Leaderboard

Finally got around to finishing the build of my XEP80II. I ordered the wrong interconnect cable for the HDMI unit, so have to wait to get it up and running. I took the Blank Nuc case that Mr. Robot supplied us and made it fit the XEP80II. Included in .Rar are the STL's for the bottom case, Rear panel and (3) lids. Blank 800, Blank XL and Blank XEGS. I designed the PCB mounts in the case to use 2.5mm knurled inserts that you melt into the case. https://www.amazon.com/uxcell-Knurled-Insert-Embedment-Assortment/dp/B07R8QJZ2Y/ref=sr_1_6?crid=D9RD3HW79JCD&keywords=2.5mm+Knurled+Brass&qid=1661908878&sprefix=2.5mm+knurled+brass%2Caps%2C74&sr=8-6 And then use short 2.5mm screws to bolt the PCB to the case. I have'nt screwed my lid on yet so I am not sure what size screws are used there for the Nuc case. Thanx to Mr. Robot for this awesome case design, and of course thanx to MyTek for the awesome XEP80II XEP80II Case.rar

Rig up a tiny hidden sound playback chip (like some novelty greeting cards use) that plays back when the lid is opened, with the message "We've been trying to reach you about your cars extended warranty." lol https://www.amazon.com/Greeting-Recordable-Invitations-Handmade-Products/dp/B08VR9S9LK

Honestly, being a niche porno game console might just be the way to go. It would go a long ways to justifying the current pricing.

It has been decided that the Intellivision FPGA core will be an Intellivision 3 specced core. The core will be written to be the Intellivision 3 and we will ensure that it can run all existing Intellivision programs and cartridges. The console will have a cartridge port and run original cartridges, have some built in Intellivision games, a couple of enhanced (Intellivision 3) updated originals... (Think Utopia with better graphics) and able to run enhanced Intellivision 3 games on current existing cartridges such as the JLP and LTO Flash! Please, no further comments about the Mister. It isn't what we are trying to do. We have no interest in using their hardware, nor glomming on some cartridge port to their hardware and our FPGA chipset is incompatible with the Mister, as far as I know, considering the hardware we have in mind. Further details to follow...

If you're worried about performance, the number one distinction on the 4A is number of instructions executed. The number of instructions trumps almost every other technique in almost every scenario... even shifts can lose to the very slow DIV if you need more than one of them. It doesn't sound like performance is your concern just yet though. Definitely learn to use a debugger. You can read your code over and over, and show it to other people, and walk through it in your head, but there's nothing so quick at shattering misconceptions that you didn't know you had like stepping through the code and checking the result of each instruction as it works on real data.

It made a great launching bay for my Transformers. Luke Skywalker also trained in it.

Phil Adam has spoken. "Greetings, This is Phil Adam, CEO of Intellivision. I had planned to respond sooner with the company status, but the team has been working through some production pipeline bugs that have delayed this update. As I've stated previously, updates from myself will be made when material facts are available and relevant. That being said, here are a few updates. 1. One of the primary goals for the small pilot run was to uncover any issues in the production pipeline before starting a larger production run. Fortunately, we did catch one significant problem. Diagnosing this issue and implementing a solution was a significant effort and caused a delay. The symptoms pointed to a bug in the controller firmware, but that was not the case. The problem was an order-of-operations issue when provisioning the console on the production line with its unique identifiers and security keys. The error manifested on the next reboot in a way that looked like a controller bug. With that resolved, the path is clear to finish the pilot run in the next few weeks. 2. We signed a licensing deal with BBG Entertainment GmbH, the details of which will be announced later. Here is a quote from Stephan Berendsen, Managing Director: "We are very pleased to have licensed four Amico games and the original game versions from Intellivision. For the past three years we have been working with Intellivision on the development of our games DYNABLASTER and BRAINDUEL for Amico. We are excited about Amico and hope that customers will be as well. We are looking forward to offering the four licensed Amico games and original Intellivision versions on other platforms soon.” 3. We have another partnership deal that will ensure that 2 of our most anticipated IPs will be available across multiple platforms as well as Amico. The details of that relationship will be announced at a later time. The target for these IPs is simultaneously (or later) with the Amico release. Given that we will have a limited number of Amico units initially, these partnerships will get the games into more hands who have been waiting to play while helping get the word out to a larger audience. As stated above, we are doing everything we can to make sure that we have a stable system before starting production. That is a key milestone in moving forward. I would like to thank you again for your support, and thank you to our internal team and external developers that work tirelessly to create a family gaming experience on Amico that brings people of different ages and skills together in group play. Phil Adam, CEO" The main positive from this is they will be releasing some of the exclusive games on other platforms.

yep. And Bisexual Planes. And Backtalk Orgy. And Boob Patrol. And Rugged Whores Redux Enhanced. And Cornhole.

They'd have to porn 'em up a bit to not make a liar out of Tommy. It'd be games like "Ladies of the Night Stalker" and "Ass-to-Smash"

I worked on creating some new fonts off and on today and I thought I'd share my progress. I've got a few more in mind I'd like to create and I'll share them in this thread when I'm finished. Feel free to use any of these in of your own projects. Use the following default alphachars statement in your code to use these fonts: alphachars ' ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ.!?,"$():~abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz`;@*+/[]-0123456789' I'm also including the test program code I wrote to view the fonts. Wow, I didn't know until I got started how tedious it is to make fonts! Broderbund: Fantasy: Italic: Space: font_test.bas Edit: Here's a zip file with all of the fonts that I posted in this thread: AtariusMaximus_Font_Collection.zip

Hi Folks, The game is now finished, you can find the .xex file attached. Once again, please bear in mind that it requires 1MB of RAM. Big thanks to @pseudografx for coming up with the music. PS. As all my other games this one comes with a source code as well: https://github.com/mgr-inz-rafal/skakatory skakatory.xex

Honestly, I think I'd be more interested in those than anything celebrating quote-unquote 50 years of quote-unquote Atari.

See, I'm in agreement with you on all of the above: TI-99/4A syndrome* is very real. Having said that, I'd add the following: Atari only ever released one peripheral (the 1064) that took advantage of the PBI, and even then it was only compatible with the 600XL. When even the manufacturer can't find a better use for it than a RAM upgrade with limited compatibility, it looks like they're just not committed to it - and if history is anything to go by, they weren't. Insert rant here about how the 600XL should have shipped with 64K and been expandable to 128K, with the 800XL having 128K out of the box. Captain Hindsight to the rescue once more! * For those unfamiliar with TI-99/4A syndrome, the following video should hopefully clarify that point: Trying to change a disk while sitting at the keyboard seems to be roughly equivalent to inserting the launch keys in a nuclear missile silo. Though I will totally admit that I think it looks pretty sweet having everything stretching out like that. Impractical unless you want to use your TI as an aircraft carrier, but visually pleasing nonetheless.

Are you sure about that? Engineers have said they passed preliminary FCC testing. If that engineer's statement is true, and if preliminary FCC testing is a real thing, then FCC certification is just a formality that can be obtained at any time.

Ryan makes me worse at this game! Always encouraging me to group more…. And I’m getting better but I lose a ton of men along the way because of it and I end my game 5 boards earlier with my same score (lower even) it’s all good. No-where near my PB but my grouping skills are improving a lot! $357,700

Hopefully on the Switch too. The Nintendo Switch is simple affordable family entertainment!

As a longtime user and a former global mod here, I'm another who will vouch for Albert being extremely lenient when it comes to banning. One thing many here don't realize is that this was far from ppera's first rodeo with the banhammer. He had been banned before years ago, and I believe his "ParanoidLittleMan" account was a secondary he created a while later. As to what led to him being banned this time, I've no idea, but whatever it was, I'm sure there was plenty of a good reason for it. Another thing important to note is that not all actions that lead to banning are on public display, as I can attest to, being someone who's had his AA inbox filled with diatribes from ppera claiming everything from the mods here hating the ST (certainly not true, why would there be an ST forum?) to us all being racist against Hungarians (yes, that is a real accusation from him, I kid you not). The banhammer is NOT wielded here in an arbitrary manner, nor is it swift in its strike.

DJC was going on about how the update is going to be great news, people will be very pleasantly surprised and they have some very good things happening. Now the update is that they still haven't entered production (wow what a surprise!) with some excuse for not doing so, and the games are going to be put elsewhere despite Tommy and the fans claiming over and over how they can't be done anywhere else. Wow, what "great news"...

Let me introduce our contribution to this year's ABBUC Software contest. Bunny Hop is a single-player puzzle game coded by @Fandal, with graphics and music by me. The LZSS/RMT audio driver was provided by @VinsCool. Additional concepts and ideas by Leopold, @twh/f2's son. The game is based on a board game "JumpIN'". The objective of the game is to get the rabbits into their holes. I won't go into detail regarding game rules, you may get a better idea by watching the video below. Due to the amount of graphics and animations, the minimum hardware configuration is an Atari 130 XE with a storage device that can load XEX files. There are separate binaries for PAL and NTSC systems, with adjusted music speed and palette. The game will be released for free after the contest results have been announced. All screenshots and video footage in this post have been captured from real hardware (PAL Atari 800XE).

I happened across this tonight, while on Youtube. I thought it would be nice to share it with those who have never seen it.

Since we're requesting things, I would like a pony. And a Maserati. And the pony should be trained to drive the Maserati.

Wait, you mean everyone doesn't call them Heavy Sexy, Light Sexy, Darth Sexy, and Prison-Sentence-If-You-Touch-It Sexy?

Ok. Good to know. Phone without touch screen = game cannot be played Phone with touch screen = game can be played on phone. According to Google Market Research, in May 2022 there are 6.8 billion smart phones in use. If we assume all smart phone have touch screens that means there is a market of 6.8 billion people for a Back Street Party port. Just 1% market penetration will result in 6.8 million sales. That's $68,000,000 in revenue at a very reasonable game cost of $10 USD*. And that is only the start! Can't wait to we see what is next!! *And if someone says $10 is too much, just remember it's less than visit to Starbucks for mom and her kid (Coffee and hot chocolate)

I just listed another 16 copies of Vanguard. concentrating on shipping out current orders, but building (and posting) more copies as time permits. my goal is to always have some available on the website. If you go there and there all sold out, wait 24 hours and check again. I have a few announcements to make in September. Be sure to watch @Papa Pete ‘S inty Homebrew spotlight in early September.

I can't find the reference but I'm reasonably sure I read something from Jay Miner saying they actually wanted more of a bus in the 8-bits but they got cost controlled. It really is a "what if" exercise to think about what Miner would have done without such constraints on the 8-bit, or if Nolan hadn't been a dork and allowed him to work on the 68K Atari successor.

Well, there were a couple of issues, and honestly I need to still spend some time to understand exactly why it was breaking. First, I wasn't considering an ampersand in the cart path, so I added that capability. But, even with that change it didn't work on the new style links. However, I wrote a new CORS proxy some time ago and hadn't updated JS7800 to use it. So, in addition to the ampersand portion, it now attempts to use the old proxy and if that fails, tries the new CORS proxy. I could probably remove the old proxy altogether, but I need to do some more testing to make sure all of the cases are covered. Chris

Sorry about the delay, but I think JS7800 should now be working with both old style and new style links. Please let me know if you see any further issues. Thanks, Chris

Have to admit that as a kid BITD, I kept certain valuables hidden tucked away under the hatch. Nothing too exciting... paper money and a small collection of antique coins mostly. 😀

So the big news is one of the German companies that developed two unexciting games for Amico have now picked up more Intellivision IPs? Not groundbreaking, but I will say if they grabbed up Night Stalker and Cloudy Mountain and drop it on Steam, I may grab em. Likely its something more like Astrosmash.

Respectfully, nobody is going to pay $300 to play Back Talk Party. And in case you reply with "But people paid $249.99 to play Wii Sports." Yeah, because 1. It was Nintendo, 2. The Wiimote was seen as actually interesting, 3. You couldn't play it anywhere else. Back Talk Party would be a possible system seller if that system was under $200 and came with two controllers. Come on, please just be sincere with the things you say. Do you honestly believe those games are going to get people to spend $300+ for the Amico?

Week 34 Top games 1. Jurassic World Evolution 2 (PC) - 1281 min. 2. No Man's Sky (PS5) - 1105 min. (#2) 3. Fairy Fencer F Advent Dark Force (PC) - 308 min. (#7) 4. Pikmin Bloom (iOS) - 243 min. 5. Retro Bowl (Android Phone) - 120 min. 6. Duolingo (iOS) - 86 min. (#6) 7. Hyper Sentinel (PC) - 67 min. 8. Pac-Man World (GBA) - 45 min. 8. Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (GBA) - 45 min. 10. Atari Masterpieces Vol I (Nokia N-Gage) - 35 min. Top systems 1. PC - 1674 min. (#1) 2. PS5 - 1105 min. (#2) 3. iOS - 351 min. (#5) 4. Android Phone - 120 min. 5. GBA - 90 min. (#8) 6. Nokia N-Gage - 50 min. 7. PS4 - 35 min. (#6) 8. Arcade - 7 min. (#7) Total 3432 minutes and 17 different games on 8 different systems, with 6 participants. For the first week in a very long time (too tired to look up when/if it happened before), the modern tracker has lower total numbers than the classic tracker. It doesn't stop a tight battle (less than 3 hours in between them) at the top between Jurassic World Evolution 2 and No Man's Sky. System wise the PC and PS5 hold their positions, but for a change the Switch is entirely off the charts, much due to some of our most frequent Switch contributors are having some time off the tracker. Both Jurassic World Evolution 2 (3120 min) and No Man's Sky (3971 min) enter the 50 Hour Club, which means that 121 games out of 1923 entries (6.3%) are in that club, which I believe is a fairly consistent figure. As usual, feel free to post your times even if you were late, and I'll include them with next week!

Here's the summary for Week 34, running from August 22 - 28. We logged 4081 minutes of eligible play, playing 68 games on a total of 24 systems. Top 10: 1. Q*bert (Atari 2600) - 680 min. 2. Pokemon Yellow Version (Game Boy) - 371 min. 3. Pebble Beach Golf (Sega Saturn) - 360 min. 4. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 230 min. (#4) 5. Mr. Do! (Atari 2600) - 178 min. 6. Sonic Delta 40MB (aka Sonic Delta Reloaded) v0.76 (Genesis) - 159 min. 7. Jr. Pac-Man (Atari 8-bit) - 135 min. 8. Mr. Happyface [hack of Ms. Pac-Man Tengen] (NES/Famicom) - 115 min. 9. Flying Shark (Sinclair ZX Spectrum) - 112 min. 10. Awesome Golf (Atari Lynx) - 105 min. Pre-NES top 10: 1. Q*bert (Atari 2600) - 680 min. 2. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 230 min. (PN#3) 3. Mr. Do! (Atari 2600) - 178 min. 4. Jr. Pac-Man (Atari 8-bit) - 135 min. 5. Flying Shark (Sinclair ZX Spectrum) - 112 min. 6. Midnight Magic (Atari 2600) - 100 min. 7. Return of the Jedi (Arcade) - 94 min. (PN#8) 8. Kaboom! (Atari 2600) - 91 min. (PN#9) 9. Lift (CoCo 1 & 2) - 90 min. 10. 1942 (WIP) (Atari 7800) - 81 min. (PN#7) Top 10 systems: 1. Atari 2600 - 1490 min. (#2) 2. Game Boy - 454 min. 3. Sega Saturn - 360 min. 4. Genesis - 179 min. (#7) 5. Atari 8-bit - 178 min. (#5) 6. NES/Famicom - 170 min. 7. Arcade - 158 min. (#3) 8. Atari 7800 - 136 min. (#10) 9. Intellivision - 128 min. (#1) 10. PlayStation - 125 min. The 2600 High Score Club promotes Q*Bert as the big winner this week, both overall and of course on the pre-NES list. Pokemon Yellow Version and Pebble Beach Golf battle for overall second place, while Solar Fox is rather safe at pre-NES #2. If last week was an Intellivision week, this one the Atari 2600 is back with strong numbers. No new entries to the 1000, 5000, 10000 minute clubs, but one game is only 8 minutes from one of those. 🙂

Hello, these are all my prototypes from 2022. Maybe someone wants to continue working on a project. I'm grateful for every idea. Bye Erik 4ChopperWar.bas 4ChopperWar.bas.bin 9ShipMissile.bas 9ShipMissile.bas.bin 12CatDogPostmen.bas 12CatDogPostmen.bas.bin 12Chaseit.bas 12Chaseit.bas.bin 13SeaWar.bas 13SeaWar.bas.bin 15CatDogPostmen.bas 15CatDogPostmen.bas.bin 17SpaceWar.bas 17SpaceWar.bas.bin dojo33.bas dojo33.bas.bin FlagCarRacing.bas FlagCarRacing.bas.bin FlagCarRacing.bas.list.txt FlagCarRacing24.bas FlagCarRacing24.bas.bin FlagCarRacing25.bas FlagCarRacing25.bas.bin ladder_Zuhause_sonntag_v0.0.6.bas ladder_Zuhause_sonntag_v0.0.6.bas.bin ShipShape15.bas ShipShape15.bas.bin Supercar1.bas Supercar1.bas.bin Survive_14.bas Survive_14.bas.bin Zahlenwelt10.bas Zahlenwelt10.bas.bin

Surely some folks have ideas on practical uses for the little chunk of space inside the speech synthesizer, revealed by opening its lid. What have you kept inside your speech synthesizer, or what do you figure could take up residence there? My suggestion: an external speaker, for playing synth audio right off the chip (for cleaner output than you get, running it to the 9919).

after almost 3 hours of very frustrating moments I finally succeeded. thanks Skippy B for the tips. in fact I was able to get 2 extra balls and bonus x4 to reach that score. I'm totally broken but happy.

I pray it comes out and VBXE can finally get some traction. Seeing it made me resume coding!

The announcement seems entirely consistent with a company that has run out of money and is desperately trying to sell off its IP and other remaining assets in order to bring in as much cash as possible before they run dry. I'd think that any machines they're capable of making would be more likely to get sold on eBay one at time, rather than given away for preview, because that would bring in more money.

Who's to say you're not stranded with adequate solar power?

C64 uses double wide pixels so it makes it easier to port assets over to 7800,it also has a much larger color palette so just using colors to get a closer arcade look already looks far better then anything the c64 can do.As for Ghosts N Goblins you'd have to ask the person porting it. C64 chars with 7800 colors just to show you how big a difference a large color palette makes JS7800 Spy Hunter With Better Colors

Based on how I used the Apple II I always felt that slots added at least 6-7 years of practical usable life to the machine. Those 80 columns. A boring useless feature to kids and gamers, proved to be another saving grace. The final day-to-day duties of my //e involved terminals and word processors. And a bit of personal journaling and databasing. IIRC. So 80-columns was instrumental. As far as PBIs and external boxes go - I'm presently not much of a fan of them. They're sprawling and messy and not always 100% compatible with peripherals that are on the fringe of high-performance. Just the wide-ass 50-pin connecting cable can introduce delays in addition to the buffers and switching logic. I have a bunch of those Mountain Hardware Expansion Chassis for the II. And I don't use them at all. They're a little over-the-top. But to a kid back then it was like a sidekick supercomputer. Fill them with Z-80s and Transwarps! No matter how it would work. Just do it and get SPEEEED!

I image coil-bound, like @Dionoid did with Stella Programmer's Guide, would be a nice feature for a book like this.

I’ve decided to extend the preorder until 9/4/2022 at 10pm CST in order to give a few more days for users that may be working on deciding.

Agreed. Atari also needed a game plan for the A8 range, which they never really seemed to develop much beyond 'add more RAM and change the case'. In fairness to Atari, multiple changes of ownership didn't help. But it always struck me that the 1200XL debacle seemed to set the stage for not moving too far away from the established chipset and capabilities. Had an 8-bit machine with improved, backwards-compatible chipsets reached the market - along with things like actual first-party support for the PBI, industry-standard disk, printer, and RS232 capabilities, and a sunset plan for the line along with an upgrade path for existing users to a 16-bit machine - things could have been very different.

It begs the question, now that exclusive Amico games are releasing on other platforms people actually own, why in the hell would anyone bother to buy an Amico now? It seems absolutely redundant now.

Nobody is being banned for posting their opinions. The main reasons someone will be banned are for being abusive towards other members (and consistently doing this), trolling, and spamming (as in, bots that like to spam up and try to post). Creating multiple accounts is another good way to get yourself banned, and this includes creating additional accounts after you've previously been banned. Generally I have been pretty tolerant and it takes a lot to get banned, unless the offenses are particularly egregious. If you consistently demonstrate that you cannot participate in discussions without slinging mud at other members, or just being a jerk in general, you're going to wear out your welcome. I don't think that's being unreasonable. In general, the only subjects that we don't allow to be discussed are politics and religion, as those almost always become heated. And I don't really want to know what your political and/or religious views are. We did have a Politics & Religion forum a long time ago and in the end it just wasn't worth the hassle to moderate, and it was just pitting members against each other on these subjects. ..Al

Derisive Boredom Merf I always read it as a dyslexic "Dave Band Matthews".

Back in the day I shelled out over $800 bucks (CDN) just so I could play 3DO Road Rash and I don't regret one second of that purchase. Good Times were had!!! That game was a system seller. Road Rash for the Genesis was also pretty awesome at the time.

That's not a Jag VR, not even close. I'd bet that's a newer VR unit (Scuba ? or derivative)

A couple of things I associate with Atari 2600: From back in the day (BITD for internet acronym lovers, who abbreviate too much if you ask me), I thought of the Atari as an extension of the arcades. It was the home version of having fun at the arcade the way seeing a movie on TV was like an extension of the movie theater. I loved the early 80s Arcade Ports. I also liked hanging out with my friends who were into it at the time, 2 of whom lived a block away on the same street. We'd happily show off our latest acquisition, and I'd see their new game and decide if I was gonna buy that one, and vice versa. These days I like to revisit the classics, and I Love Homebrews and demos; from the AA Store or played off my Harmony cart. Also I fully agree with @Keatah, @Wizzard, @Atari_Warlord, @Cynicaster, @zzip, @Rom Hunter, @NigeHenry, @Bomberman94, and @AtariSphinx

Me personally, I'd strip it down, clean it, look for a battery (and any potential leak issues), check the power supply output and then start to install cards. Some contact cleaner and/or IPA might come in handy. OBTW, nice find.