So when you spend a holiday by yourself you get more work done. No sympathy needed. The family was here for Xmas, but I'm spending New Years by myself. For my New Years celebration I played Fortnite at midnight local time so I could watch the Fortnite fireworks and dance beneath the giant disco ball. I came in 2nd in the match though... so fail.

...but that's not why you're reading this...

USB for 5200

After beating my head against the wall this past week, trying to get my digital potentiometers working correctly, I finally made a break through today. So below you will find a YouTube demo of me playing Joust on the 5200 using an Atari VCS Modern Controller via the 5200 version of my USB adapter.

The upside about developing the adapter for the 5200 is that the hardware is easier to work with. There are several conflicting power issues when doing the same for the 2600/7800. The downside about developing the adapter for the 5200 is that all the 5200 games handle the joystick code differently.

While my Pico microcontroller code seams to work fine for Joust, it was terrible for 5200 Pac-Man. I think I will need to seek advice from those who know the 5200 pots really well in order to get the pot emulation algorithm correct. So needless to say, my microcontroller code has some problems, but the hardware components and the basic code of the adapter now seems to be working for the 5200.

USB for 2600/7800

I haven't forgotten about this adapter. Mixing the 7800 controller with the 2600 Paddle controllers is really causing me some headaches when it comes to power interference. However, with my friend David's help, I think we solved this problem. I'll probably post a demo of it working sometime tomorrow.

Atari VCS - Modern Controller

One thing that irritated me about the VCS's Modern Controller was that it was booting to Xbox 360 mode when plugged into the Pico. Essentially, the Xbox 360 mode was it's default mode. While you could change it to Atari mode, it was just kind of a pain in the ass to do it every time the console power was cycled when you wanted to change games.

While I do plan to support Xbox 360 controllers, it is just a better look / user experience to have the Atari logo light up. When it's in 360 mode, the Atari light doesn't turn on. I know minor... but it's irritates me... and implementing the Xbox interface is something I will do later once the Atari stuff is working.

Anyway... for Xmas, my wife and my mother went halfsies on the Atari VCS 800 Onyx system for my Xmas gift. The experience setting that up wasn't so great the day after Xmas as the Atari store and login system seemed to be down... which meant the thing was unusable for like 24hrs... ...but I digress...

...one of the nice things about getting the VCS system was that it downloaded and installed the firmware updates for my Modern Controllers... and whaddya know... the controller now boots to Atari VCS mode by default. Which makes me quite pleased as it is alot easier to test the adapter now.

I suppose there is probably a way to do firmware updates without having to have the VCS, but I don't know what it is. I guess 10 min of searching the internet will probably tell me.