing the main city, where a strange saucer had crash-landed a few days earlier.
A hissing voice that echoed with demonic reverb said, "Jewelee, are we ready to attack now?"
This inquiry was followed by a similar-sounding voice, but feminine in gender, whispering "Yes we are. Our sticky slime will trap ALL the Teriyakians in place. We'll storm the Feudal Shiro and overthrow the emperor. Nothing will ever stop us. NOTHING!" She began an evil laugh.
The voices belonged to giant, sentient worms, looking like prehistoric creatures with a modern-day twist. The male was green with a peach underside, and Jewelee was magenta with a black underside. Their sharp teeth could rival vampires', gnashing at anything and everything (omnivorous.) And of course, a pore on their undersides could produce a slimy, sticky secretion, which was almost like Crazy Glue in that there was no escape once you were caught in it.
From the corner of his eye, the male spotted something landing far away in the city.
"Jewelee, there's something coming," he said. "Seems like a... spaceship!"
Ponch slithered to the base they'd made in the mountain cavern, where a large supercomputer the likes of ones from the 1950s resided. Slamming his body into the large button on one of the panels, the computer analyzed the data being sent to its systems. Then, at the sound of a tone, it showcased information about the newcomer to the planet.
"Ah," Ponch said. "It is indeed a spaceship. It's called the Wingman."
"Interesting," Jewelee said. "Tell me more."
Ponch slammed onto another button on the panel, and up on the screen came profiles of the Robot Force.
"Says they're lead by robots. TOM, the Captain. DAN, the Commander. RUBY... she doesn't have a title, but she's still brave." A pause, then "TOM seems like a fine specimen. It says he's in the right mindset to be a captain, but has a bad case of his ego. Stubborn, too."
Jewelee chuckled. "He will be a perfect asset to us."
The Wingman touched down on the runway in the Teriyaki Spaceport. Captain TOM exited the spaceship first, trying to look as badass as he could. Following him was RUBY, watchfully patrolling the area for signs of an invasion. Finally, Commander DAN stomped downwards, fed up with Captain TOM. He shook the black bot, trying to get his attention.
"Here's another problem, TOM: You are too caught up in your looks," DAN said.
"No, I'm not," TOM snapped at DAN. "Now shut up and act natural, or else the invaders will see us."
"You have no idea what you're saying, do you, TOM?" RUBY asked, before TOM shot her a glare that made her change the subject.
"OK, RUBY, do you have any idea where the invaders are located?" he asked.
"The report said they were somewhere in a mountain. Before you ask me for any specifics, I don't know where."
"Fine by me." Captain TOM cracked his knuckles. "Okay, guys. Let's go get those sons of bitches."
"That's the spirit," said Commander DAN. And immediately, the bots rolled out.
A few minutes later, the Robot Force were in the main stretch of Teriyaki's major city, Sukiyaki. Aliens wearing Japanese headdresses greeted the trio.
"Hello, visitors!" one said. She had blue skin, darker than Commander DAN's color, and they were wearing a purple kimono adorned with roses.
"Yo," Captain TOM said, in his best "cool" voice. "I'm Captain TOM from the Robot Force. You heard about the invasion?"
"Oh, that!" the alien said. "Listen. We caught sight of a giant saucer crashing into one of our mountains. Ever since then, every night, giant worms have been pillaging our city. See those blocks?" The alien pointed to enormous monoliths standing in the city, blocking major tourist attractions. The trio turned round and surveyed the sight. "Those have been set up by the worms. Somehow, you've got to stop them. Have you fought aliens in the past?"
"Yeah," said Captain TOM. "We stopped some loony from stealing the Rajah stone on the planet Evonar."
"Great!" said the alien. "You'll be perfect for the job." She began to wave goodbye, but Captain TOM stopped as Commander DAN and RUBY were walking off.
"By the way, you look totally hot. Have any idea where the nearest club is? I'd like to chill with some Japanese aliens," he said. The alien blushed. Captain TOM waved goodbye back as he followed DAN and RUBY, who were angrily glaring at him.
Captain TOM led his crew throughout the streets of Teriyaki, humming half-heartedly to himself, as he really wanted to get the job over with and go have some fun.
Kind of young, kind of wow, Teriyaki. Kind of free, kind of now, Teriyaki.
Meanwhile, Commander DAN and RUBY were fiercely insistent on finding the worms and kicking their tail ends. They continued down the lighted roads, as the fronts that lined the path died down. No one would go beyond this point, in fear of getting kidnapped by gang members, drug dealers, or worse.
And Captain TOM didn't know what he was in for.
He turned to his comrades and gave a frustrated sigh. "Seriously, guys, I don't see any worms here."
"They come out at night," said RUBY. "And it's sunset now!" She pointed to the magenta and orange sky. "See?"
TOM hung his head low. "All right, we'll wait until the sun sets. Gonna be up all night--"
Suddenly, a strange probe descended from the sky. Commander DAN and RUBY looked up and saw it, rotating like a gear, as a green light flickered on from its bottom and bathed Captain TOM.
The duo pointed, admonishing "Captain TOM! Look!"
Captain TOM jerked his head up, but it was too late to run. He was frozen in fear as the green light raised him off the ground with its mysterious magnetic power. TOM began to scream for help as he was dragged up into the sunset sky, away from his crew.
"DAN! RUBY! HELP ME!!" he shouted. Commander DAN and RUBY tried running after the probe, down the vacant streets, but stopped at a steep cliff, where the probe shot up into the air and into the mountains in the distance.
"Crap! TOM's been abducted!" Commander DAN said.
"This is what he gets for being such a jerk," RUBY said.
"But who knows if he's going to rescue himself? We've gotta help him!" said DAN.
Meanwhile, Captain TOM was panicking, not daring to look down, as he very much was afraid of heights. He couldn't believe he, the leader, had to be the one to get captured. Why couldn't it be RUBY? In video games like "Donkey Kong," the girl was always the one in distress. Why the dude, the tubular dude? Not enough time to think, as he was being carried superfast into the mountains above.
Where's my jetpack? If only I had it... Captain TOM loved to soar around in his jetpack back on Earth, before the space missions. He rarely got a chance to use it anymore. And this would've been a great situation to use it.
Eventually, the probe descended on the mountain range. Captain TOM had a new problem: he was stranded nearly a hundred feet above Teriyaki, and his friends. How was he going to get down? Besides walking down the mountain trail, which would be very, very tiring for his poor feet, which had done a lot of walking already.
Just as he was about to think of ways to escape, something got on him. Something very wet and sticky. The next thing he know, he was unable to move, covered in a gross, greenish-white fluid. It was almost like rusting; which one was worse he couldn't decide, right now, at least.
"Ewwww!" he shouted. "What is this? Mucus?"
Then he heard it. A slithery voice unlike anything he'd heard before.
"Surrender now, little Captain TOM," it said. "In our power."
TOM gasped as Ponch inched his way over to him, baring his fangs. Normal worms weren't even supposed to move that fast! What was going on?
"What the hell do you want from me?!" Captain TOM demanded, terrified. "Who ARE you?!"
"I am Ponch, a worm from the planet Polychaete. Me and my brethren have been horrified at the way people universally treat worms. They try to exterminate them and consider them 'pests.' Well, say no more, galaxy. You are going to get what's coming for you."
Jewelee slithered out, followed by another, nasty-looking worm. Looking down at Captain TOM like the Council of Elders at Zod, Non, and Ursa, they savored the moment of seeing their prey in complete terror. TOM was twitching, his body immobilized by the slime.
There's three of them now?
Ponch and the other worms closed in on Captain TOM, circling their target, enjoying the last few moments of his existence... or at least, his current self. Then, suddenly, they lunged in on him and bit him viciously with their sharp fangs.
A burst of pain shot through Captain TOM's nerves, as he felt the bites sinking in his metallic skin. He was in so much agony that he couldn't open his mouth to scream. How he wished he were back with Commander DAN and RUBY. Had his insolent behavior really gotten him in this much trouble?
Then, he began to feel very, very weird inside. Almost like his legs were melting, dissolving, into one. He looked down and saw his black legs becoming a shade of lime green, and twisting into a tail, as he dropped down to the ground, unable to break the fall. His arms retracted into their sides as he hyperventilated and started flailing around, in so much pain he could barely think. He felt his back lower and curve, and his mind started instantly panicking, terrified of what was happening to him. His neck began to retract into his body, as his head mutated into a pointier, skinnier, linear one with facial features. There wasn't a mirror to showcase these changes, but TOM knew very well that his "mouth" on the side of his face was growing. And the only thing he could do with this actual mouth was scream in horror, as his captors laughed wickedly. As his transformation completed, his mood began to change; he was suddenly gripped with a ravenous urge to kill. His old self tried to hold back this change in personality, but there was nothing he could do as the evilness murdered what was once Captain TOM in his mind.
Ponch laughed. "Now, with Captain TOM on our side, we will conquer Teriyaki... then the world!" Everyone in the mountain laughed, including Captain TOM.
"Yes," he hissed in a harsh tone reminiscent of vocal fry. With the newly-transformed TOM on the worms' side, there would be seemingly no way for the planet of Teriyaki to win.- Read more...
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Atari 400 mini .zip of a lot of games
Here is my collection of games for the new 400 Mini released by Atari. Great system, I like it a lot.
Anyway the link to Atariage forum:
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A New Addition...
I recently purchased an Atari 130XE package deal NTSC tested passes PBI salts A8picoCart SIO2PC w/cables and an assembled Fujinet 1.7 Atari 800 800XL 130XE 65XE XEGS on ebay. (Thank you shawnj03 and voidabone) These, combined with my linux based tnfs and 576NUC+ give me my own local Atari network. The A8picoCart give me access to the Mac/65-DDT environment for learning and developing assembly and perhaps Action! as well. Plus, with two networked Ataris I hope to play with the Fujinet's networking capabilities in the programs that I develop - but that is a long term plan. Buying is fast, learning - not so much. Back to the man-cave! (https://tinyurl.com/ykdaph4w)
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Re-affixing diskette labels
It is common with our aged disks for the adhesive backing to have dried out or deteriorated to the point the label is no longer affixed to the diskette.
I have pondered on this situation for a while, considering various different types of adhesives. My go-to for cartridge labels (laser-printed on 28 bond paper) has been a tacky glue used for scrap booking and crafts. It works good for static surfaces, but not so well on surfaces which tend to flex offer no absorption points in both materials.
I settled on trying a gel glue which should offer a high level of adhesion and longevity, as recommended by a friend who works with such things.
I picked up a postal envelope moistener and glue at the local WalMart. I have at this time done four disks and all are doing well. The simple "trick" is to use a delicate layer and to make sure the glue is evenly spread out to all edges and a little beyond. Any overage is easy to clean but, in my experience, not necessary as it dries clear and "disappears."
After application, I laid a rolled up rubberized (neoprene) cleaning mat on top to provide pressure to hold the label in place for the glue to set, but not so much as to compress the inner jacket into the media. I let it sit for a couple of hours (probably more than long enough,) and found the label nicely affixed and able to withstand flexing.
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Atari Karts VidPro Card sighting
In previous times the Atari Jaguar VidPro cards have appeared on eBay. Quite a few have been featured
In addition to those previously featured, we have now see an Atari Karts VidPro card, and it can be yours for $699 !
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Recently, I was looking into improving the sprite flicker management of Chaotic Grill. I took the following notes to give myself a general idea of the timing of this routine/process (6507 code). This is just a list of timestamps and some basic notes / calculations for handling 5 sprites. Overall, this is probably not that useful without the code or more context, but it might be interesting to some people.
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Start on cycle 768 (scanline 10, cycle 29)
768 - Start of call
812 - Start sort initialization at cycle
842 - Start of sort
1022 - Done with sort
1038 - Call find split function
1130 - Done with finding split (2 sprites at top)
1216 - noSprite1:
1240 - SavePlayerMetaDPC
1385 - jump doneLoadZone1
1423 - SaveMetaDPC_split
1567 - done with SaveMetaDPC_split
1654 - loadSpriteGraphics
1668 - loadSprite0Graphics
1748 - done with loadSprite0Graphics
1764 - loadSprite1Graphics
1844 - done with loadSprite1Graphics
1910 - done with PrepPepper
1923 - DONE
1923 - 768 = 1155 = ~15 scanlines for the entire thing1022 - 842 = 180 = ~2.5 scanlines for sorting 5 sprites
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Basic breakdown
1130 - 768 = 362 = ~4.7 scanlines for all prep work (sort + find split)
1654 - 1130 = 524 = ~6.9 scanlines for prepping mid-screen sprites
1923 - 1654 = 269 = ~3.5 scanlines for loading first two spritesOutside of prep work, it takes approximately 2 scanlines per sprite.
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In my previous blog post I opened up about the history of Radio F, the multimedia group I work with, regarding its early years as a comedy troupe and gradual evolution into a game publisher. I skipped over some of its history for the sake of brevity since it wasn't really applicable to the topic at hand but some recent developments have made them relevant again.
From 1995-1999 Radio F existed as a comedy act, and from 2004 onward it became a publisher of games when "Software" was added to its name. Between those years, though? Radio F was actually a techno music group! The friend I started the group with in 1995 and I went our separate ways just before the turn of the millennium. My memory is bad but I think we had some argument over Pokemon of all things and we just stopped hanging out after that. In 2001 I started tinkering with music sequencing in my free time and this caught the attention of another friend of mine who was also interested in working on music. We didn't really take things seriously however by the end of the year we had a handful of tracks and no real way of sharing them in any meaningful way. We also didn't have a name for our project at the time. I suggested just reusing "Radio F" and my friend was fine with that. I collected seven of our better tracks and put them together into what would be our first album/EP, No More Lonely Nights.
"No More Lonely Nights", 2001
Yeah... when it came time to design an album cover we settled on "Amy Rose upskirt" for some reason. In order to promote our music I registered a new account on GeoCities, which was still alive at the time, and designed a webpage for Radio F. I think Yahoo (owner of GeoCities) only provided something like 15 or 20 megabytes of storage space and given that the average size of an MP3 was around 3.5 MB for your average three minute song there was no feasible way for us to host the entire album on our website. Instead I took one of the better tracks from the project ("Thumper") and crushed its filesize down to somewhere around 2 MB. It sounded like garbage because of all the compression but it was the best we could do given the limitations. Visitors to the website could download the track for free and listen to it and if they liked it they could send us a mail order for five dollars plus shipping and we'd send them a physical CD in return. We actually sold a few CD's this way! Not many but enough for us to want to keep going with this project and maybe do a follow-up.
2002 would prove to be a very productive year for the group as we'd been inspired to work on music and thus had a second album ready to go after a few months of work. Titled Stuck on the Rollerslide (a reference to something that happened to me at a Discovery Zone when I was a kid) the second release was more of the same just better. We used the same sequencing software and method of recording as our first album. When it came time to release it we followed all the same steps as before; I added a page for it on the Radio F website and managed to find the space on the group's Yahoo account to fit another highly compressed "single" from the album to promote it. If you wanted one it was the same process as the first album, just send us a money order and we'd send you a CD. I want to say that we kept track of the names of who bought CD's from us and if you had purchased No More Lonely Nights then we'd charge you a dollar less for this album but I'm not 100% certain we did that. This was 20 years ago.
Later that same year we'd release a third album, Eleven Dollars in Ones (an inside joke between my friend and I for how to give someone a cash gift and make it look like more money than it was). By the time I added the page for this album to the Radio F website we'd run out of storage space on our Yahoo account; the single from Stuck on the Rollerslide ate up the last little bit of space we had. I needed to find a way to include a sample track though! I'm surprised it took me as long as it did to think of this (two years and three albums) but the solution was as simple as registering a "radiof2" account on Yahoo and using it solely to host our MP3's. File size was still something to consider so again the track was compressed. The track we chose from this album, "FM", featured radio static in certain parts of the song and this did not compress nicely at all. It sounded horrible. Thankfully there were a small number of people who listened to our stuff who let us know that the song was perhaps a bad choice and because we now had a few more MB of upload space to work with we picked another track to offer online to sample the album with.
It was now 2003 and my friend and I had one more album left in us. We weren't making bank selling CD's online because barely anyone knew about us. This was all just for fun and after a few years I think we were both kind of looking to do other things (for example I'd start working on Atari 2600 games the following year). Our fourth album, Reptilian Agenda, was in my opinion at least our best work. We couldn't pick one single track to upload online as a teaser so we actually uploaded three. By now we'd mostly figured out how to get the sound we wanted out of the programs we were using and it showed. Despite being our best release I don't recall selling very many copies of this CD. Each one sold less than the other which is weird to me because I feel the quality of the albums only ever increased. But I guess it was just a result of being so hard to find and how a lot of our "popularity" came from word of mouth on places like MSN Chat. After releasing Reptilian Agenda my buddy and I stopped working on music and focused on other things.
"Monster Truck Rally" (single), 2003
So, that's twice now that Radio F has existed and twice now that the group has disbanded. I kept the name alive on my own through "Radio F Software" but it seemed our days of releasing comedy and music albums had finally eclipsed. In my previous blog post I mentioned the creation of the website "Radio F Software Headquarters" (RFSHQ) which acted as a hub to host all of the original comedy content I was writing and filming for the web. Despite being a multimedia-oriented website our previous album releases never saw the light of day there until close to the website's closure. In 2006 I thumbed through the four music albums that we'd made in the years prior and picked out ten tracks that I felt epitomized the group during its musical period. I wanted to feature a collection from all four albums however because I was going by song quality the majority of the tracks I chose wound up being from our third and fourth albums when we were putting out our best work. I named this collection F-Sides: The Best of Radio F and offered it as a premium download on the RFSHQ website. I believe the price was still just five dollars however instead of sending out physical CD's the advancement of technology now allowed us to accept payment online with PayPal and in exchange provide the buyer with a link to download the album digitally. F-Sides was available for purchase from its release in 2006 to the closure of RFSHQ in 2008.
After going solo for nearly half a decade I had a growing interest in working on music again after being inspired by the rise of mash-ups and "YouTube Poop music videos" where creators would compose backing tracks and then pepper in "vocals" that had been sampled from viral videos and memes. In 2007 I tried my luck at this and created Radio F's first single in four years, "Hello My Future Dance Mix". This track sampled Michael "Mikey" Blount's infamous "hello my future girlfriend" audio recording that went viral in the late nineties. It was amusing but nowhere near as good as the mash-ups that were growing in popularity on the recently launched YouTube. I didn't get a lot of encouragement so I just kinda stopped working on new music, though the following year I made another remix mostly for the amusement of my younger brother and I. This track, "The Golden Fantasy Dragon", sampled TV salesman Tom O'Dell during a segment on the Cutlery Corner infomercial where he was hyping up a decorative knife of the same name. I didn't really have any intentions of releasing this song as a proper thing, I just uploaded it to YouTube where views wound up trickling in over the years.
Like I said I kinda just lost interest in making music after the Mikey song flopped and the one about the dragon knife was just a one-off joke. That was until I stumbled upon the ongoing misadventures of Christian Weston "Chris-chan" Chandler. I'm not even going to try and catch you up to speed on this guy if you've never heard of him before, just understand that he used to be a bumbling idiot on the internet who overshared way too much about his personal life and situations. In one video that was released Chris attempts to demonstrate how he would perform oral sex on a hypothetical girlfriend. The original video is disgusting and I won't link it here but back in 2010 I was floored by it and felt compelled to sample Chris' vocals with raunchy porn music backing it. The result of this effort was the song "Tickle Yo Pussay". Given the active community surrounding Chris this song actually did gain some traction and garner several thousand streams but I never capitalized on it because the curse of Chris-chan is that once you involve yourself in his life yours gets ruined in return. I made a joke song and that was enough.
Radio F, 2002
The Chris-chan single and its accompanying "B-side" marked the end of Radio F's output as a musical act. In the years that followed 2010 I graduated from university and went on with my life. Radio F's spoken word albums hadn't been in circulation for over a decade and the four music albums from 2001-2003 had long since been out of print and unavailable. F-Sides, the best of album, stopped being available for purchase when RFSHQ closed. The account associated with the mash-up singles I'd made eventually caught enough copyright strikes from YouTube to be terminated. Everything just sorta faded away.
Only recently have I started caring about all this random stuff from way earlier in my life. I spoke about it a little bit in the previous blog post but there was an era of my life where I got led astray by some real bad actors and wound up getting hurt pretty badly. It's taken several years of therapy for me to work through all this and process it in a healthy way and only now am I really starting to feel "better" in a sense. I am now looking back at all the things I've accomplished and I find myself gravitating toward the more innocuous and wholesome things that dot my history. Radio F is something harmless and fun that I can be proud of and it's something I want to celebrate. I want to keep it alive in some way. At the beginning of this year I started re-compiling everything I could find from my Radio F days with the intent to put it back into circulation. I'm not yet sold on the idea of putting our entire back catalog out there again but F-Sides, the "best of" album, is a good starting point. As the name implies it contains our best work from our four musical releases. The mash-up singles I made from 2007-2010 were inklings of a fifth album, Conglomeraté, that was never completed. I compiled the highest quality recordings I could find of these tracks as well as their instrumentals and turned them into Conglomeraté: The Singles.
Both of these releases are now available for streaming on Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube Music. If you use Pandora then Radio F's music is something that can be suggested to you based upon the music profile you've curated. I dug through the archives of everything I had across all of my hard drive backups and found a few pictures of my friends and I that would suffice as makeshift photos of "the group" and added them to our music profiles. It was important to me to find photos of us that were era-appropriate to match the time period when our music and recordings were made.
Radio F, 2010
So now we're at present day. Next year Radio F turns 30. Three decades have passed since the day one of my best friends and I had the bright idea to record our material to cassette tape and use that to distribute it among the people we knew. I am very grateful that after all this time I am still on good terms with everyone who's ever been a part of the group both from its eras as a comedy and musical act. We are currently in the planning stages for a reunion album to celebrate 30 years. I'm thinking about something akin to a 50/50 album of recorded comedy and new music. Perhaps I can make a mash-up of new music featuring samples taken from our old spoken word releases of the 90's. I'm honestly kind of shocked that the idea never came to me back when I was making mash-ups in the late 2010's. I also want to reach out to the people I've met over the years who are either musically or comedically inclined and invite them to participate on a track or two. I'm very fortunate that for the most part everyone still lives in same geographic area so a reunion to record new material and such won't be too hard to pull off so I want to do this now because there's no guarantee something like this will be possible for a 40th or 50th anniversary.
In the meantime I invite you to listen to the selected works I've made available on all the major music streaming platforms. It's nothing incredible but it's special to me and maybe in some way the fun and innocence of the recordings will rub off on you.
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Intellivision 2609 Mini Din Mount PCB Information
Sometime back I designed a two PCB set to help with installing mini din connectors in my Intellivision service work. I had requests from other to provide these files so that the PCBs can be used by all that might want to use them. Here is a link to the PDF guide that details the assembly process for the PCBs for use in the Intellivision 2609 model consoles. These can also be used on the Super Pro System and INTV III consoles as they are designed for installing in place of the RF modulator to provide a no cut solution for such AV upgrades.
Link to 2609 mount board assembly PDF guide
The advantage of these mount boards is that being a 2 part PCB means I can use the same bottom base PCB for both model 2609 and INTV II consoles. With only the top PCB portion being different. Here is an example install I did very recently showing one of the completely mount board setups in place in a 2609 Intellivision that received an RGB upgrade. Here I used a 9pin mini din for the RGB and audio, but also the 9pin allows for composite to be wired up. This means that any Sega Genesis/MD model 2 AV cable setup can be used.
And the mount board has room to allow for aligning the mini din connector to be as centered as possible.
I've also attached the PDF to this blog to make it easier as well. Links for the gerber files to have PCBs made up can be found within the PDF.
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Airship Get!
We find everyone and do some back tracking and boss fighting. Some plot twists again that are interesting.
The prince of the evil empire joins us after being fed up with their killing ways. And we steal an airship he helps us get.
Then it feels like the game opens up way more. Building a base, collecting crew members, ship upgrades, discovery searching. Even some humor and light hearted banter in-between. I'll finish fighting the empire after more exploring and building up for awhile.
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It is common with our aged disks for the adhesive backing to have dried out or deteriorated to the point the label is no longer affixed to the diskette.
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