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I got back in town last night and found a package with the problematic 65XE on my doorstep. This was sent to me by the OP of this thread after I paid him $133 (which included shipping and a new keyboard mylar). The shipping was relatively cheap at $10 since both the OP and I live in California (southern/northern), so the actual price I paid for the contents was $123, and the OP had also tossed in a Star Raiders and Centipede cart. I feel the OP was made whole again considering that the original seller refunded him $30 to go towards the replacement mylar, which I think the OP said it cost him around $22 (it was $24 and change all together, so I gave him $25) including shipping which makes sense with it coming from TBA in the same state (TBA Mylar). In the original deal the OP paid $100 (which I think included shipping) to the seller of the 65XE, but after factoring in the $30 refund and the actual cost of getting a new mylar, he ended up pretty close to $95 out of pocket. But of course I got two carts as well thrown in on my deal, hence the extra $30+ dollars I paid Unfortunately the mylar was a bit worse for wear after the trip. It had been folded in half and placed in a ziplock bag that was considerably smaller than the unfolded mylar and was not protected by anything else. So it had a slight crease across the middle which is probably no biggie, but unfortunately due to the way it was packed in with the computer, PSU, and loose carts it also had a few holes as if something had punctured it. I think if it had been me, I would have sandwiched it in between two pieces of stiff cardboard. I don't think the damage is so severe that it wouldn't still work, but until I try to use it I really don't know for sure. So I set up the computer plugged it in and sure enough only the console keys (Start, Select, Option) were not working. I opened it up, disconnected the keyboard and quickly took a piece of wire and jumpered between pin 3 and pins 21, 22, and 23 on the keyboard connector one at a time. All the console keys worked properly while performing this test. I took out an ohmmeter and checked across the surface of the mylar fingers, and found it difficult to get reliable contact. So I figured what the heck let me try something a bit unusual. I took some ScotchBrite to the last 4 fingers and very lightly took off just the upper coating. Then I put the keyboard back into the machine, plugged it in, and gave it test. 👍👍👍👍 Four Thumbs Up! It works like a champ. Sorry no video, but it would have taken far longer to do that than to just take a couple of photos along the way. The whole process still took me well over 3 hours, including writing this up. And I was suppose to do something else for a friend today, which it looks like that unfortunately will take yet another day It's not good when I get Atari gear in the mail - totally distracts me. BTW this 65XE is in beautiful condition, and remarkably its keyboard feels really frickin good, very much like something one would associate with the 600/800XL series. I checked it against a couple of XEGS keyboards I had laying around and the difference is night and day, with the XEGS having that well known mushy XE feel.

Showing off that he has three friends that are into Warlords... 😜 Lucky bugger.

I would like to introduce my new album called FOR ETERNITY. The music is done on a real Atari 8bit HW with two POKEY chips and composed in the native SDCMC editor. The album contains 15 tracks of approximately 50 minutes in length. https://poison6502.bandcamp.com/album/for-eternity #atari #poison #poison6502 #pokey #chiptune #8bit #8bitmusic #retro #trance #techstep #dubstep #techno #kutnahora #mulphia

Well, I pulled the trigger and completed my pre-order of Rev's new games joined the Club!

Hello everyone! The reason why I haven’t come back to update yet is because we have appealed the decision. Our uncle’s response to that is due in early October, and then our final response is due around 10 days after that. I’m going to try to link what we have submitted already.

I would immediately ask for a refund for the damaged mylar that was carelessly packed and post in the bad trader thread. 🤣 Glad you got it squared away with something simple.

No. But is it unexpected? Also, no. See below for examples of the kind of customer service that guy offers:

Congrats! Nice of you to help that guy out. Least he could have done was to pack it properly.

#2 in the house!

Hi Everyone, I wanted to post a couple of updates in reference to my build. I initially used the connectors for the cartridge and ECI port supplied by Ali Express for my build. What I found that it was a little short and because of the pins, it did not lie flat. I had followed some of the informational guides on the ABBUC forums in how to mount the connectors, but I found it very problematic with the cartridges that I had. Some cartridges would mount but if I touch them in any way, they would pop out since the connectors are slightly shorter that the original connectors. Other cartridges I had would not work at all. I was thinking of maybe using a cartridge connector, but in the end, I decided to order original connectors. It was not a pleasant experience removing the the Ali Express connector from the mother motherboard, but I was able to do it without damaging anything. I am just curious about other builder's experience with the Ali Express connector and also a warning for those who are thinking about using them. On another note, my build uses a GTIAdigitizer and a Pokeymax which required external connections. I did not want to drill holes in my 130XE case, so I designed and printed an XE breakout box that leverages the RF modulator cutouts for a breakout box. The box connects very securely too. I wanted to share it with my fellow builders here in case they were looking for a similar solution. I have posted the STL files on Thingiverse and on Printables

I spent a few hours with Towers II last night and really enjoyed it. I don't know the original all that well as I've already played farther into the revision, but from what I've seen this new version is clearly more enjoyable. Of course we all knew that this would be an improvement, as that's the whole point. But it truly is a clear difference. The lifebar above the enemies alone is a significant upgrade. The new weapon visuals look really nice. The voiceovers sounds great and add to the immersion. Overall the game looks and runs quite a bit better, and that makes for a more fun experience. I would love to see the two versions running side by side at a game convention or something, to make the field of view and framerate improvements easier to compare.

There needs to be cheat codes. And options like mullet length. Actually mullet length would be a good way to set difficulty.

Unfortunately it's not compatible with harmony cart, as it requires special cart hardware, but I am in the final stages of making some sample carts for sale very soon.

Well, mine arrived #9 here!

Hello guys More pictures: The game Dangerous City by PTODT: MIDIcar XL version, also by PTODT: The X2GS is not included and can be ordered separately at serdashop.be. BTW the X2GS in the picture is the SE (second edition) version. The first one is slightly bigger. And another panoramic picture. Getting pretty full, but there's always room for a couple more ... BTW we have people here from Germany (duh!), Belgium, Chile (but living in Washington D.C.), Czechia, Poland and there seems to be somebody from the Netherlands here. But I haven't met him yet and he isn't in most of the pictures. (click on the last one to enlarge) Sincerely Mathy

Yes, still ways to go. Indeed, cc7800 is fourfold : - It's a C compiler for 6502 that is efficient enough to produce Atari console game code (i.e. DASM quality-like. It's not possible to use cc65 for instance to make an "action" game on 2600 or 7800, since the code would be too big and too slow. I've tried and this was totally unsucessful). This is cc6502 (written from scratch in Rust), which is I think operational and well tested. It doesn't support the full C language (no structures in particular, but structure support is so badly handled by the 6502...), but is really optimized 6502 code oriented through the possible use of "special" X and Y indexing variables. cc6502 itself requires some documentation to explicit all the limitations and to show how to write code in order to get the most of the 6502. Frankly, given all the tests and programs I've already written with it, it's quite mature today. - It's a mapper for Atari 7800, to support the specific Atari 7800 memory layout and bankswitching. This is actually cc7800, adding keywords to the C language : bankX, scattered, holeydma, ramchip... This is working but may be not complete. Requires also some explanations. - It's a set of tools (tools7800) to generate C code for the sprites, tiles... - And to make it usable to create games, a set of headers (conio.h, multisprite.h, sparse_tiling.h, etc) and examples, with many macros that I'm still currently developing. This also requires documentation before being fully useful... It's going on. My goal is to have a complete package for the 4th of april 2024, the date of anniversary of the first release. This will never be a package for beginners. This will always require prior C embedded development experience.

Been going back and forth on this, Finally did it.

Well it would be kinda fitting based on how this topic started out, but that's not my way. Besides I didn't need it after all Yeah I suspected it would be simple, and even tried to steer the OP down that path with some suggested diagnostics, but nothing ever came of that and then he abruptly threw in the towel. I'm glad that it had a happy ending, at least for me. And I gotta say this unit turned out to be a diamond in the rough, and not even that rough. The price you were asking for the condition of this machine was very generous on your part. And I really do love the keyboard feel on this guy, which has me blown away with how good it is. Was this ever modified, because all the XE keyboards I've ever tried in the past were totally mush city? The only thing I plan to do to it besides use it, will be to give the key caps an Oxi-Clean treatment, although they aren't very yellowed. After this is done the unit will look like brand new once again. And I might even pop in one of my UGV boards to really make the video shine, but I'll do it in a none destructive way, or in other words something that can be easily reversed (no extra or modified holes in the case).

Hey now! Nothing speaks to the competency of a company than blowing millions while making nothing. They and the diehard fans really showed the haters by being so competent that an idea was for the YouTubers to hand assemble them themselves. I'm also still waiting on all the videos laughing at the haters when the Amico releases and disrupts the industry. I'm also waiting on @RetroAdvisoryBoard's Amico Tenets videos, and the debunking of the hbomberguy video. If you find that video too offensive you can always go to www.tommytallarico.com for a good time celebrating Tommy's greatness.

Gatekeeping refund racists!

Heh heh... This image... out of context... could look... quite interesting... If you catch my drift!!! 😜😁

um, nothing to be afraid of... Mine is competition pros, I currently have over 35 different versions.

So there are plenty of variants in missing, but I'm at peace with not having the hard hitters. For my 125, I only have 123 CIB. My Spiker and LF2 don't have boxes, but my repro boxes work just fine. My Intellivision Inc set is mostly complete with the glaring, but not surprising exception of Super Series, which I struggle to justify spending the going rate. I'm lucky enough to have Snafu, Sea Battle, and Backgammon. Homebrew-wise, I missed Ghostbusters, but might pick up the reissue. I think I'm also missing their most recent Parker Bros game. I'm probably missing a few variants too, like the big box 4-Tris's, but I have Intelligentvision and LTO. Oh, and I really need to grab Cat Attack. Variant-wise, I'm missing a bunch, but not in a hurry. I think the next on my list might be working on International Parker Bros and Imagic variants. Non-Intellivision-wise, I'm two games short of a complete Wii collection (including all available manuals). I also need around 40-45 Wii U games to complete. Also slowly working on Atari 2600 Activision (mix of loose and CIB).

Extending full poiints until Tuesday, September 5 - @Rick Dangerous, @agradeneu, @JagChris, @jblenkle, @KidGameR186496, @Songbird, @thegoodwillgamer, and @tripled79, I hope you can join us for these fun games!

My assumption/speculation - and it's only that - is that perhaps they funded the development. Development and publishing are often independent. And perhaps the deal with the publisher was they would make x number of dollars with the first x number of units, then y number of dollars with the next whatever number of units. So perhaps they were gambling that it would sell more than it actually ended up selling. They also had their own supply of units to sell (much like with the Intellivision Flashback, among other products), which they would have had to have funded in some way (even at cost, they would still have to pay) before making the money selling their own inventory. I know they had inventory for the DS collection for quite some time.

The original CX30 paddles are two paddles connected via a single DB9 port. Joined persay. Hence two DB9 ports .... 4 paddles. Really only for Warlords. A bit pricey I admit.

All competition entries are now here and voting will close on 9th September: https://csdb.dk/event/?id=3323 There's both PAL and NTSC Atari ROM's in the zip. votepack-starbars-compo.zip

This due to the way how the XL ROM detects a hard reset. If three memory cells contain some well-defined values, the Os assumes a warm start and does not go through the full initialization sequence. If the power cycle is short enough, the RAMs retain their value and the Os does not initialize itself completely. However, as some other RAM content may have been damaged anyhow, the shortened initialization sequence fails to bring up the machine properly. As far as I recall, this is the reason why Atari used for the 8 RAM chips one rather poor uT chip that looses its contents more quickly while the 7 other chips are better quality chips that retain their contents longer.

Another 600XL with VBXL installed

Hell I'd have seconds...

Wow, how did you guys get in there so quickly? I set an alarm on my phone and still came in at a lowly #12. Anyway, this is a gorgeous package. I can't wait to put my kids to bed so I can pour myself a nice adult beverage and dig in!

I don't know the details and it wouldn't be my place to discuss them if I did. I just can confirm knowledge of the general situation at the time. I can speculate that perhaps it was some past investment they made that didn't pay off, such as the Intellivision DS collection, and ongoing staff/retail space that couldn't be covered by revenue anymore leading to an increase in debt, but I honestly don't know. I do agree that $500k seems awfully high, but these things can definitely spiral.

Strange how Tommy seems to have no problem using young musicians for his VLG shows that he can get away with not paying. You'd think after all these rants Mr Moral Superiority would be sure to make sure everyone is paid fairly.

Asteroid for SN2 cart with YM2612 and hardware VGM player 20230830_225812.mp4

(disclaimer: my English is not good, so I'm using deepl translator, don't call me illiterate, I'm not from the USA) i started learning batari basic the day before yesterday, and i even made a little game the day before yesterday to learn how the programming language works, today i made a little showcase game based on a roblox game called "happy home in robloxia", so i made it using VCS game maker, visual studio code and batari basic (obviously), its very basic, but i'm learning the zip file of the game is attached below Happy Home In AtariTopia.zip

Already released, you can buy it here: https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=875

The $153F POKE from the DOS 2.5 manual is for where MEM.SAV and DUP.SYS get loaded from; I don't think it controls the presence of the RAM disk. I deleted RAMDISK.COM off a copy of DOS 2.5 and wrote it out to a physical disk to boot on my 64K 800XL. It produces the same behavior as in Altirra in allowing access to D8: but showing 0 sectors free, so I'm not sure what determines whether D8: is accessible, if it is even conditionally visible. I haven't been able to set up a situation where it isn't. The 16K case is more interesting. I can reproduce the 999+ sectors free, and from the execution history it looks like DOS 2.5 is reading nonexistent memory: 40300:240: 83 | A=14 X=FF Y=01 S=EE P=74 ( V I ) | 14AF: A0 7F LDY #$7F 40300:240: 85 | A=14 X=FF Y=7F S=EE P=74 ( V I ) | 14B1: 28 PLP 40300:240: 89 | A=14 X=FF Y=7F S=EF P=70 ( V ) | 14B2: 90 09 BCC $14BD 40300:240: 92 | A=14 X=FF Y=7F S=EF P=70 ( V ) | 14BD: B1 32 LDA (BUFRLO),Y ;$74FF 40300:240: 97 | A=FF X=FF Y=7F S=EF P=F0 (NV ) | 14BF: 91 43 STA ($43),Y ;$1480 40300:240:103 | A=FF X=FF Y=7F S=EF P=F0 (NV ) | 14C1: 88 DEY 40300:240:105 | A=FF X=FF Y=7E S=EF P=70 ( V ) | 14C2: 10 F9 BPL $14BD + Last 4 insns repeated 127 times If a 16K configuration is used in Altirra with the 65XE/130XE base system, the DOS listing produces garbage because it is pulling open bus data instead of $FF. Either this is a straight bug in DOS 2.5 or there is some step necessary other than deleting RAMDISK.COM to disable the RAM disk access. If anyone has a 16K system, I would be interested in whether it is open bus or not in unmapped areas (e.g. PEEK(32768)).

Updates: Some bug fixes around enemy tank respawns Cleaned up level transitions Fiddled with enemy AI / movement routines # of enemy tanks to kill starts lower and increases (to maximum of 20) over the first 5 levels or so Thanks for playing TankMaze.asm TankMaze.bin

Gotta love the super rare Short Circuit reference!

I'm not going to disagree with you here, the out-of-box experience is horrific. It got broken after a December update and turned the "oh, here is an update or two" situation into something that is really frustrating. The changes in the update were necessary updates, so rolling back wasn't an option. Not that it helps you now, but our upcoming update, which will introduce a batch of new features and do a large update to the Linux kernel, will eliminate this situation. It is a small dagger to my soul each day this fix is not going out. I just want to lock the engineers in a room with Jolt Cola and a mountain of cocaine and yell "You have 24hrs" and get this fixed.

Why is nobody recommending Altirra? It's by far the best 8-bit emulator for the computers (and 5200 which is the same thing).

A Gotek drive emulates a floppy drive at the Shugart bus level, so it does not even know what a sector is or even a byte. It only delivers flux changes. The only thing to consider is that only the HFE files can save special information that is outside of pure sector contents. Gotek can handle DSK files, but those only contain sector contents. As we're not talking about disk protection schemes but only about direct sector access, this should be OK. If needed, HFE files can be created with numerous tools from DSK, including my TIImageTool.

Really this is the one that matters most. The BVM, though a far better monitor (it's convergence is perfect), isn't set up for S-Video so we have to add the Koryuu into the mix that corrupts results a bit. This 14" PVM is essentially this is as 'correct' as a picture as we can get ultimately (I've got a bigger PVM than this, but it's convergence isn't as good. Probably could do with a re-cap). There's a little bit of blooming happening with full white. The BVM just takes this in it's stride because it's a monster... We may have to dial this down a little. PAL7800 - direct - Sony PVM 14" (CRT) NTSC7800 - direct - Sony PVM 14" (CRT) I have a famously intolerant Panasonic plasma to try it on when Cleggy comes over at the weekend (it's RGB is just broken and has been from new). It'll have to go through the Koryuu to work, but it'll be interesting. Finally there's my big PVM. It shouldn't be much different to the little one to be fair.

Round 2. This has become more of a TV compatability test than anything else. Cleggy throught he'd try the NTSC machine into the Tosh through the Koryuu (so component input to the TV) and that had some interesting results in that now the NTSC machine worked. But also the 2600 side of things on both consoles is now stable. It must be doing some digital processing there then. Though the NTSC 2600 has an odd line on it on the right, possibly noise being interpreted as video? NTSC7800 - Koryuu (S to component) - Toshiba (LCD) PAL7800 - Koryuu (S to component) - Toshiba (LCD) NTSC7800 - direct - Sony 15" (LCD) Update on odd line. Shows up here too on the 15" Sony LCD, so not the Koryuu. Just really noticable on the much larger Tosh. Looking back it's on all other images too. PAL7800 - direct - Sony 15" (LCD) Yes this panel has a stuck pixel...

Just happened to be on eBay this afternoon and saw this small lot of loose games for $15.00. Had to jump on it. Wonder what the unlabelled cart will be.

Hello guys Time for some more pictures: We're not inside all the time: 8 bit Atarians come up with nice ideas when desk space is limited that also prevent neck pain: Beetle's computers: Large size pizza, food for four: Manterola's Sega Phaser to Atari adaptor prototype: We're having fun! Are you? Sincerely Mathy

Well no real news to update...other than I'm still here. Been busy with work the last couple of weeks, and I'm hoping to get back to verifying/finalizing the rapid-fire circuitry, and PCB revision changes that I want to make, this upcoming weekend.

Hey there! This was totally a last minute thing to include so the support and patience is very much appreciated! The good news is I have numbers to work with now. I've been crunching a few just to see if it all makes sense with different settings. So far I like what I see and certainly this should give more context behind top custom scores.