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https://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-4.20-test24.zip https://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-4.20-test24-src.7z Add full 1030 modem emulation. Fixed 8048 ADDC A,@Rn and JTF instructions. Fixed a bug with some 1030 device options being sticky, particularly the answer setting. Improved debugger source file resolution -- the debugger now attempts to resolve source file references against the module path and the paths of any open source windows. Probably not surprising after I posted the dumps for the 1030 chips -- I had propped the firmware on a munged version of the XF551 emulation to confirm some things, and it wasn't too hard to get the full modem working from there. A couple of things are currently missing: analog loopback, and the relay sound. The 1030 has an audible 'twing' from a small relay when it puts the phone on-hook, which is most noticeable when pulse dialing and more characteristic than the default short thud that Altirra plays.

I had no idea that the R77 had such a limited library, and that the 2600+ was the same. I assumed that Retron and Atari had done their diligence in figuring out how to autodetect and dump most of the known cartridge types, as we did more than a decade ago in an old thread about how to use your Harmony as a cart dumper. Or if they couldn't or didn't want to figure it out, they could have always contacted me about it. It's not like it's hard to find me

Hi! What are the utility programs for 8-bit Atari that are forgotten or almost forgotten nowadays? Any proposals? As start of the discussion, video about some Polish utilities (both for "normal" users and for IT geeks): Polish utilities for Atari 8-bit (music, text editing, programming) Do you know what software was used to compose music or edit texts decades ago? Or perhaps do you prefer assembly programming? As a bonus, amazing songs played on an 8 bit computer, some in stereo!

Atari 2600 Kaboom! - 124 minutes Killer Satellites - 5 minutes Solar Fox - 175 minutes Suicide Mission - 41 minutes

Week of 8/28/23 - 9/3/23 Atari 2600 Escape from the Mindmaster - 40 Killer Satellites - 30 Suicide Mission - 10 Commodore 64 Might and Magic - 120 Total time =200 minutes I finished King's Bounty last week, and in the process learned that it was the predecessor to the Heroes of Might and Magic games. I haven't ever played those but I loved the original M&M as a kid and M&M2 is on my list of games I never beat. I had been putting that one off because I don't really have time for a long, involved RPG. However, I started playing M&M and now I'm hooked. The kids are off to school this week so maybe I'll have time after all!

Atari 2600: Dragon’s Descent 20 Atari 7800: Donkey Kong Jr 35 Donkey Kong 20 Scramble 15 Alien Brigade 30 Dig Dug 10 Ikari Warriors 35 Food Fight 20 Galaga 5 Xevious 15 Dragons’ Havoc 15

Atari 2600 Killer Satellites 16 HSC Pitfall 44 FB HSC - did bad Solar Fox 101

Patient: it hurts when I do this. Doctor: don't do that. Me: don't do quick power cycles.

Some games that have caused frequent problems for a good number of displays have been fixed by members of the community. Considering some of the fixes posted span across 10 years, there is a centralized download for convenience: HERE Here is the list of files in the attachment: Asteroids (VSYNC fixed) (20170127) (FCD8AD72).bin Battlezone (VSYNC fix) (20150701) (A2EB05D4).bin Buck Rogers (Better Line Count Hack) (NTSC) (20100421) (05831E07).bin Defender (VBLANK fix) (20150822) (E01CBE88).bin Defender (VSYNC fix) (20150822) (8311200D).bin Fast Food (1982) (262 Scanline Fix) (20181230) (AF26175D).bin Moon Patrol (1983) (262 Scanline Fix) (20181230) (BC60F010).bin Star Wars - Empire Strikes Back (More VSYNC fix) (20200614) (374976F9).bin Tapper (Timing Fix) (20170726) (E7C43A16).bin Warlords (VSYNC fix) (20150822) (3CF4E08D).bin YMMV...some, most, or even all of the above may not be needed. If so, feel free to ignore. Otherwise, if experiencing issues, especially prevalent on modern day displays for the aforementioned games, give the attached images a try. Hope it helps.

I've been seriously slacking on updates for good reason but hope to change that now that this years workload has slowed down some. In short, JagPunk:CyberDeck has taken precedence over everything else at this point. I've decided to wait no more in hopes to be able to utilize the GameDrive for it's storage capacity. Instead, I will charge forward with a 6MB version of JagPunk, that is not going to be GD-specific. Tough titty said the kitty! I'll also try to keep these updates shorter and easier to digest quickly in bursts. Attached are two earlier versions of CyberDeck tests (from the Future Ends deck I've made) that are shown in 256-Color and 16-bit. For those of you who are curious enough to bother loading and comparing the two, you'll quickly see why I ultimately wanted to remain with 16-bit cards regardless: quality. The flipside to that being, the Jaguar is being a Fussy Pussy about it and pitching a bitch about my asking too much of it. So... I had to slim the cards down some, but that turned out to be a good thing in the end. Both design-wise and space-wise. The originals were mostly placeholder anyway and the shorthand descriptions on the bottom are redundant since they will be visible in the text field when highlighted. Also feel the cards in the CyberDeck16Bit ROM are ideal because they no longer overlay the credits/cost of each directly onto the graphic artwork but instead slightly below or above, making it easier to actually see wtf they are. Hopefully. There is zero interaction with these ROMS outside of hearing the title screen music and graphic, pressing B to load the placeholder playing field and auto-cyclying through the few cards that were implemented at that time. 0 takes you back to the title screen and that's it. But it should give you a good idea of what's in mind and where it's going. CyberDeck256.rom CyberDeck16Bit.rom Currently, there are 4-decks in the game (Future Ends, CyberNaux, Synahx, and NeoNet). The first two are fully implemented, Synahx is next to add and is mostly complete with NeoNet needing an entire deck of 25 or so Primary Cards and 15ish Auxiliary cards. With that said.... Calling all Card Idea and Name Submissions! If you're interested in coming up with a few card names and ideas, feel free to add them below and I'll consider adding them to the NeoNet deck. They must be 12 characters long in name or less, include a short description of what they do, how much damage they deal, etc. NeoNet is primarily a hacking deck and those cards should reflect such but I'll remain open-minded about adding oddballs here and there. Here's a few examples from Future Ends and CyberNaux: Subject to change, the game is currently setup to randomly draw 5 cards each round in turn based fashion (first 3 are PRIMARY cards, last two are AUX cards). You'll roll 3 digital dice each round for data credits to use a card. 2 dice total for primary cards and 1 die for the AUX cards. Each die only up to 6 like standard dice. So if you roll a 4 and a 3 on the first two, you'll have 7 to use for a Primary card. Then the 3rd will be whatever it lands on for an AUX card. Hopefully that makes sense and in the end is supposed to be a lot easier to understand or grasp. The pink/red data notches on the bottom of the card indicate damage dealt (or in some cases health gained), depending on the card. The green or yellow notches on top indicate the cost to use the card with data credits. If you roll less than, you obviously can't use them. Data Credits do not rollover into the next round. The Red and Yellow claws are simply the cards turned over and help signify that they are PRIME or AUX. Primary Card Example: DERANGED: Damage Dealt: 3 Points; Data Credit Cost: 4 Primary Card Example: ACID RAIN: Damage Dealt: 6 Points; Data Credit Cost: 6 "Desc Text: May Drops of Rain Melt You!" Auxiliary Card Example: HEART ZAP: Health Gained: 3 Points; Aux Credit Cost: 3 So if a Player rolls a total of 7 for the first two dice and a 4, you would be able to play your choice of Acid Rain or Deranged as well as Heart Zap. That of course will not always be the case. Some rounds you might not be able to play any cards. Here's some Deck Select screen music outtakes created using nothing other than Atari gear (Atari STe, Stacy and Hotz): DeckSelectOuttakes.mp3 I didn't like the data notches on the sides of the playing field after all so those are gone now. I'm still working on a slicker interface to connect it all together and hope that will solve the issue of displaying cost/dmg dealt/etc. to each player left and right / player 1 and 2. Let's see how long it takes me for another update...

I haven't done this yet, but @Schmitzi or @arcadeshopper I mentioned to the other day - probably take all the DataBiotics carts that we changed from CRU to the 378/379 method and put them in one archive and stick them here in this thread in case someone else someone else comes looking for them. Beyond Wordwriter (32K) Red Baron Flight (32K) StarGazer I/II/III (32K) Desktop Publisher (32K) TI Workshop (64K) At least I think that's all of them. DataBiotics Converted Bank Switching.zip

Here are my times for this week (August 29th through September 4th) on classic games: Arcade: Q*bert - 52 min. in 3 sessions MS-DOS: J-Bird - 48 min. in 2 sessions I continued to play J-Bird until I got fer enough into Level 5 and also made a score of over 100.000 points. After that I started playing the original Q*bert for a bit to compare it to the other versions... and it won hands down. It was a bit hard to get going on it, but on the 3rd sessions, I made 100.000 points there as well, together with a sufficient progress to Level 5.

NES Faxanadu - 190min Shingen the Ruler - 80min Gauntlet 2 - 40min Tetris - 20min SNES Super R-Type - 30min

This week I played: Pokemon Gold Version for Game Boy Color - 1,043 minutes Progress: I started by leveling up all of the remaining Pokemon who needed to evolve via level up, then I added Golbat and Chansey to my party to help raise their friendship level, I bred all Pokemon needed to get baby Pokemon Pokedex entries, then self traded extra copies of evolutionary items and stones with a clone of my save file. Then I self traded all Pokemon that I had that could evolve via trade. After this I continued raising Golbat and Chansey's friendship level while searching for an catching Raikou, Entei and Suicune with the extra master balls. Next time I play I still don't have enough coins to buy Porygon or more Eevee so next on my agenda will probably be self trading a bunch of nuggets to sell and clones of Togepi and Tyrogue to breed. Plus maybe more starter Pokemon from new files.

What may be of value to reference is the scanline count list of VCS/2600 games by Digital Press: https://www.digitpress.com/library/techdocs/vcs_scanlines.htm Any NTSC game with a scanline count that does not equal 262 runs the risk of having display issues, particularly on modern displays, as CRTs are much more tolerant. Any PAL game with a scanline count that does not equal 312 runs a similar risk. For example, respecting some games: Asteroids = Version 1 NTSC 262 | Version 2 NTSC 265 | Version 1 PAL N/A | Version 2 PAL 311-313 Buck Rogers = NTSC 240 | PAL 280 (title) / 296-297 (in-game) Fast Food = NTSC 257 | PAL N/A Moon Patrol = NTSC 256 | PAL 312 Star Wars - Empire Strikes Back = NTSC 261 | PAL 314 Warlords = NTSC 263 | PAL 312 Atari Compendium is another source for scanline count of games. Noteworthy too, is Atarimania/ROM Hunter's collection is leveraged (Highly recommended for a proper/clean set of the original line-up of games), there are several official "fixed" version of titles that were released. Leveraging the fixed version likely ensures best compatibility and overall gameplay experience. Here are the details: Activision Decathlon, The (1983) (Activision, David Crane) (AG-930-04, AZ-030) [fixed] ~ - Fixed the following bug in the original version: if you keep hitting the FIRE button after letting go of the pole during the pole vault event, you can clear heights well beyond the intended limit of 5.6m. Astroblast (Paddle) (1982) (M Network - INTV - APh Technological Consulting, Hal Finney) (MT5666) [fixed] ~ - Fixed the following bugs in the original version: if two joysticks are plugged in and both are moved at the same time during the game, the following effects can happen (the same effects will happen if you use either controller): the laser base will fly up into space or below the bottom border, the laser base will become invisible and when a rock hits it, the screen will turn red, the base count will cycle from 99 down to zero, and/or the joysticks will stop operating. Bridge (1980) (Activision, Larry Kaplan) (AX-006) [fixed] ~ - Fixed the following bug in the original version: the game crashes when you bid 8. It also fixed a branch target adress in the original version. Congo Bongo (1983) (SEGA - Beck-Tech, Steve Beck, Phat Ho) (006-01) [fixed] ~ - Fixed the following bug in the original version: the game crashes frequently when you randomize the startup bank. The fixed version only displays some wrong graphics in that case. Demon Attack (Death from Above) (1982) (Imagic, Rob Fulop) (720000-200, 720101-1B, 720101-1C, IA3200, IA3200C, IX-006-04) [fixed] ~ - Fixed the following bug in the original version: the screen will go black (because the code is stuck in an endless loop) after completing 84 waves (game modes 5 - 8 start on wave 13 and will freeze after completing wave 72). The fixed version goes all the way to level 255 before wrapping around back to level 0. Dodge 'Em - Dodger Cars (Head On) (1980) (Atari, Carla Meninsky - Sears) (CX2637 - 49-75158) [fixed] ~ - Fixed the following bug in the original version: the car and score of the player(s) stay the same color in B/W demo mode. The fixed version also shows different colors after the game ends. Gangster Alley (1982) (Spectravision - Spectravideo) (SA-201) [fixed] ~ - Fixed the following bug in the original version: instead of using an immediate value (prefixed by #), a zeropage address was used. Gas Hog (1983) (Spectravideo, Mark Turmell) (SA-217) [fixed] ~ - Fixed the following bug in the original version: the scanline count was not constant. Miner 2049er - Starring Bounty Bob (1983) (Tigervision) (7-008) [fixed] ~ - Fixed the following bug in the original version: RESET doesn't start the game with 3 lives if you only have 1 or 2 lives in reserve. My Golf (1990) (HES - Imagineering, David R. Lubar) (535) (PAL) [fixed] ~ - Fixed the following bug in the original version: a branch was taken before an index register was updated to load a series of registers. Skeet Shoot (1981) (Apollo - Games by Apollo, Ed Salvo) (AP-1001) [fixed] ~ - Fixed the following bug in the original version: a rolling gamescreen on some TV sets, due to the game counting 286 scanlines. Space Invaders (1980) (Atari, Richard Maurer) (CX2632, CX2632P) (PAL) [different speed and colors] [fixed] - Fixed a bug that affects the controls of the two-player modes 81 - 96 in the second PAL release of the game: the shots alternate between the players, but the movement doesn’t - only the right player moves the cannon. StarMaster - Kommando Galaxis (1982) (Activision, Alan Miller - Ariola) (EAX-016, PAX-016 - 711 016-725) (PAL) [fixed] - Fixed the following bug in the original version: a rolling gamescreen on some TV sets, due to the VSYNC pulse lasting for only 2 scanlines instead of 3. Super Breakout (Paddle) (1982 - 1981) (Atari, Carol Shaw, Nick 'Sandy Maiwald' Turner - Sears) (CX2608 - 49-75165) [fixed] ~ - Fixed the following bug in the original version: the routine that handles the additional on-screen balls in game 3 - 6 is missing a comparison and branch. Superman (1979) (Atari, John Dunn - Sears) (CX2631 - 49-75152) [fixed] ~ - Fixed the following bugs in the original version: 1) Hold down the FIRE button and tap the joystick in any direction. When 2 seconds have elapsed, release the FIRE button: the bridge won’t blow up and you’re free to capture the criminals. 2) Start the game and hold down the FIRE button when you are above the phone booth, then press SELECT and release the FIRE button. Wait for the screen to cycle 2 scenes over (to a subway entrance) and move towards the subway. The game will continue at that scene, but you won’t be able to fly up. If you go to the bridge scene, all the criminals will escape but the bridge will not blow up.

I will look for my code for detecting and dumping the legacy bankswitch types. As for detecting and dumping ARM bankswitch types, the method I have used privately requires that the cart port hardware is set up a certain way. If the hardware is not set up this way (and it likely isn't if the hardware is already designed) then it is probably not possible and sharing this info would serve no constructive purpose. I will not say 100% that it is impossible, though. There may still be a way. I will have to think about it.

replying to my own post in case anyone else is interested in this.. using Altirra debugger it seems as you play the game the number of special targets you hit is stored in $06AC so using the built in cheater function, set $06AC to a high number such as $60 and start the game you go straight to the final battle and if you manage to hit the 3 targets then the next runway will be flashing green and you win the game next step is to patch the ATR...

As I said in my first post, I began working on MAGICLON in the early 80s. There were a lot of things I did not quite understand about interrupt processing and so MAGICLON always "kind of" worked. Being an ultimate perfectionist, it bugged the crap out of me that it didn't work perfectly. In the 80s I finally put it away, but every so often (at 5 or 10 year intervals) I would return to the project for another attempt. In a nutshell, it works like this: The first thing that happens is a copy of the 800 OS is loaded into memory. Since it only occupies 10K, it frees up memory from C000 to CFFF. This is where my code resides. I intercept the interrupt that checks if the START key was pressed and point it to my code. When the user presses START, OPTION and SELECT together, it causes an interrupt which jumps to my code. I write all the contents of memory from $0000 to $BFFF to the disk. The biggest problem I had was getting the copied software to run after it was reloaded into memory. Remember, I captured all the data and wrote it to disk during an interrupt. So after all the data is reloaded into memory, I should have been able to execute an RTI instruction (return from interrupt) and the Atari should have picked up exactly where it left off when the data was captured. This was the thing that I could not get to work from the 80s all the way up to last year. That's when I pored through all the documentation I could find and finally learned that the one piece of information I should have captured and saved on the disk was the stack pointer. If the stack pointer is not set properly, when you issue an RTI instruction the Atari will not access the stack at the correct location. Once I learned this, I saved the stack pointer on the disk and voila, the next time I ran the program, the copied software started right up at the exact spot where it had been interrupted. This should have been the end of the story but when testing a game called Way Out, the screen had garbage on it after it was reloaded. The program worked okay, but there was junk on the screen. Why? Well, it turns out that saving everything in memory is not quite enough. There are two special chips in the Atari besides the processor called GTIA and ANTIC. They are responsible for what goes on the TV screen. And here I faced the biggest challenge. I also needed to save the contents of certain memory locations within these chips. But guess what? You can write to the registers in these chips, but you cannot read back what you just wrote. So if a game stored a value, 12 say, in $D009, my software had no way of reading that value from the chip. This kept the program from being perfect until I had my final brainstorm. Why not scan all the code that is loaded into memory looking for instructions that write to either the GTIA or and ANTIC chip. Typically the code would look like this: LDA #$12 STA $D009 Once I found the store instruction, I could simply back up and capture the value that was to be stored. One final problem existed. Often, you'd find code like this: LDA #$12 STA $D006 STA $D008 STA $D009 If I wanted to find out what was stored in $D009, I couldn't just back up to the prior instruction. I needed to make sure the previous instruction was also not a STORE command. If it was, I needed to keep backing up until I found the LOAD instruction. As I processed each STORE command, I built a table of each location that had been accessed and what value was in it. Now with the table stored on disk, when the disk was reloaded, the final thing that happens is I access the table and write all the proper values back into the GTIA and ANTIC registers. To my ultimate delight, when I reloaded the Way Out game and it restarted, the screen was clear of garbage. It looked exactly the way it looked when the program was initially dumped. Only 40 plus years to get the program running perfectly. That's not too bad....I guess. Hah hah.

I ignored this thread, but I got no likes.

Atari 2600 Asteroids Attack 18 NES 1942 4 Rad Racer 10 Tiger-Heli 10

Update 3.22 3.23 - 2023-09-03 - Experimental 16 sector per track, track dump to sector dump conversion. TIPI supports converting DSK images to an extracted directory on your TIPI share. It delegates sector dump extraction to xdm99.py. However PC99 DSK images are in one of 3 track dump formats. Previously I have supported the 9 and 18 sector per track formats, for 40 track disks. Now I have extended this to support the 16 sector per track format, and to allow for 80 track (per side) disks images. I have implemented this from the spec at https://www.ninerpedia.org/wiki/Track_Dump_Format. I've already gotten tired of looking for disk images to test. If you find specific examples of incompatible disks, I am happy to receive them here, so that I may examine and keep this feature as 'magic' as possible. -M@

Atari 8-bit: Jungle Boy - 12 min. Jungle Hunt - 21 min. As usual, late Sunday evening gaming for me. Only HSC stuff, but as the retro expo season is quickly approaching, I'll likely catch a number of systems in the next few weeks.

I made a cart dumper for the stm32f103c8t6 blue pill boards using the libmaple-based Arduino core and my USBComposite library. The fun thing about this cart dumper is that it emulates a flash drive, so when you plug it into a USB port, you get a GAME.A26 file you can load into an emulator right from the dumper--you don't need to copy it or anything. Currently, it only supports 4K, F6, F8 and FA cartridges. One thing I haven't been able to figure out is how to recognize whether a cartridge has been pulled out and another inserted, so to switch cartridges you currently need to reset the device or pull it from USB. If you have any thoughts on how to detect a cartridge easily, it would be appreciated.

Recently, a friend of mine did me a favor and desoldered and dumped the ROM chips on a broken spare Atari 1030 modem I've had lying around for a while, to help answer some questions I've had about the behavior of the device. Attached are dumps for both the external 8K ROM chip and the internal 4K ROM on the 8050 and a disassembly of the internal firmware, for anyone curious about this slightly odd duck of a modem. Some notes: Unlike the XF551, which uses internal ROM or external ROM for its 4K firmware, the 1030 uses both the internal ROM and external ROM together for a total of 12K of firmware. The external ROM is used entirely for data storage and has no 8048 program code in it. The entirety of the external ROM and ~60% of the internal ROM is taken up by the downloadable T: handler and ModemLink software. The T: handler didn't quite fit in the internal ROM and needed an overflow to external ROM. I guess once they had that, it made sense to fill it with the ModemLink software. The different tones played during the ModemLink download are due to slightly different speeds of the routines pulling from the different storage locations, including internal bank 0, internal bank 1, and external ROM. The firmware runs four serial shift registers entirely in software: send/receive to SIO and send/receive to the modem. These are run at quarter-bit phase resolution (1200Hz for 300 baud). Thus, the 1030 reconditions and re-serializes bytes in both directions. There is a bug in the firmware where invalid command bytes can cause the firmware to jump to random code locations. For example, $5F locks up the firmware. I didn't dig into this much for fear of hardware damage from the 8050 trying to pull SIO ready low. Atari1030-8050.bin Atari1030-external.bin 1030-firmware.s

Well said.

For just how long are we supposed to ignore this thread? I have other threads to ignore and I don't have time to ignore them all!

The cyclone V looks to be available, just a bit more expensive: https://www.digikey.ch/de/products/detail/intel/5CEBA4F23C8N/3879656 Also a case and mechanical keyboard were recently designed for the XE by @ScreamingAtTheRadio Not sure what the finish is like on the 3D printed version though? So seems much closer than for several years. I’m also going to mention @santosp here because he did the mini-itx and custom ‘mini’ pcb layout. Not to mention a lot more… For my part I’ve not touched the core in some time. I was merging in a video scalar I wrote and pokeymax into the core, then ran into some issues that seemed like work to solve.

The Retron 77, with the community build, can play everything that Stella can play (so, almost any known game) through the sd card. The 2600+ ships with the latest Stella, so it would do the same if it could load roms (and if there was a way to access the emulator settings that you might need to tweak in some cases). But it doesn't offer that possibility out of the box. The cart port is the issue and the R77 one is no better than the one on the 2600+ by looking at the compatibility list they provided. The 2600+ cart dumper is apparently upgradable, so there's the possibility that things might improve a bit. But do not expect it to work with everything. It's just not possible. That's an inherent contraddiction. Cannot happen. It has been repeated basically on every page of this and the other 2600+ threads and also on the R77 ones: emulators don't play cartridges. Not hard. Impossible. As long as the emulators are mantained (to add support for new cart types and controllers/accessories) and you keep updating them, they'll play basically every rom. But the 2600+ pretends to play cartridges. That's the problem.

Got these...

Yep. A lot of us were interested. More than interested actually... A lot of us were quite excited for it and hoping the launch would hurry up and happen.

Nice! I never owned an Intellivision, but I've been getting into it lately! I just bought this ROM, Ms. Pac-Man, Yars Revenge, and Caverns of Mars. Love them all.

Shingen the Ruler is a fun game, but not the best cover art for a cart. I suppose that if you picked the game up for a rental it might be useful to know what all the abbreviations mean on the domestic administration interface. Then there's the unfortunate matter of the toaster NES obscuring the cover art, so you would have to write all that information down before inserting the cart,

Yes, keep stroking that one-eyed-bandit in public, man.

Worked like a charm 👍 Breadboard prototype connected to 576NUC+. Based upon Updated schematic for my intended target. 576NUC+RPSX_SDrive_V2_schema.pdf Set up Two Disk Demo, and then hit Reset. First Disk Loaded & Waiting for 2nd Disk... Pressed Disk Rotate Right Button, and then hit Return... Success!!! Demo Started...

5200- Blueprint- 15min Genesis- Sagaia- 20min Darius II- 45min SNES- Wizardry V- 2hrs rolling characters up

Oh dear, I forgot to post my times! Week of 8/21/23 - 8/27/23 Atari 2600 Air-Sea Battle - 20 Escape from the Mindmaster - 15 Sky Diver - 40 Commodore 64 King's Bounty - 270 Might and Magic - 75 Total time = 420 minutes Would have brought the C64 up to 4th place, and put the 2600 in 1st for # of games!

Here is a video showing how i import sprites to the coco3 and some 6809 code to move / display them.

It took me a while, but I finally managed to buy each of the original cartridges released with the Atari 2600. The sticking point was Star Ship, and the fact that my budget was $5.00 per cart. To mark the occasion, I put them in a stack on the dining room table, and took photos which I then turned into i-device wallpapers. They look pretty good on my iPhone. I haven't tried them on an iPad yet, but I made them with plenty of space around so that they'll work in both portrait and landscape on an iPad. Here's screenshots from an iPhone: You may notice that the screenshot with the cartridges arranged in a helix has squiggles where the time should be. This is because on weekends, I don't want to know what time it is, and iOS doesn't allow one to remove the clock, so changing it to a language I can't read is almost as good. It's also not possible to remove the date bar, but I can replace it with the weather, which is less awful than seeing the cold, bony hand of time scratching across the top of the screen. The wallpaper files are probably too large to upload to Atari Age, so you can download them from these links: Stack Helix

Skill 1 - 45,550

Yeah, I'm a bit late this week due to my desktop's hard drive dying. I'm on my laptop for now, so here are my efforts: Escape from the Mindmaster: 167 (I may be promising, but what would be more promising is knowing when I can get a new hard drive.) Killer Satellites: 820 (I just can't get the hang of this game.) Suicide Mission: 3,140 (Not being able to stop makes things more challenging.)

@Overange, I think it was decided on a similar basis that faulty GTIA and keyboards without springs could be put into the XE. For me, it's an obvious cost-cutting measure. It's also not the case that the electrolytic capacitors in Atari are eternal, while for example in the C64 they need to be replaced. Electrolytic capacitors have a typical stable lifespan of 10-15 years. They also dry out and lose their parameters. I replace the capacitors in my Ataris. I replace 470uF with 1000uF (as in XEGS), choosing a polymer super low ESR. Here I'll add that on XE boards, I always replace the DRAM memory with SRAM, and when installing VBXE, I remove Freddie so that the 3.5MHz signal goes directly into the main board from VBXE. As I wrote about the noise level on the ground plane, in the case of processors it's usually around 30mV, but Freddie generates 100mV. See what an increase that is compared to the 15mV from the 600XL. Unfortunately, adding your own holes every 0.4" doesn't yield the same results as the factory implementation. Despite that, I believe they should be introduced. Notice that this is present in all models except for the 130XE boards. The XEGS boards also have these holes, and the noise levels there are significantly lower. We need to understand how the "F" series works. The technology and design make it so that these circuits, without introducing too much capacitance on the signal lines where they are connected, achieve speeds up to 125MHz. So, when replacing the 74LS08 with 74F08N, it's not about the speed of the gate, but rather about reducing the parasitic capacitance on the main board. An additional effect is that the gate operates faster. Because the Atari design is based on NMOS and is more analog than digital from certain perspectives, everything still works. The prototype of the O2/Fixer consists of two 74F08 chips, where the first one functions like the 74LS08, and the second one creates four additional twin BO2 signals that can be directly connected to the Atari circuits on top. You can also reduce capacitance in a completely different way, but it's significantly more expensive. We can imagine replacing the PIA with W65C21N (WDC PIA NMOS), Pokey with PokeyMax, and GTIA with Sophia 2. On the XE board, I also had Freddie removed, so it wasn't connected to the BO2 line. Such a change was enough to sufficiently lower the capacitance of the BO2 line so that VBXE with Ultimate 1MB, Rapidus, and external SIDE3.1 could operate at full speed even in 20MHz mode without interference. I've proven through a reverse slow degradation system test that we can, by replacing elements step by step, increase the system's stability. So with the full installation of add-ons that I talked about, SIDE3 wouldn't start at all. After replacing one element, it started in 6502 mode. After replacing a second element, it also started in 65C816 mode but couldn't read the SD card. After replacing a third element, everything started working beautifully. I then returned all the old chips to the Atari and built a prototype of the O2/Fixer where all the circuits received signals from the twin BO2 signals. Everything worked beautifully. Switching to 1-gate and AHCT is a matter of productizing lab work, reducing costs, adapting for pick&place production, and miniaturizing without taking up additional space on the main board. This refinement has already been implemented by Lotharek, who adapted the design to conditions allowing for the production of the O2/Fixer. Theoretically, one could also use low-profile sockets, but unfortunately, such gold-plated low-profile sockets would probably triple the cost of the O2/Fixer. I personally didn't negotiate any additional compensation for this project, so as not to increase the product's value. This particular product should be widely available, as it stabilizes the operation of projects that people have often already purchased. In the end, it's all about people having stable computers so that we can continue to have fun, rather than having computers sitting in cabinets waiting for better times. In my opinion, for owners of the Ultimate 1MB, the O2/Fixer device is rather a must-have. According to the assumptions, the memory should be controlled by BO2, not by O2, for example from SRAM 64K V3. This is a matter of further system stability, as well as functioning with extended memory, not only in RAMBO mode but also in CompyShop mode. Remember that in the second mode, Antic has access to a different bank than Saliy. The BO2 and O2 signals are often confused in Atari schematics and descriptions of Atari ICs.

By "must play deep cuts," I meant the non-big name titles that people discover and love or obscure titles that only a certain percentage have ever even heard of. That's obviously wildly different from individual-to-individual. One person's trash is another's treasure, as they say, but if there weren't a bunch of games on most cartridges, then there'd be nothing to discover. I was contrasting those so-called-by-some "crap" or "filler" games (I might even call some that!) to the big name titles "everyone" knows and loves like the Namco and Capcom stuff, some of the Atari titles, Duke Nukem 3D, BurgerTime, Another World/Out of this World, Bubble Bobble, etc. My point was that extra diversity is the way to appeal to the niche. The "deep cuts" fill in the gaps, with little downside, especially since these aren't trying to compete in the mass market in the traditional sense. I'd argue that Amico was going a completely different route. They were purposely avoiding direct emulation of old games for the foreseeable future (when there was a future), and as much as they talked a big game about cornhole and MLB and what-not, I'd say that it was NEVER going to be about the actual games they had. That was secondary to the experience that the Amico purportedly was going to deliver, e.g., the focus on local multiplayer, the "unique" controllers, the so-called family-friendly experience (again, rather comical when the spokesperson was an online bully), etc. No rational person would have EVER thought it would have been primarily about the games considering the relative budgets, scopes, and titles that were going to be released, although we know full well that the most faithful sure as hell tried (e.g., one of the biggest superfans called the Finigan Fox demo the most beautiful game he's seen since Super Mario Bros. 3, which is head explodingly absurd). In terms of Evercade games coming on cartridges, you know as well as I do that that's a big selling point for the demographic they're targeting. So yeah, I'd say going digital would have a big negative effect on their sales. That still doesn't mean it's not about the games, though. There are always going to be other factors. And of course, there's always going to be the jackasses out there who chime in with "get x generic system or software and play the ROMZ for free!". The fact that there's a legit way to play these games is certainly important for some of us. It definitely is for me. I think it's a win-win for EVERYONE, even if the rights holders are not always the ones who should really be benefiting. Still, it's all for the greater good of ongoing game preservation and accessibility outside of the darker recesses of the internet (which of course have an important place, but should never be the only place).

Solar fox was the earliest video game crush i remember having (i usually consider solid snake my first but solar fox matched everything i consider a crush) and to find out he's a SHE tears me apart.. like tommy wiseau.. (ok maybe not like tommy wiseau)..

PS4 Minecraft - 350min. Building back up after losing everything. Found enough Netherite to craft again.

Excellent idea OX. Reminiscent of "Chalice" thankyou. I shall see to that on my next coding session

(F+1) Fixes: -fixed blocking of letters from falling out in later levels (On this version I managed to complete all 63 levels). ---- In this and earlier versions, the flickering speed of sprites during the game can be set with the keys 1-6 (how many frames). Gacek128_230717.xex

@Artoj I'm looking forward to seeing your cards built! I noticed a section on Ternary computing in Knuth, volume 2: Seminumerical Algorithms. Some history there. (This is the legendary work: The Art of Computer Programming.)

Maybe throw in a lightening flash now and again to see the mines in night mode?

I converted some pictures this weekend. I'v been away from the Atari scene over 20 years and I'm feeling like a noob. Doom1.xex Robo1.xex alien1.xex

Yesterday's (08/31) totals: GBA 1) Moto Racer Advance - 15 minutes 2) Muppet Pinball Mayhem - 10 minutes